Volume 4, Chapter 90 – The World’s Tangled Methods

Among Meng Qiaosheng’s subordinates was a steward named Li Changwen. When Meng Qiaosheng left in response to the disturbance, it was Li Changwen who took over and continued showing Bai Xiang and the others around.

But at a time like this, Bai Xiang and the others were neither blind nor deaf. They could all feel that the atmosphere around them was a little strange, and in the end Bai Xiang was the one who took the initiative to ask, “What exactly was that commotion just now?”

The reason she asked so directly was that she had noticed there were quite a few people in the guest-cabin corridor who looked like tourists and seemed to know what was going on. She guessed that the matter had nothing to do with privacy, so there was no harm in asking.

“Does Master Bai know the Heaven’s Pride List?” Li Changwen, Steward Li, replied when he heard the question. Then, simply assuming that Bai Xiang did know, he added, “My young master has a ranking on that list, and well… that naturally means there are bound to be struggles over fame and standing.”

He phrased it rather tactfully and politely, but Bai Xiang understood at once. So this was a heavenly pride whose ranking had been overtaken by Meng Qiaosheng, and who refused to accept it, so he had deliberately come looking for a fight?

That was normal enough.

That was Bai Xiang’s judgment.

Because lists like these updated extremely quickly. According to the information in her memories, the rankings were updated once every Void-Heaven Season.

And naturally, those updates could not all be based on face-to-face fights. Usually they relied on indirect comparisons and overall assessments. That made situations like this very easy to arise—people frequently refused to accept their rankings and would take the initiative to challenge those ranked above them.

The Void-Heaven Season, like the lists themselves, was a method of timekeeping issued by the Demon Court. In Void Realm gathering places like the Cangyin Sea, they set up “Dao bells.” Roughly every month, a Dao bell would sound, and that month would count as one Void-Heaven Season. In other words, the Void Realm also possessed a concept of time, with twelve seasons to a year.

At first, before she understood the nature of the tribulation struggle, Bai Xiang had felt that the Demon Court doing things like this was thankless busywork. To put it bluntly, it had seemed downright idiotic.

Because, judging by the way it consistently behaved in the Void Realm, it could hardly be said to live up to the title of a proper “court.” Since there were so many things the Demon Court did not bother with, and since it had no intention of levying resources from the various realms of the Void like a mortal government would, then what possible meaning could there be in spending so much time and effort on this kind of regulation?

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But now things were different… Now Bai Xiang understood the tribulation struggle, and understood spirit pools even better, and knew that the latter could in fact be condensed precisely through the “creation of rules.”

If so, then this practice absolutely was not meaningless. If her guess was right, then this method of reckoning time could also condense a powerful spirit pool, and its nature was very likely related to time and space.

What a horrifying thought…

Powers and authorities like time and space—if one wished to steal them, then they could simply be stolen. No wonder the little yellow jade had been so close to her, even though the essence of the Path of Qi was also longevity, also breaking through the shackles of one’s ordained fate.

Because perhaps, in the little yellow jade’s eyes, no matter how great the hidden dangers of the Path of Qi might be, those were matters for the future.

As things currently stood, the Path of Qi’s consumption of heaven-and-earth energy, and the extent to which it plundered and damaged rules and order, was still vastly inferior to Dao-Void Methods. On top of that, the Path of Qi could even advance by devouring demonic power, while Bai Xiang herself, as the founder of the Path of Qi, could go so far as to nourish and improve her soul by devouring the souls of cultivators.

Wasn’t that basically the equivalent of white blood cells?

What the Path of Qi killed were all “cells of Loss of Order.” Every time it destroyed one of those “disordered cells,” it was returning the spirit-pool order they embodied back to heaven and earth. Thinking of it from that perspective, how could heaven and earth not be close to her?

Even while Bai Xiang was absorbed in these thoughts, Jade Spirit remained active outside, listening to Li Changwen as well.

According to his description, the owner of that roar was named Lu Yuan. On the Heaven’s Pride List published last season, he had ranked ninety-second. But on the new list for this season, he had been overtaken by more than ten people, Meng Qiaosheng included, and had fallen out of the top hundred. He must have been furious enough to come challenge Meng Qiaosheng in person.

As for why he had singled out Meng Qiaosheng alone, it was probably because Meng Qiaosheng made the biggest target.

That much could already be seen from Meng Qiaosheng’s first reaction of “here we go again.” Clearly, such challengers had not been rare along the way. It was certainly not the first time he had dealt with this sort of thing.

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At that moment, Li Changwen was just leading Bai Xiang out through the far side of the corridor. Another stretch of deck lay there, and many merchants and tourists, all wearing the appropriate vehicles or protective suits, were gathered there, watching a battle in the void above with tremendous excitement.

The combatants were naturally Meng Qiaosheng and Lu Yuan.

Meng Qiaosheng wielded two long, narrow curved blades, each of them more than three meters in length. When he moved them, the swings were broad and unrestrained, stirring up great splashes of silver radiance. Every strike he made drew cheers and cries of excitement from the crowd… and among those cheering, women were especially numerous.

Lu Yuan, by contrast, carried no weapon at all. He was facing a powerful enemy empty-handed.

Most people would have had difficulty seeing the details of the clash, simply because the two heavenly-pride Venerables were fighting at too high a frequency and too great a speed. But from below, Bai Xiang noticed that Lu Yuan’s hands seemed to be covered by a faint layer of green light.

Whenever there was no longer any way to evade, he would use that green light to meet Meng Qiaosheng’s twin blades head-on. Whenever the two came into contact, they first tore open the void and sent chaotic gale currents sweeping out in streak after streak, and only then did they produce those piercing detonations.

What was that?

Bai Xiang kept focusing on the crucial detail and, in the end, during one clash she finally saw it clearly… The green light around Lu Yuan’s hands seemed, in its essence, to be made from countless tiny insects gathered together.

“Lu Yuan’s Venerable title is Broodmother Immortal Venerable,” Monk Zhuye quietly offered Bai Xiang from beside her. “He is skilled at controlling insects with demonic power, and the root method of his spirit pool is probably deeply connected to ‘symbiotic insects’ as well.”

Symbiotic insects, was it.

Bai Xiang glanced at Monk Zhuye and thought to herself that this method of ascending to the Venerable rank ought to be different from Zhuye’s own.

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On the surface, they both sounded like methods of controlling “non-sentient species,” enlightening them, and then reaching the Venerable ranks through the aspiration-force they offered. But ordinarily, Venerables who followed that route were extremely weak, because the root methods of their spirit pools were too feeble. Not only did they possess almost no real combat ability, they also faced severe restrictions in action.

Take Monk Zhuye. If the Blackflame Tree colony he had painstakingly cultivated were destroyed, then his Dao-attainment would likely plummet at once and his vitality would suffer immense damage. That was why, whenever he traveled, he had to hide his Blackflame Tree colony somewhere only he himself knew.

But this Lu Yuan had actually brought the enlightened colony with him?

Broodmother Immortal Venerable…

That was it. Apparently, anyone who made it onto the rankings could not hide their foundations all that well. In other words, none of them were the sort of weakling Immortal Venerables who tried to keep their heads down and skulk in the shadows. At the very least, they were on a level comparable to Cui Yuanhao.

“As for this Meng fellow…” Monk Zhuye curled his lip. “…his ambitions are not small. He is actually trying to define ‘Weapon Dao.’”

“‘Weapon Dao’?”

“Master may not know much about this, so let me explain it briefly.”

With Monk Zhuye’s explanation, Bai Xiang gradually came to understand.

Simply put, just as Great Yu had successfully produced the concept of “Sword Dao,” other people could theoretically do the same sort of thing.

Especially since Dao-Void Methods themselves did not require a cultivator to use any specific weapon. Whether one used a sword, a blade, or something else, it did not really matter, because its root method did not lie in the way of the weapon, but in the spirit pool.

A spirit pool could only be achieved through plundering rules and order.

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Every time a spirit pool was condensed, it meant that some rule or order had been granted a new definition by an individual.

And that gave the whole matter an extremely wide scope.

For example: a carpenter could define a “carpenter’s dao” through his own understanding of woodworking. If his cultivation were sufficient, then he truly could condense a spirit pool through the “carpenter’s dao.”

It would simply be very weak, that was all. And a carpenter could hardly become a cultivator in the first place.

By the same logic, a swordsman could naturally try using “Sword Dao” as the basis of a spirit pool, and a blade-wielder could likewise try using “Blade Dao” as the basis of a spirit pool.

As long as one’s talent was sufficient and one’s understanding deep enough, it was also a shortcut to entering the Venerable ranks. And because “weapons” had already been endowed by heaven and earth, and by countless sentient beings, with the concept of attack and killing, the combat power of those who entered the Venerable ranks by that route was also extremely strong, with relatively few restrictions.

“But there is a price as well,” Monk Zhuye said in a low voice.

“Namely, there are rather a lot of people walking this road… and all of them are unusually gifted.”

“It would seem that Meng Qiaosheng has set his sights on becoming the Blade Dao Master, redefining Blade Dao for the world in his own way.”

“And that also means that there must one day be a battle between him and the current Blade Dao Master.”