Volume 5, Chapter 23 – Willfulness

“It’s my fault.” Bai Zhuqing took the initiative to admit her mistake. “I wasn’t able to help you govern the country well these past years, Elder Sister. I could only use this kind of deception…”

Bai Xiang shook her head. “I’m questioning you about this, but I’m not blaming you.”

Then why…?

Bai Zhuqing looked up at her in surprise, only to see Bai Xiang point toward a breakfast stall by the roadside.

“Pull over.”

The stall was practically right up against the curb. The car edged over through the stream of bicycles and came to a stop, and the side window slowly rolled down.

“What would the honored guest like—”

The stall owner, who had a pair of mechanical prosthetic arms, was just about to ask when he lowered his head and caught sight of Bai Xiang’s incomparably beautiful face. Instinctively, his whole soul seemed to be dragged into those golden eyes. It felt as though a whole cycle of reincarnation had passed before he came back to himself.

“Could you give us two baskets of meat buns?” Bai Xiang asked.

Her pleasing voice pierced through the steam rising from the food stalls. Quite a few cyclists passing by unconsciously turned their heads, but the angle blocked their view and they could not see her.

“Yes… of course!”

The owner noticed the fabric draped over Bai Xiang’s shoulders. Though he could not see the dragon pattern on it, the gold-thread ornamentation alone was enough for him to guess that this woman of extraordinary bearing had to come from a great noble house, and that he had better treat her with respect.

The two baskets of buns were quickly packed into plastic bags and taken by Bai Xiang’s outstretched hand.

“May I ask you something?”

Bai Xiang pulled out a banknote from under the seat and handed it over, asking in the same motion, “How did you lose your hands?”

If anyone else had asked that, it would have been terribly rude. But under Bai Xiang’s presence, the owner did not feel offended in the slightest. Instead, he stood there recalling it for a few seconds before saying with a smile, “…Lost ’em on the front line, of course!”

“So you’re a retired military cultivator.” Bai Xiang nodded and continued, “According to the Xia Code, all veterans are qualified to bring no more than two people with them to Pingzhou and Yuzhou. This place may look peaceful, but it isn’t far from the North Bastion, and it isn’t far from the front line. Why didn’t you leave? Why stay here and keep holding the line?”

“Oh, that…” The owner paused, baring his teeth with a hint of embarrassment. “That’d naturally be because… I don’t want to lose the life I have now.”

Huh?

Bai Zhuqing, in the driver’s seat, was stunned on the spot.

What did that mean?

She didn’t understand?

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“I mean back then, under the old dynasty.” Afraid Bai Xiang might not understand either, the owner waved his prosthetic arms as he explained. “At that time, I was a third-rank commoner. Even getting married was hard.”

“But now it’s the new dynasty.”

“It’s the new dynasty now, we’ve got the Xia Code now, and there’s no more four-tier classification of the people. Folks like us can sit at the table too. I can get married and have kids too.”

At this point, the owner broke into a bright smile, and it was as if light shone in his eyes.

“My kid’s in Pingzhou… After I retired, I sent his mother and him over there.”

“But as for me, I’d rather stay here.”

“Are there many people like you?” Bai Xiang asked again.

“Lots!” the owner answered without hesitation.

“Why?”

“Because everybody knows the life we’ve got now… well, it didn’t come easy!” The owner raised one prosthetic arm and wiped away his sweat, smiling as he said, “Nobody wants to go back to how it was before! So even if all I can do is make cheap breakfasts for the brothers, I still want to do my part for the North Bastion!”

So that was it?

Bai Zhuqing could not help being moved after hearing him out.

To be honest, she usually had far too many things to deal with. She had never really considered why so many retired military cultivators here were unwilling to leave.

They had clearly suffered the most and seen the most bloodshed at the North Bastion, yet after being crippled and discharged, they still refused to return to the safer interior. They insisted on staying in the northern districts to work and contribute…

“You’ve said that very well.”

Bai Xiang gave the owner a deep look and rolled the window back up.

The sedan started moving again and gradually drove away. But the owner suddenly felt dazed, as though he had forgotten something extremely important.

He lowered his head.

What… what’s this large-denomination banknote in my hand?

Wait!

And my qi-path cultivation, which had been stuck my whole life… how… how did I just break into Refining Qi?

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“Did you hear that?”

At the same time, Bai Xiang sat in the sedan, eating a bun while lecturing her younger sister.

“You think you’ve let a great many people down. You think you’ve taken the lives of many people onto your shoulders, and that you even have to rely on well-meaning deception to push certain things forward, so you feel immense pressure.”

“You think the reason the Eastern Xia Imperial Court can maintain its rule is me: the Shenming Sword I left you, the qi-path divine pool I left you, the three hundred million qi-method citizens I left you.”

“But the truth is somewhat different from what you imagine.”

“They aren’t doing all this because they were deceived or oppressed by you into it. They’re doing it because the Xia Code truly improved their lives. They compare the life they have now with the life they had under Yao Yu’s rule before, and the more they compare them, the more they realize how precious the former is. That’s why they’re willing to make sacrifices of their own accord, willing to pay this kind of price to protect it. That is the reason you’ve been able to sit firmly in your position.”

“Mmn…” Bai Zhuqing pressed her lips together, looking thoughtful.

Her thinking was limited, after all.

Bai Xiang shook her head slightly to herself.

These things were basic knowledge to her. In the environment of her previous life, they could even be called common sense.

But in this world, a world that had never managed to break free of feudalism because of the existence of the supernatural, it was not easy to attain that kind of understanding.

Bai Zhuqing already counted as an exception. The girl liked reading Buddhist scriptures, and after falling for Bai Xiang, she had also gotten used to following Bai Xiang’s ideas in daily life. That was why, after Bai Zhuqing came to power, the Xia Code she guided and oversaw in compilation contained so many provisions that were closer to objective fairness.

But she still had not reached that level.

She was in the state of knowing that something was so, without knowing why it was so.

“Elder Sister is right.”

Coming out of her thoughts, Bai Zhuqing felt she had gained a great deal. Then she shifted to that worshipful gaze of hers and looked at Bai Xiang.

“For you to have such ideas as emperor, Elder Sister, is truly a blessing for Eastern Xia’s people.”

A blessing?

Bai Xiang did not show anything on her face, but inwardly she found it somewhat ironic.

Times change.

Just as, in the previous epoch, her order-preserving views would have won the favor of fragments of the primary order, now, in this era, the primary order would most likely reject her instead.

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Nothing is eternal and unchanging.

If all she wanted was to be this lousy emperor, then back then she never would have created the Path of Qi in the first place—never would have created this new path that encouraged every person to seize their own fate in their own hands.

But those things were too profound. The matters they touched were too great, too distant.

They were part of her plans, and for now there was no need to explain them fully to anyone else.

The sedan continued on, passing through the factory district and drawing near the towering wall of the North Bastion.

It truly counted as an industrial wonder.

Seated in the car, Bai Xiang carefully studied that enormous looming shadow ahead.

It stood nearly a hundred meters high, and the wall itself was dozens of meters thick.

A row of giant cannons had been installed atop it. Every firearm had been modified with qi talismans, and every ten meters or so there was a great qi array embedded into a recessed groove.

This colossal thing could house more than a hundred thousand people living and working inside it at the same time. Just by looking at the damaged sections, one could imagine how many demon tide assaults it had endured over the years, and how much blood of both demons and humans had soaked over it.

Once they drew close, Bai Xiang asked to get out.

She and Bai Zhuqing entered the interior of the Great Bastion, took an elevator all the way to the top of the wall, and stood there looking north. As far as the eye could see stretched a barren plain, almost entirely shrouded beneath a thin veil of bloody mist.

Along the way, Bai Xiang constantly observed the expressions of the military cultivators and maintenance workers. She found that although some still retained a positive and upward-looking spirit, for most of them, their overall bearing was not optimistic.

It was heavy.

It was numb.

That oppressive atmosphere shrouded the entire North Bastion.

“Elder Sister… you’ve seen quite a lot already. Shouldn’t we be heading back now?”

Bai Zhuqing followed Bai Xiang the whole way, explaining what had happened in each place, recounting the history the Great Bastion had bathed in from its construction to the present day, while also carefully probing Bai Xiang and hinting that perhaps it was time to return to Zhengyuan Palace.

In truth, she had vaguely gleaned something from Bai Xiang’s attitude.

The reason she was saying these things was that she did not want her guess to prove true.

“What’s over there?”

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Bai Xiang stopped at one section of the wall and pointed across the blood-mist to a place a few kilometers away, asking her younger sister beside her.

This stretch of wall had clearly not yet been cleaned or repaired. Its surface was full of craters and damage, and clotted flesh still adhered to the cast-steel shell. One could smell the fierce blood-reek just by approaching it.

And in the spot Bai Xiang was pointing at, there was the looming outline of a fortress.

It was relatively small.

Far smaller than the North Bastion, only twenty or thirty meters high at most. From the height of the North Bastion, its outline could be made out easily.

“That…” Bai Zhuqing spoke softly. “That’s a fortress Northern Yu built on the front line.”

“You’ve simply allowed them to get that close?” Bai Xiang demanded.

“The cost of uprooting it is too high.” Bai Zhuqing shook her head, looking even more nervous than before. “And that kind of place is surrounded by blood-mist. Even if we took it, we wouldn’t be able to station people there… Elder Sister, you can’t be thinking about that side, can you?”

She could not hold it in any longer.

From the moment Bai Xiang asked her to bring her here, she had wanted to ask. And now it looked like Bai Xiang really did have something in mind.

What exactly was she planning to do?

Bai Zhuqing truly did not understand.

Destroying one forward fortress of Northern Yu would not have much impact on the overall war situation. Instead, it would expose the news of Bai Xiang’s return. Wasn’t that a bad idea?

“Didn’t you want me to be your elder sister, your aunt, your partner, and your teacher all at once?”

Instead, Bai Xiang turned her head and smiled at her, one hand resting on the hilt of the Shenming Sword.

“Then today, I’ll teach you one more principle.”

“If the emperor leads from the front, everyone below will naturally follow.”

“Elder Sister…!?”

Bai Zhuqing let out a cry of alarm.

Her vision blurred, and Bai Xiang was gone.

A streak of sword-light split the sky and shot straight toward the enemy encampment.