Volume 3, Chapter 81 – Cicada Metamorphosis (Two-in-One)

The Snow Pear Bar. The Fire Serpents’ boss, Xibo, still didn’t know the poisoning plan had already failed, but the troop movements in the upper city were enough to make him smell danger.

No longer in the mood for pleasure, he drove all the dancing girls out, sat alone in a private room smoking, exhaling clouds as he kept sending messages and making calls, trying to get information from every informant he had in real time.

[…We’re not sure what happened yet, but something’s gone wrong at the airport.]

[The General has mobilized most of his forces and sent them to the airport. He only left his most trusted Seventh Armored Division to guard his residence.]

[I was too far away, so I couldn’t hear him clearly, but from his expression and body language, he seems very displeased about the mess you caused.]

What do you mean, the mess I caused?

Xibo almost ground his teeth to dust.

Sure, he often appeared on local TV and looked glamorous, but of the two groups who had really handed down this job, which one was someone he could afford to offend?

If the plan succeeded, he would basically get nothing out of it. Now that something had gone wrong, they were all dumping the blame on him .

He didn’t even know why that woman was important. How was that his fault?

Tch.

Shameless.

[So, boss, what do we do now?]

“…Of course we fully cooperate with the General’s operation. Send all the brothers out and join the counterattack.”

Hanging up, Xibo drew in a deep breath and muttered to himself, “How did they manage to jump back to the airport in an instant?”

No, it didn’t have to be teleportation. According to his intel, those cars had been watched very closely, with no chance to swap them out or slip away. It was also possible that they were still in “Diming Gardens,” and the ones causing trouble at the airport were a different group.

If so, their goal should be to seize Diming City’s airport by force, to prepare for those people’s return to Great Yu.

Xibo nodded. He was convinced that had to be it.

General Walker couldn’t be that blind. He must have decided that the group at the airport was the enemy’s “main force,” and that once he retook and locked down the airport, the other side would have no escape route, which was why he shifted his forces the way he did.

“What an idiot.”

Xibo’s lips curled in a sneer.

On paper the man was his “superior,” the one dealing directly with those two groups. Yet when it came to responding to “cultivators of Great Yu,” Walker’s decisions were full of holes.

What made him think the threat from the people at the airport was greater than the threat from the “cultivator of Great Yu”?

Diming City had only paid lip service to Prince Saiwei’s transfer order. Walker controlled three divisions, and with the Fire Serpents on top of that, it was no exaggeration to call him a local warlord. Did he really not stop to think— with all that local advantage, why did I only dare go with poison?

“There’s no future following a fool…” Xibo shook his head, went over to the door, locked it, and started dialing from memory.

For the first time during the call, he felt truly anxious, as if being slowly roasted.

Ever since he had led the Fire Serpents in overthrowing the previous gang, he hadn’t felt this sense of his fate slipping out of his control in a long time.

“Pick up, pick up, pick up…”

People who were ignored could be killed at any time. Right now, Xibo could only hope his past bootlicking would pay off.

He had paid a heavy price to get this number. The other side had agreed on the spot to give him a chance. They wouldn’t just turn on him, would they?

But even if they did, he wouldn’t be surprised.

What a joke. He’d done the same plenty of times himself. To those above, so-called promises were worthless. The higher the level of the game, the less anyone cared about that sort of thing. Given the other side’s status, it would be more surprising if they bothered to acknowledge him at all.

“Hello?”

Just as he was on the verge of despair, someone finally picked up.

“Manager Wei!” Xibo was overjoyed and replied in clumsy Great Yu, “Manager Wei, I’ve got bad news. The plan failed!”

He embellished what had happened as he told the man on the other end, and when he finished, he didn’t forget to sell Walker out. “The General has completely misread the situation. I’m in real danger right now. She could show up looking for me at any time.”

Reаⅾ oո ΚаtRеаԁiոɡСаfe

“Oh…”

On the other end, the man he called “Manager Wei” stretched out his tone. “We gave you support and even helped you get in touch with Starwater. And this is what you do with it.”

“Manager Wei…”

“But you’re still better than Walker,” the man snorted. “At least you’re honest, unlike that stupid pig who thinks he can play both sides.”

“All right. I’ll report your situation.”

Phew…

Once the call ended, the stone in Xibo’s chest finally settled a little.

But no.

It still wasn’t enough.

How did he know that damned “Princess Yong’an” wouldn’t use him as bait? He had to keep pushing Starwater.

While Xibo was frantically calling for help, Wei Xian was also passing the news on to the mistress of Yong’an Manor—the little princess Yao Ying, the one most cherished by Qianyu Palace.

“It failed?”

Yao Ying was reading in the garden. When she heard the news, her face went dark.

“She’s flying our banner, so we can’t openly touch her, or we look like a joke to our allies. We finally waited until she went over there with her identity hidden, and you still couldn’t even handle that?”

“Useless piece of trash,” Yao Ying snapped.

“Please calm down, Your Highness… this servant deserves death!” Wei Xian immediately dropped to the ground.

Most of Yao Ying’s willfulness was something she had learned from the Imperial House. He knew all too well what attitude was safest at times like this.

“Forget it.” Sure enough, she responded well to this; she lifted her fan and waved it lightly as she muttered to herself, “There are rumors outside that she can even cross swords with Senior Qin and come out slightly ahead… I don’t really believe that, but she is a Divine Fetus earth-master, so we still have to acknowledge that.”

The Head Disciple Swordsman of Suzhen Dao had, in all likelihood, fallen to Bai Xiang. Yao Ying had heard as much. So she had some sense of things. She knew Bai Xiang’s skill was formidable, stronger even than some veteran earth-masters.

They were just a bunch of southern monkey barbarians. They couldn’t win in a straight fight, and scheming wasn’t their strength either. It was no surprise their plan had been broken. Yao Ying very quickly stopped being angry.

“What’s Starwater’s stance?” she asked Wei Xian.

“They say they’re contacting their headquarters,” Wei Xian reported honestly.

“When we signed the agreement, didn’t they say they could deploy ‘Star Dawn’?” Yao Ying’s tone grew sharp. “It’s just a single city of southern monkeys. Why would they care?”

Well…

They obviously had their own considerations…

Wei Xian only dared say that in his heart. Outwardly, he kept silent.

“Go urge them,” Yao Ying said with narrowed eyes.

“I’ve given them five years’ prospecting and extraction rights on the Dongluo Sea. I don’t care what method they use, whether it’s ‘Star Dawn’ or a straight nuclear strike. I want her dead.”

At that, she remembered how she had been countered by Xiang Xian at the city gate back then, nearly scared into a lasting psychological scar.

That hateful master and disciple… ungrateful, lowborn trash.

Yao Ying’s features twisted with hatred as she enunciated each word to Wei Xian. “Her very existence is digging up Great Yu at the roots.”

“Tell them I will not allow her to return alive.”

…

Elsewhere, a reasonably spacious van pulled onto the road. Alai and his younger brother Fei Ming sat in the front, while Bolu and Bai Xiang occupied the back.

The van had been stolen. High-end business vehicles like this were plentiful in Diming Gardens. The point of switching cars was to avoid any trackers or listening devices that might have been in the original sedan. As for the brothers’ mother, she had already been taken into hiding by trusted company staff.

Reаd on КatReαԁіոɡСafе

They were on their way to the Snow Pear Bar. According to Fei Ming’s estimate, it would take about twenty minutes to drive there.

“It’s not far,” he said.

Fei Ming kept glancing back at her from time to time. “If we drive faster, we can be there in just over ten minutes.”

Bai Xiang hadn’t killed him. That was for his loyalty and courage.

Not every thirteen-year-old brat could make the right choice in a situation like this.

Alai’s kid brother had guts.

Perhaps sensing that Bai Xiang had “reined in her killing intent” toward him, Fei Ming got over the fear phase quickly and started getting curious about her instead.

He actually had no real idea what Alai did for work. He only knew that any company that could operate in the upper city would definitely not be run by soft-hearted people.

So his big brother’s contact turned out to be someone from Great Yu?

Was Mingfei Airlines a company industry invested in by people of Yu?

Information control in Diming City ran to two extremes. Call it closed, and you still had access to plenty of large-scale satellite channels. Call it open, and most political news was completely cut off from here.

All the information the citizens received had been carefully curated. As a result, Fei Ming didn’t really know who Bai Xiang was. He only knew she should be one of those “legendary cultivators of Great Yu,” the kind who could match an entire division alone.

He had never met such a person before. Add to that Bai Xiang’s… well, she looked very good. So… Even though she always wore a mask, the logic was simple: a mask was not always a tool to hide a bad face. Sometimes it made someone look even better.

Just then, as if finding the air stuffy, Bai Xiang casually tugged her mask off.

Fei Ming’s eyes went wide.

Mofu… She looks even better without the mask.

“Don’t stare.” Having just finished an experiment as she’d planned, Bai Xiang lifted her head and looked at Bolu. “Tell me what you saw.”

At the moment, Bolu was practically fully kitted out. His thick upper body was squeezed into a ballistic vest that was clearly a size too small, and on his head he wore what looked like a night-vision helmet. Two large lenses extended out, aimed right at Bai Xiang, reflecting the street scenes in red as they passed.

“…No image at all,” Bolu rumbled. “Not only did I fail to detect you, but for a few seconds, even ordinary imaging was gone.”

Good.

Bai Xiang nodded, satisfied with the test results.

The detection failure came from the qi membrane she’d used to block the observation channel.

As for the interference with normal imaging, that was the wonder of the Vibration Art disturbing the magnetic field.

It sounded fantastical, but she could already use the Vibration Art to stir up heavenly thunder. One heavenly bolt was better than any interference. What could beat that for disrupting electronics?

In actual combat, this would probably be comparable to an EMP, an “electromagnetic pulse” used specifically to cripple electronic equipment. Add in how the storm clouds concealed ground targets, unless the other side was ready to give up on all of Diming City and go with a “blanket attack,” those unconventional weapons were useless against her.

What would they choose?

Bai Xiang was genuinely curious.

In Elend’s memories, there was no way to deal with a “terror-level” target. Dropping more Augu God-Warriors would just be sending them to their deaths. The Federations couldn’t be blind to that.

But she also had to account for the influence and control of those divine-bloodline demons over the Federations.

Abroad was different from at home. Those filthy things faced far fewer restraints outside Great Yu. It wasn’t impossible for them to infiltrate the upper echelons. Voting, pressing buttons, that sort of thing could easily happen.

Still, she herself wasn’t a Sword Lord yet.

Bai Xiang checked her inner body-scape in parallel.

Her exchanges with Qin Wuyang had given her a lot of inspiration. One of the key points had been giving her a reference framework that pointed straight at the Sword Lord realm.

According to Qin Wuyang, the more solid your foundation, the harder it would be to break through the “Comprehend the Innate” phase.

The goal of “Comprehend the Innate” was to gather the great medicines of your meridians and apertures, feeding them back into your essence and qi so your body could grow strong again and you could shed the shackles of demonic pollution.

Rеαԁ оո KαtReaԁіոgСafe

The more solid your foundation, the more demonic power you carried. You would need greater strength to suppress that power.

Naturally, the level of difficulty wasn’t the same.

Bai Xiang, on the other hand, had no demonic power to suppress. But compared to the “Origin Aperture” she had in mind, her current progress was clearly not enough. It was far from that feeling of a looming metamorphosis.

Her planned direction for breakthrough, the main task of cultivation at the Core stage, was to find a way to improve the quality of her qi.

For now, she had only stumbled into “Comprehend the Innate” once, together with Bai Zhuqing, more by accident than anything. She had only activated a single hidden aperture, and her cultivation in the Core realm on the path of qi clearly hadn’t been fully developed. Technically, in hard terms, she should be at “mid Core stage.” But she had clearly skipped ahead, working on things that should only be considered in “late Core stage” — seeking to awaken the Origin Aperture.

That had made her physical strength spike at once and, along with it, sped up the qi-condensing cultivation sustained by her Core.

The efficiency with which her qi sea condensed sword Qi had risen yet again.

Especially the quality. Although it still felt some distance away from a true qualitative shift, at least it had begun edging toward that stage.

Unlike before, when no matter how she tried to refine it, progress was slow to non-existent.

She hadn’t “finished the stage,” so to speak. Whether she was mid Core stage, late Core stage, or where exactly she should draw the line, even she couldn’t say for sure.

Bai Xiang gave a slight mental shake of her head.

Starting to study what was theoretically the next stage of cultivation before she had perfected her current realm gave her a certain sense of dissonance, but she didn’t see it as a bad thing.

Body and spirit worked together, after all.

Strengthening the flesh could drive the condensation of qi in the Core on the path of qi. That was obviously a good thing. It should also incidentally boost the growth of her spirit.

Feeling a gaze on her, Bai Xiang turned her head. Her golden eyes met Fei Ming’s.

Fei Ming froze as if hypnotized, turning slack-jawed and vacant. He just stared at Bai Xiang with wide, eager eyes, forgetting everything else.

Charm, again.

Bai Xiang frowned, closed her eyes, and pulled her mask back up. Only then did Fei Ming snap out of it.

Something like the “atavistic resurgence of demonic power” she’d seen in Qing’er… Could she also have some special bloodline?

She’d found nothing abnormal when checking herself in reflection.

Strange. Structurally, this body was purely human.

Bzz bzz—

Her pocket vibrated.

Bai Xiang took out her phone and saw an unknown number on the display.

She hadn’t had time to get a new local SIM. An unknown number… Who would be calling her on a satellite phone at a time like this?

In that instant, she thought of that drink bottle that had fallen and shattered.

With a soft beep, she accepted the call.

“Diming City’s grassroots order is controlled by the Fire Serpents,” a deep male voice said. “Xibo is just a high-level thug working for General Walker. The real ruling power here is actually the ‘Starwater Joint Construction Security Company.’”

Bai Xiang waited three or four seconds before replying.

“Are you from the Cult of Feathered Ascension?”

As far as she recalled, only the Cult of Feathered Ascension did things like this.

“No.” The man denied it. “You don’t need to know who we are. You only need to know one thing. We’re not your enemies.”

“You’re already too late to go to the Snow Pear Bar.”

“Xibo left ten minutes ago. My people watched him get brought into Starwater’s headquarters building. If you want him, that’s where you should go.”

Not the Cult of Feathered Ascension, then…

Reaԁ οո КatRеαԁingСαfe

Bai Xiang thought it over.

If they were, there would have been no need to hide it.

So was it Fuhu Temple?

But the Fuhu Temple branch in Luohou had already fallen so far that they were running a human-trafficking operation. Upon learning of her whereabouts, they should have been terrified. How could they possibly be helping her?

Turning it over in her mind, Jade Spirit pulled up a keyword.

[Luohou Protectorate]

Since Maozhou had been opened up, the Luohou Protectorate was essentially bordering it.

It sat between Maozhou and Luohou, not far from Diming City.

She seemed to recall her master saying that Master Hua’an served there.

Like a flash of light, a chain of causality formed in Bai Xiang’s mind.

Luohou Protectorate → Master Hua’an → Longhua Temple → Yinling Temple → Kanjin Sword Dao.

So what was Kanjin Sword Dao’s predecessor?

And that modified Buddhism that had spread around here, “Mofu”—with this breadth and depth of spread and alteration, it didn’t seem like something Fuhu Temple alone could manage. It would take a power more deeply grounded in Buddhist doctrine.

With that thought, Bai Xiang said bluntly into the phone, “Even so, I don’t believe all cicadas are the same kind.”

The other side said nothing and simply hung up.

Heh.

Bai Xiang lowered her head to look at the screen, the corner of her mouth quirking beneath the mask.

“Where’s Starwater’s headquarters?” she suddenly asked Alai.

“Not far either,” Alai answered immediately. “It’s practically diagonal from the bar, just half a block away.”

“Drop me at the curb.”

“…My lady?”

“Just do it.”

At the same time, in a secluded courtyard of the Luohou Protectorate, Master Hua’an watched as the black-clad man across from him put his phone away.

The man had a tall, powerful build. Like Bai Xiang, he wore a mask, so Hua’an could only judge from his shaved head and the burn scars of his precepts on the crown that he too was a son of the Buddha, like himself.

“She’s even sharper than I expected,” the black-clad man said. “She’s already guessed who I am.”

Master Hua’an stayed silent.

He had to admit, the man was right.

After all, even when he had been injured by this man before, he had never realized what divine ability the other had used. He had never even thought along those lines.

“Senior Brother,” he said stiffly at last.

“There’s no Golden Cicada Temple left in this world.”

He no longer believed that “Mofu” could still be called their original faith.

“You’re wrong,” the black-clad man replied, shaking his head.

“So long as our Patriarch’s sword still exists in this world, Golden Cicada Temple will never die.”