Volume 3, Chapter 19 – Remnants【1】

Staring at the giant lizard monster in front of her—a creature that could only be described as grotesque from any angle—Bai Xiang hesitated, wondering whether to cut it down with a single sword strike.

Judging from its qi presence, the giant lizard’s blood and energy were already enough to rival a Purple Core in the Sword Dao. And it wasn’t like Zhou Jing’an, stuck at the shallow edges of the Purple Core realm without making any progress; its blood and energy were far more vigorous than Zhou Jing’an’s and Tong Bing’s.

Of course, combat power couldn’t be judged on blood and energy alone. It also depended on the Demon Pool type, sword arts, divine abilities, and other methods. But this monster had sapience; if it could continue to grow, it would be no small threat to others.

“I have a question for you.” Bai Xiang had it turn around again and meet her gaze, staring into its four blood-red vertical pupils. “You said you’ve been roosting here recently. Then do you know someone named ‘Liang Qiusheng’? Have you seen him?”

“No impression!” The giant lizard shook its head. “All those people either ran away when they saw me or started screaming and attacking me. I don’t know who the Immortal is referring to.”

“Then I’ll put it another way.”

Bai Xiang paused, had Jade Spirit pull up the ‘Outstanding Teacher Liang Qiusheng’ photo she had once glimpsed on Qizhou University’s photo wall, described his facial features—high cheekbones, broad forehead, prominent nose bridge, very thin lips—and then asked the giant lizard again if it had any impression.

“I do!” The giant lizard immediately nodded. “When I first woke up, I ate some people. The others all scattered and ran. Later there was a sneaky swordsman—just like the Immortal described—who came over holding a toothpick to poke me. I ripped off half his arm, and he shut himself into the lower-level prison.”

“Prison?” Bai Xiang raised a brow. Looked like the lower levels of the Prince’s Manor were even more fully equipped than she’d thought.

“The prison and the laboratory are both below,” the giant lizard nodded again. “Both sides are blocked off with something extremely thick. I rammed it a few times back then but couldn’t break through. I figured that, since he couldn’t get out, he’d just starve to death in there, so I didn’t bother with him anymore.”

Bai Xiang asked it, “When did this happen?”

The giant lizard replied, “Not sure. This little one only cares about eating, drinking, and sleeping… But I vaguely remember that during that time it was snowing heavily, and it went on for a very, very long time.”

Heavy snow meant January or February.

Bai Xiang instantly had a sense of the timing.

Continuous heavy snow for several days, and in the Jingshui area—it should have been mid-February, though the exact day was unclear.

But that was enough. From mid-February to today, it had been about ten days. If Liang Qiusheng had shut himself in the lower levels and couldn’t find any supplies, then he really would have been trapped to death.

Back then, Chai Jingyuan had even praised this man, saying he was ambushed by demons, broke through on the spot, then slaughtered the incoming enemies to the last—someone who could truly be called an outstanding talent of the Sword Dao.

She hadn’t expected him to end up like this.

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Pitiful, sigh-worthy.

And also deserved.

Because the Blood-Cloud Great Marsh hadn’t formed immediately. Six springs were venting blood mist here, and most of that mist had drifted over along the air currents above Jingshui, so gathering it all took time.

From the testimony Fang Xiaochun had obtained, some demon had seen Liang Qiusheng appearing around the Prince’s Manor before the incident. That meant he was undoubtedly in league with the Prince of Nanling, just that he hadn’t shown himself openly after the incident and hadn’t been caught with direct evidence of rebellion.

After Bai Xiang killed Yao Qingyuan and snuffed out the rebel banner, he’d had at least three or four days to flee the two states of Ze and Qi. Yet instead of escaping, he chose to take a huge risk and sneak back in before the Prince of Nanling’s Manor was shrouded by blood mist and turned into a barrier. That was basically courting death.

There had to be some conviction driving him to take that kind of risk.

Was he clinging to the belief that she had killed Liang Wanming and wanted revenge? Or had he dumped all the blame for Liang Wanming’s death onto her head?

Bai Xiang felt it was probably the latter.

Not surprising—just think what kind of coddling it took to raise a daughter with that kind of temperament. In her eyes, Liang Qiusheng himself was the real killer.

With the way he’d indulged his daughter, if she hadn’t died by Bai Xiang’s hand, she would have died by someone else’s sooner or later.

She glanced at the giant lizard and decided: for helping her take care of a minor problem, she’d give it an extra ten minutes or so of life.

She did want to keep the giant lizard alive. She’d always been troubled by one question—she wasn’t sure whether the path of qi had any effect on the demon race.

Low-level demon beasts caught in the mountains and forests couldn’t satisfy her research needs. This spirit lizard, with its vigorous blood energy and sapience, looked absolutely perfect.

But she needed to find out its background.

The laboratories in the lower levels of the Prince’s Manor would definitely be storing experiment logs about it.

“Let’s go.” Bai Xiang turned, bent down, and picked up the brocade-wrapped bundle containing Bai Nianchan’s corpse.

“Search this place with me.”

The spirit lizard didn’t dare defy Bai Xiang. It obediently lay low by her side, wriggling along like some oversized lizard or crocodile, following her as she searched through half the Prince’s Manor—at least the parts aboveground.

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There really wasn’t anything special to find. After Yao Qingyuan, that big tree, had toppled, all the money and treasure had no doubt already been swept away by others. The only ones who’d choose to stay in a place like this were probably lunatics like Liang Qiusheng.

Bai Xiang turned her head and asked the giant lizard, “Where’s the entrance to the lower levels?”

The giant lizard said, “Right where I used to sleep.”

Figures.

Bai Xiang understood.

No wonder Liang Qiusheng had to go and provoke this thing… He must have been after something stored down below, and just his luck that the giant lizard was lying right across the only path, practically obligated to eat him.

“You’re sure there’s only this one exit to the lower levels?”

She suddenly felt a little uneasy. Could it be that Liang Qiusheng had already taken what he wanted and escaped?

“There’s definitely only one!” The giant lizard even raised its right claw in a swear-like gesture. “There is a sewage pipe, but a normal person can’t get into a place like that!”

Bai Xiang said nothing. She returned with the giant lizard to the reception hall, and sure enough, she found a wide secret door in the shadows of a corner.

The outer layer of the secret door was wooden paneling. Once pulled aside, beneath it was a very high-tech-looking metal surface. In place of the doorknob was a device similar to a card reader. Bai Xiang tilted her head up to look and even spotted several embedded little holes.

Cameras?

Shouldn’t be anyone watching now.

As for this metal door panel…

She stepped back a few paces, then suddenly kicked forward.

Boom!!!

With a deafening bang, the door panel caved inward in a huge dent.

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But then something strange happened… As Bai Xiang drew her leg back, the dented metal visibly began to recover, mending itself before her eyes!

This wasn’t technology Great Yu was capable of.

Bai Xiang frowned slightly in her heart.

Had outside technology really advanced this far?

What was this supposed to be?

Shape-memory alloy?

A kick like that was something an ordinary Divine Fetus immortal couldn’t withstand. If this stuff could be mass-produced and made into light armor suits for Sword Lords to wear, it would be a real headache.

Feeling a sense of crisis, Bai Xiang couldn’t be bothered with the whole ‘find scattered ID cards to swipe the door open’ routine. Sword-Qi suddenly surged around her, gathering on Feixiang Heaven in the blink of an eye, and the entire sword let out a clear, ringing cry.

All the giant lizard saw was the blade reflecting metallic silver light, drawing a right angle through the air—and in the next instant, the sight of the blade biting into the great door.

Vmm—

Bai Xiang flicked her wrist and unleashed the Vibration Art. The more-than-one-meter-thick alloy door split along the cut into over a dozen cracks, then shattered with a boom into several large pieces.

Too brutal!

Its scales shuddering all over, the giant lizard felt deeply fortunate—surrendering right away really had been the right choice!

Bai Xiang gave it a glance and stepped inside.

The giant lizard hurriedly scampered after her.

The lower levels were very spacious.

The tunnels and walls were all metal. Bai Xiang ran her hand along the wall for a bit and with a click, turned on the lights.

A chain of lights stretched all the way to the end of the tunnel. She led the giant lizard around, searching and wandering, basically making a circuit of all the experiment areas labeled with letters.

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It wasn’t that she found nothing. For example, she came across some records and logs of human experimentation.

There were sections that seemed to be about the ‘Shenli’ Demon Pool, but only a few brief lines of introduction.

[The ‘B2’ containment object exhibits extremely strong transmissibility and can switch freely between multiple forms.]

[Project objective: extract two to three properties from the ‘B2’ containment object and simulate a Demon Pool for experimentation.]

What was that supposed to mean?

Bai Xiang frowned.

The ‘B2’ containment object—so it didn’t even sound like ‘Shenli’ itself, but more like ‘Shenli’s’ progenitor?

These were all physical documents. Presumably, when they’d fled, the electronic data had been wiped with a single command, leaving only these that they hadn’t had time to clear out.

Bai Xiang gathered up the documents she felt were key and took them with her, circling around to the far end of the lower levels, where she saw a fork ahead, with two alloy doors on either side.

She turned to look at the giant lizard, and it caught her meaning at once. “The one on the left is the prison.”

Looking down, she could indeed see many dark red stains on the ground, as if someone had dragged their body along here inch by inch.

“And the right?” Bai Xiang asked again.

“The right…” The giant lizard shuddered violently. “The right is the she-devil’s private laboratory.”

“She-devil?”

“She’s the master here—half a master, anyway!” the giant lizard said hastily. “They always called her ‘boss,’ and someone of even higher status than her called her ‘Hannah Boss’.”

That first ‘boss’ was probably ‘BOSS’.