A “Heart Debate” was a desperate measure.

When a cultivator faced a shattered Dao Heart or the abyss of self-destruction, their soul might fracture in self-defense. It would create an opposing consciousness, a devil’s advocate to argue against the urge to die. If the cultivator won the debate, their Dao Heart would be forged stronger than ever.

If they lost… the best case was eternal slumber. The worst was the scattering of the soul.

Shi Siling, despite her terrifying power, dared not intervene rashly. She stood outside the door of Qin Meran’s consciousness, listening to the screaming match within.

“What could force Meran to this point?” Shi Siling wondered, her brows furrowed. “And why does it involve Gu Xiu?”

“He is dead. Why debate over a corpse? Junior Sister’s heart is too soft, too weak.”

Shi Siling shook her head. To shackle oneself for the dead was the height of foolishness.

Inside the wooden hut of Qin Meran’s mind, the argument raged.

“You are insane!” one voice wept. “It was your fault! How can you blame Gu Xiu? You read the classics to learn virtue, not to become a hypocrite who calls white black!”

“Hypocrite?” the second voice shrieked. “Gu Xiu was wrong from the start! If not for him, Teacher would never be in this state! He is the root of all evil!”

“He gave everything for you! How can you have the face to say that?”

“What did he give? Just a life? Just some suffering? Just a few grievances? Does that give him the right to ruin Teacher? To ruin you?”

“You are unreasonable! If this is who Qin Meran truly is, then you are no better than a beast!”

“You are the pathetic one! You made a few unintentional mistakes, and now you want to destroy yourself? You are trash!”

The argument was deadlocked. Neither side could convince the other.

Shi Siling frowned deeper. She didn’t know the details, but she could hear the danger. Qin Meran was trapped.

Shi Siling was a master of Source Arts and Soul Techniques. She had a way to break the deadlock, but the cost was high.

“Do I interfere?”

She could not cure the debate, but she could seal one of the voices. It would allow Qin Meran to wake up, but the sealed voice would become a permanent Inner Demon.

Normally, she would let a cultivator fight their own battle. Interference only made the Dao Heart brittle. But time was not a luxury she had.

“Junior Sister,” Shi Siling whispered to the air. “I should not interfere. But Junior Brother’s Dao Sword is nearing completion, and he needs your help.”

“I will seal your self-destructive heart. It will become your Inner Demon, but I believe you are strong enough to slay it later.”

Shi Siling made her choice. She formed a hand seal and pointed sharply at the chains binding the hut in the mindscape.

“Bind!”

Snap.

The arguing stopped instantly.

The black chains on the hut dissolved, reforming inside the room. The illusion of the hut faded away, revealing two figures standing in the void.

The door of the mind opened. Qin Meran walked out.

Her eyes were bright with triumph.

Behind her, an identical copy of herself was wrapped in heavy black chains, screaming in muffled rage.

That copy was now the Inner Demon.

“Qin Meran!” the demon roared, eyes wild with madness. “You are a wolf in sheep’s clothing! A sanctimonious hypocrite! You deserve to die! You deserve to die!”

Suddenly, the demon saw Shi Siling standing at the threshold. Its gaze sharpened into knives.

“Shi Siling! You are wrong! You are wrong!”

“One day…”

“You will regret this choice for the rest of your life!”

In the backyard of the Listening-to-Rain Pavilion, Gu Xiu opened his eyes.

He looked up at the sky, sensing a shift in the wind. A moment later, he lowered his gaze to the small black monkey riding a Soul-Tracking Puppet in circles around the yard.

“Little Black,” Gu Xiu said calmly. “I leave the rest to you.”

“Squeak squeak!”

Little Black nodded furiously, then turned to screech orders at the army of wooden puppets standing in formation.

The puppets sprang to life. Moving in efficient teams of three, they began the mass production of talismans. For the next three days, the workshop would not sleep.

Gu Xiu turned his attention inward.

Before him sat a mountain of spirit stones and rare materials. He wasted no time. With a thought, he ignited his Qi Sea.

Inside his body, the landscape had transformed.

What was once a cloud of Qi was now a veritable ocean, vast and shimmering. At its center sat the Eight Trigrams Auspicious Cloud Dao Platform. It had already doubled in size, now as large as a house—a foundation that would make ordinary cultivators weep with envy.

But for Gu Xiu, this was merely the starting line.

He raised a hand. The mountain of spirit stones before him crumbled into dust.

A torrent of pure spiritual energy rushed into his meridians, flooding his Qi Sea like a river breaking a dam. Under his guidance, the energy surged toward the Dao Platform.

The platform drank greedily, expanding inch by inch.

Then, it stopped. The platform hit a bottleneck, refusing to absorb more raw Qi.

Gu Xiu didn’t panic. He waved his hand again, swallowing a handful of rare pills. He pressed his palms onto the piles of heavenly treasures—spirit herbs, ores, essences—and drained them dry.

The raw power of the treasures mixed with the medicinal efficacy of the pills, crashing into the Dao Platform like a second wave.

The stagnation broke. The platform began to grow again.

It was a cycle of consumption that would terrify a sect accountant.

To the untrained eye, this process looked boring. But only a monster like Gu Xiu could sustain it. Anyone else would explode from the sheer volume of energy, or bankrupt their entire clan trying to fund it.

Gu Xiu was burning through hundreds of thousands of spirit stones per day.

An ordinary Foundation Establishment cultivator might save for ten years to afford what Gu Xiu consumed in an hour. But Gu Xiu didn’t care.

For him, any problem that could be solved with spirit stones wasn’t a problem at all.

He had the resources. Now, he just had to endure the grind.

While Gu Xiu buried himself in cultivation, the streets of Cloud Firmament City remained busy.

Two uninvited guests stopped at the entrance of the alley leading to the Listening-to-Rain Pavilion.

One of them, a woman with sharp eyes, pointed down the narrow lane.

“Junior Sister,” she asked. “You said your teacher, Yin Wenshu, might be living here?”