Volume 4, Chapter 165 – Stubborn Feelings Reveal True Thoughts, Qingwu Trembles the Divine Heart (Two-in-One)

Unlike her younger sister Bai Zhuqing, after grasping the Taishang Response Method, Bai Xiang’s Jade Spirit Mingxin Method had all but become instinct.

She did not need to divide any extra attention toward the outside world. The air itself, along with the flow of heavenly essence, would naturally convey information to her.

That was why she dared do this sort of thing in the room.

Because the moment any unexpected factor appeared, she could stop in advance and swiftly smooth out the qi currents within her own body.

With such a “defensive mechanism,” Bai Xiang naturally appeared “fearlessly confident” when carrying out such “improper acts” as well. Bai Zhuqing only felt as though she had fallen into a boundless heavenly sea, her entire soul and consciousness rising and falling with its waves.

And yet the weather of that entire heavenly sea was in Bai Xiang’s hands. At first, the girl clearly still had the will to resist and struggle, but very quickly she was defeated beneath the shifting assault of those “sword fingers,” swiftly entering a hazy, indistinct state of awareness as she went limp there, murmuring and babbling.

So now I finally know… know why Sister always lets me have my way first every time… why she lets me be the one to offend her first…

In that muddled state, Bai Zhuqing suddenly understood something else.

It was not some special fetish at all. It was simply Sister taking pity on her. She had seen it directly. If that side were the one to exert force first, then she herself would have no strength left to strike back at all…

No!

This won’t do!

Barely summoning a trace of true spirit, the girl still stubbornly refused to admit total defeat. It was because she still remembered why she had thrown herself into Bai Xiang’s arms at a moment like this. Just as Bai Xiang had said earlier, that “Immortal Venerable Yuexi” had stirred up an intense sense of crisis in her.

That sense of crisis seemed to have no real basis. In truth, she ought to have been able to see it clearly: Bai Xiang would not develop feelings for Gu Xi.

No one in the world should understand better than she did how difficult it was to get her own sister to accept this kind of feeling. From that angle, this sense of crisis seemed baseless, even somewhat like needless self-pity, almost the definition of making trouble where there was none.

But that was not it.

Bai Zhuqing had to keep reminding herself that the truth was not as simple as it looked on the surface.

It could be put this way: Bai Xiang… the reason Sister had accepted her, and tolerated those unhealthy feelings she had developed toward her, was entirely because Sister was too deeply committed to “preserving order” by temperament, and yet beneath that “preserving order” there was also an extreme streak.

That sounded contradictory. If she was so committed to “preserving order,” then shouldn’t she have completely rejected this twisted affection and adhered to ritual and propriety step by step?

According to Bai Zhuqing’s own sense of things, Bai Xiang really had thought like that in the beginning.

At the very least, during that period right after she first entered the Dao, Sister’s mentality of preserving order had not yet changed. Her attitude toward me was mainly distant and proper. At times, one could see traces of indulgence, but she still refused to have any further contact with me.

The turning point came on that night, the night Sister obtained the Scripture of Returning to Origin and Transforming Qi. It was only after that night that the relationship between the two of us began to change, and there was faintly something different in the way she looked at me.

As for the changes that came later, such as the entanglement between us when we entered the Dao at No. 1 High School, or the later questioning of the Dao and the heart, in Bai Zhuqing’s eyes none of them mattered as much as that single night.

So Sister Xiang… she really was too proud. It could be said that she was the proudest person Bai Zhuqing had ever met in her life.

She had never placed any thing or any person in her eyes, and she had never truly cared about any rules.

Her outward maintenance of rules, that apparent observance of propriety, was only because she felt doing so could temporarily bring her benefits. There was no way she would sincerely carry through “preserving order,” because her real thought was probably this: only what she herself upheld as right could count as right.

It was precisely because she had seen this that Bai Zhuqing remained convinced that the Scripture of Returning to Origin and Transforming Qi was the real key that had advanced the relationship between them.

Sister really was very conservative.

But that was only a disguise.

Strip away Sister’s conservative outer shell, and hidden beneath it was the most frenzied radicalism. It was a self that would trample every rule if necessary to preserve itself, more extreme than anything else. And the factor that determined when she would reveal that self never came from the outer world. It depended only on whether she believed she currently possessed the strength to trample that portion of the rules.

The Scripture of Returning to Origin and Transforming Qi had brought Sister a corresponding degree of power and, to a certain extent, freed the self hidden inside her. That was why she had been willing to indulge me further, and to indulge my nonsense.

Bai Zhuqing admitted that she was the one insisting on this interpretation alone, but she also insisted that this way of thinking was not purely subjective speculation.

Because she and Bai Xiang had recently cultivated together, and not merely to the extent of transmitting qi while their bodies were together. They had gone directly beyond that to soul-vision of the Body-scape. Both of their soul-bodies had flown out from the crown of the head, and had pressed together in the same posture as their physical bodies while they compared and sorted out the qi pathways within them.

Whatever the motive behind that behavior, and no matter that it had all been led by Bai Xiang, for Bai Zhuqing at least, this was undeniably a true opportunity to glimpse and sense Bai Xiang’s thoughts.

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So how could she possibly not worry?

According to the portrait of Bai Xiang she had pieced together, her sister’s true personality… would not care in the least about any rule that existed in the world.

Morality?

Ritual and law?

Or simply the question of whether something “should” or “should not” be done?

Taken all together, all of those things probably had a real restraining force of zero on Sister.

What determined whether Sister would show that side of herself was her strength. Following that logic, Bai Zhuqing could very easily derive a formula.

The stronger Bai Xiang became, the colder she would appear toward rules, and the more likely she would be to step beyond habitual ways of thinking and do things others would never expect.

These “things” included the way she had killed the envoy when she went to duel with Chengfeng Sword Dao.

Included the way she had killed Zhou Yi today at the match venue.

And of course, they also included that earlier time, when the Southern King had rebelled and Chilong Circuit had descended into complete chaos. Wearing that splendid robe-dress, she had sat on the edge of the bed, lifted a black-stockinged foot toward her younger sister, and seductively asked whether she still wanted to touch it.

So of course I’m worried…

I’m worried that if Sister’s strength keeps surging forward like this and growing stronger, then one day she might completely cast off the outer shell of “preserving order” and say similar things to other people as well…

From that angle, Gu Xi was only a trigger.

Bai Zhuqing also knew that, at least judging from Bai Xiang’s recent conduct, there was no way the two of them could possibly make any such progress.

But while bathing in the hot water, she simply could not stop herself.

Could not stop herself from sketching out one terrifying scene after another in her mind.

It was precisely because she cared so much about this kind of thing that she had seemed so agitated when she came out.

So I can’t… can’t lose to Sister so easily…

Sister… Aunt belongs to me alone…

I’m going to commit the same offense against Aunt too!

The girl truly was resisting with all her might.

Even if the actual effect was almost nonexistent, at most making her little whimpering sounds rise higher in pitch and the breaks in them grow sharper, Bai Xiang naturally could still tell that her younger sister seemed to be clinging to some strange insistence.

Bai Xiang was not like Bai Zhuqing. She would never imagine so many elaborate scenarios over something like this. If she truly knew what the girl was thinking, she would only find it amusing.

As she teased out her younger sister’s murmurs and heartbeat, she also poured her soul-abilities into the girl’s body, helping her repair the injuries in her bones and meridians.

Some of the wounds were fairly deep. A mere bit of ointment could not penetrate that far.

Then she would need more medicinal force.

So she took out a pill from the small pouch in the drawer, held it in her own mouth, lowered herself to catch her younger sister’s lips and tongue, and conveyed it to her that way.

Medicinal force melted open in such a direct way was naturally fierce and violent. If Bai Zhuqing had handled it herself, she definitely would not have been able to contain it, and there would have been quite a bit of waste and dissipation.

But with Bai Xiang managing the process now, and with her soul-abilities simultaneously existing and flowing through both bodies, the medicinal force was controlled at once and transferred without the slightest leak to the sites of injury, promoting regeneration and the recovery of Qi-Origin.

During that process, she inevitably had to use soul-vision of the Body-scape to test it first.

By the time everything was almost finished and all of her younger sister’s internal injuries were fully healed, Bai Xiang came back to herself and only then discovered that at some point the girl’s soul-body had also been tugged out of her body. It was clinging to Bai Xiang’s own soul-body in a thoroughly indecorous pose, something like a koala, while continuing to mutter under its breath.

What is she saying?

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A little curious, Bai Xiang actively allowed the two soul-bodies to tangle more deeply, wanting to pry into the secret thoughts in her younger sister’s heart.

After all, she had possessiveness too.

And because of her previous life, her possessiveness was even stronger than that of ordinary people.

After listening and sensing for a while through the connection between soul-body and soul-body, Bai Xiang lifted her head, her expression growing a little strange.

So that’s it…

She thinks that when I grow stronger in the future, I’ll cast off my disguise and bring home any woman I take a fancy to.

It felt strange.

At first, Bai Xiang found it both irritating and funny. But after thinking about it carefully, although she would never truly do such a thing, her younger sister’s earlier character sketch of her… could not really be called wrong.

She truly was not wholly committed to preserving order.

On one hand, this was the “innate arrogance” almost all transmigrators possessed.

On the other hand, it also had something to do with the circumstances of her previous life.

After all, she had seen far too much injustice.

Why had her soul-abilities come into being?

She did not know the deeper reason, but on the surface… it was because she had always been thinking.

Her limbs had lost their strength.

She had almost been paralyzed.

So all she could do was think, think constantly, imagining herself running, exercising, carrying out one extreme sport after another.

At the same time, she also fantasized, imagined that if she possessed a certain degree of power, then in the face of the low points and injustices people in the world encountered, what stance she herself should take in resisting them, in facing them.

That was right.

The judgment of “injustice” could be classified as a philosophical question in any era of human civilization. It was so complicated in its entanglements and so profound in its depths that people had argued over it for thousands of years without reaching a true conclusion.

But she would never have cared about that.

At the time, she had been on the verge of paralysis. She had thought her life was already over. In that case, all the morality and law belonging to the secular world had lost their power to restrain her.

After all, she had only been thinking.

A gentleman judges the deed, not the heart.

Thinking was nothing.

Thinking was not a crime.

And within those chaotic thoughts, she had committed plenty of mad acts. Over time, that too had changed her nature, making her colder and colder toward rules, and sharply increasing her need to preserve her own self.

It was just that all this had always been hidden deep within my Inner Body-scape, and I only ever showed it when I believed it could be shown.

Drawing back from her wandering thoughts, Bai Xiang’s gaze on her younger sister deepened.

Qing’er…

Although soul-body contact did indeed carry a chance of receiving the other side’s thoughts, to perceive them this deeply, she must have poured an enormous amount of effort into it.

Little thing.

Is she hoping to eliminate those “potential threats” by “satisfying me”…?

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Finding it amusing, Bai Xiang eased off slightly, at least enough to give the girl a chance to catch her breath.

Bai Zhuqing, however, had been gritting her teeth and waiting for an opening all along. Seeing that the “opening” had finally arrived, she mistook it for Bai Xiang growing “tired.” She immediately opened her exhausted eyes, fumbled upward with both hands, flipped her sweat-damp body over, and climbed right on top of Bai Xiang.

She raised her head to look at Bai Xiang, and Bai Xiang looked down at her.

Those majestic golden pupils were half narrowed, seeming to carry a trace of teasing. The curve at the corner of her lips seemed to mock her, telling her that she could never do what she imagined, that all her persistence was destined to be futile.

That utterly detonated the girl’s emotions.

At that moment, Bai Zhuqing had only a single thought in her head.

I won’t lose…!

I won’t hand Aunt over to anyone else!

With that thought in mind, the girl abruptly opened her mouth and bit down hard.

“Hm?”

Bai Xiang’s eyes widened.

Little thing… how had she suddenly become so unfamiliar?

She had long known that her younger sister was possessive toward her, to an almost pathological degree. But that pathology had never actually fed back into certain actions.

Put simply, it was all bark and no bite.

For all the way the little thing used to flirt with words, calling her Aunt every day, always wriggling against her, even doing things like giving her a pair of close-fitting stockings, once she was actually given a chance and it came time for her to act, she immediately lost her nerve.

She did not dare put into practice on Bai Xiang the things she said aloud.

Toward Bai Xiang, and toward all the “beauty” Bai Xiang displayed before her, the girl always held a mentality almost like pilgrimage.

On one hand, she feared her actions would be a desecration.

On the other, she feared that if she went too far, she would provoke Bai Xiang’s disgust.

So of course she could not really do it. No matter how often Bai Xiang indulged her and let her do things, her actual ability to follow through was extremely limited.

But this time was different.

The little thing seemed to have entered a state of madness.

Bai Xiang instinctively felt something was wrong and wanted to straighten her younger sister up and explain the reasoning to her.

After all, it was true that she was proud, and true that she did not care to obey many rules. But based on her original standpoint, she genuinely found certain kinds of behavior distasteful, and she herself would never simply imitate them.

This should count as “domineering,” not “lawless,” shouldn’t it?

But Bai Zhuqing had already completely lost her reason.

The emotion reflected in Sister’s golden pupils thoroughly ignited her unease. Perhaps it was also mixed with the influence of the Illusory God, letting her suddenly enter a state of neither thought nor non-thought, a lucid emptiness with no distractions.

She paid no attention to Bai Xiang’s movements at all. She directly reached out, pressed a hand to Sister’s lower abdomen, and sent qi straight into her, letting it drop into Sister’s qi sea.

Hm!?!?

Bai Xiang’s eyes widened again.

Because the dual-cultivation state between the two had not yet been released, Bai Zhuqing did indeed have that permission.

But this time was unlike before.

The qi the girl was sending over ought to have had an absolute gap in quality compared with the Qi-Origin of the Origin Realm. It should have been digested by the qi sea almost at once. But this time, that qi gathered without dispersing. Not only was it not digested outright, under Bai Zhuqing’s control it rapidly condensed into a sword-pellet qi sphere.

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Once the qi sphere took shape, it began to tremble violently, because it truly could not resist the strangling and devouring of the sea of Qi-Origin. At this rate, it would not take even a breath for it to collapse and disintegrate, swallowed by Bai Xiang’s qi sea.

Then everything would return to the same process as before.

That was, Bai Zhuqing’s qi would be digested by Bai Xiang, then Bai Xiang would transmit that digested qi back to her, mixed with some of her own extraordinarily violent Qi-Origin, using that method to help her younger sister cultivate.

But this time really was different.

Bai Xiang only felt the sword-pellet qi sphere tremble once, and then it began splitting inside her own qi sea.

One became two.

Two became four.

Layer upon layer, it advanced directly to the current limit of what the girl could control, a full sixteen sword pellets.

What is this… how can this be!?

Shock.

Confusion.

Bai Xiang immediately tried to control her qi sea and digest them, but at that instant she suddenly realized that her soul-abilities were not obeying.

Not that they were truly disobeying.

The ability was still very obedient. It faithfully carried out Bai Xiang’s commands, existing simultaneously in both bodies and maintaining a delicate balance.

But that meant that, for this extremely brief interval, she had no way to resist the invasion coming from the other side.

The power on both sides came from the same source.

Her own command had been neutralized.

The next instant after realizing that, Bai Xiang shuddered sharply, her chin snapping back as she was utterly drowned by the storm raised in her qi sea.

The sixteen sword pellets did not stop splitting.

Even at this point, the gap between them and Qi-Origin still existed.

They would still be digested. They would still disappear.

Bai Zhuqing’s response was simple: keep splitting.

However many were digested, she would split and divide out that many more.

No matter what, she was going to fill Sister’s qi sea with her own qi.

She was going to use this method to make Sister understand… her true feelings for her.

She lifted her head and stared at Bai Xiang’s face, stared at those golden pupils that had already begun to lose focus and mist over, yet the movements of her hands did not slow in the slightest. Coldly, she carried out her plan.

Splitting alone was not enough.

There also had to be vibrating force.

Any sword pellets meant to be sacrificed would simply be abandoned, detonated on the spot to stir up an even greater storm of vibration.

As for Bai Xiang… she no longer had the leisure to pay attention to such details.

The storm in her qi sea was raising tidal waves.

Now it was the new fruit’s turn for its stem to fall away. Now it was this fruit’s turn to struggle in the billows, sinking and rising with the surging tide…