The Kunlun Mountain Range, eastern Fantong, Yuxu Peak, Deacon Hall.
"So I already told you! That demonic cultivator was beaten to dust by Senior Brother Qiu Changtian!!"
Liu Daoran roared furiously beside the counter. The deacon on the other side looked helpless as he explained:
"It's not that we're being unreasonable, but the sect does have its rules. Either we inspect the corpse or you provide a token proving the target's identity. In short, you must prove the target is dead..."
"He's been beaten to dust! What else can we do?" Lu Zheng asked angrily from the side. "Do you expect us to bring the dust here for you to inspect?"
"How can the Deacon Hall go back on its word like this!" Wen Qin shouted from behind, with Liu Yiyi beside her, helping make a bigger scene.
"Even dust would count as physical evidence..." The deacon hadn't finished speaking when Hu Haozhi dragged him out from behind the counter, slung an arm around his shoulders, and pulled him aside for a private chat.
"Old Su, you know me, Hu Haozhi, right?" He thumped his chest and asked impatiently.
"Why, of course I know you, Senior Brother Hu!" the deacon said with a smile. "You're a regular at the Deacon Hall. You handle plenty of our missions..."
"Good." Hu Haozhi gave him a thumbs-up, then pointed outside. "The one out there is Senior Brother Qiu Changtian, the current generation's chief disciple and the Sect Master's personal disciple. Would someone like him lie about something like this?"
"Well, that's... hard to say..."
"Why would he lie to you? Does he want those few spirit stones, or is he after a little fame?"
"That's exactly what I can't figure out." The deacon gave a bitter smile. "If he really is the Sect Master's personal disciple and the chief disciple of this generation, why would he come to our Deacon Hall to take missions?"
"Ah, you..." Hu Haozhi shook his head, his expression unexpectedly world-weary. "Do you know what it means to be 'fellow disciples of Kunlun, helping one another out of righteousness'?"
"Huh?" The deacon stared at him, dumbfounded.
In the cultivation world, where the strong preyed on the weak, was there really such a thing as "helping one another out of righteousness"?
"Not many people in the Kunlun Sect earn my respect, Old Hu. Even among the chief disciples of past generations, plenty were all name and no substance." Hu Haozhi sighed, his gaze fixed on the endless, snow-covered peaks in the distance, as if sunk in deep reflection. "But Senior Brother Qiu Changtian is absolutely worthy of being the chief disciple."
The battle that day had been fraught with peril, and even now, he still shuddered at the memory.
Just as Liu Daoran had said, without Qiu Changtian there, they would all have had their souls seized by now, trapped in a state where they could neither live nor die.
But what did Qiu Changtian want in return?
Those few paltry spirit stones? Or the admiration of a handful of insignificant outer sect disciples?
None of that made sense. Which chief disciple in any past generation had ever stooped to take missions alongside outer sect disciples?
After turning it over and over in his mind, he could only come up with four words: "helping out of righteousness."
"Senior Brother Qiu..." His eyes rested on the boundless sky above the sea of clouds, and he murmured,
"He's truly a figure like an immortal exiled from heaven."
"So, what does Senior Brother want?" Xu Yinglian asked, baffled.
"As a member of Kunlun, why must I have an ulterior motive for taking on sect missions?" Qiu Changtian asked with a smile.
Xu Yinglian nodded with an expression that said, "Yeah, right," then turned away.
"Since they've already helped claim the spirit stones and brought them over, let's take it easy today. I'm going to soak in the Kunlun Springs."
"Why are you taking a bath again, Junior Sister? Your skin will peel."
"Senior Brother, only filthy people who never wash and let grime cake on their bodies peel when they bathe."
"Junior Sister, I bathe and burn incense every seven days."
"But that's for the best. If Senior Brother got into the Kunlun pool too, you'd probably ruin the whole spring. No one wants to soak in a mud pit, except wild boars."
"I really do bathe regularly! And don't talk as if I'm some kind of beast!"
Qiu Changtian looked speechless, while Xu Yinglian wore a cool smile.
After seeing his junior sister off to the Kunlun Springs bathhouse, Qiu Changtian called for the Kunlun Mirror.
"A Jing, A Jing, are you there?"
"When am I ever not?" the Kunlun Mirror asked helplessly. "What is it?"
"If I wanted to give Ling Yunpo the spirit stones right now, and flew straight to Shu Mountain to meet him, would that create a time paradox?" Qiu Changtian asked eagerly.
"For example, I meet Ling Yunpo and hear him say, 'Hello, Qiu Changtian.'"
"Then later, I load a save from the past and become Ling Yunpo, but the first thing I say to him is, 'Pleased to meet you, Qiu Changtian'..."
"No," the Kunlun Mirror replied. "There is only one timeline, and paradoxes are not permitted."
"So in the first example, whatever you hear Ling Yunpo say, you must say the same thing as Ling Yunpo in the second example."
"Of course, if there are only a few differences between the two, I can use Mirror Flower Water Moon to filter out those minor disturbances. So you don't need to worry about them."
"What if the difference is major?" Qiu Changtian asked warily. "For instance, I go back to the past and deliberately change a large swath of history that's already happened?"
"Your attempt will fail," the Kunlun Mirror replied. "And you will suffer a backlash from the Great Dao of Time."
"For example, you watch Xu Yinglian die before your eyes, then load a save from the past and try to prevent her death, changing history."
"Most likely, you won't even make it to the point where you can stop her. Something will happen to prevent you from doing so—perhaps a bolt of heavenly lightning will strike you dead on the way."
Qiu Changtian listened patiently, then said thoughtfully:
"But I can stop her ahead of time, then find some illusion technique or something to make 'my past self' see 'Xu Yinglian's death' in accordance with the history that's already occurred, right?"
The Kunlun Mirror was stunned for a long time, as if the idea had never even occurred to it. At last, it said:
"If you can do that, then yes, it'll work. You won't trigger a backlash from time, and my Mirror Flower Water Moon can do it."
Qiu Changtian sighed.
"Isn't that just the Novikov self-consistency principle? You'd need at least ten years' worth of brain clots to come up with a setting this bizarre."
"Wha... what Novikov principle?"
"Nothing." Qiu Changtian sighed. "Forget it."
The Kunlun Mirror fell silent for a moment, then asked cautiously:
"Actually... I'm curious. What exactly do you think of Xu Yinglian? I'm not asking Qiu Changtian. I'm asking you."
"Junior Sister Xu?" He smiled faintly. "A sweet junior who chose to follow me because she admires me."
"And An Zhisu?"
"Senior Sister An? She's like a flower atop a high mountain. She's beautiful and brilliant in her own right, but what I truly admire is her courage and strength in fearlessly reaching for the sky."
"Do you like them?"
He fell silent for a moment, then sneered.
"A Jing, trust and dependence mean the same thing, you know. They're what the weak resort to."
"The road I must walk has already been laid out. Until I reach the end, nothing can stop me."
"The lonely throne in the heavens remains unclaimed to this day. This unbearable vacancy won't last much longer."
The Kunlun Mirror found it harder and harder to listen, feeling as if it were about to crack.
What kind of power-up freak was this guy? Did he even have human emotions?
"...Sure, whatever."
It mumbled its agreement. A powerful, uncontrollable thought suddenly rose in its heart:
On the surface, he and the Kunlun Mirror seemed like partners, but theirs was really just a straightforward exchange of benefits. He helped it mend the heavens and save the world; it used Mirror Flower Water Moon to help him obtain all sorts of peerless cultivation talents.
But deceiving innocent girls and winning their sincere affection had never been part of their original agreement! So it would be perfectly understandable if Mirror Flower Water Moon slipped up once in a while and let them see this guy's true colors, right?
For example, it could gradually, bit by bit, gently alter Xu Yinglian's impression of him—from an entirely fabricated "invincible Qiu Changtian" to the real person beneath his mask.
It could do the same with An Zhisu, too. He thought Senior Sister An knew "the fake Ling Yunpo," but in reality, she knew him—himself—wearing Ling Yunpo's name...
Once this tool had helped it mend the heavens and stopped using Mirror Flower Water Moon to disguise himself, returning to his real personality and appearance,
he'd be horrified to discover that Xu Yinglian and An Zhisu still recognized him.
That would probably be pretty interesting, wouldn't it?
Post-credits preview: Aizen. Qiu Changtian. Madara. They thought they'd worn masks the whole time, freely manipulating and playing with other people's feelings, never realizing that at the very last moment, they'd be stabbed in the back by the Hōgyoku. The Kunlun Mirror. Zetsu! (A voice-over rang out: "You think the person they truly fell in love with was the persona you put on? Don't be naive! The one who orchestrated all of this from behind the scenes was Ku-no-A Jing!")
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