Volume 3, Chapter 111 – True Form

Inside the black crystal cavern, after her exchange with the great meteorite, Bai Xiang opened her eyes in startled wonder.

The exchange had taken place entirely in thought. It was short in time, rich in information, and did not require the meteorite to speak in order for it to roughly convey its meaning.

Bai Xiang pressed a hand to the exposed crystal on the meteorite’s surface and asked it, “You mean this tree is the hidden entrance to the Ranxian Demon Kingdom? And someone actually sold you this information in private?”

A soft blue glow spread from beneath the crystal.

By now Bai Xiang had roughly figured out the pattern of its light. She knew blue meant deference and assent.

If it resisted, the light was purple. Its outward ways of expressing itself were even simpler and poorer than its mental speech.

Bai Xiang asked again, “What did they get from you in exchange for this intel?”

Through the blue glow, the meteorite crystal sent a thought: [Vmmm… crystals… a whole basket… valuable… filled with energy…]

Something was off.

Bai Xiang’s brows drew together.

She had already more or less guessed that this Bosuo Tree might be connected to the Ranxian Demon Kingdom, that it might well be the Illusory Realm gate. But in her view, this was the one piece of news that should not have been sold by another faction.

This was the gate to an Illusory Realm.

Never mind how absurd it was that such a thing could be condensed into a single plant and freely moved. If the other side knew this secret, why had they not used it themselves? Why sell it instead?

And they had sold it cheaply, asking only for a big basket of high-purity crystal.

Crystals from black crystal sickness and the black crystal curse were indeed valuable. Bai Xiang did not deny that.

Black crystal demon cultivators directly ate the stuff like immortal pills, which proved it contained a special energy. Anything with energy would not be worthless, and she could believe that the meteorite had traded its crystals with other demon-kingdom factions for goods and information.

But this deal was not equal in value. Think about it. This was the gate to a demon kingdom, the entrance to a vast Illusory Realm.

According to the legends, the Ranxian Demon Kingdom was home to warped demon beasts, each with fire burning in its eyes, whose drool turned to flame the moment it touched air.

Such a demon kingdom, not yet awakened, in one’s hands was essentially a ready-made, large-scale demon-breeding ground.

The owners of that gate could have gone in, collected young demon beasts and weaker demon pools, and sold them. The total value of that venture might rival the entire worth of the Blackrock Demon Kingdom. It was not something a single basket of crystal could buy.

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There was only one thing that could have made them act like this: the gate was useless to them.

Even holding it, they could not go inside. In their hands, this thing was worth nothing.

So it had fallen into her lap instead… was there really such coincidence in the world?

Suspicion in her heart, Bai Xiang hopped up onto the meteorite’s surface and walked slowly toward the giant tree to take a closer look.

Most of the crystal on the tree’s surface had already flaked off. Only the thick roots still burrowed deep into the meteorite’s body of crystal. One could say the tree “grew” on the meteorite. Its vast crown had been squeezed and warped by the cave’s ceiling, many branches hanging low.

Bai Xiang went closer and first ran a hand along one drooping branch. She plucked a five-lobed Bosuo leaf and found that the leaf was still in its natural state, as if growing in the outside world.

Normally, that should not have been possible. On her way down she had seen plenty of vegetation growing on the cavern walls. Those trees rooted in black rock and drew nourishment and energy that contained the radiation and pollution from the meteorite. Their trunks were tinged purple and black, and their leaves showed a crystalline sheen.

But this giant tree, this Bosuo Tree, was rooted right on the meteorite’s surface, feeding on the most intense radiation and pollution. Its trunk and leaves, however, remained natural and untouched. That alone marked it as unusual.

So this thing really was the Illusory Realm gate.

Bai Xiang turned the leaf over a few times in her hand and found nothing else strange about it. She put it away and began walking around the thick trunk, wanting to see where exactly this gate manifested.

She found nothing at first, but soon enough she noticed faint writing hidden beneath the bark.

The words were broken up and scattered, mixed between Yu-domain Sanskrit and Nuo-domain Sanskrit, appearing every so often with large gaps of missing text between. A preliminary guess suggested that, once completed, they would form a Scripture of Asking the Way.

Scriptures of Asking the Way were a very common type of Buddhist text. Some were exhortations, some were accounts of experience, meant to describe and teach how monks were to move through the mundane world after descending the mountain.

A Scripture of Asking the Way usually contained a “seeking the way” chapter, a “begging alms” chapter, and a “crossing hardship” chapter. Some of them even wove in medicine, feng shui and other skills, more or less teaching monks to use such crafts to fill their stomachs.

Asking the way was not only about the road under their feet, but the road of life, the road of human principle.

Bai Xiang could read Yu-domain Sanskrit, but was not strong in Nuo-domain Sanskrit. That had always been her younger sister Bai Zhuqing’s specialty.

It hardly mattered. She could cheat with the Yuming Book Repository.

Cultivating the Jade Spirit Method was convenient. In just a short while, a patched-together Scripture of Asking the Way had been completed, hanging like a page over the tip of her inner heart within her inner body-scape.

Bai Xiang saw no need to be polite. She lifted into a light hover, circling the trunk with a sword in one hand. The blade carved and etched as she flew, copying the characters from the inner page, and soon she had completed the scripture on the trunk.

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The Sanskrit characters were packed densely over the bark. When the scripture took form, all the characters gave off a faint golden light. In an instant, that light flowed over the trunk, gathering together, then faded to reveal a small slot.

The slot was only a few centimeters long, thin and narrow. At first glance, one instinctively saw it as meant for some kind of blade.

Like a rack for kitchen knives.

Or like a sword sheath.

Bai Xiang stared coolly at the slot for a while, then lowered her eyes to the long sword in her hand. Her arm blurred into afterimages and, with a soft thunk, she slid Feixiang Heaven fully into the slot, leaving only the guard and hilt outside.

It had only been a test, yet in the next instant the trunk shivered. With a click, the slot where the blade was pinned widened up and down, splitting open into a golden-lit tree hollow about two meters tall, just large enough for an ordinary person to step through.

“So the sword is the key.”

Bai Xiang drew her life-bound treasure sword from the meteorite’s surface and stepped to the tree hollow, peering inside. Beyond a hazy glow of gold, she could see nothing clearly.

This did not look like some miasma demon pool guarding an Illusory Realm at all, but more like the entrance to a hidden temple in the void.

Thinking it over, Bai Xiang guessed this might be a piece left behind by the monk Daokong.

It was not that she wanted to pin everything on him, but the Ranxian Demon Kingdom was said to hold a Zhenyuan Sword embryo, and Daokong himself had said as much.

Well… “said,” once she had digested his memories, was almost the same as hearing it from his mouth.

It meant Daokong had been inside, or he would not have left the sword embryo there.

He was the only person she could think of, and only he could have arranged a setup that recognized Feixiang Heaven. The sword had been forged to the exact specifications of the Zhenyuan Sword.

It carried a trace of Zhenyuan’s aura. Only that allowed it to serve as a key.

So one needed to hold another sword embryo in order to enter.

Paranoid precautions. Was this the treasure vault he had left for himself?

Holding another sword embryo meant a high chance one had already been possessed by Daokong.

Which meant that aside from Bai Xiang, the one unique exception, the only other person who could open this gate was Daokong himself.

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He was not likely to trap himself.

There should not be much danger.

With that thought, Bai Xiang hesitated no longer. She stepped into the golden-lit hollow. The world spun around her, and when she stepped out again, she found herself in darkness.

Another illusion like the Black Heaven thralls used?

Feeling the ground beneath her feet, Bai Xiang rejected that at once.

She was standing on solid ground.

This was not the cosmos. She had arrived in some other sealed space.

Suddenly, golden radiance burst through the dark.

It was as if she had entered the inner world of a sky-piercing ancient tree. Bai Xiang looked up and saw vast hollowed-out spaces all around her. In scale, they were a hundred times larger than the Bosuo Tree outside, making her feel utterly tiny, like an ant.

What… was this?

Slightly taken aback, Bai Xiang looked around the hollow interior. At intervals in the air, twisted rifts of space were tearing open into fragments.

She flew up for a closer look. In some of the fragments she saw charred mountain peaks, dried riverbeds, and more corpses and bones than she could possibly count.

Endless green fire surged through the fragment-worlds. Through the flames, she could just make out demon eggs writhing one after another, likely the flame beasts of the Ranxian Demon Kingdom.

So this was the demon kingdom Illusory Realm, sealed away?

Who had done this?

Daokong?

“Amitabha.”

As she marveled, a Buddha-name sounded from behind her.

She turned quickly and saw faint golden light in the void coalesce into Daokong the monk’s hazy figure. Clad in plain robes, he bowed to her.

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Bai Xiang looked him up and down, then asked curiously, “…you are not Yaosui?”

There was no trace of that polluted feeling about him.

He still had the aura of demonic power, but that demonic power…

Bai Xiang shook her head slowly in her heart.

She had never before seen demonic power of such gentle nature.

“Of course not.”

The monk Daokong smiled mildly.

Bai Xiang frowned. “Then who are you really?”

“I am Daokong.”

He bowed again and, as he straightened, seemed to remember something. “Oh. Has Benefactor ever heard of the Ranxian Buddha? Or the tale of the tiger demon who took refuge in the Buddha?”

She had.

Bai Xiang recalled the account in Wet-Slave Crone’s Observations and nodded lightly to him.

“That makes things simpler.”

The monk Daokong lifted his plain robe and wrapped it over his head. When he bared his head again, he had become a burly tiger demon in a monk’s robe, eyes glowing green, venomous drool dripping from his jaws, exactly as the story described.

“I am that tiger.”

The tiger demon fingered his prayer beads, his voice rumbling deep.

“I was the one who saved that woman.”

“And I was the one who placed that book of observations in the Tiger-Subduing Temple.”