Volume 5, Chapter 43 – Suppression (Two-in-One)

“You shouldn’t have come back.”

With a sigh, the scruffy Daoist suddenly appeared out of thin air in the seawater.

Unlike the others, whose bodies all carried more or less some ripples of demonic aura that made it obvious they were using water-avoiding divine abilities, this man looked utterly ordinary, as if he were using no method at all, yet he could still breathe and speak normally on the floor of this deep sea.

Bai Xiang saw at a glance that this was precisely the trait one should have once the flesh had been tempered to a certain level.

Her body had already truly Entered the Dao. It might not have reached the level of what this side called “fleshly sainthood,” but it was not far off. Most of the orifices throughout her body had been activated, allowing her to breathe underwater and draw in and expel Tianyuan through her pores and skin alone.

“If I hadn’t come, how would I get to appreciate all this?”

Bai Xiang did not waste words with him. She directed a black-mud tentacle to lash at him. The void itself was sliced open into a black rift, from which burst wave after wave of shrill ghost-owl cries.

If she had truly meant to kill, she could have done it earlier, when she used the Buddha’s gaze below to pin everyone in place.

The reason she had spared Yao Yu Demon Ancestor and the others was precisely so they would contact this ruler of the Sacred Court.

She wanted a real fight with this man here, not only to see what he was truly worth, but also to torture those things he had once sheltered and kill them before his very eyes.

Faced with the lash of tentacles sent by the demon Buddha, the scruffy Daoist’s face showed a hint of tension.

He flicked his wrist, and a square-holed coin suddenly appeared in his hand. It was not cast from copper, however. The material resembled some kind of void crystal, and the whole coin was a muted gold.

He flung the coin out. With a sharp hiss, it pierced through every black-mud tentacle coiling toward him, then vanished midway through one of those penetrations, as though it had slipped into some unspeakably mysterious place.

“Fang Yang, nineteenth-generation inheritor of the Dao-Void Methods, hereby offers this tribute of ‘World-Congealing.’ I ask the Buddha Ancestor to discern good and evil.”

As he spoke, the Daoist bent respectfully at the waist and bowed toward the black mud before him.

Then something miraculous happened.

After devouring the coin he had offered up, the black mud was completely severed from Bai Xiang’s control. It no longer obeyed the one hundred and eight eyeballs, no longer obeyed Bai Xiang through those eyeballs. Instead, it abruptly regained its own consciousness, writhing in strips and clusters as it slowly turned back toward Bai Xiang.

Oh?

Even Bai Xiang could not help but feel a little surprised at the sight.

She had considered all sorts of ways he might resolve the attack, but reality far exceeded her expectations.

Compared with the practitioners of the Dao-Void Methods, compared with every method those mediocrities had displayed in the past, this move alone truly seemed worthy of the name “divine ability.”

That coin should have been some kind of condensed divine pool.

Most likely, a Heavenly Dao divine pool.

In that moment, Bai Xiang instinctively thought of the various legends she had heard before from Zhu Qingluo and from the Silver Sea Merchant Guild.

For example, the Demon Court had never established harsh laws to restrain the world, yet it placed great importance on “maintaining basic rules.” For instance, they specifically set up “dao-bells” to define and synchronize the shared time of the many heavens and seas, and they always held that power of definition in an iron grip.

With a rush!

Several black-mud tentacles sliced through the seawater and came slashing back. Bai Xiang remained seated without moving a muscle, merely sending the Shenming Sword whistling out to shred all the black mud in midair.

Ah…

At the same time, the demon-Buddha monstrosity beneath her let out a sigh as well, one laden with endless suffering. Many of those watching the battle felt a stabbing pain in their souls just from hearing it, and even Wu Mengzi and Yao Yu Demon Ancestor were no exception.

What kind of method is this…?

The black mud split apart, revealing the scruffy Daoist charging through.

Still in the midst of his charge, he looked at Bai Xiang, who remained seated, and at this demon Buddha, this demon god, which despite already feeling pain still obediently served as her mount. He simply could not suppress the shock in his heart. He could not stop himself from thinking this:

The “All-World Treasure Coin” was a kind of Heavenly Dao divine pool. What it condensed was the weighty history of currency that had circulated and been used across all beings and all worlds. To nearly every type of voidfiend, it could be seen as the root manifestation of the very concept of “money.” And the divine ability derived from it was simple: as long as you “paid,” as long as the target was likewise a creature born of a Void Tribulation and affected by demonic power, then it would certainly “accept the money” and fulfill one wish of the payer.

Just like in folk sayings: money can make even ghosts turn a millstone. The symbolic dwellings of ghosts, gods, immortals, and Buddhas in the mortal world, temples and halls, had long seen offerings and worship. That behavior itself corresponded to “anthropomorphization.” All sapient beings hoped these monsters would “take money,” would “accept tributes,” and so they had grown in that very direction!

The request I made should not have exceeded the bounds of the divine ability…

I didn’t ask It to do anything specific. I only wanted It to see good and evil clearly, to see that It was being controlled…

In theory, once I paid with the All-World Treasure Coin, this Buddha corpse should no longer have been under her control. It should have awakened on its own.

But now…

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His gaze sharpened. In that instant, the Daoist’s will became incomparably firm. In a blink, he broke through all the black-mud defenses and nearly closed to Bai Xiang’s side.

Di Xiang! You truly are the greatest “monster,” and the greatest threat all living beings have ever faced!

Steeling his mind, the Daoist drew another item from his sleeve: a somewhat battered stone bowl.

Whoosh!

He gripped it upside down and smashed the inside of the bowl straight at Bai Xiang’s face.

Bai Xiang’s gaze shifted slightly, and golden light burst from both eyes.

Under her control, the giant body of the demon Buddha below, along with the one hundred and eight golden giant eyes embedded within it, also flared with boundless golden light. Everything the light “saw” was frozen in place in an instant. Even soul and thought ground to a halt.

“Dao-Void borrowed art… Communing with the Nether!”

The Daoist was affected as well. The motion of bringing down the bowl slowed little by little, but at the crucial moment he clenched his teeth with all his might, using some secret method without hesitation. With an angry roar, the speed of the bowl suddenly surged.

Thump!

A muffled impact sounded.

Did it hit?

The Daoist’s heart lurched, because no corresponding sensation came through. The person before him had vanished. The bowl had struck nothing but empty air.

“That sort of thing should only be able to affect things born of a Void Tribulation.”

“How strange. You clearly know that what I cultivate is the new Path of Qi, completely unrelated to a pollutant like demonic power, so why would it even occur to you to use something like that against me?”

Bai Xiang’s voice came from behind him.

The Daoist turned his head little by little and saw Bai Xiang still seated in midair with one leg crossed over the other. The black mud still obeyed her will, writhing and flowing as it “picked” the frozen Wu Mengzi out of the air.

What is she trying to do?

The Daoist’s eyes flew wide open.

Ah!

At the same time, Wu Mengzi jolted awake from the immobilization. He looked around and found nearly his entire body bound and wrapped in black mud. He immediately glared at Bai Xiang ahead of him, though deep in his eyes there was a stirring thread of fear.

“You both looked upon the bleak canopy hanging over the future of sword dao, yet the choices Chu Weiping made and the choices you made are worlds apart.”

“When it came time to advance, you lacked his resolve and will to cut down everything in your path.”

“And when you failed, you lacked the courage to admit it.”

“All you kept thinking was, ‘Oh, this old man has immersed himself in sword dao for a hundred years. If I were to enter another’s Dao lineage so easily, wouldn’t that mean the road I walked all my life was wrong?'”

“The more wrong you are, the more arrogant you become. The more arrogant you become, the more wrong you are.”

“Do you know? What truly led you into this dead end was not your ‘choice’ at all, but the simple fact that you never had the talent for it…”

“Shut up! Shut up!!!”

Wu Mengzi had barely managed to endure the earlier words, but as she went on his face grew redder and redder, until at last he burst out in uncontrollable rage.

“Cruel little wretch!”

“If you want to kill me, then kill me!”

“Why so much damned talk!”

“Of course it’s so you can experience a little more of it.” Bai Xiang propped her cheek on her fist, the gaze she cast over full of mockery.

“Look, if a living being goes through life without breaking the shackles of fate, then in that whole lifetime it can only savor death once.”

“The Dao-Void Methods broke that limit and let you develop ways to ascend. Ordinary injury and death ceased to be truly fatal. That certainly strengthened your ability to survive, but it also made you lose your awe of death.”

“Between life and death lies great terror.”

When Bai Xiang said this, Wu Mengzi felt as though her entire face was magnifying within his field of vision, while those golden pupils instantly swelled until they were as large as cartwheels. A suffocating pressure crashed over him.

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“It is hardship, and it is opportunity.”

“Because you do not care, hardly any of you use it to experience the true meaning of life. That is why you are so weak, weak enough to disappoint me…”

“So I intend to help you.”

Bai Xiang slowly spread her lips into a wanton, flamboyant, cruel smile.

“‘A life has one and only one death.’ How could you not take your time savoring it…”

“You…!”

Wu Mengzi had just started to say something when he noticed something inside the black mud at the edge of his vision writhing madly, as though it would burst out the next instant.

Instinctively, he turned his gaze toward it, and his pupils contracted sharply.

He saw a face emerge from within the black mud.

First a face, then a body.

First one person, then ten… fifty… a hundred…

All of their bodies had already been swallowed and digested by the black mud. The forms they displayed now, and the color of their skin, were no longer those of human bodies at all. They were identical to the black mud itself, as though the mud had sculpted them out of its own substance.

Wu Mengzi recognized those faces. They were all disciples of the Wendao Institute whom he had abandoned.

His body began to tremble.

It was not anger over their losses. It was because, through the fate of these people before his eyes, he saw what Bai Xiang intended to do to him.

She wants… to have this monster eat me…

“You do know I can read souls, don’t you?”

Bai Xiang lifted her chin slightly.

“The fear you show while you enjoy this process, I promise, I will savor it carefully, bit by bit…”

“Di Xiang!!!”

An angry roar came from the side. Bai Xiang abruptly pulled herself away from the void, and the next moment felt a blazing aura sweep past where she had been.

She raised her right hand and found that the sleeve there had also been destroyed. The sumptuous cloth had been burned to ash by golden flames, and even the pale skin at her elbow had been scorched, giving off the stink of charred flesh.

“It can injure me.”

Her snowy lashes trembled slightly. Bai Xiang looked up by instinct and saw the scruffy Daoist holding a strange “weapon,” blood foaming between his clenched teeth, charging at her like a madman and bringing it smashing down.

At first glance, the weapon resembled a sword, but it had no hilt, no guard, no edge, and no spine. It looked more like a long club or a branch, thick at the back and thin at the front.

But its head was not sharp either.

It seemed more like an object carved and polished from stone.

Something like that should have been extremely fragile, impossible in theory to withstand great force. Yet as the scruffy Daoist gripped it, swung it, and brought it down, a blazing hot wind instantly enveloped Bai Xiang, and everything touched by that power had its movements grind to a halt.

Then this is practically an immobilization art like the demon Buddha’s, Bai Xiang thought.

No… not the same.

The demon Buddha’s immobilization was nothing more than hypnosis I worked through its “Gaze Divine Pool.” What was truly immobilized was the minds of living beings, causing them in that instant to fall into self-examination and confusion.

But this immobilization is freezing even most objective conditions.

Life, seawater, Tianyuan.

Even shadows…

As she thought, Bai Xiang lifted her gaze to watch the enemy slowly bringing down that “stone club.”

The scruffy Daoist was obviously affected as well. She herself had been frozen in place, but his speed had also become extremely slow.

And as that slow passage of time dragged on, his body, the flesh of his hands, were being scorched and melted away, turning into a mess of charred, mangled flesh.

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Some trump card he himself has yet to fully master?

The next instant, time suddenly accelerated.

Bai Xiang calmly turned aside and let it pass, watching a sky-filling beam of golden light slash past her toward the left.

Crash!

Endless golden light spread outward. Everything it touched, whether black-mud tentacles or sapient beings and living creatures, was instantly immobilized, burned away, and reduced to ash.

How is this possible…?

Still locked in the follow-through of his downward strike, the scruffy Daoist’s eyes widened to their limit.

Suddenly, a piercing pain shot through his back. It was as if he could see the scene from a third-person perspective: with his posture broken, Di Xiang casually lifted her right leg and smashed it down with irresistible force, the spear-tip of that impact driving straight into his spine.

Boom…!!!

An afterimage streaked through midair, followed by explosion and smoke. With that one kick, the scruffy Daoist was stomped straight into the mud and sent crashing down who knew how many layers.

Crack!

Before Bai Xiang could so much as catch her breath, she heard the crisp sound of bones being reset. The next instant, that figure appeared before her again wrapped in golden light, only for her to seize the wrist holding the club with a smack.

“Impossible…” The Daoist bared his teeth and glared at her.

“‘Sun-Crown Needle’ has witnessed ten thousand years of time… Even if your flesh has entered sainthood, it should not be possible to break free of it in an instant!”

“What kind of monster… are you?”

“So a saint’s methods amount to freely wielding magical treasures condensed from Heavenly Dao divine pools?” Bai Xiang only stared at the stone club, and for the first time there was real interest in her voice. “So that’s how it is… You felt that after reaching this realm, you could no longer see the road ahead, so you chose to concretize the Heavenly Dao divine pools and control them by simpler means.”

“Then why didn’t you project that same way of thinking onto yourself?”

Suddenly, Bai Xiang’s face enlarged in his vision.

It should have been an incomparably beautiful, lovely face, yet from this angle it looked terrifying and sinister.

“Did it never occur to you that your own body is the finest weapon?”

“You are not even equal to the Sacred Weapon Clan.”

“Without even opening the Hidden Spirit Orifice, of course you cannot understand how I broke free!”

Her wrist flexed, crushing the bones in the Daoist’s wrist in one grip. Then, with a violent swing of her arm, she hurled him through the air like a rag doll. He slammed diagonally down into the immortal-estate city, destroying who knew how many buildings along the way and killing who knew how many Suzhen Dao disciples in the process.

And that bowl…

Bai Xiang instinctively looked back toward the shabby bowl, now overturned on the Black Lotus throne.

They were all primal regressions of Heavenly Dao divine pools, concrete embodiments of symbols. If the coin represented “offering and acceptance,” represented “transaction”; and the Sun-Crown Needle represented the time witnessed by the Dao-Bell Divine Pool, able to expend the “witnessed time” stored within it to freeze the time of kindred things across a given range…

Then what that bowl symbolized should be… life? No, more precisely, the instinct of “hunger” possessed by sapient beings?

Suddenly, a frenzied, violent consciousness surged out from the demon Buddha’s body.

The one hundred and eight eyeballs embedded in the demon Buddha’s body were all ejected at that moment. The black-mud flesh wriggled rapidly, growing new eyes in the empty sockets, but they were no longer the golden color Bai Xiang had given them. They were endless abyssal black.

Finally, it worked…

Panting, the Daoist climbed up out of the ground and looked up at the demon Buddha’s rampage.

Before the fight, I had already imagined her strength in the most exaggerated terms. I never thought that once we truly fought, the gap would prove this huge.

The wounds she dealt me are not much in themselves, but even after using my strongest methods, I still can’t do anything to her. The outcome is already obvious.

So from the very beginning, my target was never her.

The Daoist’s brows drew tight.

It was that demon-god Buddha corpse under her control!

He had deliberately created a variable in the battle. On the one hand, it would weaken Bai Xiang’s side; on the other, this turned-traitor “ally” might help him challenge her!

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“Pointless.”

Hm?

That cool voice entered his ears. The Daoist looked up and, in shock, saw Bai Xiang take back the Shenming Sword and slash open her left wrist with its edge.

Blood dripped downward like raindrops, seeping little by little into the black-mud flesh, which swallowed it and absorbed it.

But then the unimaginably terrifying happened again! A moment ago, the demon-Buddha corpse had still been raging savagely, on the verge of breaking free of control. Yet as it devoured and absorbed Bai Xiang’s blood, its resistance was gradually being extinguished?

What kind of method is this now?

Pop, pop, pop!

With a series of nauseating bursts, the more than one hundred newly grown giant eyes of the demon Buddha exploded into bloody slurry, allowing the one hundred and eight golden giant eyes floating in the air to embed themselves once more.

Watching this, the Daoist finally began to tremble uncontrollably.

It was not the kind of trembling that came from thinking Bai Xiang’s methods were too brilliant and beyond his ability to handle. Though it still sprang from fear, the root of this fear lay in his understanding.

Just as Bai Xiang had asked earlier: why, when he knew full well that Bai Xiang cultivated the new Path of Qi, did he still try to restrain her with magical treasures born of Loss of Order?

Because it should have worked.

Order and Loss of Order were two sides of the same coin. What determined whether one could be affected was not the path one chose, because every living being in the world, from the moment of birth, was incapable of purity.

They could not belong one hundred percent to Order, nor one hundred percent to Loss of Order.

There was always a little more on one side, a little less on the other.

Therefore, they could still be affected.

But Bai Xiang… was unaffected.

And not merely unaffected. Her eyes, her soul, her flesh… even the blood condensed by that flesh all seemed to possess some kind of contaminating power by nature.

Even the corpse of a demon god that not even the ancient demon “You” dared parasitize lightly was manipulated by her with such ease, docile in her hands like a pet…

So it really is true.

The Daoist’s gaze sharpened with unprecedented intensity.

Di Xiang!

Her true identity, the terrifying power hidden within her body, very likely belongs neither to “Order” nor to “Loss of Order” at all!

She is an invader from beyond the realm, a “Soul-Eroding Heavenly Demon”!

Crunch!

Aahh…!!!

At the same time, accompanied by a sickening chewing sound and screams, the black-mud flesh that had been frozen began writhing again, gnawing away every inch of Wu Mengzi’s flesh in full view of everyone.

Aaaah…!!!!

Aah…!!!!

His screams echoed ceaselessly through the undersea space.

Face after face, pair after pair of eyes, twisted as they stared numbly at the scene before them.

They were already terrified to the limit, and no longer being forcibly held in place by any method, yet they still could not move. No matter how they tried to stir themselves, their bodies would not budge.

“The first.”

Bai Xiang said it lightly, then turned to the Daoist below.

“I am going to kill them one by one.”

“Come.”

“Use all your strength to stop me.”