Volume 3, Chapter 122 – Extermination

Leading the charge, Bai Xiang caught sight of the blood abyss in the distance.

She had cultivated the Divine-Movement chapter of the Sun-Chasing Scripture. She hadn’t reached any especially profound level yet, but even just having entered the door had pushed her mastery over footwork and sky-walking escape arts up another notch beyond before, already far beyond what Xiang Xian and the other two could compare to.

So she slightly slowed her speed. Once the other two caught up, she said to Xiang Xian, “There are traces of army tents on the plain ahead. Master can follow this road over.”

Following this road straight ahead meant crossing the Jing River, and beyond the Jing River was the Qiyun Circuit. Xiang Xian didn’t even need to think much to understand that what Bai Xiang meant was for the two of them to head in the direction of the State Chancery to give support.

As for why support was going from this side to the State Chancery instead of the State Chancery supporting this side, that was naturally because there still was not a single banner of the provincial army to be seen on the plain.

The billowing smoke and dust were explanation enough for what had happened. For the Qiyun Circuit to react this slowly, the only explanation was that their reinforcements, including the Benling Sword Dao led by Wang Ran, had all been intercepted on the way.

Of course, there was another layer of meaning to these words. Bai Xiang meant to handle the yao gathered in front of the blood abyss on her own.

Just what realm was she at now?

Xiang Xian was curious. Counting both her departure and her return, Bai Xiang had been gone for less than a week, and yet when she came back she was like a different person. It wasn’t just that Xiang Xian had felt a deep, unfathomable pressure at the moment when the tribulation lotuses exploded; even just staring at this disciple in daily life now made a similar tightness rise in her chest.

If not for the fact that Bai Xiang’s reactions still seemed normal, at least in front of her and in front of Bai Zhuqing and the others still the same as before, Xiang Xian would definitely have suspected that Bai Xiang had gone astray in her cultivation, that she had somehow fallen into a kind of madness and faintly taken on a bit of Sword Lord Qingping’s bearing.

That bearing was what people called “severed emotions.”

But it was also different, not quite the same.

Xiang Xian had met Chu Weiping before, although it had been a very, very long time ago, so long that by now it was already terribly distant. But to be honest, that span of time meant very little when it came to Chu Weiping.

Unlike Chu Weiping’s rigid, carved-in-stone severed emotions, what Bai Xiang gave off, rather than “severed emotions,” felt closer to indifference.

As though her horizon had risen, or her vantage point had been lifted higher. She cared less and less about certain things, and naturally came to face the world with that attitude.

“Master, rest easy.” While Xiang Xian was still thinking, Bai Xiang had already, through Taishang Perception, guessed at and analyzed what was in her heart. She leaned closer and said quietly, “I have found the path ahead. Even if Qingping were here, I would have nothing to fear.”

This was…

She had already had her guesses, but hearing the person concerned confirm it with her own mouth was still a completely different level of shock.

Xiang Xian forcibly pressed down the horror in her heart and nodded. “In that case, good.”

She glanced down. “Go on, then.”

Bai Xiang nodded, her figure dropping sharply toward the ground like a cleaving blade.

Xiang Xian did not linger here either. She called out to Han Yinshuang, and the two of them sped off toward the direction of the army tents.

She was no fool. When she had faced the five under Wang Changhe earlier, she had already felt herself overmatched and knew that was her limit. Even before heading out this time she had handed her other two treasures to the Kong father and son, having long since decided not to show off; anything she could not beat, she had a disciple to carry the load.

Meanwhile, as Bai Xiang plummeted, a yellow-robed Daoist intercepted her midair.

They were barely a little more than twenty meters from the ground here. She looked down and saw a crowd of Daoists and black-robed figures escorting a handsome young man as they walked this way. From his face he was clearly the crown prince of the Shenwu Immortal Dynasty, Wu Qing.

“Imperial Daughter Xiang?” Wu Qing had heard descriptions of her looks. The moment he saw her, he realized who she was.

Wasn’t she supposed to be on Black Heaven’s turf? How had she come back in less than two days?

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In that instant, Wu Qing’s mind began to turn. He first glanced sideways at Zhao Dongyan, thinking how Protector Zhao had always held deep wariness toward this girl, yet they had still underestimated her. Wang Changhe was very likely to have fallen under her sword.

There was no need to think too hard about it, because she was clearly coming from the direction of Maozhou.

Thinking of this, he switched his lines and shouted up toward the sky from afar, “Lady Xiang, as a descendant of the Xuan Emperor, you have surely heard of His Excellency’s governing ideals back in the day.”

“Now a great catastrophe is upon us, demons run wild. We too are forced to come to the main world to take shelter. Why not inherit the Xuan Emperor’s principles, rule over the yao and human races together? I, Wu Qing, am willing to lend you my strength.”

Huh?

At those words, not only did the yellow-robed Daoist blocking Bai Xiang freeze in place, even the Daoists and attendants clustered around Wu Qing all went blank with shock.

This… was not how it went in the plan, was it?

Bai Xiang cast him a faint glance and said quietly, “The Shenwu Immortal Dynasty has no Venerable it can move.”

At that, Wu Qing, Zhao Dongyan, National Preceptor He, the yellow-robed Daoist, the blue-robed scholar… everyone belonging to the Immortal Dynasty who held any rank at all, without exception, turned pale with fright.

The Shenwu Emperor was gravely ill, with little life left. This was the greatest secret in the whole Immortal Dynasty. How had she laid it bare with a single sentence here?

The yellow-robed Daoist was the closest to her. In his senses, Bai Xiang’s qi presence had only grown deeper and more remote, like rolling black clouds pressing down. A single look from her forced him to raise the Golden Wheel from his sleeve, and it was several seconds before he realized she had not actually made a move.

What is this… this pressure?

The way the yellow-robed Daoist looked at Bai Xiang grew more and more shaken and uncertain.

This feeling, he had only ever sensed it back then from the Shenwu Emperor himself.

Could it be that…

Unable to accept that guess rising in his heart, blood rushed into the Daoist’s eyes. He simply hurled the Golden Wheel straight at Bai Xiang.

It was as if that flung wheel had triggered some kind of signal. Behind the Golden Wheel’s blazing light, National Preceptor He, Zhao Dongyan, the blue-robed scholar, together with more than a dozen black-robed figures, all erupted at once, attacking Bai Xiang from all directions.

So this could not be talked out anymore.

Wu Qing’s expression turned cold as well.

Then they absolutely had to capture this woman today. They could not let her spread this news.

Whoosh.

The wind howled, and the blue-robed scholar was the fastest of them all, even surging past the Golden Wheel. He shouted, “Little girl, don’t get too full of yourself! Lest His Highness get sick of you and send you off to meet those people of Yu!”

Huh?

As he reached the end of his sentence, all he heard was a single sword hum. Bai Xiang’s Silence Domain had unfolded around her once more. As it spread out in all directions, all sound and all arts were rendered null. Caught completely off guard, he pitched headfirst toward the ground.

It was a terrifying sight. At that moment, it was not just the blue-robed scholar who lost control and fell. Everyone, including the Golden Wheel and numerous other treasures, was swept down in a single sweep of soundless tide, turned into mere mundane objects. None of them could show even a trace of their cultivation or Dao-age.

This pressure, there was no mistaking it.

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The yellow-robed Daoist’s face changed drastically. His mouth kept forming shapes, as though he wanted to shout something, but the entire stretch of sky had been forcibly muted. No matter how he strained himself, he could not force out even the tiniest syllable.

One sword-chant, and a hundred sounds were deposed.

She used the Vibration Art to shake the energies of heaven and earth, then fused in the principles of the “Imagined Shenming” sword move, with Taishang Perception governing everything in between.

Who would dare say this did not count as Shenming?

From today on, unless one cultivated the same path Bai Xiang had comprehended, and one’s cultivation realm was no lower than hers,

Otherwise, as long as she wished it, no one would be able to make a sound in front of her.

Locking onto the people falling below, Bai Xiang’s eyelids drooped slightly. Her sword edge vibrated, hooking into the energies of heaven and earth once more. In her consciousness, she was already tracing the principles of the move Creation Qi Tribulation.

Then she used Jade Spirit to replicate it, driving the Splitting-Light Multiple-Images Sword Formula, the number of strikes matching the number of targets she had observed.

Clouds gathered, lightning flickered.

Her action immediately triggered a horrifying transformation.

In that utterly silent scene, all anyone saw was the sky condensing into tens of thousands of crystal-clear blue tribulation lotuses. With a sudden burst, each lotus became a demon-subduing club plummeting down, and in an instant the entire plain turned into a sea of thunder, a purgatory. Every moment, thousands of yao and Dao-soldiers were blasted apart.

They could not resist.

They could not resist at all.

At first, the blue-robed scholar still wore a look of disdain. But when the thunder club aimed at him came crashing down and every spell he tried to switch to produced no reaction at all, he finally realized that the tribulation lotuses and the Silence were a paired combination. During that time, his entire daoxu cultivation might as well not have existed, and he could only take it head-on with his flesh.

How was he supposed to withstand that?

With his life hanging by a thread, his face twisted with terror, his lips pulling back to bare fangs, yet no sound came out no matter what he did. In the next heartbeat, the thunder club punched through him, flesh and soul alike shattered to dust under the thunderous sword qi.

Once the combination of moves finished pounding down, Bai Xiang drew up her legs and sat cross-legged in midair. Feixiang Heaven lay horizontally across her knees, while above her head three illusory lotus blossoms appeared of their own accord, slowly revolving with her breathing.

Below was a battlefield scoured by thunderous sword qi. Looking out, the earth was pitted and devastated, crater upon crater blasted out by the thunder clubs, layered over one another. Every few pits, one could glimpse a little heap of shattered black ash at the center.

Only Crown Prince Wu Qing, the yellow-robed Daoist, and Zhao Dongyan were still barely standing. Their body-forging realms were extraordinary, and they had actually relied on brute physical strength to withstand the thunder clubs.

As for National Preceptor He and the other black-robed Daoists, they had ended up the same as the Dao-soldiers, all turned into ash in those pits.

“Three Flowers and Five Qi… a Mystic-Transformation Immortal Venerable…?”

Wu Qing’s robes were blasted to tatters by the thunder swords, his face blackened and scorched. Any trace of his previous handsomeness was gone. He just stared fixedly at Bai Xiang hanging in the air and squeezed those words out between his teeth.

Generally speaking, starting from the second Body Tribulation, one could cultivate the daoxu arts and comprehend the myriad mysteries of demonic power and the qi path.

The realms here were very similar to Sword Dao, also graded on how many years of Dao-age one had, but it was not that daoxu-type Sword Dao mirrored daoxu arts; it was that Sword Dao was a crude imitation of the daoxu arts.

One came first, one later.

The Sword Dao of the Yu people had always been a clumsy copy of the daoxu arts.

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Seven or eight Body Tribulations, with corresponding daoxu cultivation, could compare to the ancient human immortals.

Nine Body Tribulations, with corresponding daoxu cultivation, could compare to a Divine Fetus earth-master.

After passing nine tribulations, if one could then step out beyond the Illusory Realm itself and endure the Void Lightning Tribulation repeatedly in the passageways, one could form the foundation of Dao-Source, laying the firmest possible base of Dao-age for stepping into the ranks of Venerable great powers.

At that level, from what Wu Qing knew, one could roughly match the Sword Lords currently extant in the main world.

Aside from Sword Lord Qingping Chu Weiping, whose cultivation was impossible to pin down, especially considering that Blood-Soul Heaven had supposedly taken a great loss in his hands, the other Sword Lords might not even be as solid in their foundations as someone who had formed Dao-Source.

And beyond that?

Beyond that, one had to consider founding a divine pool of one’s own and walking a path that belonged to oneself alone.

At that point, you still could not be called a great power, but you were entitled to the title of Immortal Venerable, to receive the congratulations of countless sapient beings, to draw in offerings of vows and incense from the void.

Wu Qing understood this very well, because his father, the Shenwu Emperor, was just such an Immortal Venerable. The entire Shenwu Immortal Dynasty had depended on him to grow and expand, step by step, into its current status.

Unfortunately, even an Immortal Venerable could not escape fate. However long the lifespan, there would come a day when it burned out.

If not for that, why would he have hungered so desperately for the Xuan Emperor Scripture?

He had sworn to seize the Xuan Emperor’s legacy, inherit his father’s hopes, and guard the Immortal Dynasty.

But right now.

In this very moment.

Staring at that white-haired woman, Wu Qing suddenly realized how laughable all his previous scheming had been.

An Immortal Venerable…

I actually tried to scheme against an Immortal Venerable?

And not just scheme against her; he had even wanted to marry her, hoping she would become his aid and help him obtain the secret arts of great powers.

Shaking his head in bitter laughter, Wu Qing knew he was done for.

In the face of the term “Immortal Venerable,” any scheming or struggle was meaningless.

Without her permission, they could not even open their mouths to speak.

That was Dao.

A Dao belonging to her alone.

At the very least, it was already the embryonic form of a Dao.

He opened his mouth and tested it, finding that the silence had already faded by now. Wu Qing no longer spared a thought for his other underlings still clinging to life. He simply tilted his head back and said to Bai Xiang, “I am willing to accept punishment beneath your sword, but I beg you to open the passageway and permit the citizens of the Immortal Dynasty to enter the main world.”

Bai Xiang looked at him and did not answer.

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“His Highness… His Highness had no choice either…”

A dozen meters away, Zhao Dongyan barely managed to prop himself up, lifting his face to stare at Bai Xiang.

“The Void Calamity will tear Shenwu Heaven to pieces. If we do not fight for it, all we have is death!”

“All of these plans were my own plotting… let His Highness go… I will be the one under your sword…”

Slash.

Before he could finish, Wu Qing and Zhao Dongyan were both pressed deep into the earth by two profound sword gashes, their flesh and blood ground into paste, indistinguishable from the soil of this land.

This was the end you deserved.

Bai Xiang looked down with golden eyes, her heart filled only with cold indifference and contempt.

Because they had suffered, they wanted to endlessly oppress other races, just to carve out a place to live?

Because they wanted to survive, they would classify other races as livestock for slaughter, killing and even devouring them at will?

Those fragments of memory where they kept saying “we are all sapient beings together,” was that really what they believed?

All it was, was fear now that they knew they were about to die.

She slanted her gaze, golden eyes flicking toward the yellow-robed Daoist.

The Daoist jolted in terror. He had been lying motionless on the ground playing dead, but now he scrambled toward the blood abyss on all fours and dove headfirst into the black mist.

Bai Xiang had meant to cut him down with a single sword, but in the next instant her movement paused, and she turned a different gaze toward the blood abyss.

Whoosh.

With no warning at all, a pure black giant hand suddenly thrust out of the black-misted abyss, three joints to the arm and eight fingers on the hand. It snatched up the yellow-robed Daoist in one grip and squeezed. His miserable scream turned to black mist and was swallowed, and then, with a crack, the arm’s joints extended another segment as it reached toward Bai Xiang, blotting out the sky.

Bai Xiang closed her eyes and formed a unique hand seal, one hand pointing to the sky, one hand to the ground, framing a space in between.

Feixiang Heaven vanished from her knees. In the next heartbeat, it was as if a twisted shadow shot out from the empty center of her seal.

There was no sound at all during the process. The shadow bored straight into the center of the giant hand, as though driving through a sheet of cloth, spearing it and forcing it back all the way, until it plunged back down into the depths of the abyss and, with a soft hiss, the ground knitted shut.

After that, no further anomalies stood upon the barren plain.

The yao-folk were all cut down.

All treachery was utterly exterminated.

Only Bai Xiang sat quietly upon the sky, slowly extending her right hand to draw her life-bound sword back out of the void.