Volume 4, Chapter 144 – Imperial Daughter’s Order

“Bai Zhixing! You’ve got some nerve!”

With that furious roar, another fish-gilled Daoist present, short as a small child of only a few years old, shot to his feet, his figure suddenly blurring.

Screech.

Bai Xiang did not move. She only lifted the sword guard with her left thumb, letting a short section of the blade of the newly reborn Feixiang Heaven show from its sheath. The rampaging Qi-Origin then spread through the room like a gale. Documents on the tables, chairs, carpets, everything was swept up and blown flying. Dong Sheng had to cling to the doorframe with both hands, his body whipping in the wind like a banner.

Clang, clang, clang, clang!

The fish-gilled Daoist’s figure reappeared less than half a meter from Bai Xiang. He held a double-edged dagger, his face flushed red, straining with every ounce of strength he had as he tried to drive it inward. Yet the Qi-Origin storm stopped him in midair. In a very short span, the dagger collided dozens upon dozens of times with the storm before it ever reached Bai Xiang’s blade, and then, with a metallic shriek, it snapped in two.

How was that possible?

Shock spread across the fish-gilled Daoist’s face.

This was a weapon forged with materials touched by Loss of Order. Its resistance to every kind of pressure far surpassed ordinary weapons. After being nurtured for years, its quality was probably already close to that of a lower sacred weapon. How could it be cut apart out of nowhere by the sword qi of a mere sword, by this invisible sword qi?

She had not even truly drawn the sword yet!

Whoosh!

Before the fish-gilled Daoist could think it through, a pale, delicate hand with long, graceful fingers suddenly tore through the storm and reached for him. He was given no time to react at all. It closed directly around his throat.

“Hrk!” The fish-gilled Daoist reflexively forced out a strangled sound. He first clawed at Bai Xiang’s arm, then tried to chop and stab with the broken weapon, only to discover in even greater terror that these attacks could not so much as cut Bai Xiang’s skin. Striking her arm did not even leave a white mark.

What kind of body-cultivating monster was this?

Could it be that her ranking… wasn’t inflated after all?

Tightening her grip until the fish-gilled Daoist’s eyes rolled white, Bai Xiang pulled him close and said to him word by word, “The registration requirement for the peak division is the condensation of the Three Flowers. In other words, everyone present is a Venerable.”

“Your companion spoke out of turn. From a lowly position, he offended a stronger being he could not possibly contend with. He was therefore trampled and humiliated by that stronger being. That was entirely his own doing. He deserved it.”

“I did not strike to kill. An injury of this degree will not take his life. He still has a chance to crawl on living, and he still has a chance to participate in the competition.”

“I am only treating you as you treat others. Yet you seem… dissatisfied?”

There was almost no rise or fall in her tone. Only the final words were drawn out slightly.

But the pressure it brought to the fish-gilled Daoist was beyond measure. His bulging eyes were forced to meet Bai Xiang’s gaze, and in a daze he felt as though he had been cast into the deep cosmos. Those twin vortexes of golden pupils turned into endless wheels of light crashing toward him. Screaming and trembling, he passed again and again through the profound black hole at the center of those golden eyes, as though he had remained trapped in that absolute loneliness and despair for hundreds, for thousands of years. Then, when he came back to himself, he found that he was still in the reception hall.

“N-no… no objection!”

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He had already been frightened out of his wits by the terrifying female cultivator before him, and the words squeezed out of him in a trembling voice.

“I beg… I beg Venerable Lord…”

“Spare…”

“Spare…”

Bang!

In the next instant, Bai Xiang crushed his neck. His spine snapped with it. That ridiculous fish-gilled head dropped to the floor at once and went rolling over to the feet of a demon beside him.

“Dao Lord Bai!” That demon wore the appearance of a kind-faced old man with an immortal bearing. Frowning as he stared hard at her, he said, “Brother Yuanxu merely spoke out of turn. Why did you have to use such a vicious hand?”

Everyone present had good eyes. Naturally, they could all tell that Brother Yuanxu was not dead. His soul had likely already escaped and gone looking for the backup body they had left behind.

But with the main body he had cultivated for years ruined to this extent, even if his kin took the remains back and reforged them, he would not recover in less than several decades.

In other words, they could stop thinking about the competition from now on.

As for tribulation struggle, it no longer had anything to do with them.

The discussion of the schedule had not even begun, and already two Venerables from the Tongyun division had been removed. How could they not be shocked? How could they ignore such lunatic behavior?

They had to object.

They had to condemn her.

No matter how strong she was, could she really suppress so many of them?

“Merely spoke out of turn?”

Bai Xiang lifted her eyes and stared at the old man. The coldness in her gaze made his lips twitch involuntarily, and her pressure even forced him to edge a small step backward.

“You indulged the disciples under your command in smashing shops and burning homes. In your eyes, do those crimes simply not exist?”

What exactly was she talking about?

The old man was truly stunned.

He genuinely could not understand it.

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He had originally assumed one of two things. Either this demon woman had a violent temper, or Brother Yuanxu had offended her somewhere else and had a private grudge with her. If that were the case, then he could still understand Bai Xiang striking so ruthlessly.

But from the sound of it, she seemed to be acting more for the people of Tongyun Circuit?

But… why?

She had worked so hard to cultivate herself to her present realm. No matter how deep her conflict with them was, in the end they still belonged to the same side, the same class.

Why would she turn around and stand up for those lowly commoners? What could those people possibly give her in return?

Did she not know what severe consequences would follow if conduct like this spread?

“Dao Lord Bai!” The old man looked at Bai Xiang gravely. “You need to think carefully about what doing this really…”

“I am not discussing this with you.”

Bai Xiang cut him off, then swept that pair of deep, cold, uncanny golden eyes with their dark-gold sheen across the crowd.

“This is an order.”

“A command I am issuing by force in Tongyun Circuit, in my own name. From this moment forward, those who violate the prohibitions shall be punished according to the law. Repeat offenders shall be executed and expelled from the main world.”

The old man’s eyes slowly widened.

Zhu Qingluo, standing behind, was stunned as well.

Dong Sheng lay on the floor pretending to be a corpse. He was now truly regretting why he had ever taken on the reception of Shenming Sword Dao.

What rotten luck did I have to end up guiding this living king of hell…

Dong Sheng wailed inwardly.

The next development, if nothing unexpected happened, would definitely be a fully escalated battle. The destruction and casualties were secondary. When the blame came afterward, I’d definitely be the one used as the scapegoat. They might even wipe out my clan. What am I supposed to do?

As he wallowed in grief and despair, he suddenly felt the outside world go mute.

It was not merely that no one was speaking. It was not that simple a feeling.

This was a reception hall.

With holes in it, too.

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Even if no one were talking and no one were breathing, the environment would still be filled with tiny sounds, something like white noise. It was impossible for there to be no sound at all.

The silence he now felt was as if he had suddenly been dropped into a vacuum. Every sound, whether his own breathing, the wind, or even the beat of his heart, had vanished entirely from his hearing.

What happened?

Dong Sheng lifted his head in shock.

The light was too dazzling.

He could not even make out her figure in detail. He was forced to squint, and could only judge by instinct that the female cultivator with her back to him seemed to have one hand on the sheath and the other just pressing her sword back into it.

Had she drawn?

Dong Sheng was astonished.

Wait… then where was all this light coming from?

He shuddered, rolled onto his side, and forced himself to look upward. In utter disbelief, he saw that there was a sword-mark there, half a meter wide and so deep that it cut all the way through to the outside, splitting the entire Yongming Hall open from the ground ahead as its starting point.

And it did not stop there.

The slash mark extended out from Yongming Hall, across the road outside, through the landscaped greenery, and vanished only after disappearing among the vegetation. No one knew how far that one sword strike had gone.

This…

This was actually something human strength could do…?

Dong Sheng’s mind went blank. He completely crashed.

And he was not the only one shaken. The demon Venerables were equally stunned.

Every one of them stood there like wooden chickens, eyes bulging as they stared at that sword-mark.

For an outsider like Dong Sheng, the sight was merely spectacular.

But what sort of people were they?

They would not be frightened by mere destructive force.

The problem was the violent sword qi attached to that slash mark.

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That terrifying power that merely brushing against it with their senses could wound their souls…

That was no fake thing.

“Does anyone object?”

Bai Xiang swept her gaze over them again and asked the crowd in a calm tone.

No one answered.

Forget answering aloud. When her gaze passed over them, not a single person even dared meet her eyes.

Because they had all seen it clearly.

The starting point of that slash was precisely where the old man who had spoken out had been standing, and the man himself had already vanished from the hall without leaving behind so much as a single hair.

“I won’t be participating in the schedule discussion.”

Only then did Bai Xiang nod, tilt her head, and say to Dong Sheng,

“Don’t abandon this reception hall.”

“Hold any meetings here as well.”

With that, she simply turned, passed by Zhu Qingluo and Dong Sheng, and walked out into the corridor first.

And so, whether it was the Venerable Net, the Nine Provinces Net, or even foreign networks that were closely tracking competition news, all of them broke the same explosive story one after another that evening. People discussed and debated it like mad, and Tongyun Circuit became the focus of countless eyes around the world.

And at that same time, in the Court of Ceremonies,

an old clerk sat on a high platform facing the dusk. He suddenly emerged from his seated meditation and began writing rapidly with his brush.

[In Maozhou there is a woman, and her name is “Xiang.”]

[In the eighth month of the Fifty-Fourth Year, the Void Realm entered the world. The Sacred Dynasty changed its system to martial exercises, and the Void People violated the prohibitions.]

[Lady Xiang drew her sword, and many of the Void folk retreated.]

[She left the mark of her slash, so that those who came later might behold that mark and preserve the right within themselves.]