Volume 4, Chapter 47 – Reinforcements

Whoosh—

Riding a dark-jade treasured sword, the unfamiliar female Immortal Venerable who had attacked Bai Zhuqing sped through the mountains with Liu Yong in her grasp. Yet her speed was not much greater than that of a Divine Fetus cultivator as understood in the main world.

“Damn it… the order here is far too rigid!” A look of resentment appeared on her face, mixed with deep confusion. “She couldn’t possibly have had any information on me, so how did she see through my ‘face-grafting’ art at a glance?”

Beep, beep—

A voice came through the earpiece worn by this body: [Mantis? Hello? Are you still alive?]

“Cut the crap!” the female Immortal Venerable snapped through gritted teeth. “Where’s the promised ‘Silver-Shuttle Vessel’? I took the risk of getting killed to bring the man here, and she’s still chasing me from behind… You need to take responsibility for all of this!”

[So you’ve switched bodies, have you…] A frivolous whistle came from the other side. [My, my. From the moment we heard that huge blast until now, it hasn’t even been three minutes, has it? To have been forced to use your ‘spare body’ after such a short interval, Mingche, you really aren’t cutting it—]

“If you enjoy making sarcastic remarks, come try it yourself.” The female Immortal Venerable sneered. “I’ll warn you up front: she’s very different from what everyone expected.”

[Now that is a thorny problem.] The other’s tone stretched slightly. [To be honest, when I was preparing the plan, I already built in some advance margin, but for things to become this tense still far exceeded my expectations… Is she really that freakish?]

[Didn’t I already have you waiting that far away? And on top of that, I had a spirit-eroding Void Demon implanted in Xu Heqing to keep her tied down… and she still discovered you and caught up?]

This time, before the female Immortal Venerable could sneer again, the male voice on the call murmured to himself: [Since she was able to defeat Cui Yuanhao while he wielded a ‘lower-tier Dao armament,’ then her bodily strength and her ability to maintain relentless pressure should both be up to standard.]

[And if she can also see through your ‘face-grafting’… then dealing with someone like that is very troublesome.]

“Either send someone who greatly surpasses her in one particular area, or find someone more proficient than her in every respect.” The female Immortal Venerable snorted. “Otherwise, don’t blame me for not warning you. She may… hm?”

Halfway through speaking, she suddenly turned her head. Her body spiraled in midair along her forward momentum, but before she could completely avoid the sword force behind her, the sharp blade tore away the entire left half of her arm and shoulder.

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“Damn it!” she snarled. “Where are the reinforcements?”

[They’re already here.] The man’s voice in the earpiece had grown heavy as well. [Just as you wanted, the one we sent is a real expert too.]

At the same time, both the female Immortal Venerable and the pursuing Bai Xiang sensed an enormous shadow spread over their heads. Bai Xiang’s clone looked up and saw that, at some unknown point, a tear had been ripped open in the sky above. From within that void-rift, a gigantic silver shuttle a thousand meters long was emerging—apparently some kind of flying vessel.

“So that’s her.”

Inside the cabin of the flying vessel, Bai Xiang’s image was transmitted at the same time onto a projection formed of light-mist. The light-mist came entirely from inscribed jades arranged in a regular pattern all around the chamber. They had been neatly positioned into a large spherical formation, supported only at the base by a ring-shaped metal framework.

As that voice sounded, an indistinct silhouette entirely shrouded in light-mist spoke faintly. Though no one could see the figure’s full appearance, every cultivator working inside the chamber could feel a sharp “gaze” sweep across them and lock firmly onto the sphere of light-mist.

“Golden pupils, white hair. It should be her.” Without waiting for anyone else to respond, the silhouette continued speaking to itself. “Those wastes from the Feathering Sect finally managed to do something useful!”

“Exalted One!” A cultivator nearby hurriedly reminded him, “Young Master Shao said that there was no need to confront her head-on… our goal is only—”

“Hm?” With that cold snort, the “gaze” shifted and fell upon the speaker. The unlucky man had no ability to resist whatsoever. He only felt that both his body and the surrounding space had been locked by a force, then cracked apart little by little. In the end, with a bang, he exploded into fragments like shattered glass.

“Since when was it a worm’s place to instruct me in how I act!” The silhouette stepped out of the light-mist, revealing a long-haired youth with an unruly face.

“You lot are nothing but the transporters who brought me here. Stay above and watch in peace!”

With a second step, the arrogant youth vanished with a whoosh. The next instant, he intercepted himself directly in the path Bai Xiang had to take, appearing in the form of light-mist, and threw a punch at her.

Bai Xiang did not slow down. Her body twisted in midair, converting the force of her forward flight as she angled past with one shoulder. Flicking her wrist, she rotated her arm as though wielding a mountain-cleaving axe and chopped out with a sword strike.

Void-Imagination Shenming Sword, Mountain-Cleaving Form!

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Clang—!

Slash!

At first, the point where sword and fist met burst out with a great bell-like hum. In the next instant, Bai Xiang and the youth both changed expression slightly as they watched the arm that had taken the sword fail to split apart. It had only been cut by the sharp Qi-Origin into a series of shallow wounds.

Whoosh!

Bai Xiang stopped. The roadblock before her and the fleeing female Immortal Venerable also stopped in unison. The two sides fell into a midair standoff.

“So this too is part of the ‘plan’?” Bai Xiang raised her head again and glanced at the giant flying vessel hanging overhead before asking coolly, “What relationship do you have with the Feathering Sect?”

This was not some difficult chain of logic to make. It was obvious that everything that had happened today had a certain causal connection with the recent invasion of Maozhou by large numbers of people from the Illusory Realms.

Not one of those fools had possessed the cultivation of an Immortal Venerable. Even if they had not known the result of her battle with Cui Yuanhao, at the very least they should have known that the forces of the Shenwu Immortal Dynasty had been beaten back by her. And yet, despite that, they still dared to infiltrate this place while clinging to a gambler’s hope. In Bai Xiang’s view, there were only a few possible explanations.

One of them was that someone who understood her relatively well had sold out her information and intelligence.

Who could it be?

If someone had directly used the Xuandi Scripture to stir up these people’s greed, then no matter how she thought about it, only the Feathering Sect made sense.

Those idiots who had strayed onto an evil path—she had yet to settle accounts with them for working with people from Shenwu Heaven to scheme against Maozhou, and they had already turned around and traded information about her for something else.

What could they possibly know?

She had nothing that could really be sold.

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“You’re not stupid.” The arrogant youth narrowed his eyes. “Let me introduce myself. My name is ‘Jiuli.’ The world calls me ‘Immortal Venerable Jiuli.'”

Bai Xiang said nothing.

He looked young, no more than fifteen or sixteen by appearance, but from that single clash just now, it was obvious that he walked a pure body-cultivation path—the kind of mad body cultivator who had excavated hidden orifices and tempered his flesh to a terrifying degree.

For a cultivator like that, after becoming a Venerable, reshaping the body the way a Nascent Soul could was indeed possible.

And once one further took divine pool laws and the factor of clones into account, that apparent age meant nothing.

“Jiuli?”

Bai Xiang did not understand the significance of that name, but the one-armed female Immortal Venerable gave a slight start.

That mad body cultivator who had been stirring up storms in the Yinsha Sea… how had they gotten the channels to bring in this god of slaughter?

[Our capabilities are far greater than you imagine~]

The voice in the earpiece was still taking credit.

[Well? Wasn’t this an unexpectedly powerful reinforcement?]

[Make your decision, Sister Mingche.]

[Join us. From now on, wherever you go, you can choose powerful partners. Just think about how long you’ve spent hiding from place to place… How long has it been since you got to freely ‘graft faces’ to your heart’s content in the vast world?]

[Don’t blame me for saying this… but suppressing that desire hinders your cultivation too, doesn’t it?]

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Hmph…

Immortal Venerable Mingche’s expression shifted repeatedly, yet she lacked the confidence to refute him.

“I don’t know you.”

At just that moment, Bai Xiang’s cold voice drifted over on the gale.

Looking again at the white-haired woman standing in the void before them, Mingche saw Bai Xiang’s golden pupils open wide as she casually lowered her sword toward them and said, one word at a time, “You forcibly abducted a disciple of my Dao and slaughtered lives wantonly within my dojo.”

“Every last one of you… deserves to die.”

“You—”

Before the arrogant youth could show either shock or fury, Bai Xiang flicked her wrist in the next instant. A fierce vibration-force suddenly spread through the entire airspace, as though an area that forbade both flight and sound had unfolded. Not even the slightest sound-wave could escape it.

Then, while unbelievable shock and astonishment spread across the faces of the two Immortal Venerables—as well as the many cultivators inside the flying vessel above—one blue tribulation lotus after another rapidly gathered in the sky… more and more, denser and denser.

Then they bloomed.

In absolute silence, without the slightest sound or motion, they burst into magnificent bloom over the mountains of the southern region.