Volume 4, Chapter 201 – The Demon Puppet Props Up Blood Soul Heaven, Emperor Xiang Seizes Heaven’s Secret (2-in-1)

Without the slightest surprise, the golden pupils behind the beaded curtain flicked toward empty space and, with a single glance, saw through more than a dozen layers of heaven-sea to catch sight of a fleeing streak of scarlet.

It had no form to its shape and no source to its root, as if it existed suspended out of nowhere, yet it could keep ripping through the void, carrying Pang Tiandao’s residual soul and will rapidly away.

Scarlet…

The moment she caught that clue, Bai Xiang understood.

She first made a loose grasp with her left hand toward the space before her and began the final repairs on the newly reborn Jade Ming Sword.

The Jade Ming Sword let out an excited sword cry. The small-seal script engraved beneath its guard gradually warped, changing from “Jade Ming” into “Shenming,” while a purple-gold mist burst from the entire blade, steeped in noble grandeur like the beaded crown upon her head.

Once the transformation was complete, she casually pointed two fingers downward. The newborn Shenming Sword howled away in obedience to her guidance. Before anyone could react, it had already swept past countless brows.

“This…” Zhu Qingluo gaped, staring first at the sky and then ahead of her, only to see the fox demon locked in stalemate there suddenly shudder. Its body shrank violently from a thousand zhang in length into a palm-sized nine-tailed white fox.

The same went for Li Huiran, Yu Daoyong, and the rest. To their horror, they discovered that all of their opponents had exploded into sprays of blood mist, including Han Feng, the traitor to their camp. The trouble that had just been giving them such a headache had been resolved just like that.

Whoosh—!

After sweeping the battlefield clean, the Shenming Sword did not stop. It plunged headfirst into the clouds below, sliced through the void starting from the highest layer of the Thirty-Three Heavens Sea, pierced barrier after barrier in an instant, and shot away toward the southwest.

That would do.

Bai Xiang nodded. Her figure slowly vanished from where she stood. She had already slipped away to chase that scarlet streak.

She had thought through this course of action long ago.

The conflict between Zhu Qingluo and her original body, the romance and tangled emotions involved in it, had nothing to do with her. She did not care what hidden hardship the original body might have had, nor was she interested in finding out. Once she confirmed someone was an enemy, she would simply kill them, sparing only this avatar of Zhu Qingluo.

Li Huiran and Yu Daoyong were the same. True, their paths differed from hers, but relatively speaking, they were not extremists within the Demon Court. There was still room for cooperation and exchange, so she would not kill them either.

And as for the Shenming Sword…

She had thought it through clearly. The Shenming Sword was only suited to exist as a kind of symbol.

After her devouring and plundering, the sword-path divine pool—the purple-gold firmament blanketing the sky—had already been reduced to less than a tenth of its former self. Like the fortunes of the Yao Yu imperial dynasty, it was fragmented beyond repair and could collapse completely at any time.

Of the missing portion, a great amount of Returning-to-Origin Purple Qi had been absorbed by her; its most obvious manifestation was the beaded crown on her head.

The rest had all poured into the Shenming Sword, allowing that sword to inherit the mantle of exalted authority.

Whether the Path of Qi would flourish in the future or not, from this day on, this sword could be regarded as the inheritance Dao-sword of all qi cultivators under heaven.

It could command every sword of the Path of Qi in the world, yet it itself was weak in direct contest and slaughter.

Something like that was unfit to be used as a weapon. It was far better suited as a ceremonial vessel of inheritance.

So she would throw it back.

Throw it back to Maozhou, back to Zhennan. Put it into the hands of her grandfather, her master, and her younger sister. That would count as giving them another source of support, something to steady the wavering hearts over there.

Without bothering with anything else, Bai Xiang fully unleashed her current cultivation. One step carried her out of the heaven-sea, and she chased the scarlet streak above the dome of heaven.

At an altitude of tens of thousands of meters, the blue sky had already given way to the deep-black cosmos. She took another step, crossing an unknown distance through the void out of thin air. When she appeared again, she was already beside that red light, and her right hand shot out to seize it.

Boom…!

The bloody-red radiance suddenly flared, revealing a tiny hole hidden in the void beneath it. As Bai Xiang grabbed the red light, the little hole abruptly began spewing outward. In an instant, endless scarlet surged and spread, turning into a baleful blood mist that shrouded the surroundings, within which overlapping mirage-images began to appear.

Rip!

Bai Xiang tightened her grip on the remnant soul she had caught, but even so she managed to intercept only half of it in time. She fed that half to Feixiang Heaven to devour, then watched as the remaining half was dragged straight into that tiny hole. Raising her head, she examined the mirage-images.

“To achieve enlightenment at the final moment, break past the limit, and reach the realm where spirit condenses and qi and blood unite, the whole body entering the mysterious void—and with that, suppress Pang Tiandao.”

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“So now, should I call you Venerable Lord Bai, or should I follow the old rules and address you as Emperor Xiang…?”

As he spoke, Xue Fang emerged from the blood mist with the oil-skinned man, confronting Bai Xiang from afar in the high heavens.

Bai Xiang shifted her gaze slightly. The pair of golden cicada earrings and the strands of her beaded crown swayed together as her eyes took in every figure appearing within the blood mist.

As half of Pang Tiandao’s residual-soul memories were transferred bit by bit to the Jade Spirit, Xue Fang and the oil-skinned man’s identities and intentions were no longer secrets to her.

Core members of Blood Soul Heaven’s Eight Divisions.

In order to erase the conceptual divide between the two races and use the Sacred Weapon Clan together with the Dao-Void Methods to become a true Transmission Great Saint, to ascend to the long-vanished realm of the Saint, Pang Tiandao had not hesitated to borrow the “demon-weapon path” offered up by Blood Soul Heaven.

He had believed his plan secure and did not care what kind of waves these people might stir up. But now, it was hard to say who had really been treating whom as a chess piece.

So this was Blood Soul Heaven’s fallback plan.

Her gaze swept across them. All of it looked strangely familiar.

Take the blood mist, for example. It had the ability to open void passages and deploy troops. She had already experienced that during the Southern King’s rebellion.

The blood sea… the spring-eye… and the Blood Abyss.

Whether on the Jing River plains or on the northern frontier, Blood Soul Heaven had used these methods to traverse the void. When void passages had been sealed off, Shenwu Heaven had even once borrowed that route to invade and attack Maozhou.

Now, with all these forces gathered by means of it, they were clearly about to reveal their trump card and have the final showdown with her.

“Blood Heaven is about to arrive.”

Xue Fang could not be bothered with idle talk. He knew he did not have much time. “You have possessed the sword-path divine pool, and now Pang Tiandao is dead. The seat of the Dao-Void pool lies vacant for the moment. Why not submit beneath Blood Heaven? Let us help you enter the Sacred Court, so that together we may resist the crushing pressure of the Void Tribulation.”

Bai Xiang looked at him, but what flashed before her eyes was her first conversation with Pang Tiandao’s incarnation.

“The threat of the Void Tribulation stacks.”

At the time, Pang Tiandao had sat before her, but his eyes had been fixed on some place in the void. “All souls that fail in the tribulation struggle do not truly die. They are interfered with, twisted, and made into part of ‘it.’”

“I don’t care whether the world is ruled by demons or by humans.” He raised his head again and looked at Bai Xiang with complete sincerity. “But at the very least, the world must possess the power to resist ‘it.’”

So that was it…

Bai Xiang’s eyes flickered faintly, and she asked Xue Fang directly, “The ‘Blood Heaven’ you worship—is it the Void Tribulation?”

“Not the same.” Xue Fang’s expression shifted slightly. “The Void Tribulation cannot be seen or touched. It is like the river of time washing over all things; you can only tell it has passed by the pitted scars left behind when everything corrodes.”

“But Blood Heaven is different!”

“Blood Heaven is a new form of life that appeared after being influenced and interfered with by the Void Tribulation. It is a more advanced, higher mode of existence. It can become our future!”

Then there was no mistake.

Bai Xiang made her judgment.

She already knew quite a lot now. If her source of information was correct, then this so-called Blood Heaven—the thing Blood Soul Heaven was currently worshipping, this so-called faith, this so-called concept—should in fact refer to an excessively powerful soul-eroding Void Demon.

If a cultivator died with a strong obsession that refused to disperse, then in the main world it could possibly form a demon pool. That was because the primary order suppressed it there, reducing the degree to which the Void Tribulation could interfere.

But outside the main world, without the primary order suppressing the Void Tribulation, that same interference and pollution would increase geometrically, and a cultivator’s remnant soul would be polluted into a savage, baleful aberration that had lost its will yet remained subject to the Void Tribulation’s interference.

The lowest class of such aberrations was called a wandering soul.

Those were the unconscious soul-bodies encountered in dense numbers whenever the void was torn open or when one wandered through the void aboard a flying vessel. They were harmful only to ordinary beings. To cultivators who had entered the Dao, they posed no concrete threat.

But one step further, and things were different.

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Without the primary order’s suppression, wandering souls underwent distortion at a terrifying speed. Great numbers of them would gather and fuse in an extremely short time, either giving birth to various kinds of Void Demons or transforming into a soul-eroding Void Demon.

Just like demon pools, most Void Demons could not cross the shell of the flesh to directly interfere with the soul. They relied on all kinds of sinister arts and illusions to deceive their targets, and only if one fell for the trick would the soul become polluted.

But soul-eroding Void Demons were different.

It was like the first time Bai Xiang had ridden a flying vessel through the void. That specially made hull had been able to block the invasion of Void Demons.

Yet a soul-eroding Void Demon could pass straight through the hull, even ignore the barrier of her fleshly body, and try to burrow directly into her to devour her soul, completely replacing the very concept of her existence.

Before, Bai Xiang had judged soul-eroding Void Demons to be the equivalent of “heavenly demons” in this world, deciding that, like heavenly demons, they were shapeless and formless—a restraining force corresponding to the “heart-stream” unique to the human race of this world.

But now that she had figured out the source of their birth, she realized she had vastly underestimated them.

What was known was this:

First: as long as the numbers were great enough—as long as enough lives died—soul-eroding Void Demons could arise spontaneously from their remnant souls.

Second: such monsters would go on to feed on remnant souls and true souls alike, growing stronger by devouring them.

Third: the void was vast beyond measure, and the Void Tribulation had a history of at least hundreds of millions of years.

Putting those three things together, what else could Blood Heaven possibly be?

Over hundreds of millions of years, across a void of immeasurable breadth, through so many Void Tribulations… how many sapient beings had died in all that time? And how many wandering souls had been born from them?

The number had to be astronomical.

If, during that process, some variable had appeared—whether because someone bestowed it, or because it awakened by pure chance—then the moment it was born, the moment something like the concept of “Blood Heaven” came into being, then as long as even one such monster possessed that concept, it would never lack nourishment or food while it grew.

Wandering souls were everywhere.

Food was everywhere.

It would grow at terrifying speed, following in the footsteps of the Void Tribulation all the way.

Wherever the Void Tribulation went, it would feed.

Blood Soul Heaven was actually worshipping and raising such a soul-eroding fiend, and even regarding it as the future of all sapient beings of both races?

Bai Xiang lifted her chin slightly, a grim killing intent flashing in her eyes.

There would be no agreement here.

Xue Fang was extremely skilled at reading faces. Bai Xiang had done nothing more than pause slightly without answering, yet he immediately concluded that the negotiation had failed. Reaching out, he took a dreadful body from the oil-skinned man.

The person was naked all over. One could roughly tell from the body and features that it was female. The skin over her body was covered in swollen blood blisters, and beneath her flesh it looked as though something were struggling, bulging out one moment and shrinking the next. The sight inspired disgust and revulsion.

That was Yao Ying, the young princess of Yong’an Prefecture?

Though her face had been stretched open and torn apart beyond recognition, Bai Xiang still identified her from the features of her brows and eyes. This miserable thing was Yao Ying, who had once tried to harm her and had also tried to harm Xiang Xian.

Without another word, Xue Fang hurled Yao Ying straight at Bai Xiang, then led his people in a rapid retreat. The blood mist around them billowed and churned, clearly as they attempted to flee.

Bai Xiang’s golden pupils locked onto Yao Ying. In midair, the flesh on Yao Ying’s body finally tore apart. Massive amounts of bright red flesh, mixed with blood, swelled outward madly as if being inflated, carrying all kinds of bizarre and grotesquely mutated giant organs. There was no telling what kind of monster they meant to form.

At that very moment, the little void-hole appeared again. From within it sprayed an incomparably thick, foul-smelling blood-mist haze that wrapped around the giant monster Yao Ying had become. The two rapidly fused and overlapped, and in the blink of an eye it had transformed into a gigantic blood demon with no fixed shape, shifting like mist.

The instant that blood demon took form, Bai Xiang understood.

That peculiar aura it radiated…

There was no mistake. At once, she remembered crossing the “blood-sea spring-eye” in Chilong Circuit on her way to Qiyun Circuit, and the attack she had suffered during that passage—she remembered that enormous fiend whose features she had been unable to make out.

So it was you.

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Blood Heaven in name, a soul-eroding monster in truth.

If I had not possessed soul-abilities to reinforce and protect my path back then, you really might have devoured my soul.

Too bad…

Things were no longer what they once were.

Taking a shallow breath, Bai Xiang slowly lowered her eyelids.

Would it work?

As soon as the blood demon appeared, it spread itself open, like a gigantic rag wrapping Bai Xiang inside. In an instant it sealed off all surrounding space, forming an irregular sphere of flesh that floated there. Xue Fang and the other followers of Blood Soul Heaven could not help showing tense expressions.

Because Pang Tiandao’s plan had interfered with things, the Void Tribulation’s destruction and erosion of the main world had become far deeper than originally forecast. Invisibly, that had accelerated the true arrival of the Void Tribulation.

By Xue Fang’s own calculations, at most a few minutes remained… then the Void Tribulation would descend in full.

He could not help but glance up at the distant cosmos, only to see the hazy murk there dim slightly, as though a dark tide were advancing this way.

At most twenty breaths more, within visible range.

If they could not kill Bai Xiang within those twenty breaths and wrest the primary order’s gaze away from her, then once that “tide” crashed down, every arrangement Blood Soul Heaven had made in this generation would be obliterated. Along with them, every one of them would perish without even their bones remaining, unable to return to Blood Heaven.

It had to work!

Hating the variable that Bai Xiang had become, Xue Fang gritted his teeth and prepared himself for the worst.

Yet just then, the enormous flesh-sphere suddenly burst into great clouds of blood mist. Countless hair-thin lines of cuts vaguely appeared across its surface, extending inward in dense profundity until they reached the fineness of powder. In an instant, the sphere collapsed and shattered, revealing Bai Xiang within, completely unharmed.

Bai Xiang abruptly opened her eyes. Holding Feixiang Heaven one-handed in her right hand, she drew the sword-tip through the void, writing as she chanted.

“By Taishang’s order, let all beings heed and know.

From Dao’s five dragons, from Chan and sword, I establish the new.

Heaven and earth take their stations; mountain and marsh exchange their qi.

Thunder and wind press against each other; water and fire stand apart.

Sun-yang locks form; moon-yin fixes division.

The Five Phases lock the trigrams; stem and branch regulate the root.

Let law have its prohibitions; let all things have what they depend upon.

In place of Yu’s old order, the new dynasty is formed.”

The rough meaning of this decree was:

This was the decree of the Taishang Sage, the Taishang Emperor. All beings of this world were to listen carefully and remember it well.

From the Daoist Five Dragons and the Chan principles of Buddhism, I have attained understanding of the Dao. Today, I establish new rules.

Sun-yang and moon-yin must each keep their proper precepts. They must not recklessly shift forms, nor arbitrarily disturb the divisions of time.

Stable yin and yang, together with stable Five Phases, must be used to lock heaven and earth in place. And only when the prescribed roots are set down can all things between heaven and earth determine their positions relative to one another; only then can mountains and marshes communicate with each other; only then can thunder and storms agitate one another and generate the atmosphere; only then can water and fire repel one another, maintaining separation.

Thus, laws and rules once more have prohibitions to enforce them, and all beings and all things must act in accordance with those precepts.

With this replacing Great Yu’s principles of law, the new dynasty is thereby established.

Sixteen short lines, sixty-four characters in total.

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When Bai Xiang finished reciting them, the sword-tip completed the final stroke.

Then she lowered her head slightly and looked toward the planet formed by the lands of the main world.

Then she raised her head and looked at the many heaven-seas above, still being drawn down by the vortex and continuing to merge with the main world.

At last she cast a glance at the distant “tide,” lifted her sword again, and drew in the void a single razor-sharp character:

Xia.

The character suddenly released boundless white light. Every ray was solid as manifest qi-force, and it collided head-on with the incoming “tide,” instantly unleashing a terrifying storm and chaotic current.

Beneath the sweep of that turbulence, everything—whether the followers of Blood Soul Heaven watching from the sidelines, or the planet of the main world below, or the fragments of Illusory Realms being shoved over, or the spiraling, descending Thirty-Three Heavens Sea… even Bai Xiang herself—was wrapped and covered in countless streaking lines of speed, gradually fading away and vanishing within the blinding white radiance.

…

Time flowed on.

The years passed without sound.

At last, Zhu Qingluo, Li Huiran, and Yu Daoyong broke free once more from the time that had been pinned in place. The next instant, they looked around in bewilderment, only to discover in shock that the scenery around them had already changed.

Where was the Thirty-Three Heavens Sea?

Where was the “tide” brought on by the Void Tribulation?

How had it all vanished?

This… what surrounded them now was nothing more than blue sky and a sea of clouds, and below them stood a prosperous city.

Were they still in the main world? Still above Yujing Circuit?

Zhu Qingluo tried to cast a divination with her fingers. Her face instantly turned deathly pale.

Li Huiran’s face was dark as well, and he said nothing.

Ten years.

They had been pinned in time for ten whole years!

And it was not only that. According to the signs revealed by the divination, the rules of this world were no longer the ones they had once known. Nearly all of them had undergone some subtle change.

And when they looked at the prosperous city below, where was there any trace left of the Yujing in their memories?

Towering high-rises.

A forest of steel.

Countless small flying vessels traveled between the buildings, and holographic projections appeared high in the sky at every turn.

This was an entirely new city.

More prosperous.

And the civilization behind it was stronger as well.

“Ah…”

Yu Daoyong let out a long, faint sigh.

“Past shadows veil the river moon; beneath heaven all is turmoil once again.

Who knows, under these nine heavens, how many will meet, and how many will part.”