Volume 1, Chapter 59 – Drinking Blood

Late at night, Bai Xiang found a natural tree hollow in the woods and decided to make do there for the night.

Because they had underestimated the enemy’s strength, the pursuit unit wasn’t enough to surround and annihilate them. Huang Qian abandoned the ambush plan and chose instead to control the exit for now, wait for the main force and heavy firepower to arrive, and launch the attack at daybreak tomorrow.

The lookout had already been taken out. Waiting two hours was still waiting; waiting till dawn was also waiting. They weren’t short on that bit of time.

Just right—the pursuit unit could use this period to rest well, restore their vigor, and wait for tomorrow’s opportunity.

Bai Xiang had napped in the afternoon; by rights she shouldn’t be sleepy. But her fight with Lü Ran had consumed her mentally. She hadn’t felt it while she was taut as a bowstring; now that she’d relaxed, drowsiness came at once.

But she couldn’t sleep yet.

After making sure there were no poisonous insects in the hollow—just some huge dead leaves—Bai Xiang curled herself inside, legs together, sitting on her side, and in the dark began checking the cloud-pattern wooden sword.

She had already asked Cao Chuan: the material used to make this wooden sword was called “soul-nurturing wood.”

The name sounds fancy—throw it into an immortal-cultivation novel and it’s usually a treasure—but in Great Yu it’s a dime a dozen. Many people grow it on an industrial scale and mass-produce it into sword-student wooden swords for sale.

Because most sword-track students are working through Enter the Dao and Nurture the Spirit.

“Soul-nurturing wood” emits a unique field—like certain jades—that slightly helps in cultivating the heart-aspect.

It also has good toughness and strength by itself, making it ideal for sword-track students.

Bai Xiang inspected it very carefully.

Fortunately, there was no damage beyond some dulling and nicking along the edge.

But that alone told the tale: when she fought at full power, even with spirit infusion to shield it, the sword’s strength was starting to fall behind.

You drink blood, and you let me sketch heart flow within you.

Bai Xiang gently stroked the blade.

Which meant this sword could grow.

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Such cases were rare. When she probed Cao Chuan about it, the look he gave her was as if she were crazy.

Bai Xiang figured it was probably a coincidence.

The wooden sword had nothing special in itself; it was purely the wood’s nature that let fibers absorb blood. And her spirit-soul ability is “wooden” in its own way—rigid enough to mistakenly treat the blood that entered the wooden sword as an extension of her body.

Once that conceptual boundary was broken, pouring in heart flow, even using her spirit-soul ability to control the blood and build heart-flow branch channels inside the sword—was merely following through.

So… could I use this trick to exploit a bug…

Bai Xiang pondered.

Anywhere my bodily fluids can reach, my spirit-soul ability can go…?

That’s getting a bit improper.

Better think about practical matters.

How to solve the sword’s strength problem.

It will grow, yes, but a day isn’t enough to grow much—and barring surprises, she’d need to rely on it in battle tomorrow.

Chai Xuan’s timeline was too tight.

So she thought.

She didn’t regret treating Chai Xuan coldly. It would certainly startle the snake, make Chai suspect she’d guessed something. But this kind of thing… she should have expected it back when Chai Xuan had Zhou Ji “teach Bai Xiang a lesson.”

Bai Shengju had guessed outright, which meant the Chai father and daughter were brazen—felt that even if this side found out, it didn’t matter; it would instead warn the Bai clan not to keep digging.

But Chai Xuan would never have expected me to show up at the Nanshan camp.

The reason she joined Benling’s team was most likely to come back and take a treasure rare even among the Nine Daos.

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Could the Demon-Immortal Dao also be tied to the Chai family?

Did they collude with the Demon-Immortal Dao from the start, or was the Demon-Immortal Dao just being used by them?

After a moment’s thought, Bai Xiang judged the latter more likely.

The reason was simple: this illusory realm Demon Kingdom was far larger than originally estimated.

The larger the area, the harder and longer it takes to fill it with demonic aura.

They’d been inside for a good while already, and the aura didn’t feel overwhelmingly dense. That meant the so-called leakage wasn’t “overflowing when full,” but deliberately vented.

It should be the Chai family who drew the Demon-Immortal Dao here.

Most likely, they coveted some treasure here but couldn’t take it with their own strength alone, so they lured the Demon-Immortal Dao to discover and occupy this place, borrowing their power to “excavate” the treasure.

With that thought, Bai Xiang recalled the “egg case” the two demonfolk scouts mentioned.

The Demon-Immortal Dao had stirred the heavens and moved the earth, gathering more than ten at the Stain-the-Body stage—including Lü Ran—and even stole the Jade Phoenix Sword. That showed that, in their eyes, the “egg case” was the most valuable item in the illusory realm.

Is it that?

Even if it is… with the Demon-Immortal Dao’s force so strong here, how would that father and daughter ensure they themselves get the treasure in the end?

At that, Bai Xiang became certain Chai Xuan held an unknown trump card.

Either a method to control the illusory realm.

Or… some “old relic” from the Bai ancestral ground still survived in the realm, and Chai Xuan had forged her identity—perhaps calling herself a Bai descendant before that “old relic” to strike a deal.

When she asked to go together in the day, was she looking for a chance to slip away, or trying to trigger some mechanism?

I’ve been watching her the whole way, and Cao Chuan—taking his cue from me—has been watching her too. She shouldn’t have had that chance.

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With no leads for now, Bai Xiang turned her thoughts back to herself and started placing herself on the “food chain.”

The Chilong Circuit borders the Nanling Range—what used to be called the southern wilds. Competition here isn’t exactly fierce.

Huang Qian at Condensing the Aspect can serve as Commandant.

Bai Shengju at Divine Union counts as a local expert.

Yang Xing also said the previous state governor transferred to Qizhou specifically to retire in comfort. All this showed Qizhou’s environment tended toward the easy side.

Even so, her cultivation in Qizhou still didn’t amount to much.

She could kill Lü Ran only because she hard-countered him.

Most of his methods hinged on controlling demonic aura. With the aura pouring in yet unable to override her spirit-soul commands, he exposed a massive opening—and she took his head with a single sword.

So, my edge is “shattering illusions” and “piercing armor.”

Bai Xiang looked again at the cloud-pattern wooden sword.

Heart flow compressed to the extreme had manifested on the blade as something like the nascent form of qi.

If not for that twisted yet intangible mysterious energy, the sword could never have been that sharp—sharp enough to slice bone-beasts with ease.

But being snared by Lü Ran’s threads at the end showed her speed still hadn’t reached Condensing-the-Aspect level.

Her defense could only be called okay.

The combat suit held; Lü Ran’s needles hadn’t pierced it.

But that wasn’t her own ability. What truly qualified her to take part in battles at the Condensing-the-Aspect level was still her spirit-soul ability.

Because it existed, no mental control could shake her will.

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And… because of it, she could use it to interfere with reality, forcibly control her body, and temporarily nullify objective conditions that would otherwise hamper bodily movement.

Given her lack of speed, her overall combat strength should be around Divine Union.

But if given the chance, even a three-tribulation great demon was just one sword.

Bai Xiang summed up the battle lessons and decided to play to her strengths next time.

Let Commandant Huang and the others draw demonfolk attention, while I lurk and look for a chance to strike…

“Hm?”

Thinking as she idly checked her Transforming Qi progress, Bai Xiang was surprised to find the “progress bar,” which had been just over twenty percent, now seemed to be at twenty-five.

“It can only be that pill I took in the fight… but aren’t you only supposed to take one per day?”

When she took it, Bai Xiang hadn’t thought it would help Transforming Qi at all; she’d only used it to make up temporary losses.

But from the look of it now… it worked…?

One pill normally gives about ten percent progress. Take a second within twenty-four hours, and you still get forty percent of the first’s effect.

If she could speed this up by popping pills…

As Transforming Qi sped up, the nourishing progress would speed up too—blood-change progress included…

Then…

Worth a try.

She opened the pocket on her vest at the chest, took out another pill, and placed it under her tongue. At the same time, she did something that would look downright deranged to others—she loosened the left wrist of her combat suit and drew the cloud-pattern wooden sword across it.

Dark clotted blood and fresh, vital blood flowed out together, dripped onto the sword, ran along the edge, and seeped into it bit by bit.