Volume 3, Chapter 102 – Infiltration (Two-in-One)

As the sound of the rotors drowned out the city’s bustle, Bai Xiang disembarked with Aurora and stood atop Starwater Company’s downtown tower, looking down over the streets of the whole city.

Baco City was a megacity. Its area was even larger than most circuit cities in Great Yu. That had a lot to do with how the people of Luohou had only copied half of Yu’s system.

Instead of the multi-tiered divisions of prefectures, states, and Roads Directorates, Luohou used the single term “Circuit” to divide broad regions.

Using the Great Rock River that ran through Luohou as the dividing line, Baco City lay in Hexi Circuit and was the most prosperous of the three cities in Hexi Circuit.

Their “Circuit” was roughly equivalent to a Yu “state,” though its overall land area was smaller. Nor did they surround each circuit city with a dense ring of basic industries like Yu did. They had made no advance preparations for “fortification” at all.

Bai Xiang stood at the railing with Feixiang Heaven in her left hand. Her springy mask was pushed down under her chin for now. She wore no hat, and her trench coat and ponytail whipped in the high-altitude wind.

She wondered, if some ancient mighty being really did force a demon-ruled world back into being, how much could these unprepared cities struggle when the catastrophe came.

Life was still too fragile.

It could be hurt, fall ill, and had to face its allotted end once its cells reached the limit of divisions.

Yet it was exactly because this was so hard to attain that her quest in front of it felt meaningful.

While Bai Xiang stared off into space, no one dared disturb her. After a while, she had seen enough and followed Aurora inside, listening as they walked to her detailed briefing.

“Based on what you told us, we pulled satellite imagery of the surrounding region from our archives. We did find an abnormal number of villages on the edge of the Magakar mountain range.” Aurora opened a data panel, reading as she reported.

“Then, based on the ‘black crystal Buddha figurines’ from Luofu Temple, we selected some people who owned these curios and found that they do in fact protect against the black crystal curse.”

Aurora nodded. “Quite a few of them were caught in large-scale black crystal curses, yet just by relying on the Buddha figurines, they came through unscathed. It is very hard to explain.”

Although Luofu Temple was highly respected throughout Luohou, it was not a cultivation sect and had no so-called technique inheritance.

The entire kingdom of Luohou only had two kinds of extraordinary means. One was the killing boxing that had mutated and evolved from various underground fight rings. The other was the rather mysterious southern witchcraft.

The former was purely mortal skill, at best a temporary way to strengthen the body. Once one’s physique began to decline, the lingering side effects became an ordeal.

As for southern witchcraft, Starwater had been stationed here for a long time. Naturally they had studied it. In Aurora’s view, most of it belonged to the realm of charlatans.

Southern witchcraft had two branches, “curses” and “medicine.” The upper half included things like curse movement, curse suffering, curse killing, curse rain. All of these had been proven exaggerated. Their so-called curse arts had no power at all.

The lower half was purely medical texts, recording many ancient prescriptions.

Aurora had been born into modern society. Even with her congenital defects, she had received modern education. She certainly did not believe those old prescriptions were of much use. Actual experiments had shown that many of them were nowhere near as miraculous as advertised.

Once you saw that background clearly, Luofu Temple’s behavior naturally looked “too conspicuous” and “highly suspicious.”

They clearly did not have that kind of ability. So how were they privately distributing such “charms” to the poor?

What was the principle behind the black crystal Buddha figurines?

Why did carrying one let someone resist black crystal disease and black crystal contamination to such a degree?

Aurora did not believe Luofu Temple originally possessed such powers. If she had to guess, she would rather think they were colluding with the Blackrock Demon Kingdom behind the scenes.

The demon kingdom had deliberately passed them a way to resist the curse, condensed into the Buddha figurines. Luofu Temple then distributed the figurines through its faith network. That let them spread widely among the grassroots population. Some scheme might lie hidden in that.

The scope was simply too large. Not only believers in Buddha would get one. Even those who did not believe, after hearing so many strange tales, would feel some fear.

Anyone whose work kept them on the move, clinging to the idea that “better to believe than not,” would surely pick one up. That meant the number of people carrying black crystal Buddha figurines might already far exceed the company’s estimates.

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Her speculation was not wrong.

Bai Xiang had absorbed the shattered memories left by the monks after their deaths. By piecing them together, she had a rough sense that this was for spreading contamination further.

Put simply, the Blackrock Demon Kingdom was working together with Heitian Shinu.

Heitian Shinu wanted to use this to spread the Black Heaven Dharma on a wider scale. The Blackrock Demon Kingdom wanted to spread black crystal disease more broadly. The two goals did not conflict.

Heitian Shinu wanted the followers’ blood essence and souls. The Blackrock Demon Kingdom wanted the “ore” produced when black crystal disease covered the body, the black crystals growing from flesh and skin.

In some broken memories, Bai Xiang had seen scenes of this. A novice monk hid in secret and watched as many black crystal sufferers lay in a dark room, howling and mutating.

And a senior brother who had been good to him in normal days looked as if possessed. Not only did he not comfort or treat them, he instead used chisel and hammer to cut the black crystals off them again and again.

From time to time he would bite into a crystal, and the crunching sound of his chewing filled that scene with unspeakable horror. The novice did not dare to come out.

Sadly, hiding like that still did not save his life.

He could hide from the black crystal aberrations, but not from Heitian Shinu forcibly seizing control of his body through chanted scripture.

Neither side was any good.

Each had its own agenda, both out in the open and in the shadows.

“That village.” Bai Xiang pointed to a corner of the map on the virtual screen. “That is the entry to the Blackrock Demon Kingdom.”

Her goal was to enter and gather information on the Burning-Saliva Demon Kingdom. It would be best not to go straight there. She had come here first hoping to use Starwater’s power to forge a false identity.

After listening to her explanation, Aurora was a little surprised. “You mean, you want to start with the stronghold they have set up here?”

If they could truly find the stronghold, then weaving an identity and infiltrating would be no problem.

The issue was how Bai Xiang had done it.

Of course the demon kingdoms had strongholds in human cities. Otherwise those giant conglomerates, in spite of the army’s protection, would not find them slipping away into hiding every time they swept the mountains. The real difficulty was smoking those strongholds out.

She did not doubt whether Bai Xiang had the ability. It was just that Bai Xiang had been with her these past days.

She was alone. Unlike Aurora, she had no servants, no power base. When had she found the time to investigate?

“You only need to answer whether you can,” Bai Xiang fixed her with a look. “The rest is none of your concern.”

That pressure again.

Aurora’s heart tightened. She quickly did as she was told.

After about an hour of preparation, Bai Xiang’s entire appearance had changed.

She had taken off her trench coat and Demon-Kite battlesuit and put on a coarse linen robe. On her wrists and neck she wore simple brass jewelry set with many pieces of black crystal.

The robe was fairly conservative in style. The hem exposed a pair of bare feet. They, like her hands and face, had been stained with medicinal juice, darkening her skin for a time.

“Your sword…”

Only when Bai Xiang’s gaze swept over her did Aurora reluctantly look away and signal a servant to present a specially made bronze monk’s staff.

It had been printed in 3D. There was a hollow section inside that fit Feixiang Heaven perfectly, so even if the staff were shaken hard, there would be no rattling sound.

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There was also a backpack holding Bai Xiang’s battlesuit and trench coat, as well as her phone and other high-tech gear.

“We could give you something much better,” Aurora said, a little unwilling.

Karl Company was Star Tower’s rival. If Bai Xiang had never made contact with her, that would be one thing. Now they had established a link, yet all she could do was watch Bai Xiang walk around in a competitor’s product. The psychological frustration was hard to put into words.

“No need,” Bai Xiang refused.

She did not know much about technological gear and had no desire to let anyone tinker with her equipment and secretly collect her bodily data.

Karl Company might not be noble, but they were far away and had no offices in Luohou. They posed zero threat to Bai Xiang.

Not to mention that the Demon-Kite series gear had been collected and handed to her by Guo Rongzhi.

Given the choice, she naturally trusted her wise senior brother more.

This getup was, of course, preparation for infiltrating the demon kingdom. Bai Xiang planned to pose as a “wu” from East River Circuit, the Diming City region, a minor but known “ancient witch” of some fame. She had seen in some of the broken memories that the Blackrock Demon Kingdom had a strong interest in such old professions and had long been recruiting them.

“You really do not need to put yourself through all this,” Aurora thought about it and finally spoke her mind. “Satellites are restricted, and we cannot use some weapons, but we can still deliver tactical warheads.”

She meant that, since Bai Xiang had already solved the hardest part, finding the target, the brute-force breach could be left to Starwater’s security forces.

“You do not understand the Illusory Realms,” Bai Xiang shook her head.

Illusory Realms were spatial layers torn away from the main world, essentially other dimensions.

If they spooked the demon kingdom and the other side sealed the Illusory Realm’s exit, what good would a nuclear barrage be?

The issue was not whether they could be hurt, but whether they could be hit.

If they were no longer in the same spatial layer, how were you supposed to bomb them?

That was why she insisted on disguise. In reality, she did not need to maintain it long. Once she slipped into the demon kingdom, she could discard it.

Aurora only half understood. She tended to think Bai Xiang was simply set on “playing the game” and could only drop the argument and order her subordinates to give full support.

Soon after, a tarp-covered troop transport rumbled quietly out of Starwater’s compound.

At first, the truck drove normally along the roads. Other vehicles veered aside at the sight of the company markings, unwilling to cross Starwater’s path.

After a while, as dusk deepened, the truck turned onto a side road and slipped into a smelting plant.

This, too, was a Starwater-owned asset. A group of workers rushed in and began cutting and overhauling the truck.

In just a short time, its outward form had changed completely.

The open bed had been converted into a spiked metal frame. Protective cages were mounted around the wheels and cab, bristling with sharp spikes.

A satellite receiver was mounted on the roof. Inside, metal panels had partitioned it into a few small rooms. With bedding and some tables and chairs, it could pass for a crude RV.

By the end of the refit, it looked like something out of a post-apocalypse film, an “end-of-the-world” style rig that would not look out of place on any wasteland set.

Bai Xiang stood to one side, giving the foreman her ideas. The foreman was obedient enough, yet as the work neared completion, he kept looking like he had something he wanted to say.

Vehicles like this were not rare. The wilds of Luohou were even more dangerous than Great Yu’s, with more and denser demon beasts. Any vehicle that often traveled outside tended to undergo such reinforcements.

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The foreman was just a small factory boss at the bottom and knew nothing of Bai Xiang’s identity. From the makeover alone, he could only assume she was off on some company mission, and that the mission involved “posing as an ancient wu and infiltrating certain places.”

For a wu who had come a long way from East River Circuit, such a ride was certainly plausible. Even so, he could not shake the feeling that something was off.

Was it not too flashy?

Was this not an infiltration mission? Shouldn’t infiltration be as low-key as possible?

“You do not get it.”

Bai Xiang wore a bronze mask that covered the upper half of her face, leaving only her lips and chin exposed. With the staff in hand at her side, she did indeed look the part.

“I am the ‘rare talent’ they want. Keeping a low profile would only make them suspicious.”

She stayed in the factory and regulated her breathing for more than three hours. Only when full darkness fell did she drive the truck out alone.

She did not need companions and did not trust any helpers Aurora might assign.

Besides…

She glanced in the rearview mirror. What looked back at her from behind the mask were a pair of golden eyes.

Xuan Yi’s earlier words had not explicitly said that golden eyes were a fixed feature of the Xuan people, but Bai Xiang thought it very likely.

The golden eyes were, and so was the “phantom god” that came with them.

It was too deceptive on her. The phantom god’s power had always manifested, yet everyone had taken it, herself included, as her own natural charm.

There was no helping it. Her face simply fit the phantom god too well.

Whether it was Xiang Xian once being enchanted and showing a physical and scent-based closeness, or Bai Zhuqing’s pathological attachment to her during their training together, they had fallen without resistance exactly because that face magnified the phantom god’s effect.

Now, after her layers of disguise, the natural charm of her features had been tamped down.

She wanted to see if the phantom god still worked under these conditions.

Was the phantom god really some innate gift of the Xuan clan?

She drove and thought it through at the same time.

With Jade Spirit assisting her, she had no fear of crashing.

On the surface, it looked like a natural talent, similar to the Blackrock demons’ innate gift for crystallization curses and crystal-based combat, and the Liluo aquatics’ innate gift for turning into water.

Yet if you looked closer, the phantom god was also the general power of Demon Pools.

It was because their phantom gods were so strong that Demon Pools could confuse minds and draw people into illusions and phantasms.

You walked halfway down the road, turned back, and found front and back were exactly the same.

Or you got up at night to use the toilet, flipped on the light, and saw a deceased relative sitting on the couch looking at you.

All of these belonged to the phantom god’s power.

Phantom god. It bewilders the heart and distorts the spirit. The name came from that.

By that logic, you could define the phantom god as “an overly powerful soul-force’s projection and interference in the material world.”

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Feixiang Heaven could absorb Demon Pools. That proved they did have souls. They could be seen as phenomena or constructs formed spontaneously by soul energy under certain laws of Heaven and Earth.

Even masterless soul energy could affect living beings if it was strong enough.

So in theory, with her soul now several times stronger than a Divine Fetus after forming the Core on the path of qi, could she not have been capable of similar effects to begin with?

In that case, was the phantom god truly an innate ability given by Xuan blood, or simply the radiation and projection of her own powerful soul?

Bai Xiang shook her head, unable to settle the question.

If she could not figure it out, she would stop trying.

The monks of Golden Cicada Temple had tangled themselves up with Heitian Shinu. That meant they might have dealings with the Blackrock Demon Kingdom as well.

She would find a chance to catch those rebellious Buddhist followers, kill them, and see if they yielded more information.

After a while longer, as the road grew bumpier, the streets around her looked more desolate and run-down.

The center of Baco City was naturally bustling. The outskirts, however, were barely better than refugee camps.

There were no streetlights here. Illumination came only from the signs of corner shops.

Driving along, Bai Xiang saw plenty of drunken punks wandering about.

They shouted with laughter, and some cast sinister looks at her truck. Not knowing what this rig was about, they did not dare step in front of it.

She had a clear run, steering toward a shadowy building.

By the pale, blurry lighting, the signboard could just be read as “Gas Middle School” or something similar.

No wonder the company’s people had never found it.

Bai Xiang shook her head when she saw the sign.

If she had not known the trick from those memories, she would never have guessed the demons would hide a stronghold in a slum school like this.

“Stop.”

The school was so run-down it did not even have a proper gate. Bai Xiang had just started to drive straight in when a group of men sprang out to block her. A burly man with half his face tattooed led them as they closed in around the truck.

“This is our turf. Friend, rolling in without so much as a hello is not very polite, is it?”

Bai Xiang’s response was to lower the window and meet his eyes with her golden gaze.

“I am the person they are looking for.”

“I am going in.”

“Do you have a problem with that?”

The tattooed man’s pupils went dull for an instant. He stammered, “N… no problem…”

He immediately waved his men aside. They all looked at one another as the truck rumbled past and drove into the campus.