Volume 4, Chapter 101 – Bai Zhuqing and Bai Xiang Fall into Mortal Ties

Bai Zhuqing was in pain.

Terrible pain.

Bai Xiang had always been helping her. Of that, Bai Zhuqing understood better than anyone.

The Clear-Heart Formula, the path of sword pellets, the Qingwu Sword, the dual cultivation method…

She had truly done everything in her power to try. And yet, somehow… no matter how much she improved on top of her old foundation, Bai Xiang would always make still more progress of her own.

At this rate, how could she ever catch up to Sister Xiang’er?

She too had read the classics, and knew what it was that actually sustained the relationship between Dao companions. So of course she also had a sense of crisis. She felt that if she could not catch up to Bai Xiang, then as the gap in their cultivation widened more and more, one day she might not even be able to serve as a useful tool anymore, and the two of them might end up with no common language left at all.

By then, Bai Xiang would always be dealing with one crisis after another, beating down this Immortal Venerable today and subduing that Immortal Venerable tomorrow. The people moving around her every day would all be figures of the Venerable ranks. How would Bai Zhuqing still be able to insert herself into that world?

If things reached that point, could they still even be called Dao companions?

Precisely because of that, even though she and Bai Xiang had already confirmed their relationship as Dao companions, Bai Zhuqing remained desperately anxious to change this situation. That thinking naturally fed back into her words and actions.

Setting aside the influence of Bai Xiang’s passive Illusory God, those occasional willful moments of hers were all just ways of patching up her own sense of security.

She really had worked hard.

She really had done her best.

These past few days, she had shut herself inside Listening-to-Rain Tower. It was not only to help cover for Bai Xiang, but because she had truly treated it like closed-door cultivation, thinking and acting with all her might, constantly trying to draw out her own potential.

She had thought she had succeeded. By now, by relying on the Heavenly Pillar Meridian, she had already opened all the manifest meridians and acupoints throughout her entire body.

What did that mean?

Back in the age before the Path of Qi had appeared, when there had only been the Sword Dao system, training the body to such a degree was, in theory, roughly equivalent to the peak of the Divine Fetus Realm. Beyond that, one would begin the cultivation of hidden meridians and hidden acupoints, digging out the Great Medicine of the Human Body in pursuit of further progress.

Placed in ancient times, it would at the very least have been the physique of an Earthly Master.

Bai Zhuqing had been full of hope that she would be able to surprise Bai Xiang, but the truth was…

She did not know whether her extraordinary perception had been inherited from Little Aunt Bai Nianchan, but she truly could feel it. After Bai Xiang came before her and opened up her aura so that Bai Zhuqing could sense her clearly, that burning qi and blood, that full and abundant divine soul, vigorous and wrapped within her qi and blood… all of it was like a raging flame. Bai Zhuqing could clearly sense that, compared with before Bai Xiang left, her cultivation had risen again.

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So then she…

She truly had no idea what she was supposed to do anymore.

She could not catch up.

She truly could not catch up.

She even hated this useless self of hers a little, feeling that although she had inherited Little Aunt’s talent, she had no way to truly bring it into full play. She was certain that she must already have disappointed Little Aunt’s spirit in heaven, and that the reckless request she had made in her collapse would surely also leave Bai Xiang bitterly disappointed.

Is that so…

Seen that way, she really had been carrying immense pressure as well…

Watching her younger sister lower her head and cry like a child who had done something wrong, not even daring to lift her eyes and look at her, Bai Xiang suddenly realized that during this stretch of time she had been busy with one important matter after another, and had neglected to pay attention to some of Bai Zhuqing’s thoughts.

Ever since she had broken through the mystery before birth and the last barrier between herself and Qing’er had been lifted, their relationship had advanced by a great step. So much so that many things which would once have seemed like overstepping had, in recent days, become extremely frequent.

Whether it was using the Vibration Art to massage acupoints, or baring themselves before each other, or circulating qi with their lower abdomens pressed together, in the end all of it had happened under the banner of “cultivation.” And because of that, both she and Qing’er had gradually grown accustomed to it, without any romantic thoughts at all.

For me, that is naturally enough. After all, if one is talking about Dao companions, reaching this point is more than sufficient.

But for Qing’er…

It was probably unavoidable that she would grow anxious and insecure because of the difference in our rate of progress.

And on top of that, it was not only this one pressure weighing on her. She now also knew that Bai Nianchan’s blood essence had once been infused into her, and that Little Aunt’s remnant soul had once interfered with and controlled her. She would inevitably end up thinking along the lines of: Have I also failed Little Aunt’s dying wish?

It was precisely because all those enormous pressures had gathered together and settled onto Bai Zhuqing’s little shoulders that she had become so desperate to catch up.

And once she discovered that she could not do it, once that one breath of effort leaked away, then she might… might begin to feel that aside from “doing improper things” with me, there was simply nothing else she could still do for me.

So the deeper meaning of that sentence was not that she wanted to offend me, but that she longed… to be offended by me?

Shaking her head inwardly, Bai Xiang could only say that children really did love to think wildly.

This time, she had no intention of imposing any sort of “high-pressure policy” on her younger sister again. On the one hand, the string had already snapped, and no amount of pressure would mean anything anymore. On the other hand, she herself did bear some responsibility for how things had turned out.

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I pushed too hard before.

At this point, the only thing to do is make up for it as best I can.

“Qing’er.”

“Look at me.”

Hearing her voice, Bai Zhuqing raised her tear-blurred eyes, and in the very next instant her eyes widened in utter shock.

Right there before her, Bai Xiang was slowly undoing her waist sash. The overlapping fronts of the robe slipped down along her shoulders and arms on either side, and together with the sash and the sword, they slid gently to the floor.

The battle suit Guo Rongzhi had once arranged for Bai Xiang had long since been damaged. What she was wearing beneath was the inner garment that came with this white-and-gold robe-skirt. To speak frankly, the style was best described as a full-body stocking.

Before, she had looked perfectly dignified, but that was only because it had all been hidden beneath the outer robe. From the outside, there had been no sign of it beyond her wrists, neck, ankles, and the like.

But now, as Bai Xiang loosened and removed her clothing, the full body beneath it, a body that had never stopped developing and had only grown more mature with age, was completely displayed before her younger sister beneath the clinging wrap of the bodystocking.

Bai Zhuqing was completely stunned.

It was not as though she had never seen Bai Xiang in full before. But those occasions had all been brief.

Whether while changing clothes, bathing, or going to bed, Bai Xiang had never cared much about baring her body.

But Bai Xiang had never, ever before done this, had never “deliberately” bared her body to her in this way.

The meaning of it was different.

“Sis… Auntie!”

Then, in the very next instant, Bai Zhuqing instinctively began circulating the Clear-Heart Formula and immediately turned her head away.

“Wh-what are you doing…”

“Put your clothes back on quickly!”

Suddenly, she had begun feeling afraid again. The elder sister before her seemed so unfamiliar. She could not adapt to it. What she wanted to see was that familiar Bai Xiang.

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That is to say, the Bai Xiang who, just as she had expected, would scold her harshly.

“It is only to this extent.”

“Qing’er, after saying words like that, are you really too afraid to even look now?”

That cool voice, touched with a trace of huskiness, once more hooked into the girl’s soul. Bai Zhuqing could not help glancing up, and in that glance her eyes met her elder sister’s golden pupils.

What sort of majesty, holiness, and beauty was this…?

That should have been the state of her mind, and yet how could Sister Xiang’er… how could she be wearing something so strange…?

Seeing that the little girl had once again fallen into the effect of Illusory God, Bai Xiang walked slowly closer and spoke softly against her ear.

“What I choose to do is not for outsiders to gossip over and instruct me about.”

“Since I have acknowledged you as my Dao companion, then for all your life and mine, we will be Dao companions.”

Bai Zhuqing’s body trembled lightly, and a plaintive sound escaped her lips. “Auntie…”

“It is true that a Dao companion’s obligations do not include this.”

“But if this is what you ask of me…”

Bai Xiang moved around to stand in front of her again, looking down from above, and showed her younger sister a faint smile like an iceberg softening in thaw.

“Then it is not as though I cannot agree.”

Faced with such an invitation, Bai Zhuqing could no longer endure it.

She chose to throw open the floodgates on all the emotions she had been holding back, pouring out the waters she had suppressed for so many days toward the elder sister before her.

It felt as though she had entered a very long dream.

In the dream there were countless white clouds, vast and ethereal, endlessly shifting and changing… at times winding together, at times bursting apart and scattering. That pure white mist rolled and billowed ceaselessly through the void, stirring up endless currents of hazy vapor and shifting stars, until only after a very long time did everything finally calm again, the void resolving back into emptiness.

“Sister Xiang’er…”

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Bai Xiang also returned to herself from that feeling. Hearing the sound, she lowered her head slightly, and what she saw was her younger sister clinging tightly around her body.

I see…

Her eyelids lowered halfway, yet ripples still spread across the calm lake of her heart.

This is even more intoxicating than I imagined.

Can a desire sustained by this kind of bodily sensation also count as part of the world’s primary order?

In that instant, she even wondered whether it was just her imagination. For after that critical point, when the clouds and mist had joined at their peak and Taishang Perception had exploded to its utmost limit, she felt that her heart-aspect and her younger sister’s were gradually merging into one.

It was not merely imagery.

It was not something so simple and abstract as that.

She had caught sight of all of Bai Zhuqing’s cultivation progress. This was not “the transmission of thoughts,” nor was it “shared senses.” Rather, it was as though she herself had also become Bai Zhuqing. She had “personally comprehended her own cultivation.”

So this is… the final result of our heart-aspects mingling together from the very start, from the moment I first entered the Dao…?

It is true that I did not refine her into an incarnation of myself, but the effect, triggered through this kind of fusion, does not seem all that different in the end.

And if that is so, then does it mean that my soul-abilities…

“Qing’er.”

“Get up.”

Bai Xiang’s voice had steadied again. She pinched the girl’s smooth, tender cheek.

“Mmh…?”

Bai Zhuqing looked up at her in a daze.

From that expression, it seemed as though she had no awareness at all of what had happened during that stretch of time.