Bai Yuqiong left the Qionghua Heavenly Palace, her figure flickering like a ghost before she vanished without a trace. Yet within the Qionghua Heavenly Palace there remained another Bai Yuqiong, solemnly attending to affairs of state. Her cultivation art was exceedingly strange: the Bai Yuqiong who stayed behind in the Qionghua Heavenly Palace was in fact an Imperial Throne expert as well, no different from her in speech or bearing! Anyone who could cultivate to the Imperial Throne realm and seat himself upon the throne of Heavenly Master was no empty name. Bai Yuqiong was all the more so; her clashes with Yin Tianzi, the Black Emperor, had long since made her incomparably cunning. After dying and returning to life again and again, she had learned from bitter experience and devised one means after another to preserve her life, until at last she even schemed in secret against Yin Tianzi. Though Yin Tianzi had always been the one to scheme against others, there were several occasions on which he had nearly died at her hands. It was precisely for this reason that the Heavenly Court, valuing her methods and abilities, had made her the Heavenly Master in charge of the Westfall Sect. Before long, Bai Yuqiong had ferreted out the whereabouts of Shen Mu and Long Qilin, and her expression turned peculiar. "Venerable Mu? That young man who showed me his treasures is Venerable Mu? He does not look it. When he came to the Heavenly Court, I saw him from afar... Ah, yes. I have heard that Venerable Mu, by a stroke of fortune, can travel through time back into the past, and that he made his name in the early years of Longhan. In other words, his appearance in remote antiquity was not the same as his appearance today..." She could not help but feel uneasy: "In remote antiquity, why did Venerable Mu give me that jade pendant? Why did he shield me from Yin Tianzi's schemes? And why did he trick me out of the plume feather Venerable Yue gave me?" She could find no answer to any of it, and at last she too made her way toward the spirit-energy transfer bridge of the Westfall Sect. "Venerable Mu has gone to the Yunluo Heavenly Palace this time, has he not? The Yunluo Heavenly Palace is the domain of Emperor Yunluo, Wei Suifeng, and I have heard that Wei Suifeng is Venerable Mu's senior fellow disciple." Bai Yuqiong knitted her brows slightly, a trace of unease in her heart: "Venerable Xiao discovered that Wei Suifeng was a disciple of the Kaihuang remnants and ordered me to lay a trap and seize him with the Azure Emperor. That fellow is a ruthless sort; it was only by joining hands with the Azure Emperor to ambush him inside the Yunluo Heavenly Palace that we brought him down. Venerable Mu is luring me to the Yunluo Heavenly Palace—could it be to avenge his senior fellow disciple?" She studied the Vermilion Bird plume feather, wavering in doubt. The feather gave off blossoms of Vermilion Bird sacred fire. That sacred fire burned all things without exception and was exceedingly formidable; it was the fire of the Way second only to the Great Way of Heavenly Fire, yet its deadliness surpassed even heavenly fire. Heavenly fire is a fire of microscopic crystals, ordinarily quite stable, and so long as it is not disturbed it will not unleash its power. The Vermilion Bird sacred fire, by contrast, was incomparably violent, radiating at every moment a power that could destroy heaven and earth. Yet the Vermilion Bird sacred fire did not harm her in the least. Bai Yuqiong was deeply puzzled as well. Though her cultivation was exceedingly high, she had achieved nothing in the divine arts of fire; her arts excelled in the Way of Space, and she was well versed in the numerology of the Daoist sect and the Buddhist dharma. In those years, to evade death, in one lifetime she had gone to the Daoist sect and taken refuge under the Dao Ancestor as a Daoist nun, and in another lifetime she had taken refuge under the Great Brahma Heavenly King Buddha as a Bodhisattva. Though she was not skilled in the arts of fire, the Vermilion Bird sacred fire was quite intimate with her, which stirred her curiosity. The Vermilion Bird plume feather had been given to her by Venerable Yue, who said it had to do with her origins; yet Bai Yuqiong could already recall the memories of one hundred and ninety-seven lifetimes, and in the memories of the ninety-nine lifetimes before that, Venerable Yue had each time handed her the Vermilion Bird plume feather, speaking the same words. Her memory could even be traced back to remote antiquity, and Bai Yuqiong no longer wished to trace it further. Still, she clung to a thread of curiosity. Just as she hesitated over whether to enter the spirit-energy transfer bridge, the other her in the Qionghua Heavenly Palace had already ordered the great army of the Westfall Sect to set out for Taixu. In the Westfall Sect's main camp, ranks of gods and demons clustered around the West Emperor's divine artifact—a divine artifact forged in the likeness of the White Tiger, the West Emperor, whose fleshly body was vast and possessed boundless fighting power! Amid the countless gods and demons, a middle-aged monk and a middle-aged Daoist were quite conspicuous, passing by the spirit-energy transfer bridge. Bai Yuqiong called the two of them to a halt and said, "Daoist Baiyu, Monk Lingyue, come here. There is a matter on which I would seek the counsel of you two fellow Daoists." The Daoist Baiyu and the monk Lingyue stepped forward and saluted. "What business does the Heavenly Master have?" These two were disciples of the Daoist and Buddhist sects who had come to throw in their lot with Bai Yuqiong. Though she saw that their station was low, their wisdom and courage were exceptional, and they daily devised strategies for her; both were rare talents, and so she thought highly of them. Bai Yuqiong's wisdom had been tempered by a hundred lifetimes of narrow escapes from death, while these two possessed great wisdom by nature; thus when Bai Yuqiong met with difficulties she often sought their counsel. This mission of escorting the divine artifact to Taixu had likewise been entrusted to them. Bai Yuqiong laid out her worries, and Daoist Baiyu and Monk Lingyue exchanged a glance. Monk Lingyue smiled and said, "Is the Heavenly Master afraid that in drawing too close to Venerable Mu she will be seized upon by the other Venerables? Or is she afraid that Venerable Mu means to harm her, to avenge Emperor Yunluo?" Bai Yuqiong said, "Both." Monk Lingyue laughed. "If Venerable Mu wished to harm the Heavenly Master, why not harm her back in the Longhan years? He need only have refrained from saving you, and the Heavenly Master would have died at Yin Tianzi's hands, never to be reborn through all eternity. Why go to such trouble?" Bai Yuqiong understood his meaning at once, and her heart settled. She smiled and said, "I will go and find him. The matter of conveying the divine artifact to Taixu I leave to you two fellow Daoists. In intelligence and ability you are no less than I; you must support one another on the road and be doubly cautious. That rebel Kaihuang, Shen Ye, has no end of capable men and extraordinary talents beneath him, and he too has four Heavenly Masters." She paused, then said, "The Fisherman Heavenly Master and the Martial Arts Heavenly Master are not worth worrying about; it is the Woodcutter Heavenly Master and the Scholar Heavenly Master against whom you must be doubly on guard. The woodcutter especially—the man is wicked, and though I have crossed blades with him several times, I never gained the upper hand. And then there is the Scholar Heavenly Master, whose name is Zixi. Though he is a scholar, his courage and intellect are exceedingly great, and he is most dangerous!" Daoist Baiyu and Monk Lingyue nodded again and again. Bai Yuqiong hesitated a moment, then produced a jade pendant and a perfumed handkerchief, saying, "Zixi is formidable. If you cannot best him, bring out th