The soul is good, the spirit evil.

Records of Strange Tales from Nanchang Scholar states: “A person’s soul is good while their spirit is evil, a person’s soul is intelligent while their spirit is foolish, a person’s soul is righteous while their spirit is wicked.”

But that was merely mortal speculation.

For humans, good and evil have their measures; for the Heavenly Way, good and evil have new measures.

For cultivators practicing the Heavenly Way, love, desire, and scheming are not evil. True evil consists of all those uncontrollable emotions that hinder cultivation.

Such as obsession, madness, hatred, shame, and regret.

If a person could strip away all these emotions, they could naturally approach the Heavenly Way, existing between passion and passionlessness, embodying heaven and comprehending the Way, becoming a “Child of the Way.”

Years ago, when he studied by the window, he came across such passages and thought: If there were a special method to separate soul and spirit, removing the evil spirit and keeping the good soul, then entering the path of cultivation – that could be considered taking a shortcut to enlightenment.

But at that time he was still the Third Young Master of the Marquis Xie Manor, merely thinking such thoughts.

Until later, when he killed Jian Chou and sat before her fresh grave, feeling his insides burning like fire, his evil spirit churning, filled with both shame and pain that were truly unbearable.

His soul and spirit thus separated.

Three parts soul remained in his body, seven parts spirit went into the sword.

From then on, he called this sword “Seven Parts Spirit.”

He still loved Jian Chou, but would never again feel guilty or suffer for killing her to seek the Way, nor would he regret it.

What remained with him was coldness, restraint, and strategy.

He thought no one in the world knew his secret, not even Master Hengxu who took him as a disciple knew nothing of this.

So how could Jian Chou know?

As early as when they traveled together to the Tantric sect in the snowy region, she had already used those three words “Seven Parts Spirit” to test him.

Now she even held this sword in her hand!

When this sword pierced his chest, the seven parts spirit hidden within the blade flowed back along the sword edge into his body.

Soul and spirit reuniting brought that long-absent piercing heart pain!

Xie Buchen failed to kill Jian Chou, yet she sent the seven parts spirit back to him with one sword strike. His brow’s ancestral aperture and spiritual platform were suddenly plunged into myriad tribulations, battling with Pangu’s divine soul.

How far apart are heaven and earth?

How much difference between cold and heat?

The moment Jian Chou withdrew her sword, he fell from the void of the Desolate Domain. At the edge of his vision, Jian Chou stood motionless, gradually shrinking in his eyes until she became a blurred dot, swallowed by the surrounding darkness.

He completely sank into the depths of darkness.

Not knowing how many stars he passed, not knowing where he had sunk to. After a long fall, he felt himself crash into a torrent that carried and pulled him along. The boundaries between time and space finally gradually blurred.

An instant like sixty years, a thousand years like a finger snap!

His will was completely damaged in the chaotic battle with Pangu’s divine soul, even his body and blood became thin.

He knew he was transforming into chaos.

But he hadn’t expected he could still see light, though it was dim light.

A familiar aura emanated from the wind.

Xie Buchen opened his eyes.

What met his gaze was the constantly enlarging Extreme Domain’s hundred thousand evil lands, withered grass stretching to the sky, and the gloomy firmament forever covered with lingering red clouds. The intact Ghost Gate stood at the edge of the Extreme Domain’s seventy-two cities, and in the nearest Dead City, he could vaguely see moving ghost cultivator figures.

At this moment, he was truly bewildered.

His mind was filled with myriad pains spreading to his limbs and bones, yet this city gave him an extremely strange feeling.

After the Yin-Yang Realm war, more than half of the Extreme Domain’s seventy-two cities had been destroyed.

Even if Jian Chou entered and ruled the Extreme Domain, being titled King of Equality, when these seventy-two cities were rebuilt, they definitely wouldn’t look the same as before.

Almost instinctively, he dragged his broken body toward the city, toward his old residence.

No one along the way discovered his existence.

Streets, tall buildings, alleys – all bore their old appearance.

Xie Buchen felt like he was in a dream. He had heard that before death, people’s minds would flash through many past events like a revolving lantern.

This old residence should be the starting point of his ten lives’ destiny, right?

The door was closed, and there was even an array formation outside.

However, he walked in easily without even pushing the door, as if neither the door nor the array existed.

Blood flowed on the ground but turned into water traces.

Xie Buchen again saw the old scholar tree planted in the courtyard, which had grown so tall.

His consciousness was groggy, and his steps unsteady.

A person whose oil was exhausted and lamp dying walked up the steps, but when passing that half-open window, he actually saw Jian Chou!

On the snow-white window paper, there were faintly light red characters.

The plum blossoms in the vase had already bloomed.

She stood before the desk in this study, holding three purple incense sticks in one hand, while a tiny flame emerged from her fingertip on the other hand, approaching those three incense sticks!

In this instant, thunder exploded in Xie Buchen’s mind!

Almost without thinking, he released the ink ruler from his palm, shooting it toward her hand!

“Snap!”

The purple incense hadn’t had time to be lit before being knocked to the ground, breaking into several pieces!

The Jian Chou standing inside the window was greatly startled by this, suddenly turning around to look out the window!

She was extremely alert.

Though she could see nothing, whether by coincidence or keen perception, her gaze passed through the window frame gap and met his eyes directly.

What kind of feeling was this?

Only after the ink ruler, having scratched her hand, pierced through the entire earth of this Origin Realm and emerged from the ground on the other side, did Xie Buchen realize what he had done and where and when he was!

He had actually returned to that day when Jian Chou was trapped in the Extreme Domain and first discovered the old residence’s secret, back to the moment before she had cultivated the plum in the bottle and was about to light this incense!

If a person returns to the past, they can change the future.

But at this moment, what could he change?

Interrupting Jian Chou’s incense lighting – where would this incense end up? With Jian Chou or with the nine-headed bird? If he didn’t interrupt Jian Chou’s incense lighting, his cultivation at that time in the Nineteen Continents was still inferior to now. When the incense burned out, what would he encounter?

But it was already meaningless.

Because the choice had already happened.

After he threw the ruler to interrupt the burning incense, someone as alert and meticulous as Jian Chou would definitely never light the incense again.

Perhaps taking this incense from Jian Chou’s hands would be a solution.

But after throwing that ruler strike, he couldn’t move a single step – he was just a dying person.

This lifetime of scheming for hundreds of years, barely surviving to the end, what he gained was not controlling his own destiny, but rather having his destiny controlled by others!

Living like this, what difference was there between life and death?

Better to have never conceived hope, never been born into this world!

Coming from the future, he had already experienced everything, clearly knowing that from the moment he made incense with the nine-headed bird’s heart blood, he had become someone else’s chess piece.

What need was there for this trap in the old residence to exist?

In the depths of his consciousness, Pangu’s divine soul had already merged with him by more than half, gradually awakening. At the same time, it seemed to sense his inner thoughts and suddenly intensified its devouring!

Two divine souls, like two trapped beasts put in a cage, devouring and tearing at each other!

But this pain really couldn’t be considered anything.

When the seven parts spirit returned, the pain spreading from his heart was the ultimate pain in this world!

So he seemed to feel nothing at all. Though at his last gasp, he forcefully extended his finger!

Drawing characters on that snow-white window paper.

The process wasn’t very smooth.

Because his body was sometimes under his own control, sometimes controlled by the other, it was torturous tug-of-war. He couldn’t hear anything, couldn’t see anything clearly, and could only rely on that stubborn will to continue writing.

“There is treachery.”

These first two characters were already extremely distorted, truly lacking his former elegant precision.

But perhaps being unable to recognize them was just right?

Such a thought flashed lightly through Xie Buchen’s mind. His spirit became dazed for a moment. When that final stroke heavily settled, he finally saw clearly the eight characters he had written—

Kill Xie Buchen;

Sever Seven Parts Spirit!

“Seven Parts Spirit…”

Silently reciting these three words, all thoughts exploded at this moment, all unknown and incomprehensible doubts became clear at this moment.

Like lightning streaking across the sky in a torrential rainy night!

Illuminating all the dim and dark corners!

Xie Buchen couldn’t help but shake his head and laugh heartily, almost laughing to tears!

Laughing at this lifetime of hundreds of years of scheming, absurd as a joke; laughing at his step-by-step calculations through nine lives, merely making wedding clothes for others; laughing at these ten lives as Human Emperor with the Way called “not submitting,” now at the end of his road, becoming another’s vassal!

Even more laughing at his momentary mistake, seeking benevolence and obtaining benevolence!

So Jian Chou learned of Seven Parts Spirit from here;

So the Nineteen Continents actually had such a chaotic current that could let people traverse time!

That’s why she could test him with the three words “Seven Parts Spirit,” that’s why she could summon countless versions of herself in the final battle in the Desolate Domain. So one of them, while peering into his dreams or learning of Seven Parts Spirit’s location from other moments, could return to the Origin Realm and obtain it.

And the soul is good while the spirit is evil.

All that benefits oneself and the Way is good; all that doesn’t benefit oneself and the Way is evil.

Human good and evil are balanced by soul and spirit.

But in this lifetime, he had severed his soul and spirit!

Though the Way is born from soul and spirit, soul and spirit are not the same. Three parts soul could sacrifice everything to prove the great Way and not submit to heaven, except itself; seven parts spirit would feel shame, hatred, and pain, might not be willing to sacrifice everything for the “Way,” but could sacrifice itself!

The good and evil of the Heavenly Way and human good and evil are truly different.

Before the seven parts spirit and three parts soul reunited, he would exhaust every method to prevent Pangu’s divine soul from devouring him, but would never destroy himself. But after the seven parts spirit and three parts soul reunited, all those old emotions surged up. In this moment of battle between heaven and man, it was enough to make him choose what she wanted.

Because he was Xie Buchen.

Having schemed for hundreds of years, ten lives as Human Emperor, all for not submitting!

I am myself, no one can change me!

Clearly the most humble and simple wish in this world, yet also the most difficult and impossible wish to achieve in this world.

How can a person not be changed?

“Hahahaha…”

Xie Buchen was still laughing.

But when a thought arose, the soul and spirit in his ancestral aperture’s spiritual platform exploded like a nebula. While destroying his own soul and spirit, he was also destroying Pangu’s divine soul that had already merged with him!

If I am not myself, what joy is there in life?

If I no longer exist, what fear is there in death?

—He who kills the unsubmissive is the unsubmissive!

Born for not submitting, died for not submitting;

Jian Chou’s words were ultimately correct: What kills you is not me.

Outside the old residence, someone knocked and entered. The Jian Chou inside the window had already composed her strange and alert expression, walked to the courtyard, and sat down to talk with them.

Two people.

One Xie Buchen didn’t recognize, the other was Zhang Tang, who was still just a ghost clerk at that time.

He then remembered all the times on that isolated island in the human world, seeing her bright face under March peach blossoms, smelling her faint fragrance when she bent over the desk copying Buddhist scriptures, touching her flushed cheeks reflected by the bright red candles…

He couldn’t help asking himself: Do you regret it?

No, never regretted.

Neither regretted falling in love nor regretted the killing.

Nothing in this world was worth his regret – life or death, love or hate.

Between his indifferent brows, hostility rose and fell, deep and shallow, but finally all dissipated. The instant Xie Buchen fell, he saw those already dried characters on the snow-white window paper.

Jian Chou was still talking with those two people.

She probably couldn’t see them.

That was good.

That day above Kunwu’s sea of clouds, she raised her wine cup to toast him, saying: “You are worthy.”

But he ultimately knew he was not worthy.

He created Jian Chou, and Jian Chou also fulfilled him—

Until death, I am still myself!

In the final moment when consciousness dissipated and he perished together with Pangu’s divine soul, everything before his eyes began to sway. Even memories crumbled and vanished along with consciousness.

So he finally couldn’t remember.

What was written on the window – was it the character “ming” from “my fate is mine to control,” or the character “qing” from “my heart delights in you”?

Perhaps both.

Xie Buchen blinked and finally slowly closed his eyes. A great dream from which he would never again awaken. In the dream were distant cold green mountains and continuous misty rain…