Volume 4, Chapter 12 – Flickering Traces

Early the next morning, Bai Xiang rose, dressed, and had just come downstairs when she saw Bai Maoxu squatting alone at the steps, happily playing on a touchscreen phone with both hands.

She deliberately made her footsteps heavier, and Bai Maoxu immediately reacted, lifting his head to glance back over his shoulder.

“Senior Brother Lian asked me to pass something on,” Bai Maoxu said. “The vegetation outside the city is pushing inward again.” Then he lowered his head to look at the phone once more. “From what he means, he wants permission from the Dao to lead a team and just sweep the surrounding area again.”

Hearing this, Bai Xiang didn’t respond. She only lifted her gaze to the sky, staring at that pitch-black night canopy.

It was already six in the morning. For the southern lands, for the height of summer, such darkness at this hour was not normal.

Even stranger, this “black-sky dawn” did not appear regularly. Sometimes it would show up several days in a row; sometimes it wouldn’t appear for ten, twenty days at a time.

Coupled with the reports of vegetation running wild and mutating in bizarre ways, Bai Xiang had every reason to believe this was caused by the Illusory Realms of the upper realm drawing closer to the main world, the loss of order those Illusory Realms brought with them.

The movements of the heavens were also natural law. For loss of order to destabilize even those laws made Bai Xiang genuinely wonder whether the cosmic starry sky beyond the atmosphere was being churned and shifted as well.

If so, then this was far more than just a change in the sky.

At the most basic level, the changing distance of sun and moon would alter gravity, leading to high tides, tsunamis, earthquakes… and if it became serious enough, the crust would tear, and the world’s entire map would be rewritten.

That was why Bai Xiang had been willing to assure Bai Shengju that “celestial change” would arrive very soon.

When she looked back at Bai Maoxu, he was still nonchalantly playing on his phone.

She walked over, wanting to see what kind of game could interest him so much, and what came into view was a very familiar sea of text.

Oh… so he hadn’t suddenly given up games, he’d suddenly gotten hooked on reading webnovels?

Bai Maoxu didn’t try to hide anything from Bai Xiang. She stood at his side and read a few pages, quickly realizing it was a post-apocalyptic novel. In the story, the protagonist was killing monsters and advancing technology, clearly on track to develop a shelter and become a beacon of civilization.

“Planning ahead?” Bai Xiang suddenly asked.

“Just reading for fun,” Bai Maoxu said, as if fully aware she was still there and entirely unruffled, chewing his gum. “With you here, Sis, I don’t know about anywhere else, but at least Maozhou definitely isn’t going to fall apart, right?”

“Oh…” Bai Xiang raised a brow.

Listening to this, it sounded suspiciously like her little brother had mentally sliced Maozhou right out of Great Yu’s territory.

“Grandfather and the others don’t know,” Bai Maoxu said suddenly, lifting his head to look at her. “They all think the path of qi is still spreading outside, and that acceptance is just a matter of time.”

“But I… I snuck onto Senior Brother Xu’s computer when he wasn’t paying attention, got on the external internet, scraped a ton of data, and found that a lot of comments about the path of qi weren’t written by people.”

What was this about?

Bai Xiang was genuinely surprised.

Not just at the results of the investigation, but at the fact that Bai Maoxu even had this kind of skill.

So he was a tech nerd?

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Maybe all that time on his phone hadn’t been wasted?

Still, there was a pretty big gap between playing on your phone and being a computer whiz.

“Grandfather doesn’t really understand this stuff, so I didn’t tell him,” Bai Maoxu said, curling his lip. At last a more serious expression surfaced. “I can stake my head on it. Those posts are written by bots—artificial intelligence.”

Afraid Bai Xiang might not believe him, he exited the novel, tapped into a saved archive, and pulled up several screenshots to show her.

“This one… it looks like it supports the path of qi, arguing on a forum with people to defend it. But when I switched the topic, it couldn’t follow, just kept hammering on the previous logic. That’s obviously a fixed script.”

“This one too. And this one…”

As he talked, he kept glancing up to watch Bai Xiang’s expression. “I think that’s enough to show where they stand.”

Bai Xiang didn’t speak. She simply took the phone and flipped through carefully, confirming that what Bai Maoxu said was true.

Not only that, but the way the internet defined and understood the path of qi was off. People weren’t treating it as the new hope Shenming Sword Dao had envisioned, but merely as a side path, a new branch—another option outside of Sword Dao.

The difference there was enormous. It was very clearly a case of official forces guiding public opinion.

“It’s fine,” Bai Xiang said, returning the phone to her younger brother. “I never thought it would be easy.”

“Easy isn’t the issue,” Bai Maoxu said, frowning. Then, “Sis… I just think that maybe putting the path of qi out there now is a bit rushed.”

He paused and lowered his voice. “Before you came back, I overheard Grandfather on the phone. He lost his temper several times. And it was directly at the people in the other prefectures…”

Bai Maoxu was precocious. He might not understand the details of what Grandfather had discussed on those calls, but he could very clearly feel it: as news of the path of qi fermented outside, the other prefectures’ attitude toward Maozhou was growing colder by the day.

Combined with what he’d dug up, it wasn’t hard for him to sketch out a rough conclusion: the court intended to suppress the path of qi and had no intention of letting it replace Sword Dao.

That was his only real worry.

In his view, Bai Xiang’s cultivation might already rival that of a Sword Lord. If she simply held Maozhou, there would be nothing to fear.

But if, for the sake of spreading the path of qi, she ended up going against the whole world… then she would have far too many enemies to face.

“You’ve thought about this a lot.”

Bai Xiang looked at her brother with quiet satisfaction. “But you don’t have to worry about that part.”

“Go on back.”

“It should cool down a bit today. Put on an extra layer so you don’t catch a chill.”

After sending Bai Maoxu off—and thinking that perhaps, given his talents, she could assign him to Yuming Peak in the future—Bai Xiang went upstairs and started preparing breakfast.

She had already refined the Five Qi and gathered them into Three Flowers. Whether body or soul, she could be called Innate. She could draw directly on the energy of heaven and earth to replenish herself and no longer needed to eat.

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But what could she say? The pleasures of food were also one of the reasons she pursued longevity.

She had no intention of emulating Chu Weiping and literally training herself into a machine.

So when Bai Zhuqing woke up with a little hum, what she saw was her elegant older sister waiting by a spread of food.

Bai Xiang wore only a white dress, her bare feet on the floor. One hand lazily propped her cheek, the other scrolling alone across her phone.

“Aunt!”

Seeing the cicada-shaped earrings hanging from Bai Xiang’s ears, the girl rushed over in delight, then stared in surprise at the table laden with rice porridge, steamed buns, and various pastries.

Sis Xiang’er made all this?

“It’s not harder than swordplay,” Bai Xiang said, arching a brow at her.

“I’ve already eaten.”

“Try it and see if it suits your taste.”

There was no way it wouldn’t.

Cooking was nothing more than doing each step properly and adding each seasoning in the right amount. For Bai Xiang, who possessed Taishang Perception, that was child’s play. She could even ensure that every seasoning and every moment over the fire were exactly the same each time.

Food made like that simply couldn’t be bad. Bai Zhuqing ate with stars in her eyes, polishing off four trays of buns and three big bowls of porridge in one go, and even then she seemed a little unsatisfied.

She’d gotten an appetite.

Bai Xiang sharply noticed the subtle change in her little sister.

It meant her qi consumption had increased, a sign she was about to break through.

She was just about to offer a few words of encouragement when Bai Zhuqing’s eyes suddenly glazed over. She pressed a hand to her chest, let out a belch, and her whole body’s qi presence surged. A blood-red mark bloomed in the center of her forehead.

Hm?

Bai Xiang frowned and flashed to appear in front of her, seizing her wrist.

This was… Jade Spirit Mingxin, mastered?

She stared wide-eyed at Bai Zhuqing, and Bai Zhuqing stared wide-eyed back.

The two of them stared at each other for a long moment, entirely failing to process what had just happened.

It must be because her heart-path had cleared…

Bai Xiang was the first to recover, remembering the emotional upswing brought on by their “exchange of gifts.”

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This was the effect of speaking heart to heart.

This little thing had always put on a carefree face in front of her, but who would have thought her emotional knot here was so tight…

In a flash of clarity, Bai Xiang realized it was because Bai Zhuqing cared about her too much.

Xiang Xian had long since taken note of the girl’s talent, yet no matter how Bai Zhuqing practiced the Jade Spirit calculations, she could never manage even the most basic entry-level stage. That was actually quite odd.

Now it was clear that it was because she cared too much about Bai Xiang, worried too much about whether Bai Xiang would always be that cold toward her. That anxiety over gains and losses had prevented her from ever fully gathering her spiritual power.

And that scene yesterday had probably been a tremendous comfort to her.

With no more worries, her heart-path had opened, and the bottleneck that held her back dissolved by itself.

“Jade Spirit… I finally did it!”

After she came to herself, Bai Zhuqing was overjoyed, her face alight with excitement.

But perhaps because her mindset really had changed, she didn’t make a loud fuss. After a brief release of emotion, she calmed down and returned to that composed demeanor she showed in front of outsiders.

Her bearing and expression were almost the same as when Bai Xiang had first met her.

“It’s all because Aunt’s cooking is too good,” Bai Zhuqing said softly, looking at Bai Xiang. “Next time Qing’er faces a bottleneck, I’ll still need Aunt to ‘help from the stove.’”

She’d gotten cheekier, too.

Bai Xiang waved her off, telling her to go run to Xiang Xian with the good news, then picked up her phone, glancing at the chat still open on the screen.

She’d just been talking with Abbess Li Sheng, Dao Lord of Shangqing Dao.

Abbess Li Sheng had told her that colored mist had suddenly descended on Zezhou that morning. Anyone who saw it fainted; anyone who inhaled it fell into a drunken stupor, with symptoms like an endless dream. Even jolts of lightning couldn’t wake them. The only way out was to withstand it purely with one’s cultivation.

Li Sheng hadn’t spelled everything out, but Bai Xiang could faintly sense her thoughts.

She likely wanted to relocate Shangqing Dao to Maozhou.

As for why, on one hand… Abbess Li Sheng had been one of the first cultivators to witness the path of qi and was convinced it was the future.

She had also heard how Bai Xiang had brutally suppressed the Shenwu Immortal Dynasty on the Jing River plain and was not optimistic about Zezhou’s fate.

She knew full well Zezhou had a good chance of being targeted by some Illusory Realm force as well, and that this “colored mist” was likely just the opening act of an invasion.

On the other hand, Abbess Li Sheng was deeply dissatisfied with Zezhou’s current State Inspector, Long Qingyu, believing his policies were overly focused on guarding against and preparing for “enemies from the southwest,” which was sheer nonsense.

Enemies from the southwest…

Staring at that phrasing a little longer, Bai Xiang couldn’t help the faint curl of her lips.

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They might as well go ahead and say her name.

If even Zezhou was guarding against her to this degree, then Maoxu’s findings were as good as confirmed.

So how did the court plan to deal with the path of qi—and with its source, her?

Move the sword duels up ahead of schedule?

Under normal procedures, the Nine Prefectures Sword Meet wouldn’t be until the end of August, just over a month away.

Given the looming explosion of loss of order, Bai Xiang doubted the Meet could even be held properly.

Bai Maoxu thought she had revealed the path of qi too early; she felt the timing was just right.

Right now was precisely when Heaven stirred its killing intent and dragons and serpents rose from the earth, when numerous Illusory Realm forces had yet to fully descend. It could be called the “last stretch of free space” for spreading the path of qi.

Suppression?

Suppression wouldn’t move that quickly.

As long as some people had seen the Shenming Refining Qi Formula early on, as long as someone had copied it down out of curiosity, the technique would begin spreading among the common folk all on its own.

Sword Dao?

The Sword Dao Association?

There were plenty of people under Heaven who wanted to learn the sword, and there were indeed many disciples of Sword Dao.

But there had always been far more who never managed to succeed—and by a margin that dwarfed the former.

She very much wanted to see how the Great Yu court planned to stop that kind of vast, countless base.

Bzzz, bzzz.

Her phone vibrated again.

Bai Xiang picked up and held it to her ear, but heard nothing from the other side for a long time.

The silence lasted for nearly a full minute before a hoarse voice finally came.

“I’m Li Guangyuan.”

“Dao Lord Bai, I’d like to request a meeting to speak in detail.”