Volume 5, Chapter 36 – Detection

At the edge of the Northern Sea, Bai Xiang walked along the beach with a frown, leaving behind broad stretches of bloody mud and pulped flesh.

They were all the corpses of voidfiends.

These lower voidfiends had no brains. They had not awakened intelligence, knew nothing of weighing gain against harm, and the moment they saw a living being approach, they swarmed forward in a frenzy, intending to devour Bai Xiang so completely that not even scraps would remain, just as they did to those unlucky fools who blundered into the Northern Sea.

The result, naturally, was that Bai Xiang killed them instead.

Bai Xiang did not even need to truly draw her sword. She only had to drape a layer of qi force over her body, and that alone was enough to kill demons.

Bang! Bang!

Even as she walked, great masses of black bird-like demon beasts still hurled themselves at her.

These demon birds were pitch-black from head to tail. Several bulging eyeballs hung from the middle of their wings and from their tail feathers. Their beaks gaped open to reveal dense rows of sharp teeth, and they even had tongues that could shoot out and strike like chisels, each tongue-tip lined with a row of backward-facing barbs meant for scraping flesh.

A single demon bird was not especially strong. Someone at the third layer of Refining Qi could probably handle one.

But they liked to gather and rush as one. There had to be tens of thousands of them blotting out the sky, and almost no living creature could withstand that. Probably only someone in the Golden Core Realm could barely contend with them, and even then, not for long.

After all, an ordinary Golden Core and Bai Xiang’s Golden Core were not remotely the same thing.

Back when she was only at the False Core stage, Bai Xiang could already fight her way through the sea of the demon tide several times over with sword in hand. That all depended on her ability to absorb blood-hued Qi-sha from slaughter, absorb shattered soul energy, and feed it back into restoring her own vigor.

Others could not do that.

Even if they could fight, their strength would eventually run dry.

“Gaa! Gaa!”

The demon birds kept gathering, kept slamming into her. Noise and chaos filled every direction. Even after seeing countless companions crash into that layer of qi force and be sliced into bloody pulp without any way to break through, the creatures still charged on in crazed abandon, and the momentum of their assault even seemed to be growing.

“So annoying.”

At last, Bai Xiang was fed up with the noise. She drew the Shenming Sword and shook the blade, releasing waves of vibration from it. Centered on her, they spread rapidly in all directions, turning every demon bird they touched into flesh paste and blood mist.

Splurt! Splurt!

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Crash!

Great sheets of bones and shattered meat exploded outward in every direction. Seen from high above, it would have looked as though a blood-red flower had bloomed from the center, incomparably magnificent and eerily seductive.

That one burst of vibrating sword-force killed roughly thirty to forty thousand of the eyeball demon birds. After that, the flock’s offensive finally began to slow, and Bai Xiang at last got a moment of peace.

But it did not last long.

She had not gone much farther when a hooked claw resembling the limb of some arthropod suddenly burst out of the sand, slicing through the air as it shot at her.

“The sound tide didn’t seep into the sand?”

Bai Xiang arched a brow. Without moving at all, the qi force around her spread out with a rush and struck the ground, rippling across the beach like waves.

Pfft! Pfft! Pfft!

Beneath the incoming hooked claw, more than a dozen pillars of blood immediately burst upward, spraying out together with fragments of shell and tiny scraps of flesh.

Pfft! Pfft! Pfft!

And it did not stop there. As the shockwave continued spreading outward, pillar after pillar of blood erupted from beneath the beach. It looked like a vast field of blood-lava, full of grotesque and uncanny beauty.

“What is going on with this sand…?”

Bai Xiang narrowed her eyes, crouched down, and pinched up a small handful of grains, examining them carefully.

On the surface, it looked like ordinary sand.

But under close inspection, one would discover that every single grain was inscribed with writing.

Bai Xiang did not recognize the script. It looked more like some kind of Dao-pattern.

She tried stabbing the Shenming Sword into the sand and letting a sword art spread through it, only to discover that the propagation distance had indeed been severely restricted. It could only spread to one-tenth of its proper range.

This sand could actually slow the transmission of energy?

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Where had it come from?

Could the local rock really be that special?

Bai Xiang frowned, feeling that something was off.

Woooo—Woooo—

In the blur of the moment, several soul-eroding Void Demons appeared out of nowhere, revealing half-transparent bodies and faces in midair as they circled Bai Xiang and let out eerie shrieks.

These soul-eroding Void Demons still looked weak and immature. Their bodies resembled a fusion of transparent worms and swimming fish, yet human faces grew from their heads, though the exact features were indistinct.

Bai Xiang knew that if these things ate a person and then broke free of the shell, those faces would become much clearer, taking on the features of the people they had devoured.

Gaaa—!

The moment the nearest soul-eroding Void Demon noticed her looking over, it flew at her, about to pass through and merge into her body.

But just then, a terrifying suction force spread out from Bai Xiang’s eyes. Those eerie golden pupils seemed to truly come alive, turning into a pair of golden whirlpools. All the shrieking soul-eroding Void Demons nearby were swept into the vortex and, screaming, sucked into Bai Xiang’s eyes.

Bai Xiang silently felt for any change, but the strength of her soul had not changed at all.

At her level, any soul power or mental force provided by Demon Pools or Void Demons was barely worth mentioning. It was basically impossible for her to improve any further through that.

After dealing with the Void Demons, Bai Xiang continued studying the sand.

At first, she suspected that the sand had been carried here by the tides of Void Tribulation.

Perhaps it had once existed inside some small world of the Illusory Realm, and when fragments of that Illusory Realm fused with the main world, these grains had been brought over as well.

“No.”

She rejected that possibility.

“These grains don’t just slow the transmission of energy. They also absorb demonic aura and gather demonic aura.”

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“These Dao-patterns, taken together, faintly form an array.”

“This is… someone deliberately raising demons here?”

At that thought, Bai Xiang frowned.

What was going on here?

She had only come to clear out the demon tide and carve out some room to survive for the people suffering under Northern Yu’s crushing tyranny. She had not expected to make an unexpected discovery.

Just then, a splashing sound came from ahead.

A patch of pitch-black seawater parted to either side, revealing a sneaky-looking yao-person with fish gills and long whiskers.

Hm?

The yao-person’s first glance landed on a white-haired female cultivator standing on the beach with a long sword in hand, while pieces of flesh and bloody mud lay everywhere around her.

One look was enough to tell that she was not someone to provoke.

The yao-person immediately wanted to shrink back.

Run?

Could he get away?

Bai Xiang narrowed her eyes and reached out in that direction. A strand of qi force immediately wrapped around him, and even that patch of void was seized along with him. The fish-headed man was instantly shifted over, floating in midair as he trembled.

“Immortal, spare my life! Spare my life!”

The fish-headed man’s eyes spun, and he immediately bowed to Bai Xiang in midair.

“I’m just a local resident. I was trapped in the water by those monsters before… Many thanks, Immortal, for saving me! Many thanks, Immortal! Many thanks, Immortal!”

“Not a word of truth in your mouth.”

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That was Bai Xiang’s assessment.

“You have yao blood, but you still retain many human traits. That alone means they wouldn’t treat you as one of their own, and the sea-beasts even less so.”

“And soul-eroding Void Demons do not need to know how to swim.”

“The fact that you were able to hide in there unharmed means you definitely possess some means of avoiding calamity.”

“Immortal?” The fish-headed man’s expression changed at once. “I’m actually—”

“No need.”

Bai Xiang gave him a chilling smile.

“I’ll find out myself.”

“Immortal? Oaaahhhhhh—”

The fish-headed man let out a shrill scream. In an instant, his body was shredded by qi force. His falling remnant soul was caught by the throat in Bai Xiang’s bare hand, then sucked and compressed into a sphere before sinking bit by bit into her palm and vanishing.

The Xuandi Scripture really was useful.

Bai Xiang nodded.

And Emperor Feng, with a method like this, had still ended up betrayed and abandoned by all?

He really just hadn’t killed enough.

Closing her eyes, Bai Xiang silently absorbed the memories provided by the fish-headed man’s remnant soul. A long while later, she suddenly opened them again, two cold gleams flashing in her eyes.

“Using demon-puppets to fake death… there’s such a thing?”

“A bunch of scum.”

“So this is how the Northern Sea’s demon tide came to be.”