Volume 5, Chapter 44 – Insight (Two-in-One)

“Di Xiang!!!”

Hearing such arrogant words, the scruffy Daoist, Fang Yang, finally let the face that had remained fairly refined and calm ever since his appearance twist slightly.

“Yes, just like that.” Bai Xiang nodded, quite satisfied to see a towering killing intent surge up from his side.

“Compared to what I’m going to do after I get back, this can only count as a minor disturbance.”

“If you can’t stop me here, then from now on, situations that make you lose your composure may very well happen every moment of every day.”

That killing intent swept over with the trailing end of her voice. Fang Yang gripped the Sun-Crown Needle, split open the black mud blocking his path with a single strike, and dragged behind him a series of bizarre forward afterimages as the tip of the needle stabbed toward Bai Xiang’s chest!

Smack!

At the very last moment, Bai Xiang did not dodge as Fang Yang had expected. On the contrary, under his stunned gaze, she reached out and grabbed the front end of the Sun-Crown Needle.

How did she…

Before Fang Yang’s thoughts could catch up, the divine power carried by the Sun-Crown Needle poured forward by sheer inertia. Unable to fully control this Heavenly Dao divine-pool treasure, he could only follow that force and continue thrusting forward. Just like that, with Bai Xiang’s hand braced against the tip, with the strength she was exerting in front of him, he drove her down from midair in one breath, smashing together with her and the Sun-Crown Needle into the Qingli Immortal Estate.

Boom!

Crash!

The Sun-Crown Needle drove Bai Xiang down through more than ten layers of ruins. At the last moment, its power to freeze time and release time erupted with a roar. A beam of extreme-yang light like a laser became an extended spear tip thrusting forward, accompanied by a fan-shaped force of “release” spreading out ahead.

An incredibly bizarre phenomenon occurred: everything struck by the beam of extreme-yang light, including Bai Xiang at the very center, was frozen in place, as if all time had been locked still out of nowhere. Yet everything covered by the fan-shaped fluctuations had its time abruptly accelerate.

The result was that the surviving sea-rock and stone bricks all began decaying at high speed. Corroded by time, they crumbled into grit. That phenomenon rapidly contracted inward from the fan-shaped spread, and in less than a single breath it had already overlapped with the beam of extreme-yang light at the center.

Could this… kill her?

The tip of the Sun-Crown Needle was still held in Bai Xiang’s hand, but every divine ability it unleashed had stabbed into this empress’s chest through the beam of extreme-yang light. The blazing force bearing the imagery of the “sun,” and the concretized “time” reflected through it, were washing over her flawless body, trying to make those concretizations act upon her.

“It isn’t true time.”

Bai Xiang slowly raised her head.

“If time is like a great river, then this thing has merely stolen a portion of the river water that belongs to it.”

“I suggest you stop wasting time with such petty tricks.”

“Since you possess a magical treasure like this, your true cultivation has probably been sealed away because of it, hasn’t it?”

“You…” Fang Yang gritted his teeth. But at the front of his arm, the fingers gripping the Sun-Crown Needle felt a slight vibration-force. That force instantly spread through his entire body, making not only his whole person but even every strand of his hair seem to have been electrified. In an instant, he felt cut off from everything in the outside world. Even his most basic sense of direction became confused.

Bang!

A black blur kicked him square in the center of the chest, and Fang Yang was sent flying away at even greater speed than when he had crashed down.

He slammed heavily into an upper corner of a lower level of the ruins, his body punching through more than ten walls and ending up embedded there upside down.

Yet before he could wrench himself free, Bai Xiang arrived at his side like a ghost, grabbed his ankle, yanked him out of the rubble, and hurled him away again like a shot put.

Boom!!!

Fang Yang’s head smashed into the ceiling. He pierced through more than ten more layers of ruins, was punched out from the depths underground, and tumbled into the seawater.

He barely managed to steady his momentum and turn his body slightly, his eyes wide as he stared at the huge hole he had gouged out below. Then in the next instant, the whites of his eyes spread further as he sensed a human-shaped shadow cast behind and above him. In its right hand was a longsword, crashing down with an overwhelming force like mountains collapsing and seas overturning.

Di Xiang!!!

He had no time to speak. He could only howl inwardly as he twisted half around and slapped his palms together, catching the edge of the Shenming Sword between them.

But the force transmitted through the blade was simply unbelievable. Even as he doubted whether he could really hold it, that strange vibration-force came again and easily shook his palms apart.

Rеαԁ οn КatReаdіոgCаfе

Clang!

“Sir!!!”

Watching from afar, Zhao Feng could not help clenching his nerves tight. He clearly saw Bai Xiang’s sword cut in from the top of his teacher’s head, slicing down with astonishing smoothness, as though it had split his teacher into two halves!

“Hm?”

Just as Bai Xiang was about to follow up with another strike, she suddenly felt something interfering with her.

It was a little far away, roughly a hundred meters out… a shadow?

With a quick calculation, she sorted out the exact situation. It turned out that when the Sun-Crown Needle had come up with Fang Yang earlier, it had landed above them as well. The blazing radiance it emitted had briefly cast her shadow outward, stretching it all the way into the cracks between the ruined buildings of the Qingli Immortal Estate, briefly connecting with them.

That undoubtedly gave something skilled in parasitic arts an opportunity to exploit. At once, a sticky, disgusting, slippery sensation spread along the shadow and, using the momentum of the shadow’s natural retreat, burrowed straight into Bai Xiang’s body.

Bai Xiang made no move to stop it. Her gaze remained level, only a mocking smile curling at the corner of her mouth.

“Ah…!!!”

“N-no, that’s impossible!!???”

In the next instant, a jet-black monstrous shadow suddenly sprang up from her body. As it tried to flee, it let out a shrill scream. Part of it clung to her flesh like glue, shrinking continuously as it was torn upward, all the while making hissing noises as though some kind of energy were corroding and devouring it.

“So, monster adept in deceitful arts, this is the trick you used to devour a great demon like Shiling? And the Spirit-Vein Demons were spawned by you as well?”

In an extremely short time, the black shadow was burned down by qi force until only something the size of a palm remained. Bai Xiang dragged it out from the center of her chest and pinched it in her left hand like a rat.

“I only wanted to survive!”

That irregular shadow, whose outline was impossible to make out clearly, continued shrieking.

“Great Xia Emperor! Spare me!!”

“What a concise plea for mercy.” Bai Xiang grinned, but her golden pupils were full of chilling menace. “Let me guess… you learned it from the sapient beings who once begged you for mercy, didn’t you?”

“There must have been many who begged you too. And how did you treat them?”

“Did you ever think that they wanted to live as well…? Hm?”

As that final questioning sound fell, accompanied by Yao Yu Demon Ancestor’s shrill scream, Bai Xiang abruptly crushed it in her hand.

“Bitch…! Ah!! Bitch…!!!”

But even so, Yao Yu Demon Ancestor seemed not to have died. Sharp cries rang out from the scattered fragments, followed by a peal of wild laughter.

“Hahahaha! Such grand and righteous words from your mouth! How are you any better than me?”

“I already thought something was strange back when you asked about Bai Nianchan… When she died, you hadn’t even been adopted yet. Even if it was Yanshun, your obsession with her couldn’t possibly run that deep!”

“And then I finally realized it!”

“It’s your younger sister! Bai Zhuqing!”

“I know about that modification plan! Although the modification she accepted wasn’t complete, and at most she was only injected with some biomatter extracted from Bai Nianchan’s brain marrow and spine, her talent had clearly already begun to manifest… That ability of ‘insight’ is the proof!”

Killing intent flickered in Bai Xiang’s eyes.

At this very moment, she had ten thousand ways to annihilate the other party into dregs. Yet somewhere in the dark, a feeling was restraining her, as though if she did that, she would definitely miss something.

So she did not make a move.

She had no lack of time. She wanted to hear Yao Yu Demon Ancestor finish speaking.

“You’re afraid of her ability!”

Reαd оո ΚαtRеаdіոɡСafе

The voices of the fragments gathered together, like a chorus composed of hundreds or thousands of people at once, echoing from every direction around Bai Xiang.

“Because you’re afraid she’ll ‘see through’ the truth, that all along, the frenzy she feels toward you has been deliberately manipulated by you!”

“Yes! Deliberately!”

“The very first experimental report already pointed it out… Awakening that level of obsessive attachment without stimulation from an emotional-model framework would have been impossible without outside manipulation!”

“That wasn’t a personality projection of Bai Nianchan! That sort of fixation had absolutely nothing to do with our experiment!”

“The only outside force she could ever have come into contact with was you!”

“Your soul!”

“Your eyes!”

“Her admiration, desire, fanaticism, faith toward you… all of it only appeared because it was under your control!”

“Just like the faith sapient beings have toward gods and demons… It was because you wanted her to become that way that you ‘carved’ her into that shape!”

“So what right do you have to accuse me?”

“You and I are the same kind of thing…”

“Heeheeheehee… you and I are exactly the same!!!”

Yao Yu Demon Ancestor did not get to finish that last drawn-out note.

She only managed to drag it halfway out. The rising pitch had not yet fully begun, the trembling in the voice had not yet become rich enough, when an invisible “field” enveloped all the fragments and forcibly cut off every trace of sound transmission.

Then the slaughter began.

There was no dazzling sword light, no brilliant move.

There were only fine lines that briefly reflected in the iris, erupting from the inside out of every black-shadow fragment and cutting them apart until they could never re-form, before they were completely incinerated by qi force.

That slaughter acted upon the entire Qingli Immortal Estate at once.

Whether it was the intact disciples standing there stiffly, at a loss for what to do.

The injured who were unconscious, or not unconscious.

Or even the corpses that had already been caught in the previous battle and turned into mud and minced flesh.

The invisible “field” wrapped around all of it, instantly slaughtering more than ninety-nine percent of the Suzhen Dao disciples and Yao clan royals within the undersea ruins. Only Zhao Feng, Dou Feiyun, and the others clustered around Yao Xing remained alive.

Zhao Feng stared blankly at the scene… He saw that from the corpses cut to pieces, nearly every scrap of flesh burst out with black-shadow fragments bearing the same characteristics. They had hidden so deeply, those sticky black threads nearly seeping into the marrow itself, even entwining with the souls that flew out.

If not for Di Xiang’s “butchery” today, if she had not dismembered everything with a technique comparable to a butcher’s boning knife, those hidden black shadows would surely never have been discovered before death.

Then on my body… would there be some too?

Taking two steps back, Zhao Feng raised both hands to look at them, feeling doubt about his own position for the first time in his life.

But Bai Xiang’s pursuit had not yet ended.

Given Yao Yu Demon Ancestor’s cunning, if anyone said she had hidden only an avatar in the Qingli Immortal Estate, Bai Xiang would never believe it.

This avatar had not relied on a divine pool, but on the innate ability of the ancient demon You. She needed to expend more effort to trace the other party.

Standing in midair, Bai Xiang suddenly closed her eyes.

At that moment, her consciousness attached itself to every strand of sword qi and divine qi, crossing boundless distances in an instant while simultaneously observing each parasitic body that had been cut apart and dismembered.

Rеаd οn ΚatRеαⅾіոɡСаfе

She devoted all her mind and attention to watching, contemplating, thinking.

Then she opened her eyes.

Turning and lifting a hand, she slashed a sword toward the void ahead.

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!

Before her blade even truly fell, dense little black-rift holes tore open in the void. Clumps of black-shadow parasites shot out from them like lumps of putty, forcibly drawn together and condensed into a blurry human shape.

“How…?”

Slash!

Before the black shadow understood what had happened, the sword fell, passing from the center of its brow over the bridge of its nose, past its lips, through its chest, all the way out from between its legs.

“You actually… can… control me…?”

A fine line of blood appeared at the center of the black shadow.

This was the first time it had bled since coming into being, yet it still stared at Bai Xiang in utter disbelief.

“I… understand now…”

“Just now… you did it on purpose… let me parasitize you…”

“You really are a monster… heh heh heh… hahahaha…”

By the end, the black shadow was grinning and chuckling low.

“But don’t… get too pleased with yourself…”

“There is more than one of the You Clan… If even we have to hide in this world… then you have no idea how dangerous it truly is…”

“And looking at you… it seems you still haven’t accepted… your true self…”

“You can withstand contamination… but what about the people you care about?”

“Will you let them be contaminated… or will you choose it yourself… and be the one to contaminate them…”

“It makes no difference…”

“Heh heh… heh heh heh…”

“No… no difference at all…”

Laughing out those final dying words, the true body of Yao Yu Demon Ancestor finally collapsed, turning into a puddle of tangible bloody mud that spread layer upon layer through the seawater.

Monster…

Bai Xiang narrowed her eyes at the seawater, but her gaze flickered faintly.

If she had a choice, she did not want to agree with what the other had said.

But there was one thing that truly concerned her very much.

That was Feixiang Heaven.

Yao Yu Demon Ancestor had already served as a test just now. She had indeed proved with her life that for the current Bai Xiang, for Bai Xiang who could truly be said to have begun mastering the power of the Divine Palace Realm and reached the so-called standard of a saint, shifting and transporting space was not a difficult thing.

It only cost some effort, plus a few preconditions.

For Yao Yu Demon Ancestor, in order to satisfy those preconditions, Bai Xiang had even deliberately left an opening to lure her into possession, all so the other party would become tainted by her soul.

But Feixiang Heaven required no such preconditions. It could itself be regarded as part of the very concept of “Bai Xiang”…

Reaⅾ оո KαtRеadіոgСаfe

Yet no matter how she tried, she could not sense such a natal sword weapon at all.

What was hidden inside this…

Almost involuntarily, Bai Xiang’s mind conjured the graceful figure of a woman in a magnificent crimson phoenix robe.

The woman stood with her back to her. As if sensing Bai Xiang’s gaze, she turned around and opened her arms to her like the gentlest, most obedient of wives, a brilliant smile on her face, her beautiful eyes curved into crescents.

It should have been the most reassuring smile in the world, yet at this moment, recalling it in her heart, Bai Xiang instinctively felt a chill.

Boom!!!

Suddenly, an enormous explosion came from behind her!

It was as if some vast force had shoved all the seawater aside, creating a hollow zone underground.

Bai Xiang turned, letting the water brush softly over her body, and saw a twisted figure standing at the center of that underground cavity.

This thing was four meters tall. One arm alone was thicker than Bai Xiang’s entire body stacked several times over. On the surface of its bronze skin, nearly naked, countless worm-like muscles knotted and writhed. The pores and sweat glands all over its body opened and closed in sync with its master’s breathing, and the qi and blood, the vital essence it released gathered above its head into a blood-colored plume of smoke… The sheer aura alone was extraordinary!

“Heh…”

“So in the end… I still turned into this…”

Jets of white vapor sprayed from mouth and nostrils alike. The monster called a saint slowly raised its right hand, lifting the Sun-Crown Needle that had grown thicker and larger together with it, then raised its bald head, smooth as a peeled egg, to look at Bai Xiang.

“My apologies for taking so long to give you an answer.”

“But I hope you can understand. The Dao-Void Methods really are inferior to qi methods when it comes to extending lifespan. If I maintained this state at all times, I would die of old age in less than a hundred years.”

“Understandable.” Bai Xiang nodded and slowly turned half around.

“There’s only one thing I’m curious about.”

“Your sleeves… where did the space inside them go?”

Earlier, when Fang Yang had still looked like a frail Daoist, what had left the deepest impression on Bai Xiang was his sleeves.

She could vaguely sense that his strongest divine ability, the foundation upon which his sainthood stood, was condensed within them.

And there was a good chance that the people she meant to kill in the end were hidden inside as well.

“You’ve been playing games with me this whole time because you wanted a chance to sneak into my sleeves, haven’t you…”

Exhaling another mouthful of white vapor, Fang Yang showed Bai Xiang a smile that, in theory, was meant to express friendliness, but in reality looked incomparably savage.

“The standard for a saint is the ability to shift and open one’s own space.”

“That power is not limited to external things.”

“As you said, the best vessel is actually the self.”

Bai Xiang nodded. “So that means they’re in your stomach.”

“In that case, can I invite myself in for a look?”

“Of course…”

The giant man, towering like an iron pagoda, slowly bent down, lifting his eyes so that his pupils reflected Bai Xiang’s figure.

“How much stronger I’ll become after eating you…”

“I’m actually very curious too.”