Volume 3, Chapter 39 – Seizing the Dao (Two-in-One)

Facing the sword salute Bai Xiang presented, Kong An said nothing. He merely lifted the “Jingzhu Sword” he had only recently inherited, set it upright before his chest, and returned the salute properly.

He had come to block her at Zhang Xianzhi’s request, but if you spoke of the will to kill, he did not have it.

Before his disappearance, his father “Kong Zihua” had warned him that whenever something happened, he should “think more and move less,” and not reveal his stance at the slightest gust of wind, letting others drive him like a pawn.

Given Kong Zihua’s age and position, those words carried a great deal of weight.

So he had never planned to sell his life for Zhang Xianzhi. The only reason he had come to intercept Bai Xiang at all was because of a transfer order from Yujing, assigning him to sit in Chilong for two or three months to help Zhang Xianzhi smoothly take control of the territory.

“Bai Xiang of Shenming.” Kong An’s mustache and hair at his temples drifted in the wind. His slender eyes narrowed slightly.

“Let me see whether that sword at the Jing River was real or false!”

Taking Bai Xiang’s reputation into account, he didn’t overthink it. He simply put himself in a lower position, deeming himself the “challenger.” The moment his words fell, he struck first.

In Bai Xiang’s eyes, the instant the last word left his mouth, his figure blurred, and her lock on his qi presence scattered.

The air around her suddenly turned cold.

Up, down, left, right… Kong An’s qi presence seemed to saturate the surroundings like air itself, while the man gradually faded from where he’d been.

Oh…

Bai Xiang narrowed her eyes.

Her divine-soul ability had no effect outward; she didn’t have that absolute control. But ever since she had attained the Core on the path of qi, the strength of her spirit should have soared.

For him to make her lose her lock on his qi presence—Jingzhu’s secret art was quite interesting.

Clang…!

Suddenly, her right hand lifted her sword and swept to the right. It met the “Jingzhu Sword” slicing in on the cold wind, steel catching steel with a bell-like crash that echoed through the high sky and drifting clouds.

Looking again at Kong An, he was pressing forward with his sword one-handed, a cold and subtle aura coiling around him. There was a hint of astonishment in the eyes he turned on Bai Xiang.

She glanced up at him, then snapped her wrist and set “Feixiang Heaven” to vibrating.

Zheng!

The two swords rang together. Bai Xiang’s force lifted Kong An strongly, making him lose balance for a heartbeat. When he raised his eyes, the white-haired woman had already closed the distance. Her right arm and the blade in her hand turned into a black blur; he could only read her motion to see that she was chopping downward.

The back of his head prickled with a fatal premonition. He flipped, rolling away from his original position, and as he tumbled he felt a razor edge brush past his cheek. A hundred meters ahead, and even the clouds below, were split neatly in two.

Her sword qi was that condensed?

The power she released was colorless, without form… just like the rumors said—a special kind of demonic power.

He had lost the initiative. In a straight-up clash, she had a clear advantage. From here on out, he had to avoid meeting her head-on as much as possible.

Bai Xiang once more closed to short range, her dark sleeves billowing in midair like a drifting shadow that dropped over him and made Kong An’s heart clench.

“Master, aren’t we trading swordplay?”

Her voice followed like that same shadow.

“One hand not enough? Want to try using both?”

Clang, clang, clang!

The blade stabbed down at him from above, forcing Kong An to meet it and block.

But the difference in driving force between the two of them was stark. Even when he followed her words and brought his other hand up, gripping the sword with both hands, he still couldn’t withstand her. In midair, his position was constantly pushed down; with every block, he fell another span.

How could this be?

Kong An’s face showed nothing, but deep down he was shocked.

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There was a saying in Sword Dao: “Until Divine Fetus, you do not truly command the air.”

“Commanding the air” here did not just mean some simple soaring technique or gliding art; it also included how to borrow force and exert power while airborne. The point was that the Purple Core realm was only an entry level for moving through the air and hardly counted as truly understanding it. Only once you reached the Divine Fetus realm did you have the right to claim that.

And why was that?

Because, in terms of close-quarters grappling—in other words, white-blade combat—fighting in the air and fighting on the ground were completely different things.

On the ground, a cultivator could set their feet, finding a base to borrow strength from at any moment. But there was no such convenience in midair.

A person could be unimaginably strong yet find no opponent on the ground—if you dropped them ten thousand meters up, all that strength would have nowhere to go, and most of that tough body would be wasted.

So in aerial combat, power did not depend on the physical body, but on various soaring methods, gliding arts, and the effect of one’s heart-flow in driving demonic power.

On that front, leaving aside the two Supreme Daos, there was no sect that dared claim superiority over Jingzhu.

Jingzhu’s name came from a line of verse: “Wind through the window startles the bamboo; open the door, and snow fills the mountain.” Its root method was The Wind-Riding, Bamboo-Startling Sky-Evasion Sword Classic , and it was especially adept in borrowing force while airborne.

At the highest levels, Jingzhu Dao cultivators could even “ride qi with the body,” using a single sword to call forth wind and snow across the sky, stirring the very weather with human power.

So why had Kong An dared challenge Bai Xiang even after hearing all the stories about her feats?

Precisely because he relied on his advantage in aerial combat—plus the fact that the sword she used at the Jing River reportedly required a good deal of preparation time. He’d thought he could deadlock her and keep her from unleashing that strike.

But the situation was not what he’d imagined at all.

Leaving aside the fact that after she attained the Core on the path of qi she’d transformed in all aspects—even her physical body, without conscious effort, could now “attune to nature,” moving in the air as freely as a fish in water, completely unlike a Sword Dao cultivator with nowhere to borrow strength.

Even just speaking of this newly-born golden-core sword qi—Bai Xiang didn’t need to tense a single muscle. She only had to wrap her body in a sheath of golden-core sword qi and, instead of using her body to guide the qi, use sword qi to drive her body. With that most brute-force, straight-line charge… who could stand in her way?

Clang!

Another sword hammered Kong An down another span.

Before he could adjust his posture, Bai Xiang dove, crossing more than ten meters in a single rush—then brought her sword down hard again.

Clang!

Clang!

Clang—!

Like that, one crash after another, she simply chased him and pounded. She treated Kong An as if he were a piece of glowing iron, and “Feixiang Heaven” as the smith’s hammer, hammering and forging him stroke by stroke.

Before long, Kong An’s wrist was numb and aching, his face flushed red, and his heart-flow utterly disrupted.

This couldn’t go on.

He was truly frightened by her violent style.

He hadn’t seen a single one of those famed sword techniques they spoke of in the rumors; he’d just been hammered like an iron billet.

Knocked downward yet again, Kong An bit the tip of his tongue, brought his left hand up to his chest to form a sword seal, and spat out a breath of clear qi onto the “Jingzhu Sword.”

As Bai Xiang rushed in once more to smash him, “Feixiang Heaven” skimmed along the blade of the Jingzhu Sword and cut straight through the afterimage of Kong An’s body.

A divine ability?

Halting her fall in an instant, Bai Xiang felt Kong An’s qi presence blur again.

The same secret technique as at the beginning?

This wasn’t a residual afterimage left by high speed. It was more like “scattering form into qi,” or a “Heaven-Demon Disassembly.”

For a moment, Bai Xiang’s interest in this Jingzhu Sword Dao secret art grew.

If it truly was something like “scattering form into qi,” then recombining the body transformed into mist back into a whole had to involve extremely exquisite principles and key points. She could use them to further her own work on tempering the body.

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She’d always given the flesh great importance. Whether you treated the body as the boat that ferried you across the bitter sea or as the fuel that fed the soul’s flame, a strong body was never a bad thing—there might even be a gate to longevity hidden there.

She’d have to find some way to trick it out of him…

Thinking that, Bai Xiang finally caught Kong An’s qi presence again.

It was a great mass of scattered cloud qi, colorless and without form, mingled with the drifting mists and gathering together again into Kong An’s body.

She looked him over carefully and found that not only was his flesh unhurt, even his robes and sword were the same as before. Her amazement at this secret art only grew—and so did those slightly crooked thoughts.

“Dao Lord Bai!” Kong An lifted his head, messy strands of hair falling over his forehead. “This move is the culmination of Kong’s life’s cultivation. If you can take it head-on, then Kong will submit to you taking charge of things here!”

He didn’t wait for Bai Xiang to reply. He poured most of his heart-flow into the “Jingzhu Sword,” then tossed it up into the sky and arranged his body in a strange posture.

His left foot pointed sideways in midair, his right knee lifted horizontally. His left hand formed a half-palm sword sign pointing down, his right hand formed another half-palm sword sign pointing up. His eyes flared with golden light. “Go!”

In an instant, wind and cloud changed color.

Bai Xiang looked up at the “Jingzhu Sword” whirling out. Above and below it, two conical masses of cloud abruptly appeared, pressing the sword between them in the shape of an hourglass. In the blink of an eye they swelled several times over, forming a howling tornado of sword qi.

Another blink, and it had grown several times more.

Another blink, and again several times more.

The whirlwind seemed to have no upper limit. In just a few breaths it had expanded to a hundred meters across, its color turning dark and ominous, the shriek of the wind audible from far away.

Woooo—!

Woooo—!

The storm advanced on her with overwhelming momentum, like a tear in the sky itself, and from that tear some nameless thing had thrust out a single tentacle, which was now right before Bai Xiang’s eyes.

So this was the Divine Fetus realm.

She wasn’t surprised.

When Xiang Xian and Abbess Li Sheng had idly traded blows, they’d shaken the heavens above Wuqiu Mountain. For Kong An, even as a newly advanced Divine Fetus, to create this scale of vision when going all out was only natural.

But this was just cleverness.

Her gaze went cold.

The Divine Fetus realm in Sword Dao decided whether a dojo qualified as “mountain-and-river–grade.” Indirectly, it said they could shift heaven and earth, wielding power above the mundane.

This sword-wind tornado was just that. From her observation, it wasn’t Kong An’s own power. He’d merely used the “Jingzhu Sword” as a primer, as the lever to move a great weight. He’d nudged the weather into change at the start, and the technique had mostly slipped from his control afterward.

The destruction it could cause was plenty.

But if you never saw through the essence of such power and fed those principles back into your own being, how could you seek the great Dao of longevity?

In that moment, Bai Xiang once again sensed the flaws in Sword Dao—and how countless cultivators across the Nine Provinces differed from her on the path.

Then let me show you… what the blazing great Dao really is.

Facing the storm, she flew higher and higher, then flung “Feixiang Heaven” upward as well.

The sky was already thick with gathering clouds; bolts of thunder writhed within the black canopy. In a matter of seconds, hundreds of lightning snakes speared down and poured themselves into the sword’s blade.

That’s… the Jing River sword?

From afar, Kong An stared, eyes wide, stunned.

Didn’t she need time to prepare it?

He had been suppressing her from the very beginning—so how…

Suddenly, his pupils shrank.

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Because he’d thought of one possibility: he hadn’t put any pressure on Bai Xiang at all.

From the start, she’d been completely at ease. She’d never fought him with all her strength.

So she’d had the spare capacity to prepare this.

And she’d been preparing it… from the very beginning.

Crack!

With a sweep of Bai Xiang’s sword seal, “Feixiang Heaven” became a white bolt, falling like true heavenly lightning. The strike split the hundred-meter whirlwind in two, and with it the clouds above, the air, everything—cleaved in a single stroke.

It was like some kind of demonic art, even a miracle. The moment the sword fell, the whirlwind vanished, as if it had never existed. Kong An’s bulging eyes watched it, mind empty.

Looking up, the sky itself had briefly torn open into a deep blue rift; through that gap he could see scattered stars and streams of brilliant, seven-colored light.

From that radiance, a cold point fell—a star of steel, the “Jingzhu Sword.” Kong An reached out numbly to catch it.

Smack.

But just as he was about to, Bai Xiang intercepted it. The Jingzhu Sword dropped into her hand.

Kong An’s pupils tightened. He opened his mouth to speak, but heard Bai Xiang’s quiet voice first: “Your sword uses yourself as a primer, begging scraps of power from heaven and earth.

“My sword uses myself as the axis and draws nature’s qi into my blade.”

“With that root method wrong from the start… tell me, could you ever win?”

Ignoring the rapid changes on Kong An’s face, Bai Xiang flipped the sword back to him, lifted a hand to summon “Feixiang Heaven” into her grasp again, and set her foot on the flat of its blade.

“Farewell.”

With that, she rode the sword and drifted away.

“Using yourself as primer… and… using yourself as axis?”

Kong An hung in the air clutching the Jingzhu Sword, staring after her for a while, then lowering his head to look at the blade, his brows knotted in thought.

If he judged by Great Yu’s centuries of Sword Dao theory alone, everything this woman had said was crooked reasoning.

She’d actually tried to deny the principles of Sword Dao from the root.

If that wasn’t crooked, what was?

But she herself was the proof…

That heaven-splitting stroke was still replaying itself over and over in his mind. If her explanation were wrong, how had she done it?

“Sigh.”

Sheathing his sword, Kong An let out a soft sigh.

“Father.

“If you were at my side, you’d surely be able to guide me again…”

…

On the other side, having shaken off that clinging Kong An, Bai Xiang was unimpeded. Before long, she’d flown to hover above the Roads Directorate residence and dropped into its courtyard, standing on her sword.

Inside, Zhang Xianzhi and his people were already on high alert. He had arranged a good number of soldiers with guns to surround the yard.

But the man himself had a bit of courage. Instead of hiding, he sat leisurely at the front door with a go board in front of him.

“Where is Lian Di?” Bai Xiang glanced once at the courtyard setup and asked the matter at hand directly.

“Looks like Master Kong An’s mind has been swayed by you,” Zhang Xianzhi said instead of answering. He leisurely placed a stone on the board.

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“Dao Lord Bai clearly has sharp fangs. Why not play a game with me and talk through the principles of governance?”

Bai Xiang eyed him for a long moment, then tapped her sword tip on the ground. “Is this just your habitual arrogance talking?”

Zhang Xianzhi raised a brow. “Oh?”

Bai Xiang went on, voice like ice. “After sitting high for too long, your whole mindset shifts. Your way of acting leans toward sealing and suppression. You see the people as ignorant rabble, unfit to be taught, unfit to share in decisions.

“Have you ever thought, if the ‘system’ you worship had treated you the way you now treat the people of Chilong, what chance would you have had to take first in the exams and climb this high from nothing?”

“…That is not something a martial cultivator should concern herself with!” Zhang Xianzhi’s face turned iron blue. “You are overstepping, Dao Lord Bai!”

“Overstepping?” Bai Xiang frowned. “Sounds more like you’re ashamed and angry.”

“You cannot kill Lian Di!” Zhang Xianzhi snarled. “I’ve already submitted his paperwork as an official. It hasn’t been approved yet, but he’s no longer just a gang leader!”

“Save that routine for cheating someone else,” Bai Xiang pressed him step by step. “Is that what you said to him too? No wonder he was willing to bring three thousand men to sell you his life.”

Zhang Xianzhi’s pupils shrank sharply.

He couldn’t understand how Bai Xiang could see through his thinking.

Even Lian Di wasn’t clear on his true intentions—so how could this uncanny demon woman have guessed them?

“Because you’ve already been corroded by the system you believe in so deeply.”

Bai Xiang stepped up to him, looking down from above.

“You no longer think for the people. Instead, you stubbornly believe that ‘Heaven births all things, each to its appointed role.’ You want the children of ‘ignorant rabble’ to remain ignorant, and you call that ‘Heaven and earth’s order, the workings of fate’… you stopped being the Zhang Xianzhi who took the exams long ago.”

“You—!”

Zhang Xianzhi instinctively wanted to refute her, but in that instant, he saw in his mind the look on Liu Haoran’s face when he’d shaken his head that day.

How was it so similar to Bai Xiang’s expression now? That same chill, pity, contempt, disappointment.

Why?

Why?

How could the two be so alike?

“With the demon calamity at hand, I, as Dao Lord of Shenming, am temporarily taking over the post of Watchman.” Bai Xiang flicked up the seal token from his belt, then gave him a final glance.

“I won’t kill you.

“I want you to see with your own eyes how Zhen’nan and Chilong differ.”

With that, she swept her sword sideways and lopped off a nearby guard’s head, then waved her hand to draw the blood-soul into her palm, absorbing and refining it. Learning which direction Lian Di had fled, she launched her soaring art and shot into the air.

“Lord Zhang? My lord?”

The attendants nearby were terrified, but they forced themselves to come closer. “My lord… are you all right?”

“Heaven and earth’s order… the workings of fate…”

Zhang Xianzhi only shook his head, mind full of the doctrines and essays he’d memorized as a student.

Had I truly been wrong?

He couldn’t tell.

But he felt that perhaps he ought to see what difference there would be between a Chilong Circuit governed by him, and a Chilong Circuit governed by Bai Xiang.