Volume 4, Chapter 52 – Connections

Carrying Liu Yong all the way back, Bai Xiang returned to the south gate and saw that the entire area had already been sealed off by the Inspectorate.

And it was not just the Inspectorate. Large numbers of Shenming disciples were also stationed all around in ordered ranks. Quite a few of them had even put specially made bulletproof vests on over their disciple robes, which made for a rather awkward sight.

“Auntie!” Bai Zhuqing had been waiting for her all along on the city wall, and was the first to go up to greet her when she landed. “I heard from Grandpa that everything’s been settled… Who exactly were those people?”

At first she only swept a glance over Liu Yong, whom Bai Xiang was carrying in one hand. After that, she did not look at him again. Her eyes remained fixed on Bai Xiang’s face, looking left and right, trying to find out whether she had been injured anywhere.

But the wound on Bai Xiang’s face had already healed completely. It had only ever been a tiny cut.

Even the blood and brain matter that had splashed out when she blew open Immortal Venerable Jiuli’s head had been cleaned away with the Vibration Art. Looking at her like this, the girl naturally could not make anything out. All she saw was that her elder sister’s clothes were spotless, making it seem as though the fight had not involved much danger at all.

“It was Blood Soul Heaven.” Bai Xiang handed Liu Yong over to Xu Shu at her side, letting this “guiding senior brother” look after him. As they walked, she briefly recounted the intelligence she had learned. “There is something unusual about Liu Yong. Those people definitely have some hidden scheme in mind.”

“Blood Soul Heaven?” Bai Zhuqing frowned slightly after hearing this, and for a moment did not reply, as though she had fallen into thought.

Blood Soul Heaven… At present, if one looked at the demonic disasters connected to this force, the Blood Sea on the northern frontier definitely counted as one. Then there was also Southern King Yao Qingyuan. The rebellion of Yao Qingyuan had been instigated by these people from behind the scenes. They were the true masterminds behind the demon chaos in the lands of Qi and the fall of Chilong Dao.

And there were traces of their involvement in many other matters too, such as the divine-vein demon infiltration incident and the Ancient Demon-Erosion Order revival incident.

If I remember right, didn’t Big Sister also attribute those regime changes in the Federation countries to Blood Soul Heaven before? What exactly are these people trying to do?

By this point the two of them had already gotten into the car. Bai Xiang had originally planned to fly back directly, but then she thought that everything had already been dealt with, so there was no need to rush. She might as well make those three envoys wait a little longer.

“Auntie.” Bai Zhuqing suddenly said to her, “I’ve been thinking… Could these people be planning to keep reviving ancient demons?”

“That’s possible.” Bai Xiang nodded as she drove. Then she suddenly turned her head and glanced at Bai Zhuqing. “What, do you suspect Liu Yong is the reincarnation of some ancient demon?”

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As in, maybe he carried some kind of bloodline within him?

Bai Xiang did not think the coincidence went that far.

If she had to guess, she would say that Liu Yong probably had some connection with Qingping Dao, or else with Suzhen Dao, or even with the Yu Emperor Sacred Dynasty.

It looked like a stretch, but one could not forget that before Liu Yong emerged into notice, there had already been a process of selection. Qin Wuyang’s personal sword had chosen him of its own accord and secretly passed down a Qingping method to him.

Other things could be explained away as coincidence, but that matter alone was no coincidence.

That had been a sword carrying the root method of Qingping. Even after Bai Xiang had cut it into two pieces back then, stripping away most of its wondrous functions, the fact that it had been permeated by Qin Wuyang’s demonic power alone meant that it was not something an ordinary person could even touch.

Yet Liu Yong had not merely touched those swords. He had been the first person to find them.

Could there be some kind of necessary connection hidden in all this?

At present, she still lacked enough information.

But there was one thing she could be sure of. The first Qingping Sword Lord had originally come out of Suzhen. Qingping and Suzhen could just barely be considered of the same root and source.

If Liu Yong’s birth and bloodline were connected to Qingping Dao, then he would inevitably also be connected to Suzhen Dao.

And when that was combined with the fact that Suzhen Dao had long had some murky, ambiguous ties with the imperial house during the sixteen hundred years of rule under the Yu Emperor Sacred Dynasty, then her guess could at least be said to have some logic and foundation. It was by no means pure fantasy.

After all, what she had seen back then was dragon qi.

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Purple-gold dragon qi. The implications of that thing were far too strong. In countless novels and illustrated tales, it was almost always a sign of imperial fate. She could hardly avoid thinking along those lines.

If that was really the case, then Blood Soul Heaven had not been trying to seize Liu Yong for the sake of The Taishang Slaying-Emotions Life-Preserving Scripture.

They had really been cautious too. First they had used the Lishan Sword Sect, which also cultivated the Emotion-Slaying Sword, and then the Xuandi Scripture as smokescreens, seemingly afraid that anyone might see through their true purpose here.

But what could they do with Liu Yong?

Did he really have dragon qi?

Surely they were not planning to do something like the stories in those fantasy immortal dynasties, backing a proxy to compete for fate and fortune?

By contrast, Bai Zhuqing did not know the inside details, so her guess was a shallower one. She had merely drawn an association from the Ancient Demon-Erosion Order affair and wondered whether Blood Soul Heaven was systematically searching for, and reviving, other ancient demons.

“I don’t mean that he’s an ancient demon reincarnated…” Bai Zhuqing said hesitantly. “It’s just… I looked through the materials submitted by Miss Aurora. From childhood until now, Liu Yong has encountered a total of forty-seven demon incidents. That number is a bit too high.”

Forty-seven times?

Among common people, phrases like demon disaster, demon incident, and demon chaos were often used interchangeably. Bai Zhuqing was no exception. But from the context here, the true subject of those incidents was demon pools, not demon beasts.

People always said that if you walked the night roads often enough, sooner or later you’d run into ghosts. Living in a modern city and walking through forests of steel, a normal person would always encounter a few such things in life, whether it was ghostly walls or ghostly night howls.

But forty-seven times was far too exaggerated… especially when he had survived all of them.

Did he have some special constitution that attracted demon pools?

Come to think of it, looked at this way, it did make sense to suspect that he possessed demon blood.

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“When your Grand Master comes back, tell her about this.” Bai Xiang said.

“Mm.” Bai Zhuqing nodded. She knew that what Bai Xiang really meant was that Liu Yong was going to be “used for experiments.”

He probably would not be dissected into slices or anything like that, but all kinds of physical exams and blood draws were definitely unavoidable. At the thought of it, she could not help feeling a bit eager.

After assigning the task, Bai Xiang led the group back to the mountain gate dojo. She was planning to go question those envoys from the Illusory Realms in detail and ask them exactly what major things Blood Soul Heaven had done in the Upper Realm.

At the same time, in outer space, on a floating boulder in planetary orbit, on its dark side, a bare-chested young man sat cross-legged inside an impact crater, apparently engaged in breath cultivation.

As he inhaled and exhaled, currents of ice and fire alternated in being expelled from his mouth, yet even in the vacuum they were unaffected.

Suddenly, he opened his eyes and stared fixedly at the space ahead. A twist appeared there, revealing a small robot that had just dropped its optical camouflage.

“Greetings, Dao Enforcer Cui.” A metallic voice came from within the little robot. “I am the angel ‘Whistle’ of the Blood Soul Heaven Intelligence Division.”

The fact that this thing’s voice could travel through the vacuum showed that it was clearly no ordinary mechanical creation.

“I’ll give you ten breaths to leave this place.” Cui Yuanhao’s tone was icy. “I have no interest in discussing anything with your people.”

“Dao Enforcer Cui, you are too attached to appearances.” The little robot was not angered at all. “Surely Dao Enforcer Cui wishes to wipe away his past humiliation and reclaim his lost opportunity?”

Bang!

Cui Yuanhao clenched his fist, and even the vacuum cracked with an explosive report.

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But he still kept himself under control and did not actually smash the little robot into scrap metal.

“What exactly does Blood Soul Heaven want?”

He stared at the thing and asked it word by word.

Talking like this, are they trying to help me?

But he had lost the Tianxuan Sword, and his own Dao methods had regressed badly. To put it bluntly, he did not believe there was anything about his current self that Blood Soul Heaven would have any use for.

“Dao Enforcer Cui need not belittle himself.” The little robot circled around Cui Yuanhao back and forth, quietly passing some sort of information to him.

“…Is that true?” Cui Yuanhao’s eyes flickered after hearing it, but he still reacted with instinctive suspicion.

“We have no need to lie, do we?”

“Fine.” Cui Yuanhao nodded.

He actually agreed just like that.

After all, there was nothing much left for him to lose.

If he failed, then he would have no face left to return to Tianfu Mountain anyway.