Volume 2, Chapter 8 – Abnormality

The ten minutes were up, and Bai Shengju came shuffling out of the house right on time. He saw Xiang Xian in the courtyard, holding onto Bai Xiang and saying something, her face full of nerves and excitement.

“Humph!” He twisted his mouth all the way down to his chin, snorted, and then shuffled right back inside.

Over there, Xiang Xian didn’t notice him at all; her whole heart was tied up with Bai Xiang.

She stared at this cold yet bright white-haired girl and tentatively called, “Xiang’er…?”

Bai Xiang’s face didn’t move. “Mm…”

“Xiang’er? Xiang’er Xiang’er Xiang’er?”

This was getting endless.

Bai Xiang finally couldn’t stand it and frowned. “Did you treat Auntie like this back then too?”

“No manners at all!”

Status really did make a difference now—Xiang Xian could talk to Bai Xiang this way. “Is that how you talk to your master?”

Though she was scolding her, there wasn’t the slightest anger in her tone. Instead, she started fishing something out from her sleeve. “Here, Xiang’er, we’ll save the formal ceremony for later. Take this, it’s a gift from your master.”

Bai Xiang took it and saw it was a palm-sized little wooden box.

There was light in the courtyard as well. She turned aside, lifted the lid, and saw three blood-red pills lying inside, their whole bodies wrapped in drifting strands of blood-colored vapor.

“This is a ‘Demon-Transforming Pill’,” Xiang Xian introduced. “They’re all condensed from purified demonic power in the lab. Each one is roughly forty to fifty years of dao-age, the exact amount depends on how well a person absorbs it.”

Bai Xiang looked at her. Xiang Xian’s face was full of smiles. “Didn’t you just say… you forged a sword from an incomplete Demon Pool to save someone?”

“Use this! You can make up for it!”

“I only brought three on me for now… Don’t worry, it’s not a big problem. Once your Bai family’s Ancestral Ground is reclaimed and you regain the method for cultivating cicada demons, as long as you keep converting Demon Pools of the same type to patch it, there will be a way to fix it.”

“…” Bai Xiang blinked, but the way she looked at these three “immortal pills” was a bit helpless.

She had never even heard of such a thing, but she could guess what a “Demon-Transforming Pill” would be worth outside.

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Labs, purified demonic power—the prerequisites alone were harsh, which meant the cost couldn’t possibly be low.

One pill carried fifty years of dao-age. Even if the effect diminished, taking this stuff had to be easier than going out to hunt demons.

From the way Xiang Xian talked, as long as she wanted them, Xiang Xian could give her more. Bai Xiang didn’t even dare imagine it. If she were truly walking the traditional path, and if she really did have talent for that road—if she swallowed ten or eight of these Demon-Transforming Pills, wouldn’t she shoot straight up to Purple Core?

Too bad she couldn’t take them.

A treasure that could both increase cultivation and patch up flaws.

Too bad this treasure was useless to her.

Just as she was feeling regretful, Bai Xiang suddenly had a strange stirring in her heart and felt Feixiang Heaven on her back lightly tremble inside its scabbard.

During its forging, Feixiang Heaven had absorbed her heart’s blood. That blood had seeped into the blade, mutating as it mixed with her Heart Flow and Qi; it had already begun to take root and sprout, about to grow heart-vessels and meridians inside the metal sword body.

This meant Feixiang Heaven couldn’t be treated as an ordinary sword.

Other swords were called living things, external incarnations of the self, because there was a Demon Pool inside them.

Feixiang Heaven had no Demon Pool, and yet it was still alive, still Bai Xiang’s external incarnation. That was purely due to its own special nature.

In fact, in a sense, Feixiang Heaven—which had taken in her heart’s blood and accepted the Heart Flow and Qi she’d poured into it—was Bai Xiang’s blood-related descendant.

Precisely because of that, the link between human and sword was so tight. She could even have this kind of heart-stirring premonition, faintly sensing that Feixiang Heaven was now emanating a mood of excitement, longing, and hunger.

Interesting.

“Then… thank you, teacher.”

Closing the lid and pinching the little box between her fingers, Bai Xiang bowed to Xiang Xian.

“Teacher?” Xiang Xian was taken aback. Wasn’t that a bit too distant?

But thinking that Bai Xiang hadn’t formally bowed as a disciple yet, and might not have received strict orthodox Great Yu ritual education growing up, she didn’t take it to heart. She just decided she’d have to give her a proper crash course on that later.

Never mind anything else—just look at these clothes.

She glared in distaste at the tight combat suit Bai Xiang was wearing.

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On a woman, even if this kind of outfit was fairly thick and there was a vest and other armor covering the chest, it still showed off her body lines far too much.

With this kind of natural build, white hair, and heterochromatic eyes—did this child not realize what kind of effect she’d have in an archaic dress?

If you want bulletproofing, just spend more effort on the material.

I, Yuming, am the foremost of all the Dao-sects in Yujing. If I let someone walk out dressed like this, the patriarchs would be fit to rise from their graves in fury.

Next, Xiang Xian pulled Bai Xiang aside and started in on a whole round of instructions. She asked about her cultivation progress, and whether she had any puzzles or confusion along the way. Bai Xiang took the opportunity to throw over the questions Huang Qian hadn’t been able to answer, and got detailed replies to all of them.

“You guessed right,” Xiang Xian nodded. “Purple Core is purple precisely because demonic aura and demonic power have condensed to the utmost.”

“After all, that stuff is red.”

“As a cultivator’s dao-age grows deeper, their demonic power condenses more and more; outwardly, it naturally changes from bright red to darker and darker shades.”

“From bright red to dull red, and then to that almost purplish-black color—usually, if your Outward Aspect power can stain itself that shade, it means you’re ready to condense a Purple Core.”

“As for your dao-age, Xiang’er… I don’t know the exact cultivation level of that thousand-year cicada demon, so it’s hard to say for now.”

“Would you be willing to let me examine your inner landscape and Heart Flow?”

Bai Xiang hesitated a bit, but then still nodded and turned around.

This step couldn’t be dodged—it was better to test early, to see whether Xiang Xian’s abilities could detect what was special about her inner Qi.

Xiang Xian pressed her hand to Bai Xiang’s spine. Bai Xiang only felt a gentle, warm energy seep in from the point of contact, passing through the tight combat suit, instantly filling the space between the fabric and her body, almost “licking” over her entire person.

What a strange sensation.

She frowned there, while Xiang Xian fell into confusion.

“How odd,” the Dao Lord of Yuming withdrew her hand. “Your Heart Flow pathways are… overly complicated, and there’s a unique force mixed in there…”

She’d used not even half of her demonic aura for this probing, and yet it took a great deal of effort just to “knead” that strange energy. Its quality was frankly a little frightening.

In terms of quantity, it was only a bit over a hundred years of dao-age.

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The weirdest part was—why was this “demonic power” transparent?

“The Startling-Spirit Cicada… it seems we’ll need to study it together with your ancestral methods,” Xiang Xian said. “This Shenming Sword of yours is no simple thing. When you said Daokong Chan Master was connected to Bai Muying, I already started guessing—there might be more secrets hidden inside.”

Bai Xiang agreed, and set those concerns down for now.

This way, any problems that came up in her cultivation later could be pushed onto the “Cicada-Shedding Method.”

If Xiang Xian discovered issues on her own, she wouldn’t overthink it.

“Teacher.”

She looked at Xiang Xian.

“Could we talk more about what happened back then?”

Bai Xiang really was very interested in the details of what happened after her aunt Bai Nianchan was imprisoned.

At the very least—

She rubbed at the sword callus that had surfaced along the inside of her finger.

I need to know who was pushing from behind the scenes…

“What happened back then… was very complicated. I’m sorry, but that’s all I can say.”

Xiang Xian first showed a guilty look. Then, noticing the subtle shift in Bai Xiang’s expression, she immediately widened her eyes.

“Xiang’er, this matter involves too many people, too much weight. It’s not something you should be distracted by right now.”

Thinking of Bai Xiang’s unique temperament, she softened again.

“Focus on the sword first, all right?”

“Your talent is almost unheard of. If you can walk that heavenly road to the end…”

She stopped herself there.

This was something that couldn’t be said, mustn’t be said—but she believed Bai Xiang would understand what she meant.

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“I’ll keep telling you about Huang’er instead!”

To change the subject, Xiang Xian drew the Jade Phoenix Sword again, showing Bai Xiang its extremely unique white-jade structure.

“Nowadays, the Nurture the Spirit method has been developed to the extreme with all kinds of scientific instruments, but in ancient times, cultivators didn’t have that convenience.”

“Legend says that in the old Dao there was a cultivator surnamed Li. After he achieved Blood-Change, he didn’t go to Forge the Sword. He insisted his body hadn’t reached its limit yet and continued tempering his bones and marrow, trying to cultivate something called ‘jade bones’.”

“This kind of training was brutally damaging. After many years, he’d trained himself into skin and bones, with nearly all his blood essence sucked into his marrow.”

“Not only did he refuse to stop, he spent money and used every method to collect Demon Pool true-form materials and containment vessels, trying to use the Demon Pool’s mystery to help himself achieve the Dao.”

“The result was, of course, failure.”

“After he died, demonic aura coiled around his corpse, and his entire skin turned blood-red. That was a real ‘blood skeleton’.”

“His fellow disciples and teachers cremated his remains, but unexpectedly, during the burning, a white-jade short sword drilled out from his spine.”

“And they were astonished to find that this sword had its own unique wonders—it could heal injuries and dispel poison, cure all sorts of illnesses, and could be taken directly into the body, as if you’d simply grown an extra bone.”

“Later generations tried to copy the method, but never again managed to refine a similar sword embryo. From then on, Huang’er’s reputation as a ‘wondrous object’ was firmly established.”

“It was a gift of chance, strengthened by human soul, forged in blood, bestowed by heaven and born of earth.”

“The heirloom treasure of my Yuming line.”

The speaker had no particular intent, but the listener did.

While Bai Xiang listened to the story of the Jade Phoenix Sword with her ears, her thoughts had drifted to Feixiang Heaven.

So things like this weren’t unheard of in the ancient days either…

What would happen if she put the Demon-Transforming Pills together with Feixiang Heaven?

Xiang Xian was still singing the Jade Phoenix Sword’s praises, but Bai Xiang was already thinking about slipping away.