Senior Arnold clearly had no idea about the system prompt that had just appeared before Gu Chengming's eyes.
To Gu Chengming's surprise, the girl seemed to be thoroughly enjoying having just been gently "lifted" by him. The instant she sensed his hand freeze, she even wriggled instinctively, as if trying to twist her head around to see why he'd suddenly stopped moving.
Gu Chengming, for his part, took a good long while to finally work out what this so-called "swinging" actually meant. — So she meant using the Senior as a weapon!
Then again, on second thought, the body of the cultivation world's foremost body cultivator was presumably tougher than any spirit artifact by a wide margin.
If he really could swing this Senior around like a blade, even a Sovereign would surely take grievous injury from a single hit.
Gu Chengming pictured the scene for a moment, then hastily flung the outrageous notion out of his head.
How could he go swinging a Senior about like that!
Somewhat guiltily, he lifted Arnold a little higher.
Once she realized Gu Chengming had finally caught up, Arnold turned her head back with satisfaction and went on studying the map in front of her.
"This is really quite different from how it was in my day," she remarked, pointing a finger at a spot on the map. "Back then, this used to be a mountain."
Gu Chengming followed her finger, and a sudden confusion rose in him.
The spot she'd pointed to was, in the present day, a stretch of plains within Great Qian's territory.
From what he knew, this Senior should have belonged to the same era as the Fate-Reversing Tribulation-Severing Sovereign and Jiahao Sovereign — reckoning by the timeline, that put her at only a few thousand years back.
Was a few thousand years really enough to level a mountain into flat ground?
Just as he was puzzling over this and about to speak, a familiar voice suddenly sounded from outside the courtyard.
"young friend? When did you get back — and who's this?"
The Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign's voice scattered his train of thought. He looked toward the sound and found her standing before the hall, the hem of her moon-white robes stirring lightly in the breeze.
Having spoken, the Sovereign let her gaze rest on the unfamiliar girl for a moment, brow furrowing slightly.
At her words, Gu Chengming considered for a moment, then recounted the whole story of Senior Arnold's background from the beginning — starting with the Master bringing him into the Imperial Academy's hidden chamber.
When she heard the words "the remnant soul of a Seventh Realm Sovereign," a grave look abruptly rose on the Sovereign's face.
Arnold, meanwhile, seemed to finally notice the visitor and turned away from the map.
She looked the Sovereign up and down, and her eyes lit up. "You're from Penglai?"
The Sovereign blinked, clearly not expecting the other to place her origin at a single glance.
The Penglai Immortal Sect had been a great sect ten thousand years ago; one of its branch lineages had, through the ages, grown into the Yunyue Sect, a power that dominated its own territory today, and the Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign was that lineage's core elder.
Seeing the girl name her origin at a glance only deepened the Sovereign's estimation of this Seventh Realm Sovereign, and wariness rose in her — just as Arnold nodded happily. "Penglai's a good place."
Then she started up her odd rambling again: "When Penglai's around, it's Penglai. When Penglai's gone, it's still Penglai."
The Sovereign: "...?"
She glanced instinctively toward Gu Chengming, who returned a thoroughly helpless look, one that plainly said, This Senior really is like this.
Following the thread of "Penglai," Arnold went on with considerable relish. "My best friend back then was from Penglai too."
Reckoning by this Senior's generation, the "best friend" she spoke of should, by rights, have been a junior of the Sovereign's own lineage.
But when the Sovereign had first been trapped in the time crevice, the Penglai Immortal Sect's main branch had still existed. She struggled within that seam for ten thousand years, and only upon breaking free and returning to the present world did she find Penglai had vanished without a trace — it was then she learned the sect was gone.
As someone who had once belonged to the Penglai Immortal Sect, to claim she felt no grief at all would plainly be a lie.
Now, with the subject raised, she couldn't resist asking after the fate of Arnold's friend.
Arnold thought hard for a moment. "She was Penglai's Sect Head, back then."
By her account, then, Penglai had still existed at least a few thousand years ago?
The Sovereign had assumed Penglai had been snuffed out swiftly after her own imprisonment in the time crevice, but from what she now heard, the sect had endured for at least another ten thousand years beyond that.
Though it had fallen in the end, in that intervening span of over ten thousand years, Penglai must surely have produced no shortage of remarkable figures.
A tangle of emotions rose in the Sovereign all at once, but Arnold, oblivious to the complicated look on her face, simply carried on.
"She was really something."
Arnold looked rather proud of herself, as if boasting about the playmate she'd once been proudest of.
"She refined the Causality Dharma-Station all the way to its highest tier — she could fix the past with a single glance, and even reckon out life, death, and the future."
Just as the Sovereign was thinking of asking further, Arnold added, regretfully, "Pity I can't quite recall her Dao title right now."
Hearing this, the Sovereign couldn't help feeling a little disappointed.
Still, she'd already learned this much from her — she supposed she should be content. She offered her thanks, then fell into a wistful silence, as if some thought had struck her.
Gu Chengming, in the end, said nothing to interrupt.
Arnold, however, was on a roll, and launched into more tales of the exploits of her best friend whose Dao title she couldn't quite remember.
Just then, the message jade slip tucked in the Sovereign's sleeve — the one she and Zhou Qingmu had exchanged on the day they formed their "Older Woman Alliance" — trembled faintly.
She swept it instinctively with her spiritual sense, and words slowly surfaced on the slip.
[Our alliance strategy is already bearing fruit — I hope the Sovereign will press on and do even better.]
By rights, this message still fell within the bounds of their pact's agreement to "share information," but the more she read it, the more something in the phrasing struck her as off.
They'd only just formed their alliance in perfectly polite terms, yet a mere few days later, this Director Zhou of the Night-Watch Bureau had already left her far behind.
Share information? All she ever shared was her own good news!
The Sovereign sighed.
— If she didn't act soon, she really would fall behind.
She quietly tucked the message slip back into her sleeve, her gaze settling once more on the young man in the hall, listening to Arnold's stories of old Penglai.
Arnold, thoroughly enjoying her reminiscing, was gesturing animatedly to demonstrate just how her old friend used to "fix the past with a single glance."
The Sovereign considered for a moment, then bowed.
"What you've just told me, Fellow Daoist, means a great deal to me. My thanks."
Arnold waved a breezy hand. "No need to stand on ceremony."
Then she started up her odd rambling again: "Me telling you is the same as you telling me, and you telling me is the same as me telling you."
The Sovereign: "..."
She pushed down the strange feeling this stirred in her and turned to Gu Chengming. "young friend, the moon looks fine tonight — would you care to sit with me a while under the osmanthus tree in the courtyard?"
Gu Chengming blinked.
The invitation came rather out of nowhere, but a glance at the Sovereign's expression was enough to keep him from asking further — he simply nodded and agreed.
Arnold, still deep in her storytelling, perked up with curiosity at this. "Then I'll come too!"
The Sovereign nearly choked on the spot.
Fortunately, Gu Chengming reacted quickly. Choosing his words with care, he addressed Arnold gently. "Senior, you've spoken with the Sovereign a good while now — you must be tired. I recall you slept in that chamber a very long time, so your spiritual sense may not yet be fully accustomed to the outside world. Perhaps it's best to rest for a few days within my glabella, and come out for a walk again once your qi has steadied."
Arnold nodded quite earnestly. "That's fair enough."
She stepped up to Gu Chengming, dissolved into light, and sank back into his glabella.
A strange feeling stirred in Gu Chengming.
He'd only meant it as an offhand suggestion — but it actually had that function? She really was starting to feel more and more like a spirit artifact.
Night deepened.
Beneath the old osmanthus tree in the courtyard, moonlight lay spread across the stone steps.
The Sovereign and Gu Chengming sat facing each other at the stone table beneath the tree, a pot of warmed osmanthus wine and two small cups set between them.
By rights, a Sovereign had no need for mortal wine, but this pot of osmanthus wine had been warmed by the Sovereign's own hand, and — for once — she even raised her cup and took a small sip.
Gu Chengming, watching from across the table, felt his sense that something was off tonight grow ever stronger.
The Sovereign weighed her words a moment, then finally spoke first.
"young friend — while you were listening to Senior Arnold's stories of old Penglai just now, did you happen to notice my expression?"
Gu Chengming nodded. "You seemed quite moved, Senior."
The Sovereign smiled faintly.
"I came from Penglai's own main branch." She lifted her eyes to the dense osmanthus blossoms overhead, her voice suddenly slowing. "The osmanthus in Penglai back then bloomed even more thickly than this. Come Mid-Autumn, the whole mountain would turn gold — from a distance, it looked as though the moon itself had fallen onto the peak."
Gu Chengming listened quietly.
The Sovereign took another sip of wine.
"The year I was trapped in the time crevice, I'd meant to go back to the sect and see the osmanthus one more time." A rare note of wistfulness crept into her voice. "That battle came so suddenly — I never even got the chance for one last look."
"By the time I clawed my way out of the seam, Penglai was already gone."
Something stirred in Gu Chengming.
By the Sovereign's usual nature, this was something she would never have brought up with a junior — yet tonight, for once, she had.
He didn't interrupt, only listened in silence.
The Sovereign gazed at the moonlight, her expression softening.
"Hearing Senior Arnold speak of a Sect Head who, ten thousand years ago, refined the Causality Dharma-Station to its very peak — it's eased a grief I've carried, pressed down, for a long time."
She said no more after that, only held her cup and gazed at the moon.
Gu Chengming didn't press further either, simply keeping her company beneath the moon.
The night wind drifted through the osmanthus branches in gentle gusts. After some unmeasured span of time, the Sovereign suddenly gave a soft laugh, as if some perfectly ordinary thought had just occurred to her mid-conversation.
"Now that I think of it," she said, glancing at Gu Chengming, her tone almost as flat as idle chatter, "you still don't know my true name, do you."
A breeze stirred lightly through the osmanthus branches, and from some distant alley the faint beat of a night-watch drum carried through the air.
A strange feeling rose in Gu Chengming. He and the Sovereign had known each other some time now, yet she had always gone by the four characters "Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing," and he had never once thought to ask further.
— By the customs of the cultivation world, a Sovereign's true name was never to be revealed; anyone who pried for it might as well be called a mortal enemy.
And yet here, the subject had come up from her own mouth.
Gu Chengming considered a moment before speaking. "What would you like, Senior?"
The Sovereign drew a deep breath, then finally said, "From now on, when it's just the two of us, I'd like to hear you call me by my true name."
"Wangshu."
Hearing this, Gu Chengming felt the weight of it too.
By telling him her true name, the Sovereign was, in effect, placing the most hidden gate on her cultivation path into his hands.
Gu Chengming looked at her. The Sovereign's expression remained gentle, though a trace of nervousness lingered in her eyes — she seemed unpracticed at saying too much all at once.
But in her own way, she'd already said everything she could.
Was the entry bar for a Sovereign-tier romantic offensive supposed to be this high?
Gu Chengming suppressed the commentary in his head, solemnly tucked away the jade slip, and bowed to her. "Senior Wangshu, this one will remember."
Hearing this, the Sovereign finally let out a breath.
She said nothing more of her name, nor of Penglai, and simply chatted with Gu Chengming at ease about various recent goings-on in the Capital; Gu Chengming, too, let the earlier subject drop.
As the hour grew late, the Sovereign rose to take her leave.
Walking to the courtyard gate, she paused abruptly, turned back to glance at Gu Chengming still seated beneath the osmanthus tree, and the corner of her mouth curved.
"The moon is very fine tonight."
Something stirred in Gu Chengming, and he nodded back to her properly. "It is, indeed."
The Sovereign turned and dissolved into the night.
Meanwhile.
Yu Wenqiu looked over the newly improved emerald-and-white-jade outfit before her, recalling the "humiliation" the Sovereign had once dealt her, and felt a flush of vindication.
Hmph. I came to the Capital of my own accord — this is my home turf now!
Director, Sovereign, step aside — watch me win Little Gu back right under both your noses.
With that thought, she put on the scallion costume...
Sure, last time was a mix-up, but Little Gu had seemed to genuinely like it.
This time, surely all she had to do was put it on and walk up to him, and he'd understand what she meant?
Yu Wenqiu thought this with no small amount of anticipation.
— That night, Elder Little Yu, dressed as a pancake-wrapped scallion, went bouncing along and ran straight into a Ghost Wall.
The Flowing Cloud Moon-Tracing Sovereign's epic defensive counter!
Elder Little Yu: total failure.
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