Volume 4, Chapter 13 – The Calamity Rises

At ten in the morning, Bai Xiang arrived at the most prominent hotel in Zhen’nan’s city center, the Tianhe Tower Hotel, wearing the same robe-dress as yesterday with her sword at her waist. She used her authority to clear the place on the spot.

Tianhe Tower was actually a foreign-invested hotel, its supply chain routed from Luohou, with its true source in a federal nation. They didn’t dare offend Bai Xiang, so they quickly drove out and compensated all current patrons, emptying an entire hall for her use.

Bai Xiang sat there for a while before a powerful presence appeared within her Taishang Perception.

She lifted her head and saw a middle-aged man in a suit and tie, gold-rimmed glasses on his nose, walk into the hall. His features were exactly those of the rich merchant Li Guangyuan.

“Dao Lord Bai.” Li Guangyuan sat down directly across from her. He glanced at the tea on the table and the menu. “I’ll keep it short. I’m actually here to invite you to join our organization.”

Bai Xiang only watched him and did not respond.

“Dao Lord Bai has already dealt with Shenwu Heaven. I wonder if you’ve heard from them what the upper realm is like,” Li Guangyuan asked again. “For example, have you ever heard of an organization called the Seven Illusory Heavens Alliance?”

The Seven Illusory Heavens Alliance?

Bai Xiang shook her head. She had never seen that name in any of the memory fragments.

“The Seven Illusory Heavens Alliance is a coalition of seven Illusory Realm planes, each similar to or even stronger than Shenwu Heaven,” Li Guangyuan explained. “I’m from one of them, Ningming Heaven. I came to Maozhou on a mission entrusted to me by Immortal Venerable Ningyuan. He wishes to use Maozhou as the place where his descendants temper a new method.”

Bai Xiang stared at him and still shook her head. “If you mean the Head Shop Demon Pool, I don’t understand what this so-called new method is supposed to be.”

“Is Dao Lord Bai not curious why so many Illusory Realms are all drawing close to the main world right now?” Li Guangyuan smiled. “It’s because they have their eye on the main world’s order.”

“Order?”

“Exactly.” Li Guangyuan took a deep breath. “As the saying goes, when Void Tribulation shatters the void, loss of order runs rampant. Order is the rarest thing out there.”

Here, his tone dipped. He used an extremely soft voice to send the words across to her. “And this order, or you could call it the rules, directly determines whether a cultivator can shape a divine pool and step into a higher realm.”

So that was it.

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After hearing his explanation, Bai Xiang finally understood why so many upper-realm Illusory Realms were scrambling to return to the main world before the next great calamity arrived.

Her comprehension was first-rate. In an instant, she linked it to Investiture of the Gods, linked it to the concept of quantity tribulations in primordial-era settings.

Quantity tribulation had long since been deconstructed by all kinds of fan interpretations. The most widely accepted version treated it as heaven-and-earth backlash.

Heaven and earth had primordial qi. When immortal gods lived long and devoured that qi, they created a deficit. Heaven and earth became unstable, and so a quantity tribulation erupted, forcing the immortals to vomit back the primordial qi they had consumed, to offer themselves as sacrifices and return everything to nature.

Put simply, it was there to kill immortals.

The many Illusory Realm planes here must each have carried some of the main world’s order with them when they were first cut off by Void Tribulation.

Order wasn’t abstract at all. On the contrary, it was very concrete.

If an entire landmass was sliced away as an Illusory Realm, then the solid land and flowing rivers were part of the order. The air drifting within it, the living sapients, even gravity and pull between bodies were all things that could be called order.

In the beginning, that order could run stably. It supported that Illusory Realm space, keeping it stable and able to house many sapient beings who could live and cultivate there.

But as time passed and the erosion of Void Tribulation grew worse, loss of order began to pollute it, and the entire space would gradually collapse.

For the Immortal Venerables who ruled the upper realm and made its rules, they might not care whether a given Illusory Realm lived or died.

One Illusory Realm collapsed, they would simply find another.

Their first concern would always be their own cultivation, and whether their own power base could continue. Beyond that, whether their clans and bloodlines could remain strong and thriving.

What determined that was order.

Whether it was to escape Void Tribulation, to ensure their bloodlines could develop, or to keep climbing in the future and seek a way to touch the realm of mighty beings, they all had to squeeze into the main world.

Only, this so-called new method for shaping a divine pool actually required planting Demon Pools like the Head Shop?

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What kind of method was that?

At first, Bai Xiang was a little puzzled, but soon she recalled that mainstream cultivation in the upper realm followed Dao-Illusory methods.

Those Dao-Illusory methods used demonic power as their core, power that was pure loss of order. If one used such methods to shape a divine pool, and that pool’s very name matched Demon Pools, then the logic seemed clear. Were they trying to carve out a unique personal rule of loss of order in the world?

Something like a Demon Pool, the way every Demon Pool had its own independent rules?

With that thought, the sandstorms in Xizhou, the drought corpses in Luezou, the flood wells in Xuzhou, the colored mists in Zezhou, and the Head Shop Demon Pool in Maozhou all fell into place in Bai Xiang’s mind.

So that was it.

It wasn’t about killing people, nor simply about seizing territory.

It was about needing that order.

About needing to use that order as nourishment to grow their own divine pools of loss of order.

“What is Dao Lord Bai’s inclination?” Li Guangyuan fixed his gaze on her. “Immortal Venerable Ningyuan is known for keeping his word. That is public knowledge throughout the upper realm. As long as Dao Lord Bai is willing to join the Seven Illusory Heavens Alliance and lend us this land for our use, then once the matter is accomplished, Maozhou will still be your Maozhou. The seven Venerables, especially Immortal Venerable Ningyuan, will remember the favor and agree to help Dao Lord Bai block the Demon Court’s heaven patrols.”

Bai Xiang narrowed her eyes. “Heaven patrols of the Demon Court?”

“That was my oversight.” Li Guangyuan slapped his forehead. “Dao Lord Bai has never even heard of our alliance, so of course you wouldn’t know about the Demon Court.”

“The Demon Court in truth is…”

Slash.

His words cut off. Li Guangyuan stared blankly at Bai Xiang, his eyes full of shock and disbelief.

This…

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How was this possible…

How did she dare…

“You call them Immortal Venerables and Venerables. Yet for me, it’s only ‘Dao Lord Bai.’”

Bai Xiang took her hand off Feixiang Heaven’s hilt, picked up the tea bowl and sipped, and when she looked up again, her gaze was sharper than her sword.

“I can only conclude that you people have no respect for me at all.”

“You—”

Li Guangyuan’s eyes bulged. He wanted to say something more to rebuke her, but a straight line of blood had already appeared across his brow.

With a soft, splintering sound, his body collapsed, and the remnant of his soul was plucked up by Bai Xiang and crushed in her hand.

“Alliance?”

“Demon Court?”

Closing her eyes, Bai Xiang absorbed Li Guangyuan’s memory fragments. Her expression did not ripple.

She rose, tossed down a gold bill, and vanished from the spot.

At the same time, in Zezhou.

Abbess Li Sheng finished her meditation and slowly exhaled a stream of white breath.

Still no good.

Her brows knitted tighter.

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With only Bai Xiang’s few words and a copied Shenming Refining Qi Formula, she had barely managed to enter the door, yet everything still felt inefficient.

Should she move the mountain gate or not?

Abbess Li Sheng was still hesitating when noise suddenly sounded from outside.

“Yu Luo Heaven’s Yugu Gong of Taixu Monastery requests guidance in sword arts from the friends of Shangqing Dao.”

A shift of place and time, and a white-skinned young man in black robes arrived at the foot of Tianzhu Mountain, raising his voice toward the heights.

“Han Lie of Julong Circuit, having heard your Dao is skilled in flight, has come to pay his respects and request instruction.”

Nor were they the only ones.

“Disciple of Blood-Soul Heaven…”

“Changli Heaven, Yuanming Temple…”

“Wind-Calamity Heaven, Qinglan Immortal Sect…”

One figure after another, some with treasured swords and blades in hand, some with long spears and staves on their shoulders, appeared one by one at the mountain gates of the Nine Prefectures’ nine circuits, openly provoking and demanding duels.

In an instant, wind and cloud were thrown into turmoil. Within the shroud of the blackened sky, countless dark clouds gathered and rolled.

Just as Bai Xiang had predicted.

The heavens over Great Yu, the heavens over the Nine Provinces.

After three months, they had finally changed.