Volume 1, Chapter 42 – The Remarkable Bai Shengju

After finishing her sword practice, Bai Zhuqing was about to shower. Bai Xiang decided there was no need to hurry the swordsmanship matter and headed to the back to find Bai Shengju.

Not going with him right away was not because she did not care about Bai Shengju, it was to give Bai Lianzhou more time.

You had a whole night and a whole morning. If you still cannot talk him into handing over the Dao Lord’s seat, I will not wait any longer.

As she arrived, she happened to see Xu Shu coming out. He still looked unwell, yet there was finally a bit of color in his face.

Still upset over Jiang Haojing’s betrayal.

He looked all right. Grandpa and the others must have soothed him.

Xu Shu saw Bai Xiang too, called her “Senior Sister.” They nodded in greeting, and he skirted around her and left.

Bai Xiang stepped over the threshold into the courtyard. Before she saw Bai Shengju, a fit of violent coughing sounded.

It felt as if he had forced it down while Xu Shu was there, then let it go once the boy left.

“Grandpa.” Bai Xiang called out.

“Cough, cough, cough…? Pfft, ugh, cough, cough!”

Trying to suppress it, Bai Shengju grew impatient and mis-breathed, which only made the coughing worse.

Bai Xiang went over and saw him squatting in a corner of the courtyard, a linen cloth spread before him with dozens of medicinal herbs laid out neatly to dry.

No need to ask whom those herbs were for.

Without hesitating, Bai Xiang helped him up and, first thing, roused her spirit-soul ability to probe within.

Unfortunately, the ability would not heed her this time.

It felt reluctant to be tainted by another.

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If this road would not do, she could only wait for her heart-aspect to finish its metamorphosis and see whether qi-force could nurse Bai Shengju’s body.

First, though, she had to make him give up the match and pass on the Dao Lord’s seat.

Otherwise he would be dead in a week. What talk of nursing then. He would not last that long.

“All right, I know my own body…”

Bai Shengju patted her arm.

“Do not hold me up, I am not that old yet!”

“I know you came to persuade me, but nothing you say now will matter. I will not send Lianzhou to die; his road must not end here.”

“Grandpa.”

Bai Xiang fixed him with a look. “Are you truly blaming yourself because of Aunt Nianchan, and that is why you want release?”

“Who told you that?” Bai Shengju froze.

“Zhuqing.”

“That little thing!” Bai Shengju puffed his beard and glared. “Where did she eavesdrop that from? Guanshan told her? That unfilial brat is never home when it counts, only knows how to give me grief!”

After cursing Bai Guanshan, he sighed. “I cannot say it is not part of it.”

“But at root, the main reason is that I cannot let go… I cannot let go of the path I have sought.”

“Xiang’er.”

“I am here.”

“You know what the view is like beyond the Dao-Initial Three Realms.”

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Bai Shengju’s voice hardened. “The Condense-Aspect Three Realms.”

“First realm, Visualization.”

“By continuing to visualize the Demon Pool in your heart, you remodel the heart-channels to suit the surge of demonic power.”

“Second realm, Divine Union.”

“By pressing the demonic aura brought by the sword back into it, you subdue the Demon Pool hidden within the sword body.”

“Third realm, Condense the Aspect.”

“Completely master the sword’s Demon Pool and condense a true Outward Aspect outside the blade.”

“Like Zhou Jing’an. He had just reached Condense-Aspect and could already summon a Qingya Dragon Python from thin air with demonic power, directly using the python’s divine abilities.”

“At that point, a mortal’s strength touches the divine. You can drive a Demon Pool’s power to manifest demon beasts and demon arts, even command water and fire, take hold of nature.”

“Back then, your grandpa was only a hair shy of Condense-Aspect. Otherwise I could not have held this strip of land, could not have taken the dojo back from Liu Jingfeng.”

“Later, because of certain things, I faced a sword match I believed I was very likely to lose.”

“At the time, my cultivation was already in Divine Union, and I had reached the fifth merge, just a hair from six merges complete.”

“But the challenger was in Condense-Aspect.”

“I weighed the gains and losses and chose to yield in that moment. From then on, my heart-aspect never advanced.”

“I could not condense an Outward Aspect at all.”

“It was as if my heart grew old in that instant.”

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Bai Shengju smiled, then turned his head to look toward the inner hall.

“And now I am eighty-one. One way or another, I have only a few years left.”

“So do you understand? However you put it, your grandpa reached the brink of six merges complete. That Liu Mengqing, at best she is halfway to six. For now I still have a bit of strength banked; if I explode once, I can fight her. Give it a few more years, and I might not be able to explode at all…”

He shook his head as he spoke, full of regret, and his expression shifted as he stared at the inner hall.

From Bai Xiang’s angle she could not see inside, yet she had gone in many times and knew the inner hall enshrined her grandmother, He Qiuming.

Bai Xiang had little impression of her, because she passed early. During the Bai family’s second generation’s growing years she died of pancreatic cancer, leaving only a black-and-white photo from her youth in the inner hall of Bai Shengju’s side room, the first thing you saw whenever you stepped in.

Bai Shengju often reminisced about He Qiuming; Bai Xiang had seen it.

She could be sure, the look on his face now was absolutely not mourning for He Qiuming, but some other, more complicated emotion.

She could not name it, she simply felt it.

Her thoughts turned, and she suddenly recalled that the albums Bai Shengju sometimes leafed through seemed to contain more than just photos of He Qiuming.

She had seen it once, a fleeting glimpse from childhood. In the photo stood a tall woman with big wavy curls, seemingly leaning against a young Bai Shengju, smiling sweetly.

Oh. That makes the name Bai Nianchan sound odd too.

It sounded more like a name chosen to commemorate something or someone. Yet He Qiuming was alive when Bai Nianchan was born, so it clearly was not about her.

Put together with the unfamiliar woman in the album, could it be…

“Grandpa.” She asked directly, “In that album I saw when I was little, who is the wavy-haired woman?”

Lost in regret over the past, Bai Shengju answered offhand, “Who? The wavy-haired one? You mean Shu Fang…”

Hm?

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Now Bai Xiang was truly taken aback.

Good grief.

From the sound of it, there was more than one.

“Then Aunt Nianchan’s name, who was it commemorating?”

“Of course it was to commemorate—what are you asking me all this for?”

Bai Shengju finally snapped to and glared at Bai Xiang, wary.

“Grandpa.”

Bai Xiang glared back.

“That Condense-Aspect challenger, did he not cross swords with you on another battlefield as well?”

What she meant was to ask whether the man had been Bai Shengju’s romantic rival, whether he had challenged Bai Shengju over that mysterious woman, and Bai Shengju, weighing the pros and cons, chose to back down, which led to his cultivation stagnating.

What she had not expected was for Bai Shengju’s face to flush.

Muttering under his breath, stammering, he said, “You are so young… who taught you to say things like that…?”

Huh.

Bai Xiang’s eyes went wide at once.

So the old man really is something.