Ba no longer ate people. She ignored the cultivators imprisoned in the Blood Prison World and let them fend for themselves. Bao Gu naturally had no interest in asking about these cultivators she had already completely given up on.
There was spiritual energy in the Blood Prison World, but not much. Compared to spiritual energy, there was far more deathly aura. That faint trickle of spiritual energy wasn’t enough to sustain the cultivators trapped inside. What kept them alive was still their own reserves.
Even if they reduced consumption as much as possible, the spiritual power in their bodies steadily ran dry. One by one, they began to shrivel and grow gaunt. Before this, Ba would occasionally appear before them and put on a show of devouring people alive, stewing living flesh in front of them, scaring them so badly they didn’t dare move recklessly. On top of that, at the time they all still had enough spiritual power to maintain their bodies, so they didn’t yet appear weak.
Now Ba hadn’t appeared in a long time, and they had all starved until they were nothing but skin and bones. Some even starved to death outright. Many more, once their spiritual power was exhausted and their bodies weakened, were eroded by the deathly aura, falling ill. Some died of sickness. Others were corroded by deathly aura yet somehow stayed alive, becoming neither human nor ghost.
Then, a gruesome tragedy of cannibalism broke out in the Blood Prison World.
Those who didn’t want to die started eating people. Those who didn’t want to be eaten had to fight back. They were all cultivators, all possessed combat power. Who was willing to just sit and watch themselves be eaten? Of course they had to do everything they could to resist. To resist, they needed strength. The only energy supply available—was human flesh…
So, over food, savage slaughter erupted throughout the Blood Prison World. Every pair of eyes went green with hunger and red with killing. The people beside them no longer appeared as people in their eyes, but as meat, as food, as threats.
Some, in order to survive the massacres, banded together into groups to hunt others, treating them as stored rations.
Ba sensed the fluctuations of battle inside the Blood Prison World and at first paid no attention. This kind of thing flared up once in a while and she couldn’t be bothered. But when the commotion inside became truly too great, she sent her divine sense in for a look—and was so shocked her eyes went blank.
Her rations were eating her rations!
The sheer surprise and disbelief made her forget she was still sulking at Bao Gu and keeping score over past grievances. She went to find Bao Gu and said:
“Didn’t you say people eating people is wrong?”
She opened up the Blood Prison World and revealed the Bone Palace before Bao Gu’s eyes.
Bao Gu lifted her head and swept her divine sense over the cages.
She drew in a sharp breath, her face turning pale.
The people inside were all as thin as ghosts, but their eyes were like those of starving beasts and hungry ghosts. Many clutched other people’s mangled limbs and torn flesh in their hands, gnawing on them, every one of them eyeing their surroundings warily, ready at any moment to fend off others…
The prisoners suddenly caught sight of Bao Gu and Ba. Terror and dread hit them like a tidal wave. They all shrank back into the corners of their cages. Some dropped the limbs and scraps of flesh in their hands. Some couldn’t bear to part with them and clutched them even tighter. Some kowtowed, begging for mercy, weeping and wailing…
In Bao Gu’s mind, only two words remained: “Living hell.”
This scene burned her eyes even worse than the great drought back when Qing Shan County was beset by demons. Back then, cannibalism was done in secret, in hiding. People ate those who had already starved to death, brought back in secret.
But this—hunger could grind a person’s humanity to dust.
Suddenly, one person rushed forward, grabbed the cage bars with all his strength, and shouted at the top of his lungs:
“Lord, I’m willing to do anything for you! Give me a way to live, I beg you, give me a way to live—”
One person charged out, and then more and more people surged forward, shouting at Bao Gu. Some even swore blood oaths on the spot.
At this moment, Bao Gu was both what they feared most—and their last shred of hope in despair.
Bao Gu’s gaze passed over them and fell on the bodies of those who had died in mutual slaughter, gnawed down to bare bone. She glanced once, then shifted her eyes to Ba and asked:
“Can you let me handle them?”
Ba still refused to let go of the question from before.
“Didn’t you say people eating people is wrong?”
She gave her own view.
“If they’re hungry, why can’t they eat?”
“Give them to me,” Bao Gu said. “I’ll show you why.”
Ba stared at her in puzzlement.
“Let them out?”
Bao Gu shook her head.
“Keep them locked up. I’ll tell you how to deal with them.”
Ba reluctantly agreed.
“…Fine.”
Bao Gu stood up.
“Come with me.”
She led Ba to the council hall, then had Ba open the Blood Prison World in public. At the same time, she linked it into a formation, projecting the scene inside the Blood Prison World onto the plazas on every level of the battleship.
Then she sent a voice-transmission ordering everyone to gather at the plazas.
The scene of that purgatory inside the Blood Prison World unfolded before everyone’s eyes. The misery, the horror, sent chills through each person.
Every single one of them had once come out from the Blood Prison World themselves. That place’s terror had been seared deep into their souls. Yet what they were seeing now was even more tragic than what they remembered.
They had known that those left behind in the Blood Prison World had become Ba’s rations. They’d thought they would all eventually be eaten by Ba. They hadn’t expected them to end up slaughtering each other and devouring one another instead.
Inside the Blood Prison World, the cultivators screamed and wept for mercy in madness. Their starving-ghost expressions, their deranged eyes, made them look nothing like cultivators, nothing like people.
Bao Gu spoke to the cultivators within the Blood Prison World:
“I want to ask you a few questions.
“The one who captured you is Ba. The one who trapped you in this desperate situation is this Bone Palace. You are all prisoners here, all rations. None of you are in better straits than the others.
“With so many of you, why did you not join forces to fight Ba? Why did you not work together to bring down this Bone Palace and make one last, all-out struggle?
“Instead, you turned on each other, persecuted your own fellow cultivators who had fallen into the same plight, you slaughtered one another, devoured one another.
“With so many of you here, how many died by Ba’s hand, and how many died by your own?”
No one answered her.
Their eyes held only hunger, madness, and a desperate, crazed will to live.
Bao Gu asked again:
“You beg me to give you a way to live. But what about your ethics as people, your principles, your bottom line, your humanity?
“If you’ve lost all of that, on what basis do you stand in this world? On what basis do you go on living?”
Her voice paused, then grew distant.
“When I was young, I had only been in the Xuantian Sect for less than two years when the sect suffered a catastrophic calamity. My fellow disciples, my teachers, my senior brothers and sisters used their blood and their lives to teach me a lesson.
“In that battle, Xuantian Sect suffered horrific casualties. Other than my Grandmaster and Uncle Master Feng, the only survivors were us disciples who hadn’t been in the sect for long and were still at the Qi Refining, Foundation Establishment, or Golden Core stages.
“I… we lived because they used their lives to protect us.
“Xuantian Sect was not wiped out and was able to rise once again because they used their deaths to preserve the sect’s foundations.
“They died, but with their deaths they protected Xuantian Sect and made possible the glory Xuantian Sect has today.
“With their deaths, they showed me what sect honor means, what it means to fight to the last drop of blood rather than cling cravenly to life and abandon your fellow disciples and your principles.
“Do you know why I risked my own life to trick Ba into banishment in the void?
“Because back then, there were people who disregarded their own lives and used their lives to protect me.”
Her gaze turned ice-cold as she looked at the people in the Blood Prison World.
“You want a way to live, but you shouldn’t be begging me. You should have begged yourselves.
“But you cut off your own path to survival.
“I will not save people who, in the face of great calamity, know nothing of standing together against a powerful enemy and only know how to kill themselves and each other, betraying their own comrades.
“The moment you betrayed your fellow cultivators, you had already lost the qualification to live.”
The three hundred thousand cultivators on the main ship were all stunned by the misery of those in the Blood Prison World. Even those who didn’t fully agree with Bao Gu’s talk of “ethics” did not dare refute this declaration of hers.
Some even interpreted her words as:
“Look closely at the people in the Blood Prison World. This is what happens to those who oppose me and betray me.”
They felt this was a classic case of “killing a chicken to warn the monkeys.”
There were also many who nodded in quiet approval, thinking that Bao Gu valued loyalty and righteousness, and that following her would lead somewhere.
Human hearts are all different and thoughts varied, but the fate of those in the Blood Prison World once again refreshed their memories, branding in another deep mark.
Bao Gu had faintly left them with an impression: falling into Bao Gu’s hands ended even worse than falling into Ba’s hands, worse than death.
When Ba heard this speech of Bao Gu’s, she immediately lost her calm and shouted at Bao Gu:
“You were telling them to come deal with me?”
In Bao Gu’s mouth, she was the enemy, the outsider.
Ba’s eyes went red. She felt especially wronged and stifled. She had no way to refute it, but she felt utterly miserable. She hated being treated as some excluded freak, hated being seen as an alien thing.
She hadn’t eaten anyone in a long time.
Bao Gu sent her a private voice-transmission:
“I only wanted them to remember one thing: when you choose to betray your comrades, you are also choosing to be betrayed by your comrades.”
She finished, then cut off the formation’s projection.
She looked at Ba and softened her voice.
“You cut off their path to survival. Of course they should have joined forces against you.
“Qing Ying, a gentleman has things he will do—and things he will not.”
Ba suddenly froze, eyes wide.
“How do you know my name is Qing Ying? I never told you.”
Bao Gu snapped in exasperation:
“I’m not blind. There are huge letters carved on the array pillar saying ‘Qing Ying’. You think I can’t read?”
Ba had never mentioned anyone besides her father, so the only one who could have carved her name on the array pillar and given it to the main ship as its name could only have been Ba herself.
Ba blinked, and her voice softened.
“Fine…”
Then her tone suddenly shot up again.
“No, wait—we were talking about why you told them to come deal with me!
“Do you still want to find a chance to stuff me back into a coffin and seal me up again?”
Bao Gu gave Ba a cool side glance.
“You wanted to hurt my senior sister, you wanted to eat my Holy Aunt, and you tried to capture me. Of course I’d fight you to the death.
“Now we’ve turned blades into jade and silk. If you treat me well, naturally I’ll treat you well.”
She looked Ba straight in the eye.
“If you stop eating people and stop taking their lives, they naturally won’t band together to fight you.”
Ba was stunned.
This… sounded like it sort of made sense. She actually didn’t know how to argue.
But she still hated how Bao Gu used her as an example of a powerful enemy, and even imagined having so many people gang up on her. Even if she could slap a huge swath of them to death with one palm, even if three hundred thousand people weren’t enough for her to kill with a few slaps, she still didn’t like it.
She remembered how, in the past, endless streams of cultivators and earth immortals had thrown themselves at her, exhausting her strength through sheer attrition until she fell into a formation and ended up sealed in that divine-metal coffin.
She also thought of how, ever since she’d mentioned Yu Mi to Bao Gu, Bao Gu had been ignoring her, and she felt profoundly upset.
She hadn’t even seen Yu Mi yet—just mentioned her once—and Bao Gu had already started giving her the cold shoulder. If Bao Gu actually found Yu Mi, wouldn’t she cut Ba’s rations in half? No—she’d probably give them all to Yu Mi.
To Ba, Bao Gu was her long-term food source. Now that long-term food source wanted to run off, and might even seal her back in that divine-metal coffin for Yu Mi’s sake!
Thinking of the divine-metal coffin, Ba suddenly felt the urge to chop off her own hands.
She had actually given Bao Gu an entire divine-metal chain—enough divine metal to make several divine-metal coffins!
All at once she lunged forward and wrapped herself around Bao Gu’s arm, dragging out her voice:
“Master…”
That syrupy, saccharine tone made goosebumps erupt all over Bao Gu’s skin.
The cultivators in the Blood Prison World, who had just been sentenced to death by Bao Gu again and were on the verge of madness, were stunned stupid.
Either they thought they’d gone insane. Or they thought they’d had a cultivation deviation. Or they thought they’d misheard.
Then they went even crazier.
Bao Gu was so startled she hurriedly pulled out a bottle of Revival Pills and, on top of that, stuffed an extra box of newly made Coiling Dragon Enlightenment Tea into Ba’s hands.
While Ba was lowering her head to receive the Revival Pills and Enlightenment Tea, Bao Gu quickly yanked her arm free from Ba’s embrace and turned to head back to her little courtyard.
Ba caught up to her in a few quick steps, dragging her voice again.
“Master, I’ve gone through the formal apprenticeship rites and served you tea. You can’t just ignore me. You can’t dock my rations for anyone!”
Seeing she couldn’t shake Ba off, Bao Gu stopped and kept her face taut.
“Speak properly.”
Ba let out an “oh,” immediately straightened up, and started counting on her fingers.
“I know a sure way out of the void and back to a world with living beings.
“But you have to promise me—no matter what, even if you meet Yu Mi, I’m still your beloved disciple. You have to treat me the same as always—no, you have to treat me even better.”
Amazement, surprise, and a hint of disbelief flashed through Bao Gu’s eyes.
“You know how to escape the void and get out alive?”
Ba lifted her little face proudly.
“Anyway, my experience is just a tiny bit broader than yours.”
Bao Gu snorted a laugh.
“And you still apprenticed yourself to me?”
Ba instantly lost her proud air. She gave a dry little cough to cover it up, thinking to herself:
Wasn’t that just to learn War God Clan techniques?
In the end her master was cunning as a fox. After all her wheedling, trickery, and volunteering as her sparring partner to steal techniques, she’d only managed to pick up a bit of superficial skill and a few lines of incantation.
“So do you agree or not?” she said. “If you don’t agree, I won’t tell you.”
Bao Gu thought for a moment.
“My senior sister can cook.”
Ba: “…”
Bao Gu continued:
“She’s also a total foodie. She carries a cooking cauldron wherever she goes. The cauldron I gave you was refined based on the one she uses to stew demonic beast meat. Hers is a true magic treasure, though.”
Ba: “…”
Bao Gu went on:
“When it comes to food, if she dares claim second place, no one would dare claim first.
“The Duobao Spirit Monkey who brews Supreme Monkey Wine is also tagging along with her, and there’s also Xue Ling, a direct-line princess of the Celestial Fox royal clan, following her around gathering rare spiritual delicacies and treasures.”
Ba thought for a while and asked:
“How does Yu Mi’s cooking compare to those six chefs?”
Bao Gu shot back:
“Have you ever seen me ask those six chefs to cook for me? I don’t even look twice at their dishes.”
Ba took a deep breath and screamed in her heart:
“Doesn’t look twice!!”
She rolled up her sleeves mentally and howled inside:
“When I caught Yu Mi back then, why didn’t I make her stew a few people for a taste—no, fry a few people—no, that’s not right, stir-fry a few people…”
Ba’s mouth was practically watering.
She thought for a moment, then asked in a small voice:
“Master, does Yu Mi know Xuantian techniques?”
Bao Gu said:
“Everything I know, I’ve taught her.
“She’s the young sect master of Xuantian Sect. The most orthodox Xuantian inheritance should be in her hands.”
Should be—not is.
In truth, the true core inheritance of Xuantian Sect was still with Bao Gu herself—the War God Sword and the Xuantian mountain range.
Ba stomped her foot in frustration.
“Aiya, I bowed to the wrong master!”
But when she compared Yu Mi and Bao Gu side by side in her head, she still felt it was better to have Bao Gu as her master. After all, she really couldn’t stand Yu Mi, really disliked Yu Mi. Even if Yu Mi could cook, so what? At worst she’d just make Yu Mi her personal chef.
Bao Gu was speechless.
You damned glutton.
She said:
“Out with it. How do we find a way to live?”
