Volume 2, Chapter 1 – Legend

At daybreak, two military jeeps cruised at a steady speed along the jungle road—the four of them returning to the Circuit City.

The matter was urgent, and Huang Qian hadn’t brought a single personal guard. He only gave the four a quick physical once‑over to confirm no major injuries or demonic aura contamination, then drove them back himself, wanting to get it done as fast as possible.

Bai Xiang rode with Huang Qian in the first vehicle; Xu Xi and Cao Chuan sat in the second.

Feeling the chassis jolt and then settle level, Bai Xiang gently opened her eyes in the back seat. Outside, the vegetation was no longer dense; it had the look of the Circuit City’s outskirts.

Huang Qian happened to be checking the rearview and caught the moment she opened her eyes. In the dim cabin it was like a spark of lightning flashed out.

He felt something was off, but on second thought, maybe it was his imagination.

Was it her unusual eye color?

Plus the white hair—mm. So she was indeed adopted by the Bai family…

It wasn’t any real problem. Huang Qian’s curiosity flickered and passed; he just chalked it up to Bai Xiang’s cultivation surging over the last few days—she couldn’t keep her energy from spilling over, which was causing some physical anomalies.

“If you ran into Lü Ran again now, you wouldn’t even need to tangle with her, would you?” Huang Qian asked with a grin.

Bai Xiang thought it over and nodded.

Before she’d even transformed Qi, she could insta‑kill Lü Ran’s human form, and she could briefly hold her own against Chai Jingyuan’s demonized form.

Now that she’d formally achieved Transforming Qi—and forged the treasure sword “Feixiang Heaven”—her combat power had leapt frighteningly.

She hadn’t tested the exact tier, but conservatively: a Three‑Tribulation Great Demon’s demon aspect, or a standard human cultivator at Condensing the Aspect—if they were arrogant enough to let her close, it was probably a one‑sword matter.

That has nothing to do with how many years you’ve trained or what experience you’ve got. In a fight, it’s whether you can block or evade the other side’s strike—block it and you live; fail and you die.

With her Heart‑Aspect turning Heart Flow into Qi, then condensing that Qi into the blade, she doubted there even existed a Condensing the Aspect that could withstand the cut.

Rеαⅾ οո KatRеaⅾіոgСafе

Not to mention, she’d just inherited Bai Muying’s scroll of The Startling‑Spirit Cicada; there were many sword ideas in her mind waiting to be developed.

Take the Shenming Sword, for instance—its core essence is one word: “vibration.”

With “wrist‑vibration,” you can drive demonic power/Qi to emit a piercing cry, fend off encirclement, and in single combat fine‑tune control—using the blade to bundle sound waves and steer their direction.

There are also tricks like “shoulder‑vibration,” “leg‑vibration,” and “sword‑vibration.” When she braced Chai Jingyuan’s blade with her wooden sword earlier, used vibration to stick to his blade and deny his recovery, then pulled space open for Zhao Xu’s slash—that was the “sword‑vibration” technique.

Could these techniques be developed further?

If nothing else, just “sword‑vibration” alone… Bai Xiang at least knew how high‑tech vibrating knives worked—so could she raise the cutting power by generating sufficiently high frequencies?

Bai Muying hadn’t developed it that way, and no one else in this world had either—because they didn’t have Bai Xiang’s body for it.

To pull off a concept like this, without a body both tough enough and supple enough, it’s simply impossible. The force of “sword‑vibration” transmits into skin, muscle, and bone too; if your body isn’t strong enough, the first go will rattle you into injury.

But Bai Xiang could.

Cultivating the Transforming Qi method gave her more than just Qi. Don’t forget, the precondition for condensing Qi is called “all methods advancing together.”

That meant Bai Xiang had now finished nurturing and harmonizing skin, flesh, organs, bone, marrow, Blood‑Change… indeed every organ and tissue in her body—and every one of those was at exactly the same 100%.

Once, she had perfected skin and perfected flesh, but the other parts weren’t nurtured enough; going all‑out would cause hidden injuries. Now there was no such worry.

Without invoking her soul ability to “force the body,” no matter how she exerted herself, she wouldn’t incur hidden injuries.

No matter what force she took, so long as it didn’t exceed her current bodily limit—so long as she survived—her inner circulation would naturally nurture every tiny corner, heal the wound, and leave not a trace behind.

Such a body already exceeded the limits of mundane common sense. Maybe it hadn’t appeared in tens of millions of years.

Reaⅾ oո КαtRеadіոɡСаfе

But hidden injuries weren’t just her problem back then—they’re every cultivator’s problem.

Bai Xiang pondered.

Before her, no one had truly achieved “all methods advancing together.” Once the nurturing rate of each organ and tissue fell out of sync, the short board inevitably dragged things down, ruined coordination, and, over time, left hidden injuries.

In that situation, the more you train, the worse your foundation actually gets.

Time is a bitter sea; the body is the ship.

To cross the long river of time, you absolutely need a sound hull.

In cultivation terms, you drift further from the Innate; in scientific terms, your cells get older.

Thus, relying on a body that gets worse the more you train—a battered boat—and you still want to ask the Dao and seek immortality? Impossible.

Bai Xiang had a strong intuition: if you truly want longevity—want to break the human race’s innate ceiling—you must first achieve completeness; that is, nurture and master your body through and through.

Before a breakthrough, you need a floor.

If you can’t even hold the floor, what future is there to talk about?

As I am now, an ordinary Condensing the Aspect can be cut down with a single sword.

She did the math.

As for realms above Condensing the Aspect, she wasn’t sure, because when her Transforming Qi progress was around thirty percent, Huang Qian had once gathered demonic power onto his sword to perfectly block the invisible distortion.

That meant if the realm above Condensing the Aspect could condense demonic power further—to a “quality” on par with Qi—then her strike could be blocked.

Reаԁ оո КαtReαdіnɡСafе

If so, it would become a standoff.

No idea how good their close combat is?

From Nurture the Spirit on, the Sword Dao system stops emphasizing the body’s foundation. The further you go, the more it looks like using demonic aura/power to cast arts.

If their bodies are also lacking, then I can…

“Above Condensing the Aspect is ‘Purple Core.’” As if knowing what she was thinking, Huang Qian offered a prompt without taking his eyes off the road.

“Condensing the Aspect and embracing the core—that makes one a Sage and True Person.”

“Liang Qiusheng is at that realm.”

“Zhou Jing’an is also at that realm.”

“But don’t think that just because you might easily beat Chai Jingyuan—or maybe even me—you can look down on everyone at Condensing the Aspect.”

“The basic requirement for embracing the core is to raise the sword’s Demon Pool to three thousand years of dao‑age—but that doesn’t mean the cap is three thousand.”

“Dao‑age can be plundered. A monster that’s only lived a hundred years doesn’t necessarily have only a hundred years of dao‑age.”

“In extreme cases, certain heretical groups can mass‑produce monsters with a few decades to a hundred years of dao‑age—then turn them into nutrients to devour for self‑gain.”

“Although absorption efficiency is low and every such case causes a huge stir and usually gets cleaned up quickly, the world is vast! The realm is vast! You can’t rule out someone, by one means or another, nurturing four thousand—even five thousand years of dao‑age while still at Condensing the Aspect!”

“Different dao‑age totals mean massive power gaps inside Condensing the Aspect! Don’t take that lightly.”

Bai Xiang could hear this was from the bottom of Huang Qian’s heart.

Reаd οn ΚatRеаԁіnɡСаfе

It counted as passing on experience; she listened with full attention.

“Zhou Jing’an should have been called a Sword Saint long ago,” she asked Huang Qian. “Has he held off breaking through just to keep accumulating dao‑age? Does Purple Core also require stockpiling dao‑age to advance?”

“Ah, that…” Hearing those questions, Huang Qian grinned, a teasing smile on his face.

“No.”

“Or rather—not only.”

“Not only…?”

“From Purple Core on, what cultivators face isn’t just their own issues,” Huang Qian’s tone sank. “It also includes ‘demonic aura pollution.’”

“Years ago, Zhou Jing’an showed unusual interest in the Jade Phoenix Sword. People speculated at the time that he’d run into trouble in cultivation and needed a healing treasure like the Jade Phoenix Sword to help mend it.”

“And if it can’t be healed?” Bai Xiang asked again.

“The Sword Dao Association routinely verifies his condition,” Huang Qian replied.

“If he can maintain it, he’s still the Qingya Sword Saint.”

“If he can’t…”

“Then he needs to find a successor—fast.”