Volume 5, Chapter 84 – Prestige (2-in-1)

“Master!”

“No way! This can’t be real!”

At the borderland along the edge of the yellow sands, a young Daoist with Buddhist beads around his neck and a blue-gray Daoist robe stared at the shattered soul jade on the array plate. His eyes widened uncontrollably, and a grief-stricken cry burst from his mouth.

The art of making soul jade was something Fang Yang had only revealed after his return. It was of little use for surveillance, but it could wrap a wisp of “jade-soul essence” around a target and, through the connection between the main body and that jade-soul essence, determine the target’s rough current condition.

If the entire jade shattered, like now, crumbling into grains like sand, then one could basically be certain the person was thoroughly dead. There would not even be any chance of something like a remnant soul parasitizing another host.

This young Daoist was Qingjiang, Fang Yang’s most beloved direct disciple. He was first stunned by the state of the soul jade, then, without another word, forced himself to his feet. He had decided to ignore that senior’s warning and step into the desert. At the very least, he had to recover Fang Yang’s corpse!

“If I were you, I wouldn’t do that.”

At that moment, accompanied by a gust of sand-laden wind carrying a faint fishy smell, the Blood Lord appeared and said flatly to Qingjiang, “That’s no longer a war mortals can interfere in. If you go in, you’ll just be throwing your life away.”

“Senior Xue?” Qingjiang called out instinctively. Then his brows drew tight and he abruptly stepped back, narrowing his eyes as he demanded, “My master is likely more dead than alive, and you were clearly invited by him to go reinforce him. So why is it that you came back unscathed?”

“Ah… I hate dealing with thick-headed brats like this the most…” The Blood Lord shook his head, looking utterly helpless.

“Hk.” He covered his mouth and coughed a few times, then spread open his palm, revealing clotted blood and fragments of internal organs stuck to it.

“Let me make this clear first. While it’s true that I left your master behind and ran, that wasn’t because I insisted on doing so.”

“If I hadn’t left, your master would die, I would die, and you would die too.”

“If I die, then who’s going to teach you in your master’s place?”

“If you die, then who’s supposed to avenge your master?”

“Teach me… avenge him…?” Qingjiang was left staring blankly, the muscles at his jaw twitching faintly.

Avenge him…

That was right. His master was dead. As his disciple, shouldn’t he avenge him?

He had to preserve his useful life, cultivate properly, and strive to personally cut down his enemy in the future, using that enemy’s blood-soul to honor his master!

“I’m sorry, Senior Xue.” Thinking this, Qingjiang bowed his head to the Blood Lord while enduring immense grief. “I lost my composure for a moment and misunderstood you… What should we do next?”

This little radish was a hundred, a thousand times kinder than his master…

Internally lamenting how easy the child was to fool, the Blood Lord coughed and, for the first time, seriously faced that question himself: what exactly should come next?

And as he truly confronted it, he realized something else. Ever since escaping danger, he, who had always been neurotic, moody, and careless about anything important, had unconsciously kept his face tense the entire time. Even when he was making things up just now, he had not smiled once.

He suddenly turned around, blocking Qingjiang’s line of sight, and took the chance to raise both hands for a close look.

But in truth, there was no need to look closely.

Anyone, anyone at all, so long as they saw those hands right now, would be able to tell that they were trembling faintly in the air.

Has the pressure the Xia Emperor put on me really reached this level…?

The Blood Lord said nothing. Suddenly, he felt a trace of regret over having abandoned Fang Yang.

The Xia Emperor, Bai Zhixing, had risen from obscurity to become a Venerable and be crowned Emperor in no more than eleven years total. And if one counted the ten years she had been trapped in the Sky Sea, then that meant she had truly only spent a single year on actual cultivation and breakthroughs.

One year. Alone, with a single sword, facing three Saint-realm opponents… Although that “Jiuli” had not even fully brought forth its physical body and was little more than an empty shell, and Fang Yang had also suffered for not understanding her weapon, taking a heavy blow from her sword outright, the result of that one-against-three battle, one dead and two wounded, could not be denied.

If a monster like that were allowed to keep growing, she truly would overturn everything.

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Seen this way, losing Fang Yang, an old friend and old rival whose roots he knew so well, might well have been his own mistake.

But if I had stayed, if I had to face her for Fang Yang’s sake…?

The Blood Lord frowned hard and immediately stripped those thoughts from his mind.

“I suddenly understand why your master said that to me.”

The Blood Lord turned his face slightly to the side, his tone holding a quiet note of feeling.

“She really is an ‘exception.’”

“She’s worth setting aside every past dispute and gathering, coordinating, every bit of strength we can find to deal with her.”

“Senior Xue…” Qingjiang frowned. Unable to understand the deeper meaning in those words, he only thought the man was testing him and quickly said, “Before he left, Master left a recording in the First-Spirit Hall at the summit of Pilgrimage Mountain. He also gave me authority so that in a crisis I could take command of the halls of the Sacred Court. He instructed me that I was only to use it at the most critical moment.”

The implication was clear. Though he was willing to follow the Blood Lord, a Saint, and learn from him, the other party should not even think of using that as leverage to let the Federation forces under him swallow up Pilgrimage Mountain, swallow up the Sacred Court.

After all, that too was the lineage his master had left behind.

In Qingjiang’s eyes, abandoning the lineage for the sake of revenge would be an even greater act of disrespect.

“The Sacred Court? Its many halls?”

Hearing that, the Blood Lord curled his lip, took out a Western-style pipe from his robes, lit it, and leisurely took a drag.

“If you’ve got the time to worry about that, you might as well look up at the sky.”

“See what use any of that is to her.”

The sky?

Qingjiang froze, then instinctively lifted his head, and was instantly shocked by what he saw.

Beyond the flying sand raging across the wasteland, within the dim canopy of heaven, was a vast mass of violently writhing cloud. It churned and heaved like the most savage ocean waves. At times it condensed into a pair of vague giant wings, perhaps thousands of li across. At times scattered layers suddenly exploded apart, and from the gaps hung several long, constantly lashing “tentacles,” each one equally enormous.

How had I not noticed a sight like this before?

Was it because the wind and sand never ceased, howling without stop, completely covering up the commotion above?

No…

His soul returning, his awareness settling into place, Qingjiang suddenly realized, only now, that it was precisely because of the battle in the sky that even this farthest edge had been swept by wild winds and flying sand…

Zheng—

Suddenly! The dark clouds at the horizon split apart violently, as though a blade had sliced open a flatbread, cleaving the heavy cloudbank stretching hundreds of li straight down the middle.

A streak of dazzling white radiance, something neither Qingjiang nor the Blood Lord had ever seen in all their lives, suddenly shone through that narrow fissure and the countless holes in the clouds. In an instant, it lit every corner of the desert wasteland as bright as day.

“Emperor Xiang!”

“You’ve gone too far!”

A roar like muffled thunder rolled down from the heavens. Qingjiang squinted and vaguely saw that it came from a massive “tentacle,” or rather, from something at the end of it that had opened its beak.

The scene shifted to high above.

With one sword strike, Bai Xiang slashed across Jiuli’s chest and abdomen, dragging out a massive wound across its body, one so large its end could not be seen. Great quantities of foul-smelling demon blood poured out of it without stop, spilling into the clouds and pattering down. It looked as though a rain of blood might soon fall.

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A demon god.

She temporarily lowered her sword and carefully observed its outline. Whatever abilities it might possess aside, this body was truly far too enormous.

At its largest, it could spread for a thousand li. The weight of flesh that its skeleton could bear completely defied the laws of physics.

And it could shrink and change its size as well. Even at its smallest, each of its wings was still two thousand meters in span.

It was terrifyingly huge.

Practically comparable to a city.

A body like this really could be called a treasure. It seemed the thing hiding behind the scenes had set up Jiuli’s escape so meticulously because it had taken a fancy to this very body and wanted to seize the demon god’s flesh.

“You really are exactly alike.”

Her eyelids lowered slightly as Bai Xiang fixed her gaze on the giant demon ahead.

“Whether it’s the tone you use when you realize you can’t beat me and start complaining about your grievances, or the smug self-assurance you have at the start when putting your plans into action, it’s as if you came out of the same mold.”

“Let me guess. You should be the ‘mutant’ created by the remnants of Blood Soul Heaven after they fled into the wilderness,” she continued.

“The reason the wilderness voidfiends have grown into such a large force, the reason they repeatedly invade the borders of my Great Xia, is all because of your manipulation.”

Almost the instant her words fell, a winding neck, something that looked like a gigantic tentacle, swept over with mountain-crushing force, arriving before her in a heartbeat.

A sharp gleam flashed through Bai Xiang’s eyes. Faced with the attack, she did not raise her sword to slash. Instead, she lowered her body to the left with the movement and drove into it with her shoulder.

Boom!!!

The collision came between two bodies whose sizes were absurdly mismatched, yet it unleashed an incomparably terrifying vacuum blast. Not only did it tear apart and clear away all the nearby clouds, even the very point of empty space where the two met cracked open, black-rift fragments snapping loose and falling downward.

After the collision, one of the giant demon’s bird heads was shoved far away, and a shrill scream burst from its throat.

Bai Xiang, meanwhile, merely retreated a dozen meters before steadying herself again. Then, without even looking behind her, she tightened her grip on Feixiang Heaven in her right hand and, without warning, slashed backward, sending out another wave of fused sword aura that struck head-on against another bird head winding around on a different neck.

Screee—

After suffering losses from two sneak attacks in a row, the controlled demon god Jiuli let out another piercing shriek. It seemed able to pass straight through a living being’s eardrums and act directly on the soul. Every creature below that heard it, human or demonic beast alike, froze on the spot like animals cowed by a tiger’s roar, unable to move.

“What a racket!”

“Taishang. Hereby. Gives. Order. — Seal and Sever!”

Bai Xiang had had enough of its endless noise. With Taishang Response, she instantly seized forceful control over the surrounding heavenly essence, forming her signature forbidden-law airspace. Silence was merely one of its incidental effects.

The moment that domain opened, it was as if a special magnetic field had been switched on. The giant demon’s synchronous shrieks from its nine heads vanished instantly. No matter how it strained its throat, not a sound came out.

In the silence, the sky suddenly darkened. Realizing its shrieks had failed, the giant demon simply curled its body and sent all nine heads sweeping down like tentacles, intending to encircle Bai Xiang that way.

Bai Xiang pressed her lips together. In an instant, her left hand summoned the Shenming Sword from the Qi Sea of her Inner Body-scape. Rather than holding it normally, she reversed her grip on the hilt as though wielding a dagger, while her other hand held her natal Dao sword in a standard grip. With twin swords in hand, she stepped through the void and met the incoming giant demon head-on.

Within the forbidden domain, only pool arts, physical strength, and certain innate divine abilities remained unaffected.

The “person” controlling the giant demon had obviously realized it would not be easy to gain any advantage. Taking the opportunity, he simply unleashed in one burst all the innate divine abilities this demon god body possessed, planning to combine those powers with this overwhelmingly powerful flesh, forcibly break through Bai Xiang’s blockade, and flee straight into the wilderness.

Thus, as Bai Xiang whirled in combat with twin swords, colliding with and carving through the giant demon’s beak, claws, wing-blades, scales, thorned crest, tongue-whiskers, and other fragments of its body, she suddenly discovered something—

Those pieces she had struck away, smashed apart, snapped off, crushed underfoot, shaved flat, and severed… while they did indeed spray demon blood and fly away in ruin, at the same time several strange forces began to envelop her body, bringing immense pressure.

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At that instant, she drew upon Fang Yang’s memories.

The Saint of Pilgrimage Mountain, though not the creator of the Dao-Void Methods, was certainly one of the great figures who advanced and perfected that lineage. He had survived in the void for an incomparably long time. Even when using that so-called “giant-man mode,” something akin to burning his own life away, he had still boasted that he could live another hundred years in that state. That showed both the toughness of his lifespan and the depth of his experience.

An old immortal like that, an old monster like that, naturally had records concerning Jiuli in his memories, and Bai Xiang now understood them at exactly the right moment.

“The demon god Jiuli was originally a pair of twin demon birds.”

“They were interfered with by a Void Tribulation and contaminated, and that was what caused their ‘mutation.’”

“This kind of ‘mutation’ can be found everywhere within Void Tribulations. If it fails, it turns into an incomparably ugly, rotting, half-dead monstrosity. The most famous example is the Ancient Calamity Dragon.”

“But if, by an extremely tiny chance, the ‘mutation’ succeeds, then it may transform and awaken even more powerful innate divine abilities.”

“And if, on top of that, it already possessed excellent talent and a strong enough ‘base,’ then it could rise straight into the clouds by relying on this, advancing from an ordinary demon creature into a mythic being, every movement shaking heaven and earth.”

And the most famous record concerning this demon said:

Nine bodies merge into one, saintly bones hurl force.

Soaring ten thousand li, turning blood into black wind.

A piercing shriek stills the heart, fiery eyes seize the soul.

All forms are void, cast off the old and fuse with the new.

Though the thoughts seemed incomparably complex, in reality only a moment had passed.

Bai Xiang activated the Jade Spirit Mingxin Method and, within that instant, matched the powers and pressure surrounding her one by one with the information in her mind. At once, she saw through the nature of its talents and thereby glimpsed this giant demon’s true foundation and fatal weakness.

“Emperor Xiang!!!”

“Die!!!”

The enormous roar slammed directly into her heart.

This kind of divine ability should be the same as its earlier shriek: a heart-stilling technique.

Taking advantage of the fact that she had just struck with her sword and her posture had run its course, a thick neck slithered over like a winding dragon, bringing a bird head right before her. But it did not attack. It merely opened one giant eye wide, letting a flame-like radiance shine from it as it stared at her.

This divine ability should be soul-seizing. This demon had displayed it before when it tried to possess a human body.

Now that she had the experience, Bai Xiang quickly identified the other divine abilities as well: force-hurling, soaring, blood-transformation, black wind, and transformation. One by one, she countered them with direct clashes, void-locking, fused sword aura, and other methods.

And still, the giant demon would not stop. Its shriek had been sealed by the silence art, so it could only pour sound directly into her ears through divine abilities, hoping to cause her some interference.

But what left it unable to believe, and even afraid, was that every effort it made was useless against Bai Xiang.

She was completely unaffected, completely undisturbed. Her movements remained as succinct and decisive as ever.

Even when it used its transformation ability, turning the surrounding bird heads, scales, and other body parts into half-human shapes wielding feather-blades to fight her, that “Xia Emperor Sword” of hers, the weapon that posed a tremendous threat to it, could actually be swallowed straight into the palm of her hand, entering through the right hand and emerging from the left. In an instant, it filled the opening in her left hand that it had exhausted so much effort to create, and once again carved a massive wound into its body!

What kind of monster is this?

The longer the battle went on, the more terrified the young man secretly controlling the demon god’s body became.

He could not help but start to wonder: between himself and Emperor Xiang, who exactly was the “conceptual construct”?

How did it seem to him that compared with himself, Emperor Xiang was the real “mutant”? The real monster?

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“Seven…”

In the midst of battle, staring at the spurting demon blood, Bai Xiang suddenly closed both golden pupils.

“Seven divine abilities. There are still two missing.”

“You’ve been avoiding showing me the last two from the very beginning. It isn’t that you don’t want to use them. It’s that you don’t dare use them.”

“After fully understanding those last two abilities, you realized the enormous hidden danger that would come after using them. For now, you’re unwilling to pay that kind of price, so you don’t dare.”

“At least when facing me, you don’t believe paying that price would help you escape with your life.”

“Am I right?”

“Xuetian… no, perhaps I should call you ‘Demon Lord’?”

Aaaaah—

In that instant, Bai Xiang seemed to catch the mad howl coming from within that enormous shell. She still kept her eyes closed, only a faint smile at the corner of her lips, her black-silk-clad feet stepping with light, delicate footwork through the countless sprays of demon blood and scales as she continued exposing her enemy.

“Nine into one, cast off the old and fuse with the new.”

“From the very start until now, one of your heads has never once joined the attack.”

“I’m guessing that’s where your soul is.”

“The demon god Jiuli’s proudest talent is ‘fusion.’”

“Cast away an old talent, and it can fuse in a new one.”

“It devours. It evolves.”

“And you, after using that authority, still cannot control that power for the time being!”

[Emperor Xiang—]

A plea for mercy suddenly rang out in her heart.

[We can talk…]

[I actually—]

Puchi!

As calm as wind and clouds, Bai Xiang suddenly took a single step, slipping between the countless entangling tentacles and feather-blades, passing by that final giant bird head that had never been mobilized.

And then everything fell silent.

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

Bai Xiang drew both swords back into her body, let out a breath, and said softly,

“That power never belonged to you in the first place.”

“I’m taking it back.”

“I’ll send you back to where you came from.”