Volume 2, Chapter 11 – Demon Sword

Bai Zhuqing’s state was clearly off as Bai Xiang pinched her toes and sent vibrations through her feet. It was like she had some nameless emotion stuck in her throat, desperately holding herself back from crying out.

Bai Xiang could see she was enduring, but she didn’t ease up at all, keeping the force steady and maintaining the vibration output.

Every time her little sister tried to struggle, sometimes even using all her strength like a kitten mewling as she begged, Bai Xiang’s expression stayed cold. Every time Bai Zhuqing opened her mouth to plead, she even increased the vibration a little.

It wasn’t that she was set on punishing the girl—she was saving her.

A sense of crisis was something you had to have from the very start.

Bai Xiang was very sure of the path she would walk in the future, of the storms she would go see and stir up. That resolve was so firm that she could already foresee—if the Bai family as a whole couldn’t keep up with her, their end would be tragic.

Bai Zhuqing’s talent wasn’t bad, but her mindset was flawed. She spent her days obsessed with following and watching Bai Xiang, but didn’t take her own practice seriously enough.

Bai Xiang needed to break her fixation.

If she couldn’t endure something as small as a tingling sensation—if this kind of minor ordeal made her mind wander and thoughts run wild—how could she ever train a good sword?

And if she couldn’t, she would never keep up. At that point, Bai Xiang could consider distancing herself from Bai Zhuqing.

Being too close would only harm her.

And Bai Zhuqing didn’t disappoint her.

At the beginning, the girl’s heart was full of confusion and shy delight. The sensation was so mysterious that she couldn’t help thinking maybe Bai Xiang was trying to play some kind of “game” with her.

When the feeling surged over her like a tsunami, she couldn’t help herself. Her soul and consciousness were flipped over by the waves, swept along and tossed up and down.

The impact was so sweet, so intoxicating. The tidal waves seemed endless, capable of crashing over her again and again.

But halfway through, she saw Bai Xiang’s face.

Her beloved Sister Xiang’er… the “Auntie” she jokingly called her… that face was still as delicately beautiful and cool as in her memories.

The only difference was those eyes.

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In them, she saw distance, evaluation, expectation—and disappointment.

Strictly speaking, you shouldn’t be able to read so many complex, blended emotions in a person’s eyes. But Bai Zhuqing saw them anyway—she jolted awake from the surf and realized it had all been her own projection and fantasy.

So I did know this was wrong…

It was like poking through a sheet of paper, the effect of “false teaching in ten thousand scrolls, true teaching in a single sentence.” Once she grasped the principle, Bai Zhuqing no longer felt that tingling as torment.

Her thoughts rolled out in an instant. She started thinking—this Dao method Sister Xiang’er was passing on must be something she’d fought for her life to obtain, right?

Then she thought, if she couldn’t even seize this kind of opportunity, then in that future she’d imagined over and over, the one no one dared speak of… would her dearest sister vanish from it?

At that point, Bai Zhuqing fell into a strange state.

The more tangled her thoughts, the more factors she weighed, the calmer her heart became. She actually stabilized that state and began to feel the unique Heart Flow routes within the tingling, even trying to learn from them.

Without realizing it, Bai Xiang had already let go of her ankles.

Even so, Bai Zhuqing was still immersed in that unique and subtle vibration frequency. Her sock-wrapped soles and toes twitched now and then, as if attempting a clumsy imitation.

Her eyes were still closed, but her face was no longer red…

Watching quietly at the side, Bai Xiang waited until she was sure her sister had truly stabilized her state. Only then did she slowly let out a long breath.

Not bad.

She’d passed several tests in a row, and even from this kind of trial she’d managed to pull herself back in time.

Should she call it deep good fortune, or say she was simply born in tune with her?

Frowning slightly, Bai Xiang suddenly recalled the theory of complementarity from the Daoist classics.

At first glance it really did seem to make sense—she’d first owed her upbringing to the Bai Zhuqing branch of the family, then Bai Zhuqing had helped her succeed at Transforming Qi, and now that she’d learned something, she was returning it by teaching her as both sister and master… wasn’t that another kind of cycle of Dao?

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Illusion.

She discarded the thought outright, not intending to dwell on it.

She might cultivate both Buddhist and Daoist methods, but she had no intention of letting their doctrines bind her too tightly.

Doctrine was illusion.

Having seen how vicious human hearts could be in the cultivation world, Bai Xiang firmly believed there was only one path in this world that truly worked: power.

Seeing that Bai Zhuqing still had her eyes closed, feeling out the Heart Flow, Bai Xiang left her alone for now. She turned and sat at the small table, took Feixiang Heaven off her back in its scabbard, and set it on the table along with the little wooden box holding the Demon-Transforming Pills.

Clang…

She drew the sword. A bright, snowy band of sword light immediately reflected across her face, perfectly slicing across the area of her eyes.

She only drew a little before setting the sword back on the table, then opened the wooden box, took out one Demon-Transforming Pill, and carefully laid it flat on the exposed blade.

In her mind, that yearning will surged wildly.

A strange scene unfolded: the blade suddenly released an invisible surge of sword Qi. It twisted up around the pill and crushed the precious pellet, turning it into a mass of vast, unimaginably pure blood-red demonic power, like a clump of red mist wrapping the sword. It was rapidly swallowed and absorbed into the blade!

So it can do this…?

Even though she’d prepared herself mentally, seeing it truly happen before her eyes still amazed Bai Xiang.

When it had still been the Zhenyuan sword embryo, it had never showed any such trait.

Could it really have mutated?

Something like the Jade Phoenix Sword’s birth—“a gift of chance, strengthened by human soul, forged in blood, bestowed by heaven and born of earth”?

Thinking it through, Bai Xiang remembered the final step of the forging—that was when she’d drawn out the cicada demon’s soulless body’s blood to nourish the embryo.

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She’d originally only needed to drizzle a bit, but when Chai Xuan suddenly appeared, she’d simply drained all of it, leaving only an empty shell for the Chilong Army.

Had the excess demonic blood made it dependent on both kinds of energy from birth?

That was probably the only explanation.

The blood mist was gradually absorbed into Feixiang Heaven. When only wisps were left, it stopped eating and sent Bai Xiang a wave of satisfied emotion.

It’s full.

Bai Xiang immediately gripped the hilt. Her Heart Flow turned to Qi, drilled in from her palm, entered the metal blade beneath the hilt, and linked up with the internal Heart Flow routes.

The instant they connected, her eyes flew wide, her surprise growing even stronger.

There was Qi inside.

Not what she’d infused earlier—Qi that Feixiang Heaven had produced by itself.

It was only a trace, but it was new Qi, different from the rest in that it was red, floating alone inside the sword body, as if waiting for someone to take it.

Bai Xiang didn’t rush to handle that new Qi. Instead, she carefully examined the other changes within the blade.

Hmm… some of the structure was different from before.

There were more branches in the heart-vessels… was that growth from being “fed”?

She swung the sword a few times. It felt no different from before. Only then did she cautiously gather the Qi around it and bring it close to that newborn strand.

The moment they touched, the two merged naturally.

She drew the cluster of Qi back into her body and reintegrated it into her circulation.

There was no need to concentrate on the sensation—it was immediately obvious that her total Qi had increased a little.

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Opening her eyes, Bai Xiang looked at the sword, the corners of her lips curling upward.

After completing Transforming Qi, her combat strength had indeed skyrocketed, but it had also created a massive hidden danger: there was no road ahead of her.

The grand cycle of her Heart Flow could only be used for Transforming Qi. Once she’d truly succeeded, no matter how hard she trained or refined it, that cultivation could no longer increase her Qi.

Qi could still be converted. Qi could still grow.

But her body couldn’t hold it.

She was like a wooden barrel with a fixed upper limit. Transforming Qi was like turning a bucket of water into a bucket of oil. The barrel could now spontaneously generate more oil, but it couldn’t contain it—it would just be wasted.

So why did “blood Qi” work?

Bai Xiang guessed it was because blood Qi strengthened her body at the same time.

Strengthening the body meant strengthening the barrel itself, increasing its capacity.

It wasn’t much, but it was still a historic breakthrough—from zero to one.

“Feeding on Demon-Transforming Pills, it takes fifty years of dao-age to make a meal.”

“What if it eats aberrations directly?”

Bai Xiang lifted the sword and examined it closely, her smile slowly taking on a hint of wickedness.

I cultivate human methods, and you cultivate demon methods.

Heh…

That’s fine too.