Volume 2, Chapter 104 – Descent (1)

Before Bai Xiang could even ponder what exactly the “Dao Master’s true spirit” was, a solid surge of “heart-force” flowed in through her brow, like spring rain pouring into her inner body-scape.

Heart-force was soul energy. Back when she’d absorbed remnant souls from Bolou, Bai Xiang had treated that amount of energy as “1 unit of heart-force”. Compared to today, Dr. Huang’s contribution was not even 0.2 units.

Xu Zhe had provided about 0.9 units, Yao Qingyuan’s remnant soul was 7.8, and the grievance blood remains, all gathered together, had delivered 92 units of heart-force in one go. As for the true spirit Xiang Xian had left behind, it was pitifully small—by Bai Xiang’s estimate, only about 0.4.

But that wasn’t the main point.

“Jade Spirit” was running at high speed in her inner body-scape. As time passed, Bai Xiang finally understood: the “Dao Master’s true spirit” passed down by Xiang Xian was, primarily, an infusion of the past Dao Masters’ memories.

Yuming Sword Dao was the most unusual among the nine mountain-and-river–grade dojos. Combat was not their main trade. Compared to raising swords and dueling people, they excelled more at engineering and research, reputedly holding “three thousand ingenious arts and five thousand marvelous methods”.

In reality, that was just modesty.

By now, all the methods and secret arts held by Yuming Sword Dao added up to over ten thousand. Among them were various “evil methods” researched by all kinds of fiends, demonic cultivators, and wild dreamers (such as Chan Master Wenluo, who created The Scripture of Returning to Origin and Transforming Qi). These were not things that could simply be archived. The method chosen by the successive Dao Masters of Yuming was always to split them into two copies: one kept in the dojo, to deal with outside covetousness, and the other directly etched into the mind using the Jade Spirit method, to be passed down through memory imprinting.

In the Sword Dao system, this operation was practically unbelievable, because “memory and soul are hard to transmit” was common knowledge. From ancient times to now, no one had ever managed it.

If everyone could do it, why would great clans still worry about raising unfilial sons?

Just copy the fighting fathers, imprint their memories once, and would there still be so many gaps and misunderstandings between father and son?

Human hearts were secondary. The crucial thing was the transmission of experience and knowledge.

If you could skip a massive amount of trial and error and learning time, any dojo that had such a method would have long since been exalted to the heavens.

In reality, Yuming Sword Dao also couldn’t do it to that extent. This true-spirit inheritance was both “innovative” and “exploiting a loophole”. It tore off part of a person’s soul to condense something called “true spirit”, then used the Jade Spirit method to etch scriptures and formulas onto it.

[What is a Demon Pool?]

Within the rapidly scrolling characters and numbers, Bai Xiang faintly heard someone summarizing.

[I think a Demon Pool is “soul energy that has gone out of order, but meets certain conditions and continues to exist”.]

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[“Out of order” means that the Demon Pool itself seems to have no fixed pattern. They’re bizarre, myriad, and ever-changing. All sorts of types can appear, and they update in bulk every year. Aside from those artificially cultivated, it’s very hard to find two identical Demon Pools.]

[But Demon Pools do have a few points of regularity. One is that they have an operating logic. Many ordinary people who escaped from Demon Pools have said as much. They say that Demon Pools kill according to a logic. They call it the “Principle of the Demon Pool”.]

[It has logic, and it has loopholes. If you discover a loophole and exploit it, it won’t harm you. In this respect, all Demon Pools are the same. They’re extremely rigid, and extremely objective and fair.]

[Another point, I think… is that even without consciousness, they can still maintain the “Principle of the Demon Pool” and continue existing. That, in itself, is an exquisite program.]

[So if we can replicate these rules, why can’t we fabricate a Demon Pool out of nothing?]

[Especially our Yuming Dao. Since our founding patriarch, “Daoist Mingxin”, created the “Jade Spirit calculus”, it’s been over a hundred years. Over this time, the Jade Spirit method has gradually become one of our sect’s foundations, but it’s still just a tool.]

[Several generations of Dao Masters have only used it to pass down scattered secret arts. The efficiency is low, and the harm to people is great. The “Heart Demon” isn’t strong enough to bear the load.]

[So today, I propose this idea—on the basis of the “Heart Demon”, refine the “true spirit”, imitate the operational logic of Demon Pools such as the Heart Demon, and under the aid of the Jade Spirit turn the “true spirit” into a “man-made Demon Pool”.]

[Once we succeed, the true spirit will have Demon Pool properties.]

[It will have its own operating mechanism and operating logic. Its properties will be defined as “recording and imprinting textual information” and “preserving and passing it on to bodies cultivated in the same method”.]

[It can be refined, or be refined anew and stored in a sword after changing its parameters.]

[Its power might fall short of a “Heart Demon’s”, but it’s more stable—after all, it was split off from oneself. How could it ever backlash against its own source?]

[If such a method can be popularized, Yuming might be able to mass-produce Purple Cores. Then we might catch up with Qingping and Suzhen and not be unworthy of His Majesty’s favor.]

[Sixth Dao Master of Yuming Sword Dao, the Demon Calculator, Pu Ling.]

So that’s how it is…

As more and more information poured into her consciousness, Bai Xiang completely grasped the essence.

This “True Spirit Demonization Method” could indeed pass down knowledge—but not much in the way of experience and insight.

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In other words, the split-off “true spirit” was like a storage chip. It merely acted as a storage device. The person receiving the inheritance could use that storage device to study what was inside.

But if that person wasn’t inclined to learn, then all that knowledge was useless.

In addition, the true spirit’s function wasn’t actually fixed.

Just like a storage chip could hold entirely different content, the “parameters” of a true spirit could also be artificially set during its creation.

From the sixth Dao Master’s notes, Yuming Sword Dao’s original foundational Demon Pool had been the “Heart Demon”, an invisible, intangible Demon Pool specialized in crafting illusions.

That kind of Demon Pool wasn’t rare. Many similar ones appeared every year. The reason their founding patriarch, Daoist Mingxin, had chosen the Heart Demon as his foundation was simply to temper his inner heart and push himself to create the Jade Spirit calculus. Only after he succeeded did he regret it—because the Jade Spirit calculus consumed a massive amount of a cultivator’s mental focus, and that naturally left less heart-force available to suppress the mental pressure of the Core Tribulations.

The Heart Demon was already a Demon Pool adept at luring and confusing hearts. Compared to a normal Demon Pool, a Heart Demon–rooted Core Tribulation was harder to cross. On top of that, if you still split your heart-force to nourish the Jade Spirit, the outcome went without saying… This also led to a severe shortage of Core realm cultivators in Yuming Dao’s early days. They were basically a third-rate dojo.

The turning point came precisely under the sixth Dao Master, the Demon Calculator Pu Ling.

The Jade Spirit calculus was already fused with Heart Demon heart-tempering; changing the Demon Pool root was out of the question. So Pu Ling took an alternate path and turned his focus to whether a gentler man-made Demon Pool could be created.

It was an absolutely wild, near-mad idea.

Yet Pu Ling… had more or less succeeded.

There was still no proof that the “true spirit” he created by tearing his own soul qualified as a Demon Pool. But its effects were similar. And it was gentler, more stable, and switching to the True Spirit Demonization Method allowed one to go straight to the Core realm, with very little risk in each Core Tribulation.

Though a realm cultivated this way was weaker than one rooted in the Heart Demon, once you pushed that realm high enough—higher by two or three… three or four tiers… by crushing people with sheer realm, whether it was “weaker” or not stopped mattering.

With this method, Pu Ling ascended straight to the ninth turn of the Purple Core, then broke through in one stroke to become Divine Fetus, dragging Yuming Dao into sudden prominence and making them the third mountain-and-river–grade dojo—a soul figure in the dojo’s history who could not be ignored.

The True Spirit Demonization Method.

Bai Xiang had no intention of attempting it.

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Not because she looked down on it, but because in her view, everything that came before the path of qi was already outdated. Barring surprises, all of it would be replaced. Naturally, she had no reason to chase after old methods.

But some of its concepts did offer her inspiration.

Much like the enlightenment Chan Master Wenluo had given her—for the Core realm, for the qi core, for how to grasp that process—by using the Jade Spirit to speed-read the inherited memories, Bai Xiang’s understanding leaped ahead in an instant.

And most crucial of all was that sliver of inherited true spirit.

A mere 0.4 units of heart-force would normally be laughably insignificant.

But right now she was on the verge of a breakthrough, and happened to be missing exactly that “hair’s breadth, tiniest fraction” of soul energy. In that moment, its presence became vital.

As she studied the True Spirit Demonization Method and the inherited memory, this sliver of true spirit was quietly absorbed by her soul. It felt as if something in her heart was finally filled to complete roundness in that instant. A sense of naturalness, fullness, and water-reaching-the-canal overflowed from the bottom of her heart.

So she didn’t hesitate any longer. She condensed the qi core once more—for the last time.

Boom…

A soft sound echoed in her ears, along with the faint sense of something breaking.

The “air core” in her inner body-scape didn’t seem to change. It was still “formless and shapeless”, not a true solid object.

But it had gained a fresh breath of qi.

That breath was swept along by the countless heart-currents on its surface and immediately carried through her whole body, running one full circuit through her.

Bai Xiang opened her eyes and let go of the Sword Contemplation stance.

She first raised Feixiang Heaven and her left hand to take a look. At a thought, her body rose lightly and floated outward, as agile as a fish playing in water.

So this was the qi core.

It did feel… very different.

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After getting used to it for a bit, Bai Xiang glanced northward, toward where Qiyun Circuit lay.

But very soon she shifted her focus, drifting instead over the “spring” and hovering above the pit, staring into it in thought.

…

Qiyun Circuit, State Chancery, the atmosphere was heavy.

Fang Xiaochun was currently advising the old servants and retainers—things had developed to this point; if they stayed in the manor they were only waiting for death. Better to dismiss them early. If they mixed into the masses, they might yet survive.

“This is without a doubt Yao Qingyuan’s scheme.” He himself, however, wore a calm expression. His gaze was clear, without a hint of discouragement. “Even if we lose, it’s only this one battle we lose. After me, others will rise to settle the account. There’s no need to grieve for me.”

“Father!” Fang Wenya stood beside him, supporting his arm, still unable to believe how the situation had suddenly turned so sharply for the worse.

“There were signs.” Fang Xiaochun stroked her hair. “Ever since the grievances seventeen years ago, I knew Yujing was forcing the Prince of Nanling to rebel.”

“They called it a peaceful retirement, but in truth the Imperial House simply couldn’t trust anyone else to fill this seat. They had to keep me here to watch.”

“It’s just that no one anticipated Yao Qingyuan would be this utterly depraved… He’s completely sold everything out to those demons. He can no longer be treated as human.”

“Then why chase us out, Father?” Fang Wenya tried to argue with reason. “The three Dao Masters haven’t decided the outcome yet… and even if he does win, given how he spread demon calamity, given how he cultivated his evil arts with those ‘blood remains’, how could he possibly spare the rest of Qiyun Dao?”

Running meant death.

Not running also meant death.

So why run?

Better to stay, and walk the last stretch alongside Fang Xiaochun.

“…Sigh.” Fang Xiaochun sighed.