Volume 5, Chapter 87 – Illusory Vision

“…I am not your father.”

After a pause, the Blood Lord replied,

“You are a spirit-creature born of heaven and earth, the incarnation of that will. I’m not qualified to be your father.”

“But you gave me the awakening of wisdom,” the young man said. “It was precisely because of your betrayal and pursuit that I was able to grow this quickly into what I am today.”

“Cut the nonsense.” The Blood Lord frowned. “Why did you contact me?”

“To form an alliance, naturally.” The young man nodded. “I underestimated her threat far too much. I believe Father did as well. We can join forces. The Federation and the voidfiends—if the two strongest and most far-reaching powers in the world today join hands, defeating her will not be especially difficult.”

“What shameless bragging.” The Blood Lord remained perfectly calm. “What are you, exactly, within the voidfiends? You spent years laying the groundwork just to dare activate a plan against one dying old fossil barely clinging to life. Forget what happens once those demon gods return—you’ll be nothing then. Even right now, with the mountain empty of tigers, you still couldn’t control all of them. You couldn’t even control a tenth!”

“All things advance according to objective momentum,” the young man said indifferently. “I admit I can’t do it for now. But if I weren’t confident, why would I willingly humiliate myself like this?”

What it said did seem to make some sense.

The Blood Lord frowned and probed, “What did you obtain this time?”

“A talent.”

“What?”

“One that suits me extremely well, you could say… something on the level of a ‘foundation for attaining the Dao.’ With it, I can unlock limitless possibilities. Surpassing her would be no challenge.”

What kind of talent could have that kind of effect?

The Blood Lord frowned, considered it for a moment, and then suddenly widened his eyes.

Could it be…?

Oh. If that was the case, then no wonder. No wonder the first demon god body it had schemed for after plotting so long had been Jiuli.

But how could that be possible?

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I saw that body being slain with my own eyes. With the terrifying power of the Xia Emperor Sword, no remnant soul-will should have been able to evade being traced. How did it manage to bring that thing back?

“I know what Father finds strange, but what I want to say is that I haven’t wasted these years either.” The young man smiled. “Through transactions with certain people, I obtained part of the Xuandi Scripture.”

“The Xuandi Scripture?” The Blood Lord did not believe him. “What use would that thing be to you? Without Emperor Feng’s bloodline, you can’t even read the words. Quite a few people throughout history have obtained the Xuandi Scripture, but none of them managed to cultivate anything from it.”

“Bloodline is not the key that opens that inheritance. Will is.” The young man interrupted him. “Just as I once suspected that she might be the surviving rebirth of Emperor Feng’s remnant spirit, after carefully comprehending that technique and her power, I finally understood how terrifying she is.”

“Her power has nothing whatsoever to do with the bloodline in her body.” He spoke to the Blood Lord word by word. “The ‘Divine-Might Golden Pupils’ are not something inherited through bloodline. Those eyes themselves possess no power at all. They are merely the outward manifestation of an inner spiritual state.”

“In theory, so long as the conditions are met, anyone could possess that same outward trait. But that condition is far too difficult to fulfill. At the very least, none of the ‘old-law’ paths of the past could achieve it… that final lock cannot be opened, and if it cannot be opened, then the condition cannot be met.”

“You’re saying all this to threaten me into cooperating with you?”

The Blood Lord instinctively felt suspicious, but he was also involuntarily curious and wanted to hear the other party say more, so he went on, “What does this prove? That she doesn’t rely on bloodline talent at all, but is a genius like Emperor Feng?”

“She is far more terrifying than Emperor Feng.”

At that point, the young man’s face darkened slightly.

“Emperor Feng only pushed skill to its absolute limit, but that ‘total amount’ was insufficient. That is exactly why he failed.”

“As for her…”

“Let me put it this way: awakening something like Emperor Feng’s ‘Divine-Might Golden Pupils’ is merely the first threshold for understanding how powerful she truly is.”

Was it really that exaggerated?

The Blood Lord still half believed and half doubted.

“You do not need to give me an answer right away.” The young man nodded.

“I know. The Federation is now a great power, and there are many different voices within it. And since you previously gave up using ‘hive mode’ to control this country, that is bound to create obstacles for your rule.”

“‘Hive mode’ would destroy all hope and all future…” The Blood Lord tried to argue in defense of his past choice. “I don’t think I’m qualified to bear the fate of an entire race on my shoulders.”

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Even though countless people over the past thousand years had called him mad, he had always believed himself to be extremely rational and calm.

Madness?

Demonic deviation?

Those were nothing more than attacks born of differing pursuits.

“There is no need for you to explain any of that to me either.” The young man smiled. “Of course I know what you were thinking. Otherwise, you would not have broken with them back then, and you would not have driven me away.”

The Blood Lord fell silent and did not offer any further explanation.

“I have heard that the Federation intends to mine those floating fragments in orbit—to accelerate the awakening of the void secret realms within them. The new power I have obtained also requires this kind of ‘acceleration.’”

“Of course, I will not take advantage for nothing. The total mass of this world will continue to grow, and the voidfiends are destined to occupy the greatest portion of it. There are many resources the Federation finds difficult to gather that our side can provide, even if what you want is Xuan Jade fragments.”

“Father can think it over a little more.”

“In seven days, I will call again.”

With that, the communication ended.

The Blood Lord leaned quietly against the wardrobe, his gaze fixed on the genesis pod as his eyes narrowed little by little.

…

At the same time, Great Xia, Zhennan.

The inner chamber on the fifth floor of Listening-to-Rain Tower twisted for a moment, and just like that crisp, dashing entrance of hers before, Bai Xiang pried open a fissure and stepped out.

Then she looked at the ceiling and wooden floor that had been sliced open by the rift and slowly shook her head. “Even with the Jade Spirit assisting, my control still can’t reach that truly meticulous level… Next time, I’d better do this outside.”

“Mmh…”

The moment Bai Xiang withdrew her mind’s control over her body—that is, removed every effect her soul-abilities were imposing on her flesh—large amounts of sweat immediately seeped out all over her body.

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Those beads of sweat soaked through all her clothes. Accompanied by the characteristic evaporation that followed intense exertion, several faint wisps of white mist rose above her head.

“Even my socks are soaked.”

Bai Xiang lowered her head and looked at her feet with distaste.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have worn socks when I went out in the first place.”

With one tug, she undid the tightly cinched waist sash. The black robe with golden dragon patterns, now damp through, swiftly slid down along the curves of her waist. Along with it, the black silk pantyhose giving off heat were stripped off as well and casually tossed into a corner of the training room.

Bai Xiang went downstairs and entered the washroom to rinse off.

She could have cleaned away the grime directly with the Vibration Art, but she had long since formed the habit.

After washing herself quickly, she filled a pool with hot water, stepped in and sat down, crossed her legs, straightened her back, and began reviewing and summarizing the battle from earlier.

The superficial gains were not worth mentioning. Whether it was the demon god’s corpse, the annihilation of two voidfiend armies, killing the Qingyun Demon Saint, killing the major threat Fang Yang, or indirectly all but blowing the Blood Lord apart… to Bai Xiang, all of those were merely external things.

The true gains had to lie within the Inner Body-scape, in the elevation of her true self.

“No… I can’t replicate it.”

After several attempts, Bai Xiang opened her eyes, her snowy brows knitting slightly.

She had been conducting experiments just now, trying to use Xiang Xian’s teachings and Fang Yang’s memories to perform extrapolation and, through that, deduce the future.

But she had failed several times in a row. Only once did she vaguely see an afterimage appear before her, but that afterimage shattered less than a millimeter after leaving her body. It provided no effective information at all.

“The path of extrapolation.”

“There is indeed a saying that Daoist extrapolation is about calculating every variable in order to deduce the future.”

“I used to think that was an exaggerated claim. Perhaps it really can predict the future, but that sort of prediction… is clearly not the same concept as the afterimage scenes I saw.”

“What I saw was closer to ‘future sight.’”

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“More intuitive. More concrete.”

“More useful in battle itself.”

Bai Xiang yearned to master this powerful technique. She kept trying, but only about once in every hundred attempts did she barely manage to succeed. It was nowhere near what could be called skillful mastery.

Even using her ability to hypnotize herself did not work; it only raised the success rate somewhat… Is it because I lack genuine stimulation?

Bai Xiang pondered.

Meditation was effective, but it was certainly different from real stimulation.

Perhaps if she encountered a similar crisis again, the success rate would rise enormously, but she definitely could not place her hopes on probability.

She still had to practice more.

She had to strive to master it proficiently.

Suddenly—

The world before her eyes blurred at once. A hazy afterimage stepped out from her body, strode over, and yanked open the washroom door, exposing a sneaky figure right there.

Hm?

In the next instant, the scene shattered. Bai Xiang focused and sensed for a moment, and a strange expression appeared on her face.

There was only one other person besides herself who had the authority to move freely above the second floor of Listening-to-Rain Tower, so there was no need to ask who that figure was.

The problem was what that person was holding in the ‘future sight.’

It seemed, probably…

to be the pair of black silk pantyhose she had taken off earlier.