Li Yuan held the key as he reached the Phantom Array. First he tossed it aside and paced a full circle, senses open. All he saw was the same dry, airless brick floor that filled every other corner of the sub-basement. Then he picked up the key and stepped forward. A ripple swallowed him; the bricks melted into a moonlit pond, and a small stone hut appeared on the far bank. The water should have been stagnant, yet it pulsed with life—silver fish darted beneath the surface. Overhead, dusk had fled and a sky full of stars glimmered. Either the chamber sat somewhere above ground, hidden by the illusion, or even the roof of this underground palace was part of the mirage. Clearly the place was designed as a second refuge for the Holy Tree Temple’s core members, a bolt-hole to use if the Sect Guarding Array ever fell. The makeshift illusory formations outside were merely decoys Qing Hancheng fed to Gu Xuejian so she could feel privy to some grand secret. Li Yuan pushed open the chamber’s door. He saw a couch and a writing desk. Stacked on the desk were slim booklets. One glance and his face lit up. There were fifth rank and higher skills, movement arts, poisons, and beast-taming manuals with special chapters on wood and insect demons, even alchemy notes. Paging through, he realized the fifth- and fourth rank beast-handling manuals Qing Hancheng had gifted him in the past were half-copied from these very books, just enough missing to keep him dependent. Now he owned the complete texts; taming skills went straight onto the to-learn list. Poisons, footwork, and alchemy…he needed them all. He bundled every booklet under his arm, ready to haul them back to Cloudpeak Province alongside the three original paintings and the cultivation techniques. Treasures still kept turning up. Li Yuan found blood gold ingots, blood crystal marrow, finished pills, etc… Accepting Qing Hancheng’s inheritance became a careful game. Li Yuan attached one end of the thousand-mile thread onto a disciple inside the third gate. Each time he returned to the White Bamboo Hanging Bell Tower he ferried another load through the thread to Dawn Manor, where Cui Huayin and the others locked it away. Cui Huayin, Jing Shuixiang, and Yao Jue had no idea what was happening beyond their walls. Watching their man spirit away the Holy Tree Temple’s heirlooms piece by piece left them numb with shock. For a moment they honestly wondered whether he had robbed the entire temple. Li Yuan hid nothing. He told them how he’d taken on the identity of Bubba, challenged Qing Hancheng, how the half-step third rank powerhouse fell, how Qing Hancheng’s dying wish thrust his legacy upon him, and how a lethal flaw riddled the Holy Tree Temple’s core cultivation technique. Four pairs of eyes, three women plus Ping'an, stared at him as though he’d grown horns. Li Yuan had defeated a man on the verge of third rank? The Holy Tree Temple’s cultivation technique carried a built-in deathtrap? The original diagrams had been tucked inside the White Bamboo Hanging Bell Tower all along? Any one of these facts was earth-shaking; together they left all of them reeling. Li Yuan all but smeared Qing Hancheng’s legacy across their faces. They didn’t know how to feel. The techniques were dangerous, yes, but they were also pristine, uncut gems on the road of cultivation. Mixed with sorrow for Qing Hancheng, a small thrill crept in. The path ahead suddenly lay wide open. And as thanks, the three women began helping Li Yuan burn off the excess vigor that came with his ever-rising blood-energy. Cui Huayin in particular, the once-aloof Yin Consort, unlocked an impressive array of new costumes and roleplay. Li Yuan, for his part, enjoyed every minute of the research. He still adored the beauty of his three wives, but Cui Huayin had never stopped calling him a brute and generally refused to let him touch her. Even on the unlucky nights when she drew the short straw, she would endure him with a look of pure distaste, then roll clear out of attack range, pull up a second quilt, and sleep facing the opposite wall. Li Yuan never forced the matter, yet even with his own wife he sometimes had to content himself with daydreams. The Yin Consort knew exactly what went on in that rascal’s head. This time she decided to reward him—lavishly, in fact—but a single indulgence did not mean a permanent policy change. When the fun ended, Li Yuan was left itching again; as he put it in the slang of his previous life, he’d been CPU-ed—maybe even UFO-ed. Still, he had no wish to smash the fragile balance among them. The game itself was half the charm. In the secular world pleasure lay in food and desire long before the cold climb of power and money; immortality meant little without the flavor of the mortal red dust. Days slipped by. Li Yuan cautiously settled into Qing Hancheng’s identity. He hadn’t tried to take command of Qing’s private network of hidden loyalists, some of whom were even fifth rank elders, because he meant to tap them only at critical moments. Not even Jing Baikou or Gu Xuejian knew those men led double lives. Qing Hancheng had been a master of secrets. Meanwhile, Li Yuan kept testing whether he could tune his body deeply enough to handle the Holy Tree Temple’s cultivation techniques. However, the current level of his Mortal World Transformation was still too shallow. It didn’t affect deep enough into flesh and bone. If his Six Paths skill improved by stages, the next tier, surely tied to that elusive Yang flame, should do the trick. Yet he could find no path to break through. Li Yuan also sent Tang Nian to comb the countryside for gifted orphans. Within two months she delivered 300 sturdy children who had passed the Holy Tree Temple’s rudimentary ninth rank test. Cloudpeak Province was poor; orphans were plentiful—some left by disaster, some sold by desperate parents, some simply abandoned. Word spread that the Tang Sect paid silver for extra mouths, and people showed up in droves. More than half the recruits were girls, but hunger had blotted out gender; they stood like frightened, skin-and-bone cubs, moving only when ordered. At mealtimes they swarmed the cauldrons, stuffing food down as if they’d never see another bowl. Li Yuan returned just as the children were eating. They wore oversized cotton jackets; cheeks bulged like dumplings yet they still crammed in more, afraid the feast would vanish. The sight softened him, but the teachings still had to begin. Learning his cultivation techniques was not a curse; it was a chance to bend fate. A stone’s throw from the fifth rank meat field, new buildings sprung up. The new Holy Tree Temple sat on the left and the new The Bladeseekers on the right. Foundations for a different future were being laid, brick by careful brick.