Volume 4, Chapter 198 – The Chan Sword Repels the Massed Enemies, a Green Shadow Reveals the True Body (Part 2)

Stepping onward, Bai Xiang wandered alone amid the clouds.

Though her pace looked unhurried, every step shifted her forward a short distance out of thin air. In the span of a few breaths, she had already reached the very edge of the Wandering Cloud Sea and was about to touch the black-rift vortex leading to the next level.

As she walked, she gradually felt a mysterious current of heat surge up from beneath her feet. It spread through the orifices in the soles of her feet, ran through the six hidden meridians of her legs, and drove her qi and blood throughout her whole body.

Rush…

Faintly, in the empty space behind her path, there remained a sound greater than rushing rivers. It was her entire body’s qi and blood being awakened and mobilized, as though it were about to unleash still greater power.

So that was it.

Bai Xiang closed her eyes slightly and carefully felt through the process.

The change came from the Sun-Chasing Scripture.

This cultivation art had most likely been left behind by the ancient human race. In the past, Bai Xiang had entered its gate by chance, and through talent and effort had trained her qi and blood to abundance. But in essence, she had never understood the true meaning of this art, especially not the core line from the Divine Movement chapter, the sentence: “Keep running. Don’t stop.”

The reason she had never been able to grasp it was actually very simple. Her physical body simply had not been strong enough.

Her body was not strong enough, and the manifestation and refinement of her orifices and meridians had not yet been brought to completion. So no matter how she tried, no matter how she practiced, she could not understand the essence within it, nor could she possibly obtain the secret transmission from this method of circulating qi and blood.

Only now, only with body-cultivation that had surged within ten days, only after the manifestation and refinement of her whole body’s orifices had reached a full three hundred twenty-eight, only with that kind of foundation, could she try again and naturally grasp its mystery.

Whoosh!

With her eyes still closed, Bai Xiang visualized herself pursuing the Great Sun and began striding faster and faster through the clouds.

She moved more and more quickly. At the same time, from within her body came the crashing rush of blood and the muffled thunder hidden inside it.

Boom!

Suddenly, the muffled thunder turned into a crackling peal. One hidden orifice that had remained inside her, still not yet successfully manifested and refined, was forcibly driven open by the surge of qi and blood, erupting with a frightening blast.

Boom! Boom!

From then on, it became impossible to stop. Her speed grew ever swifter. Once more, backward-trailing afterimages appeared in front of her body. Every time she struck one of those afterimages, it was as though another cracking peal of thunder burst forth. She herself became like a blade cleaving through the cloud-sea, instantly breaking through the black-rift barrier and entering the next layer of the Heavens Sea beyond the vortex.

It was a world of darkness.

Unlike the white and translucent Wandering Cloud Sea, this place had no sunlight at all. Only faint gray light refracted down from above, illuminating shadowy puppet-figures rampaging and darting through the gloom.

Bai Xiang did not stop.

She did not even realize that a new heaven had already replaced the old one. She simply continued forward, pursuing the Great Sun in her visualization.

And so this dark world suffered for it. Her figure transformed into a streak of white light. From afar, it looked like a white line cutting open the sky, like a flash slicing across the heavens. Wherever she passed, countless puppet-shades were reduced to ash, letting out endless shrill screams.

Crash!

Suddenly the sky brightened. She had already passed through the dark world, through another layer of black-rift barrier, and entered a bottomless ocean.

All around her lay heavy, freezing seawater. Under the effects of Loss of Order, it became an oppressive weight that pressed down on Bai Xiang and greatly slowed her progress.

At that moment, another figure also broke through the heavens and entered the Heavens Sea. It was Ji Bu, foremost disciple of Taixu Monastery.

As one of the first people warned by Bai Xiang of the hidden danger in the demon-weapon method, he too had long since guessed that Demon Court would make its move at the critical moment of the finals. He had chased after her because he wanted to find Bai Xiang, form an alliance with her, and question Pang Tiandao over his dark design.

The great vortex outside changed every moment. It was not as though choosing the same entry point meant you would appear in the same place after entering. At first Ji Bu had worried he might lose track of her, but to his surprise, the moment he came in, he saw Bai Xiang.

Ji Bu was startled at first, then let out a slight breath of relief.

“Venerable Lord Bai…”

With his cultivation, this deep-sea environment naturally posed no threat to him. Ji Bu hurriedly cupped his hands, his voice passing through the water as he tried to exchange a few words with Bai Xiang first.

And then he saw a sight that utterly baffled him.

Just the moment before, when he had first seen Bai Xiang, her movements in the water had still been extremely stiff and slow.

But in the very next moment, she maintained that same speed while turning toward the front. Somehow, from somewhere, her body borrowed force from thin air. She spun, set her shoulder, snapped out her arm, and brought down a vertical slash.

Ji Bu instantly felt a terrifying pressure surge toward him. Before he could react, he felt something crash through his body with a rush of water, and in the next instant he felt as though he had suddenly leapt out of the sea and was plummeting downward.

What was that?

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He hurriedly steadied himself in midair, then opened his eyes again, and nearly had them burst from their sockets.

This… this was the Heavy Abyss Sea, famed as the bottommost sea of the Heavens Sea. Such a vast and boundless ocean, water so heavy it weighed like an entire world, had actually been split apart by that one sword?

Looking up from where he stood, he saw towering seawalls on both sides, ten thousand meters high, forcibly parted by that single strike. Between them there appeared a broad avenue that ran straight to the seafloor.

What level of power was this? What kind of force could accomplish something like that?

Before Ji Bu could come to his senses, Bai Xiang had already shot away along the open path and vanished.

Rumble, rumble!

Then the seawalls began to crash shut again, forcing Ji Bu back down. His cry for her turned into nothing but a string of bubbling sounds.

Meanwhile, Bai Xiang directly broke through yet another layer of black-rift barrier and entered a new space of unbearable heat.

The outer scene scorched her with real heat, while her inner scene continued visualizing the blazing Great Sun. Before long, even with Bai Xiang’s physique, beads of sweat began to appear on her brow, each one faintly tinged with blood.

Having reached this place, Bai Xiang silently calculated the progress of the orifices she had manifested and refined within her body.

Three hundred thirty-six.

Eight more than the original three hundred twenty-eight.

She was still running, without stopping.

But as she passed a river in this realm, sudden inspiration struck. In her mind, the circulation route of the Drinking-Water chapter surfaced at once.

Subconsciously, she moved her qi and blood according to that method. Three Flowers appeared above her head, and one of them dropped as a phantom into her body. That made her lift her head and open her mouth. The vast river was seized and drawn into her mouth, swallowed down almost in an instant, and refined into a mass of pure Origin Qi.

After drinking dry the river, Bai Xiang stopped where she stood. Above her head rose a pillar of blood-qi beacon-smoke, and she frowned in thought.

“Crashing Mountains.”

“Drinking Water.”

“Divine Movement.”

“So that’s it. The essence of the Sun-Chasing Scripture is the plundering of every external landscape.”

By this point, the mystery of the martial scripture was basically fully solved.

The water she had just drunk was indeed water in this world, but the moment it entered her body, it ceased to be water.

It became Heavenly Origin.

An incomparably concentrated and refined Heavenly Origin.

Only Heavenly Origin could possibly be refined into such a massive quantity of Origin Qi. The Drinking-Water chapter could refine every element of the external landscape into Heavenly Origin. In essence, this was the plundering of all things in heaven and earth, diminishing Heavenly Dao to replenish and complete the self.

What a cultivation method steeped in savage brutality.

This scripture had to come from the primordial human race. There could be no mistake in that deduction.

Crackle!

Boom!

Bai Xiang opened her eyes. Two new star-like orifices lit up in her body once more, raising her Origin Orifice progress to a new stage of three hundred thirty. The pillar of blood-qi beacon-smoke above her head also swelled violently, instantly piercing through the upper heavens. Her own body flashed, and she shot straight from where she stood to the very end of the sky where the beacon-smoke had reached.

With a swipe of her hand, the space in front of her split apart, revealing a long, narrow black-rift passage.

Bai Xiang was not satisfied. She gripped Feixiang Heaven and carved another stroke.

The black-rift passage extended far farther ahead. And from a distance, one could see that the scenery within the layers was completely different. On top of the original section, seven more layers had been added.

“How is that possible…?!”

Outside, Chan Master Lingku looked up at the sky and stared at the mirage-image on the vortex, almost forcing the words out of his throat in a mutter.

Pang Tiandao had arranged a battlefield like this with clear intent. Although the great vortex looked like a seven-colored kaleidoscope and encompassed one corner of the Thirty-Three Heavens Sea, and entering it meant passing into the corresponding Heavens Sea world, in truth everything that happened inside could still be projected as mirage-images and seen in full by the people in the arena.

And not just the arena.

The same scenes were being transmitted outward through the recording equipment still left inside the grounds. For a time, whether it was Chan Master Lingku and the others, Young Master Shao within the space station, Xue Fang racing toward the scene while still keeping an eye on the live broadcast, or the Yaoyu clansmen hiding within the Silver-Shuttle Vessel, including Yao Xing and the woman in monk’s robes… every last one of them wore a shocked expression, scarcely able to believe what they had just seen.

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“With one sword, she split open seven layers of heaven! What realm has she reached now?!”

Chang Hongyuan was shaken as well. He quickly compared the sight with the markers of the upper levels and realized that if Bai Xiang could do something on this scale, then she had to have reached Venerable Saint cultivation.

What kind of nonsense was this…? She should only be eighteen this year, right?

An eighteen-year-old Venerable Saint?

What?!

Chang Hongyuan was first thunderstruck, seized by the absurd feeling that all these years he had truly cultivated like a dog. Then he quickly came to his senses. This was absolutely a wonderful thing!

No matter how one looked at it, Bai Xiang was clearly opposed to the Sacred Court’s course and opposed to Pang Tiandao.

So the stronger she was, the better. That was the only way she could buy room for their side!

With that thought, Chang Hongyuan’s confidence rose sharply. Seizing the chance, he drove Chan Master Lingku back with a sword strike and shouted, “Master, do not stay obsessed! Standing together with the demon-humans of Blood Soul Heaven will only doom you forever!”

“Doom forever?”

Chan Master Lingku narrowed his eyes slightly and finally recovered from the shock Bai Xiang had given him.

He glanced at Yang Chen, who looked half-mad as he frantically operated his field and Divine Pool to remotely direct the others in besieging Gu Xi, and then said softly, “Have you never considered that, looking across history, the trend of an age always has its inevitability, and those who drift with the tide in the course of it cannot be defined by simple good and evil?”

Chang Hongyuan’s eyelids twitched. “Master may as well speak more plainly.”

“You want plain words? Fine.” Chan Master Lingku’s eyes flew wide. “To end the strife between the two races, and to let all living beings truly escape the sea of suffering, we must obey the Great Saint’s will!”

“After today, there will no longer be any division between the two races!”

“In this world, there will be only the Sacred Weapon Clan!”

“Only in this way can everything end! Only in this way can the wheel of tribulation struggle be broken!”

What was he saying?

Chang Hongyuan stared in shock.

The Sacred Weapon Clan… the demon-weapon method had actually been created for the sake of that goal?

“Pang Tiandao truly is a madman.”

At the same time, before a sacrificial altar lit with fire, Ten-Extremes Daoist Zhou Yuan was staring at Yao Ying and slowly laying out the root of the plan.

“He wants to end the cycle of tribulation struggle. He wants to become the sole savior across all ages, surpass Emperor Feng, and put an end to the endless strife that has existed between the two races since the day they were born.”

“His Heavenly Dao Divine Pool, the All-Beings Homage Aspect, is the manifestation of his own personal emotions and will. It is not, in itself, some particularly formidable Divine Pool. It belongs to the same nature as split-body paths such as the ‘Profit Path’ and the ‘Guile Path.’ And yet through repeated refinement in practice, he forcibly raised it to its present level.”

“And every such rise meant accepting a new self,” Zhou Yuan said with feeling. “The purity of his madness is remarkable. At least in that respect, I am beneath him.”

In front of him, Yao Ying was tightly bound to a thick pillar with specially prepared rope. As she listened, she shook her head in terror. But because a talisman was plastered tightly over her mouth, all she could do was make muffled whimpering noises.

She would rather not hear any of these secrets!

Damn it… what in the world were these people trying to do?

Looking around, the ritual ground was packed with countless black-robed demon-humans. Their bodies gave off a faint silver sheen, and the expressions with which they looked at her were twisted and fanatical. All of it filled Yao Ying with unbearable fear.

“And it is because of that purity that Blood Soul Heaven had the chance to work with him.” A faint smile appeared on Zhou Yuan’s face.

“The demon-weapon method was not Pang Tiandao’s creation. Like everything else, he merely sees it as a chess piece for achieving that goal.”

“But what Blood Soul Heaven wants is not the same thing.”

“Unlike him, who fears that thing and wants to fuse together the power of all realms to resist it, Blood Soul Heaven wants to guide it here.”

“The future we want is not the same future.”

“In that respect, Pang Tiandao is our chess piece as well.”

Yao Ying kept making muffled sounds, still doing nothing but shaking her head frantically.

“It’s about time…”

Zhou Yuan lifted his eyes to the dim sky, as though he had caught some crucial sign. He took a torch from someone at his side and slowly walked toward the altar.

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“Pang Tiandao wants the Thirty-Three Heavens Sea to return to the main world. That itself is the best possible moment.”

“Little Princess, if you enjoy honor, then you must bear duty.”

“Now offer up your Returning-to-Origin Purple Qi.”

“Let Blood Heaven follow that pull and return to this heaven and earth once more.”

Whoosh!

He lit the fire beneath the pillar.

At the same time, the assembled followers of Blood Soul Heaven cut open their own wrists, allowing the silver blood of their already transformed Sacred Weapon Clan bodies to pour into the grand formation prepared in advance. It drew out the Returning-to-Origin Purple Qi from the earth-veins and gathered it onto Yao Ying’s body.

The flames shattered.

As Bai Xiang took another step, she had already crossed the Heavens Sea at high speed and once again lifted her eyes to meet Pang Tiandao’s.

That exchange of gazes lasted only a single breath. Very soon, her eyes shifted to the figures at Pang Tiandao’s side.

There were two of them.

One was a fair-faced middle-aged man with half-lidded eyes, looking somewhat lazy.

The other was a young woman in a white dress, draped with a layer of green gauze over it, with a beauty mark at the center of her brow. Her face was ninety percent similar to Zhu Qingluo’s.

And ahead of them, there were two more people locked in tense confrontation with Pang Tiandao’s group. One was Li Huiran, and the other was a twelve- or thirteen-year-old boy in Daoist robes.

“Bai Zhixing! You’ve come at just the right time!”

The Dao-robed boy’s eyes lit up the moment he saw her appear.

“Come over here, quickly!”

“You must stand on our side!”

“Come help maintain the stability of the Sacred Law!”

Bai Xiang narrowed her eyes.

“The Sacred Law?”

Then she looked toward Li Huiran.

“Stability?”

Li Huiran’s expression turned slightly unnatural.

A man who had always been arrogant and overbearing now seemed unable to look directly into those golden eyes. His gaze shifted away in visible awkwardness.

And it really was awkward.

When he had first met Bai Xiang, he had delivered that whole grand speech about “progressive ideas.” Yet now he did not support Pang Tiandao’s own “progressive act.” It made it look as though his actions were slapping his own face, and his words no longer matched what he was doing.

“He cannot prove that he is right.”

Li Huiran tried to defend himself.

“Blood Soul Heaven is still the enemy, up to this very moment.”

In other words, he had not yet seen enough reason to justify switching sides. So naturally he intended to keep walking the road he was already on. He did not think there was anything wrong with that.

Before Bai Xiang could say anything, a streak of green light shot out from the passage that had only just begun to close, landed beside her, and condensed into Zhu Qingluo’s figure.

The instant she appeared, she fixed her eyes on the woman at Pang Tiandao’s side with such force it looked as though she were trying to stare her to death. Even through the flesh of her cheeks, one could see her muscles twitching. She was very clearly grinding her teeth.

“Why?!”

The question was almost forced out through clenched teeth as Zhu Qingluo angrily demanded an answer from the woman.

She felt sure the other woman knew exactly what she was asking.

Why had she compromised?

Why had she deceived her?

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And why had she chosen to stand with Pang Tiandao, to stand with the enemy who had harmed Changlun?

“They are not enemies.”

At that moment, Bai Xiang’s voice sounded from the side.

What did she just say?

Zhu Qingluo froze and turned back toward Bai Xiang in disbelief.

She saw Bai Xiang’s expression clearly. It was a strangely subtle look, as though she had long since seen through certain truths and was now looking down from that height at the ignorance of someone else.

“His ideal is probably to create an entirely new race through the demon-weapon method, then force the demon race and the human race alike to abandon their current bodies and transfer their souls into this new race, creating an entirely new symbiotic relationship.”

Bai Xiang looked straight into Zhu Qingluo’s widened eyes and spoke to her word by word.

“If that happens, there will no longer be any distinction between demons and humans in the world, and there will be no need to continue the hatred of the past.”

“…Doesn’t that idea sound very familiar to you?”

Like lightning splitting a lake of thought, Zhu Qingluo’s eyes widened. All at once, a memory surfaced in her mind.

…

“Qingluo!”

“I found a book in the library today. It was about an emperor named Emperor Feng. Some of his ideas are very interesting…”

…

“Qingluo!”

“I think Emperor Feng was right. The two races should have ruled together. He only failed because he wasn’t strong enough, but there was nothing wrong with what he did.”

…

“Qingluo…”

“I want power too. Then I can walk Emperor Feng’s road once again. And I swear I’ll strictly examine the people around me and make sure there won’t be so many traitors.”

…

“Qingluo, tell me, if this can really be done in the end, wouldn’t that mean we had broken the cycle of tribulation struggle that has lasted who knows how many billions of years?”

“We’ll break the old cycle, and then establish a new one.”

“We’ll become the immortals, gods, and Buddhas of the new era.”

“…A world that stable and orderly would surely be better than the one we have now.”

How could that be…?

Her body stiff, Zhu Qingluo slowly turned her head little by little, her gaze moving back and forth between her true body and Pang Tiandao’s face.

“You discovered it through the true spirit of my aspect-body, didn’t you?”

Pang Tiandao lowered his eyes toward Bai Xiang.

“That’s right,” Bai Xiang admitted.

“When I returned it to him, I erased your ‘scent’ along the way as well.”

“Perhaps that was exactly what you wanted.”

Pang Tiandao nodded. “I did indeed hope he could be freed, because that is what I owed him.”

“Qingluo, I’m sorry.”

He turned toward Zhu Qingluo. A faint smile, one wholly out of keeping with his nature, suddenly appeared on his face.

“‘Let the many go first; may the teeming multitude flourish forever.’”

“That maxim is my All-Beings Homage Aspect.”