Volume 4, Chapter 67 – Arrival

After finishing some of the games installed on the vessel, Bai Xiang asked the Jade Spirit for the time and found that nearly ten hours had already passed.

As expected, if the only requirement was killing time, no genre of game could compare to construction and management games.

The trip to Shenwu Heaven, assuming Shenwu Heaven had not actively shifted and changed its coordinates, would take close to twenty hours even with Bai Xiang piloting the vessel herself and not needing to avoid dangerous passages along the way.

She had made that clear to Guo Rongzhi before departure, and Guo Rongzhi had arranged games for her on the assumption that the trip would last at least sixty hours. But most games posed no difficulty for the Jade Spirit, especially the action, fighting, and AI-versus categories. Bai Xiang only sampled those briefly before setting them aside.

And the reason she had to rely on games to pass the time, the reason she did not sleep or nap in the cabin, and did not sink her mind into further cultivation, was that she had to account for the possibility of an invasion by Void Demons.

By now she already knew that Void Demons were roughly the higher form of demon pools. If demon pools were “certain supernatural phenomena born when the soul-energy of sentient beings from the main-world plane, after death, failed to disperse and was interfered with by Void Tribulation, with only a tiny minority able to awaken intelligence again and reach the legendary ultimate boundary of wisdom,” then the greatest difference between Void Demons and demon pools was that they were subject to far greater interference from Void Tribulation.

It was like one side receiving ultraviolet radiation under the protection of the atmosphere, while the other endured every kind of cosmic radiation outside the atmosphere. The danger produced by the two could not be compared. The latter was naturally far more severe.

“According to the information provided by Sun Yaoming, Daoist Fengxu, Jing Lanyu, Monk Mibu, and the others, combined with the residual memories left behind by Wu Qing and his group, it can be confirmed that there are not many Void Demons with subjective intelligence. In that respect, they are rather similar to demon pools.”

While controlling her game character to produce resources and buy the corresponding assets on the market, Bai Xiang thought about the “soul-eroding Void Demons” that Daoist Fengxu and the others had mentioned.

Just as demon pools also came in many varieties, and the Illusory God effects each could produce were different, Void Demons were divided into ordinary Void Demons and soul-eroding Void Demons.

Ordinary Void Demons were closer to demon pools. They too were subdivided into many types, and so long as one saw through and broke the rules within a Void Demon field, most cases ceased to be dangerous, or at the very least one could escape with one’s life.

But soul-eroding Void Demons were different. Although such Void Demons did not possess subjective intelligence, they already had the instincts of living beings. They did not have any messy rules. Invading the souls of sentient beings, contaminating them, and even replacing their consciousness, that was the inborn instinct of every soul-eroding Void Demon.

Seen that way, they were closer to the “heavenly demons” of ordinary xianxia stories.

An invasion by a soul-eroding Void Demon usually came without a trace. Very often, the victim would remain compromised for a long time without being able to notice anything through their own power. And if it dragged on too long, their spirit could be completely eroded. At that point, the cultivator’s subjective consciousness would become like a spectator in its own body, lucid at times and muddled at others, forced in its lucid moments to watch the soul-eroding Void Demon manipulate the body into committing all sorts of horrifying acts.

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Once matters reached the late stage, the cultivator as a whole would become a “Loss of Order bomb.” That was exactly what happened to Xu Heqing of Lishan Sword Sect: his mind was completely usurped by a Void Demon, and he meant to spread the contamination of Loss of Order inside him through self-destruction.

That was how terrifying it was. That was why, even in the world of the Illusory Realms, so many cultivators turned pale at the mention of soul erosion.

Even for Bai Xiang, this thing could not be called entirely harmless, because she had noticed that invasions by soul-eroding Void Demons usually came with no obvious warning signs. She had therefore made a conjecture: was this kind of invasion successful precisely when a cultivator let their thoughts drift?

For example, during cultivation.

Or during sleep.

Because cultivators generally had condensed souls and firm consciousness, most of them did not dream. Even so, their subjective guard still weakened during such processes. No amount of precaution could truly change that.

And my soul-ability can only take effect once I myself become actively aware that I am being invaded.

To prevent myself from being ambushed, I have to remain awake throughout this journey.

Whenever she faced this kind of possible danger, Bai Xiang was always overly cautious.

“The time for the first stretch of the journey should be about up.” She suddenly frowned. “But why haven’t I seen the void passage that should already be here?”

“Passage” was a term the cultivators of Shenwu Heaven had long since worn out. It referred to roads like the Blood Sea and the Blood Abyss, roads that covered a wider range but held even greater dangers within.

At present, the formation of such roads was attributed either to minor Void Tribulations or to turbulent winds. Several such “shortcuts” were recorded in the void formation diagrams held by Shenwu Heaven’s cultivators, but because they lacked the strength, they did not dare choose those routes.

Minor Void Tribulations would intensify the phenomenon of Loss of Order, which meant a higher chance of Void Demons, and of soul-eroding Void Demons, existing nearby.

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And turbulent winds might blow over filthy things that had already taken shape over many years. Wu Qing’s group did not have an Immortal Venerable protecting them, so even when Bai Xiang had finally driven them into a corner, they had only dared risk following the Blood Abyss for the last leg of the journey.

Bai Xiang, however, did dare to look for those shortcuts. Yet the void passage that should have appeared within ordinary sight by now still did not show itself, making her wonder whether something was wrong with certain people’s memories.

What could be the reason…

After waiting a while longer, Bai Xiang asked the Jade Spirit for the time again and learned that eleven hours had already passed.

Suddenly, on a whim, she called up the game interface on the computer. She found that according to the machine’s own calculations, only nine hours had passed.

So that was it.

Bai Xiang understood at once. This too, it seemed, was an effect of Loss of Order.

Interference strong enough to distort space. At this level, she should not be too far from that void passage.

So she continued piloting the vessel through the void. When the machine’s timer finally reached the expected time, Bai Xiang looked out the window again and, sure enough, caught sight of a hidden vortex ahead.

It was a “celestial body” formed from deep purple and violet-black currents. The size of just one of its spiral arms surpassed the largest planet in her memory. The closer she drew to it, the more keenly Bai Xiang felt that sense of emptiness, vastness, and even grandeur.

Then her eyes flashed. Her right hand, which looked as though it were wrapped in black silk gloves but in truth was covered by the battlesuit, shot upward, as if clutching something in midair.

“Kee!”

The unknown existence revealed its true form. It was a semi-transparent soul-body, humanoid except with the legs removed, making it somewhat ghost-like in shape. Then, on top of that, it had undergone a sort of biochemical mutation, becoming a bizarre monster with claws bared, its abdominal cavity piled with skulls and bone fragments, and a long tail outlined by tiny skeletal shards like the larval tail of some alien creature.

This thing… could actually pass through the protective layer of the void vessel?

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Bai Xiang held it in her grip and studied it for a moment. Seeing that the vessel’s hull was not damaged in the slightest, she guessed that it might be one of the legendary soul-eroding Void Demons.

Soul-eroding Void Demons had no fixed form. Even the same soul-eroding Void Demon, when observed by different sentient beings, would appear slightly different.

After a moment’s thought, Bai Xiang simply crushed the soul-body. It let out a shriek and burst apart, turning into strands of gray energy that drifted off into the void.

Back before the Three Flowers, she would have needed to borrow the power of Feixiang Heaven to do something like this.

But now it was different. The condensation of the divine flower had transformed her soul along with it. Now she needed neither her soul-ability nor Feixiang Heaven’s devouring power. The soul-force radiating from Bai Xiang alone was enough to shred a soul-body like this.

After shredding it, she tried spreading her thoughts out to make contact with the strands of gray energy drifting through the void.

Did Void Demons have memories too?

She needed some sense of that.

The first strand of gray energy merged with her wandering thoughts. In that instant, Bai Xiang’s brows knit tightly, and her gaze went slightly vacant.

When she came back to herself, she did not try touching the gray energy again.

Hollow memories drifting through the void…

If that could even be called memory, it was something better consumed as little as possible.

Rumble…

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The vessel’s hull began to shudder. The vortex had drawn too close, and under the pull of a certain force, the vessel was being compelled to accelerate.

That acceleration reached a terrifying level within a matter of seconds. Bai Xiang did not even get a clear look at the scenery in between. The next moment, she felt the vessel flung away by a gigantic force, tumbling end over end through the void before finally steadying itself again after quite some time.

And she went through that experience three times on the road.

After shredding the fifteenth soul-eroding Void Demon, and also slaying an unknown Void Demon with the Tianxuan Sword along the way, Bai Xiang saw a shattered rock standing in the void ahead. Most of it was shrouded in violet-black haze, flickering in and out beneath illusory light.

It was one of the few things in the darkness that had any color. Her spirits lifted. She drove the vessel forward at speed, pierced straight through the hazy mist, and the next moment felt the scene before her suddenly brighten. Everything she saw was blood-red.

Below lay a height of a thousand meters, and she could just make out the vast earth.

But the heavens were not the clear blue they should have been in memory. Instead, they were this blood-red color, disturbing to the heart just to look at.

“So they actually didn’t change locations…?”

Bai Xiang found that a little surprising.

She did not know what had happened here, what unexpected turn had caused that Emperor Wu neither to flee nor attempt to seek revenge on her for killing his son.

But this should be the place.

Shenwu Heaven.

She had finally arrived.