Volume 4, Chapter 98 – Reactions

“Senior Brother! Something’s happened over on the Sacred Court’s side!”

Elsewhere, within another misty, dim stretch of void, in yet another fleet, a young girl’s cry rang out from the corridor of one of the large flying vessels.

The girl was petite and cute, wrapped in a deep blue martial outfit, with the broad sleeves on both arms tied back with straps. Her black hair shone with a dark luster. Without waiting for any reply, she kept shouting through the door, “Senior Brother! They’ve started messing around with the rankings again!”

The door suddenly opened outward. The girl showed no surprise at all, naturally barging in and seeing a tall young man seated cross-legged in meditation in the middle of the cabin.

The young man’s frame was extremely long and lean, though his chest and ears stood out in particular, making his upper body look noticeably more powerful than the lower half. His appearance was handsome and well-formed, his facial structure sharp as though carved with a blade and chisel.

This man was none other than the new number one on the Heaven’s Pride List, Chang Hongyuan.

“Senior Brother, did you already know about this?” The girl narrowed her eyes at her own chief disciple. Just from the fact that he had gotten up to open the door for her himself, she could already see there was something to it.

“Shaolian.” The young man finished circulating his qi, exhaled two streams of white mist from his nostrils, and only then slowly opened his eyes. “Do you know that when they previously placed me at the top of the rankings, many people had exactly the same attitude you do now?”

“Why is Senior Brother making excuses for those people instead?” the girl asked with a frown, her tone displeased. “When Yang Chen was still around, you only narrowly lost to him. But Yang Chen has been missing for more than a year already. They had plenty of seasons in between when they could have moved you to first place, yet they stubbornly waited until just recently. Isn’t that negligence in itself?”

“It’s hard to say, when it comes to my struggle with Brother Yang.” The young man smiled. “He was ahead of me by quite a bit before. That was a real gap, not something that can be erased just by talking advantage.”

Senior Brother is saying strange things again.

Xu Shaolian looked at him with a peculiar expression.

It had been the same before. Quite a few disciples in the dojo, herself included, had clearly wanted to support Senior Brother, yet he always insisted on saying things that boosted the other side’s prestige while diminishing his own. Even Master had been angered by it several times, and only recovered after the ceremony they held some time ago.

“Two points,” Chang Hongyuan said, seeing through her thoughts. “First, the ranking itself does not mean much, so no matter who called for my opinion in the Venerable Net, I had no desire to bother with it.”

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At that, Xu Shaolian’s face instantly turned awkward, as though she had in fact done something of the sort and had just been caught by the person involved.

Looking half amused at this lively junior sister, who was also their master’s daughter, Chang Hongyuan continued, “And this time alone, I dare say the Heaven-Watching Hall really wasn’t ranking things at random.”

Xu Shaolian found that odd. “Why do you say that?”

It was not as though Bai Xiang had merely jumped fifty or sixty places. Whenever anyone else had made that kind of sudden leap, it had always stirred up a storm of discussion. So why was this one time an exception?

It couldn’t be that Senior Brother saw she was pretty and was making excuses for her on purpose, could it?

Xu Shaolian pouted, feeling that she had truly had rotten luck. She had not even managed to keep that Gu Qingyou in check, and now another one, even more fox-like, had turned up here.

She had seen Bai Xiang’s portrait too, and speaking honestly to herself, in terms of beauty the woman was probably no worse than Gu Qingyou.

But with that head of snow-white lashes and hair, and the extra advantage of those golden eyes, Gu Qingyou really had little capital to compare. The only reason she could still hold onto first place on the Heavenly Fragrance List was the strength of the base she had built up over many years. Losing the crown was only a matter of time.

Especially that line about a “sternly inviolable bearing.” The description was utterly laughable. More likely it had been crafted on purpose to stir up the urge to conquer in male and female cultivators alike. Xu Shaolian had spent plenty of time following gossip from pleasure houses and knew perfectly well what amorous people liked.

“You don’t know the inside story, so you’d best not make comments lightly.” One look at her face and Chang Hongyuan could tell she was unconvinced. He rubbed his forehead in a headache, thinking that Master had really thrown every troublesome chore at him and truly did not intend to deal with a single one himself.

“What inside story?” Xu Shaolian glared. “What dealings does she have with the Heaven-Watching Hall?”

“Watch your words!” Chang Hongyuan finally put on a stern face and rebuked her.

Xu Shaolian reined herself in, but the expression on her face still showed her dissatisfaction.

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“The Heaven-Watching Hall observes and oversees all things. Don’t think that just because you’re this far away, no one knows when you curse people,” Chang Hongyuan said, taking a black crystal card out of his storage jade plaque. “And don’t think I’m exaggerating. The proof is this thing.”

“‘Black Venerable Card’?” Xu Shaolian asked. “What’s so special about that?”

“It’s a method of the Exalted Saints. How could it not be special?” Chang Hongyuan shook the card in his hand. “Even ordinary Venerables probably don’t know this. As long as they choose to log into the Venerable Net, even if they’ve only logged in once, their qi-signature becomes entangled with a certain method. Throwing away the card is useless. The Heaven-Watching Hall can still grasp the broad outline of their movements.”

“Ah!” The girl finally looked shocked. Flustered, she also took out her own black card. “Then wouldn’t that be… something like remote surveillance… How can it be such a dangerous thing?”

“There’s no need to worry.” Chang Hongyuan spoke leisurely. “Master already treated this batch of cards. Against us, this method can only achieve positioning. It has no other function.”

Then he added, “So now you can guess the rest. One must possess a certain level of cultivation to resist the entanglement of this pact. If Bai Zhixing truly did that by her own strength, then she really does deserve her current place.”

So then… whether one could resist the entanglement of the black card by one’s own strength could serve as a standard for judging one’s approximate power?

Xu Shaolian turned grave, because through that she had arrived at an even more terrifying thought. The reason the Heaven-Watching Hall operated this way must be that they believed the current top nineteen of the Heaven’s Pride List all possessed the same ability.

But I can’t even sense it at all… and that Gu Qingyou is ranked eighteenth!

Damn it! Am I really that much worse than those seductive foxes!?

She was clearly still unconvinced, and stubbornly said, “Even so… even so… who told the Heaven-Watching Hall not to set down any clear rules beforehand?”

“Anyway, all we need to do is sit back and watch the show. Everyone outside the top twenty got shoved back a rank because of her. There are plenty of people who’ll want to make trouble for her!”

“There will indeed be trouble,” Chang Hongyuan nodded. “But I don’t think there’ll be much.”

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“Why not!?”

“Because no one who reaches the Venerable ranks is an idiot.” At this point, Chang Hongyuan finally shook his head and sighed.

“Who would bother too much over someone fated to die?”

“It’s only a pity for her talent.”

“…That’s why Wang Xiu said what he did.”

…

The scene shifted back to the Silver Sea Merchant Guild’s fleet. Meng Qiaosheng was speaking with someone inside his own cabin through a secret treasure.

The person he was speaking with was his mother, the remarkable woman who, in all the tales outside, had personally led the Silver Sea Merchant Guild back to prosperity: Meng Wanyu.

“I’ve already given her the item.” Before Meng Qiaosheng floated a brilliant silver mirror. He spoke toward the sea of mist within it. “Someone came and made trouble in the middle, but it didn’t affect much. She did indeed accept the gift.”

“You did very well.” A woman’s voice came from within the silver mirror, gentle and melodious, not bearing in the slightest the force one would have expected from the strong-willed businesswoman of popular imagination.

“From here on, don’t have too much contact with this person. In some matters, excess is as bad as deficiency. We are only placing bets on multiple outcomes.”

“Mother, there is something I don’t quite understand.” Meng Qiaosheng’s brows drew tightly together. “Since Exalted Saint Lie has declared that she has absolutely no path to survival, why are we still spending resources to build goodwill with her?”

Other things were one matter, but a lower-tier sacred weapon was far too valuable.

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“We cannot make only a single preparation,” the woman said. “True, she has violated the greatest taboo of both the Void Realm and the main world. She has actually tried to lay hands on the exalted seat of Path-Creation. Even the comments on those ranking lists dare not fully summarize the matter…”

“But times are no longer what they once were. Even the Heaven-Watching Hall can hardly track the shifting of the star positions now, and the arts of prophecy and omen-reading are virtually useless. No one knows whether there may still be some unforeseen turn within all this.”

So she’s only a spare piece.

Nothing more than that?

Meng Qiaosheng nodded, his face thoughtful.

“What?” The woman’s tone grew lighter. “I never see you asking about other women in ordinary times. You’re showing this much concern for Bai Zhixing. Has your Dao-heart been stirred?”

“Not to that degree.” Meng Qiaosheng refuted it at once. “Your son is only a little curious, curious about the Dao lineage she created.”

“And that is exactly the part I warned you not to ask too much about,” the woman said in a grave voice. “Although there is already a Path-Creation Exalted Saint occupying that spirit-pool seat, so she is destined to be unable to spread her method broadly, if any investigation should come from it… do not drag the entire guild down with you.”

“Of course not.” Meng Qiaosheng hurried to state his position. “Mother can rest assured. I know my limits.”

“Do not entertain any thoughts about her.”

That was the woman’s final warning.

“At present, we still do not have the qualifications to get entangled in a struggle like this. Do what you ought to do, go make some name for yourself at the Dao-Void Martial Tournament, and then return to the Cangyin Sea. We will sit atop the mountain together and watch the play.”