Volume 5, Chapter 21 – The Situation

As Guo Rongzhi continued laying out the details, Bai Xiang also confirmed her own suspicions.

There had been two greatest culprits in Bai Nianchan’s case. One was the Blood Soul Heaven followers, who had directed everything from afar and manipulated the Southern King, Yao Qingyuan, into laying the plot. The other was the Yao Yu ruling house, which had silently permitted the miscarriage of justice and allowed the wrongful case to proceed.

By now, the Eight Divisions of Blood Soul Heaven had become much like the many dojo sects stranded in the main world, drifting from place to place. Some had been caught and annihilated by Eastern Xia’s Dao armies. Some had fallen into voidfiend encirclements and been devoured and absorbed by those fiendish creatures, which in turn gained intelligence from them.

In the eighth year of Zhengyuan, which was two years before Bai Xiang’s return, the southern region of the Starsea Federation was struck by a voidfiend invasion numbering just under a hundred thousand.

Compared to the great demon tides that easily numbered in the millions, this counted as a minor affair. The Federation did not take it too seriously, merely dispatching one of the Seven Silver Eagles, Colonel Longde, to lead troops in handling it.

Longde came from a military family in the Federation and was especially skilled at command and at using mechanized forces. He had many times led armies against demon tide assaults of a similar scale and won, so everyone believed that this time he would claim victory as well.

But the way things developed was anything but normal.

Just when everyone thought that demon tide would, as usual, enter the Federation army’s encirclement, it suddenly split into three forces. Two of them went around the encirclement from separate directions and launched surprise attacks on Longde’s flanks, while the third seized the chance created by the chaos to drive straight into the apex of the encirclement’s arc, where Longde’s main force was positioned.

After a world-shaking battle, Longde was defeated, and together with the twenty thousand mechanized troops under his command, he was swallowed by the voidfiends and all but wiped out.

That battle shook the entire world. No one had expected a demon tide to be capable of maneuvers like that.

Voidfiends were savage, but mindless. That had once been a universally acknowledged truth.

But after that day, it no longer was. At the cost of his life, Longde, the Silver Eagle of Xichuan, told the world that as the voidfiends grew more rampant and devoured more people, it was possible for them to awaken intelligence and produce leading figures capable of commanding whole demon tide armies.

When Bai Xiang first learned of that piece of history, she immediately thought of the cicada demon she had encountered in the Shenming Ancestral Ground.

If a Demon Pool evolved to its limit, it could in turn awaken sentience and enter the legendary Extremity of Wisdom. Naturally, then, the vast armies of the voidfiends also had a chance to give birth to such monsters.

But none of those were Blood Soul Heaven’s main strength.

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Blood Soul Heaven had been the primary force pushing the foul and heretical weapon-forging method. Back then, Pang Tiandao had merely adopted and exploited that plan. That meant Blood Soul Heaven’s main force ought to be the promoters and leaders behind the Sacred Weapon Clan, and there was a very high chance they had already infiltrated the Federation’s upper ranks.

Then there was Yao Yu.

Why had Bai Zhuqing needed to garrison the Xia Capital? Why act in a manner akin to the Son of Heaven guarding the nation’s gate?

Naturally because there was an enemy, and that enemy stood right at the Xia Capital’s doorstep.

Looking across the map, the Xia Capital occupied what had been Yujing Circuit ten years ago. Beyond Yujing Circuit had originally lain Huangzhou and Daizhou, two state prefectures that flanked and guarded the capital like divine gatekeepers. Even when the northern frontier had previously fallen, that had still been the case.

But not anymore.

From a bird’s-eye view, if one went north all the way from Zhengyuan Palace, past the residential districts and industrial districts, one would come upon a towering wall.

And beyond that wall?

There stretched a desolate plain wrapped in soaring blood-qi.

Part of that blood-qi had spread over from the earlier ravages of the Sea of Blood. But even more of it had, over these years, been extracted from the countless corpses of those who died when Northern Yu and other states commanded and drove men southward in campaigns of invasion.

“The upheaval happened too suddenly at the time. No one imagined that the Yao clan, for all that it was the imperial house, would actually abandon the whole realm without hesitation and flee directly with its clansmen.”

At this point, even Guo Rongzhi showed contempt, thoroughly disgusted by Yao Yu’s conduct.

That imperial clan in flight had ended up in the north and, across a stretch known as the Blood River Plain, established the regime of Northern Yu.

As for Profound Xia, it lay even farther to the northwest. Bai Xiang knew that lot well too—they were precisely the remnants of the Feathering Sect that had never been completely wiped out.

“Profound Xia claims that you are the Imperial Daughter of their former dynasty. They believe that, in theory, the regime of Eastern Xia ought to belong to them, so they proclaimed their own state name as ‘Profound Xia.’ They even said that when you return, they’ll make us pay.”

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Guo Rongzhi shook his head.

“None of these chronic afflictions are easy to deal with. So the old master could only pick off some small fry to vent his anger.”

He said it lightly, but it landed on Bai Xiang’s heart with great weight.

The greatest culprits were standing there in plain view, and yet for one reason after another, vengeance could not be exacted and they could not be uprooted.

Guo Rongzhi had already explained it clearly to her. At first, once the case was reopened and pursued into the territory of Dongzhou, several relatives of officials who had taken part in Bai Nianchan’s arrest and imprisonment back then were interrogated. Once their guilt was established, their clans were naturally exterminated. Only one group of the Zhao clan managed to escape. The current estimate was that they were hiding somewhere in the three states north of the river, very close to Tianji Circuit.

And as for Liu Yong… though he was nominally Bai Xiang’s disciple, in truth he had scarcely been taught by her at all. For the past ten years, he had watched many of his inner-sect senior brothers head for the front lines and win merit in the fighting against the voidfiends and against the armies of Northern Yu and Profound Xia. Aware that his potential was nearly exhausted, Liu Yong too had grown desperate and frenziedly wanted to prove himself to the Bai family.

That day, he had gone out alone and discovered traces of the Zhao clan in Tianji Circuit. One of their informants was being hunted down by him and was just about to be captured when Tianji Circuit was suddenly struck by a demon tide invasion.

Liu Yong had originally had a chance to escape, but just to prove himself, he forced his way deep into the heart of the demon tide. In the end, not only was the informant not saved, Liu Yong himself lost both legs and his left hand. Now he could only rely on prosthetic limbs to maintain mobility.

But how could prosthetics replace flesh and blood?

If he were from the Sacred Weapon Clan, that would be one thing. But he was human. Losing limbs was equivalent to being born without several meridians. How was he supposed to keep walking the road of cultivation from this point on?

It was little different from becoming a cripple.

“How could Northern Yu and Profound Xia possess this kind of strength?”

Bai Xiang could not understand it.

When she had killed those court officials, she had struck in fury. And she had assumed that anything those two knew could also be told to her by Bai Zhuqing, so she had not cared to gather up their remnant souls and had instead shredded them to pieces on the spot.

Now Bai Zhuqing still had not gotten out of bed. Bai Xiang could not wait any longer, so she simply asked Guo Rongzhi first.

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“How many people did your transmission of the Path affect ten years ago?” Guo Rongzhi asked her.

Bai Xiang estimated briefly and replied, “Roughly three hundred million.”

“You calculated that quite accurately.” Guo Rongzhi nodded, then said, “Then now we only have a little over four hundred million. Do you think that number is normal?”

Was it not?

Bai Xiang calculated for a moment. If she factored in the casualties from the chaos of Year One, the demon tide invasions, and the several great wars in the north, it seemed fairly reasonable.

“Reasonable?” Guo Rongzhi raised a brow. “You’re counting only the base population, aren’t you?”

The base population?

He meant there was also outside input—ah, I know what he means.

Bai Xiang understood.

Because aside from the residents of Eastern Xia itself, there really had been outside inflows.

The main world was constantly fusing with fragments of the Sky Sea.

The land would expand. Heaven and earth would grow broader.

Even the lost parts of ruins would naturally be restored, so what about the living beings who inhabited those fragments of the Illusory Realms?

Even Void Demons knew how to invade. Would living, breathing people not know?

“I understand.” Bai Xiang nodded. “Those refugees.”

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Eastern Xia had been the victor of the previous Void Tribulation. Strictly speaking, it should have been the only imperial dynasty recognized by the primary order.

That was why she had the confidence to call those people refugees.

It was precisely those refugees… Over ten years, they had flowed endlessly into the main world, constantly replenishing its population. But they would, in all likelihood, never choose to join Eastern Xia.

The reason was simple. Those fragments had all once been the territories of sects.

The interests of sects were innately opposed to an immortal cultivation dynasty like Eastern Xia.

Once those people returned to the main world and looked for a place to settle, they certainly would not choose Eastern Xia just to make life hard for themselves. They would instead join the Federation or join Northern Yu, which would undoubtedly strengthen those powers at a rapid pace.

After all, no matter how weak it was, a single fragment could still provide hundreds of millions of people.

Take the Shenwu Immortal Dynasty back then for example: its total population had only been somewhat smaller than Great Yu’s.

It was precisely after gaining that source of strength, and after a steady stream of sect forces joined countries like Northern Yu, that they gained the confidence to fight Eastern Xia head-on. They had even repeatedly attempted southern offensives over the past ten years, forcing Bai Zhuqing to personally garrison the Xia Capital.

And that was not all.

There were also the remnants of the Demon Court.

The tides of the Void Tribulation had far-reaching effects. In the deepest depths of the voidfiend hordes, there might even be vicious great demons hidden away, as savage as Blood Heaven.

And if one also counted that “Demon God Temple” they mentioned…

Bai Xiang narrowed her eyes, and a sharp gleam flashed through them.