Volume 4, Chapter 194 – Celestial Change (Two-in-One)

Ten days passed in the blink of an eye.

During that time, no matter what kind of public uproar or storm broke out outside, no matter whether Void People came to visit or high ministers of the Yu court sent letters to sound her out, Bai Xiang ignored them all. She sealed off the upper floors of the hotel with Origin Qi and remained inside in secluded cultivation.

The process lasted a very long time. By the end of it, Bai Xiang had not stepped out of her room for a full three days. She simply hovered above the bedroll, sitting upright with her eyes closed, utterly motionless.

Only when the expected time was nearly at hand did her lashes tremble slightly, like a spring cicada waking from long sleep at the touch of the Awakening of Insects, and she opened her eyes again, divine light flowing within them.

After waking, Bai Xiang felt an instinctive sense of disorientation. It was as if time had been stretched out. In her own perception, in the process of exploring and refining her Origin Orifices, she had not been immersed for ten days, but ten years.

By instinct, she moved her thoughts, and then discovered in surprise that the feeling had not been wrong at all. Her ordained lifespan had genuinely been reduced by ten years.

“My soul-abilities grant me a privilege. So long as I can make the soul sovereign, then my soul, my body… everything covered by the name ‘Bai Xiang’ is untouched by any external interference or influence. The only thing that can act upon it is my own will.”

“Then those vanished ten years mean I truly did spend ten years exploring and losing myself within my Inner Body-scape?”

Bai Xiang frowned slightly, unable for a moment to understand whether this meant she had dug so deeply this time that she had uncovered the secret of time and space hidden within the human Inner Body-scape, or whether it simply meant that those ten years were the price paid to cultivate to this step.

It did not matter.

Perhaps the Inner Body-scape did hold other secrets, but for now, that was not something she should be considering.

Bai Xiang did not dwell on the question any further.

She had not fully explored the mysteries of the Inner Body-scape.

Even though she possessed soul-abilities, and even had such a powerful referential method as soul-vision of the Body-scape, allowing her to lock onto hidden orifices directly through Chu Weiping’s memories and insights and manifest and refine them one by one, the further the process went, the more difficult it became.

Before she had formally begun this round of cultivation, the total number of orifices she had manifested and refined had been one hundred sixty-four.

Now, however, that total had reached three hundred twenty-eight, exactly double what it had been before.

If she continued cultivating, there was still room for improvement, but time had run out. She had to stop.

At her current stage, this ought to be enough.

Bai Xiang tightened her skin and flesh slightly, and a series of crackling explosions immediately rang out from inside her body.

Put together, the number of explosions was exactly three hundred twenty-eight, not one more, not one less.

This should have been an utterly terrifying force of vibration and impact. In theory, each individual detonation possessed enough power to shatter the void and blast open a black rift.

Yet under Bai Xiang’s precise control, not a single unusual phenomenon appeared in the room.

She drifted down onto the bedroll as lightly as a feather, remained seated in lotus posture for a while in thought, then got up, put on her shoes, and went to bathe and change.

This time, she scrubbed herself with exceptional care.

In this process of self-exploration and self-excavation, it felt as though she had relived those ten bedridden years all over again. She scrubbed herself with such earnestness and such deep feeling that it was as if the self she had once been had awakened again and was clinging to this stretch of time to experience rebirth.

Once she had washed herself clean, Bai Xiang changed into her inner garments. As usual, she took out the black silk pantyhose her younger sister had left for her, stretched them open, and put them on. Then she opened the wardrobe and took out a set of black Dao Lord robes patterned with gold, the kind she would wear only on the most formal occasions, together with a sash of the same tone, and fastened it tightly around her waist.

After that, she gathered up part of her white hair, fixed it in place with a dark-gold Buddha’s-hand hairpin, and took out a jewelry box, inside of which lay a pair of golden cicada earrings.

She first put on the earrings, then tilted her face a little before the mirror.

In the mirror, the woman wore a black dress with gold-trimmed sleeves, golden Dao patterns embroidered along the hem. Most of her snow-white hair had been pinned up, yet part of it still hung loose and fell to either side, revealing a smooth, rounded forehead and a flawless face that showed no defect from any angle.

As she moved, the woman in the mirror moved with her.

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The drifting strands of hair, the swaying golden ornaments, the graceful waist bound by the sash, the reflections of light in her golden pupils… all of it made the woman seem bathed in divine radiance, full of poise and brilliance, yet also carrying an imposing dignity.

“My strength has grown a bit absurd. If it really comes to the point where I need it, then these earrings…”

Bai Xiang hesitated slightly, but in the end she still did not remove them.

Changing shoes and belting on her sword, she raised a hand toward the door. The handle pressed down soundlessly on its own, turned inward, and pulled the door open, revealing Zhu Qingluo with a blank look on her face.

Zhu Qingluo was holding the little white fox in one arm, while her other hand hung stiffly in midair, as though she had been about to knock.

Seeing that Bai Xiang was already “fully prepared,” she narrowed her eyes halfway. “You really mean to go?”

“What else would I do?” Bai Xiang stepped past her and walked straight out.

There were no longer any personal belongings of hers left in the room. Any scattered leftovers were useless now, so there was no need to bother with them.

“That’s Pang Tiandao you’re talking about…”

Zhu Qingluo hurried after her, chattering by her side.

“He’s someone praised as having a real chance of truly taking charge of the Sacred Court. On top of that, he occupies a Divine Pool seat. You can’t even condense a Divine Pool through your Path of Qi. A fight like this is simply…”

“Then what should I do?” Bai Xiang kept her eyes fixed straight ahead. Only her earrings swayed with her steps.

“You understand him well enough. Do you think if I back down now, I’ll live?”

Of course not.

Zhu Qingluo fell silent.

She knew Pang Tiandao well. The man never forgot a grudge, was viciously vindictive, and after occupying the Transmission Pool seat for so many years, had long since grown used to never tolerating defiance from others. No matter what choice Bai Xiang made, she would most likely not escape her ending.

But at the very least, it could buy a little more time.

Zhu Qingluo’s shoulders drooped, together with the little white fox’s ears.

She could not help stealing a few more looks at Bai Xiang, and was equally stunned by how striking she looked today.

Bai Xiang paid no attention to Zhu Qingluo’s constant chatter. There was no one left at her side to distract her mind now. She went directly to a pavilion and waited there. Before long, a steel beast with embedded rotors descended with a thunderous roar.

“Dao Lord Bai.”

The aircraft’s cabin opened, and several men jumped out. The instant they saw Bai Xiang’s full face revealed by the gale whipping at her clothes, they were all startled, then hurriedly suppressed the stirring in their hearts and invited her aboard.

“This… you have already advanced to the final stage. Please come with us to Yujing.”

Tongyun Circuit and Yujing Circuit were adjacent to each other to begin with, so the journey was not long.

Bai Xiang rested with her eyes closed the whole way. When she opened them again, she was already looking at a different sky.

It was now around noon, but the heavens were unkind. Not only was there no clear blue sky for ten thousand miles, the whole firmament was dim.

And not dim in the ordinary sense, either, but set against a vast backdrop of murky dark yellow, with countless banks of black smoke and storm-clouds roiling overhead.

There was no need to ask. This was naturally the result of interference from the power of Loss of Order.

This was Great Yu.

Yaoyu.

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The canopy of sky that now hung over the greatest capital city of this imperial dynasty in the main world.

Bai Xiang stared at the darkened sky, and from time to time lowered her eyes to look at the city below. She discovered that the aircraft was not flying toward the expected destination, namely the airports around Yujing Circuit.

Instead, it flew directly above an enormous egg-shaped stadium and hovered there. After waiting for a while, a seam split across the top of the giant structure, and it slowly opened to either side, exposing the huge and expansive venue within.

The steel beast descended in a roar of noise, but that noise was swiftly swallowed and drowned out by an even greater torrent of sound.

Zhu Qingluo was sitting beside Bai Xiang. Her lips parted slightly in surprise as she saw that the edges of the enormous arena were packed layer upon layer with spectators. The moment they saw the aircraft appear, they erupted into a tremendous roar, screaming and shouting, all of it joining together into a vast tidal wave of sound.

At a glance, she could tell that these spectators were not real people, but mirage-like projections created through special means.

“They come from all over the world.”

The voice came from across from them. It was the Association official who had first invited Bai Xiang aboard.

He took off his sunglasses, fully revealing his face. He was a middle-aged man, with wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and graying hair at his temples.

“I am Gu Xingdong, chief of the Great Yu Sword Dao Association.”

“Dao Lord Bai has been wholly devoted to cultivation. I imagine you do not know what has happened in recent days. Please allow me to explain.”

There was a kind of helplessness in Gu Xingdong’s voice. He looked no older than fifty at most, yet he carried the same air of decay Bai Xiang had only seen on Bai Shengju when she had first crossed over.

It was as though he had completely lost hope in certain things.

And the former enemy now sitting before him had just so happened to become his final hope.

Gu Xingdong’s explanation was extremely concise, and Bai Xiang quickly grasped the overall situation.

First came the public storm.

Over the past few days, the greatest storm outside was no longer the Dao-Void Tournament, but the disasters of Loss of Order erupting repeatedly all over the world.

The closer the Void Tribulation drew to the main world, the stronger its interference became.

Bai Xiang had once traced back and seen part of the scene from when the Void Tribulation fully erupted. Countless wind disasters, fire disasters, floods, and earth disasters were piled together, enough to overturn and scramble the very physical laws of the universe, wrench gravity itself and tear planets apart, leaving a ring of spinning shattered remains around the outer edge of the tribulation.

Of course, it had not yet reached that point, but the stability of the primary order had already been severely damaged. The most obvious sign was that space had become extraordinarily fragile. Any Void Demon with the slightest scale to it could easily break through the barriers and invade.

And in this world, only Yaoyu possessed organized supernatural forces. On top of that, the sects of the Void People were also gathered here at this very moment, so for the time being they could not stir up too much trouble.

But elsewhere, the situation was disastrous.

The gray zones in every direction, as well as the federation-states that had once held themselves in high esteem, had now all been swept into catastrophes far more terrifying than any demon pool outbreak. It could be said without exaggeration that with every passing second, huge numbers of lives were being harvested and extinguished.

“The Sami Federation, the Ruffen Federation, the Ximu Federation, the Yinbu Federation… aside from us, every nation on the surface is suffering through disaster.”

Gu Xingdong sighed. “They’ve lowered their heads and asked us for aid too, but…”

But Great Yu itself was powerless.

No. It could even be said that Great Yu could scarcely protect itself.

With matters having developed to this point, no sapient being living in this nation could any longer belittle the Dao-Void Tournament and regard it as a mere sword competition.

Gu Xingdong had also realized that this competition was very likely the product of compromise among many forces. The Great Yu court had been fortunate enough to hold one position of leadership in it, but unfortunately, that position was becoming shakier and shakier as time passed.

That much could be seen from the slots in the final stage alone. Of the sixteen sects that had advanced, fifteen belonged to invading Void People.

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Only Shenming Sword Dao. Only Bai Xiang, a single lone shoot, had broken through the encirclement. That alone was enough to show just how dire the situation really was.

Gu Xingdong was a man with political sense. From Suzhen Dao’s voluntary withdrawal and the court’s silence, he had already glimpsed the direction the future was taking.

If his judgment was correct, then this country… this realm under heaven, had most likely already been sold out by the imperial house.

The dynastic mandate of sixteen hundred years would come to an end in the coming days. Perhaps that point would be linked to the outcome of this tournament. Perhaps when the curtain fell on this competition, an upheaval never before seen and an age of chaos never before seen would rise at once.

Gu Xingdong could do nothing about any of it. And yet at this moment, the only person with a chance of influencing the great tide through “meager strength” was Bai Xiang, the Shenming Dao Lord, Bai Zhixing, whom the Association had once treated as an enemy.

How could he not feel the bitterness of it?

How could he not be wreathed in that air of decay?

“Those people are projections,” he said with a sigh, introducing the spectators to Bai Xiang.

“Following orders, I released access permissions. This enormous arena can accommodate more than three hundred thousand simultaneous viewers, and thousands of machines around it are transmitting the light-and-shadow footage at the same time.”

“Some of those people just lost family in demonic disasters. That sort of atmosphere… I think Dao Lord Bai can probably understand it as well.”

“I know that, given how the Association treated Dao Lord Bai in the past, it is not appropriate for me to say this, but…”

Gu Xingdong bowed his head deeply toward Bai Xiang.

“If Dao Lord Bai can do it…”

Boom!

Crash!

With a violent tremor, the cabin doors opened, letting in the clamor from outside. Gu Xingdong’s final words were instantly drowned out, and only a few movements of his lips could barely be made out.

Faced with that, Gu Xingdong first froze for a moment, then showed a smile mixed with bitterness and relief. Rising to his feet, he bowed to Bai Xiang and made a complete gesture of respectfully welcoming her onto the arena floor.

Bai Xiang looked at him, then stood and stepped forward.

And in the instant she passed him, when their figures crossed, a calm, austere female voice carrying a faint authority cut straight through the surrounding uproar and pierced directly into Gu Xingdong’s ears and mind.

[I will.]

What did she say?

Gu Xingdong’s eyes widened. He turned his head in shock, but all he caught was the hem of a skirt lifting in motion.

Bai Xiang stepped out of the steel beast’s belly cabin and descended the stairs into the arena, only to discover that there was more than one such steel beast parked on the field.

Looking into the distance, there were more than a dozen of the massive things stationed across the grounds. The cabin doors of each seemed to open at the same time, and from each emerged a figure.

There were young men, old men, youths, and women.

Including Bai Xiang, there were exactly sixteen people, all gathered here in one place.

“Venerable Lord Bai.”

Amid the tremendous noise filling the arena and the countless flashing lights, a Daoist in blue robes with twin swords on his back approached and was the first to cup his hands to Bai Xiang in greeting.

“I am the representative sent by the Heaven-Splitting Alliance for this competition. You may call me Du Fangzhi.”

Bai Xiang stood perfectly still and merely cast her golden gaze sideways at him. Du Fangzhi immediately seemed to feel some immense terror and instinctively took half a step back.

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What was going on?

Fear and confusion filled Du Fangzhi’s heart, but he did not dare think too deeply about it, only assuming he was too nervous.

Moreover, the order to approach Bai Xiang had come from Qianyuan Sect. He did not dare disobey. He could only force himself to keep speaking.

“Judging from the situation, the final stage will most likely be a chaotic melee.”

“A format like that is unfavorable to small sects like ours. My thought is, why don’t we support each other and join forces against figures like Yue Canglan?”

He spoke faster and faster, convinced he had reason on his side. “I’ve heard that Venerable Lord Bai bears an old grudge against the Seven Illusory Heavens Alliance. I would be willing to persuade Qianyuan Sect to report upward to the Sacred Court and ask the Patrol Warden to assist in mediating it.”

“…What does Venerable Lord Bai think?”

Click.

Almost at the same moment the last note of his voice fell, the Dao sword in Bai Xiang’s hand gave a crisp sound, like a blade knocking into its sheath.

Du Fangzhi blanked for a moment.

Then came confusion.

Then fury.

And finally terror and despair… as he glared at Bai Xiang with wide eyes.

“You… you…”

He could not finish.

With a wet sound, his body split apart. Before all eyes, he was cut into a thousand pieces, and those thousand pieces blasted outward in every direction, scattering further and further until they became the finest possible particles of blood-mist.

An uproar exploded all around.

But Bai Xiang did not spare them the slightest attention.

She did not even look at the other contestants now fixing their gazes on her. Instead, she simply raised her head toward the sky, as though she had sensed something in advance.

“Hm?”

Ten paces away, a sword-bearing man had originally intended to go speak with her. Seeing this, he stopped at once and also looked up.

Gradually, everyone began to notice the phenomenon above.

It was as though the roiling storm-clouds had been torn open by a hand, revealing a patch of glowing prismatic mist in the middle.

Endless mirage-like illusions appeared along the horizon, and black rifts opened one after another along their edges, as though some vast object were trying to force its way inside.

“This is… the Thirty-Three Heavens Sea?!”

Daoist Luo Ying was also watching the sky. When he saw it, he could not help crying out in alarm.

No matter how much he had tried to anticipate things, he had never imagined that the Sacred Court would make such an outrageous move in the finals.

The Thirty-Three Heavens Sea…

Were they really going to ride the momentum of the Void Tribulation and forcibly merge it into the main world?