Volume 4, Chapter 126 – New Guests (Two-in-One)

Only after she had completely subdued and taken control of the system officials who governed the Qi lands did Bai Xiang finally go to Fang Wenyuan’s residence. After entering, she reached up to a porcelain bowl on the bookshelf, turned it one full circle clockwise, then three full circles counterclockwise.

Then she stepped back and waited, using her sharp hearing to catch the sound of gears turning within the concrete. She watched as the bookshelf swung aside in a fan-like arc, revealing a dark doorway behind it.

This was the secret room Fang Wenyuan had set up.

He had come to Qizhou under Crown Prince Yao Quan’s orders, and his main purpose had been to drain the dragon-vein purple qi of this place dry. Once the dragon-vein purple qi was drained, then under the order of the current dynasty, Qizhou would become a wasteland.

That was not just empty talk. It would become a literal physical reality.

Think about it. There are always certain places in the world that look like earthly paradises, as though heaven itself favors them. And there are always places that are nothing but barren mountains and foul waters, with terrible environments. Not only is the land poor and resources scarce, even breathing means inhaling poisonous miasma.

If the dragon-vein purple qi of Qizhou’s four circuits were truly drained dry, then before the next dynasty was established and order was refined anew, the Qi lands would most likely turn into the latter sort of place.

Since that was the case, and since he knew this place was about to become a wasteland, Fang Wenyuan naturally felt no burden at all in oppressing the people and plundering their wealth. This secret room was piled high with the valuables he had scraped out of the populace in the days since taking office.

Fifty chests of tongbao coins, ten chests of gold notes.

Ten chests of fine silks, twenty chests of gold goods.

And even that was only because the goods were dirty and Fang Wenyuan could not conveniently deposit them in the gold banks. The sums he had already moved through the banks were truly astronomical.

Bai Xiang frowned at the piles, sorted through them carefully, and decided to keep only the portion that had been presented to Fang Wenyuan by the officials. The rest, once daylight came tomorrow, would be redistributed and returned to the common people.

If there were concerns about stampedes or fraudulent claims, then the money could instead be converted into corresponding quantities of everyday necessities and handed out that way.

After all, the chaos here already showed that, now the news of the martial exercises had been made public, some demonized cultivators from the Illusory Realms probably felt they no longer needed to hide. These filthy things would certainly become much more active than before. The Nine Provinces were about to enter a period of real turmoil.

As for the present? Right now, this could only count as small-scale skirmishing.

In Bai Xiang’s judgment, the Dao-Void martial exercises were only the appetizer. Later on, there might even be situations where every province was jointly controlled by Illusory Realm forces together with the imperial princes and princesses, each raising the banner of legitimacy and facing one another in armed confrontation. That would truly mean warlords everywhere and beacons of war across the realm.

Rather than waiting until then, when ordinary people would only be troubled by not being able to spend their money, it would be better to exchange it for them now.

This world placed extreme value on top-end combat power, and Bai Xiang did not think distributing this kind of “contending-for-the-realm resource” to ordinary people would delay anything.

To put it bluntly, she had never expected to raise an elite army capable of helping her defeat the various immortal dynasties. That was simply impossible.

For one thing, there was not enough time.

And even if she did raise one, what then? If she later clashed with powers like the Demon Court, and one of those hidden Exalted Saints, or someone on her own level, casually showed up and unleashed a grand move like Forbidden-Method Tribulation Lotus, would that army still exist?

So it was unrealistic. Even in a struggle for power, the military could not be the main pillar. At most, mortal armies could be used to occupy territory, hold it, and maintain governance.

After finishing the inventory, Bai Xiang also found the main target of this trip in the secret room: a gourd hidden inside a silk bag.

The gourd was not large. When Bai Xiang gripped its middle with her right hand and closed her thumb web, her index finger and thumb could easily touch. Its surface was a strange dark brown, a bit like the color of an old gourd left to age for many years. But on closer look it carried a faint metallic shimmer, and under reflected light it even resembled a violet-gold hue.

This was no ordinary gourd. It was a Returning-to-Origin Immortal Gourd, produced through a secret method by nourishing it with Returning-to-Origin Purple Qi.

The Returning-to-Origin Immortal Gourd had only one use: storing and transferring Returning-to-Origin Purple Qi. Small as it was, it was still enough to hold all the purple qi refined from draining Qizhou’s dragon veins dry.

Now that Qizhou had been pacified, Bai Xiang certainly knew how to extract dragon veins, but there was no way she would use such a heaven-defying, harmful method to obtain purple qi.

The Qi lands bordered the Jing River closely. If this place became a wasteland, would that not affect the Jing River as well, cutting off its flow and drying up its channels?

And that would implicate far more than this single wasteland. It was a vicious scheme that harmed the balance of heaven. Bai Xiang seriously doubted that if she truly did such a thing, the little yellow jade would continue to feel close to her.

So of course that would not do. She also had no desire to do such a thing.

But the Returning-to-Origin Purple Qi that had already been extracted, she did not intend to waste.

After leaving the secret room, Bai Xiang ordered everyone around the little plaza cleared out. She went to the Eight Trigrams bronze furnace, pulled the stopper from the Returning-to-Origin Immortal Gourd, and aimed its mouth toward the furnace’s air vent.

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Hiss, hiss, hiss.

A puff of white smoke rose from within the furnace. The jumping violet-gold flames seemed to be drawn by some unseen force, tracing out a thin line of their own accord and streaming into the gourd.

That’s done.

She sealed the stopper again, cut a strip of cord from her waist sash, wrapped it around the middle of the gourd, and tucked it into the inner layer of her sash instead of hanging it outside. At once, she felt this trip could already be called a great success. She had achieved most of her goals.

Oh, not quite.

There was still Lord Fang’s side. She needed to see what was happening there.

When Bai Xiang arrived at the State Chancery, the first thing she heard was arguing.

“No! He died to save me! And now you want to destroy his corpse! How could I possibly agree?”

That was Fang Wenya’s voice.

Bai Xiang remembered this noble young lady. She was the beloved late-born daughter of Fang Xiaochun. She had once been caught up in the demon chaos at Chilong No.1 High School, and in the end it had been Bai Xiang who rescued her.

As she descended into the courtyard, Bai Xiang saw at once that Fang Wenya, eyes red from crying, was draped over a coffin. Quite a few armored guards surrounded her, and the one leading them was actually Abbess Li Sheng.

“Dao Lord.” The moment Li Sheng saw Bai Xiang, she hurried over and first explained in a low voice, “Mr. He went with Peak Lord Wang to the Wuqiu Mountain side. Peak Lord Wang plans to organize the dojo relocation overnight.”

Only then did she begin describing the situation inside the residence.

The rough outline was this: Fang Xiaochun seemed to have fallen into some kind of delusion. After Li Sheng’s group had explained the situation and their purpose, he not only refused to cooperate, he even shouted that they were rebels.

Because of that, Fang Wenya’s attitude had become uncertain, and she no longer trusted them very much.

As for the coffin, it contained the corpse of an official named Xu Changze. They had originally wanted to open it and check whether the body had been contaminated by Demonic Power and whether it might undergo corpse transformation, but Fang Wenya had stubbornly blocked them and would not let them proceed.

Corpse transformation was also a fairly common danger nowadays.

The interference brought by the Void Tribulation affected every aspect of existence. Even the soul energy that dispersed after a sentient being’s death could be polluted, turning into things like Demon Pools or Void Demons. Corpse transformation, followed by the body becoming a corpse demon or corpse fiend, naturally also existed.

For these guards and for Li Sheng, wanting to confirm the condition of the body was only natural. One could not say they were wrong.

“It’s Sister Bai!”

The moment Fang Wenya saw Bai Xiang, all her dejection vanished. She rushed straight at her, buried her face in Bai Xiang’s chest, and began sobbing loudly.

Fang Wenya knew Bai Xiang as well. Earlier, she had not known He Xian, nor had she been that familiar with Li Sheng, so she had naturally taken Fang Xiaochun’s opinion as her guide and had not trusted those people much.

But Bai Xiang was different. She had saved their lives more than once. She was the kind elder sister to whom one could entrust everything.

This young Lady Fang… wasn’t she originally not this type?

Bai Xiang’s brows drew together for an instant.

Aside from her younger sister Bai Zhuqing, she did not like others getting this physically close to her.

Without showing it on her face, she steadied Fang Wenya and kept her from rubbing against her chest any more. While soothing her, Bai Xiang asked what had happened and prompted her to explain the details.

“My father values face too much and didn’t want to inform Sister Bai of what was happening here,” Fang Wenya said after venting a little and regaining some calm. She wiped her tears and continued, “So I wanted to contact Lord Xu and have him do it instead. I knew his temperament. Other people might submit to Fang Wenyuan, but he absolutely would only pretend to go over while secretly remaining loyal to the prefectural office!”

So the matter of sending the letter had been exposed, and that had brought fatal disaster upon him.

Bai Xiang glanced at the coffin beside them.

Xu Changze. That letter had indeed been written by him. Although she had already guessed back then that his chances of survival were slim, now that his corpse truly lay before her, Bai Xiang still felt a little moved.

This was a man of real integrity, an official who could have been put to important use, and he had died just like that. It was a pity.

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Then, looking again at Fang Wenya, Bai Xiang also understood why the girl had insisted so stubbornly.

Because Xu Changze could be said to have died because of her.

Bearing that kind of karmic burden, and raised with this sort of family education, of course she could not bear to let others defile the corpse of a righteous man.

It was also because the pressure on her was too great. That had made her a little one-track-minded.

So the problem still lay in Fang Xiaochun’s attitude?

Others might have been completely confused, but Bai Xiang saw it at a glance. The core issue in this deadlock was that Fang Xiaochun was not in his right mind. Even after meeting Li Sheng and hearing her explain everything, he still cursed them as thieves.

Bai Xiang had no proof, but she suspected the Dynastic Divine Pool was at work.

If one treated the Yu Emperor Sacred Dynasty, that concept itself, as a Divine Pool rule like the Human-Head Shop, then the more loyal an official had been before, and the higher their position, the easier it would be for them to stubbornly cling to the wrong thing and be manipulated by that rule.

To put it bluntly, this too was a form of cognitive tampering. It forced “loyalty to the court” into first place above all else.

Only that could explain why Fang Xiaochun had never contacted Maozhou all this time.

It was so close. He was the state governor. When Fang Wenyuan had first arrived and his foundations were still shaky, Fang Xiaochun could have found a thousand ways to deal with him if he had wanted.

But he had done nothing and had simply let himself be hollowed out step by step.

This really was troublesome.

After all, it involved a critical secret tied to the foundations of the dynasty. Even the memories Bai Xiang had plundered during this trip did not contain the details, so she had no idea how to restore Fang Xiaochun.

Should she try Golden-Pupil Illusory God?

But Fang Xiaochun did not cultivate, and his soul strength was no different from that of an ordinary mortal. Doing so would definitely cause harm and might even greatly shorten his lifespan.

Bai Xiang was still thinking about how to explain the stakes to the young Lady Fang so she could be mentally prepared.

But at that moment, her gaze sharpened. Her golden pupils locked onto a patch of empty space in the courtyard, and both hands simultaneously pressed down on her sword hilts as she drew Feixiang Heaven and the Tianxuan Sword at the same time.

Li Sheng’s eyes widened instinctively. Faced with so many enemies earlier, Bai Xiang had never looked so much like she was facing a great foe. What had she sensed?

Following Bai Xiang’s gaze on instinct, the others saw only a crack split open in empty space, and from within it billowed rolling black smoke carrying a dense sulfurous stench.

Quite a few people frowned and covered their noses. Was that the smell of volcanic magma?

What was going on?

A crack had opened in space? Was there really a volcanic crater on the other side?

Before they could make sense of it, a blurred figure shot out of the rift in an instant and lunged at Bai Xiang with lightning speed, reaching straight for her chest.

“How dare you!” Li Sheng roared in fury.

Where had this shameless lecher come from? How dare he try to molest my Dao Lord disciple in front of me?

Clang!

The Shangqing Sword left its sheath as Li Sheng tried to intercept him.

But something happened that shocked her. In her eyes, the other party’s movements did not even seem all that fast. She could see them clearly. Yet the moment she truly moved, she discovered that compared to him, her own movements had slowed as if in a many-times-stretched slow-motion scene. No matter what she did, she simply could not keep up.

What was this?

Could this man also be a master on the level of Mr. Zhu and Mr. He?

Facing the black figure’s grasp, Bai Xiang was not particularly angry.

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Because she knew very well that he was not trying to violate her. He wanted the object hidden in the hollow of her chest.

She had clearly cleared the field beforehand. Within several li, she had confirmed there could not possibly be any witnesses. Yet this man had still managed to lock onto this place.

That was why she was treating him as a great enemy. Clearly, this was something ordinary Venerables could not do.

Li Sheng and the others could not react in time, but Bai Xiang could. She crossed her two swords before her and forcibly intercepted the incoming claw.

Screech.

Another clash of metal rang out. In the next instant, that claw suddenly turned red like molten lava and spewed out a blast of scorching smoke that engulfed Bai Xiang.

Bai Xiang’s body was surrounded by Sword Qi. She swept away the smoke entirely, used several moves of the Void-Imagination Divine Sword to pin the figure down again, then circulated qi through the Divine Movement chapter at her feet and drove a sword-thrusting stab-kick squarely into the man’s heart.

Boom!

Another explosive report rang out. The tremendous force generated a terrifying blast of wind, like a storm above force eight erupting and breaking outward in all directions. It sent everyone reeling, clothes and hair whipping wildly. Fang Wenya had to hide behind a pillar just to keep her footing.

Did she land it?

Li Sheng watched in extreme tension.

There was really no way for her to help in this exchange. She could only judge in general that the man had probably been struck in a vital point.

That was the heart, the middle of the chest. If he didn’t die, he should at least be badly injured.

“Ha!”

The figure flew backward and landed on the ground. His feet plunged through the stone tiles as if they were tofu, sinking his legs deep into the soil below the calves before he finally revealed his form.

It was an old man draped in ragged strips of cloth, so scantily covered that one could almost say he was naked.

The old man was extremely filthy-looking. His bronze skin did not actually look too dirty, but no one knew how long it had been since his hair and beard had last been washed. Great masses of it were tangled together, and both his hair and beard had grown to astonishing lengths, enough that even his eyebrows dragged on the ground with them.

Well, one could say he had “profited from misfortune.” At least it covered the shame below his waist.

“So fragrant! So fragrant!”

This old beggar-like fellow said nothing sensible after appearing. He merely lifted the right hand that had nearly grabbed Bai Xiang, held it before his nose, and sniffed it deeply, his face showing utter intoxication.

What kind of behavior was this?

Li Sheng stared in utter disbelief, then roared in fury, “You old bastard! You’ve got nerve!”

“What are you shouting for?”

To her shock, the old beggar glared back at her and said in an extremely scornful, contemptuous tone, “She’s fragrant! You stink!”

“You! You’re not qualified to speak!”

What was this even supposed to mean?

Before Li Sheng could react, the old beggar lifted his hand and pointed one after another at the armored guards standing around them.

“You!”

“You!”

“And you too!”

“You all stink! None of you are allowed to talk!”

Me?

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As the last person the old beggar pointed at, Fang Wenya blinked her red-rimmed eyes and, meeting his gaze, pointed at her own chest as well.

It had only been an instinctive gesture, but to her surprise the old lunatic actually nodded hard at her, as if to say, Yes, you. I mean you exactly.

What the hell is this?

Fang Wenya was furious.

How do I stink?

What exactly was this old thing here for?

Still, by this point, even Li Sheng could see that he was not some lustful degenerate.

His standard for judging fragrance and stench probably had nothing to do with whether someone was a woman. It likely involved some deeper principle.

In that case, should they first send everyone else away?

Li Sheng was still hesitating when a warm breeze touched her face first.

Before she could react, she saw a cluster of green light gather in the middle of the courtyard into a vague silhouette. When it dispersed, a woman in a green dress appeared.

Another expert?

Li Sheng and everyone else stared wide-eyed. The woman seemed unconcerned, merely gazing at the old beggar and murmuring softly.

“One is me, full of ulterior motives. The other is a pitiable soul who couldn’t bear the blow and has fallen into madness.”

“Little sister Zhixing, although inexperience made you expose a flaw, I have to say your luck really is rather good.”

Sensing that this woman had no intent to fight, and that even the old beggar did not plan to continue attacking and was only rolling his eyes around as he observed the scene, Bai Xiang sheathed both swords with a clang and looked at the two of them with eased brows.

“Who are you?”

“Before I answer that, won’t you invite me inside for a cup of tea?”

The green-dressed woman smiled brightly at Bai Xiang.

“Oh, right.”

She flicked another glance toward Fang Wenya.

“I heard from the grasses and trees that this Lord Fang seems to have developed some kind of affliction?”

“I happen to know a bit of wandering medicine. If little sister Zhixing has no clue what to do, why not let your elder sister here give it a try?”

Her voice was gentle and gave the impression of a warm spring breeze. Even Li Sheng unconsciously let down her guard and felt the suggestion sounded workable.

Bai Xiang, however, was not affected. Her brow twitched almost imperceptibly.

The green-dressed woman clearly noticed that too, and the expression on her face stiffened slightly.

The clash had already happened without anyone realizing it, but everyone else was clearly still unaware.

“Come in.”

Bai Xiang dispersed the Qi-Origin around her body and glanced at the old beggar.

“If you can persuade him too,”

“then I’ll sit down and talk with you.”