Volume 3, Chapter 64 – Secrets (Double-Length Chapter)

Bai Xiang was aware of Bai Zhuqing’s little movements.

These days, the two of them had been sleeping stark naked. She’d thought that once her little sister got this chance, she’d try something further. She hadn’t expected that just burrowing into her arms for a hug was enough to make her satisfied.

Blinking, she didn’t make any other moves. She knew all too well how hard Bai Zhuqing had been working these days to fight against the attraction she herself gave off.

Her silly little sister thought she didn’t know. That wasn’t true at all.

Back when they’d stayed for a while at the Benling Dojo on Mount Wuqiu, Bai Xiang had already realized that as her soul grew stronger, the temperament she radiated—paired with her face—had a tremendously seductive effect on others.

It didn’t work well on people who actively hated her, but on those who’d originally felt nothing toward her, and especially on those already close to her, this enchanting effect was a headache.

It could give other people a headache, and it gave Bai Xiang one too. Whether she cared or not, she didn’t want to walk around every day with people pining after her wherever she went, or wearing anything and having others’ thoughts go straight into the gutter.

The good news was that once her qi had formed a Core, this seductive power could be restrained inward. Add to that the fact that she’d taken over the authority from Bai Shengju and succeeded him as the dojo’s highest leader—her powerful strength and lofty status had added a new halo to her. That halo essentially covered up that deadly allure and helped shield her from a lot of trouble.

But during these days of training Bai Zhuqing, she hadn’t held back in the slightest.

She figured that charm had to be working on Bai Zhuqing at several times its normal effect, and with the other girl genuinely loving her from the bottom of her heart, being able to struggle out of those emotions and grind the Clear-Heart Formula to total mastery really hadn’t been easy.

She could treat this as a reward for her.

Bai Xiang closed her eyes and sank into a deep sleep as well.

As always, she was the first to wake the next day. When she opened her eyes, she was not at all surprised to see Bai Zhuqing clinging to her like a koala, most of her face smashed against her chest and squashed badly out of shape.

It looked like the texture was pretty good. Bai Xiang reached out and gave her little sister’s cheek a squeeze, making the latter furrow her brows and mumble in her sleep, muttering things like “Sister Xiang smells so good,” “Sister Xiang’s scent is so sweet,” and other such nonsense.

Sweet?

Bai Xiang frowned slightly and focused. There really was a cool, damp feeling at her chest.

So it wasn’t drool this time… Narrowing her eyes, she gave her sister’s face another squeeze, then left her there and went downstairs to bathe.

Today’s outfit would be on the leisurely side. For once, she didn’t put on any socks. After changing into close-fitting underclothes, she simply threw on a light blue robe, skipped shoes altogether, and sat at the table with a brush in hand, writing out small regular script.

This was a special kind of brush. From the outside it looked no different from a ballpoint pen you’d buy in a shop, but once you uncapped it, the tip was actually bristles, and the cap had been specially designed to protect the brush tip.

Thanks to the handwriting practice she’d done during the early period of being hospitalized in her previous life, Bai Xiang’s characters were fairly good. Sheets of small script were swiftly laid aside to dry, the strokes on them like dragons and snakes threading through clouds—sharp, yet still carrying a free-flowing grace.

She rarely let others see her writing, precisely because you really could see what she pursued in life from it. Even those who didn’t understand calligraphy at all could at least see her ambition in her strokes. Maybe they wouldn’t take it seriously, but she didn’t like having people see straight through her.

Bai Zhuqing was the exception. Her silly little sister had long been a special case.

By the time Bai Zhuqing came downstairs, Bai Xiang was almost done. The girl was wearing short white cotton socks, a red bean bun clamped in her mouth, and the gauzy outer dress she’d thrown on hadn’t even been tied yet. When the wind blew, the underwear-only body underneath was almost fully exposed. Out on the street, it’d be a classic little hoodlum look.

But Bai Zhuqing couldn’t care less. They were in seclusion, after all, and no one with no eyes would come barging in to bother them. She felt that the fact she was even wearing clothes at all proved she’d been properly raised. When she was little, she and Bai Leying had run around their rooms bare-bottomed all the time.

“Mrm mrm what’re you writing, Auntie?”

She shuffled over, staring wide-eyed as she watched, both hands lifting to tie her hair. The fragrance of shampoo mixed with the faint scent of a young girl’s body, especially when her hair drifted past and brushed Bai Xiang’s nose, tickling it.

Bai Xiang glanced over at her and muttered under her breath about propriety.

“It’s cooler this way~ Hoo!” Bai Zhuqing piled her long black hair up, bit into her bun, and her face melted into a look of happiness.

She’d already figured out the pattern. If Bai Xiang wasn’t sitting cross-legged in midair to cultivate first thing in the morning, it meant the bulk of the morning could be spent resting and doing chores.

Even in seclusion, you still had to do chores. Not just mopping the floor and wiping windows, but also washing clothes, boiling water, cooking… The two sisters took turns on these shifts, and to Bai Zhuqing, chores were way easier than cultivation.

“Since you’ve got nothing better to do, you might as well come look at my writing.” Bai Xiang, head lowered as she wrote the last sheet, couldn’t stand to see her looking so idle.

Even she hadn’t realized that the one who’d picked up a habit during this training wasn’t just Bai Zhuqing. Whenever she saw her sister, she couldn’t help wanting to press her down, to bully her a bit, to force her into that flustered look.

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What was she writing?

Bai Zhuqing finished the bun in two bites and picked up a stack of pages to look through.

The more she read, the more it dawned on her: weren’t these the weird movements she’d been forced to practice these last few days?

“This is a body-forging art I summed up from other methods.” Bai Xiang set down the brush and said quietly, “Its effects definitely won’t match the originals, but as long as you stick with it, any Shenming disciple proficient in the Vibration Art will inevitably make progress cultivating it.”

“Then it’s good stuff!” Bai Zhuqing could obviously see the value.

Body-forging in the Sword Dao was difficult. Before the Purple Core, the only step available for strengthening the body was Nurturing the Spirit.

Even when there was a chance to train the body after forming the Purple Core, most Purple Cores weren’t particularly invested in it. They felt that raising their physical body to a certain level was enough.

Once you specialized in that path, cultivation after the Core realm naturally focused on passing through the nine turns of the Purple Core. Training the body was just a side benefit.

Exactly because of this, any method that could continuously raise physical strength in the realms that followed counted as a path-to-the-Dao foundation even in a great sect.

“The Sword Dao these days has gone crooked,” Bai Xiang, however, didn’t agree with her evaluation. “The flesh is the root. Chasing after flashy outer Aspects and divine techniques is the truly heretical path. Don’t use Sword Dao realms as your examples in the future.”

“Oh.” Bai Zhuqing answered obediently, then snuck a look at Bai Xiang and saw she was arranging a document on the computer again.

This round of text needed a lot of images attached—anatomical diagrams of the human body she’d found online. Bai Xiang went through them one by one, annotating each image. When she compiled the manual later, these diagrams would be included as well.

“What’ll you call it?” Now Bai Zhuqing was really interested.

Other sects’ secret techniques all had names that sounded grand and profound—this Scripture, that Art. Shouldn’t theirs also have something that sounded impressive?

“Whatever.” Bai Xiang didn’t care. “We’ll just call it Tendon and Bone Resonance Technique .”

Even though it heavily referenced God-Descent Calisthenics , whether you could actually train this body-forging art depended on whether you understood the Shenming Vibration Art. The name suited it well enough.

“What a lazy name!” Bai Zhuqing pouted.

“You didn’t write it, so why do you care?” Bai Xiang gave her a once-over. “Go get me some more buns. Not the plain ones.”

During their seclusion, the two of them had been eating nothing but buns.

It wasn’t that they loved buns that much—no matter how tasty something was, you’d get sick of it every day. It was that cultivation and martial training really did burn a lot of energy, and when you were spending all day thinking about how to cultivate, you honestly didn’t have the mental space to fuss over recipes.

They didn’t even have time to half-heartedly fake real dishes. The ideal food, therefore, was frozen buns.

Ready-made, wrapped and stuffed. When you wanted to eat, you just threw them into the steamer.

After demolishing four or five stacks of buns in one go, Bai Xiang rinsed her mouth and washed up, then started thinking about today’s schedule.

Cultivation required a balance between tension and relaxation.

She decided she’d give Bai Zhuqing half a day off today.

“You can go play on the computer for a bit,” she said, looking at her sister, who was staring at the wood grain on the table. “We’ll start cultivating again at three this afternoon.”

Nice!

Bai Zhuqing cheered wildly in her heart but didn’t dare show it on her face.

She hadn’t consciously realized that “Bai Xiang has started enjoying bullying me more,” but she still had instincts.

Cheer out loud now and she’d pay for it later…

Once she’d shooed the little girl away, Bai Xiang went back to studying the techniques and secret arts recorded by Jade Spirit.

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In her eyes, the Tendon and Bone Resonance Technique was just small potatoes, unworthy of being called a “Scripture.” Even though it contained a new breathing method she’d extracted herself, it still couldn’t compare in body-forging subtleties to the Sun-Chasing Scripture .

In fact, there was another high-grade technique here: the Suzhen Immortal Martial Arts Lu Qingning had provided.

Suzhen Immortal Martial Arts was a compendium, and its main body was divided into four major sections: the Supreme Resonance Section, the Classic-of-Change Bone-Forging Section, the Spirit-Nurturing Essence-Containing Section, and the Dharma-Guarding Arts Section.

Those were the four principal parts, covering the four major categories of puppetry side-paths, body forging, spirit nurturing, and guardian arts.

After that there were three smaller sections: the Plants-and-Trees Essence Section, the Bone-Mending Medicine Section, and the Governing-the-People Essentials Section.

You could see why Bai Xiang called it a “compendium” just from that tangle of titles alone.

Especially those three small sections—one of them was even something like “Essentials of Governing the People.” Bai Xiang honestly had no idea what to say about Suzhen Dao at that point.

Unfortunately, most of the techniques in it were of no use to her.

Just as with the Shenming secrets, most of which required mastery of the Vibration Art, whether you could cultivate the arts in Suzhen Immortal Martial Arts depended on whether you had Suzhen’s fundamental method.

That meant an “essence-containing item”—you had to have some kind of Demon Pool like a ginseng demon to start with. Without that, you couldn’t cultivate it.

Although Bai Xiang had the Immortal-Martial Token, the ginseng demon essence stored in that jade was actually not much at all.

Hoping to cultivate Suzhen Immortal Martial Arts off of it was unrealistic, so she didn’t plan to use it there. She was saving it to cultivate the Sun-Chasing Scripture .

The Sun-Chasing Scripture .

A technique created with the myth of Kuafu chasing the sun as its reference. The name alone sounded awe-inspiring.

Suzhen Immortal Martial Arts also contained body-forging arts, but the Sun-Chasing Scripture hadn’t been included in it, which alone showed how unusual it was.

In the memories Lu Qingning had provided, she didn’t know the Sun-Chasing Scripture . The reason was that this body-forging art was too hard to cultivate. Counting the entire history of Suzhen Dao, there hadn’t been a single person who’d managed to complete the Sun-Chasing Scripture .

Still, she’d been Suzhen Dao’s number one sword disciple, and that rank had been enough to let her claim and read the complete Sun-Chasing Scripture . With her proud nature, she’d originally planned to just collect the Scripture first and come back to cultivate it later when the opportunity arose.

Unexpectedly, in the end it had all become a wedding dress for someone else.

“I blew Lu Qingning to bits, and only this jade token remained.” Bai Xiang toyed with the Immortal-Martial Token in her hand, sinking into thought.

The Immortal-Martial Token was similar to an Illusory Realm, containing an inner space. At first she’d been pleasantly surprised, thinking it was some kind of storage ring–like treasure. But after careful exploration, she’d discovered that the space inside was laughably tiny—at most it could store a few drops of essence blood.

If you wanted to be optimistic, at least that was “not enough” instead of “none at all.”

If there were small ones, there could be big ones. Bai Xiang remained fairly calm about it. She felt there was still hope of making a storage ring in the future.

It was standard equipment for cultivators. How could it not exist?

It absolutely had to be tried.

As for why the Sun-Chasing Scripture was so hard to practice, just how hard it actually was—after two days of flipping through and studying the Scripture, Bai Xiang’s opinion was that Lu Qingning’s failure was completely normal.

It was a technique that went to the extreme of brutality, and half its notes and explanations were utterly baffling.

For example: the Scripture didn’t begin with any theoretical summary at all. It opened by describing a method for grinding up the strength of your muscles and qi—“mountain-charging.”

How did you charge?

You just did.

No explanation why, no mention of what defensive measures to pair with it, no guidance on how to run your qi along with it. The only hint was that next to that section there was a meridian diagram, roughly indicating that you were supposed to slam into the mountain while circulating your blood and qi along those routes.

There was no way any “normal person” could learn from that.

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And “normal person” here included the world’s so-called geniuses. Lu Qingning’s memories regarding this Scripture were full of resentment. She’d suspected more than once that this was a troll technique and that some of the methods in it were outright nonsense.

Charging into mountains, fine—at least that was something concrete. If you absolutely had to have me do it, I could grit my teeth and try.

But what the hell was that later “Water-Drinking Section” supposed to be?

Why don’t you come explain to me what you mean by “first drink a river, that part’s easy”?

When Bai Xiang had read the Sun-Chasing Scripture , she’d done so while syncing with Lu Qingning’s memories, and when she’d felt that wave of grievance, she’d nearly laughed. In this, Lu Qingning’s indignation was entirely justified.

According to the commentary, the Water-Drinking Section was for training the internal organs. The notes claimed that “being able to drink water” proved your lung capacity and stamina had reached the standard, and that “you needed at least the ability to drink down a small river before you could continue cultivating.”

Lu Qingning’s memories held no other records of the Sun-Chasing Scripture , but Bai Xiang was sure this technique absolutely didn’t originate with Suzhen Dao.

Suzhen Immortal Martial Arts had been compiled by Suzhen Dao’s founder, Song Yutian, but as for the Sun-Chasing Scripture , just from that wild, savage aura that permeated it and that irreverent, casual tone, Bai Xiang leaned more toward it being an ancient legacy—

The Sacred Emperor “Gu.”

The Great Yu Taizu who’d opened the Sword Dao.

There were indeed rumors that Suzhen Dao held the Sacred Emperor’s legacy. After her initial surprise, Bai Xiang quickly calmed down. Her real focus was still on how to cultivate the Scripture.

Clearly, the Sun-Chasing Scripture had been tailor-made for its creator.

“Tailor-made” might not even cover it. It felt more like the author had “naturally grasped some godlike body-forging method” and had “mistakenly assumed that others could use it too,” so he’d “just straightforwardly written it down.”

This wasn’t innovation. It wasn’t a method for teaching others derived from careful summary and reflection.

It was a record, a plain description of some wonder of Heaven and earth.

Take the Mountain-Charging Section again. The author clearly felt there was no need to explain anything complicated, because that was literally how he had cultivated—by charging mountains. He had trained up his muscles and blood by smashing into mountains day after day, and they’d just naturally developed. So of course he assumed other people could do the same.

In reality, that was not how it worked at all.

Whether it was charging mountains or imitating Kuafu’s water-drinking, those phenomena, when they appeared in the author’s cultivation, were essentially a Heaven-and-earth spectacle—miracles that occurred only for him.

They were similar in nature to Bai Xiang’s soul ability.

Inside Bai Xiang, her soul ability was the ultimate parent. Whatever she wanted to do with it, she could.

The Sun-Chasing Scripture ’s author was the same. Either he’d been born with a divine body like the giants of myth, or he possessed some likewise reality-bending power—if he believed he could do something, then he simply could.

When Bai Xiang first had this idea, she thought she was getting carried away, that her imagination was a bit too wild.

But after she finished the Scripture and reached the “God-Walking Section” and the “Sun-Chasing Section,” she realized her thoughts had been too conservative.

If all those descriptions were true, then the Scripture might not even have been penned by “Gu.”

For a simple reason—if “Gu” were actually capable of that, why would he bother practicing the Sword at all?

If you could tear great demons apart with your bare hands, why would you bother waving a “little twig” around?

In short, it was a strange book.

Not only were its training methods bizarre and its notes confusing, it also hinted at countless associations with ancient history.

For example, was this the martial Scripture of an even more ancient human heritage?

Did myth truly exist, and were the legends of sun-chasing real?

If they were real, did that mean there really had been those mythic wars in ancient times? Was there truly a long-lost Demon Court, a giant race, even demon gods?

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It all depended on whether she could cultivate it.

Bai Xiang mulled it over.

She had a soul ability… She could simulate the meridian diagrams in her inner body-scape, simulate the routes of circulating blood and qi. She was already miles ahead of others.

If even she couldn’t cultivate it, then those legends were probably fake.

Once she’d thought it through, Bai Xiang stopped overanalyzing it and padded over to her sister, quietly watching her play on the computer.

She couldn’t train the Sun-Chasing Scripture yet.

She needed to wait a few more days, until her cheap master finished refining the pills. Only with those medicines could she start.

Bai Zhuqing was playing an action MMO. Her character was a “Sword Immortal” class. The moves were elegant and smoothly linked; the only problem was that her damage was lower than other people’s.

“What kind of bullshit class balance is this!”

After discovering that even after chugging every potion in her bag she still couldn’t beat those guys with guns, the girl’s cheeks flushed as she swore at the screen.

“They can’t even fly and all they’ve got are a few stupid metal cans, just standing there spamming energy shots! How is that class stronger than cultivating immortality?”

“Dog devs! I hope every watermelon you ever buy is nothing but black seeds!”

She had a real talent for cursing people out.

Bai Xiang silently recited that line in her heart.

Thinking for a bit, she went over to her own computer desk, sat down, downloaded the same game, found the server Bai Zhuqing was on, and clicked to create a character.

Naturally, the class was also “Sword Immortal.” Then she swiped her card and insta-maxed the level.

There wasn’t much to say about the gear. The game’s gear system was on the realistic side; damage mainly depended on mechanical skill and understanding of the class.

Bai Xiang practiced a bit on the training dummy, then waited for Bai Zhuqing at the entrance to a dungeon.

Bai Zhuqing’s character arrived, and she sent a party invite.

Maybe it was same-class affinity, but Bai Zhuqing accepted the invite right away.

She probably thought she’d carry easily.

Bai Xiang’s lips curled up slightly.

Reality was cruel. Maybe Bai Zhuqing really had played longer, but when it came to eyesight and seizing opportunities to sneak in damage, she couldn’t compare to Bai Xiang.

In under ten minutes, Bai Xiang heard the sound of a fist hitting the table from the other side.

“How am I still losing to someone in the same class as me!”

Trash game! I don’t even want to play anymore!

For a long time afterward, Bai Zhuqing never realized what secret this little story contained.

Bai Xiang herself never noticed just how captivating the curve of her lips became when she did things that seemed so meaningless.

She seemed to have grown fond of this feeling.

Teasing her into a temper… was really fun.