The towering main hall sat at the very center of the mountains, grand and imposing, with archaic bronze bells hanging from the corners of its eaves.
The doors stood wide open, two rows of steward disciples waiting respectfully on either side.
As Chu Qingxue stepped through the doorway, the disciples on both sides lowered their heads and bowed together in silent salute.
Her steps were steady, her hem drifting lightly, and she drew every trace of her restrained sword intent and spiritual pressure back inside her.
Every movement, every posture kept strictly to the rules laid down for the sect's Saintess. Not a single fault could be found in any of it.
She walked to the center of the hall, raised her eyes to the Sect Master seated on the high dais, and her heart sank.
He had governed the sect for eight hundred years, a great power of the Divine Transformation realm, and he had always been gentle and generous with her, the particular kindness of an elder in his face.
Today his expression was severe, and his eyes were as sharp as an unsheathed immortal sword, their edge fixed straight on her.
Had she been behaving strangely lately? Had the Sect Master discovered what she was?
The thought had barely surfaced before another layer of cold spread across her back.
For three months she had imitated the original owner's speech and bearing with everything she had, and she had thought her cover reasonably well kept.
But a Divine Transformation cultivator's sight reached the heavens and his observation caught the finest detail. No flaw, however small, would escape those eyes.
She forced down the churning in her chest, walked slowly forward, lowered her head and bowed, performing a textbook full salute of a disciple.
"Disciple Chu Qingxue greets the Sect Master."
"Qingxue."
The Sect Master's voice was low and heavy, echoing slowly through the empty hall.
"This disciple is here."
The Sect Master rose slowly and came down the jade steps one at a time.
Even with his pressure deliberately reined in, the vast presence particular to a Divine Transformation cultivator still filled the space around him, tightening the breath in the chest.
"Since you returned from that mission four months ago, your cultivation has not advanced by the smallest measure."
His gaze was heavy, and there was no telling from it whether this was anger or something else.
"That day you were set upon by three devil cultivators of the Nascent Soul realm and driven into a position you should not have survived."
"Your master did not think it through. I never imagined they would lay such a death trap."
"What I never imagined at all was that you, cornered with no way out, could turn and cut down a Nascent Soul devil cultivator with a Golden Core cultivation, and then withdraw without a scratch."
"The matter shook the whole of the Eastern Wilds. But inside the sect, no few elders and core disciples have their doubts."
"First, killing across a realm — a Golden Core felling a Nascent Soul — defies heaven by its very nature. Second, everyone says that since that battle, your temperament and the way you go about things have changed a little from before."
The Sect Master looked at her, and the feeling in his eyes was complicated.
"I have cultivated for eight hundred years and seen countless geniuses under heaven. You are the first who could kill across a realm, Golden Core to Nascent Soul."
Chu Qingxue lowered her eyes, and her long lashes trembled faintly.
Hearing this, the heart she had held suspended for so long finally came down a little.
So the Sect Master had not uncovered her body-snatching secret after all. He was only troubled by her stalled cultivation and the rumors going around outside.
She let out a quiet breath of relief inside, and at the same time thought fast about what to say.
Using the battle as her excuse — that it had thrown her state of mind into disorder — was the safest choice on offer. It was reasonable, and it would not invite deeper probing.
Here the Sect Master's tone eased somewhat, as though out of sympathy for a junior.
"It is only that after that struggle between life and death, your cultivation has stayed exactly where it was."
"I imagine that vicious fight disturbed your dao heart?"
"Master sees clearly."
"This disciple's state of mind has indeed been unsteady of late. I was intending to find somewhere quiet and enter seclusion to recover."
Chu Qingxue answered smoothly, her tone level and without a ripple in it.
"Seclusion would be well."
The Sect Master nodded slightly, his expression easing a little.
"Only by quieting the mind and cultivating can the dao heart be made firm."
The nerves drawn tight through Chu Qingxue's whole body loosened slightly.
If she could get into seclusion without trouble, she thought, she could hide away in her cave dwelling and cram the methods in earnest, out of everyone's sight, and defuse the crisis in front of her for a time.
But before she could think any further, the Sect Master's words turned.
"Before that, however, there is one matter I need you to see done properly."
"In seven days comes the sect's annual Disciple Recruitment Assembly. Once the new disciples have come up the mountain, you will give them their first lesson."
Teach a lesson?
Have her expound the dao and transmit techniques to brand-new disciples?
Chu Qingxue's body went rigid. The shock in her eyes was very nearly impossible to hide, and her mind went blank in an instant.
She had not even finished memorizing the most basic 《Ethereal Sword Art, Opening Chapter》, and as for the laws of the sword dao or the essentials of cultivation, she did not understand the first thing about them.
Never mind standing on a platform to expound the dao — even tossing off a few offhand words about basic sword forms would give her away on the spot.
A cold that pierced the bone spread out through her limbs, and her instinct was to refuse.
Her mind raced. The original owner had always kept strictly to the sect's instructions. On the occasions she had been assigned to guide entry-level disciples, she had accepted gladly every time and never once begged off.
To refuse outright now would only confirm the rumors of a drastic change in temperament and draw deeper suspicion.
"Master, this disciple's state of mind is still unsteady. I fear that in poor condition I would hinder the new disciples' cultivation."
"Oh?"
The Sect Master's brows drew together, and his gaze turned severe in an instant.
He narrowed his eyes slightly — eyes that had seen through eight hundred years of shifting winds and clouds — and fixed them on Chu Qingxue with plain scrutiny.
That familiar pressure came rolling over her.
Chu Qingxue's heart tightened, and she came to her senses at once.
She remembered the original owner's disposition perfectly clearly: always respectful and obedient toward the Sect Master, never half a word of refusal.
To refuse now, in front of everyone, was to expose the anomaly with her own hands.
Once the Sect Master grew suspicious, he would certainly investigate her to the bottom.
And then the charge of body-snatching would be proven, and the wretched end of a soul burning in the Soul-Refining Lamp would be her final destination.
The road ahead was a blank. There was no fleeing it, and refusal was a dead end.
In the space of an instant she weighed every gain and every risk, and could only force down the panic and despair churning inside her.
After the briefest hesitation she bowed again, her tone obedient.
"This disciple...!"
"Obeys."
Only then did the Sect Master's face slowly ease. He came over, patted her shoulder lightly, and approval showed in his eyes once more.
"Good."
"I knew you would not disappoint me."
"This way the new disciples get to see the bearing of our Sword Sect's Saintess, and the chance to expound the dao will help you find your dao heart again. Two things accomplished at a stroke."
"This disciple understands."
Chu Qingxue took her leave as protocol required and turned to walk out of the main hall.
The moment her foot crossed the threshold, the composure she had been holding up by force slowly drained from her face.
Expounding the dao and demonstrating the sword art was a dead end harder to handle than any crisis before it.
Seven short days were nowhere near enough for her to make up the sword dao knowledge she lacked.
The road ahead was pitch black, and she did not even have the right to shrink back from it.
The setting sun slanted down and dyed her white robes a warm gold.
Sword intent circled her, and from a distance her bearing was as exceptional as it had ever been.
Not one of the disciples coming and going who saw her failed to feel reverence rise in them.
She did not return to her own cave dwelling. Instead she turned her sword light around and rode it to a cliff on the rear mountain where almost no one ever went.
She flew, and her mind was a tangled knot.
She turned the Sect Master's arrangement over and over, working through the scene on that platform again and again, and every version of it ended at the same four words: body dead, dao extinguished.
Only when she reached the place did she gather her focus and release her divine sense, sweeping inch by inch across three hundred zhang in every direction, confirming that there was nothing here but rock and trees — not half a human figure, not a single ripple of spiritual power.
The nerves she had held taut all day long finally snapped through.
She let every layer of pretense fall away, dropped down on the edge of the cliff, and covered her face with both hands.
The fear, the helplessness, the despair she had held down for days on end all came surging up.
In her distress she reached without thinking for the sword at her waist, and the moment her fingertips touched the hilt, the motion stopped dead.
Her grip was stiff and awkward, without any of the natural ease a sword cultivator ought to have.
This body possessed the Flawless Sword Body, one in ten thousand, and yet to her the longsword that had been at the original owner's side for years was stranger than a rock by the roadside.
She truly had nowhere left to turn now.
The thought of running had surfaced in her more than once.
But she understood what running would cost better than anyone.
The name of the Ethereal Sword Sect's Saintess rang through the whole Eastern Wilds. The moment she fled of her own accord, every great orthodox sect under heaven would mark her their first target for hunting down, and the devil cultivators watching hungrily would post a sky-high bounty on her life.
The Harmonic Joy Sect had put her at the top of their bounty list long ago, declaring openly that they would refine her into the most beautiful cauldron under heaven and keep her as their sect-guarding treasure.
That business had once angered the Sect Master so badly he came close to open war with the Harmonic Joy Sect.
She stood first on three separate lists. The world was vast, and there was not the smallest corner of it that would hold her.
Running would do nothing but delay the hour of her death.
But staying was an ending just as perilous.
She was an ordinary person from another world who had occupied the original owner's body by sheer luck, scraping by under the title of a peerless genius until now.
In these three months she had copied expressions daily, drilled her bearing, stolen glimpses of other people's forms and practiced them bitterly — but her comprehension was too poor, and she never managed to reach the essence of any of it.
She could not read the texts and did not dare ask her questions. That glittering identity of Saintess was, for her, an airtight cage.
Now the Sect Master was forcing her onto a platform to lecture and demonstrate the sword art, to instruct a crowd of hopeful new cultivators as the Saintess of the Sword Sect — and to do it in front of the whole sect, top to bottom.
She had to cram even the entry sword art off a stele by rote. How was she to explain the true meaning of the sword dao, the methods of cultivation?
Seven days from now, the instant she opened her mouth to teach, every layer of her disguise would come crashing down.
And then sect law would show no mercy, and the flames of the Soul-Refining Lamp would swallow her soul in the end.
Chu Qingxue pressed a hand to her throbbing temple and looked down at the boundless sea of clouds churning below her feet, and felt tired through body and mind alike.
The grievance and fear and powerlessness stacked up layer on layer over so long, until she could no longer hold up the strength she had been feigning.
Her shoulders shook faintly, and warm tears slipped quietly down through the gaps between her fingers, striking the bluestone drop by drop.
The sobs she had smothered for so long broke out of her.
She stood in a position ten thousand people envied, and yet she lived in more torment than any menial disciple in the sect.
She had a top-grade spirit root and a Flawless Sword Body and nothing to match them in learning or comprehension; she wore the halo of a peerless genius and stumbled through even the most basic cultivation.
She wanted to learn, wanted to ask, wanted to be rid of this pretense that made every step a fright — but invisible shackles surrounded her on every side and held her where she was.
The seven-day deadline pressed closer step by step, and more and more people throughout the sect were quietly watching her for changes.
An outsider to cultivation with no more than half an understanding of the entry method, trapped inside the bright and glittering shackle that was the Sword Sect's Saintess.
On one side, a hopeless road of flight to the ends of the earth with the world hunting her; on the other, a dead end of public exposure and a soul scattered to nothing.
She racked her brains and could not come up with the smallest way out.
A heart full of anguish and nowhere to speak it, and no one she dared ask for help. All she could do was let the tears and the panic swallow her, little by little.