Volume 5, Chapter 57 – Talent (Two-in-One)

To avoid being tailed by anyone watching them, the evacuation party Tao Sicheng arranged was kept very small. Among the core family members, there were only herself and her younger brother, Tao Kangyuan.

That same wastrel boy Tao Xianghao had berated earlier—yet Tao Sicheng actually cared for him very deeply.

Why? Perhaps because Tao Kangyuan really was simple-minded in the best way. Back when she had been found as a child to have blocked meridians, he had not ignored her like everyone else. He still came to play with her often, bringing her a great deal of comfort.

Tao Sicheng could afford not to care about anyone else in the Tao family, but her younger brother Tao Kangyuan was the one person she would absolutely protect.

The middle-aged man brought Tao Sicheng to a side room outside. It was actually where the servants lived. There, Tao Sicheng quickly changed into ordinary clothes, smeared ointment on her face, and put on a lifelike human-skin mask, disguising herself as a maid before going out with the middle-aged man.

The man was called Uncle Tao. His surname had been bestowed by the family. It was said that his cultivation had already reached the Golden Core realm of qi cultivation. His flexible swordsmanship was tricky and vicious—but most of the people who had seen him use his sword were already dead.

“Family Head, are you certain we shouldn’t bring anyone else?” Uncle Tao asked Tao Sicheng seriously as they walked.

“No.” Tao Sicheng shook her head. “I need them to help draw the scouts’ attention. Too many people would be inconvenient. When the time comes, not a single one of them would survive.”

Uncle Tao looked at her, but in the end said nothing.

He had remained with the Tao family purely to repay a debt of gratitude. At the very least, he had to ensure the main line’s bloodline survived. If Tao Sicheng had merely murdered her father, he definitely would have moved against her. But Tao Sicheng treated Tao Kangyuan extremely well, and that was why he was willing to follow her.

Right now, the Tao family needed exactly this kind of decisive Family Head. In Uncle Tao’s eyes, everyone else was useless trash. Whether they were brought along or not made no difference.

The two left the courtyard by a side path and merged into the servants bustling back and forth.

There were many people in the Tao residence, and their food, clothing, and daily luxuries were all lavish. As a result, there were also many servants. At the moment, goods were moving through as purchased supplies and ingredients taken from ice storage were being handed over. Blending into the crowd, the two of them did not stand out.

Pretending they had been sent on an errand, they slipped out of the group and got into the sedan waiting outside. As the door closed, Uncle Tao glanced back once. Tao Kangyuan was sleeping soundly in the rear seat.

In that case, there was nothing more to say.

He started the car and quickly drove the brother and sister away from the estate.

“What’s the situation at the airport?” Tao Sicheng made several calls along the way, asking her subordinates about various matters.

“Is that so… a lot of watchers… and there are at least three we can confirm.”

“Then it probably isn’t convenient to leave for now. Come back. Tonight probably isn’t the right time.”

Having finished the misdirection, Tao Sicheng switched off her phone, pulled out the SIM card, threw it out the window, and said coldly, “We can’t leave through the airport.”

“How do you know they betrayed you?” Uncle Tao asked in surprise.

Tao Sicheng smiled. “A kind of instinct.”

Meanwhile, at Eastern Province Airport, several people inside an interrogation room handed over their phones and looked expectantly at the guard walking over.

“What did she say?”

“She said tonight probably isn’t the right time…”

“You’re her trusted aides, right?”

“That’s right. Usually, we’re the ones who gather intelligence for her.”

“The legendary gifted woman, the real engine people whisper about behind the scenes—is her reaction really this slow?” the guard muttered.

“Forget it. Our side’s task is already done. Report it upward and let the people above worry about it themselves.”

On the other side, the sedan had already broken through layer after layer of checkpoints and was now driving up the mountain along a straight road.

Apparently, no one had expected they would choose the hardest mountain route for their escape. Most of the official defensive forces were probably concentrated at the ports and the airport, so there were actually fewer checkpoints along this road instead. Tao Sicheng managed to bluff her way past all of them.

An hour later, after the vehicle had gone up the mountain, Uncle Tao said frankly, “Driving like this is too slow. And farther ahead, a car this wide won’t be able to get through. I’ll fly the three of us out.”

A Golden Core qi cultivator possessed the ability to traverse the air. Carrying two people was still no problem for him.

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“All right.” Tao Sicheng nodded. She knew this was the best option.

The harshness of the terrain outside Eastern Province was reflected precisely in this—if even a little four-wheeled sedan was considered too wide for the road, then some paths could only be climbed with one’s own hands and feet.

Uncle Tao did not drive the car all the way to the end of the road. Instead, he stopped two-thirds of the way there and had Tao Sicheng stand aside with Tao Kangyuan while he shoved the car off the cliff.

“It should at least throw them off a little,” Uncle Tao said.

Then, carrying the siblings with him, he rose into the air and maintained a low-altitude escape flight, heading northwest at tremendous speed.

“Uncle Tao, aren’t you going to ask why I want you flying this way?” Tao Sicheng asked him.

Uncle Tao did not answer, so she continued on her own. “There’s nothing left in Eastern Xia worth clinging to anymore. If we stay here, we’ll only be waiting to die. I plan to leave the country through Tianji Circuit and go to Pilgrimage Mountain—or go by way of Pilgrimage Mountain and then continue on to the Starsea Federation.”

“As long as the Family Head decides, that’s enough,” Uncle Tao said. “This old servant is only responsible for obeying orders.”

Tao Sicheng quietly let out a sigh of relief.

In truth, she did not entirely trust Uncle Tao. The gap in force between the two sides was far too great. If he wanted to betray her, she had absolutely no way of stopping him.

But now that they had already made it this far and he still had not sold her out, then he should be reliable.

That also finally left her some room to think about what she could do after reaching Pilgrimage Mountain.

She felt she still had to cultivate.

The Xia Emperor, Bai Zhixing—that was the living example before her. The woman had fully proved what personal martial power could accomplish. That kind of ability to overturn one’s fate by sheer force was something Tao Sicheng longed for even in her dreams.

Pilgrimage Mountain and the Federation both had Saints, so they could stand against the Xia Emperor. But if she relied only on “political asylum,” it would be hard to receive any especially favorable treatment. Therefore, she had to prove her own value. Only then might they be willing to use their methods to unblock her meridians.

Facing the fierce gale, Tao Sicheng’s thoughts weighed heavily on her.

There was one secret she had not told Uncle Tao: she had fused with a Spirit-Vein Demon.

Being parasitized by a Spirit-Vein Demon should result in the host’s complete death, but for some reason, it had spared her life, lodging itself only in half her face and half her brain.

When she woke up at the time, that half-face had been floating in the air above her, staring at her, and it had said, “I spared you because I value your cleverness. Work hard. In the future, serve the Mother Empress together with me.”

What shameless arrogance.

Serve the Mother Empress? Your Mother Empress must already have been killed by now, right?

Otherwise you wouldn’t have dropped dead on the spot and nearly blown away half my brain, leaving me bedridden so long that I almost missed my chance to escape.

At the thought, Tao Sicheng could not help lifting a hand and, through the human-skin mask, touching the right side of her face.

At the time, she had not understood. She had thought it really had spared her because it valued her potential. But later, she figured it out. A Spirit-Vein Demon would never take such a risk.

It had not spared her because of potential at all. It was simply because it could not kill her.

And when it died suddenly, she should by all rights have been dragged into death with it—but instead, she had only fallen ill once.

After recuperating, she looked at herself in the mirror and discovered that the blood-flesh nerves left behind by the Spirit-Vein Demon were not merely corroding her blood and bones. At the same time, her blood and bones were greedily absorbing its remains.

Just like soil drawing in fertilizer—ravenous, frantic, insatiable.

Tao Sicheng now had a feeling that once that absorption was complete, she would gain the Spirit-Vein Demon’s ability to manipulate flesh and reshape form. After that, she would no longer need a human-skin mask to change her appearance.

[Fusing with Demonic Creatures]

How strange. She had never heard of any family possessing such a gift.

She had once considered whether this gift had manifested because of demon blood awakening, but she had checked the records. The demon-blood concentration in the Tao family’s ancestry was not deep, and it had not come from any especially powerful demon either. It was impossible for that to manifest a gift like this.

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In the past, she would not have known whether this was a good thing or not. But now that her family had fallen and she herself was being chased like a stray dog, this ability would be extremely useful.

She planned to reshape her body into something even more beautiful once she had mastered the power, and then use that beauty to work her way step by step into contact with Pilgrimage Mountain’s upper ranks. If that failed, she would simply lay everything out honestly. Perhaps they would see value in this gift and help her open her blocked meridians.

And besides—my meridians have been blocked since birth. Maybe this gift has been causing trouble in secret all along.

At that thought, Tao Sicheng’s heart began to pound with excitement.

Could it be that I’m not trash at all, but a genius?

That I only needed certain conditions to activate my gift?

Whoosh—

In the midst of that joy, she abruptly spun once in midair—but it was actually Uncle Tao performing a difficult evasive maneuver. Vaguely, she heard something shriek past overhead.

“Someone’s here!” Uncle Tao spat out the two words, dropping fast and flinging the siblings into the dense forest from several meters up.

“I’ll cover the rear!”

“Go!”

Several meters was not a dangerous height for Uncle Tao, but for the Tao siblings it was quite troublesome. In the middle of the fall, Tao Kangyuan still managed to catch his sister and sling her onto his back before continuing to flee.

“Kangyuan… you’re awake?” Tao Sicheng froze.

“I woke up ages ago,” Tao Kangyuan said sullenly.

“Don’t be scared, Sis. Uncle Tao already told me everything.”

“You…”

“He also told me you might kill Father. Yes, I know.”

“I don’t blame you!” Tao Kangyuan said through gritted teeth. “I know… Sis had no choice. You didn’t want to do it… this was all because the emperor forced you!”

“I swear I’ll definitely get you out!”

“Thirty years east of the river, thirty years west of the river—one day I’ll wipe out the Xia Dynasty and avenge Father!”

“Kangyuan…” Tao Sicheng was deeply moved at first.

But as Tao Kangyuan ran with vigorous, flying strides, continually leaping over dangerous terrain—and even carrying her across a cliff more than ten meters wide—her shock only grew greater and greater.

“Kangyuan, since when did you become this strong?”

“I don’t know either,” Tao Kangyuan answered honestly. “If I had to say, maybe it started when I was twelve, when Uncle Tao brought back a few modified qi-refining manuals from somewhere else. Do you remember?”

“I remember.” Tao Sicheng bared her teeth in a smile.

How could she not? Those manuals had originally been found by the family for her.

Because of the way she had gotten involved with Tao Xianghao, she was still able to enjoy resources like that. It was just that the result of trying them had been disappointing. She could not practice them, so the manuals had eventually been passed out for others to train with.

At the time, Tao Kangyuan had received a manual called Tiger-Pounce Stance. It required one to imitate the posture of a tiger pouncing, using that to condense the first thread of qi-force inside the spine. At high levels, both hands would swell thick like tiger claws. Not only would one’s strikes become immensely powerful, but a forward pounce would also carry the majesty of a mountain king, enough to frighten some weaker Demon Pools to death on the spot.

But Tiger-Pounce Stance only trained the arms.

Now, however, Tao Kangyuan was swift and powerful in every step he took. Clearly, he was even more impressive with the rest of his body than with his hands. So where had that come from?

“Later on, I asked Uncle Tao for other manuals too. At first he refused,” Tao Kangyuan said. “But I begged so much that he still gave them to me in the end. He warned me not to study them too deeply, because different kinds of qi-force would clash inside the body, and if I practiced too many mixed arts, I’d suffer qi deviation.”

“I tried it, but I felt he was wrong.”

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“Because no matter which manual I practiced, although the qi-force that came out at first was different, it would very easily be absorbed by the other qi-forces.”

“It was amazing… as if they were ‘fusing’ together. I ended up being able to cultivate every kind of art!”

“Not just my hands and feet—my whole body!”

“I wasn’t just talking nonsense earlier. I really do have the confidence to overthrow the Xia Emperor!”

“Fusion” again…

The speaker had not meant anything by it, but the listener had. Tao Sicheng was stunned.

Could it really be a family gift?

But then why had no one else awakened it? There was nothing about it in the genealogy.

Rustle!

Clang-clang! Bang-bang!

A sudden burst of fierce combat rang out from behind them. Then came a muffled grunt, and Tao Kangyuan stopped in his tracks and spun around.

“Uncle Tao—”

The siblings’ eyes split wide with grief and fury as they saw Uncle Tao in midair, his head pierced through by a streak of sword-light. He fell into the grass like a torn sack, utterly motionless.

An enormous terror descended in an instant.

If… if even Uncle Tao could not block it, then how could they?

No matter how powerful this mysterious gift might be, it would only pay off in the future.

If they were going to die right now, how could there be any future at all?

“You forced me to expose my ‘flying sword art.’”

“Old bastard. You were damned hard to kill.”

Along with a sinister voice, the two of them looked up and saw a person in a pure-black, light-swallowing combat suit standing on a tree.

The figure was black from head to toe. Even the eye area was covered by dark shades. A hiltless, guardless “strip of iron”—really nothing but blade—circled around him like a darting fish. It was presumably the so-called flying sword.

“Tao Kangyuan. Tao Sicheng. So it should be you two, right?”

Taking out his phone and comparing them to a photo, the black-clad swordsman muttered to himself.

“You actually took such a twisted route. Good thing I was smart enough to sprinkle stink powder on you, otherwise I never would’ve guessed this direction. You’d have slipped away already!”

“Stop sniffing! That’s something only demon beasts can smell.”

The black-clad swordsman burst into laughter, and a furry dog-demon head poked out from his shoulder.

He rubbed the dog demon, then sent the flying sword stabbing straight down.

“In your next life, be born into a better family!”

“And remember not to oppose Her Majesty again!”

I’m going to die—

At that moment, time seemed to slow to a crawl.

Tao Sicheng could feel her brother’s muscles drawing tight all over. She knew Tao Kangyuan wanted to try resisting, but that was clearly useless.

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As life reached its final moment, a true death-flash passed before her eyes, and scene after scene that should long since have been forgotten began to return to her.

In one of them, from when she was only a few years old, she dimly saw two black figures standing by her bedside, looking down at her from above.

“This one… has pretty good talent, doesn’t she?”

“Mhm. It’s even clogged up the weak meridians of her human body. That means the channels and acupoints inside her are fusing on their own. Even within the clan, she’d count as a good seedling.”

“Unbelievable. The clan chief sent us to search for ‘scattered leaves.’ I thought this would be a wasted trip, but who would have thought we’d find a prize like this?”

“So, do we take her back now?”

“No rush.”

“She may have awakened our ‘Liren’ bloodline through atavistic reversion, but she’s still mixed-blood. It’s too early to say whether she can grow up safely.”

“We’ll observe her first. Once she grows up, then we’ll take her back.”

“Erase her memory.”

“She isn’t worthy of knowing these things yet.”

Tao Sicheng remembered absolutely nothing of what happened afterward.

She could not remember those two people’s faces. Even their voices were vague, so blurred she could not tell whether they were male or female.

The only thing she remembered was one of them extending a palm toward her. In that palm, there seemed to appear a totem of a nine-headed monstrous bird. Those nine bird heads kept winding around one another, kept fusing together, until they became a writhing lump of unidentifiable flesh that was projected straight into the depths of her heart.

This… is something that really happened to me?

Snapping back to herself, Tao Sicheng suddenly realized something was wrong.

She might not die after all.

There was still a chance!

“Who’s there?!”

With a whoosh, the flying sword changed direction and shot diagonally toward another spot—but halfway there, it was fixed motionless in midair by some kind of force. No matter how it struggled, it could not move.

“Pffft—!”

“Ungh!”

From the darkness ahead came sounds of fighting and pained cries, all from that black-clad swordsman. After a brief struggle came the sound of a sack dropping to the ground, and then, slowly, a figure walked out of the dark.

It was a woman with bronze skin, strange markings painted across her face, and a moon-white robe draped over her body. The instant she appeared, she fixed Tao Sicheng in an unwavering stare, as though she cared only whether Tao Sicheng lived or died.

“I didn’t expect you really would awaken…”

The woman sighed.

“Who are you?” Tao Kangyuan shouted warily, clearly not trusting this stranger.

“I am Rongyin.”

The woman smiled, then turned her gaze toward Tao Kangyuan.

“Another one… how interesting.”

“Come with me, little ones.”

“I’ll take you somewhere you can see a much bigger world.”