Volume 5, Chapter 37 – Tribulation Lord (Two-in-One)

In Bai Xiang’s original view, killing off ninety percent of the Yao Yu line, and even the upper nobility along with them, should have been more than enough.

The nobles who remained might have escaped her tribulation, but the refugees, now freed from restraint, would not let them off. The fate awaiting them would likely be even more miserable than having their heads blown apart by a single sword strike from her, and they truly would deserve it.

As for Yao Yu’s direct line, under Bai Xiang’s deliberate control, the Shenming Sword had indeed used the method of “lingchi flesh-flaying.” Added to that, those nobles had watched her wander back and forth through Yujing City over their live broadcasts, terrified and unable to guess what she intended to do. Before dying, they had certainly suffered immense torment and psychological torture. As vengeance for Grandfather and for her aunt, that was already enough.

But this fish-headed yao-person… his soul contained memories concerning the “Northern Sea ruins” and the “demon-puppet art”!

The former proved that the Northern Sea demon tide was not a naturally occurring phenomenon at all, but something the Yao Yu regime had deliberately allowed to happen. On the one hand, it was meant to cover up an ancient ruin lying beneath the nearby sea. On the other, it was meant to use the demon tide to oppress Northern Yu’s people and force them to accept brutal rule.

The reasoning was obvious. Compared with a demon tide that spoke no human language, possessed no reason, and knew only how to eat and kill, Yao Yu’s tyranny at least still left some hope of survival. It was precisely because the refugees felt that looming threat that they had remained so submissive.

And the latter was even more shocking.

The so-called “demon-puppet art” referred to the use of some mysterious method to prepare a special material. Using that as a foundation, one could completely copy a person’s body and memories and remold them into a brand-new individual.

Because it was filled with genuine memories, unless the truth was deliberately pointed out, that individual would not even know it was a “fake.” It was perfectly suited for serving as a stand-in for a staged death, and could even confuse the soul-reading methods recorded in the Xuandi Scripture.

“There is a shelter beneath the sea, specially built by members of the Yao family to avoid calamity. At first, it existed only to build fortifications and protect the ruins, but once the facilities gradually improved, they simply turned it into a bolt-hole for escape. This person came up from there.”

“He was a level-two researcher in the Yao family’s research organization, the Wendao Institute. The reason he was able to avoid the demonic disaster was because he was carrying a treasure called the Hunyuan Buddhist Bead.”

Turning the thought over in her mind, Bai Xiang flipped her palm, revealing a brownish-red wooden bead with a hole running through its center.

This Buddhist bead had originally been excavated from the seabed ruins. There were a total of one hundred and eight of them. A single bead alone was enough to muddle one’s spiritual essence and interfere with prying.

“He came up to collect the bodily tissues shed by demon beasts as materials for the next phase of the experiment…”

Clenching the Buddhist bead in her hand, Bai Xiang looked coldly over the sea, a bizarre feeling suddenly rising in her heart.

If she had truly been cold and heartless, if this trip had been solely for revenge, killing people and then leaving while abandoning Northern Yu’s many refugees to their fate, then she would absolutely have missed the Northern Sea… and missed these hidden secrets.

And it was precisely because she had always carried through on her “self,” because she was unwilling to abandon those refugees, that she had, “by sheer chance,” received this reward.

“No. It wasn’t chance.”

Bai Xiang’s delicate brows suddenly drew tight.

“As Buddhist doctrine says: to kill in order to protect life, to sever karma rather than sever men. It means that so long as one holds compassion in one’s heart, then killing to cut off karmic flame can still be understood and forgiven.”

“I came to the Northern Sea to save the common people from disaster, and the common people, in the unseen, have also given me a gift in return, helping me see the truth, expose Yao Yu’s cunning scheme, and once again bring these people me, this ‘present-world calamity.’ That is exactly what those words mean—cause and effect revolve in cycles, and retribution never fails.”

“With deeds like this, and an outcome like this, how is this not the Great Dao?”

Her brows relaxed, her thoughts became clear. Bai Xiang’s lips curved faintly upward, and her heart felt incomparably open and at ease.

One had to know that in the past two days, she had ravaged Northern Yu. Even if the number killed by her hand was not the ten million Yao Yu had claimed, it was absolutely in the millions.

So many lives—even if they were evil lives—still carried a bloody balefulness and resentment-karma that no ordinary person could bear.

Even if Xiang Xian had been brought here and forced to bear it, she probably would not have slept at all for the first few months. She would have needed a long period of time to steady her Dao-heart, repeating to herself, “I was not wrong,” before she could recover.

As for Bai Xiang, although she possessed soul-abilities, and any erosion directed at her soul would fail beneath the suppression of her subjective will, her heart would still experience slight ripples all the same.

That was perfectly normal, because the path she walked was not the path of severing emotion. So long as she retained emotions, she would inevitably be affected by them.

Even if the effect was extremely slight, it was still an effect.

And once too much accumulated, it would inevitably be detrimental to her cultivation.

But now things were different.

After Bai Xiang came to a profound understanding of the mysteries of karmic retribution, those emotions could no longer affect her at all.

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Using her soul-abilities, she condensed a “heart-sword.” With that heart-sword, she severed every last trace of those influences, and her Dao-heart at once returned to clarity, tough and seamless, without the slightest crack.

“Emperor Feng’s beliefs are Emperor Feng’s, not mine.”

“Now I have carried out part of his dying wish, and as for the road ahead… as for my own ‘path,’ I think I’ve finally begun to find it.”

“Heh—!”

With a rueful laugh, Bai Xiang dropped into a half-crouch and suddenly exerted force. Her body streaked into the sky in a bizarre afterimage, while the beach, under the backlash of that force, burst and split outward in every direction… leaving behind a huge ripple where she had stood.

High in the air, Bai Xiang looked down over the black sea.

In the next instant, she plunged headfirst into the icy water, and her vision immediately dimmed.

Taishang Response took effect. The Jade Spirit was frantically warning her.

From every direction, an endless sea-tide of monsters converged. Among them were innumerable vicious fish demons and flood-dragon demons, and still more beyond count… great void demons drifting through the gaps between seawater and void, lurking all around and staring at Bai Xiang with greedy longing, waiting for an opportunity to strike.

Faced with all of this, Bai Xiang merely stood quietly within the seawater. Cold light flowed through her golden pupils, while the qi force around her condensed above her head into a semi-transparent imperial crown with hanging bead curtains, lending her an added air of imperial majesty.

“The Taishang. Hereby. Gives. Order—”

“Before me, slay gods.”

As the low, melodious words passed her lips, an invisible force instantly took control of the heavenly-origin energy present throughout a broad expanse of the surrounding sea, and through that connection transmitted a certain will outward, forcibly branding itself onto every nearby “soul.”

The serrated sea-demon closest to Bai Xiang stiffened for a moment, and the ferocious light in its giant eyes abruptly went out.

And that influence kept spreading.

The fish demons stopped swimming one after another. The flood dragons and sea serpents likewise ceased stirring the undersea currents.

Almost at the same instant, the spirits within their core orifices were annihilated. Their bodily functions still appeared intact, but the souls inside them had already been extinguished, leaving behind nothing but empty shells of flesh.

Bang, bang—

Screee!!!

The soul-eroding Void Demons burst one after another around her like half-transparent fireworks, leaving behind only scattered screams.

And farther away, those wandering great void demons were likewise affected by the order.

Every Void Demon that dared open a fissure and peer at Bai Xiang directly from the far side of the void had its soul cut down with a single sentence, no exceptions. At once, heaven knew how many cracks snapped shut in the distance, mixed with furious roars and curses—only for all sound to vanish once the order swept over them.

“Who goes there?”

A disturbance of this scale naturally alarmed the wardens stationed in this stretch of sea.

A gray-robed young man rode in from the deep sea on sword-light. The moment he landed nearby and saw the scene clearly, he froze in shock.

This woman forcing her way into the sea—white hair, golden eyes, and a black dragon robe?

The sleeve on her left arm was torn off too… This was Di Xiang?

She hadn’t left?

How had she found this place?

The gray-robed young man’s pupils contracted. On the one hand, he was terrified by Bai Xiang’s movements. On the other, he was horrified by the method she had used.

So many voidfiends… whether the corporeal Void Demons, the soul-eroding Void Demons, or even those intangible Demon Pools that specialized in bewildering and disrupting souls and minds—there had to be at least several hundred thousand of them piled up from this stretch of sea all the way to the shore.

Even if they had not yet begun to multiply again, even if they had not recovered to the full numbers of their peak state, that was still an absolutely terrifying force. Even if all the Federation’s governors came out in force to wipe them out, it would still take real effort.

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And yet, from the look of it, they all seemed to be dead?

There was no demonic blood or shattered flesh anywhere nearby… how exactly had she done it?

The young man’s body went rigid. Seeing Bai Xiang turn around, those dark-gold eyes sweeping over him in the murky light, he hurriedly lowered his head, not daring to meet her gaze.

“Th-this… it seems Your Majesty the Xia Emperor truly has the people of Yujing at heart. I am Wu Yuan. On behalf of the people of Yujing and the people of the northern lands, I offer thanks to Your Majesty the Xia Emperor.”

Bowing deeply at the waist, the young man saluted Bai Xiang.

In the next instant, he felt the world spin. By the time he regained his senses, he discovered that an immense force had already seized and gripped him, shifting him directly in front of Bai Xiang!

What kind of method was this?

The seawater… what was controlling the seawater?

Qi?

The invisible qi refined through the Path of Qi… it had wrapped around the seawater, even permeated it?

To think it could reach this level…

Damn it… I’m clearly at Sword Lord cultivation, so how can I not even break free of this restraint?

“Wu Yuan?”

“I saw your name when I was reading the roster. You are Zhao Feng’s junior brother, and Wu Mengzi’s last disciple.”

Ignoring Wu Yuan’s constant struggles within the water’s grasp, Bai Xiang questioned him as she pleased.

“I’ll ask you this.”

“I couldn’t find the Suzhen Dao lineage in Yujing. Where is Wu Mengzi hiding?”

“Wh-what… is Your Majesty the Xia Emperor… talking about…” Wu Yuan tried to muddle through. “My master’s whereabouts… are vague and uncertain… How would I, as a disciple… know!”

“I see.” Bai Xiang lowered her eyelids slightly. “Understood.”

Understood what?

Wu Yuan froze, and in the next instant a wave of agony spread through his whole body. He hastily looked down and discovered that the seawater wrapped around him had been pinched into countless water blades, spinning around him at terrifying speed and slicing his flesh away bit by bit!

“Di Xiang! What exactly are you trying to do?!”

Wu Yuan finally broke, fear beginning to creep into his voice.

“You are a sovereign, a great power who can contend with Sages! And yet you strike at a junior like me!”

“Where is your sense of propriety?”

“You have no shame!”

Bai Xiang said nothing. She merely increased the cutting speed a little.

Very quickly, the water blades stripped away all the flesh below Wu Yuan’s knees, leaving behind only a few connected bones.

“I’ll talk!”

Wu Yuan could no longer endure the agony of being flayed alive. “If you want to know where my master is, I’ll tell you!”

“Stop!”

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“Stop right now!”

“Too late.” Bai Xiang tilted her chin up slightly. “I only give one chance.”

“What did you say?”

Wu Yuan was startled, a massive question mark instantly rising in his mind.

Oh—it was the Xuandi Scripture!

Master had said before that Di Xiang had very likely mastered the Xuandi Scripture, and that within it there was a method for searching souls and reading spirits. So if she wanted to know something, there was no need for torture at all—she only had to kill someone and read their soul to get it!

“Ahhh!!!”

“Bai Zhixing! May you die a horrible death!!!”

As immense pain flooded through him, Wu Yuan instantly understood: Bai Xiang’s earlier questioning had never been for the sake of getting an answer. She had simply been toying with him!

Bai Xiang could not be bothered to waste words on him. Qi force rolled up the water blades and accelerated them, and in the blink of an eye Wu Yuan was stripped down to a skeleton, allowed to savor the pain of this extreme punishment to the fullest before death.

“Ahhh—!!!”

A wail that only souls could hear echoed through the void. With that movement, Wu Yuan’s soul seeped out from his skull. He had only just released the first scream by sheer inertia when Bai Xiang snatched him up in one hand, and all further sound stopped abruptly.

“Bai Zhixing…! Xia Emperor…!”

Even so, immense terror drove Wu Yuan to force the words out in a muffled voice. “Let my soul go… I swear I’ll leave the main world and never, ever become your enemy…”

“Do you have the right to make that offer?”

Bai Xiang looked at the soul in revulsion.

“The histories praise the Yao Yu line to the heavens, always talking about how they received Heaven’s mandate.”

“For sixteen hundred years, no matter how many upheavals the world suffered, whoever finally ascended the throne had to follow Yu rites, marry a noble daughter, change their surname to Yao, and renew the Yao family’s rule for another hundred years.”

“And at the time, you people made the purpose of all this sound so grand—something about ‘severing Heaven and Earth,’ about preventing yao-people from throwing the world into chaos.”

“But now that I look again, the common people and refugees under Northern Yu’s rule lived lives worse than the pigs and dogs of the Federation.”

“The Federation is controlled by the remnants of Blood Soul Heaven, genuine yao-people, even extremist heretics among yao-people.”

“And yet you were worse even than such heretics. For all these centuries, the Suzhen Dao has been helping and supporting precisely that kind of regime… It even compiled something called the Suzhen Immortal Martial, planning to use Saint-Transition Pills and Sacred Heart Pills to control the experts among the common people, turning them into puppets to serve Yao Yu…”

By the time she reached this point, Bai Xiang’s voice had become terrifyingly cold. Anyone could hear the violent killing intent contained within it.

“I’ve changed my mind.”

She spoke to the soul, now sunk completely into despair and panic.

“I’m not going to simply kill you.”

“As it happens, the Shenming Sword still isn’t spiritual enough. It needs a few more high-quality soul-medicines.”

“I’m going to place you inside the sword and refine you slowly.”

“You can spend a little longer tasting the pain the people of Yao Yu have endured over these past sixteen hundred years!”

“N-no!” Wu Yuan’s remnant soul screamed in horror. “You can’t do this! You can’t do this!”

Smack!

Bai Xiang crushed his shriek, then flicked her hand and sent him into the Shenming Sword, instructing Little Huang to “go easy on the eating,” while she herself dove toward the seabed.

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Passing through great swathes of floating corpses, what lay below was the silent deep sea.

Bai Xiang descended rapidly. Before long, she saw an enormous shadow appear on the seafloor, like a gigantic rock mass jutting up from the seabed.

This was the place.

Through the fish-headed man’s memories, she knew this was the external disguise of the Northern Sea ruins.

The giant rock was roughly a thousand meters high, its base rooted in a fissure of the sea abyss, its surface riddled with irregular holes.

Bai Xiang aimed for one of those holes and flew inside. Then, all at once, her figure halted, a trace of savagery rising on her face.

It was the Shenming Sword in her hand—Little Huang inside it was eagerly transmitting information to her, and one of those pieces of information was directly connected to the unjust case of Bai Nianchan!

“The Yao Yu demon ancestor… the ancient demon ‘You’?”

“A mysterious great demon capable of devouring the ancient demon ‘Shiling’… one that excelled at parasitism and concealment, and could give rise to ‘Spirit-Vein Demons’ from within souls?”

“Spirit-Vein Demons were actually brought forth by the Yao Yu demon ancestor?”

At once, many things from the past that had never made sense before were finally explained.

For instance, why Spirit-Vein Demons had never dared invade Yujing.

Or why Yao Yu had maintained such eerie silence during the Void Tribulation—clearly because they had already learned the general trend of events through Spirit-Vein Demons, through hidden pieces planted inside powers of the Illusory Realm, and had long since resolved to abandon the nation in order to preserve themselves.

This intelligence was critically important.

Because Bai Xiang had originally thought that the mastermind behind her aunt Bai Nianchan’s wrongful death case—the principal culprit—should have been those few Spirit-Vein Demons that had cooperated with Southern King Yao Qingyuan, as well as the Blood Soul Heaven tribe behind those Spirit-Vein Demons.

And the Yao Yu imperial family could only be counted as having fanned the flames, bearing merely “secondary responsibility.”

But now everything had to be overturned and rebuilt from the ground up.

“The Yao Yu demon ancestor.”

Bai Xiang stared into the deep tunnel.

Was this thing the true mastermind?

At that moment, she closed her eyes, and many scenes from the past surfaced in her mind.

Grandfather Bai Shengju’s bleakness and grief.

Uncle Bai Guanshan’s prejudice toward her at the beginning.

Second Uncle Bai Lianzhou’s taciturn silence.

And even her younger sister… Bai Zhuqing being implicated by it all.

Everything converged together, piecing itself into the corpse of a young girl.

The corpse had only an upper body, and it hung on a wall together with the heads of many demon beasts, like prey displayed by a hunter boasting of a successful kill.

All her emotions stirred into waves.

Then gradually sank back into silence.

When she opened her eyes again, two dark-gold lights flared within the abyss.

Without the slightest further hesitation, Bai Xiang flashed forward and shot straight into the deep tunnel.