Volume 5, Chapter 111 – Suffusing the Dao Heart (2-in-1)

The darkness of the Void Realm was deeper still than outer space.

This Silver-Shuttle Vessel, disguised as a bus on the outside, was probably built with very high-grade void crystals. Its interior was much larger than its outward appearance suggested. The layout resembled a train, with a corridor and a row of sealed rooms.

As soon as Bai Xiang boarded, she swept every room with her divine sense. Only after confirming that, aside from herself and Li Wenyu, the only other person on board was the young driver did she quietly let her hand fall away from the sword hilt at her waist.

“Do you… want to stay with me?”

Li Wenyu’s voice came from beside her.

Bai Xiang glanced at her and actually read a trace of expectation in her eyes.

“Do you regard me as kin?” she asked directly.

This!

Li Wenyu had not expected her to be so blunt. She parted her lips, then said stiffly, “I… I know our positions and identities are very different. Maybe you will never acknowledge someone like me, someone who abandoned you. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to make amends.”

Bai Xiang raised a brow and went on, “There’s no need to say things like that. Don’t make me think you’re that shallow.”

Then she moved past Li Wenyu, found a room for herself, and stepped inside alone.

Li Wenyu gave a bitter smile.

Of course she understood what Bai Xiang meant. Bai Xiang was saying to her: if you have clung to your ideals so firmly that you could abandon your own child without hesitation, even disregard your own life, then you should not stoop this low just to please someone else.

She definitely thinks I’m trying to curry favor with her to win her forgiveness, so I can get some benefit out of it.

Li Wenyu felt helpless. In truth, that was only human nature.

If she were forced to explain it, even she herself could not clearly say why she had suddenly wanted to draw closer to Bai Xiang. She was certain of one thing at least: she had not developed any feeling toward Bai Xiang that could truly be called “affection.”

At present, she simply did not yet understand whether it was only a form of “curiosity.”

Bai Xiang clearly intended to carry the disguise through to the end. After entering the room, she chose a lower bunk, sat cross-legged on it, and began regulating her breath and circulating qi.

If Li Wenyu had not been traveling with her, naturally there would have been no need for any disguise.

But Meng Wanyu had gone out of her way to arrange for Li Wenyu to be brought over. Bai Xiang intended to remain hidden and see exactly what the other side was plotting.

The powerful qi aura of the Divine Palace Realm flowed with her blood, yet made no outward disturbance at all.

Only from Bai Xiang’s own perspective, only by turning inward with her soul-abilities and observing within, could one see clearly that the stellar orifices inside her body were flashing one by one, linked in streaks of light like the electric sparks passing through a nervous system.

Suddenly, she opened her eyes. In the dimness, it was as though two golden swords had left their sheaths.

That was terrifying!

Li Wenyu, who had just pushed open the door and entered, held her breath and did not dare let out even the slightest puff of air.

From her perspective, she could only see Bai Xiang’s shadow seated on the bed. Then, in that darkness, two bursts of golden light suddenly lit up. When they swept over her, she truly felt as though her eyes had been scorched with pain.

“Did you not understand what I meant just now?” Bai Xiang asked the visitor coldly.

She had already made it clear that she did not want to stay together, and yet Li Wenyu had come over on her own anyway. That was a little too thick-skinned.

“No… maybe it isn’t what you think,” Li Wenyu replied.

At first she pulled stiffly at the corners of her mouth, forcing out a fairly gentle smile. Then the curve of her lips widened further as she said, “After all, you acknowledged that identity… so we may really have to stay together like this.”

Hm?

Bai Xiang frowned.

Then she realized what Li Wenyu meant. She was referring to the maid identity mentioned when they boarded.

If she was a maid, then naturally it made sense for her to stay with her mistress. If the two of them took separate rooms, the driver in front would definitely grow suspicious.

This would not have been difficult to resolve. The hallucinations the young driver had seen had all been deliberately planted by Bai Xiang. If she simply tampered with his perception one more time, Li Wenyu would lose her excuse.

But Bai Xiang did not do that.

Rеαԁ oո КatRеаⅾіngСаfе

She looked carefully at Li Wenyu and found that she seemed a little excited, as though she had found a loophole in the rules and gotten a small bargain out of it.

There was no need to reveal more of her abilities in front of her.

Bai Xiang said nothing, which amounted to tacit consent for Li Wenyu to stay in the room.

There were two beds in all, both bunk beds. Bai Xiang took the lower bunk on one side, while Li Wenyu chose the lower bunk opposite her.

Bai Xiang watched her make the bed, then closed her eyes and immersed herself in cultivation again.

After a while, Taishang Response sent her a warning.

Opening her eyes, she saw that Li Wenyu had copied her and sat in full lotus as well. In her hands was a cheap, widely circulated copy of the Shenming Qi-Refining Formula, and she was gazing intently at Bai Xiang.

When she noticed Bai Xiang looking at her, Li Wenyu first guiltily shifted her eyes away. Then she looked back again and asked, “May I… ask you for guidance in qi arts?”

Bai Xiang stared at her and did not answer.

“I watched the news.” Li Wenyu turned her face aside again as she explained. “I saw many things that shattered my understanding and common sense… I don’t understand them, so I want to try cultivating it myself.”

“The guards also said I could ask an instructor from one of the grand academies to teach me.”

“But in the end, no instructor can compare with you, can they?”

She had actually been thinking this for some time already.

Her resolve had not been as firm then as it was now, but she really had already sent people to collect this sort of little blue booklet, and had even tried reading through it on the way to Zhennan.

But Bai Xiang still did not speak.

It was as though she had no intention whatsoever of paying her any attention.

So she still hates me after all…

Li Wenyu’s body stiffened, and inwardly she mocked herself for inviting humiliation.

“The point you’re trying to open isn’t where you think it is.”

A voice suddenly came from the front of the room.

“If you can’t locate the acupoint accurately, and your vocalization is wrong, then if you want to refine your first wisp of qi power, it will take you at least half a year.”

“In other words, you do not possess what would conventionally be called ‘talent for qi arts.’”

“In any sect, dojo, or academy, someone like you would be classed as a mediocrity.”

That assessment was mercilessly harsh. Li Wenyu felt her heart trembling as she heard it.

“But since it is I whom you are asking…”

Bai Xiang drew out the last syllables slightly, then suddenly emitted an extremely strange sound from her throat, one so odd that at first hearing it was impossible to tell what animal it resembled.

“!?”

Li Wenyu’s eyes widened. She felt an immense wave of sound surge toward her, using the air as a medium to transmit force into her body.

This kind of transmission was more thorough and more comprehensive than any kind of kneading massage or acupoint pressing. Li Wenyu felt the air in every direction passing Bai Xiang’s vibrating force into her body along with that sound. The waves of force penetrated her skin and sinews, compressed her blood and qi, guided the exertion of her strength, and all but led her by the hand until her own throat cavity trembled as well, producing a resonant cry exactly identical to Bai Xiang’s.

“Pfft!”

After letting out that cry, Li Wenyu spat out a large mouthful of blood. It was blackish in color and reeked of rot, and when it hit the floor, it actually writhed on its own.

This is… the demon blood inside me!

Li Wenyu’s breathing was somewhat weak, but her eyes were frighteningly bright.

She realized that the demonic power corrosion that had plagued her for such a long time had actually been worn away by half at the very moment she succeeded in cultivating qi arts, and had been expelled from her body as foul blood.

Could qi arts truly be this miraculous?

Li Wenyu parted her lips, realizing that she should be thanking Bai Xiang at a time like this.

Reαⅾ оո КαtRеaԁіnɡСαfе

But when she looked over again, Bai Xiang had already closed her eyes, clearly unwilling to pay her any further attention.

Time passed just like that, and before long, six hours had gone by.

During that time, Li Wenyu consulted Bai Xiang three more times.

She discovered that Bai Xiang’s perceptions were astonishingly sharp. As long as Li Wenyu looked at her and the corresponding thought arose in her heart, Bai Xiang would open her eyes at once and, before Li Wenyu could fully voice her request, help her cultivate either with words or with transmitted vibrating force.

How strange.

She had already wondered about this back when Bai Xiang first peered into her memories. Could those eyes truly see through other people’s thoughts?

“Your ‘spirit’ is too weak.”

This time Bai Xiang did not open her eyes. She answered Li Wenyu’s question with her eyes still closed.

“Spirit means the soul. Some forms of life are born with souls stronger than those of other lives. Because of that, they awaken wisdom and thought, and only then are they called sapient beings.”

“If the soul of a sapient being possesses an intense enough obsession, then even after death it can remain gathered without dispersing. It can transform into a Demon Pool aberration and, following a certain logic, form unique rules within a limited area.”

“In the past, such rules were called the ‘principles of Demon Pools.’”

“Sapient beings with powerful souls possess a unique gift in discerning the principles of Demon Pools. They often experience effects like a sudden flash of insight.”

“But that is not necessarily because they are more intelligent. It also has to do with their souls being so strong that, through the entanglement of one spirit with another, they can comprehend that set of rules.”

Li Wenyu listened in half-understanding and half-confusion, then asked Bai Xiang, “Do you mean that because your spirit is too strong and mine is too weak, the effect is similar to how someone with a powerful soul can comprehend the principles of a Demon Pool, and so my thoughts are very easily read by you?”

Bai Xiang did not answer.

But from the tacit understanding Li Wenyu had built with her over these past several hours, no answer amounted to tacit agreement.

So that’s how it is.

Li Wenyu understood inwardly.

No wonder she can do so many strange and uncanny things… Her soul is simply too powerful, so powerful that to others she is like a Demon Pool facing an ordinary mortal. Naturally, she can use Illusory God methods to bewitch ordinary people, to throw them into hallucinations.

She can even directly read the thoughts surfacing on the outer layer of an ordinary person’s soul.

A thought stirred in her heart, and Li Wenyu asked again, “Is that ability unique to you?”

Bai Xiang opened her eyes.

From those beautiful, enchanting dark-gold eyes, Li Wenyu read a trace of mockery.

Apparently not.

Then again, that made sense… As long as they were sapient beings, as long as they were creatures capable of awakening wisdom, the strength of their souls was enough in principle for them to form a Demon Pool after death. The only question was whether, at the moment of death, they possessed a sufficiently intense obsession.

Everyone had a soul. This was no privilege.

In theory, as long as one could train the strength of the soul to her level, anyone could possess that kind of ability, and perhaps awaken those kinds of eyes as well.

“Have you thought it through?”

Hm?

It was rare to hear Bai Xiang speak again, and Li Wenyu looked up at her in surprise.

She did not understand. Thought what through?

“It seems you haven’t realized it yourself. In your subconscious, you have always deeply longed to obtain ‘freedom.’” Bai Xiang looked at Li Wenyu, then shifted her gaze to the little blue booklet resting at the side.

“Otherwise, there would be no need for you to study this.”

“Am I wrong?”

This…

Rеαԁ οո KаtRеаԁіոɡСαfе

Li Wenyu was inwardly stirred, but did not show it.

Instead, she asked Bai Xiang, “Compared with that, what concerns me more is how far the Xia Emperor actually wants to go in ‘ordering the world.’”

“You are clearly… using force to suppress everything in practice, yet you are willing to grant the lower strata so much freedom.”

“Forgive my bluntness, but this looks very contradictory, because many of your policies do not seem favorable to consolidating imperial authority. If anything, they seem more like… dismantling it.”

Ever since the concept of imperial power had come into existence, it had necessarily been arbitrary and overbearing.

And yet the Great Xia of today felt very strange to Li Wenyu. On the one hand, it possessed the most powerful and least questionable ruler in all of history, in terms of concentrated authority. On the other hand, many of its systems and institutions seemed to lack any sense of reverence toward that ruler.

There was something that could be called “open” or “enlightened” within them, and that stood in opposition to “dictatorship” and “centralized rule.”

Wasn’t that contradictory?

It looked as though “the monarch were actively forging shackles for herself.”

If Bai Xiang were not so strong, and so young, Li Wenyu might even have suspected that Bai Xiang was deliberately setting the tone for the world after her own death, laying down the rules for that future world.

Of course Li Wenyu wanted to know how Bai Xiang thought.

Perhaps Bai Xiang would not explain something this sensitive to her, but Li Wenyu felt that she might never again have another opportunity to be this close to Bai Xiang.

If she missed this chance, she would never be able to ask again.

“I am obviously not plotting my own funeral arrangements.” Bai Xiang looked at her with an even stranger expression.

Then again, that was normal. What she intended to do had no precedent before her, and likely would have no successor after her either. It was only natural that Li Wenyu could not understand it.

“There is something wrong with this world,” Bai Xiang continued. “Heaven and earth can give rise to the calamity of the Void Tribulation. Over the past countless hundreds of millions of years, innumerable sapient beings have gone forward one after another, like men trying to tame a flood, searching for a way to govern the Void Tribulation and coexist with it. Yet not a single one can be called truly successful.”

“The ancient human race does not count. They cultivated only the flesh and never touched the Three Flowers. The stronger they trained the body, the more severely they burned through the lifespan allotted to them by Heaven.”

“Though I have not read many records, I suspect that every single individual among the ancient human race had a rather short lifespan.”

“And Dao-Void Methods, Sword Dao, and the Sacred Weapon Clan do not count either. They all carry their own hidden dangers.”

Bai Xiang shook her head.

“I only want to correct what is wrong.”

“I will be the one to set right these disordered principles.”

So she really did want to create a new “food chain,” to embed the Path of Qi and qi arts into it. She had even said that qi arts would henceforth feed on demonic power, that voidfiends would become nourishment for human qi…

Li Wenyu had already heard similar things from her before, so she was not overly shocked. Looking at Bai Xiang, she continued, “But what if you succeed?”

“That alone would be incredibly difficult. As those fragments return, what you will have to face is every great power that has slumbered through countless eons for the sake of self-preservation.”

“But if you really do succeed, if you really accomplish all of that, can you be sure that the imperial dynasty you create, the rules of this new world, won’t turn around and harm you?”

That was what Li Wenyu truly did not understand.

It was also why she had felt that Bai Xiang was preparing for death.

The logic was obvious. Right now, you stand opposed to many people because what you are doing harms their interests. And right now, your imperial dynasty supports you because they need to rely on you in order to survive under those people’s pressure and suppression.

But if all those threats disappeared, if the new world were truly built, would the imperial dynasty established according to the present momentum, Great Xia, really permit an autocratic female emperor to stand forever above them?

What Bai Xiang had given those people was not merely power.

The essence of qi arts was absolutely not something as shallow as mere strength. It blended Buddhist principles with Daoist canons, and even contained elements of the Confucian classics. It was a true union of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism, something capable of enlightening wisdom.

Take Li Wenyu herself.

At the moment she awakened her first wisp of qi power, she had gained an insight, a feeling of “freedom” and “ease” unlike anything she had ever known before, because for the first time she had seen hope of escaping demonic power and the interference of Loss of Order. And she believed that everyone who cultivated qi arts had felt the same.

For the first time, they had all tasted the flavor of “freedom.”

For the first time, they understood that they could actually reach such a level through themselves alone, that by digging out their own potential they could resist the corrosion of demonic power, oppose demon beasts, Demon Pools, Void Demons… and even natural disasters, Celestial Change and Earthly Upheaval. They could oppose everything with their own strength!

Rеаԁ оո KαtRеαdіոɡСαfe

How could sapient beings awakened to such a way of thinking possibly tolerate a monarch standing above their heads?

If Bai Xiang truly succeeded, Li Wenyu was certain of one thing: she would be betrayed again.

“Hm?”

At that question, Bai Xiang finally frowned slightly.

She did not quite understand. In the Jade Spirit’s analysis, Li Wenyu’s feelings toward her did not qualify as familial affection. At most, there were only the faintest signs of a beginning.

Then why did she care about this?

If she were a mother who truly cared for her and loved her, then saying such things would be one thing. But why was she meddling in this when she had nothing better to do?

“Human beings are contradictory things by nature.”

“They seek the peace of long life, yet fear the loneliness of long life.”

Bai Xiang said,

“If you insist on an answer, then all I can say is… I do not care how they see me.”

“I do these things because I myself want to do them.”

“It is not because I pitied someone, or because someone moved me. It is simply because I feel ‘this is wrong,’ and so I will change it. That is all.”

“As for how they see me after it is changed, whether they revere me, worship me, honor me, love me… or slander me, fear me, dread me, hate me, I do not care.”

“I will continue to exist.”

“I will go on existing, forever and ever.”

Bai Xiang spoke those words in an utterly calm tone, and yet the shock they brought Li Wenyu far exceeded any of their earlier conversations.

In Li Wenyu’s eyes, Bai Xiang at that moment seemed like the Buddha itself. Behind her seated lotus posture, there seemed to appear a brilliant halo, dazzling enough that one could scarcely look straight at it.

Perhaps… perhaps flesh and blood from the same root really did share some connection.

At least that was what Li Wenyu believed. She felt that, in that moment, she truly resonated with Bai Xiang to a considerable degree. The sensation of thought and soul trembling together was something she would never, ever forget for all eternity.

“Then…”

She parted her lips, still wanting to say something more.

Boom!

But at that very moment, the carriage suddenly shook violently, directly cutting her off.

What happened?

Li Wenyu looked up and reflexively turned toward the carriage wall.

“Someone’s here.”

Bai Xiang broke her seated posture and got down from the bed.

Things were beginning to get interesting.

She glanced at Li Wenyu.

The other side did not know she was here. Otherwise, they would never have dared to come.

Which meant this move could only be aimed at Li Wenyu.

Qing’er really did call it right.

It was a trap.

Just not one aimed at me.