Volume 3, Chapter 7 – Verdict

After a few polite exchanges, once Han Yuanfeng had been seen off, Bai Xiang beckoned Lian Feng over.

“Dao Master!” Lian Feng’s expression was a little worked up.

He really just changed how he addressed her, just like that…

Watching from the side, Bai Zhuqing couldn’t help curling her lip, inwardly disdaining her junior brother as if he’d become her own older sister’s number-one bootlicker.

Why say that?

Because the succession ceremony for Shenming Sword Dao’s Dao Master had actually been handled in a rather shabby way.

A proper Mountain-and-River grade Dao field would make a huge fanfare of such a succession, letting the whole world know. Countless officials would come, as well as princes and princesses from Qianyu Palace, all wanting to pay their respects and find ways to cozy up to the new Dao Master.

But the Bai family… well, they really hadn’t been in any position to do that back then. As she remembered it, the demon chaos had just been quelled when she woke up. Bai Xiang had told Bai Shengju what had happened, and Bai Shengju had gathered a group in the main hall to kneel together before the ancestral tablet. A few words later, the seat had been passed on. It all felt quite casual.

Bai Zhuqing believed herself already plenty fawning, but sometimes she still couldn’t quite wrap her head around it—she simply wasn’t used to it, not used to someone so close to her suddenly becoming a person of high status.

But Lian Feng was absolutely the one who’d adapted the fastest out of everyone.

That gave her a faint sense of threat.

How could anyone else be Sister Xiang’s number-one bootlicker?!

It has to be me!

And only me!

“Dao Master!” So she chimed in as well. “Junior Brother Lian’s just traveled back and forth across two provinces. All that going by boat and carriage must’ve worn him out. We should let him take everyone to rest first.”

Lian Feng: ???

Seriously, Senior Sister, are you for real?

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If you did the math, technically it was two provinces—this place counted as Maozhou territory, and they’d come from the old Dao field, the Nanping branch road in Chilong Circuit.

But the actual distance wasn’t that exaggerated.

The two places were that close!

Once all the forest stretches were widened and properly paved, taking the land route wouldn’t even take half a day!

“Zhuqing.” Bai Xiang looked toward her “little sister.”

“Dao Master!” Bai Zhuqing also looked at her, big eyes shining bright.

“Stand down.”

“Yes!… Huh?”

“Don’t you dislike this kind of busywork?” Bai Xiang fixed her with a cool stare. “Hurry up and get things ready for Elder Han. When you’re done, come back and practice your sword properly.”

Having shooed away the troublemaker, Bai Zhuqing, Bai Xiang turned back to Lian Feng. “Judging from your expression… you caught Deng Fu?”

Later on, Lian Feng had explained the reasons for his departure. With his sincere attitude—and those heavy kowtows begging forgiveness like Xu Shu back then—the dojo hadn’t pursued the matter of him leaving without permission.

“Deng Fu is dead!” Lian Feng nodded hard, lifting his eyes to Bai Xiang. His pupils were full of respect and fanaticism. “All thanks to the Dao Master’s spirit-pointing grace!”

No wonder Zhuqing felt uneasy.

Looking at Lian Feng, Bai Xiang felt she could understand.

Lian Feng had seen the warmth and coldness of human relationships since childhood, truly crawling through the mud and ash, encountering every kind of cruelty in human nature.

His bottom line wasn’t the same as that of an ordinary young man. For a bite of food or a place to sleep, he could throw away his dignity without hesitation.

To carry out his great revenge, he was willing to pay any price.

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Huang Meng had said that when they’d first found him, he’d wanted to sell himself to companies like Qingyun Pharmaceuticals, becoming a test subject to be turned into a modified human.

So of course his shift had been rapid.

Younger brothers and sisters, even fellow disciples, still felt embarrassed to call her Dao Master, yet Lian Feng said it naturally and freely.

He was truly a prime candidate to become a trusted, diehard retainer.

Good thing he ended up in my hands. Otherwise, he probably wouldn’t have lived long.

Same as these people.

She swept her gaze around the hall, letting it fall on the white-robed disciples.

These were fresh recruits taken in under cover of the demon disaster. All of them had lost their families in the upheaval. With nothing tying them down, they were willing to become spirit-pointing material.

They’d given everything to beg for power, and these white robes were fate’s reward.

Which was only natural.

Bai Xiang still wasn’t planning to fully reveal the existence of the path of qi. For now, it remained a secret. Only close kin, her master, Ma Yue and a few core disciples… plus the two Dao Masters under her control… had the qualifications to know.

Under those circumstances, she couldn’t recruit too many disciples through normal channels. And even if she did, she couldn’t just openly explain the path of qi to them and rush to give them all spirit-pointing.

Only those like Lian Feng, with firm hearts, desperate for strength, who even regarded her as a faith—they were the ones she would make exceptions for, helping them realize their wishes.

That was why the team led by Lian Feng was so frighteningly strong.

Every one of them was in the Enter-the-Dao phase. During spirit-pointing, they’d undergone the Know the Self transformation. After two months of bitter cultivation, they’d begun to grasp their heart-aspect seeds, each showing a different category of qi-force traits… their strength already rivaled Forge the Sword in the Sword Dao system.

The only issue was the lack of resources—there was no way to outfit them all with good swords.

The differences between the path of qi and Sword Dao also showed in their weapons. There was no need to take in a Demon Pool for their swords; their core power came from the self’s heart-aspect, and they didn’t need to recite the Sword Dao’s Human Principle to steady their sword hearts.

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Taken a step further, the weapon didn’t even have to be a sword.

In theory, they could choose any weapon that suited them. As long as the material was appropriate—say, they found something with sufficient strength—even instruments like zithers or brushes could be refined into protective Dao treasures. But changing mindsets was genuinely hard.

Sword Dao had been rooted in Great Yu for many years. Its concepts were deeply ingrained in people’s hearts. Even so, these particular disciples were stubbornly convinced that their protective Dao implements could only be swords.

Right now, most of the manpower, along with the troops Fang Xiaochun had sent, were all busy helping with land reclamation. No one had time to purchase large quantities of high-grade ore. How was she supposed to solve this?

As she chatted with Lian Feng, asking about the daily situation at the old Dao field, Bai Xiang was also thinking to herself about whether she should appropriately accept some foreign investment.

Her phone already had plenty of letters from foreign companies, all expressing, without exception, a desire to deepen cooperation with “Maozhou.”

Under normal circumstances, this kind of thing would definitely be illegal.

But she fully expected to unleash the path of qi on the world. When that time came, the whole realm would fall into chaos. The court might well drum up eighteen routes of princes to jointly crusade against her, Bai Xiang. So what did it matter if she broke a few minor laws right now? She simply wasn’t afraid.

It was definitely feasible.

Bai Xiang had already made up her mind: she was going to pull in some external capital.

On one hand, Maozhou—especially Zhen’nan Circuit—desperately needed foreign capital to help them develop.

Advanced equipment. Mature technology.

Building a city was unimaginably difficult. Without those things, even ten or twenty years might not be enough.

Secondly, she needed to use this kind of cooperation to find out what the outside world had developed into by now.

What technologies were out there?

Especially in the field of biotechnology—could they offer anything for the “evolutionary serum”?

Could those strengths be used to assist cultivation on the path of qi?

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Could she purchase technological battlesuits to bolster the dojo’s defensive capabilities?

And she still had unsettled accounts with the outside world—namely Qingyun Pharmaceuticals… Behind the Prince of Nanling’s rebellion, there was also the shadow of support from the Sami Federation. To trace things back to the source, she’d have to interact with the outside sooner or later.

But that would all be later.

She still had to break the manor’s barrier before the Yujing team arrived.

“I may be away for a few days soon.”

Thinking of this, Bai Xiang gave Lian Feng a quiet reminder.

“While I’m gone, do your best to cooperate with Commandant Huang and the others. If you run into something you can’t handle, ask the Benling and Shangqing Dao lineages for help.”

After Lian Feng agreed, Bai Xiang rose, went back upstairs, and continued delving into the Great Dao of the Golden Core.

After all, she still didn’t know whether this realm could truly rival a “Sword Lord.”

Her soul’s strange abilities let her forcibly realize in her body all those immortal cultivation concepts that were supposed to exist only in fantasy novels.

Did that mean that as long as her logic held together, she could feel out the Golden Core’s further progression, even Nascent Soul, all on her own…?

Night.

After carrying the slumped-over-at-the-computer Bai Zhuqing onto the bed, Bai Xiang sat back down at the desk.

She froze for a moment when she looked at the screen.

Because she saw a freshly updated feature article—an entire special report introducing “Shenming’s Bai Xiang.”