Volume 5, Chapter 32 – Contest of the Board (Two-in-One)

Crossing the winding mountain road, Bai Xiang stood at the edge of the plateau cliff and quietly looked down at the city below.

On this journey alone, more than twenty Northern Yu cities had already fallen into her hands. Among them, the “garrison towns” had been almost completely slaughtered clean, but there were also a number of ordinary cities that had not suffered disaster, where only the troops and the ringleaders had been purged.

This was not because Bai Xiang had a woman’s softness and had deliberately spared a portion of the people. Nor was it because she had some fiery golden eyes that let her sweep a glance over a city and instantly tell which people were good enough to live and which deserved to be purged.

It was because the state of Northern Yu itself had gone too far.

It was still that same simple logic: for an aggregate the size of a nation, what did ten years amount to?

In modern society, if a construction project is delayed a little, even ten years may not be enough to deliver it. Yet Northern Yu had managed, in only ten years, to establish more than forty cities on the “new northern frontier,” where huge tracts of Heaven Sea land had been integrated… There was obviously something wrong within that.

On one hand, the Star Sea Federation and Northern Yu were on good terms. Products and technologies the Federation refused to sell to Eastern Xia could be enjoyed by Northern Yu.

For example, the “worm drills” and “bionic tunnel-boring machines” needed for excavation… With such technological equipment in hand, Northern Yu’s construction naturally became vastly more efficient.

On the other hand… Northern Yu had preserved the “four-tier civil code.” In fact, it had made it even harsher than before.

According to the Northern Yu laws Bai Xiang had learned of, only those with aristocratic lineages and connections could become officials, and only those able to cultivate, or at least possessing talent for cultivation, were entitled to even the most basic rights.

Everyone else, whether they were mixed-blood demon-humans or whether they swore up and down that they were pure-blood human, would all be categorized as “laborers,” condemned for generation after generation to perform only the lowest work that held up society.

These “laborers” made up more than ninety percent of Northern Yu’s population. In ordinary times, not only could they not fill their stomachs or keep themselves warm, they were forced to live in the filthiest, darkest shacks. And if fortune turned against them, they would also be beaten and punished by those above them.

For example, that line of “sacrifices” Bai Xiang had first seen in Nankai City—their fate would have been the most miserable of all. If Bai Xiang had not arrived and overturned their destiny, what awaited them would have been to watch their own arms and legs eaten before their eyes, then to be disemboweled, their internal organs dug out for others to feast on.

The reason things had become like this had to do with the composition of Northern Yu’s imperial house.

The Yao Yu line carried demon blood.

And that was the whole point. When even your imperial house consists of demon-human hybrids, what standing or motivation do you have to restrain the nobility?

None at all.

It was precisely because the Yao Yu imperial house served as the greatest example that, after Northern Yu was barely established, it quickly set in place a system with demon-human mixed blood as the core interest class. That was how the entire society, from top to bottom, began to breed horrifying customs such as “sacrifice” and “cannibalism.”

Why do I sacrifice? Why do I eat people? Because the ones above me are not human, of course.

Never mind whether I myself am human or not, whether I like sacrifice or like eating people. Even if I truly were pure-blood human, even if I personally hated drinking human blood, hated eating human flesh, and from the bottom of my heart found such acts utterly revolting, for the sake of my position, for the sake of my interests, even for the sake of my life, how would I dare not do it? How would I dare not eat!?

A “country” like that was too warped.

And it was precisely because of that warped atmosphere and warped system that every place Bai Xiang arrived at required no careful sorting at all.

Those dressed in splendid robes, swords hanging at their waists, proud in bearing and laughing in easy conversation—not a single one of them was undeserving of death.

Those barefooted, their hands and feet callused, their hair matted with grease and grime, their faces dull and numb, so lowly they were practically sunk into the mud—she would not kill even one of them without cause.

At a glance, the two sides did not even look like the same species. Which should be killed and which should not was, in truth, perfectly obvious.

And now… it was the same.

As far as the eye could see, this “New Yujing City” was filled with hundreds upon hundreds of towering high-rises. The tallest were probably sixty or seventy stories, all capped with eaves in imitation of ancient architecture. Between the buildings were temple-like facades, red tiles and blue bricks, great red lanterns… Row after row, line after line, multicolored neon lights flashed in the evening. Paired with the mirage-white mist unique to this plateau, the whole place gave off a feeling of drunken oblivion, hollow and dreamlike enough to spill over straight from the heart.

But Bai Xiang’s brows only drew tighter. Seeing this “civilized wonder” brought her no pleasure at all.

Nankai City. Plateau City.

Those cities had been forged in only ten short years by smelting together the flesh and blood of tens of millions of bottom-tier laborers.

Then what of this “White Jade Capital” before her?

So many high-rises. So many neon lights.

Beneath that mirage-haze, beneath that white mist, how many withered bones must be buried there?

At that thought, Bai Xiang’s brows knitted even more deeply.

It was because she had been moved by Emperor Feng, because she had been moved by the ideals left behind by the Xuan Dynasty, that she had truly resolved to become this Emperor.

Because once one had seen light, one could no longer tolerate darkness.

If no one dared, I would.

If no one would do it, I would.

If I lacked the strength, that would be one thing. But if, with a lift of my hand, I can overturn the mortal world, and with a turn of that same hand make the stars, sun, and moon revolve according to my will—

why should I not act?

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As if in a dream, a squadron of “spirit vessels” quietly flew over from that brightly lit expanse. Each was about the size of a small truck, marked with symbols resembling those of military police. Numbering several hundred in total, they hovered cautiously in midair before her.

“Your Majesty the Xia Emperor, I am Yang Zichuan, commander of the Northern Yu Capital Army.”

An amplified announcement came from within.

“The Imperial House has already heard of your deeds and specially dispatched me to await… your return.”

“Is that so.” Bai Xiang looked up. At that exact moment, the gale swept back the hair from her forehead, reflecting her face and her eyes in full upon the machine screens.

“Then why did he not come himself?

“Does he really not know why I came to Yujing?”

Th-this…

Hearing those words, Yang Zichuan started trembling all over.

He was nothing more than a minor commander who had risen through connections. When his posting had first been assigned, no one had ever imagined that one day Yujing City would need to face such a terrifying enemy…

“Tell him to come see me himself.”

Bai Xiang cast a glance toward the city, raised her hand, and cut out with a streak of sword-light toward those people. With a slash, she carved out a hundred-meter arc of qi-force, immediately setting off a vast chain of explosions in midair.

There would be no issue of the message arriving too late, because she knew the conversation just now had almost certainly been “broadcast live.”

Killing these people outright would be letting them off too easily.

She wanted them to struggle a little longer, experience a little more, and only then head to death carrying the deepest despair and pain.

Whoosh—

Her figure swept forward. She descended directly into Yujing City, picked an arbitrary rooftop platform, and landed.

“Greetings, Immortal Elder!”

The servants on the platform saw that she could walk through the air and knew at once that this newcomer was a master even among cultivators, someone they absolutely could not afford to provoke. One after another, they bowed until their heads nearly touched their chests and knelt, kowtowing to her with heavy thuds.

The wisdom of survival… was it?

For people who did not like kowtowing, whether they kowtowed or not did not really matter.

But for people who did like kowtowing, if they did not kneel, they died.

Bai Xiang did not move. She simply stared at their kowtowing motions and fell into a daze.

Sniffling lightly, she let her gaze settle on one of the men to the left.

There was a bloody smell on him.

He had eaten human flesh.

And not even a full day ago.

She raised her left hand. The man thought he was about to be rewarded. Staring at Bai Xiang’s breathtakingly beautiful face in a daze, his own face filled with wild joy and delight.

Shhk—!

Then his body shattered.

Wrapped in a thread of qi-force and ground apart, he became a cloud of blood mist that scattered away on the high-altitude wind.

Ignoring the screams, Bai Xiang stepped into the air—and in the next instant, she appeared on the street below.

Here, the surroundings changed completely.

If the mirage-haze and neon lights above the clouds were the signature of New Yujing City, filled with the radiance of civilization and an atmosphere of drunken luxury, then the ground below… was a land of despair where no light could be seen.

There was not even electricity here. People could only borrow a faint, negligible bit of illumination from the projections cast by the lights far above. Whenever shafts of multicolored light shone down from a height of a hundred meters and swept over the muddy streets, one could always see large numbers of rat-type and insect-type demon beasts scurrying away in panic, revealing the pale human bones they had been covering.

The smell of smoke, the smell of blood, the reek of filth, the stench of demonic aura.

All kinds of odors mixed together with the ragged figures slumped and huddled behind bits of debris, composing a dark ballad beneath the lampstand.

“You smell good… Are you a woman? A woman would come to a place like this?”

A voice came from nearby, followed by a raised hand reaching toward Bai Xiang.

Slash—

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“Ahhhhh!!!”

A severed arm flew through the air, casting the man’s screaming shadow against the wall.

Bai Xiang had just been about to ask him whether he knew where the local gangs were based, when Taishang Response sent her a warning, causing her to abandon the thought.

“I thought you would keep hiding from me.”

She turned her head little by little and looked into the darkness behind her.

At that exact moment, a beam of light from above swept down and, as it passed over that patch of darkness, illuminated the newcomer.

Face white as jade. Brown Daoist robe.

That slightly slovenly appearance—it was precisely the Sacred Court’s “Sir.”

A great panic spread through the area. Every living thing there, whether awakened and intelligent or still an untamed beast, felt an enormous sense of danger the instant those two faced each other, and nearly crawled and rolled away in terror.

“What you are doing is meaningless.”

Sir looked steadily at Bai Xiang.

He truly could not understand what meaning there was in any of this series of pointless acts from Bai Xiang.

“And you?”

Bai Xiang shot back.

“You saw all this. Why didn’t you act?”

“Compared to them, you are as a man is to ants,” Sir said. “When a man passes by and sees ants fighting, he may, on a whim, occasionally stop them or help them. But a man cannot treat every single ant with equal seriousness.”

“Well said.” Bai Xiang nodded. “That is why I taught them the Path of Qi.”

Again.

Sir frowned.

Before coming to see Bai Xiang, he had already thought about how a discussion between the two of them might unfold, where its contradictions lay, where the points of conflict might emerge.

In the end, it could only be said that he had still held on to a sliver of hope.

After all, she cared about karma.

After all, she had become an Emperor.

He had tried to believe Bai Xiang was someone who “understood reason,” someone who “understood the bigger picture,” and had thought that perhaps the two sides would eventually have a chance to sit down and talk things through.

But the truth left him deeply disappointed.

That answer was too shallow.

With a wave of his hand, the scene of the space before them shifted like a curtain being drawn aside, instantly transforming into an inner chamber in one of the high-rises.

Its furnishings were antique and austere, with incense smoke rising from a bronze censer.

Across a broad floor of blue stone sat only a low go board, with two meditation cushions placed opposite one another.

Sir first sat in the seat of honor, took out a black stone from the bowl, and looked up slightly at Bai Xiang.

“Xia Emperor.

“Please.”

Bai Xiang paused, smiled, glanced at the Shenming Sword in her hand, casually tossed it out the window, and went forward to sit facing him.

Sir held black.

Black played first.

As the two played, Sir continued the topic.

“I have heard of your deeds,” he said. “You hold fast to proper order, and believe Dao-Void Methods are compromise, oppression, even pollution or degeneration.

“Then why would you now break the ‘order’ you once held in your heart?”

Placing a stone, he lifted his head and challenged Bai Xiang.

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“Just like the order of Heaven and Earth: vast, majestic, and structured.

“Even though the Demon Court honors Dao-Void above all, and honors demonization above all, it has never once thought to change this principle.

“From the instant all living things are born, they are assigned the place where they ought to stand.

“And yet you taught them a method to leap beyond it. Is that not, in itself, the practice of ‘Loss of Order’?”

Without lifting her head, Bai Xiang also placed a stone on the board and said, “Dao-Void Methods are also a method of ascent.”

“It is not the same.”

Sir shook his head.

“Your method can break the fate assigned by Heaven. Cultivated to a profound enough level, it can even greatly extend one’s natural lifespan.

“Compared with things like ‘primordial return’ or the ‘Void Tribulation tide,’ this is the truly terrifying ‘tribulation of Loss of Order.'”

Hm?

Bai Xiang looked up and studied him with a strange expression for a long while. It was only after Sir himself had begun to frown slightly that she finally showed the faintest trace of a smile.

“So in your eyes, there are some things that are better unchanged than changed.

“Dao-Void Methods took inspiration from ‘Loss of Order,’ but after securing their place, they turned around and took the lead in upholding ‘proper order’ and ‘ordered sequence.’

“And now I am the one playing the role of Void Tribulation.

“And the Path of Qi is the one playing the role Dao-Void Methods once played.

“Old sir, I am very curious.

“When generation after generation of your heroes and great figures reversed their fates, created Dao-Void Methods, and perfected them, was there anyone back then who also tried to lecture you in just this way?”

The moment she said that, Sir’s face changed at once.

His heart had been thrown into disorder.

Bai Xiang lowered her eyes to the board, blinked at the place where he had just set his stone, and said, “The era is different. The trend is different. The two cannot be compared in the same breath.”

Sir held it in for a long time before he could answer Bai Xiang with only that.

Staring at the board, brows knitted tightly, he placed another black stone in the center. Then he looked up and asked Bai Xiang, “I have one question for the Xia Emperor.

“The Xia Emperor shows pity toward ants. That is the compassion of a bodhisattva.

“But if the ants, even after receiving help, feel no gratitude, and instead seek to overturn the Xia Emperor—

“Xia Emperor, how would you conduct yourself?”

“Kill them,” Bai Xiang replied without even raising her head.

“Those who do not understand gratitude may be killed. Those without loyalty or filial piety may all be killed.”

“Of all the sage-emperors and enlightened rulers from ancient times to the present, not one has had killing intent as heavy as the Xia Emperor’s,” Sir sighed.

“That is Heavenly Principle.”

Holding white, Bai Xiang placed a stone at the edge of the board.

“All I have done is give all living things an equal chance to compete against me.

“The strong live.

“The weak die.

“I do not fear challenge.”

“And if one day the Xia Emperor must face this whole world… if the whole world were to rise in revolt and unite to punish the Xia Emperor,” Sir asked again, “then how would the Xia Emperor conduct herself?”

“I would naturally kill them all.” Bai Xiang lifted her head and met his gaze.

“Whoever blocks my Dao may all be killed.”

Sir frowned and looked deeply at Bai Xiang, but no words came out.

This was more or less the worst possible outcome.

Di Xiang.

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Her ideology, and the threat brought by that ideology, was indeed more terrifying than the voidfiend invasions or the primordial return.

To all living beings, she was the greatest threat of all.

And the greatest “demon” as well.

“The enlightened rulers of the past did not dare kill because the states they won were not rightfully won.”

But while Sir had nothing to say, Bai Xiang instead began speaking again.

“If I have the ability to conquer all under Heaven, to arrange mountains, rivers, plants, trees, sun, moon, and stars according to my own will, then why should I care about the noise of those below?”

Sir frowned. “Even if it means becoming the enemy of all living things?”

“He who accepts a state’s filth becomes lord of its altars of soil and grain. He who bears a state’s misfortune becomes king of all under Heaven.”

Bai Xiang looked up at him.

“If one does not even possess that much spirit, how can one deserve to sit in this position?

“And besides…

“All under Heaven may not even dare stand against me.”

Click!

The white stone fell, jolting Sir awake as he looked down at the board.

Th-this… this was!?

He stared in shock. Only then did he realize that at some unnoticed point, the “momentum” of the white stones had already linked into one continuous whole, surrounding the black stones like mountains and rivers!

Dragon-slaughter!

Like a razor-sharp sword-light howling through, it severed the dragon-veins of the black stones completely!

Whoosh—

With that rushing sound, the Shenming Sword spun back in through the window and landed in Bai Xiang’s grasp with a sharp clack as she caught the hilt.

She raised the sword.

There was blood on the blade.

At last, Bai Xiang smiled.

“The purpose for which I came here has already been fulfilled.”

She left the board behind and slowly rose.

Her tall, slender figure cast down a shadow over the board, and over Sir as well.

“If you have the time, you may come to Xia Capital.

“We can continue this unfinished game.”

You—

Sir looked up, but there was already no one before him.

True enough.

He had not expected it.

He truly had not expected it to end like this.

“Playing go with me, and still able to divide your mind to control a flying sword to kill…

“Two Saints and one Emperor, is it?”

Looking again at the board, Sir narrowed his eyes. Beneath that calm face, dark currents surged.

“As if we were not already facing the crushing pressure of the voidfiends, now this enormous variable has been added for nothing.

“Where do we go from here?

“Where… do we go from here…?”