Looking at Ba, Bao Gu couldn’t help thinking of those cultivators who had been eaten and were now rotting inside Ba’s stomach. Her pretty face went completely bloodless, and the torment she’d suffered left her whole being wilted and drained.
She lifted her head, stared at Ba, and said:
“Just eat me.”
Ba’s smile froze.
She looked at Bao Gu, her gaze flickering. Then she got up again, opened her Blood Prison World, grabbed a cultivator from one of the cages, and, while he was still alive, tore open his skull. She scooped out brain matter, brain pulp, every last bit, piled it into the skull cap, and carried it over to Bao Gu.
“I can pour this into your mouth a little at a time and make you swallow it.”
She brought the skull brimming with brains right up to Bao Gu’s lips.
Bao Gu’s beautiful face went ashen with terror. Sitting on the ground, she scrambled backward, bumping into the pile of broken bones behind her, setting off a sharp clatter.
She retreated until she couldn’t move any farther, her back pressed tightly against the carriage wall, both eyes full of fear. Forcing herself upright, she braced her back against the wall to hold up her weak, exhausted body. She avoided looking at the skull in Ba’s hand and instead fixed her gaze on Ba’s young, almost childish face.
“In the past,” Bao Gu said, “Yu Mi wanted to temper his body through the Myriad True Spirits Cauldron. He needed a huge amount of rare spiritual treasures and medicinal herbs to nourish his physique. I followed the recipe my master’s wife gave me and searched for a long time, but I couldn’t gather all the refining materials. Later, my master’s wife told me those things didn’t exist in this realm at all.
“She filled in the missing materials for me and, in passing, explained some things about upper-realm spirit treasures, and what this realm calls ninth-tier spiritual treasures.
“To cultivators in this world, anything close to immortal-treasure level, or above immortal-treasure level, that can bring back the dead is lumped into ninth tier. But there’s a world of difference between one ninth-tier sacred object and another.
“My honored aunt has always been called a Ninth-Tier Sacred Lotus. People in the cultivation world only know she’s of the lotus type. Because she’s unique and powerful, they classified her as ninth tier. It wasn’t until I saw the Prison-Breaking Blood Lotus in the Primordial Desolate Mountains, learned that my honored aunt inherited the legacy of that upper-realm demon immortal who sealed you back then, and then saw how you refused to let her go, that I finally remembered a rumor my master’s wife once mentioned about an upper-realm supreme treasure.”
She locked her sharp gaze on the thread of lotus-shaped mark at Ba’s brow.
“Back then, you built a city of corpses and used endless death qi to nourish a single wisp of life.
“You have an Undying Golden Body, but that doesn’t mean you can’t die. You gained a wisp of life from the heavenly tribulation, but your physical body was still dead. You wanted to resurrect yourself. So you used boundless death qi to nourish that one wisp of life and sought true rebirth.
“You slaughtered countless living beings—and in the end, you still failed, didn’t you?”
Ba narrowed her eyes slightly and tilted her head to look at Bao Gu with interest.
“What are you trying to say?”
The contempt and disdain in her gaze had clearly lessened.
Bao Gu said, “But when you reappeared in the world, you took a step from death into life. Not only did you come back alive, you even gained a method to fuse blood fiend death qi into bones and refine them into living things.
“However, that method is incomplete. Just a shred of my honored aunt’s origin power sealed in a jade pendant was enough to force those things back to their original form.
“This has nothing to do with your corpse-city. It comes from you refining the Prison-Breaking Blood Lotus that was suppressing you.”
Ba nodded lightly.
“Keep going.”
Bao Gu said, “What you refined into ‘living beings’ is flawed. Even you yourself aren’t truly resurrected. You only sealed blood fiend death qi inside your body, hiding it in this shell you’re using.
“Because you only refined the Prison-Breaking Blood Lotus. You’re missing the other half—the World-Cleansing Sacred Lotus that was born together with it. Only if you refine the World-Cleansing Sacred Lotus and use its power to wash away the endless death qi in your body will you count as truly, completely resurrected.
“My honored aunt is the lotus seed that transformed into human form from that very World-Cleansing Sacred Lotus—the one your upper-realm demon immortal obtained from the chaotic mists, born alongside the Prison-Breaking Blood Lotus.”
Ba clapped lightly and laughed.
“Very good. Since you know how important the World-Cleansing Sacred Lotus is to me, you should understand that I’ll spare no effort to find her. With your abilities, you’re far from being able to oppose me. Why don’t you take me to her instead, hm?”
Bao Gu said, “She’s my master.”
Ba replied, “You promised me that as long as I let Yu Mi go, you’d take me to your master. If you keep your word, I won’t have to go to any trouble. Everyone’s happy, aren’t they?
“For the old War King’s sake, I won’t make things too hard for you.”
Bao Gu asked, “Do you know why I tricked you into coming here?”
Ba’s gaze shifted, and in the next breath, her eyes turned ice-cold. That carved-jade doll face of hers instantly took on a ghostly, sinister air.
“You tricked me here so I couldn’t find the World-Cleansing Sacred Lotus?”
Yes. Tricked here.
She, the daughter of the Heavenly Emperor, a being who turned death into life, had been fooled by a little yellow-haired girl.
Ba really didn’t want to admit it, but she couldn’t refute it. She only felt her dignity had been dragged through the mud.
Bao Gu said, “From the moment I decided to leave with you, I never thought I’d be able to go back.”
As she spoke, the thought that she would never see Yu Mi again, never see her honored aunt or her Little Martial Aunt again, suddenly drained all strength from her body. She had left without hesitation, but now that it was done, the realization struck her—
By leaving, she had abandoned everyone she cared about.
There would never be a day of reunion.
Her heart felt hollow and aching, a dull, indescribable pain.
Once Ba fully grasped her situation, her anger boiled over. She hauled Bao Gu out of the corner and clenched her fist, then started smashing down on Bao Gu’s finger bones, one joint at a time.
One punch.
Flesh mangled, every bone in her fingers shattered.
Bao Gu let out a muffled “ngh,” clamping her teeth together and refusing to scream.
Ba crushed Bao Gu’s finger bones one after another. Once they were broken, she moved on to her palms, then her arms. When both arms were a pile of splinters, she started from the tips of her toes.
She took her time, fist after slow, measured fist, pounding until Bao Gu’s bones shattered inch by inch. The pain made tears stream down Bao Gu’s face, but she couldn’t even make a sound.
In the end, Ba turned all four of Bao Gu’s limbs into masses of fragmented bone.
She grabbed Bao Gu’s tear-streaked face and said, “You’d better think of a way to go back. Otherwise, next time I’ll start with the bones in your face.
“If those break, this pretty face of yours will collapse.”
Bao Gu’s lips moved, but no sound came out.
Ba lifted her up.
“What was that?”
Bao Gu panted for a while before managing to squeeze out a whisper.
“If you dare touch my face, I’ll blow myself up right in front of you.”
Furious, Ba flung her back to the ground and gave her another savage beating.
By the time she was done, not a single bone in Bao Gu’s body was intact—only her face remained untouched.
Bao Gu lay on the ground, too weak even to twitch, barely clinging to life. All her injuries were to flesh and bone; Ba hadn’t touched her qi sea or meridians, so her cultivation wasn’t impeded.
Silently, Bao Gu circulated her energy, guiding it through all her shattered bones, resetting what she could, and restoring her internal organs to their proper places.
There were too many wounds. Her entire body hurt so badly her vision swam and sleep kept pulling her under. Resetting bone after bone that had been smashed into fragments was a task that consumed immense focus.
She barely managed to put one finger bone back where it belonged before she drifted into a dazed sleep.
The broken bones embedded in her flesh, nourished by her spiritual power and the rich medicinal essence of all the treasures she’d consumed over the years, healed at an astonishing rate. The injuries to her flesh were fine, but because she hadn’t reset most of the bones, they grew back randomly, twisted and crooked.
The skeleton inside her body became utterly deformed.
When Bao Gu woke, she quickly realized her bones had mended wrong. However she’d been lying when she passed out, that was the shape her skeleton had grown into.
Before she had time to mourn the fact that she had become a cripple, Ba’s drawn-out voice floated over.
“Oh, you’re awake.”
Bao Gu saw Ba amble over, casually clench her fist, and rain another flurry of blows down on her.
Her bones shattered all over again.
In a haze, Bao Gu suddenly thought of when she’d undergone weapon fusion.
Compared to that… this treatment was practically generous.
At least it wasn’t as painful as fusion.
Bao Gu lost count of how many times Ba broke her bones.
Every time she woke, Ba would shatter every bone in her body again, beat her until she passed out, then wait for her to wake up and do it all over.
Ba slowly broke each finger bone, one by one, then went on to the rest of her body. Beyond the involuntary physical reactions to pain, Bao Gu gave her nothing—no extra pleas, no begging, no collapse.
After repeating this many times, Ba finally lost interest.
Using physical torment to torture someone from the War King clan… it was pointless. She felt bored.
Anyone of the War King clan who survived the weapon-fusion ordeal was numb to pain to begin with.
She stared at Bao Gu’s face for a long while, considering whether to punch it.
After a long hesitation, she gave up.
She felt that if she hit that face, this War King girl really would self-detonate. The girl was so weak Ba could crush her with a single finger, but once she blew herself up, the sword she’d fused with would release its sealed power, and that might not be something Ba could easily withstand.
After thinking it through, Ba picked out someone from her pile of food—a cultivator who knew medicine—and ordered him to reconstruct the War King girl’s bones.
At last, after her body had been twisted and inhuman for so long, Bao Gu was given something resembling a human shape again.
The one who treated Bao Gu was a Void Tearing–stage cultivator, one of the few remaining in Ba’s Blood Prison World. In front of Ba, he trembled like a mouse facing a cat, overflowing with caution and fear.
He treated Bao Gu with extreme care.
Her injuries didn’t strike him as strange. He’d long since grown used to watching Ba devour people without blinking. Compared to that, breaking someone’s bones all over was nothing.
What did shock him was that Ba would actually have Bao Gu’s injuries healed.
Not shred, not eat—heal?
He suddenly realized this might be a chance to live.
Because Ba didn’t want Bao Gu to die.
Carefully, he reset Bao Gu’s bones, then took out healing medicine for her and even used his own spiritual power to help repair her injuries.
Under his wholehearted treatment, Bao Gu soon woke up.
He did not, however, expect that the moment Bao Gu opened her eyes, Ba would grab him and eat him on the spot.
Use the donkey while it grinds the mill, then slaughter it when you’re done. No hesitation.
Bao Gu didn’t know this Void Tearing cultivator, but she recognized the sect emblem on his robes. As far as she knew, he wasn’t Alliance Army; he must have been one of those who went to break the formation in the Primordial Desolate Mountains to seize the formation core and ended up captured by Ba.
Bao Gu honestly didn’t feel the least bit sorry for him.
If he hadn’t been greedy enough to break that formation and release Ba, none of this would have happened.
Sitting in the ground piled with bones, she watched Ba slowly eat the man bite by bite, without the slightest reaction.
It was the sea of bones that really made things clear to her.
No wonder Ba used bones to weave cages and build palaces. There were simply too many. Leaving them in heaps was an eyesore and got in the way, so she might as well put them to use.
To be fair, the bones of Void Tearing cultivators were quite hard, and the spiritual power they contained was strong. They had a jade-like texture, but finer, denser, and tougher than jade.
Ba ate people every day. After chewing on one kind of meat over and over, even she got tired of the taste. Seeing that Bao Gu no longer reacted to her eating people, she lost her appetite halfway through, tossed the remaining half a corpse aside, and used her foot to push the bones piled next to Bao Gu away.
Then she bent her knees and sat down in front of Bao Gu. Her eyes—like dots of lacquer with a faint red glow—stared straight at Bao Gu.
“I won’t kill you,” she said. “I’ll let you live. I’ll give you your freedom. Go.”
Bao Gu gave Ba a faint glance.
Ba said, “My word is as good as gold. I’m not like certain little girls who lie to trick people.”
Bao Gu turned her head slightly.
Calling a woman in her mid-twenties a ‘little girl’ while looking like a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old herself… she really had the nerve.
Since Ba said she could go and would give her freedom, Bao Gu saw no reason to be polite about it.
She stepped outside the carriage and immediately felt how bitingly cold it was—like a place with no temperature at all. There was no air to breathe, not even the slightest trace of spiritual energy.
She silently rejoiced that she had fused the Xuantian Sword and reached the Nascent Soul stage. If she’d still been just a Golden Core cultivator, she wouldn’t have lasted long out here.
After confirming there was no immediate danger outside, she pulled her spare carriage out of her giant storage bag and placed it behind her current one. Then, with one step, she landed in the new carriage and left behind the old one, broken and piled with human bones.
Once inside, Bao Gu activated the defensive formation and collapsed onto the thickly furred, soft seat, utterly exhausted.
Her carriage remained where it was. Ba’s, however, shot away at high speed, wrapped in a light veil of golden radiance. Before long, it disappeared beyond the reach of her divine sense.
Sensing Ba’s carriage vanish, Bao Gu felt a little dazed.
Had Ba really given up on her and decided to part ways?
Or did Ba want her to think she’d gone so Bao Gu would dare to go back, and then secretly follow her all the way back to the cultivation world?
Bao Gu didn’t know.
She only knew one thing—she couldn’t go back.
All around was lifeless emptiness. No sound. No hint of vitality.
Loneliness wrapped itself tightly around her, and waves of longing surged through her chest. Memories of the little courtyard on Lingyun Peak, of the cloud-sea forest, of the small house by the mortal village, all floated up in her mind.
Those days, bit by bit, became the most beautiful memories of her life.
Bao Gu took a deep breath and forced herself to pull it together.
First she took out a bath barrel and prepared some water, scrubbing herself thoroughly. Only when every trace of blood stench was gone did she step out of the tub.
Once she’d tidied herself up, she began thinking about what to do next.
She didn’t bother worrying whether Ba might still be watching her in secret. Whether Ba was or wasn’t, her situation wouldn’t change much.
She had the Xuantian Mountains, the jiao-dragon medicine fields, and the lake she’d relocated from the Sealed Heaven Deadlands inside her giant storage bag. With those, she didn’t have to worry about basic survival.
Her only concern was whether some unknown danger might appear in this void.
Since no danger had come yet, and she didn’t know what might be out there—or where might be safer—she decided it was better to stay put in this spot that seemed, for now, to be free of threats.
She chose to remain where she was.
She took out some everyday items and set them up in the small inner space of the carriage. Then she placed a tea table and chairs on the observation platform outside. In this empty darkness, the only thing worth looking at was the boundless starry sky.
After converting the carriage into a place she could live in, she added another concealment formation that blocked divination and detection.
That was her settling down.
The carriage was too small to keep living creatures inside. Her giant storage bag contained all kinds of beasts and animals, and even a jiao-dragon Enlightenment Tea Tree that had gained sentience, but she couldn’t just crawl into the bag and live there herself.
Still, taking out some tea to brew, or a few spirit fruits to snack on, was perfectly viable.
With nothing else to do, she focused on cultivation. Occasionally she’d brew a pot of tea or bring out some spirit fruits, then let her mind wander as she stared at the distant stars.
Sometimes, when boredom hit hard, she even thought about going to land on one of those stars.
But what looked close was impossibly far. She burned through spirit stones at an alarming rate, and the star she’d been aiming for never seemed to grow any larger.
Later, she encountered a drifting meteorite. It was enormous, like a floating island. As it passed near, it exerted a huge pulling force, dragging her carriage helplessly toward a collision.
At the last critical moment, Bao Gu tore open the void and plunged through, barely escaping with her life.
Once she’d escaped, she looked around and saw that the island-sized meteorite was gone. The surroundings were so clean there wasn’t even a speck of dust in sight.
She’d used void teleportation; she had no idea if Ba had followed, or if Ba had ever been following. She didn’t even know whether Ba had really left before.
She called out, “Ba! Come out!”
No response.
She tried again.
“Ba, are you there?”
Still, nothing.
Seeing there was no reaction, Bao Gu stopped shouting. She carefully probed her surroundings and, finding no danger or hidden threats, pulled out a piece of demon beast meat she had once obtained back in Hidden Dragon Abyss by slaughtering demon cultivators.
She cleaned it quickly and was about to start stewing it when she realized she didn’t have a pot. The big cauldron she’d always used for cooking demon meat belonged to Yu Mi.
Thinking of Yu Mi brought that dull ache back to her heart, but she quickly forced her emotions down.
As long as she lived, her soul lamp in the Xuantian Sect would stay lit. As long as it shone, Yu Mi would have that much more peace of mind.
She took out some refining materials and refined a small cauldron about two feet across. Then she cut the demon beast meat into chunks, put it in, and added spiritual herbs and treasures to slowly stew.
Bao Gu wasn’t particularly fond of meat; tea was her true love.
Whenever she missed Yu Mi, she would cook some demon meat. Every time she did, she felt a little closer to him.
She rarely ate the meat itself, usually just drank the broth. As for the meat, she always tossed it back into the Xuantian Mountains to feed the fish in the river.
Bao Gu couldn’t tell how long she’d been drifting in the void.
She only remembered that she’d already made demon meat stew more than ten times. As for how many times she’d brewed tea—she’d lost count.
She asked the jiao-dragon Enlightenment Tea Tree, “How long has it been since I last came to pick tea from you?”
The tree rolled its eyes at her.
“Three years. You harvest tea from me once every three years.”
“Uh,” Bao Gu said. “And how many times have I come to pick tea?”
If she knew that, she could calculate how long she’d been floating out here.
“How would I know?” the tea tree snapped. “If I had a good head for numbers, would I have let you exploit me like this?”
Bao Gu felt that the jiao-dragon tea tree had an excellent point, leaving her speechless. She could only slink away.
When she withdrew her divine sense from the giant storage bag, she suddenly noticed that outside the carriage there was now an unclothed girl of about sixteen or seventeen, and that girl was none other than the Ba Bao Gu had always suspected of spying on her in secret.
Ba took a single step and walked straight through Bao Gu’s defensive restrictions as if they weren’t there. She sat down at the little tea table, reached out, and pulled the still-simmering demon-meat cauldron into her arms.
Then she plunged her hand into the boiling broth, grabbed a hunk of demon meat, and tossed it into her mouth.
Eating straight from the pot.
Bao Gu’s eyes went wide and stayed that way.
In no time at all, Ba had polished off the entire cauldron of demon meat, along with every drop of broth. She set the cauldron back down in front of Bao Gu, opened her Blood Prison World, grabbed a random cultivator, pointed at him, and said:
“Cook this.”
