Volume 5, Chapter 104 – Research Progress (2-in-1)

After their lovemaking, that same night, Bai Xiang had a dream, something that rarely happened to her.

The content of the dream was none other than some of the memories she had seized in the daytime while forcibly invading Li Wenyu’s mind.

Li Wenyu did not look old, only a little over thirty, but in reality she was already close to sixty.

Strictly speaking, she was not born in any state of the former dynasty. Rather, she was the result of intermarriage among the previous generation of the Feathering Sect’s “imperial clan.”

She was born within the sect and raised within it as well. From childhood, she had been steeped in doctrine by elders of every stripe, and had long since taken “restoring Great Xuan” as the sole mission of her existence.

If that woman were required to sacrifice herself, she would probably do it without the slightest hesitation. This was already the kind of mentality that could be called an ideological brand burned into the mind.

When she woke, Bai Xiang discovered Bai Zhuqing leaning sideways against the headboard, looking down at her with worry.

“Big Sis fell asleep,” Bai Zhuqing said. “You normally wouldn’t sleep this long, much less wake this late, and you sweated so much too.”

I sweated?

Bai Xiang was briefly taken aback. She sensed herself for a moment, and sure enough, her body was sticky all over.

“Did Big Sis have a nightmare?” Bai Zhuqing’s gaze grew even gentler. Speaking in that soft, sweet voice of hers, she leaned in and wrapped her arms around Bai Xiang. “Don’t be scared, Big Sis. Qing’er is here… Qing’er will never abandon Big Sis…”

What even is all this?

Bai Xiang was speechless. She had most likely sweated because her flesh and blood really were connected to Li Wenyu’s. Recalling memories related to Li Wenyu gave her body a sense of identification, and that could trigger certain emotional reactions in the body, but it had nothing to do with Bai Xiang’s own emotions.

Still, it was rare for the little girl to be this docile, so Bai Xiang did not expose it. Instead, she lifted Bai Zhuqing’s chin and leaned in, planning to start with a light breakfast.

After breakfast came the main course, and after the main course was over too, Bai Xiang carried the limp Bai Zhuqing to the washroom, ran the water, and took her down for a bath.

After washing up, the sisters got dressed and prepared to go their separate ways. Bai Zhuqing was going to continue inspecting the other two Demonic Aura Observation Towers, while also handling matters related to the establishment of the Education Directorate and other new departments. Bai Xiang, meanwhile, was heading for the back mountain to see what Hannah’s side had turned up after a night of research.

When she arrived, Bai Xiang was surprised to find someone squatting by the main entrance, playing Snake on his phone.

Bai Maoxu?

Well, although he worked at Starwater Company, his research direction was obviously electronic communications and biotechnology, especially cybernetic-body modification. He definitely had access to the back mountain as well, so he had probably hurried over after receiving an internal notice.

“Big Sis.” The moment Bai Maoxu saw her, he put down his phone and nodded in greeting. “I heard from the doctor that there were new materials, so I came over specifically to take a look.”

Bai Xiang asked, “Then why didn’t you just go in?”

Bai Maoxu shook his head. “The new materials all have something to do with you, Big Sis. The doctor said you’d be coming today too, so I just waited here instead.”

The “new materials” he meant were probably not the same “new materials” Bai Xiang had in mind.

Bai Xiang understood at once. Bai Maoxu did not know about the broken bone she had discovered yesterday, so what he was referring to should have been the Demon God remains that had been cut up and flown in.

Waiting until she arrived before going in was his way of showing her respect.

“Then let’s go in together.” Warmed inwardly, Bai Xiang invited him along.

“Okay.” Bai Maoxu nodded, a pleased expression appearing on his face. “If there are any materials I don’t recognize, I can ask you. There are some things even Senior Master said she didn’t understand, but she told me you might know the details.”

Bai Xiang did indeed know.

She had swallowed most of Fang Yang’s remnant soul, and had also inherited a great deal of the memories and knowledge of the saint from Pilgrimage Mountain. Many materials she had not recognized before only needed a glance now for her to identify them and explain what they were.

Bai Maoxu disinfected himself, Bai Xiang used the Vibration Art to shake the dust and microbes from her clothes, and the two of them entered the laboratory together to begin examining the delivered materials.

They had not gone all the way inside yet, and they had not seen Hannah or the others. Instead, an ordinary researcher came over and carefully explained things to them.

Bai Maoxu listened while nodding, occasionally pulling out a small notebook to jot things down, and at times taking pictures of the materials with his phone.

After a while, Hannah finally managed to make time to come out.

The researcher visibly heaved a sigh of relief, apologized, and hurried off at once.

“So, how’s it look?” Hannah was much more casual. After giving Bai Xiang a formal bow, she shoved both hands into the pockets of her white lab coat and half-narrowed her eyes at Bai Maoxu.

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She looked drastically different from before too.

Her skin was still green, and her hair was still that dark mossy green, and her features still looked somewhat strange, her eyes set rather far apart, her lips fairly thick, but at the very least she looked far more human than she had before.

That too was a change brought by cultivating qi methods.

Apparently, the qi-force trait she had awakened was “Catalyzed Regeneration,” meaning that as long as she attached qi-force to the surface of flesh, she could accelerate cell division inside it, thereby achieving rapid healing and regeneration.

When Bai Xiang had first heard about it, she had immediately wondered whether Hannah often used that ability to experiment on herself, cutting off a finger and regenerating it and the like.

A lizard’s natural healing ability was already strong. She also had the lizard’s own soul inside her body, so perhaps her awakened trait was related to that as well.

“Not bad.” Bai Maoxu nodded, then asked, “But these should all be ordinary materials, right?”

“Yes.” Hannah nodded. “The higher-end ones are farther in. Come this way.”

She led the two of them farther down, stopping outside a chamber fitted with bulletproof glass, then waved a hand to activate the lighting inside.

Bai Maoxu’s brows twitched at once, because as the lights came on, the giant wolf demon inside, bound by alloy chains, was revealed as well. It was just opening its blood-red eyes and turning toward them with a roar.

But halfway through opening its mouth, the wolf demon spotted Bai Xiang standing there.

It instantly cowered. Not only did it shut its mouth, it furrowed its brows, restored an expression of purity and innocence to its eyes, then dropped to its knees before her like the demons in old stories, pressing its two front paws together and repeatedly bowing.

“This is that Eclipsing-Moon Demon King?” Bai Xiang asked.

“Yes.” Hannah nodded. “This one was marked as having special use, so I didn’t do much to it, just drew a bit of blood… It’s nastier than the other great demons.”

Once they reached the Demon King level, people naturally got into the habit of referring to them as great demons.

This wolf demon was being kept for Liu Yong and the others to practice on, so Bai Xiang ignored it and continued on with Hannah.

Hannah was right. The Eclipsing-Moon Demon King was already getting the best treatment.

The chambers farther in held other Demon King captives of the same level, but those demon creatures were missing limbs left and right. One spider demon had even had its skull cracked open, and half the humanoid brain inside was gone.

None of those things were even properly conscious anymore. They had most likely been injected with and fed all kinds of drugs, so they barely reacted at all to the arrival of Bai Xiang and the others.

“The director took the most materials,” Hannah said in a helpless tone. “She said she wanted to take them back and study pill refinement…”

The director was Xiang Xian.

In truth, the entire back-mountain laboratory, together with the entire Great Xia Voidfiend Research Institute, had only been built under Xiang Xian’s direction.

Only after passing that row did they reach the main event.

On the third level, Bai Xiang finally saw the “Demon God remains.”

It was still housed in a similar glass chamber, but what hung inside was a gigantic eyeball.

The thing lay there lifelessly on the alloy floor, with countless cables inserted into its surface.

Bai Xiang shifted her gaze to where it touched the floor, and discovered that a layer of blood-red fungal mat was spreading outward at an extremely slow pace, while scattered across it were blood-red mushrooms ranging from one to five centimeters in height.

“Its blood is poisonous.” Hannah nodded. “Even though it’s dead, its blood and the things left inside it can still strongly interfere with the outside world.”

“Is this a kind of radiation?” Bai Maoxu asked.

“It really does resemble that.” Hannah’s eyes lit up. “Our internal discussions led us to conclude that the so-called interference of the Void Tribulation is very likely a kind of radiation. Its source would be a mysterious ray from deep space, and once matter is irradiated by it, it undergoes mutation.”

Bai Xiang pressed the matter. “Can it be observed?”

Hannah shook her head. “Not for now.”

Then at best, it was only a hypothesis.

Bai Xiang shook her head too.

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It was merely a scientific way of describing the interference of the Void Tribulation. Without evidence, it was only empty speculation.

And she did not believe the Void Tribulation was something that simple anyway.

“How do you plan to deal with it?” she asked Hannah.

Jiuli’s remains were a problem. Although the divine soul inside had already been destroyed by Bai Xiang, making it impossible for it to return from death the way the Buddha-corpse had, its flesh and blood still caused contamination. Even during transport, it had already caused quite a few soldiers to mutate.

For something like that, unless one’s qi-method realm was high enough, one was not even qualified to look at it without isolation.

That was why Bai Tingyun had rushed it over to Bai Xiang at top speed. He doted on his Tingyun Army, after all, and could not wait to be rid of the trouble.

“The director is still researching it,” Hannah replied. “At present, we’re trying to refine essences from demon blood, and also conducting some experiments by mixing it with other materials. If it works, then we’ll be able to make a new medicine from it. After qi cultivators take it, it can greatly stimulate their qi and blood.”

“Does it only have medicinal value?” Bai Maoxu was interested in something else entirely. “What about its bones? Its sinews and fascia?”

“And its body is so huge. What about its nerve threads? Have those materials been extracted too?”

“All of them.” Hannah smiled. “Those materials are far stronger than what you get from ordinary great demons. Whether you use them to make cultivators’ weapons or battle armor or cybernetic bodies, they’re all excellent… Though personally, I still recommend the first option.”

“Only as weapons?”

“Yes, and preferably not swords.”

“Why?”

“Because sword cultivators love using the sword-pellet method to store their weapons in their stomachs and nurture them there.” Hannah curled her lip. “The contamination of Loss of Order in these things is extremely hard to remove. Most likely, even after they’re turned into weapons, there’ll still be some residue. Even if one’s qi-method realm is enough to resist and counterbalance it, if you store that inside your body…”

Hannah left the sentence unfinished and merely shook her head.

Fair enough.

A weapon edge carrying contamination was not a flaw for a weapon. On the contrary, it increased lethality and destructive force. As long as the owner was not so bored that they cut themselves with the blade for fun, that side effect would basically only affect enemies.

But if you drew it into your body and nurtured it there, then things became hard to say. Hannah likely felt that sword cultivators were more “crazy” than ordinary cultivators, and so she especially did not recommend forging swords from these materials.

Bai Xiang thought to herself that Hannah really did understand sword cultivators.

It was a stereotype, but not an inaccurate one.

The Shenming method had enlightened the world and replaced the former dynasty’s rules of sword cultivation. Sentient beings no longer had to be bound to any one weapon type, and could choose freely among sabers, spears, swords, halberds, and the like.

That freedom of choice actually included firearms too.

Although in theory there was not much future in taking firearms as one’s main martial path, once you had enough people, all kinds of oddballs appeared. Quite a few disciples chose to use precious materials to manufacture guns, including some very large-caliber ones.

Every time Bai Xiang thought about that, she involuntarily remembered a game she had played in her previous life, one where magic, firearms, psychic force, and martial arts coexisted… She felt that this path might not necessarily be without prospects.

That was getting off topic.

In short, because of her influence as the founding patriarch, sword cultivators still formed the largest group, and they were far more extreme than cultivators of other branches.

They would not care in the slightest about contamination or no contamination… If an announcement were made within the Dao according to proper procedure, saying that a new batch of “unprecedentedly high-quality sword-forging materials” had arrived, then whether they were sword-cultivator disciples staying behind on Dao duty or sword-cultivator disciples currently studying at Zhennan University, every last one of them would go mad with excitement.

So it went. Hannah led the two of them through many dismembered Demon God remains being held separately. There were eyeballs, broken bones, sinews and fascia, and hair, all of which displayed contaminating properties to one degree or another.

Most of all, its nerve tissue.

Its nerve tissue was not in one of those small chambers. Instead, it was stored in a gigantic culture vessel large enough to fit several Gundams. Inside was a tangled mass of nerve tendrils connected to brain tissue, chaotic and disorderly, and utterly indescribable to behold.

A very complete flaying job.

That was Bai Xiang’s assessment.

Aside from the damaged areas she herself had cut, the nerve fibers in the other sections had all been stripped off in connected lengths.

Hannah did not have that kind of ability. Xiang Xian had definitely wielded the knife personally.

This thing’s contamination was the most intense. Even through the glass casing, it could still leak through. Every researcher, including Bai Maoxu, had to wear specially made protective suits and helmets when handling it. Only Golden Core cultivators could face it without protection.

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After inspecting the research progress on Jiuli’s remains, Bai Xiang was fairly satisfied.

She especially valued the part concerning medicinal use.

Her great ambition was to forcibly embed qi methods into this world’s “food chain.” On this path, influenced by her personally, all the cultivators who practiced it truly had shown extraordinary resistance to demon blood, demonic aura, and demonic power.

And that was not all.

She was not sure whether it had anything to do with her once having cultivated by devouring demonic power, but among qi cultivators, a portion of them had also displayed a kind of “bloodthirst” toward demonic power.

If there were cases, then that meant the path of “letting qi methods accelerate cultivation by devouring demonic power” was viable.

At present, they merely lacked research, and lacked enough people capturing demon creatures to conduct experiments on.

Bai Maoxu was rooted to the spot by Jiuli’s nerves and could no longer move away, so Bai Xiang simply had Hannah stay there and explain things to him while she went deeper inside alone to find Xiang Xian.

Click.

The alloy doors opened to either side.

As the gap widened, Bai Xiang looked down and saw two little foxes, one white and one black, squatting at the entrance like door guardians welcoming her.

The little white fox on the left bared its teeth at Bai Xiang, smiling in an adorably soft and sweet way.

The little black fox on the right had been trying to imitate it all along. Seeing this, it bared its teeth at Bai Xiang as well, but its smile was far more terrifying.

There were countless golden eyeballs beneath its fur. As it bared its teeth, its fox head split apart, exposing even more golden, blister-like eyes across its face, then using those eyes as the core to reassemble itself into no fewer than eight fox faces.

An ordinary person would piss themselves on the spot.

“Go play by yourself.”

Bai Xiang kicked the thing lightly to make it stop blocking the way.

“Grrrululu…”

A growl came from the little black fox’s throat.

It was not displeasure. Rather… based on Bai Xiang’s understanding of it, this was its attempt to imitate the white fox’s cute little whimpering cries.

In other words, it was acting coquettish.

Ignoring the thing, Bai Xiang went around it in search of Xiang Xian, and could not help comparing that Buddha-corpse fox with the Bodhisattva from White Crane Temple.

If only all ancient great beings were corpse-forms like this, and all so easy to control.

“You’re here.”

As usual, Xiang Xian was wearing a purple palace dress underneath and a white lab coat over it. She held a photonic screen in one hand, and, rather ostentatiously, she was wearing a pair of gold-rimmed glasses.

Oddly enough, once she put on the glasses, her whole aura changed instantly.

Before, she had merely seemed stately. With the glasses on, however, she became quite a bit more alluring.

“I heard that Dao Lord Li stayed in Zhennan to teach, and didn’t return to Zezhou with the people from Shangqing Peak.”

On a sudden whim, Bai Xiang took a teasing jab at her master.

“I wonder whether Master has any idea why that might be.”

In response to the “University Plan” laid down by Bai Zhuqing, Shangqing Peak, like the other peaks, had dispersed and reopened schools. Returning to Zezhou, they had reestablished the Shangqing Academy there.

But Abbess Li Sheng had not gone back with them. Instead, she had remained in Zhennan and taken a position as honorary principal at Zhennan University. To Bai Xiang, the reason for that was actually very obvious.

“Oh my… to think you’d take the initiative to bring up this kind of topic with me. Looks like the little girl from back then really has grown up…”

Hearing this, Xiang Xian raised a hand and adjusted her glasses. Her narrow, seductive eyes narrowed in a rather dangerous way.

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“I’m concerned about Master’s major life affairs.” Bai Xiang’s expression was completelycalm and composed? Wait must translate. Sorry fix. Need final coherent.

I don’t think there’s anything to avoid about it.

I even nudged Bai Shengju into going to look for someone, so why should my bargain master be any different?

“Hmph…” Xiang Xian curled her lip, looking a little unnatural.

“I don’t really mind… I came to terms with that sort of thing a long time ago.”

“But Li Sheng… she’s a monastic.”

“Her cage is heavier than mine.”

So in other words, she was the one less able to let go.

Bai Xiang understood.

She immediately began thinking about giving her master a few tricks later, preferably something that would make her take the initiative to approach the other woman.

Xiang Xian, however, had no idea that her most beloved and proudest disciple was plotting such things. She pulled Bai Xiang over to a culture vessel and pointed at the broken bone inside.

“Where did you drag this thing back from?”

That way of putting it…

Bai Xiang frowned.

Xiang Xian was obviously retaliating verbally for Bai Xiang’s earlier teasing, but Bai Xiang did not mind. She simply recounted the process of hunting down the “soul-gu.”

“It’s actually related to the Sun-Chasing Scripture?” Xiang Xian drew in a breath. “Could it be the legendary Kuafu Clan?”

After obtaining the accumulated memories of Pang Tiandao and Fang Yang, Bai Xiang had, after returning, taken time to copy down some of what she had seen and heard, organizing it into volumes. At Xiang Xian’s level, she naturally had access to those records.

Among them was one ancient human branch seemingly related to the Sun-Chasing Scripture. They had no specific recorded name, and “Kuafu Clan” was a label Bai Xiang herself had given them.

“Is there some problem with it?”

Bai Xiang was curious.

For Xiang Xian to start asking question after question right away, the data on this thing must have been extraordinary?

“The cellular activity and neural activity are both abnormally high…” Xiang Xian shook her head.

“Do you know what that means?”

“It means it hasn’t ‘died’ at all. If I want to, I can replicate its stem cells at any time and print out its original body!”

“For example, like this.”

As Xiang Xian operated rapidly on the light screen, more than a dozen mechanical arms extended from the culture vessel and began rubbing and stretching the marrow surface with tiny brush-like tips.

The change came quickly. Biomatter began to gush from the tips, stretching out from the broken end in streaks of blood and gradually printing a complete bone.

A finger bone?

Bai Xiang narrowed her eyes.

She had already suspected as much when she brought it back, but only at this moment did she truly confirm it. This broken bone, about as long as her forearm, was only a single finger bone.

That meant that if the complete skeleton of the original body were printed out, its size would vastly exceed that of modern humans.

So it really was an ancient human branch…

The incomparably mysterious Kuafu Clan.

A primordial life-form said to cultivate no methods at all, relying purely on the flesh to withstand the Void Tribulation head-on and cross the void.