Volume 5, Chapter 25 – Sacrificing to the Sword

Naturally, the newcomer could only be Bai Xiang.

Her speed was astonishing. In an instant, she became a streak of sword-light and leapt across the distance. The qi-force around her body burned like invisible flames, rolling out and tearing through the thick bloody mist, while the surrounding void itself warped faintly.

Before she descended, she had already roughly heard the answer given by the boy below. The sword she had raised came to an abrupt halt, then changed into a light upward flick that severed the right arm the young scholar had thrust out. She landed lightly atop the city wall and swept a cool, appraising gaze over the evil cultivators.

“You…” Marquis Wenchang had lost his right hand. In his agony, he instinctively wanted to fly into a rage, but then he realized that he had not even seen the shadow of his attacker’s sword. She was almost certainly not someone he could survive even a single exchange against. He could only forcibly suppress his fury and narrow his eyes as he questioned Bai Xiang.

“Who are you, Your Excellency? Why have you attacked our mighty southern frontier pass without cause?”

Only after saying that did he truly get a clear look at Bai Xiang’s appearance, and at once he froze.

The first thing that entered his eyes was a somewhat loose antique-style robe.

Its base color was deep black, embroidered with golden dragons.

A broad sash cinched the woman’s waist tightly, setting off her full breasts and graceful figure.

Higher up, he saw only two strands of white hair falling from her temples, drifting together with the hair over her brow in the gale, revealing that incomparably beautiful yet majestic face, and those soul-shaking golden eyes.

Th-this person is—

Instinctively, everyone present, Marquis Wenchang included, felt that the woman in black looked vaguely familiar, as though they ought to know who she was.

But when had they ever seen such a strange woman—beautiful and alluring, yet also possessed of awe-inspiring dignity?

If they had seen her before, there was no way they would have forgotten.

Just then, someone among Marquis Wenchang’s attendants suddenly pointed at Bai Xiang with a trembling hand and stammered, “Y-you… you’re Em… you’re Emperor Xiang…?”

Huh?

Emperor Xiang?

Everyone fell silent. Looking at Bai Xiang again, they found that the more they compared her to the recorded images and portraits of the High Emperor Ancestor Xia, the more alike she seemed. It was as though they had been cast from the same mold!

Because they had only recently been reviewing Bai Xiang’s deeds in their own minds, a wave of horror and dread immediately surged through them. They felt that there was simply no way they could stand in opposition to Emperor Xiang. Intimidated by sheer fear, they did not dare even breathe too loudly.

And yet the last of their reason was telling them that Emperor Xiang’s return to life was impossible.

Whether it was the sect master of Qianyuan Sect, the current Yu Emperor, the Imperial Preceptor, or even the Sacred Venerable of the Sacred Court, all of them had reached the same conclusion in turn: there was no way Emperor Xiang could easily escape from the depths of the Sky Sea.

Because within the Sky Sea, the most violent tides of the Void Tribulation had gathered! Those chaotic and disorderly forces could even throw the space-time within it into confusion. One second, time might crawl so slowly it was almost still; the next, it might race forward in a blink, leaping by centuries or millennia!

And the deeper one went into the Sky Sea, the more intense that phenomenon became. Which meant that even if Emperor Xiang had still been alive and fighting against the tides, she should already have grown old under the scouring of disordered time, perhaps even withered away and died long ago.

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So how could she possibly appear here in this form?

Could they be seeing things?

“The wind carried your answer back to me.” Bai Xiang paid no attention to any of that. Her eyes remained fixed on Marquis Wenchang. “You said you humiliated Qing’er four years ago?”

Huh?

Marquis Wenchang froze. Realizing that Bai Xiang was referring to Bai Zhuqing—that false empress of Eastern Xia—a strange sense of grievance and absurdity rose in his heart.

What?

Wasn’t I the one who was humiliated by her?

While Marquis Wenchang was still hesitating, Bai Xiang’s wrist blurred slightly, and the hand pressing the sword hilt and scabbard produced a soft click.

“Ah…” Marquis Wenchang’s body trembled faintly. He hurriedly stumbled back two steps and looked over his body, then at his hand, only to find that there seemed to be nothing wrong.

“Your Lordship!?”

“Your Lordship—!”

At that moment, he heard cries of alarm erupt from the attendants behind him. He hastily turned around and found that everyone, Dou Wenshi included, was staring at him in utter terror, as though they were looking at some grotesque monster.

What’s wrong with me…?

Doubt rose in his heart, but Marquis Wenchang no longer had the strength to think it through.

He felt weak and exhausted. A heavy drowsiness welled up from within his soul. With the last sliver of consciousness he had left, he only had time to glimpse his skin slipping downward from the top of his head like an empty sack, as though his human hide had been peeled clean away, leaving the raw, bloody flesh beneath it exposed.

Bang!

Marquis Wenchang’s body exploded apart, and with it the deadlock shattered as well.

With a ringing clang, Bai Xiang drew the Shenming Sword once more. She seemed to swing out a casual stroke, but halfway through the arc carved by the blade, it turned into light. By the time it had completed half of the remaining half, that light had grown violent as the blazing sun at noon, like a great radiant sun made manifest, transforming into a tide of endless sword-light and endless qi-force that in an instant swallowed the many evil cultivators together with most of the battlement tower.

Zheng—

Crash!

This scene was likely visible in full clarity only to the row of boys hanging there as offerings.

They watched with their own eyes as that sword-light swept across the tower ahead, engulfing those hateful soldiers, engulfing the true culprits, those evil cultivators unworthy of being called human. With a single strike, it sheared away three-quarters of the entire tower at a slant and plowed a horizontal sword-scar into the ground below so deep that no bottom could be seen.

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One sword strike, and all things fell silent.

All doubt, all terror, all disbelief turned to dust beneath that sword, together with the parts of the wall that were dissolved away, together with the corpses embedded within them, all of it merging into drifting motes of light.

“Your injuries can still be treated.”

Then they heard the woman’s voice continue from above.

“Wait here.”

“Someone will arrive soon.”

Whoosh—

Her figure turned into a rainbow as Bai Xiang shot forward, holding the Shenming Sword as she charged into Nankai City, where she happened to meet a group of soldiers hurrying over in panic.

These soldiers wore composite armor on the outside, but beneath it they still had on antique-style cloth garments. Some among them were clearly unaffiliated cultivators who had enlisted in the army. Every last one of them wore a frightened expression, with no idea what exactly had happened.

“You cling to treacherous evil.”

“You deserve death.”

Bai Xiang swung her sword. The Shenming Sword tore through the murky blood-qi and gave off a shrill cry in midair. The invisible qi-force merely spread outward, yet once the people before her caught and heard it, the mysterious vibration-force contained within it erupted directly inside their bodies, slicing through bone, tendon, and flesh from the inside out. In the span of a breath, tens of thousands of them exploded into blood-mist and chunks of flesh.

“What monster dares run wild here!?”

An angry shout came from the front left, and faintly, it seemed that several figures were streaking through the air toward her.

Slash—

Bai Xiang did not even look that way. She shifted the Shenming Sword into her left hand and casually flung a sword strike toward them. The dazzling sword-light shone upon the world once more, and in an instant it swallowed every one of the incoming cultivators whole.

A few breaths later, the sword-light faded. The attacking cultivators had vanished without a trace, while on the ground below there now lay an enormous sword-gouge a hundred meters wide, dragging from beneath Bai Xiang all the way toward the northwest. Its end could not be seen even after several thousand meters, as though the entire city of Nankai had been split in two by a single sword.

What kind of sword art was that!?

In the other directions, the reinforcing soldiers and cultivators were all dumbstruck by the sight.

They might not have been able to recognize who Bai Xiang was, but that sword art?

How could such a terrifying sword possibly exist in this world?

“You are, by rights, all human.”

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Bai Xiang looked at the countless Northern Yu armies and cultivators gathering from every direction. Standing alone in the void, she spoke, and her words simply ignored the distance of space and pierced directly into the hearts of all who heard them.

“And yet you willingly cast your lot with demons.”

“You slaughter your own kind.”

“You eat flesh raw.”

“You all deserve to die.”

“Don’t listen to this demon woman’s nonsense!” someone roared from the rear.

“We’ve got numbers on our side!”

“Attack together! She can’t stop all of us!”

Driven by the incitement, and driven just as much by fear, hundreds of thousands, then millions of soldiers surged in from every direction like a black tide. Countless divine abilities, sword qi, and blade qi, mixed with bullets and shells like a rainstorm, all came crashing down upon Bai Xiang at once.

Faced with this “crisis,” Bai Xiang instead closed her eyes.

She stood upright in the air, gripping the Shenming Sword firmly in her right hand and holding it vertical before her. Her left hand formed a profound seal, while her right wrist blurred and trembled with gentle softness, carrying the blade through one twisted afterimage after another in midair.

“Taishang. Hereby. Gives. Order…”

“Sever. Slay. Extinguish.”

As she slowly opened her eyes again, boundless killing intent burst out from those golden pupils, spreading together with the violently surging qi-force in all directions.

All things fell silent.

Only the sword’s cry remained.

Puff…

Puff, puff…

Amid endless sword-light, figure after figure turned into blood-mist.

The pattern spread faster and faster, denser and denser, like a plague. In an instant it engulfed every tide of people within sight, shredding their bodies, equipment, and divine abilities into fragments and blasting them into dust too fine ever to be gathered together again.

When the sword’s momentum finally came to rest, Bai Xiang stood proudly alone in the sky. Behind her was a half-collapsed tower wall, while before her the vast city of Nankai had almost ceased to exist, reduced to nothing but flat ruins.

One sword.

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And the southward bridgehead fortress that Northern Yu had built at staggering cost was wiped away, while the million troops gathered there were annihilated into nothing.

Th-this… what exactly is…

Only at that moment did Bai Zhuqing arrive in pursuit with Yu He and the other forces aboard flying vessels. She stood with the others in the control room, staring at the scene displayed on the screens before them, eyes wide and lips parted, too shocked to speak for a long while.

All at once, she understood why Bai Xiang had made her bring her to the North Bastion, and why she had said those things.

That was right.

What Bai Zhuqing had been thinking was that the pressure within the country was immense on every front, while her own control over the state still was not strong enough. It would be best to delay the public announcement of Bai Xiang’s return, to begin by replacing the court officials in the Xia Capital, and then, only after all the state prefectures were under the control of trusted confidants, reveal the news to the common people from the top down.

But now Bai Xiang was telling her that none of that was necessary.

If the situation had truly been peaceful, Bai Xiang might well have listened to her advice and waited patiently.

But ever since learning what kinds of threats the various fronts were facing, Bai Xiang had no desire to wait any longer.

You don’t believe?

Then I’ll kill until you do.

And if you still don’t believe—

Then I’ll kill you all.

In this campaign, the Taizu High Emperor of the Eastern Xia Imperial Court returned. Bearing a sword alone, she marched north to punish Yu. She first broke Nankai City and annihilated a million troops, then entered the Northern Yu heartland and successively smashed eighteen cities, including “Xinglian” and “Wuguan.” In a single night she ranged across more than a hundred li of territory. Though Northern Yu’s many prodigies and experts joined forces to stop her advance, they could not withstand her edge. In a single battle, ten million Dao-souls perished, all of them bled out in sacrifice to her sword…

When the news spread,

the whole world was shaken.

…

And at that very same time, in the northwestern desert, at the ruin that Xue Fang and the others had once found, distorted ripples passed through the void. Streams of fine sand gathered together and completed the damaged mural at the center of the ruin.

Upon it was painted a gigantic bird with nine heads.

Then, suddenly, eighteen sinister gleams flashed in the darkness.

Bit by bit, they leaked into view.

Bit by bit, they opened.