Volume 2, Chapter 101 – Legend (1)

As she streaked through the air, Bai Xiang gradually got used to this bird’s-eye view.

Being able to fly really was different. Even though her current flight mode was fairly straight-line and clumsy, this feeling of unrestrained freedom was nothing like usual.

As she neared the southern military camp, Bai Xiang slowed down, hovering over the Nanping Road area, focusing especially on the Nanping side street where the Bai Family Dojo was located.

Mm, things looked relatively stable.

There were gunshots and cannon fire on some streets, but that was just the Chilong Army garrisoned nearby unable to sit still any longer, already forcing a fight with the “Shenli” blood corpses.

She also saw two unfamiliar Condensing the Aspect cultivators she’d never seen before assisting this Chilong Army unit. One specialized in picking out polluted targets; the other quickly concentrated fire to annihilate them. Their coordination was practically seamless.

So Xu Zhe really couldn’t control all the troops.

Seeing this, most of the weight on Bai Xiang’s heart eased. She knew she’d guessed right—once the “Shenli” chaos broke out, the wider it spread, the more it would inevitably drag the strength of the Chilong Army and the Inspectorate down into the water.

Because these people had consciences too. Before they saw the carnage of a demon riot with their own eyes, they might still be willing to accept “unreasonable orders” and sit on their hands. But once they actually faced those blood corpses and skeletons, very few could go on enduring it.

Their families were among these people as well; it was impossible to just grit their teeth and bear it.

In this way, they would start to doubt the orders from above. Even if they eradicated the surrounding demon riots, they’d no longer be able to pose a threat to the Shenming Dojo.

As she saw, the dojo bore no signs of shelling. It looked exactly the same as when she and Bai Zhuqing had left.

More importantly, this also meant she didn’t need to spend too much energy on “Shenli”—she didn’t need to wrestle with questions like “should I clean up every last bit of pollution in Chilong Circuit before going after Xu Zhe?”.

I came all the way from the northern district, passed by Third High, then First High, and now down into the southern district… pretty much drew a zigzag across the map, and along the way I’ve cleared out more than ten polluted zones.

Schools were densest along this path, so you could say most of the sources of pollution along it had already been wiped out by her.

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Bai Xiang did the math in her head and felt that although some polluted areas still remained, their number had shrunk drastically. As long as the Chilong Army, the Inspectorate, and those security consulting firms were willing to get off the sidelines, cleaning up these blood corpses wouldn’t be a problem.

So she didn’t delay any longer. She drove her sword Qi to erupt once more, wrapping her body and accelerating southward.

Halfway there, she felt her waist-seal vibrate. She took out her phone and connected directly. “What now.”

The caller was Yu He. That group was also currently responsible for watching over Bai Zhuqing; this was a call she had to take.

“Don’t panic!” Yu He knew this was no time for jokes. He opened by explaining the reason. “It’s not your sister, she’s fine. It’s that someone over here wants to defect.”

Bai Xiang didn’t understand. “Defect?”

“Yeah. Just hear me out first, here’s roughly what happened…”

Yu He quickly ran through the causes and consequences. In broad strokes—after Bai Xiang left, they’d divided tasks among themselves. At this point they obviously didn’t need to worry about “exposure” anymore, so Yu He started contacting all remaining Demon-Suppression Bureau personnel in Chilong Circuit. Regardless of whether their cultivation was adequate, he ordered them all to converge on the safehouse, then picked out a few women from those who arrived earliest to look after Bai Zhuqing. The rest were split off to form a ring of defense around the building.

As for himself, he’d received a report from the newly awakened Lian Feng—who said a local gang, the “Shiyou Gang”, served some big shot in the circuit city and might “cause some unpleasant interference” with the safehouse.

Lian Feng had actually hesitated a little over this. He wasn’t sure whether he should really rat out his former boss, “Huang Meng”.

But after waking, he was shocked to find his cultivation had practically been reborn. In his inner body-scape, an unheard-of meridian route map was cycling and turning, and a gentle energy flowed along that cycle through his whole body. Every time it ran a circuit, he could feel skin, flesh, organs, bones, and marrow slowly growing stronger.

For someone like him, who craved power, that feeling was simply too wonderful. He immediately associated this abnormal change with Bai Xiang’s “punishment” of him, and realized this was a heaven-sent opportunity—for him it was as good as directly helping him break through the threshold of Entering the Dao, and on top of that paving the road to Forge the Sword. Calling it a life-transforming grace would be no exaggeration.

Huang Meng had indeed looked after him back then, but compared to Bai Xiang’s kindness it was utterly insignificant… There was simply no comparison at all. So he didn’t hesitate in the slightest to tell Yu He the whole story, emphasizing Huang Meng’s cunning—and the very high likelihood that he and his subordinates had “certain… special preferences”.

Yu He knew what “special preferences” meant. He’d once disguised himself as a beggar to experience life, and he knew how chaotic the bottom rungs of Great Yu could be. Some gang-controlled districts had been heavily eroded by foreign cultures—so much so that you could call it the complete collapse of all propriety.

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This wasn’t the main thing he cared about, but he did very much mind having a power like that alive near the safehouse. So he personally led a team and wiped out all nearby Shiyou Gang strongholds, including the “Jinhua Dance Floor”.

The little Shiyou Gang, at most, dominated one corner of the circuit city. Even someone like Shao Ran, merely Nurture the Spirit ninth stage, could suppress them just by waving the banner of his status. Faced with an old-school Condensing the Aspect like Yu He, they had no chance of resisting. After a brief bout of melee, the thugs simply raised their hands and surrendered.

And then Yu He found that “Huang Meng”.

The true leader of the Shiyou Gang, the “special preference guy” in Lian Feng’s mouth, whom he’d described as cunning to the extreme, like a wily rabbit with three burrows… just came walking straight down the stairwell and asked Yu He whether he was with the Demon-Suppression Bureau.

“You know about the Demon-Suppression Bureau?” Yu He asked him on the spot.

“Of course.” Huang Meng seemed to have already accepted reality. His expression was utterly calm. “I know more than you think.”

And then Huang Meng said he wanted to “report” something—he stated that over twenty years ago, he’d served on the Northern Frontier and seen some terrifying things. The recent deployments by the Roads Directorate in Chilong Circuit had reminded him of that time. After hesitating, he’d still decided it was necessary to let the Demon-Suppression Bureau in Qi know about this.

“He says that back then he’d already been put on the death list, but some people in the army…” Yu He glossed over the details. “Anyway, he got pulled back from the brink, the only one saved out of that pile of corpses. After he recovered, he learned the person orchestrating the whole thing was Xu Zhe, so he chose to follow him.”

Bai Xiang could hear a hint of appreciation for Huang Meng in his tone, and warned him, “Even so, his hands are drenched in blood.”

There are no good people in a gang.

Who cares why you first took to the bandit’s road… Once you’re in this line of work, how could your hands not be bloody, how could you not cut someone open and dig out a few kidneys?

If Huang Meng truly had a pure heart, he should’ve contacted the Demon-Suppression Bureau to work as an undercover line from the start. The reason he was jumping ship now wasn’t that his conscience had awakened; it was just that he’d started to feel afraid.

“He insists on contacting my superiors.” Yu He sounded helpless. “But right now communications are down, and you’re the strongest one here… Want to hear what he has to say?”

“…” Bai Xiang fell silent for a moment, then said, “You didn’t chop off his hands and feet, did you.”

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Good grief, what a little ancestor.

Yu He howled “vicious” in his heart.

He didn’t get it. He’d gone through proper interrogation training himself and hadn’t gone straight to that kind of thought, yet this seventeen-year-old girl who wasn’t even of age… where did this killing intent come from?

Bai Xiang couldn’t be bothered to keep nagging. “Put him on.”

There was a rustling sound from the other side, and very soon a hoarse male voice came through. “Are you the commander?”

Bai Xiang didn’t respond, but he kept talking on his own. “What I want to report has to do with the ‘Blood Sea’.”

Blood Sea?

Bai Xiang’s brows lifted ever so slightly.

This was her first time hearing this term.

She had no idea that after Huang Meng said this, Yu He on the other end turned deathly pale, and even those deep eyes of his showed a flash of panic.

“Blood Sea?” Cao Chuan, on the other hand, didn’t understand. Lying beside him, he tugged hard at Yu He’s pant leg. “What’s the Blood Sea? You know?”

“Blood Sea…” Yu He opened his mouth several times, then swallowed the words back. Watching Huang Meng elaborating into the phone, he lowered his voice to his companion. “You know Great Yu has nine mountain-and-river–grade dojos, right?”

Cao Chuan nodded.

Mountain-and-river–grade dojos—dojos that “sit over the rivers and mountains”—were the official collective term for the nine great Sword Dao schools.

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“There are tiers among them too.” Yu He went on. “It follows the pattern of Great Yu’s territorial expansion. The earlier a Dao-lineage is established, the deeper its accumulation. Of course, this doesn’t include Yuming Dao—they’re not specialized in battle.”

“Even though there’s no specific title or formal name, within the nine Daos there is a supreme coordinating seat. The annual ‘Nine Prefectures Sword Meet’ is one way that competition shows itself.”

“And as for that seat… a lot of people think it’s something all nine Daos and nine prefectures vie for, but in reality that’s not the case. The dojos truly qualified to contend for it—there are only two in all of Great Yu.”

“Huangzhou, Qingping Dao.”

“Daizhou, Suzhen Dao.”

“The other seven Daos together shouldn’t even dream of comparing to those two. That gap is not something ordinary people can imagine.”

Cao Chuan said nothing.

He was thinking, wondering why Yu He had suddenly started telling him all this.

“Still don’t get it?” Yu He’s voice grew gradually colder. “With two forces that strong, if it were you, would you be content to guard nothing but dry, cold wastelands, hills, and glaciers?”

“Is the water in the Jiangnan region not sweet enough for them?”

“Are the flowers in the Southern Ridges not beautiful enough?”

“The main reason they don’t push their power outward, and instead allow Yujing to keep awarding newly opened territories with new mountain-and-river–grade dojos, is the ‘Blood Sea’!”