Volume 3, Chapter 114 – Proving the Innate with Blood and Qi, Refining Spirit in the Demon Kingdom (Two-in-One)

In the grand, golden tree-hollow space, Bai Xiang sat cross-legged in midair in her tight battlesuit, hands forming the Golden Light Sword Seal of “In Heaven and Earth, I Alone Am Revered.” Wrapped in the sword-Qi Buddha around her, she truly resembled a bodhisattva Buddha, sitting opposite her own incarnation.

This meant that Huali, facing her, could see at most her back. He was one hundred percent sure the sword-Qi Buddha was still pressing down on the Black-Heaven Dharma Aspect he controlled. His heart was already filled with horror, because he had discovered that Ji Chang’s qi presence had almost vanished.

It had withered away in an instant, to a level that was nearly unbelievable.

Ji Chang would never choose to manipulate his own qi like that. Which could only mean…

Clutching at hope, Huali looked up at the golden lock-ring and, in terror, saw its talisman-empowered golden shell rapidly peel away, revealing the golden collar inside, which shattered at once into scattered pieces.

Below, a thin vertical line of blood slowly appeared on Ji Chang’s face.

His expression was stiffer than Huali’s, but there was much more emotion in his eyes. He stared fixedly at Bai Xiang’s figure and face and squeezed out, with great effort, a single line through his teeth: “How… can this be…”

“Pff.”

He could no longer hold the cut closed. His body split with a ripping sound, his two halves quickly shredded further by the sword-Qi still lingering on the wound.

Bai Xiang was currently splitting her mind three ways. One part controlled the sword-Qi Buddha pressing Huali and the puppet Hua’an. Another watched the falling golden-collar fragments. Only the last sliver of her mind was on Ji Chang, and she caught a wisp of black smoke drifting out from his ruined body, clearly about to dissolve completely into the space around them.

She had no interest in arguing about it. Her hand seal shifted, and she drew Feixiang Heaven back in a reverse arc, slashing several times at the void the smoke was escaping into. Her blade indeed struck something solid. With a precise twist of the sword edge she slapped it sideways and then caught it out of the air.

When she opened her right hand, a piece of green jade lay in her palm.

“Are you going to come out and explain yourself, or do I drag you out and refine you to death?” She looked down at the green jade. Inwardly she thought that these “upper realm envoys” really did all have ways to protect their souls.

She had been on guard against this for some time. That wariness was a gift from Lu Qingning, the Suzhen Sword-head.

After all, Lu Qingning’s status in Suzhen Dao was not especially high. The fact that she had not known the truth about the Illusory Realms already said a lot. Yet even a disciple like that could draw on a jade token that stored her blood and soul. Clearly such methods were not rare within Suzhen Dao.

Suzhen Dao and the Great Yu court had always been intertwined, and the Great Yu court had, behind it, that hidden rebel demon clan.

Bai Xiang believed these demon arts shared a common origin. Besides, Daokong’s memories also contained scenes of “upper realm envoys” who would not die even when killed. She therefore guessed that these people mostly possessed similar abilities.

Her conclusion was based on multiple layers of analysis, intelligence gathering, and Taishang Induction. From Ji Chang’s surviving soul’s perspective, however, what had happened was simply terrifying.

I used the Golden Wheel Talisman and still could not take a single strike from her. That is one thing. But how did she see through my background so completely?

Ji Chang’s remaining soul was scared out of its wits. He suddenly realized that even His Highness the Crown Prince might have been wrong about one thing. Bai Xiang might not be a “remnant of the main world” at all. She might, like him, be from the upper realm.

How else to explain her methods?

The subtlety with which she wielded demonic power left no perceptible anomalies, and the strength of her blood and qi did not resemble a Yu person’s at all. The main world should not possess any body-forging method that could be cultivated to this level.

Take that wolf-smoke of blood and qi that had suddenly erupted just now. That was plainly the mark of having excavated the Hidden Heart Orifice.

Ji Chang would never believe Bai Xiang had broken through mid-battle. He was certain she had always been at this level and had simply used deception to block others’ perception. Only when the crisis came had she revealed it as a killing move.

There was also the plan he and Huali had discussed, about trying to get close to her first when they came in. That approach had failed, and he now felt it had to be because she already knew his background.

Yes. That had to be it.

The more Ji Chang thought about it, the more he felt there was only this one explanation. He did not dare delay any longer. His remaining soul turned into a tiny black-gas figure that rose from the jade and knelt before the “giant” Bai Xiang.

“I did not know the imperial daughter’s august might just now and gave offense. Your humble servant Ji Chang knows his wrongs and his guilt. I beg the imperial daughter to withdraw her divine art and at least spare this remnant soul.”

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He really came out?

Bai Xiang raised her brows. Sword-Qi spun in her hand, twisting once, and Ji Chang’s soul let out a scream as it was shredded again, this time without leaving even a trace of its presence.

This jade had some mechanism in it. Bai Xiang’s soul could not penetrate it at first. She had spoken only to bluff him, never expecting it to work so well that he would actually drag his remaining soul out to beg for mercy.

After refining Ji Chang’s soul and turning it into units of mental power, Bai Xiang released her cross-legged posture and rose lightly in midair, turning halfway toward Huali.

Her movement was neither fast nor slow, yet in Huali’s eyes it seemed far too quick and sudden.

“…”

He was now sure he had provoked someone he absolutely could not hope to match. Meeting Bai Xiang’s golden eyes again, he felt a fine sheen of sweat break across his bald head.

The Black-Heaven Dharma Aspect had faded away alongside the sword-Qi Buddha. After all, the dharma aspect was borrowed strength. Without Black-Heaven Shinu directing it, Huali himself could not sustain it for long.

On Bai Xiang’s side, she was adjusting to her “new body.”

The Hidden Heart Orifice governed the heart, through bone marrow and into the organs. Once opened, it could draw an unending supply of “great medicine” from the inner body-scape’s orifices, which in plain terms meant an upgraded blood-producing function.

Old blood was reabsorbed by the bone marrow and, in turn, it fed new blood back into circulation. It was that blood rushing through her body that had driven out the wolf-smoke of qi and blood just now.

First the blood, then the liver, muscles, skin, and other organs. Under the irrigation and influence of this new blood, Bai Xiang felt her body grow tougher with every passing second.

A sudden insight came to her, and she understood naturally that the bottleneck on the Fleet-Movement chapter of the Sun-Chasing Scripture was gone.

She still did not know how one was supposed to cultivate the Fleet-Movement chapter in theory, nor what the manual truly meant by “just keep running and don’t stop.” But now it no longer mattered if she knew.

The body had twelve surface channels and three hundred and sixty-five surface acupoints. The so-called hidden meridians and void meridians, hidden orifices and void orifices, would likely have corresponding numbers.

Yet not all orifices were alike. Among the three hundred and sixty-five void orifices there was talk of “Three Primordial Orifices,” which included the Hidden Field and Hidden Heart.

The Hidden Field Orifice transformed qi, refining qi.

The Hidden Heart Orifice produced blood and changed blood.

She called it “transforming qi” and “refining qi” only because she had created the path of qi and called it that. Strictly speaking, they should have been “transforming qi” and “refining qi” in the usual sense, where qi and blood together were called “qi-blood.”

Blood was essence, and the path of qi and blood was also called the path of essence and qi. It was the general outline of all methods in the myriad worlds.

Whatever form the Dao-Void methods took, their core was the Hidden Field Orifice.

Whatever body-forging manual it was and however many void meridians and void orifices it could excavate, its core was the Hidden Heart Orifice.

And as if some higher will had imposed a limit on living beings, the two were usually impossible to obtain together. Many profound body-forging methods might record information on both, yet each person’s orifice positions differed slightly. A few millimeters of variance on the outside became an insurmountable deviation on the inner body-scape, so such records did little good.

Only with great will, great fortune, and great opportunity, all working together, could one excavate both in a single breath.

Otherwise, once one orifice was opened, the difficulty of finding the other multiplied.

The path of essence and qi began from these two orifices. Bai Xiang had, by relying on the overbearing nature of her soul-ability, dug out both of them at once. In the upper realms this would have been enough for her to be called “Innate in the flesh.” Countless venerables and mighty beings would fight to take her as a disciple.

With such bodily conditions, the Fleet-Movement chapter of the Sun-Chasing Scripture could no longer keep her outside the threshold.

If she decided to train it, she would absolutely be able to get in.

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Time was short. Bai Xiang had no way to fully organize all the memories Ji Chang had provided for now. Fortunately, these were common knowledge among the offerings of the National Preceptor’s Manor, so she absorbed them quickly.

Converted to real time, only a few breaths had passed when the giant sword-Qi Buddha around her suddenly contracted, turning into a membrane of qi that wrapped Bai Xiang.

She raised her left hand and pinched the membrane, studying it. She could feel that the qi-membrane she had just retracted had been slightly improved in quality and strength by the qi-membrane coursing through her body.

Of course.

Essence blood turned into qi, and qi in turn nourished blood.

The path of essence and qi had always been mutually beneficial, the two advancing hand in hand. Improvement on one side would inevitably drive the other to surge as well.

It was just that what she transformed was not the ordinary “qi” of mainstream Daoist methods, but something mixed with heart-flow and soul, Qi-Origin.

By that logic, should there also be a Hidden Spirit Orifice?

Might the last of the Three Primordial Orifices be linked to the soul, forming the threefold “essence, qi, and spirit,” and allowing one to attain the Daoist supreme realm of “three flowers crowning the head”?

When it came to cultivation realms and pursuing long life through the path, Bai Xiang’s train of thought tended to snowball. Once it started, it was hard to stop. Looking back at Huali, she felt a wave of impatience and disdain, her gaze seeming to say, “Why are you still here? Why haven’t you gone and died on your own yet?”

Huali’s scalp prickled under her stare. He suddenly remembered how Bai Xiang had spared Hua’an earlier and grabbed the latter in a hurry, intending to use him as leverage and threaten Bai Xiang in hopes of saving his own life.

But his movement, in Bai Xiang’s eyes now, was far too slow.

Too slow, far too slow.

It was like bullet time in a movie, or a slow-motion shot. She even had the leisure to lean close to Huali and carefully study the struggle on his face, then draw her upper body back and sink into thought again.

Reading his micro-expressions, she judged that this big monk seemed to have some connection to Master Hua’an.

Understandable. They were all from Golden Cicada Temple. They were probably brothers, knowing each other from before.

But that had nothing to do with her.

Bai Xiang stopped caring about it. She flicked out the index finger of her left hand, tapping Huali in the center of his brow.

Puff.

She misjudged the force slightly. The pressure was so great that Huali’s entire crown fractured on the spot. To the eye it looked as if half his skull had been blown away.

He himself did not even feel it. According to his plan, he still grabbed the dazed Hua’an puppet and clamped a hand around his neck, shouting at Bai Xiang, “Unless you want him to die, then…”

Here he froze.

He felt liquid running down over his eyelids. Reaching up, he touched blood.

Another touch revealed the truth about the top of his head. Huali stared at Bai Xiang in horror, then his body went limp and fell, joining the cursed corpse monks on the floor of the tree-hollow.

Still in midair, Bai Xiang caught hold of Hua’an, gripping his shoulder and sending in vibrating force. Just as she had once examined Bai Shengju’s condition, she quickly confirmed that Hua’an was essentially unharmed, only in a temporary coma.

She had meant to go down and collect Huali’s soul. Just as she was about to land, she saw the golden-collar fragments scattered around suddenly snap back together into a single collar. Under the enhanced sight granted by her soul-ability, she watched it swallow Huali’s remaining soul.

“Hm?”

She frowned slightly and had Feixiang Heaven hook the collar up. Right before her eyes, the object softened and melted in midair, finally turning into a sheet of yellow talisman paper.

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This was a Golden Wheel Talisman.

Ji Chang’s “gift” had contained records of it. It was forged from the blood and essence of “Golden Wheel Adept,” one of the National Preceptor Manor’s three great offerings. When paired with a ring-shaped treasure, it could become a golden wheel collar. Once locked around its target, that target’s soul and body would be bound and controlled by the talisman’s owner.

That vicious magical treasure was something the Golden Wheel Adept often presented to the Crown Prince Wu Qing of the Shenwu Immortal Dynasty, to help him capture powerful female cultivators to serve him.

If you want to use it to torment others, that is one thing. But you came to make me your target?

The Golden Wheel Talisman was part of the soul-refining path. That it could actively devour a soul made sense.

Bai Xiang crushed it between her fingers, flooding force into it, yet still could not retrieve Huali’s soul. It seemed to have been spent during some process of conversion.

It did not matter. She now had Ji Chang’s memories, which fully documented how he and the remnants of Demon-Immortal Dao and Right-Self Dao had used the Blood Abyss passageway to descend into the main world, intending to swallow all of Mao State.

As for that Crown Prince Wu Qing, the fact that he had set his sights on her was because of the Xuandi Scripture.

Before the passageways between heaven and earth were cut, there had indeed been the Xuan Dynasty and an Emperor Xuan.

His rule had been brief, yet he had basically “pressed down an era” and “stood unmatched under heaven.”

All were “unmatched,” but the weight of that word differed from age to age.

In the current main world, without the return of the Illusory Realms and without Bai Xiang herself as the greatest variable, the one who would have dominated would have been Qingping Sword Lord Chu Weiping. But his “invincibility” could not compare to that of the Xuan Emperor.

That had been an era before the passageways closed, with great demons rampant and many titled venerables. For the Xuan Emperor to beat them all into silence and force them, for a time, to accept his founding of the Xuan Dynasty said everything about how overbearing his methods were.

Keep in mind that his ideals were utterly at odds with the ancient world.

In an age where demon blood was paramount, he was a mixed-blood of two races and advocated “sharing between the two” and “co-rule by the two,” holding that there was no inherent inferiority among living beings. Behave like a human and you are human. Behave like a demon and you are demon.

In the eyes of the demon race, this was outright treason. It called for the combined forces of the majority to punish him.

For that reason, the Xuan Dynasty collapsed quickly. The human race’s strength in that ancient time was devastated. From that turning point, humans truly began to decline. A hundred years after the fall of the Xuan Dynasty they were reduced to slaves and blood-food. That was the ancient history Bai Xiang knew well.

Legend said that after his death, the Xuan Emperor had left behind a Xuandi Scripture that recorded all his lifetime’s ultimate arts.

As a powerful figure who had painted a bold stroke across his era, he had many coveters. Numerous Demon Kingdoms, immortal dynasties, and Illusory Realm forces all sought that legacy. The Shenwu Immortal Dynasty was by no means the only one.

If that was the case…

Bai Xiang did some calculations in her heart, thinking of the Meridian-Connecting Method and the Sun-Chasing Scripture, then turned her gaze to the fragments of the Ranyan Demon Kingdom, at those demonic beast eggs jumping inside green flames.

The Ranyan Demon Kingdom was a resource that Daokong’s true spirit had prepared for his own return.

He had suppressed this place not to bless all living beings but because he had his eye on these green-flame beast eggs. While sealed, they could not move or resist, making it easy for him to guard this “treasure ground” while fishing for others. He had only needed to wait for other true spirits or Yaosui-possessed bodies to arrive.

It was worth pointing out that the true spirit bore no goodwill toward such “companions.” It had not planned to cooperate with them. Its intent had been to devour them, refine the stored beast eggs, extract their pure life essence, and see whether it could use an empowered soul to rebuild a body.

In the outside world, a clutch of beast eggs like this would be worth an unimaginable sum. Their value would far exceed that of an eight-hundred-year-old Spirit King Ginseng, and by quite a margin.

Given such an opportunity, it would be a waste not to use it.

Having decided to seize this chance to break through a bottleneck and raise her cultivation realm again, Bai Xiang first propped Master Hua’an safely against the wall. Then she flashed into the Ranyan Demon Kingdom, appearing out of thin air above a pool of green fire.

There were more than ten thousand beast eggs here. Each one held a sealed true spirit. With Daokong dead and control in her hands, Bai Xiang could manipulate them at will.

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The Ranyan Demon Kingdom was a lowest-grade Demon Kingdom. The beasts that emerged here had very little intelligence and mostly followed their instincts to catch and devour humans. Leaving them be would only be a future disaster.

Bai Xiang felt no psychological burden. With a thought, she melted one beast egg in the green fire. It turned into a streak of concentrated green essence that she drew into her mouth, where it became a violent, restless surge of life energy.

This effect is almost on par with a Canxuan Pill.

A faint gleam flashed in Bai Xiang’s eyes. The nourishing effect of these beast eggs exceeded her expectations.

A single egg did not match the Canxuan Pills her cheap master had painstakingly refined for her, but the strength here lay in numbers.

More than ten thousand beast eggs. If she used her soul-ability to remove “tolerance to medicine,” would that not amount to ten thousand “lesser Canxuan Pills”?

On top of that, she had two orifices still able to pick the “great medicine.” The plan would work.

Without hesitation, Bai Xiang immediately sped up.

One beast egg after another turned into green light. The pace became so fast that the lights merged into a single mass. The brilliant green radiance blended with the green fire and rose like smoke as she absorbed and refined it. Her body, especially the spinal vertebrae and the bones connecting her hips and legs, began a new round of transformation on top of the earlier qi-blood strengthening.

The itching was now at its absolute peak. Even Bai Xiang could not help a slight frown.

Its intensity far exceeded what she had felt when she cut down Chilong. It seemed to rise up from her very soul, and for a moment she could not screen it out.

Her mind wavered. In a daze she seemed to see a black-haired girl crouching in front of her, cradling her legs and feet with the devotion of a pilgrim at worship, carefully playing with the soles of her feet in her hands.

“Mm?”

She snapped her eyes open, mildly startled by her own hallucination.

I may… but I cannot possibly be that far gone.

It was too absurd.

It must have only been coincidence.

She is, after all, the only one who has ever touched my legs and feet…

Steadying her mind, Bai Xiang used Jade Spirit to pull out the Sun-Chasing Scripture and saw that she had entered the Fleet-Movement chapter.

The itching had spread beyond her legs and feet. It was now flowing out across her whole body. That meant the Fleet-Movement chapter’s body-movement bonus was no longer confined to her legs and feet, not just when her soles struck the ground. She could also draw on it when moving her whole body through the air.

The Meridian-Connecting Method remained.

Bai Xiang’s expression grew serious.

Strictly speaking, the Meridian-Connecting Method did not record any Hidden Spirit Orifice.

Nor did any of the many memories she had seized. There was not even a concrete description. At most they alluded vaguely to the concept, saying that some suspected such an orifice existed.

Yet Bai Xiang still chose to try.

Once she returned from this trip, she would face a great many challenges.

She needed a heavier piece to put on the board, to have the confidence to walk her chosen path.