Volume 5, Chapter 112 – Jiuluo Guangyu (Two-in-One)

The shaking came fast and left just as fast. With one last violent shudder dragging at the end of it, the bus vessel came to a complete stop as if it had slammed into something.

Li Wenyu copied Bai Xiang and jumped down from the bed, her eyes seeking Bai Xiang’s opinion.

“You go out first.”

Bai Xiang’s lips did not appear to move at all, yet that cool, detached voice sounded right beside her ear.

So she’s going to use me as bait.

Li Wenyu’s heart stirred, but for some reason she felt a little relieved instead.

In the end, I received Emperor Xia’s grace. I have no power to repay Emperor Xia, so the least I can do is contribute in this way.

She warned herself like that and stepped forward first to pull open the cabin door.

Bang!

The outline of the compartment had already warped. The door had been jammed into the frame, and she had to yank it inward with force before it finally came open.

Li Wenyu stuck her head out first and looked around the passageway. Only after confirming there was nothing unusual did she step out with her longsword in hand and carefully make her way toward the front of the vessel.

Bai Xiang followed behind her at an exquisitely subtle distance. If anyone were observing Li Wenyu from the front, it would have been impossible for them to see Bai Xiang at all. The shadows in the rear half of the compartment happened to cover Bai Xiang from head to toe.

In truth, Bai Xiang already knew what had happened.

The interior of this bus vessel was not large. The instant the door opened, she extended her spiritual sense and swept through the whole thing. She discovered that the young driver had died miserably in his seat, with a city-breaking ballista bolt as thick as a drink bottle lodged straight through the middle of his chest.

By then, Li Wenyu had also reached the front section. Looking ahead, she saw that the front compartment had been horribly deformed. Large swathes of silver-gray metal casing had been crumpled and crushed together. The young driver was not only pinned to that heap of twisted steel wreckage by the bolt, but his lower body had been compressed by the metal into a crimson paste of flesh and blood.

“This is…”

Li Wenyu was not quite sure what to make of it. She wanted to turn and look at Bai Xiang, but just as she started to tilt her head, a faint breeze brushed past the tip of her nose.

Like a ghost, Bai Xiang appeared in front of Li Wenyu. Her raised right hand happened to catch a bolt that had pierced through the window.

Krrk!

The blue-glowing metal arrowhead struck the center of Bai Xiang’s palm. As though plastic had slammed head-on into steel, it was flattened and ripped apart, splitting from the center of the tip into four strips of metal.

Crash!

Immediately after that, the windows all around them were forced open, and figures leaped in from every side. Judging by their attire, they fell roughly into two groups.

One group wore pitch-black skintight combat suits. Some carried cold weapons like blades and swords, while others held firearms. Every one of them wore masks and helmets, and they looked highly trained.

The movements of the second group were far less uniform. Some wore only cloth robes, while others had bulletproof vests over those robes. Their weapons were mostly swords, sabers, and staves, and they only jumped in after the black-clad fighters.

On the surface, the black-clad fighters looked more dangerous, but Bai Xiang saw through their movements at a glance. That bunch of oddly dressed robed men had Dao-Void Methods cultivation far above the soldiers in front of them.

“Hm?”

These people had assumed Li Wenyu should already have been shot through. They had only come in to retrieve the corpse. The moment they saw Bai Xiang standing before Li Wenyu, especially when they saw the deformed bolt in her hand, they all froze.

What the hell?

That was a Demon-Breaking Ballista, a strategic weapon whose single shot could blast straight through a Golden Core cultivator. How could someone stop it with one hand?

Reαd οn КatRеαԁіոɡСafе

And from the look of it, she had taken it head-on. Was this some kind of illusion?

“You came to kill her.” Bai Xiang casually tossed the ruined bolt aside. Her golden pupils swept back and forth across their faces. “Why? Who sent you?”

At this point, there was no need for any disguise. In the eyes of those attackers, Bai Xiang’s image gradually sharpened from a blur into clarity, allowing them to see her dark black dragon robe and her features.

Di Xiang!

How could it be her?

The instant they recognized her, every one of them was scared out of their wits. The black-clad leader immediately raised a hand and flashed the tactical signal for retreat. The robed men behind him no longer cared about cursing the bad intelligence and turned to flee at once.

“You’re already here. Why are you in such a hurry to say goodbye?”

Bai Xiang’s voice came from behind them, followed by an invisible ripple.

“Taishang. Hereby. Gives. Order. Void, be sealed.”

Using the surge of sound as its carrier, the ripple spread outward at high speed, passing over every body in an instant.

Li Wenyu was unaffected. She stared blankly at the scene before her. She could feel that every person who was in the middle of fleeing paused for a moment as the ripple washed over them.

Then Bai Xiang raised her right hand before her again. Her five pale fingers swayed lightly like lotus petals, slowly curling inward until they clenched into a fist.

Something terrifying happened.

All of the attackers, together with the environment around them as they were leaping away, began collapsing toward the center, condensing into a single ball of flesh.

Splatter!

Great sheets of blood spread out from the meatball, while streaks of bloody remnant souls rose from it, shrieking and howling as they lunged at Bai Xiang like evil spirits.

Bai Xiang merely lifted her gaze and swept it across them once. The overwhelming spiritual sense projected through her eyes crushed those impurities on the spot, turning them into pure mind-energy that her body absorbed on its own.

“You…”

From the beginning of the attack, to those people jumping in, to their total annihilation at Bai Xiang’s hands, the whole sequence had taken only an extremely short time. Only now did Li Wenyu finally react. Her lips parted slightly as she stared at Bai Xiang. “You’re not leaving a single survivor?”

“There’s no need.”

Bai Xiang’s expression remained utterly calm.

“A weak soul cannot protect its own thoughts even while alive, much less after death. I trust the testimony of the dead more.”

That was definitely not a method the Xuandi Scripture was supposed to have.

Li Wenyu felt a chill of fear. She now completely believed that Bai Xiang had not inherited the Xuandi legacy.

The Feathering Sect did have records concerning the Xuandi Scripture. They were not records of its exact contents, but they did know what it should look like once cultivated successfully and what methods it should grant.

Back then, the Xuandi’s most famous techniques were the ability to knock a person’s soul out of the body, as well as to seize and control souls weaker than himself in order to extract information.

But when had the process ever been this sinister? This was practically a method of an evil faction like Blood Soul Heaven.

Bai Xiang said nothing. She was rapidly refining the memory fragments supplied by those remnant souls.

Rеаd oո ΚαtRеаⅾіոgCafe

The black-clad men came from District 21 of the Starsea Federation’s Star Ring Military Region. That much was easy enough to guess from their gear.

They were a tactical squad that normally patrolled the space ring in a vessel. They had no idea what exactly this mission entailed. They had simply received a sudden order from their superiors to use the vessel’s void-traversal function to reach a certain set of coordinates, pick up that batch of robed men, take them to another location, and cooperate with them in intercepting a small vessel.

As for those robed men, most of them had shaved heads beneath their hats and hoods. Their true identities were monks of Jiuluo Heaven.

Jiuluo Heaven had once been one of the many heaven-seas of the Void Realm. It had been sealed off internally and cut off from contact with the outside world for a very long time. Its population of over ten million had all been monks and Buddhist followers, and every one of them worshiped a thing called the Jiuluo Guangyu Buddha.

Ever since Pang Tiandao initiated the primordial reversion, Jiuluo Heaven, like the other heaven-seas, had begun merging with the main world. In the process, ninety-nine percent of its monks and devotees were devoured by void-rending tears. The survivors were absorbed and assimilated by the Starsea Federation, hidden all this time deep in its heartland without being exposed.

But now they had been sent out specifically to assassinate Li Wenyu?

Li Wenyu had grown up in the Yu Dynasty era. Her cultivation was, at most, equivalent to the seventh layer of Refining Qi. She did not even have a Golden Core, and her combat strength was nothing worth mentioning. The only noteworthy thing about her was her status as the biological mother on this side.

But if that status was what they valued, shouldn’t their first thought have been to capture and use her?

Why come in trying to kill her outright the moment they arrived?

This surface-level information could not answer Bai Xiang’s doubts. She increased the nourishment she fed to the Jade Spirit, and at last pieced together a complete recording from countless fragments of memory.

It took place in a grand and majestic hall of carved stone. A tall, gaunt figure spoke softly to those below.

“Your Buddha Lord has yet to awaken. As believers, you should do everything in your power to help It.”

“Indeed.”

A response came immediately from below.

“Then we can make a deal.” The tall figure nodded and drew an object from his sleeve.

“If you can help me kill one person and bring me her corpse, I will agree to lend you a treasure. With that treasure, you can accelerate your Buddha Lord’s revival.”

After saying that, he tossed the object out. It spun in the air until its true appearance was finally revealed.

It was a razor.

Its two-fold design made one think at a glance of the razor used to shave one’s head upon entering the monastic order.

The moment Bai Xiang glimpsed that object through the memory image, she could already vaguely hear chanting Brahmic hymns by her ears. In a trance, it seemed as though hundreds of arhats and bodhisattvas were gathered around her, and as they chanted, endless pink flower petals began to drift down from the sky.

The bewitching power of that chanting was terrifyingly strong. In the image, the monks standing below all went blank the instant they heard it, then dropped to their knees before the floating razor and cried out mournfully, “We welcome the sacred artifact!”

But that sort of enchantment was useless against Bai Xiang.

She was not disturbed in the slightest. Her gaze remained clear as she locked onto the razor, taking in its outline and even every last pattern on its metal surface.

Then the scene shattered.

It seemed those people knew no more than this.

She still did not know why they wanted Li Wenyu dead, but at least she now knew their general background.

The Starsea Federation and the monks of Jiuluo Heaven.

The tall, gaunt figure in that scene was clearly the Demon Lord. He had promised to use that razor-shaped dharma treasure to help those people speed up their Buddha Lord’s revival. That razor most likely came from the ruins of Jinguang Temple.

Rеαd οո KαtReаԁinɡСαfе

Jinguang Temple…

Could a treasure excavated from that place help revive the Jiuluo Guangyu Buddha because all Buddhist dharmas shared the same root? Or was it because the Jiuluo Guangyu Buddha itself had some connection to Jinguang Temple?

Frowning slightly, Bai Xiang looked at Li Wenyu and suddenly realized that her attitude toward her had already changed.

At first, she had not cared. If Li Wenyu showed any sign of betrayal, Bai Xiang would have killed her casually.

But with each exchange between them, Li Wenyu had shown a capacity for reflection, and Bai Xiang’s negative impression of her really had begun to fade.

That did not mean forgiveness.

Nor did it mean overlooking the many sins Li Wenyu had committed in aiding the Feathering Sect.

But abandoning Li Wenyu and letting her live or die on her own in the void, or letting other people kill her in front of Bai Xiang’s eyes, was now something Bai Xiang could no longer do.

“Does the Feathering Sect have a library of scriptures and records?”

All at once, Bai Xiang spoke and asked Li Wenyu.

“Yes.” Li Wenyu nodded. “…We may be short on money and short on people, but we are definitely not short on books.”

What a joke. They were remnants of the Great Xuan.

What kind of era had the Great Xuan belonged to?

The Yu Dynasty had ruled for sixteen hundred years. Go back another sixteen hundred years before that, past the barbaric era of tribal conflict, past that round of Void Tribulation that had plunged civilization back into a savage age, and the Great Xuan stood there before all of it.

With such a long history behind it, as long as anything had survived, there was no way it would be lacking in books and classical records.

“Oh?” Bai Xiang lifted a brow and continued, “Then have you heard of the Jiuluo Guangyu Buddha?”

Judging from the attackers’ memories, they were already not far from the ruins of Jinguang Temple.

She was definitely going there, but that did not stop her from gathering more intelligence first.

She had not expected much, but to her surprise, Li Wenyu thought for a moment and then nodded. “I have… You want to know about that Buddha?”

She really did know?

Bai Xiang nodded. “Tell me everything you know.”

“The Jiuluo Guangyu Buddha has some ties to the Great Xuan,” Li Wenyu said. “You know this already. The Feathering Sect’s classic is On the Five Worms, and it preaches equality for all living beings and the ascension of the entire world.”

All of it was cult doctrine.

Bai Xiang had been about to frown, but seeing that Li Wenyu had paused and stopped speaking, she reluctantly gave her some face and nodded.

Li Wenyu smiled at once and continued, “As the story goes, that Buddha was formed from the beliefs of countless citizens of the Great Xuan. The words ‘Guangyu’ in Its title symbolize feathered ascension.”

As Li Wenyu continued, Bai Xiang gradually learned more about that Buddha.

Simply put, the Jiuluo Guangyu Buddha did not possess the intelligence of a sapient being. At most, It was a condensation of the willpower and wishes of living beings. In that respect, it resembled the Buddha corpse Bai Xiang had captured in the North Sea.

Both belonged to the purest category of ‘divine buddhas’ and ‘immortal buddhas.’ At the moment of their birth, they were no different from voidfiend monsters. It was only after accepting the wishes of others and being sculpted by those wishes that they gradually became what the world hoped them to be.

Read оո КаtReаⅾіոɡСafе

And things like that were, of course, very dangerous.

Just like how bizarre the Buddha corpse had been before Bai Xiang subdued it, the Jiuluo Guangyu Buddha would only do one thing upon awakening: turn every living being it encountered into one of its followers and help them “ascend in feathered form” with all its might.

“I’m not sure whether that Buddha has any connection to Jinguang Temple, but It truly is an evil Buddha,” Li Wenyu said.

“Wasn’t It born in accordance with the ideals of your Great Xuan?” Bai Xiang asked. “It’s still telling people to ascend in feathered form. Why does that make It evil in your eyes?”

“That’s a fake feathered ascension.” Li Wenyu bared her teeth. “It pours its own existence into the bodies of its followers, causing their life-forms to mutate grotesquely… That’s still different from our ideals.”

Is that so?

I don’t see much of a difference.

Bai Xiang scoffed inwardly at her sophistry.

The Feathering Sect had done no shortage of similar things. No one had forced them to carry out those massacres of entire cities.

“There are… actually disagreements within the sect on that point.”

Li Wenyu’s expression dimmed as the subject came up.

“Many ancient texts were lost. Most importantly, the Xuandi Scripture was lost, and only some records and rubbings remain. Losing those meant losing our power. In order to reclaim that power and resist Great Yu, the sect had no choice but to launch many experiments that the world would see as cruel.”

Bai Xiang shook her head. “That is not an excuse.”

“It really isn’t!” Li Wenyu answered at once.

But when she saw that Bai Xiang had already turned away, clearly unwilling to keep speaking with her, she could only smile bitterly and say, “I’m not saying this to argue with you, nor to ask for your forgiveness.”

“In any case… if that Buddha is what those people are relying on, then you should be careful of It.”

“The way It exists is extremely evil and bizarre.”

“Even the Xuandi went through a hard battle when facing It, and the version he fought had only just taken shape for less than a day.”

“Its power increases geometrically with the spread of faith-contamination.”

Is that so?

On the surface, Bai Xiang did not appear to care, but inwardly she memorized every word.

Jiuluo Heaven. Jiuluo Guangyu Buddha.

It sounded formidable, very likely the hidden card being prepared by the Demon Lord and the Federation.

“Let’s go.”

“There’s no point staying here anymore.”

Bai Xiang walked to the shattered gap in the bus vessel and saw a medium-sized vessel parked outside, completely empty.

The impact at the beginning had been the bus crashing into this thing and coming to a stop.

She brought Li Wenyu aboard that vessel, adjusted the coordinates on the star chart, and sped away toward the location of the ruins of Jinguang Temple from the memory.