Volume 4, Chapter 77 – Subjugation

Shenquan had been closely watching Bai Xiang pursue them. When he saw that her first target was Zhu Canghai, joy rose in his heart, and even his flight slowed by a fraction.

But he had not expected Zhu Canghai to be such useless trash. He could not even withstand a single sword strike from Bai Xiang. Not only was his life-bound Dao sword, the Jinque Sword, smashed apart by her through sheer brute force and the power of a holy weapon, he himself was sent flying who knew how many hundreds of meters away. He had barely bought Shenquan any time to escape at all.

And now, faced with Bai Xiang’s fully wound-up sword stroke sweeping down at him, he simply did not dare take it head-on. He could only keep twisting his body in midair, trying to dodge, only to find that no matter how he twisted or which direction he turned, the sword edge followed him like a shadow, as though he had been completely locked in.

This was going too far!

Gritting his teeth, Shenquan once again brought out that square white jade seal and drove it through the air in a curve, sending it straight at Bai Xiang’s cheek.

Bai Xiang changed moves. With a flick of her wrist, she used the Vibration Art to drive the Tianxuan Sword into releasing a broad arc of sword qi. The qi took on the outline of a sacred bird in midair and slashed toward Shenquan. At the same time, her body spun once in the air, her shoulder pulling the sword back in a reverse arc, and brought it crashing down right into the center of the seal.

Boom!!!

A transparent shockwave erupted in midair, spreading outward in ripples. The blood-red sky and the filthy clouds above were forcibly scattered apart. The floating islands nearby either shattered outright or fell from the sky. Even the earth nearly a thousand meters below rippled like water, splitting outward from the point of impact.

At the same time, Shenquan was struck by the sword qi.

He truly could not evade the qi lock, so just before the blade of qi hit him, he twisted around and revealed a heavy shell across his back, trying to use it to take the blow head-on.

But with a splurt, the shell was cut into by the sword qi and only barely managed to jam it halfway through. Shenquan, enduring the pain, still wanted to turn back around, but in the next instant an even sharper agony tore through his spine. The bird-shaped sword qi exploded apart, spraying blood and blasting off the outer layer of his shell, exposing the flesh, hide, and membranes of his back in a bloody ruin. He let out an involuntary scream and spun downward through the air.

By then, Bai Xiang had already smashed apart the seal. The instant she saw what had happened, she followed up at once. Her sword light fell in rapid succession like a chain of brilliant strokes, chopping Shenquan’s flesh body apart in midair into tofu-sized chunks. Then she rolled her qi into a whirl and ground it all into bloody mist.

“Aaaah!!!”

Shenquan’s soul-shadow fled from the air. It was a mottled python wrapped in a black tortoise shell. As it screamed and rose upward, it shrieked at Bai Xiang in hatred, “You dare break the Sacred Court’s rules. Just wait. I will report you to the Sacred Court myself!”

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Bai Xiang raised her head and watched the soul-shadow. Her golden eyes remained locked on the direction in which it drifted, and the longer Shenquan stared back at her, the more his expression softened. In the end, he could not help asking in a small, almost timid voice, “…Could it be that fellow Daoist also understands the path of the soul?”

Bai Xiang cast a sidelong glance behind her, then shifted her eyes toward the direction where Zhu Canghai had been sent flying earlier. She slashed a streak of sword qi that way, then hurled the Tianxuan Sword itself like a thrown weapon as her own body shot forward to seize Shenquan’s soul-shadow.

Shenquan was instantly scared out of his wits. He twisted left and right in midair, trying desperately to flee. Several times he narrowly escaped Bai Xiang’s grasp.

She does not have a soul-seizing treasure?

From that, Shenquan judged Bai Xiang’s background. He concluded that she only had a rough understanding of soul arts and was certainly not as profound in them as he was. She was simply relying on an overwhelming soul force from who knew where to overpower his techniques. At this point, she had no real means of dealing with him.

But then, at the very moment he twisted again and her fingers just barely missed him, golden light flashed in Bai Xiang’s eyes. Under the forcible interference of her soul-ability, the bones in her right arm actually lengthened forward by a section, and in one grab she seized the soul-shadow in her hand.

“You…!” Shenquan shrieked in shock and fury, but he had no time to say anything else. Bai Xiang’s Qi-Origin twisted once, shredding him into remnant soul fragments. He could only be absorbed as Bai Xiang’s own spreading soul force latched onto him and devoured him as nourishment.

“Shenquan!!!”

He Xian’s furious roar came from below. The old Daoist had not actually fled far. After seeing Shenquan’s body shredded, he turned back intending to cover the escape of Shenquan’s soul-shadow, but now he found himself in an impossible position, forced to face Bai Xiang directly.

“Fellow Daoist, stop!”

Zhu Canghai descended from above, clutching the broken half of the Jinque Sword, shouting as he slashed toward Bai Xiang’s chest.

His sword speed had originally been quite slow, but as his words reached the middle, the edge suddenly accelerated, carving a sharp right angle through the air and colliding directly with Bai Xiang’s fist.

Boom!!!

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Another rippling air-burst exploded outward.

Zhu Canghai flew backward from the center of the explosion with a face full of disbelief. He punched through who knew how many layers of blood-red cloud, then crashed heavily into a floating mountain a hundred meters away, smashing and tumbling through it with repeated impacts until he burst out from the other side. When he raised his bloodshot eyes again, the sight before him was the Tianxuan Sword, carrying golden sword qi in the shape of a sacred bird, cleaving He Xian apart in midair.

“No!!!”

Zhu Canghai let out a shrill howl of rage. All the blood and qi in his body ignited at once. He simply threw away the broken sword in his hand, gripped his iron rings, and charged into the battlefield, colliding head-on with the Tianxuan Sword, which was now moving of its own accord.

He truly was risking his life. His body cultivation was also exceedingly solid. He could actually clash with a holy weapon using his flesh, sinews, and bones alone. But such a thing could never last long. All he managed to do was knock the sword aside and interrupt its continued shredding of He Xian’s ruined body. He no longer had any energy left to pay attention to Bai Xiang’s movements.

At that moment, Bai Xiang was falling.

She ignored the battle in the sky. Her body turned over like a diving hawk and plunged toward the earth. One by one, she found the strange hazy shadows across the plains and wilderness and snuffed them out. In the end, she pursued the deepest and darkest shadow of all, seized it, and dragged it up from the ground. It was He Xian’s true form.

The thing was extremely strange in appearance. It was as long as a three-meter snake, entirely pitch-black and covered in scales, with four clawed feet growing around its body, like a little dragon made of shadow. In Bai Xiang’s hand, it writhed ceaselessly, trying again and again to break free.

After capturing He Xian, Bai Xiang looked up toward the sky and saw the Tianxuan Sword giving off an enraged cry, still trying to fly upward and kill Zhu Canghai.

“Back!”

She called out. The Tianxuan Sword halted abruptly, then very unwillingly drew back its offensive and drifted down, landing once more in her grasp.

“Huff… huff… huff…”

Only Zhu Canghai remained in the air, panting heavily. Judging from the burning blood-qi phantom around him, at his peak he should have resembled a blood-qi tiger-sha. But he had already been drained badly by clashing with the Tianxuan Sword, that holy weapon, and it was hard to say how much strength he still had left.

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Bai Xiang looked quietly at the Daoist in the sky, then at the little shadow dragon in her hand, and suddenly felt a kind of weariness.

“Open your true spirit.”

She narrowed her eyes at the little dragon in her grasp.

“Otherwise…”

The shadow little dragon had already been frightened out of its wits by Bai Xiang’s habit of going straight for the kill. After being captured, it had thought this demon woman would refine its soul and tear out its spirit. It had never expected there would still be a chance to live. It immediately and obediently opened up its soul true spirit, allowing Bai Xiang to stamp a mark into it.

After doing that, Bai Xiang shook the prey in her hand once, then looked up at Zhu Canghai. The meaning needed no explanation.

Zhu Canghai’s surging blood and qi gradually calmed. Silent, he descended to the ground, glanced at Bai Xiang, then dropped to one knee and bowed his head before her.

“So you people are actually fairly loyal to each other?”

To be honest, Bai Xiang was somewhat surprised by their attitude.

When the three of them had split up and fled, she had only been confident of keeping Shenquan and Zhu Canghai behind. She had not really had any way to deal with He Xian.

But unexpectedly, they still cared about their mutual ties. Even while fleeing, He Xian had not forgotten to help save the others. That was what had allowed her to trace him back and seize his true body.

She had assumed they were all nothing but sneaking, underhanded filth. This really was unexpected.

“The Void World is perilous. Reaching the rank of Venerable may allow one to hold a territory, but true transcendence and great freedom are still far out of reach. Trash like us can only cling together in cooperation if we wish to hold even a little standing.”

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Zhu Canghai answered Bai Xiang honestly, and even while speaking, he still did not raise his head.

He had been completely overawed by Bai Xiang’s strength.

His three-brother group had once relied on their three specialties of soul, arts, and body. No matter what kind of Immortal Venerable enemy they faced in the past, they had at the very least been able to gain the advantage in one direction.

But when they met Bai Xiang, all three strengths were broken through head-on by her. She crushed and defeated the three of them utterly, without the slightest trace of exaggeration.

He had to admit the result. Losing to Bai Xiang left him with nothing to say.

“Explain your dealings with Blood Soul Heaven clearly.”

Bai Xiang tossed the little dragon aside with a flick of her hand.

Now that she had marked his true spirit, just like with the Black Crystal Sacred Venerable, she was no longer worried about him escaping.

“Reporting to my lord, this matter is an injustice!” Zhu Canghai raised his head and quietly changed the way he addressed her.

“We are only responsible for delivering the resources we harvest to Cloud Tower.”

“As for the hidden workings behind it, we truly do not know!”