Supreme Detachment

He carried Liu Laodao into the room and settled him in, figuring he would probably wake by morning. Then he sat beside him and stared blankly for a while.

As a former psychologist, he knew his current state was far from normal. He was anxious.

Things were proceeding smoothly for the moment, but one—or perhaps several—major crises were still lying in wait.

Ninth Young Master might come looking for him. That would be no good. He might die.

Bai Yunxin might come looking for him. That would be no good either. He might die as well.

Bai Yunxin had gone to find Ninth Young Master. The best possible outcome was... perhaps the two great fiends would fight and take one another out. Li Yunxin still remembered Bai Yunxin's reaction that night... that was hardly how one reacted after hearing news of an old friend's whereabouts.

The worst outcome was that the two of them would come for him together—he could scarcely imagine such a scene.

And besides that... the Tongming Jade Slip.

He might never have seen it before, but he knew that the Dao Tradition and the Sword Sect possessed all manner of miraculous methods. The chief disciples of three Sword Sect branches alone had already driven him into a frantic scramble, not to mention that above the branches stood the Grotto Heavens. Those "chief disciples," who strutted about the mortal world like they owned the sky, were probably no more than grassroots town officials in the wider cultivation world...

If word truly got out that the Tongming Jade Slip was in his hands, the entire cultivation world would come to seize it. There was no way he could keep it. He might even lose his life.

Mortals always liked to regard highly accomplished cultivators as "immortals," yet they did not know that the Heavenly Heart Orthodox Law contained the word "heart," for it cultivated the heart. But it was not the "compassionate heart" of ignorant mortal legend—it was "Supreme Detachment."

There were five realms of cultivation: Profound Truth, Transform Void, Intent. Upon reaching the Transformation Realm, one had to place importance on cultivating the heart—cultivating the fuck. To advance further, into the True Realm and the Profound Realm, one would face Heart-Demon Tribulations one after another. To pass those tribulations, one had to forget all emotion. The fewer emotions one possessed, the fewer tribulations one faced.

Once all human emotions had been cast aside, one would reach the realm of "Supreme Detachment," beyond the five realms of "Profound Truth, Transform Void, Intent." By then, both soul and flesh would have been tempered to unimaginable strength, and one could ascend in broad daylight.

But... that was only in theory.

Because no one had ascended through feathered transformation for nearly three thousand years.

Li Yunxin did not know what the realm of "Supreme Detachment" truly felt like, though his unusual experiences in his previous life allowed him to understand a little.

Yet he knew with certainty that the higher a person's cultivation, the less likely they were to possess any "compassionate heart." That did not mean they were monstrous villains—indeed, even the urge to commit evil had to be discarded. They simply became heartless. Like machines, they calculated every gain and loss to arrive at the optimal solution. As for whether others might be harmed in the process of reaching that solution, that was not something they cared about.

Because sympathy, too, was an emotion.

Sometimes Li Yunxin wondered what kind of state that was. To possess the power to move mountains and fill seas, yet have no seven emotions or six desires...

What was the point?

No matter what, once those people set their sights on him, he would probably suffer terribly.

Those people must have been searching all along. That was why, after the thunderstorm came, someone had appeared at his door not long after.

That thunderstorm was a mystery as well. His parents had somehow carried this jade slip and lived in seclusion for more than a decade without ever being discovered—just thinking about it made him feel its depths were unfathomable. Yet those parents, so "unfathomable," had been struck dead by lightning in a single night.

Whenever he thought of that, a chill ran through his entire body.

What level of existence had fixed its gaze upon him? Even now, was it still watching him?

But at least he knew he still held one trump card.

Without him, those people could not open the jade slip.

No matter how great their divine powers, they could not open it. No matter how clever they were, they could not open it. No matter how broad their knowledge, they could not open it.

Because that was something no one in this world could accomplish.

Li Yunxin sighed and vigorously rubbed his face. Outside, the chirping of insects gradually rose, while bamboo leaves rustled in the breeze. He picked up the packet of braised beef again, selecting and eating it slice by slice as he walked out the door.

He needed to make some preparations.

The fiends and cultivators of this world were certainly formidable, but... he possessed other things those people knew nothing about.

Heart demons were the most terrifying of all.

On that same night, across a single street, a lamp burned like a bean in Qiao Duanhong's bedroom within the Qiao Household.

He had not breathed his last, but neither had he awakened. Lying on the bed in the main room like a broken puppet, he gave off a heavy medicinal smell.

His wounds had been covered with herbal poultices and medicine for traumatic injuries, then clumsily wrapped in bandages by unskilled hands. His cheeks were sunken, his eyes shut tight. If not for the occasional rise and fall of his chest, he would have been no different from a corpse.

An old servant kept watch beside his bed, his white hair disheveled as though it had gone uncombed for days.

The old man's face was etched with ravines. One eye was blind, clouded milky white. He clutched a face cloth in his hand. The part beneath his fingers was still damp, but the rest had already dried. That meant he had sat here for a long time—or rather... had fallen asleep leaning against the bed.

Only an hour later, when the night watchman's clapper sounded from the back street and carried into the room, did the old man suddenly wake and raise his eyes to look at Qiao Duanhong.

He was still unconscious. The old man reached out to touch his forehead. It was still burning hot.

The old man struggled to his feet, went to the copper basin beside the bed to wash the cloth and replace it, then walked to the door and pushed it open.

The sound of the door opening startled awake the two young servants stationed outside.

The old man sighed. "You two have slept all night. Has the medicine been decocted?"

The two young servants wiped the drool from their mouths and exchanged a glance. "Going now. Don't be in such a hurry, Master Meng."

Then the two hurried off, whispering as they went and glancing toward the western courtyard.

Voices drifted from the western courtyard, along with laughter. Men and women were there, their voices rising and falling. The spring night wind carried the scent of wine from that direction—they were drinking in the courtyard at night.

The old man hunched over and looked that way with his one remaining eye, then shut the door again.

He knew those two young servants would not decoct any medicine. There had long been no medicine left to decoct. These past two days, he had paid from his own pocket to hire a physician for the eldest young master. But he had never possessed much money, and now it had all been spent.

Those two shameless women and Qiao Jiaming would care even less. Not only would they not care, they wanted nothing more than to let the eldest young master fend for himself, alive or dead. More than thirty people in this great Qiao Household had once depended on that escort agency to make their living. Now the eldest young master had led men on this escort run, and every last one of them had perished. Only he himself had returned, and even whether he would live or die remained uncertain.

As the old man thought about it... sometimes, he even thought...

Perhaps the eldest young master would have been better off dying there.

If they had all died together, this Household might not have become what it was now. And the eldest young master would not have had to lie in bed as he did now... listening to those two shameless women and that scoundrel making merry.

Back then, the eldest young master's first wife, Qiao Wenshi, had been a good woman... it was only a pity that she had died too early. She had left behind only a daughter, who had now gone mad and was locked away in the rear courtyard. A daughter... after all, she was only a daughter. This old man could not spare any care for her for the time being.

The only one to pity was the eldest young master. He had watched the eldest young master grow up since childhood. Back then, he had still been an escort master. In the thirteenth year of Guangyuan, they encountered bandits on the road, and he took a saber stroke and a sword strike for the old chief escort master.