Volume 4, Chapter 93 – Resolve

With this breakthrough, what Xiang Xian obtained was the “Path of Qi Golden Core” that Bai Xiang had explicitly described in the inheritance manual.

Under her own senses, all the qi-force she had rebuilt through recultivation was being further compressed and refined within the circulation of the Golden Core, then flowing back into the Qi Sea of her dantian. Every strand and every thread had undergone a qualitative change compared with before and was already beginning to transform toward so-called Qi-Origin.

And that was not all. Xiang Xian was certain that the reason her qi-force cultivation had surged so sharply after her breakthrough had a great deal to do with the fact that she had simultaneously excavated and manifestly refined the Hidden Field Orifice.

“The manual Xiang’er left behind included records of these acupoints. I benefited from her generosity as well. After reading through all the notes on her insights, I suddenly felt inspired and began my breakthrough by drawing out the great medicine of the Hidden Field Orifice. That was why everything went so smoothly.”

Xiang Xian did not lack a cultivator’s pride. After all, she had stood out from the competition and inherited the position of Yuming Dao Master from those before her. But she was already at this age, and she understood equally well where her own limits lay.

If she had not switched over to recultivating the Path of Qi, if Bai Xiang had not awakened her and then given her those notes of insight, Xiang Xian did not believe she would still have had any future or potential on the road of cultivation.

The reason this breakthrough had succeeded, the reason her whole body had all but been washed and renewed, the reason she had obtained the Golden Core fruition and gained two hundred years of lifespan in one leap, all of it had come from benefiting by the light of her disciple.

“In the current environment, the cultivation of a Path of Qi Golden Core is not actually enough to stand out. But I have already manifestly refined the Hidden Field Orifice. As long as I turn all my qi-force into Qi-Origin, I should not be too far from the Origin Realm Xiang’er described.”

Xiang Xian had not improved her cultivation in quite some time, and needless to say, her mood was excellent. Sitting atop the mountain, she continued testing and controlling the clouds and mists of the cloud sea, continuously turning them into all manner of talismanic formations.

These formations were all new research that Guo Rongzhi had developed.

Some of the formations were failed works and meaningless even if displayed. But others possessed mysterious effects such as “breaking the void” and “awakening the spirit.”

Guo Rongzhi certainly could not have achieved this level of efficiency on his own. The reason things had turned out this way was inseparable from Sun Yaoming’s wholehearted assistance.

He and his master had most likely already made up their minds. Tianfu Mountain had sent over quite a few formation diagrams from their reserves accumulated over many years. It was practically a matter of Guo Rongzhi asking for something and them immediately handing it over. Their desire to throw in their lot with them was written plainly on their faces.

In a great age of struggle, Tianfu Mountain was also a conspicuous human power. It made sense that such people would be eager to find a backer.

They were probably thinking in terms of offering charcoal in snowy weather. Their devotion to Xiang’er and to Maozhou was a kind of wager.

As Xiang Xian thought on all this, she continued shifting and reshaping the cloud-and-mist formations. Within a range of more than a hundred meters around her, no change in the motion of the qi-mists could escape her calculations or her control.

In terms of planning and controlling the whole field, it was actually even more marvelous than Bai Zhuqing’s path of sword pellets. And the root of all this lay in the “qi-force characteristic” Xiang Xian had grasped after understanding her own heart.

She was not sure how exactly to classify her qi-force characteristic, but one thing was obvious: her control over qi-force far exceeded that of ordinary Path of Qi cultivators.

At that moment, a figure happened to come walking up the mountain. Seeing this scene from the side peak, the newcomer’s eyes immediately widened, and she hurried forward.

Xiang Xian had already known of the visitor the moment she entered the range of the formation diagrams. The white mist immediately dispersed back into the cloud sea, and Xiang Xian rose from the peak, clasping her hands behind her back with a smile as she looked at the newcomer.

“Qing’er.”

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“Elder Master!”

Bai Zhuqing was wearing a white gauze ancient-style dress. She answered first, then set down the food box she had specifically brought for Xiang Xian, and quickly ran to her side, circling around her and looking her up and down from every angle.

“Elder Master, this…” Her tone was extremely careful, as though she were overjoyed but did not quite dare believe it, and the sight drew a bit of amusement from Xiang Xian.

This little girl. She is nothing like this cautious when she is with Xiang’er. She is making me seem frightening instead.

“I have advanced a realm,” Xiang Xian said lightly. “There is no need for me to remain in seclusion here any longer.”

Now that she had received Xiang Xian’s definite confirmation, Bai Zhuqing was delighted as well.

She knew exactly what Xiang Xian’s cultivation level had been before, so the breakthrough could only mean one thing: a Path of Qi Golden Core. And Xiang Xian was, after her own elder sister, the very first person to advance to the Qi Core stage. If one looked at what that meant more deeply, it was no trivial matter at all.

Because it symbolized that, for other people too, the road of the Path of Qi was truly walkable.

In Bai Zhuqing’s eyes, no matter how powerful a Dao lineage might be, if only her elder sister alone could walk it, then in the end… not that she would ever belittle her sister by saying something like “it won’t amount to much,” but at the very least, her sister would be unbearably lonely on that road.

Xiang Xian’s success meant that other Path of Qi cultivators should also be able to succeed, and further, that Bai Zhuqing herself would one day be able to reach this step as well.

She was overjoyed. Before her eyes, it was as though she could already see a future in which she followed that road and caught up to Bai Xiang, finally able to stand at her side. Delight flickered through her gaze again and again as she clung to Xiang Xian and carefully asked her about the insights she had gained in the course of breaking through.

For most cultivators, questions like these were highly sensitive. Only these two, who were truly master and disciple in all but name, could ask them so directly.

“The method cannot be personally transmitted.” Xiang Xian shook her head. “This is not me trying to be mysterious. It’s simply that knowing these things too early would bring you no benefit in cultivation.”

If Guo Rongzhi had been the one asking, she might have answered.

But Bai Zhuqing was only outwardly dignified. Much of her steady temperament was a façade. In truth, her mind was no less lively than that of her younger sister Bai Leying. If she knew too much, it would easily stir her monkey-mind and restless intentions, and would instead hinder her cultivation.

“All right, then.”

Bai Zhuqing pouted. “Then what about those cloud-and-mist formations just now? You can’t talk about those either?”

“This is the qi-force characteristic I grasped.” Xiang Xian moved her thoughts slightly, and the cloud-and-mist formation rose once more around them.

On the surface, it looked as though all of it had been drawn from the cloud sea, but in truth every strand of cloud-mist had Xiang Xian’s qi-force mixed into it.

“I have named it the path of Qi Arrays.”

Qi Arrays?

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Bai Zhuqing listened obediently as Xiang Xian explained the marvels within it, only to discover that Xiang Xian’s qi-force characteristic was astonishingly similar to her own.

Whether it was speaking of condensing qi-force into sword pellets or into formation diagrams, both were things that could only be achieved by bringing one’s control of qi-force to the limit.

This… does that mean Elder Master’s characteristic is the same as mine?

“It is not the same.” Xiang Xian shook her head.

“I plan the whole field. You pursue singular focus.”

“You cannot spread out the art of sword pellets to form a qi array of this kind, and I cannot condense sword pellets as you do and then split and transform them further.”

“In other words, although both are characteristics of qi-control, in truth they are two different branches.”

“You are Shape-Gathering.”

“I am Qi-Scattering.”

“This all comes from the difference in our temperaments. The qi-force we form therefore also differs in subtle ways.”

After hearing that, Bai Zhuqing fell into thought. “Then in that case, the characteristics recorded on record will have one more type added to them.”

The reason she had been so surprised earlier was precisely because, no matter how many recorded characteristics resembled one another, there had never before been a case of two that were completely identical.

She had thought Xiang Xian and she herself were “the same kind of person,” but now it seemed that was not so.

“You were trying to be lazy and have me help you study the path of sword pellets, weren’t you?”

Xiang Xian saw through her thoughts at a glance, and her tone rose slightly.

“No…!” The girl’s face immediately stiffened.

But clearly there was no hiding it, and after hesitating for a moment, Bai Zhuqing simply admitted it. “I just… I want to catch up to my sister sooner.”

As she said this, she unconsciously reached for the sword hanging at her waist.

But it was not the Qingwu Sword. It was Feixiang Heaven, hanging beside the Qingwu Sword.

What a foolish child.

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One could tell at a glance what the girl was thinking. Xiang Xian shook her head inwardly, feeling that this matter would be difficult to handle.

At her age, she had long since grown clear-sighted about the private affections of disciples. As long as the person in question was one she herself approved of, and the other party’s background could be counted as clean, she would never object.

But the one you chose is the highest difficulty possible…

In truth, Xiang Xian knew very well that these two sisters had probably already confirmed their relationship in private. That much could be seen from the fact that Bai Xiang took Bai Zhuqing along with her every time she went into seclusion.

In the history of Sword Dao, entering seclusion and cultivating together was an important sign that a Dao-companion relationship had been established.

She did not know what kind of Dao companions Bai Xiang and Bai Zhuqing were, whether they only cultivated the heart together, or cultivated body and heart together. But there was one thing she knew for certain: the difference in cultivation level between Dao companions could not be too great.

If the gap was too wide, then over the course of cultivation they would gradually lose all shared topics. It would be as though a thick wall had risen between them, and estrangement would become the inevitable outcome.

The gap in cultivation between Qing’er and Xiang’er was somewhat too large. Bai Xiang might not care about it for now, but that was only because she herself was still young. She had only sat in her current position for a few years and had not yet fully felt what such things meant.

But as time passed, would Xiang’er’s thoughts remain the same?

Would she grow tired of a relationship like this?

No one knew.

If Bai Zhuqing wanted to be safe, if she wanted to ensure such a possibility never became reality, then the only thing she could do was to charge forward and work desperately to keep up with Bai Xiang’s road.

But how easy could that possibly be.

Xiang’er’s talent… not just in the thousand-year history of Great Yu, but even counting back through middle antiquity and ancient antiquity, how many monsters like her had the world ever produced?

If you want to catch up to your Sister Xiang’er, you are going to have to suffer a great deal.

Yet looking at the determination in the girl’s face, Xiang Xian also knew that no matter what kind of advice she offered now, it would be useless.

Although Bai Zhuqing was lively and jumpy at heart, and spoke to her elder sister without much seriousness in private, once she set her mind on something, absolutely no one could make her give it up.

Not even Xiang Xian herself.

Even if Bai Shengju came to persuade her, it would still be useless.

“You won’t be going back today either.”

With that thought, Xiang Xian suddenly changed her mind and said so to Bai Zhuqing in an even tone.

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“Huh?”

The girl stared, then lifted her head in curiosity to look at Xiang Xian.

“Aren’t you trying to catch up to your sister?”

Xiang Xian lowered her eyelids halfway and looked at her.

“With cultivation this low, how are you supposed to catch up?”

“Stay here and undergo special training with me.”

“Our qi-force truly does have points of similarity. This is the perfect chance to see whether your sword pellets can be used to set up formation diagrams…”

This!

Bai Zhuqing’s face immediately turned bitter.

How did I manage to dig my own grave like this?!

“You don’t plan to catch up anymore?”

She had just started to make excuses when Xiang Xian crushed her with a single sentence.

“To set your resolve on walking together, to become companions upon the Dao… is an ambition like that a joke to you?”

I…

Bai Zhuqing bit her lip, and before her eyes there seemed to appear Bai Xiang’s back.

It was a scene she had dreamed again and again. In those dreams, Bai Xiang was always walking ahead. She never seemed to be moving quickly, and yet no matter how Bai Zhuqing chased after her, she could never catch up. The distance between them only kept growing farther and farther.

Even if I know my sister isn’t that kind of person, I still can’t afford not to have a sense of urgency myself…

At that thought, Bai Zhuqing steeled herself.

So what if it’s Elder Master’s demonic special training!

Just wait. When the time comes, I’ll make my sister’s jaw drop!