Volume 5, Chapter 30 – Departure (Two-in-One)

As the sword-light slowly descended, Hanmeng’s life began to flash before his eyes.

He had come from the “Augu Training Camp” on the Western Continent. From childhood, he had trained in the God-Descent Calisthenics, the Vacuum Meditation Method, and the Illusory-Spirit Breathing Method, all so that he might be selected as a glorious Augu God-Warrior and fight the cultivators of the Yu State for his country and for the Federation.

After the Void Tribulation tide, the E31 training camp where he had been stationed was completely destroyed by storms and tsunamis of Loss of Order. By extraordinary luck, he alone survived, clinging to a plank until he was finally rescued.

In his haze, he felt himself being transferred through several hospitals before entering a place that seemed like some kind of high-end biological research institute. Before he had even regained consciousness, he underwent the fusion experiment with the “Sacred-Forged Weapon: Radiant Emperor.”

He remembered it clearly. Before it fused with him, the Radiant Emperor had looked like a mirror made entirely of silver-gray metal.

It had no handle. Its shape resembled an Eastern Daoist bagua diagram, and on the rim around the mirror’s edge were inscribed eight profound Dao-patterns he could not understand.

He had watched helplessly as the mirror floated up before him. Twisted, pliant metal tendrils extended from its eight corners, forcibly pierced into his body, and then the whole thing slammed violently into his chest.

A pain unlike anything he had ever known surged through his nerves. He convulsed, struggled, and screamed madly. Huge swellings rose all over his body, like blisters formed from liquid metal mixed with flesh. They burst open again and again, then swelled up again and again, collapsing and reforming in an endless cycle.

“Fusion rate has reached 80%.”

“Excellent. This one has the best aptitude yet. It looks like Containment Item AX-07 has finally found its owner. At last we have something we can take back as a result.”

He vaguely heard people talking, but by then he was too exhausted. As the pain ebbed, he sank into a heavy sleep.

When he awoke, he was informed that because of the world-ending catastrophe, a number of countries, including the Sami Federation and the Ruffen Federation, had chosen to form a true alliance. Because of his outstanding aptitude, and because he already had rank and military credentials from before the catastrophe, he was being exceptionally promoted to federal major. They hoped he would not fail the people’s expectations.

After that, he began enjoying all kinds of privileges, and at the same time began learning this newborn society from scratch.

Towering skyscrapers. Dazzling, dreamlike nightscapes.

Metal bodies. Ever-changing appearances.

The “Sacred Weapon Clan.” From the history books, he learned that this had been the original name of the current “new humans.” As he turned the pages and read about the predecessors who had died resisting the catastrophe and the invasions of monsters, he gradually made up his mind to devote his life to the newborn Federation.

Over the years, he had piloted his construct mech, the Radiant Emperor, in campaigns all over the Federation. He had carried out rescue missions, assault missions, and annihilation missions more than once. Step by step, on the strength of dazzling military achievements, he climbed to the heights of power until he was no longer treated merely as a soldier, but had gained the right to make strategic calculations from outside the war-game board.

And once he reached that point, it was inevitable that the giant beast of the East, Eastern Xia, would enter his field of vision.

In Hanmeng’s eyes, the fate of the Eastern Xia people was an unfortunate one.

They were unlike the humans of Northern Yu and Xuanxia, who had begun their first evolution by accepting demonic power. Nor were they like the new humans of the Federation, who had undergone a second evolution on top of that first acceptance of demonic power.

The people of Eastern Xia had not evolved at all. They were simply clutching the memory of a little girl who had been dead for many years, clutching the cultivation system she had opened up, and charging down a road with no future.

Wasn’t that so?

True, according to the cultivation system Eastern Xia taught publicly, Hanmeng had learned that the path known as the Path of Qi and qi methods could be cultivated up to the Origin Realm. Once one broke through to that realm, one would possess strength second only to a federal Executive Governor.

But reaching that point was far too difficult…

Without that founding emperor, the people of Eastern Xia were like a people without a soul. Add to that the dense voidfiend invasions and demon tides of the last ten years, and Eastern Xia’s younger generation had never had a stable enough environment to grow stronger. To this day, not a single person had broken through to that realm.

If not for the fact that the Imperial Court Regent held a sword left behind by Di Xiang, and could use that sword to clash head-on with Saint-grade mechs, and if Eastern Xia had not also developed all kinds of qi talismans and qi arrays to gather strength, and if the threat of the voidfiends had not also existed for the Federation… then in all these years, there was no chance the Federation would have refrained from making a move against that neighbor.

But Hanmeng knew this was only a matter of time, and he had long since prepared himself mentally for war against Eastern Xia.

This trip to Northern Yu was because the Federation intended to contact the Sacred Court’s former lord and see whether Northern Yu could coordinate with them in a pincer attack against Eastern Xia.

That was how he had always viewed these matters, and the people of Eastern Xia.

Until the day he encountered Bai Xiang.

Wasn’t she supposed to be one of those so-called primitives?

Then why…

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Why was the radiance emitted by this sword even more brilliant than that of the Radiant Emperor…?

Within that light, he felt his faith collapsing and shattering.

Powerless, Hanmeng slowly closed his eyes.

Szzzt—

Suddenly, a flash erupted in reality.

A gigantic ball of light more than two thousand meters across appeared in midair. Then a bursting fireball and mushroom cloud rose and spread outward in a great fan. In the span of only a few seconds, the raging currents of air accelerated from the level of a strong breeze to the point that they could puff up people’s cheeks. And then came the true shockwave. In an instant, countless vehicles and buildings were swept up and hurled away. The living beings closest to the outer edge of the shockwave were directly vaporized by the searing heat, everything they had been turning into dark silhouettes splashed across the ground and walls.

[Support is in place. This is Shuer.]

[Banaji says he has already reached you.]

[Hanmeng, can you hear me?]

Who?

Snapping his eyes open, Hanmeng suddenly felt that both his soul and body had been stuffed into a long, narrow tunnel, as if someone were dragging him through it by the ankle.

He forced his eyes open, and his vision abruptly brightened.

At some point, he had returned to the body of the Radiant Emperor, and the place he had just emerged from seemed to be… a long, narrow shadow dragged across the earth?

Was that… Banaji and Shuer?

And the ones bound to those two were… the Shadow Ripper and the Broken-Wing Angel?

Had the reinforcements finally arrived?

Turning his gaze and looking up, the Radiant Emperor saw beside him a mech nearly fifteen meters tall, its entire body wrapped in dark shadows.

“…Where is Shuer?” he asked the other side, scrambling to his feet in alarm. “We can’t let her… let her face Di Xiang alone!”

“She’s not on the ground.”

A deep, resonant male voice came through the channel.

“I think that beating scrambled your brains.”

“Did you forget? The Broken-Wing Angel specializes in ultra-long-range strikes. She’s right above your head right now.”

So… she was above?

Suspended in the air within the protective membrane formed by qi-force, Bai Xiang first swept her gaze over the plateau city, now almost entirely reduced to ruins. Then her gaze turned two kilometers away, toward the Radiant Emperor that had just emerged and the shadow-wreathed mech beside it. Finally, she slowly raised her eyes to the sky. The view within her golden pupils instantly zoomed in to ten thousand meters overhead, where she caught sight of a construct mech hovering at the outer layer of the Qi Sea.

Its body had a streamlined outline. Its legs seemed able to retract and transform, and from its back rose a single metal wing more than twice the size of its own body. At a glance, anyone could tell that its greatest advantage lay in speed.

That earlier strike had come from it.

Bai Xiang raised her left arm and slowly shifted her gaze, watching as her sleeve split apart bit by bit, crumbled little by little, and turned to ash with the movement of her hand.

“Its soul-strength is lacking.”

That was her verdict.

“But its material defense, and the concentrated force of its attacks, truly do approach or even surpass Pang Tiandao as he once was.”

That was not a low evaluation, because Pang Tiandao was different from other Venerable Saints.

Dao-Void Methods took the condensation of a Divine Pool as the dividing line. Cross it, and one became a Venerable. Below it, all were ants. At the very bottom were naturally scattered Venerables like Monk Zhuye. After all, the Divine Pool he condensed had no combat power at all and was good for nothing but keeping himself alive.

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A step above that were scattered Venerables like He Xian and Zhu Canghai back then. The Divine Pools of Venerables at that level could already assist in battle. If someone like Shen Quan happened by chance to comprehend a soul-path technique, they could dominate at that level.

Above that were scattered Venerables who, on top of their initial Divine Pool, had additionally comprehended a weapon Dao.

For example, the sword Dao, blade Dao, or spear Dao.

They still did not truly count as first-rate, but with one extra Divine Pool art, their lethality increased enormously. People like that could be called top scattered Venerables.

Above that, however, one was no longer in the category of scattered Venerables at all. Those were heroes who could occasionally place on the various ranking lists. In any given faction, they could command forces of their own. That was the level of Cui Yuanhao, the Tianfu Mountain Dao Administrator from before.

Above them were the prodigies who could steadily make the rankings, like Meng Qiaosheng of the Silver Sea Merchant Guild.

With Meng Qiaosheng as the dividing line, the top prodigies began to refine and master field-dao.

Field-dao was what people commonly called the “Venerable Lord” realm. In truth, that realm did not actually exist. It was only an honorific title.

Above Venerable Lord, one had to master at least one Heavenly Dao Divine Pool.

It could be a weaker one, but there had to be one.

Only by refining the laws of that Heavenly Dao Divine Pool into the field-dao one had already mastered, transforming it and integrating it into a small illusory-realm world, could one suppress and govern that world, or even create a “Heaven Sea” out of thin air.

One who entered and ruled a Heaven Sea could be invested as a Venerable Saint.

And because Saints did not appear, the servants of the Demon Court instead called such people Great Sages.

But Pang Tiandao’s power was still above that of ordinary Venerable Saints!

The difference between him and an ordinary Venerable Saint was like the difference between Chu Weiping and an ordinary Sword Lord!

These Saint-grade mechs could all stand alongside a powerhouse like Pang Tiandao, someone who had reached the ultimate limit of Venerable Saint. From that alone, one could see how absurdly strong they were!

Even with the fatal flaw of weak souls, they were still unreasonably powerful!

Could simple fusion with tainted sacred weapons really produce this level of strength?

A doubt rose in Bai Xiang’s heart. She had the feeling that the fusion source at the root of these so-called Saint-grade mechs was definitely no ordinary object.

A higher-order sacred weapon could never produce such an effect…

But Guarding-Order treasures or Heavenly Stem Precious Jade would be too much.

That left only one possibility: something like relic fragments that had returned to the main world.

Those prehistoric remnants that had once been scraped away into the void and left drifting there for tens of thousands, even hundreds of millions, of years. They themselves contained extremely violent and concentrated power of Loss of Order.

The power of Loss of Order was the source of demonization. It could be directly transformed into demonic power and demonic aura.

Cultivators who followed the conventional Dao-Void Methods path could not make use of that power, because it was too violent. Their bodies simply could not endure it.

But the Sacred Weapon Clan was different.

So long as the fusion succeeded, they could reconstruct their fleshly bodies with tainted sacred weapons, instantly gaining physical strength far beyond what they once possessed, and use that to forcibly contain that violent demonic power.

So that was it.

This so-called combination of technology and divine abilities truly did have its merits.

Casually summoning the Shenming Sword out of the ruins and taking it in hand, Bai Xiang had just been about to investigate the high sky when she felt her body shudder slightly.

Looking down, she saw that the ruins beneath her feet had, at some point, turned into a spherical mass of pitch-black shadow. Those shadows had completely wrapped around and absorbed even her own shadow, rapidly forming a five-hundred-meter-wide shadow sigil ringed on the outside, using the binding force it generated to pin Bai Xiang in place by force.

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“I see.”

Bai Xiang moved her body slightly and stared straight ahead.

“So there are still more flashy tricks.”

“In that case, you might as well use them all at once.”

No sooner had the words left her mouth than she saw, several kilometers away, a long beam of light with a glowing blue exterior and a bright white core shoot into the sky, as if it were targeting something.

That single-winged mech?

Their own side firing on their own side?

With a raised brow, she watched. Above the Qi Sea, a streak of extreme speed slashed across the sky. From the very beginning, it was already moving at more than ten times the speed of sound, and it was still accelerating.

Then suddenly, the streak slammed into the light-beam. Its already terrifying speed doubled again, and in that instant a metallic feather component separated from the single wing and shot straight toward the ground!

Szzzt—

A sphere of light.

An explosion.

A mushroom cloud.

Compared to the first beyond-visual-range strike, this one spread wider and affected an even greater area. When it finally subsided, ninety percent of the plateau city had been erased from the map, replaced by a gigantic super-crater so vast that one could almost not see its far edge at a glance.

“Is she dead?”

Above the Qi Sea, the single-winged mech came to a hover. Metal all over its body flowed downward like red-hot liquid. Then, in the next moment, it writhed inward and contracted, becoming a skintight bright silver combat suit wrapped around a cold-faced young woman.

“The murderer who killed my sister…”

“Was she really dealt with by me just like that…?”

The young woman’s eyes remained fixed on the ground. Spectrum-data kept flashing within the reflections in her pupils, and deep within them lay an icy hatred.

And after that hatred came boundless exhilaration. Bit by bit, her expression grew more excited, her beautiful face twisting like that of a madwoman as she covered it with both hands and began to sob.

“Dead…”

“Dead…”

“Heh heh heh… she died just like that…”

“That was far too easy on you…”

“Murderer…”

“Murderer…”

“I said I would slice you into pieces and eat you one strip at a time…”

“Elend…”

“Sister Elend…”

“I’m sorry…”

“Shuer couldn’t keep her promise…”

[Shuer, move, now!]

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Suddenly, Hanmeng’s shout came through the channel, so full of panic and urgency that it almost seemed ready to burst out of the instrument itself.

Hm?

The young woman froze in confusion, stopping her sobs. She tried to lower her hands and raise her head slightly.

Then her pupils widened.

A person.

The shadow of a single person had fallen over her from close range.

She lifted her eyes further. Her gaze climbed from the black robe-dress patterned with gold, past the waist, past the chest, past the neck and that exquisitely shaped chin. Before she could even see the person’s face clearly, a hand reached out and pressed down on her head, completely blotting out her vision.

Wha…

Her mind went blank.

Completely blank.

Before the young woman could react, that hand yanked her downward.

Wild, blindingly fast, unstoppable, plunging toward the earth. Almost in the span of an instant, she was smashed hard into the center of the great pit in the ruins of the plateau city, setting off yet another ferociously violent shock of light!

“Di Xiang, enough!”

“Stop!!!”

Within the endless white radiance, a black rift tore open at speed. From it extended the sleeve of an ancient robe, sweeping down over Bai Xiang’s head.

The sleeve moved in an extraordinarily strange way. When it first emerged, it was of normal size, but in the blink of an eye it swelled to a thousand meters, then ten thousand, almost entirely enveloping Bai Xiang within it. Through the deep shadows inside, one could even make out vague realms. It was as though a world had formed within the sleeve itself!

Whoosh—

A terrifying suction force came from the sleeve. Under its influence, Bai Xiang’s body began to show faint signs of distortion, as though she were about to be dragged into a rotating fold of space-time.

“Hmph!”

At the critical moment, a vertical blood-red mark appeared on Bai Xiang’s forehead. Two brilliant beams flared in her golden eyes. Her whole body shuddered and then shook once more, and cracks instantly spread through the void-shadows surrounding the sleeve, shattering like a mirror.

Once it broke apart, the outer world came back into view.

A young Daoist, whose appearance suggested he was about twenty, stood not far from Bai Xiang in a green Daoist robe, staring at her with great gravity.

“Northern Yu can grant your wish.

“You may do whatever you like to your enemies upon this land.

“In exchange, spare these children for the time being, and do not start a war on this scale for now.

“What… do you think?”

The young Daoist stared at Bai Xiang intently, and there was a certain tension in the way he held himself.

Bai Xiang looked at him steadily for a while. Then her gaze fell to his hand, where she saw a string of green jade prayer beads.

She studied those beads for a long time before finally giving a slow nod.

“Agreed.”

Then, without any further reaction at all, her figure blurred and vanished directly.