Volume 5, Chapter 13 – Resolve

Aboard the special aircraft, Bai Xiang switched on the phone and first entered the numbers of several acquaintances from memory.

Then she began going online to look things up. She checked on the entire Bai family, from her grandfather Bai Shengju at the top to the youngest, Bai Maoxu, then the outer disciples of the Shenming Sword Dao, and even people with whom she had once shared close ties in Qi and Mao Provinces, such as Cao Chuan, Huang Qian, Tao Shuohua, and Yu He. Anyone she could remember, she searched for.

First came the Bai family. Relying on the Shenming Sword she had sent back in those days, the Bai family had naturally taken control of and defined the orthodoxy of the Path of Qi. Her grandfather Bai Shengju, her eldest uncle Bai Guanshan, and her second uncle Bai Lianzhou had all been granted noble titles. Most of them, however, had not remained in Xiajing, choosing instead to stay in Zhennan, Mao Province, to build things up there. Bai Zhuqing, as Regent of the Imperial Court, was the one who stood out the most.

Then there was the Shenming Sword itself. The sword had been built on the frame of the Yuming Sword she had once obtained from Xiang Xian, then successively fused with the yellow-jade short sword and the Godslaying Sword. Its material was superb, and it could slice through iron like mud.

After that, Bai Xiang had used it when she devoured the Sword Dao divine pool that once hung above the Nine Provinces. Added to that was the incense-and-faith power gathered from three hundred million qi-method people. It could be said that whoever held the Shenming Sword was effectively in command of a heavenly divine pool aligned with the Path of Qi.

With such a weighty artifact controlled by the Bai family, those three hundred million qi-method people could never possibly go against them.

“When I threw that sword back, my understanding of the Spirit Palace Realm was still incomplete, so I did not pour that part of my insight into it.”

“But for the earlier realms, from Enter the Dao to Golden Core, and then from Golden Core to Origin Realm, I left out none of the details or key points.”

Bai Xiang recalled what she had been thinking at the time. Sending the Shenming Sword back to Zhennan had been a deeply deliberate move.

Theoretically speaking, so long as Bai Zhuqing could obtain the approval of the Yellow Jade spirit attached to the Shenming Sword, she would be able to draw upon the Path of Qi divine pool contained within the sword and directly infuse other people with cultivation or insight. The level of cultivation she could infuse would be tied to her own.

For example, if Bai Zhuqing was currently at the False Core Realm, then she could use the Shenming Sword to draw on the Path of Qi divine pool and infuse others with False Core cultivation.

If she were at the Golden Core Realm, then she could infuse others with Golden Core cultivation. By this method, she could mass-produce mid-level combat power.

Of course, that kind of infusion was not permanent. In essence, it was not truly one’s own cultivation. It was borrowed cultivation, drawn from the Path of Qi divine pool through the Shenming Sword as a medium.

That cultivation would continue to ebb away over time. How long it took to run dry would vary from person to person, and one would need to return to the Shenming Sword periodically for a new infusion.

Although it could at most infuse Golden Core cultivation, and later realms were difficult to manage because they involved the three origin orifices, especially the Hidden Spirit Orifice, this method alone was basically enough to ensure that the Bai family could stand firm through an age of chaos.

So Bai Xiang did not find any of the information surprising.

With the Shenming Sword, with independent Venerables like Monk Zhuye and Zhu Canghai, with a meticulous planner like her master Xiang Xian, with the Silver Sea Merchant Guild as an ally, and with control over the original three hundred million or so qi-method people, forget the mere position of Imperial Court Regent. Even placing Bai Shengju or Qing’er directly on the throne would have met with little resistance.

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“The Shenming Sword Dao was never dissolved.” Bai Xiang continued browsing.

Qiao Wen had already told her some of this. Her original assumption had been that, now that they had taken control of the lands of Eastern Xia’s fourteen provinces, the Shenming Sword Dao, and especially the various peaks beneath it, would no longer have any reason to remain intact and would probably have been broken up and reorganized.

But to her surprise, it had not been reorganized at all. Even though the people within the Dao had all been assigned outward, some to run universities and some to run companies, the overall framework still remained and was still firmly in Bai Shengju’s hands.

She immediately realized that her grandfather was using that force as an imperial guard.

It stood beyond the simple relationship of qi-method people. These were confidants among confidants. Only followers and disciples raised from the very beginning by one’s own hand could give the Bai family that degree of trust.

“The Demon-Suppressing Directorate and the Military Affairs Directorate.” Bai Xiang swiped to Huang Qian’s profile picture and found that the dark, rugged fellow had been promoted again.

Huang Qian’s office was Commandant of the Sealed Directorate within the Military Affairs Directorate.

He had originally held the nominal post of commandant under the Roads Directorate of Chilong Circuit, but a Commandant of the Sealed Directorate was different. That office could be said to be one of the military coordinators of the Xiajing region, able to intervene in military defense and prevention across the circuits around Xiajing. Its authority was enormous.

Then there was Yu He. In his early years, under Fang Xiaochun, he had only been a minor official in the Demon-Suppressing Directorate system. He had once even disguised himself as a beggar and partnered with Bai Xiang on missions. Now he too had been promoted and enfeoffed, sitting in command of the Eastern Xia Demon-Suppressing Directorate, bearing the seal of Directorate Guardian and coordinating the men of its branch offices across the provinces.

Besides them, Tao Shuohua was running schools, Wang Ran was running schools, Li Sheng was running schools.

The many schools destroyed in the chaos of Year One had been rebuilt by these people. Then, using the schools as their core, they expanded outward into provincial administrations. That was how the fourteen provinces had been established across this newly opened land.

“So each province was originally built with a school at its core. This method of administration looks far too similar to the self-reinforcing model of the school cliques and the companies.”

After finishing that broad overview, Bai Xiang turned her attention to the structure and operating pattern of Eastern Xia’s political system.

She discovered that this country was not quite what she had imagined.

Based on the impression given by those two federal lieutenants, Eastern Xia should have been a miserable world, supposedly far less free and democratic than the Federation, where everyone lived under dictatorship.

But in reality?

The people of Eastern Xia had no time at all to care about that sort of nonsense, because even now they were still being forced to hold together with extreme closeness and fight desperately just to survive tomorrow.

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Eastern Great Xia’s fourteen provinces inherited the provincial system of Yao Yu, with each province containing four circuit capitals.

If the information Bai Xiang had found was correct, then among those fourteen provinces and their combined fifty-six circuit capitals, including Xiajing itself, more than half had already undergone fortress conversion.

In other words, compared with circuit capitals, they could more properly be called “base cities,” the sort of term one would use in an apocalyptic age.

Why?

For that, one had to ask Pang Tiandao.

Back then, for the sake of his ambitions, Pang Tiandao had shifted the Thirty-Three Heavens Sea over, attempting to merge it with the main world. The divine abilities he displayed there had not come wholly from his own power, but from two Heavenly Stem Precious Jades.

Once activated, the Heavenly Stem Precious Jades would not halt the process just because he had died and his Dao had perished. That meant that even after the Void Tribulation tides had ravaged the world, the merger of the Thirty-Three Heavens Sea and the main world would not stop.

Over the past ten years, fragments of many Heaven Sea secret realms had continued merging with the main world. The direct result was that the surface area of the main world’s planet had grown larger and larger.

Why had the land of the Nine Provinces gained enough territory for four new provinces? That was roughly how.

And those belts of fragments still circling the outer reaches of the main world’s planet at this very moment had all been drawn in by the same inertia. They too were still being swallowed little by little by the main world over time.

But what returned to the embrace of the main world was not only the environment.

It was not just water and earth that had merged in. Along with them came the Demon Pools and Void Demons hidden throughout the many Illusory Realms.

Relying on those two Heavenly Stem Precious Jades, and on the edict Bai Xiang had proclaimed, the Void Tribulation tides had failed to destroy the outer layer of the main world. Even so, they had still greatly corrupted the Demon Pools and Void Demons that already existed there, strengthening them further into terrifying monstrous abominations.

In Zhengyuan Year One, a tide of voidfiends numbering in the hundreds of millions crossed the southern Long Pass and launched a frenzied offensive against Mao Province.

At the most dangerous point, three of Mao Province’s four circuit capitals were briefly lost. Eastern Xia was forced to turn every circuit capital it controlled at the time into a fortress. It was only by mobilizing the strength of the entire nation that it barely held out and ultimately devoured the surviving tail end of that voidfiend army.

What sort of magnificent scene must that have been?

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A picture arose involuntarily in Bai Xiang’s mind. The camera looked down from high above, and across an incomparably vast and desolate earth stood base city after base city ringed by walls. The voidfiend army filled every inch of land outside them like a tide. Every base city had been driven into an utterly isolated and helpless situation. It was absolutely a survival crisis even more terrifying than the chaos of the Blood Sea.

Then came Zhengyuan Year Two, Zhengyuan Year Three… nearly every year brought another voidfiend tide of comparable scale crashing into the provinces.

Sometimes it came from the south.

Sometimes it came from the northwest or the southeast, from the sea.

And as the main world continued swallowing fragments of the Illusory Realms, entirely new voidfiends for which there was little data would frequently appear in different places. Each time an unknown great demon emerged, it caused appalling casualties and brought immense pressure upon the provinces’ defensive systems.

It was precisely under that pressure that more than thirty of Eastern Xia’s fifty-six circuit capitals had undergone fortress conversion.

Using the fusion technology brought by qi methods, people built great bastion walls outside the circuit capitals, walls of steel a hundred meters thick and seventy to eighty meters high, enough to enclose both the urban districts and the farmlands.

And it was also because vast numbers of voidfiends roamed the wilderness, placing the same undifferentiated pressure on all civilizations, that the Starsea Federation had not seized the chance to attempt the annexation of Eastern Xia.

After all, a territory ten times larger also meant a greater probability of pressure along the borders. Over the last ten years, the Federation, whose main ethnic group was the Sacred Weapon Clan, had likewise been driven to distraction by these voidfiend monstrosities.

So that was the general picture.

Whether it was Eastern Xia, the Federation, or any of the other proclaimed regimes, none of them, in Bai Xiang’s view, could really be called normal states.

Fragments of the main world were returning, merging, and restoring it to its original self. That was the great trend of the new age.

Before such a trend, it was difficult for these peoples to truly master their own fate.

“Voidfiends…”

Bai Xiang turned instead to the voidfiend material published online.

The atmosphere of Eastern Xia’s internet was actually quite good.

Perhaps because they had weathered the impacts of the voidfiend assaults, public opinion seemed very united. Even when a few base cities were besieged by voidfiend armies and cut off from outside supplies, the people inside would still use the internet in turn to comfort other netizens.

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Some people posted their daily schedules online.

Some people chose to go to the front to help build and fight, taking a photo of themselves each day and pairing it with a few encouraging words.

Bai Xiang browsed quite a lot of that material, and felt that the Bai family, and especially her younger sister Bai Zhuqing, were truly worthy of admiration and praise for having led Eastern Xia in resisting the invasions after the voidfiend tides began.

“She’s done well.”

She set down the phone and turned to look at the clouds outside the window, yet in her mind she thought of the Tianji Silver Eagle, Suo Nie, whom she had casually killed, along with the whole set of federal plans she had discovered by reading the remnants of his soul.

Voidfiends was the collective term for Demon Pools and Void Demons. The most difficult force among them was the physical onslaught of voidfiend monstrosities, but that did not mean the threat of Demon Pool Illusory Gods had vanished.

Compared with the humans of Eastern Xia, the Sacred Weapon Clan was almost immune to the control of Illusory Gods.

And together with construct mechs, protected by what amounted to the battle mecha of a new age, the Federation was naturally in a far easier position than Eastern Xia when dealing with the voidfiend threat.

Ten years had passed. The Sacred Weapon Clan had probably more or less adapted to the impact of the voidfiends.

Taking Suo Nie’s little schemes into account, it could not be ruled out that they had set their sights on Eastern Xia again.

“I just wonder where Zhu Qingluo and the others are now.”

“And the Demon Court.”

“With Pang Tiandao dead, did those people choose seclusion, or did they join the Federation?”

As her thoughts turned, Bai Xiang felt rather uneasy.

She was missing a split body.

Better to settle matters in Xiajing quickly, mobilize the strength of all the base cities to gather information, and recover Feixiang Heaven. That was the proper course.