Bao Gu could endure the emptiness and loneliness of the void, but she couldn’t endure how fast time slipped away. One moment of distraction or a burst of busyness, and ten days, half a month, even several months would be gone. Three years had passed, yet it felt like only two or three months.
Every time she forced herself to check the time, her heart trembled with fear. Time was vanishing too quickly—or her progress was too slow. She was afraid of wasting time here, afraid she would simply run out of life in this emptiness. Afraid that one slim, fragile chance to see Yu Mi again would be worn away by this madly rushing time. Afraid she would never see Yu Mi again, that it would be a final farewell.
She had known before she left what her situation would be. Leaving meant waiting to lose everything, to lose her dearest kin, her greatest love. But as time went on, that loss grew more and more real, more and more painful.
She missed Yu Mi. The longing felt carved into her bones, seeped into her marrow, boiling there into a bone-deep ache. She had resented Yu Mi for leaving without a word, resented her for throwing herself into danger without telling her, resented her for never sparing a thought for her when she took those risks. When she tricked Ba into being exiled into the void with her, saying it was to remove this disaster from the world—wasn’t that also throwing a tantrum at Yu Mi?
Now, all the resentment, all the anger had faded. She only hoped she could see her one more time.
Bao Gu pulled her gaze back from the hourglass, only to catch, out of the corner of her eye, Ba sprawled lazily on her soft couch, tilting her head, those beautiful eyes like a vast starry sky fixed on her with amused interest. From Ba’s mouth came the sound of fruit pits being crushed.
Bao Gu’s eyes flicked to the fruit plate on the low side table. A whole plate of spirit fruit, and not a single pit left.
Ba’s bite was terrifying. She could take a chunk out of Da Luo Redgold with one chomp; these fruit pits, hard as iron, were just crispy snacks to her. No wonder every time she ate spirit fruit she crunched the pits down too, never leaving a scrap.
Ba finished the last fruit pit and still looked unsatisfied. She lifted her eyes to Bao Gu, that pitiful, hopeful look in them about as pathetic as it could get.
Bao Gu pretended not to see that poor-little-me expression and kept her head down, going through the jade slips.
She was the one who ought to be pitied, wasn’t she?
Managing three hundred thousand people wasn’t especially hard, but without a housekeeper like Wang Ding to help, and with no suitable replacement in sight, she had to handle a lot of trivial matters herself.
When Bao Gu finally finished checking the accounts and got up to sweep the jade slips on the table into her oversized storage bag, she noticed a few of them were missing.
From the corner of her eye, she saw a shadow under the desk. She bent down and peeked, only to find Ba sitting on the floor with her knees up, the missing jade slips spread across her legs. Bao Gu squatted down to look at her and saw Ba was completely absorbed.
Curious, she asked,
“What are you reading?”
Ba shoved the jade slip back at her with a disgusted face.
“I really don’t get what’s so interesting about these.”
Bao Gu hugged the jade slips Ba tossed back and said,
“They’re ledgers. How much ore we produce each month, how much metal we refine, how much jade and other resources we mine, how much we spend—it’s all in here. Managing accounts is just as important as managing people.”
After so many years side by side with Ba, she’d come to know her quite well. Setting aside the fact that Ba treated people as food, she actually wasn’t bad. Anything they agreed on, Ba had never broken once. In all the years she’d stayed by Bao Gu’s side, she’d never caused any trouble. Ba often put on a “I totally look down on you” act, but she was actually very obedient. After so many years together, Bao Gu couldn’t help feeling some affection toward her.
Ba tilted her head and squinted at her.
“What kind of trouble could they make?”
In her heart she added,
I’m watching them. Just waiting for them to slip up.
Bao Gu was idle for the moment and didn’t have a bad impression of Ba, so she simply started talking to her about handling accounts and managing people.
As she spoke, she suddenly noticed Ba was looking at her with her head cocked, eyes full of sly light. Ba looked like a girl of sixteen or seventeen, and with all the spirit treasures and ten-thousand-year medicines Bao Gu fed her from that huge storage bag, even her chin had started to soften and round slightly. It made this Ba, who terrified the entire cultivation world, look like a soft, innocent, naïve young girl.
Like right now: there was mischief in those eyes, but the bright, lively gaze was as clear and pure as a mountain spring. It made Bao Gu instinctively want to lift her hand and ruffle Ba’s hair.
She asked,
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
Ba’s smile bloomed.
“Are you teaching me how to keep accounts?”
Bao Gu hummed in acknowledgment.
“I know you’re powerful, but it never hurts to know more.”
Ba’s brows arched. She stared at Bao Gu in confusion for a moment.
“What’s the point of knowing how to manage accounts?”
Bao Gu asked,
“If you wanted to kill these three hundred thousand people, how long would you need?”
Ba said,
“An instant.”
Bao Gu asked again,
“If you wanted these three hundred thousand people to stay alive instead?”
Ba replied,
“That doesn’t even take an instant. I just don’t kill them, and they live, don’t they?”
As soon as she finished, Bao Gu shot her a deep look, full of meaning.
Bao Gu turned and sat down in her chair.
“Not killing them is not the same as letting them live. In this void, what happens if there’s no food? They starve to death. Before they starve, in order not to starve, they might even turn to cannibalism.”
She looked straight at Ba.
“Ba, you were human once. Why did you start eating people? Because you were hungry. Because you needed to replenish your energy. They’re no different.”
Never mind these cultivators—back when Qing Shan County had been hit by three years of demon-induced drought, she had seen people eat people with her own eyes.
Ba asked,
“And what does that have to do with keeping accounts?”
Bao Gu said,
“You’re not managing numbers. You’re managing resources through the accounts, and by managing resources, you manage people.”
She raised the jade slip in her hand.
“This is just a jade slip. What’s written on it is only numbers. But those numbers represent the resources that keep us alive. You were able to break out of your seal because the cultivation world was plundering resources.”
She fixed her gaze on Ba.
“If there were Earth Immortals in this age, back in the cultivation world I would have sealed you again. Do you believe that or not?”
Ba almost snorted in contempt—but then she remembered that endless swarm of people back then, charging at her no matter how many she killed, wearing her down until she had no strength left, and then that coffin dropped from the sky and sealed her inside—
The memory rose, and Ba’s aura changed in an instant. Billowing blood fiend energy and deathly qi seeped from her body, enveloping her in red light. Even her eyes turned blood-red. The lotus mark between her brows flared vivid and wet, as if it had come alive.
She had lost many memories, but that didn’t mean she’d turned stupid.
Ba stared fixedly at Bao Gu and said coldly,
“Why are you telling me this now? There’s no Earth Immortal in this era. You can’t seal me. But I can kill you right now.”
Bao Gu said,
“No matter how strong a person is, their personal strength has limits. My combat power is weak, but by controlling resources, I can make the whole world move for me. Here, I can’t beat you. I might not even be able to beat many of the laborers outside. But you handed them to me. Now they’re all working themselves to the bone for me. These three hundred thousand people, I point, and they go.”
She continued evenly,
“Through accounting I manage resources, and through resources I manage people. That makes everything sustainable, endlessly renewable.”
She added,
“You don’t have to glare at me like that. If I wanted to harm you, I wouldn’t be telling you all this.”
“In the cultivation world, I saw you as a calamity and a dire enemy. I was willing to throw away my own life to trick you into this void. But, strictly speaking, we don’t have some irreconcilable blood feud that demands we destroy each other. You wanted to eat my master. I wanted to protect my master. That’s all.”
“If you go without one World-Purifying Holy Lotus, I can keep finding you spirit treasures and rare medicines. All that added together—do you really think it’s worth less than a single lotus? There’s a Prison-breaking Blood Lotus in this world, and a World-Purifying Holy Lotus. Do you think there are no other wondrous treasures that can serve as substitutes?”
The blood fiend energy and deathly qi slowly drew back into Ba’s body.
She thought for a long while before asking,
“Why are you telling me all this?”
Bao Gu said,
“You keep your word. In the end, I’m the one who tricked you and broke faith. But when you get down to it, we’re both just trying to live well.”
“Dying is easy. Living well is hard.”
“I’m telling you this, trying to teach you how to keep accounts, because I want you to have one more way to live well.”
Ba froze for a moment, then tossed out,
“You talk too damn much.”
She got up and walked toward the door. When she reached it, she added lightly,
“I won’t eat your master in the future, then.”
Bao Gu gave a wry smile. An ache rose in her chest out of nowhere.
Even if Ba didn’t eat her honored aunt anymore, they still couldn’t go back.
Ba wandered around outside for a while, then came back to Bao Gu’s side. She lowered her head and stared at her own round, delicate toes, pale and lustrous like carved jade.
“Um… didn’t you say you’d teach me how to use resources to make the world move for me?”
Bao Gu lifted her head from the jade slip, stunned.
“I only said I’d teach you to keep accounts.”
Ba raised her chin.
“It’s the same thing.”
“It’s not the same,” Bao Gu said.
Ba glared at her in outrage.
“You’re tricking me again?”
Bao Gu said,
“Accountants only deal with numbers. Have you ever seen the world move at the beck and call of an accountant?”
Ba stared at her, eyes practically spitting fire.
It wasn’t a metaphor. Two tongues of flame danced in her pupils, burning outward past her eyes, curling over her thick lashes and almost reaching her brows.
Bao Gu recognized the flames in Ba’s eyes as one of the primordial fires of heaven and earth: Hell Karma Fire, a yin fire born from the Prison-breaking Blood Lotus. Yin fire wasn’t like yang fire—yang fire burned hot; yin fire burned cold—but both could reduce anything to ash.
Seeing Ba’s eyes literally on fire but feeling no killing intent from her, not even a wisp of blood fiend qi, Bao Gu stayed perfectly calm. She nodded at the chair beside her.
“Sit down. I’ll explain it slowly. I’m not tricking you.”
Ba snorted heavily and plopped into the chair next to her.
Bao Gu said,
“Cultivation starts from refining essence into qi and goes step by step until you ascend as an immortal. Making the world move for you is the same—you have to go step by step. Teaching you to keep accounts is just the first step.”
Ba’s expression slightly eased.
Bao Gu continued,
“You see me doing the accounts. But have you ever seen me *only* do accounts?”
Ba thought about it carefully. Her gaze lit up and she smiled.
“Teach me.”
That brilliant smile carried a faint hint of flattery when she looked at Bao Gu.
Bao Gu was briefly stunned by it, feeling oddly at a loss.
Ba thought she had changed her mind.
“Hey, you were just teaching me a moment ago.”
Bao Gu was still puzzling over that hint of flattery. If Ba was trying to butter her up, it meant she really wanted to learn. Why this sudden eagerness? Which part of what she’d said had gotten through to her?
She was curious, so she asked directly.
Ba fidgeted for a long time before finally blurting out, half angry,
“You’re so weak, and you still had the confidence to say you’d stuff me back into a coffin. You think I’m going to let people bury me a second time?”
After she escaped, she’d carefully shrunk herself away, half-paranoid that she’d provoke that endless flood of people rushing up to kill her and bury her in a coffin again. She had never understood what it was that drove all those people to throw their lives away to seal her and bury her for so many years.
She thought of the first time she met Bao Gu—how she’d tried to grab her, and all those people had thrown themselves at Ba with no regard for their lives, tangling her up and letting Bao Gu escape right from under her hand.
What Bao Gu had said today had been a huge jolt and revelation to her.
Bao Gu stared blankly for a while, then suddenly burst out laughing.
So that was it—once bitten by a snake, and you’re afraid of rope for ten years.
Ba ground her teeth and glared at her.
“Are you going to teach me or not?”
In a good mood, Bao Gu’s lips curled slightly.
“I am.”
Ba was so powerful—if Bao Gu didn’t teach her and make use of her, how could she live with herself?
Her smile faded.
“But I can’t teach you for free. If you want to gain something, you have to give something. If you want to learn, you need to show sincerity—and act like you’re here to learn.”
Ba said,
“What do you want? Just say it. You want me to forge you a set of divine metal battle armor?”
Bao Gu said,
“To learn something, you have to take a master.”
“When I started cultivating and learning the sword, I took my master as my teacher. When I studied alchemy and formations, I took the demon saint as my teacher. Only once I’d formally taken them as masters did I learn the true skills. Without that, you only get a bit of casual guidance, just the surface.”
Ba looked at her with confusion and faint suspicion. It really felt like Bao Gu was digging a pit for her to jump into.
Bao Gu said,
“Taking a master is no trivial matter. And what I’m going to teach you will be of great use to you in the future. Whether you want to take me as your master, whether you want to learn—think it through carefully before you decide.”
Ba asked,
“Are there any downsides to taking a master?”
Bao Gu said,
“Once you do, you have to listen to me. That’s about it. After that, I’ll teach you everything I know. If you do well, I can even pass you Xuantian Sect’s cultivation technique and teach you how to forge the War God Sword.”
Ba’s eyes lit up, glowing with joy. She jumped to her feet.
“Really? You’ll really teach me to forge the War God Sword?”
Bao Gu was puzzled.
You’re the Heavenly Emperor’s daughter. Why are you so interested in the War God Sword?
Ba said,
“If you teach me those two things, I’ll take you as my master.”
Bao Gu said solemnly,
“I can only teach you to forge the War God Sword if you’re willing to listen to me.”
Ba blinked at her.
“As long as you don’t trick me or set me up, I’ll listen.”
Bao Gu choked for a moment.
She was literally tricking Ba into becoming her disciple right now.
Keeping a straight face, she carefully explained what it meant to respect and honor one’s master, then told Ba to think it over and come back to her once she’d decided.
Ba thought, and thought some more. In the end, she couldn’t resist the temptation. She asked Bao Gu for a tea set and, under her guidance, brewed tea, then knelt solemnly before Bao Gu, kowtowed, and offered the tea, performing the full three kneels and nine kowtows to formally take her as her master.
After Bao Gu drank the tea Ba presented, she saw how excited the girl looked, as if she’d picked up some massive bargain from heaven itself. Bao Gu couldn’t help asking, full of curiosity,
“So happy to be my disciple?”
Ba shot her a disdainful glance, eyes clearly saying,
As if. Only a ghost would be happy just because they became *your* disciple.
Bao Gu caught that look, thought about everything again, and quickly connected it to the War God Sword.
She summoned the Xuantian Sword and held it, studying it for a long time. Then she glanced at Ba in confusion, doubts gnawing at her.
The Xuantian Sword was very powerful, yes. But for the daughter of the Heavenly Emperor to value it this much?
She suddenly remembered—Ba had spared her life before, seemingly also because of this sword. She had assumed Ba had some connection to the War King clan, but it seemed there was more to it than that.
Ba saw Bao Gu staring at the Xuantian Sword, lost in thought, and not even telling her to get up from her kneeling posture. She simply stood up on her own.
“Ahem. You’ve had your disciple tea. Isn’t it about time you taught me how to forge the War God Sword?”
Bao Gu looked at her in surprise.
Such impatience?
Ba said,
“You drank the tea, I listened to your lecture, and you’re still not teaching me?”
Bao Gu suddenly felt a bit unsettled.
Who had tricked whom this time?
Why did she feel like *she* had walked right into a trap?
Suspicious, she asked,
“What’s so special about this sword that you value it so much?”
For her, the Xuantian Sword had mostly been something to prop up her status.
Ba saw her dragging her feet and refusing to teach, and her gaze turned vicious.
“Are you teaching me or not?”
Bao Gu glared right back.
“Are you daring to bully and disrespect your master?”
Ba’s fierceness shrank in an instant.
“I wouldn’t dare!”
Bao Gu pressed on,
“What’s this sword good for, exactly?”
Even as she asked, she felt her own face heat. She was the sword’s master and she was asking *Ba* what it did.
Ba gave her a look of pure contempt.
“You’re the sword master. And you’re asking me?”
“I don’t know,” Bao Gu said calmly. “You do. So of course I’m asking you.”
Ba strolled over to a chair and sat down, languid.
“I vaguely remember the supreme cultivation technique of the War King clan… um… anyway, you just have to pass me the technique. Why are you asking so many questions?”
Bao Gu put away the Xuantian Sword, picked up her tea from the low table, and took her time drinking it. Only after she finished the whole cup did she hand the ledger to Ba.
“Learn to read the accounts first.”
Ba bristled internally.
Who wants to learn that?
But she thought for a moment, then still took the ledger from Bao Gu.
“A perfected War God Sword can cleave the firmament itself. The War God Sword of the War King clan has another name: the Heaven-Rending Sword of Domains. If you want to cross the void, why bother building ships? As long as you fully comprehend and perfect the sword on you, you can cross the void on your own.”
Hugging a mountain of gold while crying about being poor—Ba couldn’t not look down on Bao Gu.
Bao Gu fell silent.
The more she thought, the more something felt off.
“With the War King clan’s forging method, any sword can cut open the sky and tear through the void? Anyone can do it?” she asked.
As soon as the words left her mouth, she saw Ba looking at her sidelong. Bao Gu felt so embarrassed she had to touch her own nose.
Ba said, enunciating each word,
“A *perfected* War God Sword.”
Bao Gu summoned the Xuantian Sword again, weighed it in her hand, and asked,
“What about this one?”
She remembered how Ba had used it before, slicing divine metal as if it were tofu. A sword forged from Da Luo Redgold, and it had sheared divine metal?
Clearly, there were many things about this sword she’d completely overlooked.
Ba stared at her so-called master, utterly speechless.
She suddenly wanted to crush every bone in Bao Gu’s body inch by inch and roll her into a ball. This woman was infuriating.
Bao Gu just looked back at her.
Ba couldn’t stand it. Hugging the ledger Bao Gu had given her, she ran off.
She wasn’t blind—of course she could see that Bao Gu wouldn’t easily pass her the War King clan’s cultivation technique.
But the days ahead were long.
