Volume 5, Chapter 56 – In the Shadows

After warning Bai Chenyu, Bai Zhuqing let him leave with meek assent, then privately summoned a hidden sword attendant and ordered her to keep an eye on this cousin of hers, to stop him from doing anything rash.

The sword attendant was a tall woman dressed head to toe in a pitch-black, light-swallowing skintight battlesuit. Her entire face was hidden behind a mask. After hearing the order, she hesitated.

Bai Chenyu’s status was too sensitive. He was an offshoot branch of the Bai family’s main line. As for how far this “surveillance” of him could go, she needed further confirmation from her mistress.

“Master,” the woman said softly, “please grant me a jade token.”

“Hm?” Bai Zhuqing had originally been about to head upstairs. Hearing that, she paused slightly and narrowed her eyes in this direction.

Pressure slowly gathered in the silence. The female sword attendant did not dare raise her head. She only pressed both arms tightly to the floor, not even daring to breathe too hard.

“There was a famous battle when the previous dynasty was founded,” Bai Zhuqing said suddenly.

“At the time, Yu Sacred Ancestor ‘Gu’ was attacking six tribes at once. Among them was the strongest tribe of all, called ‘Yang.’ The armies of Yu had attacked the Yang Tribe three times and failed every time. This time, ‘Gu’ chose to hand the task to the great general Wang Ping.”

“On the spot, Wang Ping put forward a condition to the emperor. He demanded that nearly ninety percent of the entire nation’s troops be assembled and placed under his command. If that could not be done, then he would not accept the appointment.”

“‘Gu’ himself was resisting a coalition army on other battlefields. The moment he heard Wang Ping’s demand, he refused him and instead appointed another great general, Chen Qian, to attack Yang, giving him nearly forty percent of the nation’s military strength.”

“Not long afterward, word came back that Chen Qian had suffered a crushing defeat because he hesitated in deploying his troops. While retreating, he even fell into an ambush by the Yang Tribe. His entire army was wiped out, and even he himself was beheaded.”

“When ‘Gu’ learned of it, he sent his own strategist—Dao Ancestor Song Yutian of the Suzhen Dao—to personally invite Wang Ping over, and promised to place every remaining soldier he could still mobilize under Wang Ping’s command.”

“Wang Ping accepted the post and utterly crushed the Yang Tribe. Later generations, when judging this chapter of history, often said that what Wang Ping truly wanted was not sufficient troops at all, but to use this as a way to test ‘Gu’s’ attitude…”

Gulp!

The female sword attendant swallowed nervously.

On closer look, her body was even trembling.

“Of course, I’m not the emperor. Some comparisons shouldn’t be applied to me.” Bai Zhuqing’s tone rose lightly, almost bright and lively.

“But I dislike your line of thinking very much.” She looked at the sword attendant, and her voice suddenly turned icy.

“What, are you also asking me for a show of attitude? So that after you kill Bai Chenyu… you won’t be left without protection?”

“I wouldn’t dare!”

The sword attendant denied it at once.

“I understand your meaning now, Master… I’ll go at once!”

“Wait.”

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She had just started to rise when Bai Zhuqing stopped her with a single sharp word.

Listening to the tap, tap, tap of footsteps, the sword attendant saw ten white-jade toes in sandals come to a stop before her. The corresponding voice came down from overhead.

“For now, simple ‘surveillance’ will be enough.”

“The Tao family’s fate is already sealed. I don’t need to check whether there’s anything wrong with Tao Sicheng. I called him here to warn him, so that if something happens, he won’t make some life-or-death scene.”

“If he lowers his banners and quiets down, you needn’t concern yourself with him.”

“But if he oversteps—or even betrays us—”

Clink!

With a light sound, a jade token dropped onto the floor, landing right before the female sword attendant’s eyes.

Th-This… this is!

The female sword attendant looked up in shock and alarm.

Flap-flap-flap—

A burst of wings beating.

Night. At the Tao family estate, Tao Xianghao sent off a disguised carrier pigeon, then hurried to shut all the doors and windows.

The voidfiend assault that should have come after the Start of Spring had not arrived, and that only increased his pressure.

To make matters worse, the worst possible news had come from outside. Tao Xianghao’s brows were locked tight as he began thinking about how to save himself.

The Tao family had operated in Eastern Province officialdom for many years and possessed its own intelligence network.

According to the reports, the emperor had transmitted an edict that afternoon and had already begun ordering every major war zone and every base city to arrest anyone who spoke publicly on behalf of the Tao family.

In Maozhou, Qizhou, Luezhou, and Pingzhou, many officials had already been seized. The move caught everyone completely off guard, and many more immediately tried to pull strings and submit remonstrances, hoping to plead on behalf of those who had already been arrested.

But it was useless. Very quickly, within a single shichen, even these “second-wave petitioners” were also taken away.

Regardless of birth.

Regardless of status.

The local Demon-Suppression Directorates intervened directly, with the commandants and military commissioners entering the fray alongside them. Even among those who had spoken up were wealthy merchants from collateral lines of the Bai family, disciples of Liu Haoran, “Master Cijing,” and people with direct or indirect ties to the Shenming Sword Dao—and all of them were arrested all the same.

Tao Xianghao was no fool. He quickly realized that the emperor clearly intended to use a strategy of “isolating without killing” against the Tao family—a move that could also be translated as “killing with a borrowed knife.”

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Cut off every voice that dared influence the edict, suppress everything with iron-blooded force, compel all officials to fall silent and reflect—and in that process of reflection, make them understand her deeper meaning: Oh, so she expects us to take action against the Tao family ourselves!

“She can display benevolence to the outside world, avoid lowering the bottom line from the very start, use the hands of her ministers to eliminate the rebels, and, while she’s at it, bind all her subjects’ loyalties to herself.”

Tao Xianghao let out a heavy sigh.

“Godlike in both immortal cultivation and martial might, and possessed of such scheming.”

“I chose the wrong path…”

At last, Tao Xianghao felt regret for the “course” he had discussed back then with the Tao family’s Third Master—Tao Ran, one of the Three Excellencies.

“So Father has given up, then?”

A seductive voice came from behind him.

Tao Sicheng walked in with graceful steps, wearing a thin lady’s dress and holding incense candles and a fruit platter.

“Who told you to come?” Tao Xianghao’s tone was extremely unpleasant.

“Get out!”

“Stop bothering me!”

He harbored no small amount of resentment toward Tao Sicheng.

The Tao family had sold out its allies, slaughtered all thirteen noble houses of Eastern Province, and tried to beg forgiveness from the Imperial Court with those people’s blood in exchange for their own lives… In truth, it had been a desperate gamble.

Even if it had succeeded, this act would have gravely offended the “conservative faction” within Great Xia. From then on, the Tao family could forget about receiving any support from that side. They would probably have had to immediately find some secret place to hide away in seclusion.

And the reason the Tao family had made such an audacious bet was that they had counted on one crucial weight on the scale: Eastern Province’s defenses needed the Tao family.

Once the snow melted in early spring, every region would face voidfiend incursions, and among them the demon scourge in the Eastern Sea would be especially severe—that was the intelligence Tao Sicheng’s side had provided.

But the emperor had been back from the northern campaign for several days now, and the Eastern Sea demon tide still had not come.

In an instant, that dropped the Tao family into the worst possible position. Tao Sicheng had even fallen gravely ill because of it.

As a result, Tao Xianghao had developed a resentful bitterness toward his daughter, and now he did not want to see her wandering around in front of him.

“Father.”

“We shared joy together, did we not? Are you unwilling even to look at me?”

Her voice was full of delicate weakness.

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Tao Xianghao’s heart softened despite himself, and his expression became extremely complicated.

“Sicheng, you…”

He turned around, intending to do as asked and “look at his daughter once.”

But that single glance gave him a terrible shock, and the rest of his words changed directly into, “Y-Your face?”

“How did your face become like this?!?”

The candlelight flickered. Earlier, the right half of Tao Sicheng’s face had been hidden in shadow.

As she gradually drew closer, the light illuminated that shadowed side, revealing that the flesh there had completely rotted away. Beneath the bloody, pulpy flesh were densely packed corroded holes, and through those holes one could see the bone underneath directly.

Such a horrifying, gory sight—and happening to his most beloved, beautiful daughter at that—struck Tao Xianghao so hard that he stood stunned, unable to say a word for a long while.

“…Call it retribution, I suppose.”

Tao Sicheng bared her teeth. The intact skin on the good half of her face twitched slightly from the pain.

“I never thought she could do it to this extent.”

“I truly underestimated her.”

“Sicheng, what exactly—”

“We don’t have time anymore, Father,” Tao Sicheng cut him off. “Bai Zhixing’s move was too ruthless. The killers and assassins from every house should already be on the road.”

“I know!” Tao Xianghao said anxiously. “But—”

“Don’t try to notify anyone else,” Tao Sicheng interrupted again. “I’ve already arranged the party and brought Kang Yuan with us. Father, leave with me right now. We still have a chance to rise again.”

“So urgent?” Tao Xianghao stared blankly.

“The situation leaves us no choice, Father.” Tao Sicheng narrowed her eyes. “Please decide quickly.”

“It’s too rushed!” Tao Xianghao had trouble accepting it. “The mountains around Eastern Province are steep and treacherous. They can’t get here that fast, can they?”

“They may have flown here,” Tao Sicheng said, her voice already turning cold.

“But even so…” Tao Xianghao frowned and began pacing back and forth inside the room.

“But even so, the things in the ancestral residence still have to be moved out.”

“All those objects, and the paintings and calligraphy.”

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“And the gold and silver buried in the courtyard—those things… bwah!?”

Halfway through speaking, he stopped abruptly.

He looked down, eyes bulging, and saw the tip of a sword protruding out.

That sword had stabbed in through Tao Xianghao’s back. Its icy edge pierced through Tao Xianghao’s heart and then jutted out through the front of his chest, the blade gathering the heart’s blood that flowed from the wound.

“Tao… Sicheng… you…!”

“Sorry, Father, but you truly aren’t fit to be this family’s head.”

The young woman pressed close to her father’s body, her voice so cold it was shaking.

“In your hands, the Tao family has no chance at all of rising again.”

“So let me take the helm instead.”

“Go in peace.”

“…!!!”

Tao Xianghao tried to say something more, but with his vital point pierced, strength rapidly fled his body. He no longer had the power to speak.

Shlk!

The young woman pulled out her sword, and the man’s corpse crashed to the floor.

Having killed him, Tao Sicheng wasted no time. She quickly searched Tao Xianghao’s body and soon found a jade plaque hidden in an inner pocket.

“Family Head!”

Just then, the door was pushed open. A tall, sinister-looking middle-aged man saw Tao Sicheng, then turned his gaze and saw Tao Xianghao’s miserable death on the floor.

His lips twitched, but he said nothing. Instead, he continued by addressing Tao Sicheng.

“The party is about to depart, Family Head. Please come at once.”

“Understood.”

Hearing that form of address she had dreamed of for so long, Tao Sicheng’s lips curled upward, and a sickly flush appeared on her face.

She hurried over to the middle-aged man. He seized her by the arm, and the two of them darted out of the estate together.