Volume 2, Chapter 21 – Call for Help

“I’m giving you two choices right now.”

Back in the side room, seated exactly where Bai Xiang had been checking the medicine bottle last night, Xiang Xian sipped her tea slowly while staring at Bai Xiang.

“First, you come back with me to Yujing Circuit, back to Yuming Sword Dao. I’ll recommend you to Yujing University in my own name.”

“You don’t need to worry about your family’s safety. I’ve already spoken with Xu Zhe, the Watchman; he’s promised to keep a closer eye on things over here.”

“The second choice is to do what your aunt did back then—stay here and polish yourself a bit more.”

“Well? Hurry up and give me an answer.”

Bai Xiang was sitting properly on the edge of the bed facing her. As soon as she heard this, she answered without thinking, “I want to stay and polish myself for a while.”

“Ah—!”

Xiang Xian suddenly grabbed her head with both hands and let out a muffled scream.

“I can’t stand it…” She lunged forward, clamped her hands down on Bai Xiang’s shoulders, and shook her. “I don’t get it! What is there for you people to ‘polish’?”

“With a foundation this good, you should be coming back with me to go into seclusion and train! Then we slap the Yujing University name on you and let you go wild sweeping championships in every competition under the sun—what would you not have?”

“How are you still hung up on staying here to polish yourself… You’d better explain this to me clearly!”

There was something a little off with this woman’s mental state.

Bai Xiang frowned and tilted her head back slightly to avoid Xiang Xian, and for the first time she felt some doubt about the choice she’d just made.

She’d chosen to stay for several reasons. One, naturally, was that she wanted to finish investigating ‘Oricon’ and the Demon Pool variant ‘Shenli’ before she left. Another was that she’d looked up some information and learned what kind of place the Yuming Sword Dao, run by this bargain master of hers, actually was.

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Simply put, Yuming Sword Dao specialized in heavy industry and heavy weapons; among the Nine Daos it was an extremely unusual branch.

They were not known for combat power. Instead, they were famous across the land for all sorts of pill-refining experiments, metal experiments, research into Demon Pool Aberrations, and origin-tracing studies on secret human body methods.

This Dao branch had a lot of “odd jobs.” The most representative example was something Bai Xiang had personally experienced: the ‘Mingyu Cream’ she’d used before, which she’d since handed off to Bai Leying to use as a whitening cosmetic.

Mingyu Cream was the star product of Mingyu Co., and Mingyu Co. was directly affiliated under Yuming Sword Dao. It was almost a given that this ointment was a product of their lab research.

Once she learned that, Bai Xiang immediately developed a strong resistance to the idea of going to their mountain gate.

Just as there isn’t a chicken alive that doesn’t resist a fried chicken restaurant, and not a dog that doesn’t resist a dog-meat place.

As a real-life “rare case,” a “rare specimen,” Bai Xiang didn’t like this kind of research-obsessed faction at all. She was worried they’d slice her up as experimental material.

Right then she’d also understood why Yuming had so many strange and crooked methods—this was literally what they did. They researched something, then filed it away in an archive. That was just standard practice in that field.

So she wanted to stay here for a while first and try to give her invisible sword Qi a bit more color.

Her killing Qi was formless and colorless; out in the world that was way too eye-catching. But there was a solution—keep feeding Feixiang Heaven Demon-Transforming Pills, or keep letting Feixiang Heaven drink demon blood.

After Feixiang Heaven devoured a Demon-Transforming Pill, it generated a blood-colored sword Qi. Once Bai Xiang absorbed that strand of sword Qi, all of her sword Qi would be dyed red.

That was why, when she crossed swords with others, the killing Qi she released was pink, looking almost like flower petals.

After she defeated Liu Mengqing, the sword shredded the Demon Pool ‘Liu Blade Ants’ and absorbed the lingering demonic aura, which deepened that red a shade. It proved that this “kill directly” route also worked.

Bai Xiang felt this would be the key point of her future disguise.

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She would slowly dye her invisible sword Qi red, then pin the original colorless stage on the Cicada-Shedding Method and let her bargain master discover it “on her own.” That way her biggest secret could be kept safe—and only then would she set off for the Yuming Dao grounds.

She couldn’t say any of this out loud, of course, so she lied to Xiang Xian instead: “I feel like my cultivation has improved again.”

“Really?”

Xiang Xian froze, then suddenly reacted. “Wait—so the power you showed on stage wasn’t something you’d been hiding before, it was another step up?”

She had obviously misunderstood, and Bai Xiang went along with it.

She wasn’t lying completely; the total amount of her sword Qi really was growing. She wasn’t afraid of Xiang Xian testing her later.

“How is that possible?”

But Xiang Xian was the one who got spooked. She frowned deeply, baffled. “You got a fortuitous encounter and blasted your way from Forge the Sword straight to Condensing the Aspect. By rights you should have slammed into a bottleneck immediately—locking yourself away to grind shouldn’t do a thing.”

“The only explanation is that your fortuitous encounter was beyond imagination!” Her eyes grew brighter and brighter as she stared at Bai Xiang. “Even half-ruined, that thousand-year Demon Pool you absorbed definitely held more dao-age than what we’re seeing. There’s still a lot of power sleeping in your body, waiting for you to dig it out and refine it!”

If you insist on seeing it that way, all I can really do is nod.

Bai Xiang chose to go along with Xiang Xian—whatever you say, that’s what it is.

But she didn’t dare underestimate this bargain master of hers either, because when Xiang Xian had gotten close before—within a foot of her—her danger sense hadn’t budged at all.

She’d never encountered anything like that, and concluded that Xiang Xian’s cultivation must be even higher than she’d imagined.

Purple Core definitely couldn’t cap her.

She just wasn’t sure how many realms beyond Purple Core she’d gone.

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And so, Bai Xiang made her choice about the road ahead.

She had thought Xiang Xian would head back to Yujing Circuit first. She hadn’t expected this woman to brazenly ask Bai Shengju for a guest room so she could stay, claiming she had to “protect her disciple,” that “no one is allowed to harm a single hair on my good disciple’s head.”

Bai Shengju didn’t like the look of her, but he couldn’t argue with her excuse. In the end he went along with it, consoling himself that it was also for the child’s sake.

Time passed slowly, and Bai Xiang’s life settled back into peace. She went back to days of practicing sword every day, asking Xiang Xian for answers whenever she hit something she didn’t understand, sometimes heading into the forests to slay demons and sacrifice to her sword, sometimes going to the Jobs Directorate to gather information and keep track of the case’s progress.

Bai Shengju’s anti-inflammatory medicine had been stopped.

Bai Guanshan was busy with business, and once again left home with Elder Aunt Zhu Ying in tow.

Shen Xuelan had gone back to her parents’ place once, and after returning this time, she firmly decided to live in the dojo.

She planned to stay by her husband Bai Lianzhou’s side and help him handle some miscellaneous matters.

Because Bai Lianzhou really was very busy—thanks to Bai Xiang, Shenming Sword Dao’s name was now resounding far and wide. Applicants were lining up out the door, and every day Bai Lianzhou was busy handling kids and their parents.

On top of that, he had to instruct the apprentices, demonstrate drills… He ended each day so exhausted he didn’t even want to shower. In the end it was Shen Xuelan who wiped him down with a wet towel.

Among the third-generation disciples, Xu Shu had become an inner-sect Senior Brother. It seemed he had already earned Bai Shengju’s approval; after a bit more observation, he’d be allowed to inherit the “Vibrating Sword Formula.”

Because classes had resumed, Bai Leying and Bai Maoxu both went back to school and their dorms.

But Bai Zhuqing chose to stay. Every day she was out front pretending to be a Senior Sister, guiding the newly enrolled disciples, and every so often she’d slip to the back to check on Bai Xiang.

She wasn’t annoying about it; she just watched.

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Watched Bai Xiang cultivate, watched Bai Xiang practice sword.

From time to time, when she ran into something she didn’t understand about the Vibrating Sword Formula, she’d come to Bai Xiang. Basically, after Bai Xiang “vibrated” her a couple of times, she’d get it.

Bai Xiang suspected she was doing it on purpose—using “I don’t get it” as an excuse to come over and get vibrated—but Bai Xiang had no proof.

The upside was that Bai Zhuqing’s progress in the Vibrating Sword Formula was skyrocketing.

The downside was that the way she looked at Bai Xiang was getting stranger and stranger, like she was itching to try something.

In this way, more than a month passed. Xiang Xian tested Bai Xiang and found that her dao-age really had improved, and finally believed her nonsense. She said that in a while she would teach Bai Xiang the essence of ‘Yuming Sword,’ and told her to mind her conduct and cultivate her temperament for the next few days.

Bai Xiang’s dao-age and the “dao-age” Xiang Xian understood weren’t the same thing at all. She just took note of Xiang Xian’s words, and that afternoon she planned to go to the Jobs Directorate to see if there were any demon-hunting commissions.

She had to kill demons to feed her sword anyway; taking commissions meant one job could bring two kinds of benefits. It would be a waste not to take that deal—she certainly wasn’t picky.

But on the way, she received a text from Chen Jing.

Her little deskmate had typed a whole mess of mistakes, and Bai Xiang had to read it twice to be sure she wasn’t misunderstanding: Chen Jing was asking her for help to find her missing father.

How could her dad have gone missing?

‘Chen Zhien.’

The name suddenly popped up in her mind, pulling Bai Xiang back to that first encounter at the hospital.

She pulled a business card from the sleeve of her phone case and narrowed her eyes at the line that read: “Deputy Manager, R&D Department, Qingyun Pharmaceuticals,” and sank into thought.