Two days later.
High above, the radiance of the Twin Yin-Yang Fish Formation flared violently in that instant. The black and white currents no longer circulated gently—instead they became two roaring dragons, madly churning the qi of the entire Red Dust Mountain.
At the same time, a surging, turbulent tide of Red Dust Qi erupted from every corner of Red Dust Mountain, like countless pink floods bursting their dikes all at once.
It had begun. Yun Ni had made her move.
On the training grounds, the clashing sword edges of a sparring match suddenly stalled.
The sword-bearing girl froze mid-motion, her arm hanging in the air. The clarity in her eyes was like clear water into which ink had been dropped—swiftly clouding, spreading, until at last it was replaced by an eerie peach-pink hue. The long sword in her hand fell with a clang, yet the corners of her mouth slowly curved into a smile of blissful, hollow rapture.
Beneath the covered walkway, an outer-court disciple who had been sweeping suddenly cast aside his broom.
As though beholding some peerless vision, he reached out foolishly to claw at empty air, murmuring indistinct words of love, as if he were floating among the clouds. Even as his whole body collapsed limp to the ground, that same skin-crawling smile of happiness still hung upon his face.
One, two, ten, a hundred...
This transformation spread like a plague, sweeping across the whole of Red Dust Mountain with an unstoppable momentum.
No one resisted—because they had no awareness at all that they were being attacked.
Their reason was stripped away, their souls sealed off, leaving only the most primal, most pure desire, magnified without limit. Thousands of disciples became like puppets on strings—some standing rigid where they were, some slumped in corners—all of them holding the very same posture.
Heads tilted back, eyes glazed and scattered, gazing toward the mountain's summit—toward the Formation Eye that was about to devour everything.
Their sense of self was sinking into darkness, while the Red Dust Qi surging within their bodies was being greedily drawn out, gathering into invisible rivers, all rushing toward a single destination.
Gu Chengming had no time to think it through. His body shot forward, racing at full speed toward the direction where the Red Dust Qi was thickest.
The Yin-Yang Fish's protection let him pass unimpeded the whole way—but at this moment that protection had grown precarious, teetering on the edge. For the Yin-Yang Fish itself was enduring tremendous agony, and the power it could spare for Gu Chengming grew less and less.
At last, he arrived at that place.
—The place where the Red Dust Qi was most concentrated.
It was several times larger than that underground lake he had once seen in the forbidden grounds. The vaulted ceiling was carved densely with ancient runes, and at the very center of this space, a colossal fish-shaped spirit creature was writhing and struggling in midair.
That was the true body of the Yin-Yang Fish.
Unlike the phantom he had glimpsed in the forbidden grounds, the Yin-Yang Fish's true body was far vaster than Gu Chengming had imagined.
Its body stretched across most of the underground space. Its black and white scales refracted a mysterious luster beneath the light, and within its enormous fish eyes a chaotic radiance revolved.
But at this moment it was bound by countless pink chains—chains that were not solid objects, but forged from Red Dust Qi condensed to its utter extreme: the desires of all living beings.
The surging emotions that had erupted from the thousand-odd disciples of the Harmonious Joy Sect under the catalyst of Red Dust Qi—everyone's desires, obsessions, cravings, and greed—in this instant were guided and gathered together by Yun Ni, transformed into the shackles that bound the Yin-Yang Fish.
And directly beneath the Yin-Yang Fish, Fu Xiaoxiao hovered in midair.
Around her body coiled a layer of dazzling black-and-white light, her face pale, her eyes tightly shut.
—She was bearing the process of the Dharma-Station transformation.
And farther off, upon a raised platform, Yun Ni sat cross-legged, her hands forming a complex seal, her body wreathed in Red Dust Qi so thick it had nearly become substance.
Before her floated a bronze-hued mirror. The face reflected in it was not her own, but the figures of all thousand-odd disciples of the Harmonious Joy Sect.
—Those very people whose desires were being drawn away without their knowing.
As though sensing the newcomer, Yun Ni did not halt her movements. She did not even open her eyes.
"Gu Chengming of the Night-Watch Bureau, is it?"
Her voice was calm, carrying no trace of surprise.
In truth, from the very day Li Suizhuang had brought him here, Yun Ni had faintly harbored a suspicion.
The Imperial Academy's chief physician coming in person, bringing along an apprentice of unclear identity, and arriving precisely as the sect sealed the mountain—it was all far too much of a coincidence.
And the matter of his meeting with Fu Xiaoxiao—Yun Ni knew of that too.
But she had not stopped them from meeting. On one hand, it was out of guilt toward Xiaoxiao; on the other, she did not wish to make an enemy of Great Qian, nor of the Night-Watch Bureau. However one looked at it, this matter was, in essence, merely an internal affair of the Harmonious Joy Sect.
"I clung to a hope," she said, "that since you are a man of the Night-Watch Bureau, once you understood the full circumstances, you would choose to return to the Capital first to report—so that the Night-Watch Bureau might dispatch higher-ranking cultivators to handle this."
A round trip would take several days at the least. By then the Yin-Yang Fish would already have transformed into a Dharma-Station, and the problem of the yin-yang imbalance would be resolved along with it.
As for the disturbance already caused to the Capital, a few spirit stones in compensation would settle it. Great Qian would not tear off its face against the Harmonious Joy Sect over a sect's internal affair that had already been laid to rest.
"But you did not leave. That, I cannot fathom."
He was nothing more than a Second Realm sword cultivator. Even if he possessed a few tricks, even if he had killed a spy of the Eternal Life Sect—yet here, now, what he faced was the collective desire of the entire Harmonious Joy Sect and an innate spirit creature on the verge of returning to a Dharma-Station.
What could he possibly do?
Gu Chengming paid Yun Ni's words no mind. His gaze passed over her and fell upon that small, ceaselessly trembling figure suspended in the air.
Fu Xiaoxiao—her eyes tightly shut, unaware that he had come.
Or perhaps she knew and simply could not respond—at this moment her entire consciousness was enduring the tremendous impact of the Dharma-Station transformation. What strength could she possibly have left to perceive the outside world?
"Chief Banner Officer Gu."
Yun Ni's voice drew his attention back. She had assumed no posture of attack; she had not even released any aura. She simply stood there, plain and unhurried, looking down at him from on high.
"I have no wish to be your enemy, nor do I wish to harm you."
"But since you have chosen to remain, then at the very least I ought to make you understand—that what I am doing is not so despicable a thing as you imagine."
She raised her hand and gave a light wave.
In that instant, Gu Chengming's vision underwent a violent change.
The dense Red Dust Qi swirling around him suddenly became countless streams of light and shadow, weaving before his eyes a scroll so vast it was suffocating.
He saw the desires of all living beings.
The inner worlds of the thousand-odd disciples of the Harmonious Joy Sect unfolded before him one by one—not in the form of words or sounds, but as the most direct images and emotions.
Some yearned to stand at the summit of cultivation; some yearned for a single person to cherish them wholeheartedly; some yearned to break free of the sect's bonds; some yearned for peace.
A thousand people, a thousand faces; a thousand thoughts, a thousand feelings.
These desires interwove, converging into a vast sea of red dust.
And at the far edge of that sea lay a world where everyone was smiling.
No pain, no struggle, no torment of longing unfulfilled. Every single person was immersed in the purest happiness, every desire satisfied, every craving answered, every loneliness filled with warmth.
A realm of ultimate bliss, where all are happy.
Yun Ni's voice sounded beside his ear, carrying a gentleness she rarely revealed.
"The Harmonious Joy Sect cultivates the Red Dust Dao—and is that not the cultivation of the joys and sorrows of all living beings? If all people could be left with nothing but joy and delight, would that not be the very pinnacle of the Red Dust Dao?"
"It is indeed beautiful."
Gu Chengming stood within that illusion woven from the desires of all living beings, and he smiled.
"But I—do not agree."
Within her heart, Yun Ni felt a helpless resignation. It seemed there was truly no other way.
Ever since she had become the Grand Elder, not a single thing had gone as she wished. No one agreed with her; no one understood her.
But she was the Grand Elder of the Harmonious Joy Sect. Even bearing the misunderstanding of everyone, she would still see to it that the sect's next thousand years continued to endure.
She sighed, raised her hand, and under her guidance that immense Red Dust Qi began to surge toward Gu Chengming.
Not to attack—but to assimilate.
She meant to draw Gu Chengming, too, into the system built from the desires of all living beings, to turn his own desires into kindling for the Yin-Yang Fish's transformation.
This was the gentlest way to deal with him—it would not take his life, only lull him to sleep amid ultimate bliss, and wake him once everything was over.
The Red Dust Qi rushed in like a tide—then, three feet from Gu Chengming, it abruptly halted.
That was the Yin-Yang Fish's protection.
Yun Ni's movements froze. She fell silent for a long while, and then she smiled.
In that smile there was bitterness, there was release, there was a kind of "so that is how it is" acceptance of fate.
"So you are the Yin-Yang Fish's last straw to clutch at?"
She looked straight into Gu Chengming's eyes, her tone calm.
"Then let me see just what tricks you truly have."
As the Yin-Yang Fish's proxy, he naturally held a standing equal to her own within these desires of all living beings.
But in the end he was nothing more than a Second Realm cultivator. Whether in matters of love and hate, or the seven emotions and six desires, his understanding of Red Dust Qi could not compare in depth to her own.
She had spent three years constructing this system of all living beings' desires. By what right could he unravel it?
Gu Chengming said nothing. In that moment the Yin-Yang Fish's power flooded into his body like a tide, merging perfectly with the Yin-Yang Creation Strategy. His perception was, in an instant, magnified to an inconceivable degree—he could sense the existence of every cultivator upon the whole of Red Dust Mountain, the flow of every wisp of Red Dust Qi, the veins of every thread of cause and effect.
The desires of all living beings—the desires, emotions, obsessions, and cravings of the thousand-odd disciples of the Harmonious Joy Sect—gathered together into a torrent mighty enough to shake heaven and earth.
Yun Ni had spent three years guiding this torrent, condensing it into the shackles that bound the Yin-Yang Fish.
This power was too vast—so vast that with Gu Chengming's Second Realm cultivation, a head-on confrontation was utterly impossible. And yet he laughed aloud.
The reason was simple: everything unfolding before him was exactly as he had anticipated—even the means by which the Yin-Yang Fish guided him were precisely as he had imagined.
What Yun Ni saw was "the desires of all living beings"—a vast, chaotic, unnameable whole.
But that was not what Gu Chengming saw. What he saw was one person, and another, and another.
When his perception traced upward along the veins of that Red Dust Qi, those so-called "desires of all living beings" were no longer a blurred torrent, but were deconstructed into hundreds and thousands of clear, independent, wholly distinct threads of emotion.
And at the end of every thread was connected a specific person.
A living, breathing person with a name, a past, fears, and yearnings.
Gu Chengming opened his eyes, and in his vision, the world had changed.
Countless dialogue boxes surfaced before him.
One after another, layer upon layer, dense and overwhelming, covering the whole sky.
Above each dialogue box was labeled a name; beneath each were listed several options.
Some of those names he had seen before; some he had never heard.
But that did not matter. What mattered was this—every dialogue box corresponded to a disciple of the Harmonious Joy Sect swept up in the desires of all living beings.
And every option was a path leading into the depths of her heart.
[Within his sea of consciousness, the Yin-Yang Creation Strategy let out a cry of astonishment: This is...!]
[It saw it.]
[All the techniques saw it.]
Gu Chengming offered no explanation, because none was needed.
He was a Galgame player.
A veteran who had cleared countless routes, conquered countless characters, and made countless choices before countless options.
In those games, he had learned one thing—
There was no such thing as "all living beings"; there was only one "you" after another.
Every person was unique. Every person deserved to be taken seriously. Every person's story should never be reduced to the single label of "desire."
And what Gu Chengming had to do was very simple.
—To see each of them, one by one.
His hand rose.
The first dialogue box surfaced at the very front.
It belonged to an outer-court disciple, just twenty years of age, her cultivation no more than the First Realm. Her desire was very simple.
She wanted to grow strong. She wanted to be recognized by the sect. She wanted to prove that she was not worthless.
There were three options.
Gu Chengming did not hesitate. He reached out and tapped one of them.
In that instant, an exceedingly faint wisp of Red Dust Qi flowed from his fingertip, traveling along the thread of cause and effect to reach the heart of that outer-court disciple.
I see you. Your effort, your unwillingness, your longing—I have seen it all. You are not worthless.
In her dream, the rims of the outer-court disciple's eyes reddened faintly. That heart of hers, filled with desire, hollow and numb, cracked open after that single note.
The first Red Dust chain snapped.
Yun Ni's brow furrowed slightly.
But before she could even react, Gu Chengming had already extended his second hand.
The second dialogue box, the third, the fourth, the tenth, the fiftieth, the hundredth—
Dialogue boxes surged forth before him in a frenzy, so many they nearly obscured his entire field of vision.
Countless names, countless stories, countless options.
Some needed encouragement; some needed understanding; some needed a single "it's all right"; some needed a silent companionship.
For some, the knot in their heart lay in a cruel word from childhood; for some, the obsession stemmed from an unforgettable parting; some simply feared loneliness; and some had lost themselves over the long course of cultivation.
Every person was different, and every person needed a different answer.
And Gu Chengming gave it to them.
He was conquering hundreds and thousands of routes all at once!
Yun Ni's expression finally changed. She watched as the Red Dust chains she had painstakingly forged, condensed from the desires of a thousand disciples, disintegrated at an unbelievable speed.
Not shattered by force—but unraveled from within.
Those disciples bound by the chains were "waking up" one by one—not waking from sleep, but waking from the dream-illusion of desire.
Their desires had not vanished, but they were no longer a chaotic, blind torrent driven by instinct. They had turned back into warm, purposeful emotions belonging to each individual person.
"This is impossible..." Yun Ni murmured.
The system of all living beings' desires that she had spent three years constructing was being unraveled by a Second Realm cultivator, in a way she utterly could not comprehend.
When the last Red Dust chain broke, the Yin-Yang Fish let out a long cry.
That sound pierced through the whole of Red Dust Mountain, pierced through the Twin Yin-Yang Fish Formation. Those emotions liberated from the desires of all living beings did not scatter. Instead they became a warm, bright power carrying the warmth of a thousand faces, slowly flowing back into the body of the Yin-Yang Fish.
Not desire—but love.
It was that most genuine, most tender, most guarded feeling in each person's heart.
Some loved kin far away; some loved fellow disciples at their side; some loved the very land beneath their feet; some loved the bright moon overhead.
—A thousand people, a thousand loves; ten thousand thoughts returning to one.
"Cough—!"
Yun Ni coughed up a great mouthful of fresh blood, her purple palace robes tearing to shreds inch by inch in the violent gales of qi.
In the next moment, her aura swiftly withered. Under the backlash of all living beings' emotions, her soul sank into utter self-imposed isolation, and her whole person, like a bird with broken wings, tumbled helplessly from the high platform—gravely wounded and unconscious.
As Yun Ni fell, the Red Dust Qi within the underground space began to churn violently.
The Yin-Yang Fish gave one last long, drawn-out cry.
Its enormous body no longer concealed itself. It became a revolving ring of black-and-white light, its surroundings turning into a chaotic space of the purest yin and yang qi.
In that space where the two qi of yin and yang intersected, before her consciousness sank into darkness, Fu Xiaoxiao perceived it all.
As the torrent of all living beings' desires surged within her body, though her soul had been suppressed to its very limit by the impact of the Dharma-Station transformation, she was, after all, the Fish-Warden Elder—the resonance between her and the Yin-Yang Fish had never once been severed.
Amid all the tangled, complex Red Dust Qi, within the torrent woven from a thousand threads of cause and effect, she still recognized that one aura in an instant.
—That was Gu Chengming's aura.
The moment this awareness flooded into her mind, Fu Xiaoxiao's consciousness did not grow any clearer for it. Instead, as though seized by something, she began to fall uncontrollably toward somewhere far deeper.
She remembered something from many years ago.
Exactly how many years ago, she could no longer clearly recall. Back then she was still very small, only recently having joined the Harmonious Joy Sect, her cultivation no more than the First Realm—she could not even sense the most basic Red Dust Qi.
The Harmonious Joy Sect had always placed few restrictions on newly admitted disciples. Her master sent her to live for three months in a town at the foot of Red Dust Mountain.
Not to cultivate, not to train—simply to live, plainly, in the world of mortals.
"The Red Dust Dao is rooted in the red dust," her master had said.
"If you don't even know what the mortal world is like, how can you cultivate the red dust?"
And so the small Fu Xiaoxiao was cast off to Joy Town, lodged with an elderly couple who ran a general goods shop.
The old couple treated her well, cooking delicious food in ever-changing ways each day, and telling her stories in the courtyard at night.
The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl, Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai, the White Snake and Xu Xian—all those hoary old tales that had circulated among mortals for who knew how many years.
Fu Xiaoxiao listened with a sneer.
Young as she was then, she already vaguely knew that she was a cultivator of immortality. For cultivators, living several hundred years was an ordinary thing. Those mortal tales of "faithful unto death" and "following each other into life and death" seemed to her laughably brief.
A mortal's whole life was but a hundred years. Those earth-shaking loves and hates, set against the timescale of a cultivator, were no more than the span of a single nap.
But there was one story she remembered.
It was not one the old couple told, but one she had found in a corner of the shop—a dusty old storybook. Its pages had already yellowed and grown brittle, and the writing on its cover was so faded it was nearly illegible.
The story was very simple. It told of a time long, long ago, in an age before the Harmonious Joy Sect had ever been founded...
Back then Red Dust Mountain was not yet called Red Dust Mountain—it was just an ordinary barren peak, and at its foot lay a small village, and in the village there was a girl.
The girl had no remarkable origins. She was not the descendant of an immortal, nor a child of destiny—she was simply an ordinary mortal, one without even a spirit root.
But she had one thing that set her apart—she could see the colors in other people's hearts.
Happy people were warm-colored; sorrowful people were cool-colored; the angry were red; the fearful were black.
In that age when demon beasts ran rampant and cultivators were like gods, the days of mortals were bitter, and she grieved for them.
And so she began to do a foolish thing—she went to every household in the village, to listen to every person's story.
For those who had lost kin, she wept alongside them; for those who had lost their cattle and sheep, she helped search for them; for those struck by grave illness, she kept vigil at their bedsides, night after night, nursing them.
Later, demon beasts assailed the mountain, and the village fell into utter catastrophe.
The cultivators were busy saving themselves; no one had any thought to spare for this insignificant little village.
The girl stood at the village entrance, facing down those colossal monsters mighty enough to crush anything. She had no spirit root, no magic power, not even a decent weapon.
But still she stood there.
Not because she believed she could win, but because behind her were those people—those she had spent her whole life listening to, keeping company with, and loving—all of them, right there.
Just such a story—no dramatic ups and downs of plot, no soul-stirring conclusion, not even the girl's name left behind.
After finishing it, Fu Xiaoxiao closed the storybook and tossed it back into that dust-laden corner.
"It's a lie," she muttered.
A mortal, with no spirit root, no magic power—by what right could she accomplish such a thing? By a chestful of fervor? By a bellyful of naivety?
Where in this world was there such a good person? Where in this world was there anyone who would stake their life to love others?
Fu Xiaoxiao sneered, and then she forgot all about it.
Then she returned to the mountain, and began to cultivate, and began to grow strong.
Her master said she was a genius, said her talent was one that came only once in a century, said that as long as she cultivated the Red Dust Art step by step and practiced ordinary dual cultivation and gathering-and-replenishing, she could reach a level far beyond the reach of others.
She did not listen. The red dust she cultivated was not the tender whisperings of love, nor the mingling of the bedchamber, nor that "proving the Dao through desire" that the Harmonious Joy Sect disciples always had on their lips.
What she cultivated was the human world—the smile-lines at the corner of the old man's mouth as he rubbed and stamped his hands in the cold wind selling candied hawthorns on the street; the tenderness in the eyes of the woman deep in the alley who watched again and again at her door for her husband to return home; the ten thousand lanterns of households on New Year's Eve; the single sheet of spirit-money at the Qingming festival; the first cry of a newborn; the hand gripped tight by an old man on the verge of death.
What she cultivated was the true red dust.
There were those in the sect who said she had taken a wayward path, said that what the Harmonious Joy Sect cultivated was precisely the Dao of passion and desire—without dual cultivation, how could one prove the Dao?
Some laughed at her for being pretentious, saying that a disciple of the Harmonious Joy Sect unwilling to dual-cultivate was as absurd as a sword cultivator unwilling to draw his sword.
Fu Xiaoxiao could not be bothered with them.
She proved everything with sheer strength—Second Realm in ten years, Third Realm in thirty, peak Fourth Realm in several hundred. She was the most dazzling genius the Harmonious Joy Sect had seen in a thousand years, and throughout it all she had never once dual-cultivated with anyone.
There was even a time when she felt she had already proven that path was the right one.
Until the day those disciples were surrounded by a Fifth Realm great demon.
She stood there, facing an enemy she could not possibly defeat, and behind her was a group of junior sisters trembling in terror.
In that moment, she suddenly recalled that story—that nameless mortal girl without even a spirit root, that figure standing at the village entrance facing the demon beasts.
It turned out she had remembered it all along, even as her lips said she did not believe it, that those tales were lies, that there was no one in this world who would stake their life to love others.
But in her heart, she had believed all along. From the very moment she first read that story, she had believed.
She believed there could be such a person in this world.
That was why she had walked this path—no dual cultivation, no gathering-and-replenishing, using only the purest myriad facets of human life, unrelated to desire, to cultivate the Red Dust Dao—because she wanted to become that kind of person.
Was there truly no one in this world who would stake their life to love others?
Then she would be that person.
And so she Reversed the Effect to the Cause without hesitation, with her Fourth Realm body counter-striking against a Fifth Realm great demon—even if the price was her Dao foundation shattering to pieces and the rest of her life laid to ruin.
She had never regretted it.
But now and then, when she sat alone in the deep of night, she would think—
If only there truly were such a person, that would be wonderful.
Not herself, but someone else.
Someone who, like the girl in that story, would still stand in place when everyone else had turned and left.
A fool who took no thought for the consequences, who sought no return, who set themselves ablaze to light the way for others.
She thought there would be no such person in this world.
Because she had searched for several hundred years, and had not found a single one... hadn't she?
Her consciousness sank little by little.
How much time passed she did not know. Fu Xiaoxiao's consciousness rose and fell in the torrent of memory, and then she heard that voice.
Very far, and yet very near.
But it reached her ears clearly, distinctly.
—But I do not agree!
Then came more voices.
Not spoken in words, but conveyed through Red Dust Qi.
That shadow blurred in the darkness for several hundred years, that nameless figure she had read of in her youth in a tattered storybook—
In this moment, took on substance.
It slowly overlapped with the silhouette of a single person—that young man she had dragged along the Imperial Academy's covered walkway to test on the Red Dust Art, that foolish boy who, after being struck by her Red Dust Art, had asked with a blank face, "What does this mean?"; that dolt who, before leaving, had been stuffed with an armful of things by her and had still thanked her foolishly.
That liar who said "I understand" and yet never left at all.
—Gu Chengming.
Fu Xiaoxiao slowly opened her eyes, and what met her gaze was a face just inches away.
She stared at this face, for a long, long while...
So long that Gu Chengming thought she had not yet fully woken, and was just about to speak and call to her—
"I told you to leave." Fu Xiaoxiao's voice was so weak it hardly seemed her own, yet that tone of anger and vexation was exactly the same as before. "Idiot."
Gu Chengming was stunned for a moment, and then he smiled.
"Senior sister's awake? How do you feel?"
"How do I feel?"
Fu Xiaoxiao tried to struggle up into a sitting position, but her body was simply too weak. After struggling for a good while she only managed to nuzzle against him in his arms, and at last she gave up struggling and lay there, seething.
"There's not a single spot on my whole body that doesn't hurt. My meridians feel like they've been scorched by fire, my dantian is so empty I can't squeeze out even a thread of spiritual power—so you tell me, how do I feel?"
"And you—"
She reached out and, using every last bit of her strength, thumped Gu Chengming once on the chest.
That thump was soft and limp, like being pawed once by a kitten.
"Didn't I tell you to leave? Didn't I say to go back to the Capital?"
In the end, that fierce-on-the-outside, weak-on-the-inside pretense could no longer hold up. Her voice grew smaller and smaller, more and more muffled, until at last all that remained was a faint, indistinct snuffling from her nose.
Fu Xiaoxiao did not fuss for long.
She soon quieted down, and that hand thumping his chest had, at some unknown point, turned into a grip clutching the front of his robe, her knuckles pressing white, as if she feared that the moment she let go he would vanish.
The two of them stayed like that in silence for a while.
The surrounding space was very quiet.
At this moment the two of them were inside the body of the Yin-Yang Fish—more precisely, in a temporary space that the Yin-Yang Fish had constructed with its own power in the course of restoring its balance.
Overhead, the black and white currents circulated slowly, and now and then, where they met, a few fine sparks of light would burst forth, like stars in the night sky.
Her voice took on a hint of accusation.
"You never intended to leave from the very start, did you?"
Gu Chengming was silent for a breath. "Mm."
The hand clutching his robe gripped tighter still.
"Bastard. Liar."
Having cursed him, she fell silent again. After who knew how long, Fu Xiaoxiao at last lifted her head from his arms.
The rims of her eyes were still red, the tip of her nose red too. She looked utterly disheveled, without the slightest dignity of a Harmonious Joy Sect elder.
"Gu Chengming."
"Hm?"
Fu Xiaoxiao looked at him, as though a thousand words were stuck in her throat, not knowing which to begin with.
But in the end she said nothing at all. She raised her head, rose up on her toes, and kissed him.
The kiss was so brief that Gu Chengming had no time even to react before Fu Xiaoxiao had already drawn back.
She did not look at him. Her cheeks flushed at a visible pace, burning from the roots of her ears all the way down her neck, and she shrank back into his arms, burying her face once more against his chest.
"You promised me."
Her voice was so small it could barely be heard.
"That once your cultivation succeeded, you'd provide yang qi for the Yin-Yang Fish."
She muttered, her voice muffled against the front of his robe, indistinct and mumbling.
The two qi of yin and yang overhead were indeed still in a state of imbalance—the black yin qi clearly outweighed the white yang qi. Though it no longer churned as violently as before, to fully restore its balance would still take some time.
And what Fu Xiaoxiao said was not wrong—he had indeed, back when he was cultivating the Yin-Yang Creation Strategy, agreed to such a condition.
Cultivating the Yin-Yang Creation Strategy to great accomplishment required the method of dual cultivation to harmonize yin and yang, replenishing the Yin-Yang Fish with yang qi.
Only, spoken now from Fu Xiaoxiao's own mouth, it carried an entirely different layer of meaning.
Gu Chengming lowered his head and looked at the small elder in his arms who had buried her face so tightly, her ears red enough to drip blood.
Within his sea of consciousness, the reactions of the techniques varied, and the most fervent, naturally, was the Yin-Yang Creation Strategy.
[The Yin-Yang Creation Strategy kept popping up windows in red font: Yes yes yes yes yes!!!]
[Piercing Insight activates.]
[Option One: Dual-cultivate.]
[Option Two: Dual-cultivate a little later.]
Looking at the two options that had popped up before him, Gu Chengming said with a smile, "All right."
Then he leaned down of his own accord, and a soft, coquettish gasp sounded.
Yin and yang flowed in turn, and at last were stilled.
[Fu Xiaoxiao CG Unlocked.]
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