Volume 4, Chapter 199 – Pang Makes Light of Heavenly Dao, Zhu First Casts Changlun (Two-in-One)

According to the intelligence Bai Xiang had gathered, all of these changes had supposedly begun after a traitor from Demon Court helped Yaoyu sever the link between Heaven and Earth, roughly sixteen hundred years ago. The theory had been that once the severing cut off the conditions that preserved Demon Court’s harmony, Pang Tiandao started losing his mind and throwing himself into factional struggle and political purges.

But that was not actually the case.

The point at which the change began was earlier, far earlier than the main source of that intelligence, Zhu Qingluo, had imagined. The proper dividing line should have been the moment the individual named “Pang Tiandao” comprehended the Divine Pool called the All-Beings Homage Aspect.

The All-Beings Homage Aspect was a Divine Pool similar to paths like the Profit Path and the Guile Path. In principle, it was close to most split-body Divine Pools, and from everything Pang Tiandao had shown since appearing, he had never minded displaying that fact.

“Aspect-body,” in full, should have meant “All-Beings Aspect-Body.” According to Bai Xiang’s analysis, the condition for condensing one of these All-Beings Aspect-Bodies was most likely to cut away a thread of the true spirit from the original body, wash away its memories, and cast it out.

That thread of true spirit would then attach itself to an innate embryo, and after birth it would directly become a newly born sapient being. When that sapient being grew up and came to its end, the insights from that entire life would be extracted by Pang Tiandao, and one All-Beings Aspect-Body would return to him.

An “aspect-body” needed a complete life experience belonging to a single individual before it could be reclaimed as an aspect-body. Only once reclaimed could all of its power return to the original body and pile up into an incomparable might.

Just like that scene Pang Tiandao created when his true body appeared, the sight of those countless aspect-bodies converging. That moment meant his power had drawn back together and he had once again become his complete self.

That explained why, whenever Bai Xiang stared at his face, she always felt it lacked any defining features, so plain as to be unremarkable.

And only that could explain why Zhu Qingluo’s true body would set aside old grievances and help this “enemy,” even to the point of cutting away her own “immature former self,” going that far to carry out her will.

Because Zhu Changlun was Pang Tiandao.

But Pang Tiandao was not only Zhu Changlun.

The benefactor the two Zhu Qingluos cared about was only one of Pang Tiandao’s aspect-bodies. Perhaps he had gained something from that aspect-body’s experiences and insights, but as for the notion that he had been possessed by a single aspect-body, that the guest had usurped the host, Bai Xiang did not believe it.

By the same token, she did not believe Pang Tiandao was truly carrying out Zhu Changlun’s wish. She did not believe that fusing the Thirty-Three Heavens Sea with the main world was motivated by any lofty moral ideal.

It was still ambition.

Ambition that, after passing through some kind of terror, confusion, and despair, would seek “ascension” at any cost and regardless of all consequences.

“I am curious, though.” Ignoring Zhu Qingluo, who was still trapped in immense shock, Pang Tiandao suddenly frowned at Bai Xiang. “I deliberately cut away that aspect-body and wanted him to drift through the outer void forever, never to return to the main world. Yet he found you of his own accord… and you just so happened to sever his connection to me completely.”

He narrowed his eyes halfway. “How did you manage that?”

He meant… the old beggar?

Zhu Qingluo looked at Pang Tiandao, then at Bai Xiang, her thoughts briefly unable to turn.

She had already accepted the fact that “Zhu Changlun was Pang Tiandao’s aspect-body,” but she truly could not understand how the old beggar had anything to do with Pang Tiandao.

No… perhaps there had been clues after all.

First, there was the old beggar’s ability. He could cut open space and move through it freely. That kind of ability required a field-path Divine Pool cultivated to its absolute apex, and was one of the marks of the Venerable Saint realm.

Yet she herself was the Hall Master of Rebirth Hall. Even if she was only a split body, and even if her true body had locked away some of her memories, all her experience had taught her that once she saw certain familiar things, that kind of lock would fail, and she could still roughly recall quite a few related memories.

Then how could she not recognize the old beggar?

She could say with total certainty that, aside from the monstrous freak of an eighteen-year-old standing beside her, there were no Venerable Saints in the world wholly outside the sheltering shadow of the Sacred Court. In other words, it was impossible for someone with Venerable Saint cultivation to have no connection whatsoever to Demon Court.

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The idea of hiding alone in some forgotten corner, cultivating in silence all the way up to Venerable Saint, and then suddenly popping out to stir trouble was impossible.

The accumulation required to reach that step was simply too great. Without the environment for exchange provided by Demon Court, without the materials and knowledge Demon Court supplied, it should have been impossible for anyone to achieve it under normal circumstances.

Why had Demon Court originally been an academic organization?

Because walking to this step was too bitter and too difficult. It had required the gathering of many minds to form in the first place.

And if that was so, then she should not have failed to recognize him.

If he was a Venerable Saint, even if only as a split body, then at the very least his name ought to have been recorded in the registers of the Sacred Court. The moment she saw him, she should have recalled it. Yet he matched none of the Venerable Saints in her memory.

That point alone was strange enough. Only now did Zhu Qingluo suddenly realize just how many obvious flaws the old beggar had carried all along.

Even more shockingly, she turned to stare at Bai Xiang.

If Bai Xiang had guessed this beforehand… then she had still dared let the old beggar escort her family back to Zhennan?

Was she insane?

Was that not the same as voluntarily handing her weakness over to the enemy?

Faced with the curious gazes of both Pang Tiandao and Zhu Qingluo, Bai Xiang’s expression remained indifferent.

She clearly had no intention of explaining.

Because on matters like the old beggar having once followed his own will and entrusted his true spirit to her safekeeping, and in that way having his Pang Tiandao-imprinted true-spirit mark accidentally washed away by her, she had no obligation to explain anything to an enemy.

Soul-abilities held the highest level of priority.

Anything covered by the concept of “Bai Xiang” could only exist and operate according to her will.

“So reason still does not suffice?”

Pang Tiandao had also gleaned Bai Xiang’s general state from the force gathering around her. He knew this battle could probably no longer be avoided, yet he still could not help but feel regret.

Eighteen years old, and in the span of a single year she had crossed the two major stages from entering the Venerable ranks to glimpsing sainthood.

What had he been doing when he was eighteen?

Ah. With too many aspect-bodies, he could no longer quite sort it out.

“Very well.” Pang Tiandao turned to look at Li Huiran and the boy Daoist. “Since you are all the same, then there is nothing more to say.”

He flicked his left sleeve. It suddenly expanded, swelling larger in an instant until it seemed to connect with the heavens above, as though an entire Heavens Sea world were crashing down upon Li Huiran and the boy Daoist, Yu Daoyong.

“Li! Protect your lord!”

Yu Daoyong let out a strange yelp, summoned his bronze mirror, and rode it like a small boat in the surging storm, continually using Li Huiran in front of him as a sail and meat-shield to evade the sharpest currents of wind and cloud.

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Li Huiran’s expression stiffened for an instant. Then with a cold look he drew his sword with a clang. A black-red blood-mark appeared on the blade, and in the next moment the mark suddenly swelled and grew, carrying a lingering afterimage as it split the clouds. In only a few breaths, he crossed space and shifted directly in front of Pang Tiandao.

Bang!

One could not see how the two collided. One only saw the sky ripped open into a vast hole, with endless heavenly waters and cloud-currents pouring backward through it, mixed with black fire and jade water… and in a crack no one noticed, a faint thread of blood aura hidden within.

Two or three breaths after the clash, Li Huiran’s figure rolled out from the backdrop of the heavens.

The instant he looked up, his expression changed.

Pang Tiandao’s billowing sleeve was still drifting toward him, but what had fused into the end of that sleeve was no longer only cloud-flow. It was as though it had scooped up the entire Heavy Abyss Sea and was smashing it at him with the weight of an entire Heavens Sea.

His cultivation…!

Boom!

There was no time for shock or fury. The entire Heavy Abyss Sea exploded in midair. Boundless seawater erupted and blasted outward from the point where it struck Li Huiran, pouring down like an overturned Milky Way cascading from the ninth heavens.

“Li!”

Yu Daoyong rode his “bronze-mirror boat” in complete disarray, barely keeping his footing atop the galactic torrent as though surfing a flood.

Behind Pang Tiandao, light and shadow shifted. It was as though several different figures stepped out from either side of him.

The moment Yu Daoyong saw their faces clearly, he could not help crying out.

“Hall Master Mingxiang, Hall Master Zhenyue?!”

“Pang, just how long have you been hiding inside the Sacred Court?”

Pang Tiandao did not answer him. With another wave of his sleeve, the space behind him twisted and changed, and three or four more figures emerged, men and women alike, all of them Hall Masters familiar to both Yu Daoyong and Zhu Qingluo.

The moment those people appeared, they naturally understood the intention of the one in command. Under the lead of Han Feng, Hall Master of the Immortal Works Hall, they rushed forward, surrounded Yu Daoyong and the newly surfaced Li Huiran, and without a word began a coordinated siege.

Over there, heavenly waters merged with hazy radiance, and divine abilities blended with sword-light. Over here, matters were no less busy.

A green gauze skirt drifted in the distance. As it lifted, it revealed several massive fox tails and a pair of beast-eyes gleaming with green light. It was a colossal fox-demon a thousand meters long. Reeking of foul wind, it came on with fierce momentum and, the moment it arrived, swiped a claw toward Zhu Qingluo.

“Don’t interfere!”

Zhu Qingluo shouted, a screen of green light appearing before her, and in the next instant she was struck away together with the light, spinning through the clouds like a top.

Yet even so, after stabilizing herself, she still clenched her teeth.

“This is between me and myself…”

“Stay out of it!”

“Go deal with Pang Tiandao!”

Baring her teeth, Zhu Qingluo again wrapped herself in green light. Under its nourishment, the wounds on her body rapidly healed. Then that same green radiance swelled in the wind, instantly forming around her a fox-demon phantom just as large as the other one, and the two threw themselves together, locked in savage combat.

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So from Bai Xiang’s position, the scene before her was this: to the left, two thousand-zhang fox-demons tearing and biting at one another; to the right, Li Huiran and Yu Daoyong caught in a chaotic melee against five or six Venerable Saint Hall Masters. It made the central path seem empty by contrast, and made the man at the end of that road stand out all the more.

“I do not extend this kind of patience to others.”

Pang Tiandao looked down at Bai Xiang from above.

“A new world requires a new order.”

“Will you abandon the new law, enter my service, and take charge of the sacred weapons?”

Bai Xiang lifted her head slightly and stepped into the void.

Then a second step.

Then a third.

Suddenly, a delayed afterimage appeared before her.

The moment she struck the first afterimage, Pang Tiandao’s pupils contracted sharply. He felt a keen sword-intent lock onto him, and at the same time a wave of vibration swept over him. Every one of his methods of spatial shifting was locked down in that instant. He could only watch helplessly as the sword-edge passed through his body.

Raising her arm and swinging her sword, Bai Xiang appeared behind Pang Tiandao.

Pang Tiandao’s body burst apart into clusters of tiny, neatly cut chunks of flesh.

But almost immediately, the flesh-chunks turned into black smoke. That smoke condensed into countless Pang Tiandaos at once, and all of them simultaneously unleashed transformations of divine ability against Bai Xiang.

It was an absolutely magnificent, almost dazzling sight. In that instant, haze shifted, wind and cloud changed course, and heavenly fire, black water, green wind, and shattered rock all pressed down together, as though the entire heavenly environment of the Thirty-Three Heavens Sea had become Pang Tiandao’s weapons and divine abilities, meant to grind Bai Xiang to dust.

Ah…

Bai Xiang lowered her eyes.

Of course. He occupied the Pool seat left behind by Demon Court’s Sacred Lord. He had stolen the Heavenly Dao Divine Pool of the Dao-Void Methods, and among the many realms, the Thirty-Three Heavens Sea contained the greatest number of sapient beings who revered the Dao-Void Methods. So in this stretch of heaven and earth, his power would be enormously amplified.

But.

With her legs rooted in place, unmoving as a mountain, Bai Xiang raised her Dao sword in her right hand.

What does not belong to oneself is illusion in the end.

Rumble!

Blue veins rose across the back of her pale hand. Inside her body, three hundred thirty manifested orifices thundered in unison. In that instant, Bai Xiang’s hair swept back, and a vast surge of blood-qi blasted away every cloudbank around her. Her body blurred and vanished from the spot, using a shifting method like the Golden Light Sword Seal, except that this time she hurled her own body directly into the space ahead, once more breaking through the bombardment of countless divine abilities.

Rip!

Blue-white lightning flashed across the void.

At the same time as Bai Xiang passed through Pang Tiandao’s many aspect-bodies, all of them froze at once, finally revealing solemnity and gravity in their expressions.

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Bang! Bang!

With a single thrust, thousands of aspect-bodies exploded, half of them gone in one strike.

Bai Xiang’s body turned leisurely in midair. Her left hand rose to grasp at the heavens, and at once she condensed a move of Creation Qi Tribulation, turning the sky full of thunder into a colossal sword that stabbed viciously downward.

Pang Tiandao’s many aspect-bodies converged again. With a sweep of his right sleeve, he ripped open the void and shifted a ten-thousand-zhang star into place to block the attack.

Boom—

The thunder-sword and the star collided, erupting in blinding white light. Endless blue-white lightning became sword qi and annihilated the shattered stone, boring straight through the massive obstacle. At the same time that it struck Pang Tiandao, it manifested dozens of thunderlight afterimages of Bai Xiang, each one driving a form of the Void-Imagination Divine Sword against him.

Once again Pang Tiandao was cut into fragments.

And once again he turned back into black smoke.

“I can feel it. There is a will on your sword.”

The vast black smoke gathered into human form again, revealing his plain face.

“There is a pulling sensation…”

“So that’s it. You cultivate all Three Flowers together. Your soul is full to the brim!”

Fixing his gaze, Pang Tiandao saw through the hidden Three Flowers above Bai Xiang’s head in a single glance.

Yet those flowers were unlike the Three Flowers of any Venerable rank. Every petal was perfectly full, flowing into one another, shifting into one another.

“What a pity.”

Pang Tiandao narrowed his eyes. His hands were still clasped behind his back.

“With talent like this, it is a pity you will die here today.”

That was true.

Bai Xiang had startled him again and again. Time after time, he had been forced to revise upward his judgment of her talent and strength. Each time, it had caught him off guard.

But it meant nothing.

She simply did not understand what it meant to stand in the realm he now occupied.

At the same time, Bai Xiang also stilled her sword.

The two of them subtly changed positions. After exchanging another long look, Bai Xiang suddenly drew out a storage jade token and summoned from it a short yellow-jade sword, along with a Yu-forged longsword that looked entirely unremarkable.

The two characters “Yuming” were engraved on that sword.

Before Pang Tiandao could even finish knitting his brows in alarm, she drove the short yellow-jade sword and the longsword together into fusion, and in the same motion cast her consciousness into them.