Volume 4, Chapter 14 – Ice and Fire

For the Huiling who lived in the main world, this June was a month of Loss of Order.

First, in early June, celestial signs and the climate began to change more violently. Things like “daytime turning to night” and “early summer feeling like deep winter” happened often. One moment gale-force winds, the next lightning tearing across the sky, yet it would not necessarily pour rain every time.

When it turned hot, it was brutally hot, like the height of late summer. When it turned cold, it was bitterly cold, like midwinter in February. The weather was far too strange.

Then there was the vegetation… All the plants across the territory of the Nine Provinces were growing wildly, at more than ten times their former rate. This did bring some benefits, such as easing the urgent food crisis after many Dao cities were “fortified into strongholds.” But it also brought the huge hidden danger of “vegetation encroachment.” State governments everywhere had to keep sending people out to clear plants that crossed the boundaries, and these days they were driven half mad with the workload.

Next came the fact that the concept of the Illusory Realms was made public for the first time.

Not in the sense of allowing it to circulate as a rumor that people could mention in a low voice on certain public occasions. It was pushed directly online by the Court itself. Any machine connected to the net could look it up, and this set off a storm of discussion among the common folk.

“Illusory Realms? I knew it, that ‘other world’ I saw when I was little was real! Mom, come look! You all wouldn’t believe me before!”

“So that’s how it is… I said last time Teacher Cao’s survey parameters were off. There was a segment that looked like it had been swallowed. Now it seems that segment was where an Illusory Realm existed… We really were blessed and lucky to get out of there!”

“Captain, come look at this thing. I think it might be very useful for us when we head into the wild in the future…”

“Is this real or not? Illusory Realms? So the Demon Kingdom and all those Aberrations really came from these sources?”

All across the Nine Provinces, the public announcement of the Illusory Realms stirred up heated debate. It did resolve quite a few people’s doubts and gave them a more concrete understanding of the world. Among them, the sharp-minded caught a faint whiff that the situation was not ordinary and tried hard to figure out the reason for making this secret public.

With Great Yu’s usual level of information control, there was no way they would have laid things out so openly before. For them to suddenly act against type and publish it this time struck many as odd, and some even felt uneasy.

Their unease was, in fact, justified.

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By mid-June, the Office of Rites and the Sword Dao Association had posted a notice online stating that the Shangqing Sword Dao in Zezhou had been challenged by a swordsman from a nation within the Illusory Realms.

The man called himself “Yu Gong of Taixu Monastery.” He defeated over a dozen experts of the Shangqing Dao in succession. Even “Wuyouzi Zhao Jinyan” lost to him. In the end, another personal disciple of Abbess Li Sheng, Leng Qiu, stepped out, rode a thunder dragon into battle, and forced him to concede, his sword left sheathed.

Because the duel broke out so suddenly, neither Qingze University nor the Zezhou State Chancery had time to make preparations. As a result, quite a few people watched the entire sword bout from a neighboring mountaintop. Some of the footage, shot in high definition, was remarkably clear. As soon as it appeared, it spread wildly across the net.

This was exactly the kind of news the public loved. In recent days, disasters had brought lockdowns everywhere, and information control was extremely strict. At long last, they had some gossip they could discuss openly, and it involved the most attention-grabbing and curiosity-piquing figure of all kinds of gossip: a Sword Dao prodigy. Many online media outlets immediately ran huge headlines such as, “Purple Lightning Rips the Sky! Shangqing’s Successor Emerges!”

The incident sent Leng Qiu’s reputation soaring. The people began calling her the “Purple Lightning Sword” and the “Racing Thunder Sword.” Her ranking on the Splendid Beauty List shot up rapidly, and many people from other states finally remembered her name.

What many had not expected was that this was only the beginning.

Very soon, the Office of Rites and the Sword Dao Association started issuing one public notice after another.

Today, the Red Dust Dao was challenged. Tomorrow, someone showed up at the Frightened Bamboo Sword Dao to kick their signboard… Battle after battle, name after name. People suddenly realized that the online gossip was coming so fast that they could not keep up. The entire latter half of June was spent talking about these “Illusory Realm experts.” Various headlines and trending topics dominated the charts. All levels of society joined in the frenzy.

“Who on earth is this ‘Han Lie’? And where is this Julong Dao? They can actually raise such a disciple, someone who can force so many in the Frightened Bamboo line to concede in the Path of Flight?”

“‘Jiang Taiping’ of Blood Soul Heaven is amazing too! They’re both twenty-nine, but that ‘Dingyan’ from Mingyuan Temple only beat Sword Head Luo Fang of the Hantian line. Jiang Taiping went straight to challenge the Hantian Dao Master and only lost by a narrow margin. That kid’s future is limitless!”

“Benling Sword Dao lost as well. Sure, Dao Master Wang Ran never took the field and barely saved a bit of face, but does that mean our Qizhou has no young powerhouse who can step up?”

“At least Benling has an excuse and can say their Sword Head wasn’t around. But Yuming Sword Dao and Jinlin Sword Dao were beaten so badly they could not even salvage a shred of dignity.”

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“Especially Yuming! Even their Dao Master lost?”

“What is going on with that Yuming Dao Master? From the news before, wasn’t the one sitting there supposed to be a beautiful big sister?”

“Who knows… I don’t recognize a single person from Yuming. I haven’t even gone into winter hibernation yet, and my memory is already failing?”

“There is definitely something wrong with Yuming Sword Dao. It is like the entire upper echelon has been swapped out.”

These were the people who only cared about combat strength and the Splendid Beauty List rankings.

“Julong Dao, Blood Soul Heaven, Changli Heaven… Have you noticed? The way these people report their affiliations follows a pattern. It usually starts with some ‘xx Heaven,’ and then their dojo name comes after.”

“‘xx Heaven’ seems to be what they call the Illusory Realms themselves, doesn’t it?”

“Well, of course. If you lived in the Illusory Realms, would you really label yourself ‘Illusory Realm people’? That is just how we outsiders describe them.”

“Exactly! It is like no disciple of a demonic sect would introduce themselves out loud with ‘we, the Demon Sect’ as their title.”

These were the people who would devour any gossip they could find and loved to dissect every bit of information.

Others dove straight into conspiracy theories, loudly discussing how these Illusory Realm nations that had suddenly appeared would harm Great Yu. Almost every provincial TV station assembled dedicated program teams, inviting experts and scholars to research and debate. The atmosphere was heated to the extreme.

In this climate, sharp-eyed people noticed that a few areas of the Nine Provinces still remained low-key.

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One was naturally Yujing and the Northern Border. The fighting in the north grew more intense by the day. Although the spread of news was banned, you could tell from the way supplies were being requisitioned everywhere to support the front. If the Northern Border could handle things alone, why would they need others to reinforce them?

Very few Illusory Realm experts were heading north. Only one disciple of the Qinglan Immortal Sect, “Ge Xi,” went to challenge Yuming Sword Dao. He did not act rashly again, and their entire duel took place in the wilderness south of Yujing.

Another area was the newly developed tenth state, the Mao State Chancery.

If the three states of the Northern Border were still troubled and people could quietly debate whether the long-standing Northern Border Demon Kingdom had always been an overpowered Illusory Realm nation, then Mao State was completely silent.

No one challenged it.

No one paid attention to it.

In this wave of excitement, it seemed almost forgotten by the world. Even its regional network had yet to be reconnected.

It was not that no one thought this strange. Some time ago, people online had been arguing nonstop about whether that so-called new Path of Qi was reliable. Back then, Mao State had been at the center of the conversation. In particular, that young and beautiful Shenming Dao Master attracted plenty of attention. Even people who did not care about anything else would still follow her news.

Those people went online to raise their questions and wondered why no Illusory Realm experts dared to challenge Mao State, to challenge the newly promoted Mountains-and-Rivers-ranked Shenming Sword Dao.

But even more people blasted them with curses.

“‘Dared’? Wrong choice of words there, buddy.”

“They clearly just look down on it, and you are out here bragging for them.”

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“That Path of Qi does not work, I am telling you. If it did, the Court would have promoted it long ago. How could there still be so much controversy?”

“Dao Master Bai may indeed be very talented, but she is too young. Her true combat strength is still open to question.”

Thanks to the earlier information controls, especially the brief network outages caused by natural disasters everywhere, what happened on the Jing River Plain had not spread widely.

All of these comments were allowed and tacitly tolerated. Under this trend, Mao State and Shenming were quickly abandoned by public opinion and drowned in indifference and doubt.

Faced with this situation, there were only two places where ordinary people kept silent.

One was Qizhou.

Although Bai Xiang had led Shenming Sword Dao out to found a new base and become the heart of Zhen’nan, the new state capital, many in Qizhou had been blessed by her earlier than anyone else. They would not forget how she crushed the Southern King’s rebellion and saved them from the Demon-Immortal Dao and other evil cultists.

They did want to speak up in her defense, but their numbers were too small. They could only remain silent for the time being.

The other was Mao State itself.

The reason for their silence was simple.

Compared to the frenzy outside, the people of Mao State were still offline.