Volume 1, Chapter 55 – Bronze Cicada

When Cao Chuan led his men onto the battlefield, he couldn’t help freezing at the sight.

The black earth where tents had been pitched was burning; some tent remains had collapsed to one side, tongues of fire roaring over their surfaces.

Out in the open, at least a hundred human corpses were laid out in rows, most missing arms or legs, sockets a blur of mangled flesh.

The surviving Chilong Army soldiers were being lifted onto stretchers with their comrades’ help. Seeing this, the men Cao Chuan brought sprinted forward—some to fight the fires, others to salvage supplies.

Every three to five meters there were scraps of remains and the marks of explosions. He saw huge skeletons of creatures he couldn’t name, their surfaces riddled with nauseating pores, being covered with black cloth so the night wind wouldn’t set them keening with demonic sound.

Far off, against a rolling backdrop of red mist, in smoke of death and flame, one peculiar corpse stood at the center.

Its upper body was wrapped in a violet-red robe; somehow only half the face remained. The other half hung slanted over the lower body’s corpse—and from the waist down that half had completely mutated, flesh turning into insect tissue plated with exoskeleton, ballooning to over two meters across—like a massive spider-beast with a human torso.

Wooden sword on her back, Bai Xiang sat quietly beside the corpse.

One leg bent, wearing the blood-stained ‘Blackwatersnake Max’ form-fitting combat suit, a baseball cap in hand, white hair spilling down, she gazed low toward the night fog in the distance, lost in thought.

Motion and stillness crossing, the blood and fire around her seemed like her backdrop. Cao Chuan’s mouth fell open, floored by the scene.

Sword in hand, he walked dazedly up to Bai Xiang. After a moment of blank eye contact, he crouched, pulled on gloves, and began examining the demon’s body.

After a bit, he murmured, “This is Lü Ran.”

He stared a little longer, then looked up at Bai Xiang. “A three-tribulation great demon… and you killed her in under ten minutes?”

He told himself he’d reacted quickly enough. After all, the Demon-Immortal Dao hadn’t just hit the northern camp—they’d struck from all four directions. He’d needed to deal with his sector first before he had the slack to come support.

But what was he looking at?

If the assaults all started together, only a bit over ten minutes had passed.

Bai Xiang was just a mere sword-track student. How had she cut down a three-tribulation great demon in under ten minutes?

This was a joke! Even Huang Qian couldn’t pull that off, could he?

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“She got careless.” Bai Xiang felt she should explain. She pointed at the lower half’s corpse that had only mutated after death. “She kept a human form fighting me, couldn’t stop my sword, and died on the spot.”

“Even so…” Cao Chuan blinked hard and drew a long breath. “Even so, that’s extraordinary…”

His thoughts were a bit scrambled.

No—grant that Lü Ran didn’t use her demonic body’s Outward Aspect and fought you in human form—was her title as the ‘Violet-Needle Daoist’ fake?

Corpse-puppet threads, violet-red needles, remote control with demonic qi, violet-red toxic blasts…

All the methods in the dossier: which of them could a mere sword-track student counter?

With that many tools, even in human form, why would Lü Ran let you get close? Why would she stupidly take a blade to the face?

Cao Chuan only regretted not being on scene, unable to witness how Bai Xiang had done it… He was even starting to doubt reality.

“I might be a perfect Nurture the Spirit.” Bai Xiang tried to comfort him.

“That was her initial read on me too.”

“Perfect Nurture the Spirit… perfect Nurture the Spirit?” Cao Chuan’s memories stirred hazily.

There was—there was something like that in the records.

By rights, before Forge the Sword, a sword-track student facing Forge the Sword or Stain-the-Body just gets crushed.

The core principle is that everything in the Nurture the Spirit realm prepares you for Forge the Sword. A sword-track student is like a blank page, waiting for the chosen Demon Pool to stain them black.

You can’t pick that Demon Pool at random.

Say a sword-track student expects to choose Demon Pool a as their Forge-the-Sword foundation. They’ll pre-adapt to its demonic qi through the Demon Pool Visualization Chart.

By the bone-tempering or blood-replacement phase, under their instructor’s guidance, they’ll also condense a Heart-Flow Route Map suited to Demon Pool a.

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But if, before forging, they cross hands with a Forge the Sword swordsman or a Stain-the-Body demon, their body might get invaded and polluted by b, c, d… those other kinds of demonic qi.

All their prep was to welcome Demon Pool a. With that contamination, their cultivation system collapses; they basically lose combat power in an instant.

It’ll also affect their future path—in the worst case, they won’t be able to forge a sword at all.

Hence the saying, ‘Before Forge the Sword, unfit for war’—a sword-track student really is fragile before locking in their path.

Are there exceptions?

Yes.

Perfect Nurture the Spirit means some people, gifted to the extreme, need no teaching and, by sheer insight—even instinct—can cultivate Nurture the Spirit to near-perfection.

Skin, flesh, viscera, bones—where normal people only warm heart flow to sixty or seventy percent, these can reach eighty or ninety, even asymptotically approach a full hundred.

The body thus nurtured is not only supple and swift, immensely strong; external demonic qi also struggles to invade. They can punch above their tier and fight Forge the Sword.

Legend says the ancient sage-emperors were all perfect Nurture the Spirit.

And those prodigies and ‘human immortals’ in local chronicles are very likely the same.

With precedent, Cao Chuan finally accepted reality.

It was still wildly exaggerated, but with the facts before him, he could only choose to believe.

“Huh…?”

Reason returning, he suddenly sensed something off.

At the start of the raid, in the southern camp, Huang Qian got drawn off by another three-tribulation great demon.

The western camp had Liang Wenbo of the Benling Sword Dao; the eastern had himself. They faced two-tribulation demons, and since the demons weren’t lingering for a fight, wrapping things up hadn’t been much trouble.

They had first worried it was a tiger-luring feint, suspecting the Demon-Immortal Dao aimed to steal the rear—most supplies and the medical tents were in the northern camp—but seeing Lü Ran’s body, he knew that was wrong.

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All that maneuvering to leave the north empty for ten minutes was surely to let Lü Ran take revenge.

Bai Xiang had killed her younger brother Yang Xing—that was public record. When the Inspectorate filed it, Cao Chuan had read it and knew: ‘If Lü Ran comes to Chilong, her first target will definitely be Bai Xiang.’ But how did she know Bai Xiang was here?

He’d only brought her over in the first half of the night; now, by late night, the news had already reached the Demon-Immortal Dao?

His brows knit tight as he looked at Bai Xiang.

Bai Xiang happened to look back, nodding to him. “There must be someone in camp tipping them off.”

“It can only be that.” Cao Chuan nodded. “I’ll report this to the chief.”

“You’ll get an answer!”

The ‘chief’ here wasn’t Huang Qian, but Fang Xiaochun.

If Cao Chuan had thought this way before, now his expectations for Bai Xiang’s future updated again—he was certain she could become a pillar of the State Chancery.

A talent like this had been wronged. If you don’t win her over and reassure her, how do you accomplish things? How do you accomplish great things?

Fixing on the ‘Blackwatersnake Max’ she wore—stained with filth yet showing no sign of damage—Cao Chuan felt oddly at ease.

Timely help in the snow is far deeper than gilding the lily.

“I’ll go find Huang Qian first!” He made to leave.

“Wait!”

Bai Xiang stopped him. Under his puzzled gaze, she stood, walked toward the banked red mist behind her, drew the wooden sword, and teased something out of the grass.

It was… a cicada cast and carved in brass?

“Assistant Officer Cao, aren’t you curious why this red mist is still gathered here—why it refuses to disperse?”

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As she spoke, Bai Xiang pressed the sword tip against a wing, pushed it down, then let go to spring up sharply.

“Bzzzz——~~~~~~~”

A hum rippled far and wide. In Cao Chuan’s eyes, the red mist ahead was actually shaken open by that wave of sound, driven back several meters in one breath!

This—!

Cao Chuan’s doubt snapped into certainty. “The Demon Pool’s true form?”

The recon team he led had been trying to crack the ‘phantasmic Demon Pool’. And the root of its derivative red mist… was actually this bronze cicada?

It could draw the red mist to gather and linger nearby, yet a flap could disperse it…

No mistake!

This bronze cicada was the Demon Pool’s true form!

“It fell off the demon,” Bai Xiang said.

“With this, it means the barrier at the entrance can be broken.”

“The Demon-Immortal Dao would never have expected Lü Ran to die, much less that we’d get our hands on this. Which means…”

“Which means if we press the chase now, we’ll catch them flat-footed!” Cao Chuan picked up the line, eyes blazing. “We can head straight into the Demon Kingdom!”

With so much at stake, Cao Chuan hurriedly left the scene.

Before going, he told Bai Xiang to grab a few minutes of rest—there might be an emergency op any minute.

Bai Xiang, meanwhile, watched his back, then tilted her head toward the deep woods, the corner of her mouth quirking up.