With no one else available, Bao Gu felt sorry for Yu Mi and had no choice but to set aside the project of modifying the world-breaking gate formation. She personally went out to handle those matters.
Once she took over, she was nowhere near as easy to talk to as Yu Mi. Everything was handled strictly according to Kan Gang law.
Those who had used their positions to embezzle Kan Gang property were handed over to the Punishment Hall; their sentences would depend on how serious the case was and how much of the losses they could return. If their teachers or relatives were willing to scrape together money to ransom them, Kan Gang would reclaim the losses, then, after they paid ransom and fines, give them a lighter punishment.
If they had poor connections, no one willing to save them, had already squandered the stolen wealth, and couldn’t spit back out what they’d swallowed, then there were only two paths.
One: seize a strand of their life-soul, seal it into a soul tablet, and send it to the Death Camp to serve as a death warrior.
Two: send them straight to the public square and “ka-cha”—one stroke to take their head.
As for the ones planted by other factions inside Kan Gang, serving as spies and stirrers of trouble, no plea would work on them. No matter who came to beg, no matter what they offered as ransom, it was useless. Kill every last one. Bao Gu didn’t even leave their souls intact.
Before, when Yu Mi was handling these people, their backers could still maneuver and pressure things to protect them. Now they’d run into Bao Gu, who was like oil and salt that wouldn’t mix, whose word was final. Those who had dragged their feet waiting to “talk it over with Yu Mi and bargain a price” dragged it so long that by the time it was Bao Gu on the scene, there was nothing left to save. Some of them weren’t even allowed a last meeting before they were chopped down.
Every one of those people had backing; some of them had truly formidable patrons. It was all useless.
An old prince of the Yue Kingdom even went to beg Siruo, asking her to intercede and save the life of his only legitimate heir. Siruo could only go find Jade Shura, and ask her to “drop by and watch the execution.” After the sentence was carried out, Jade Shura used a magic tool to collect the freshly shattered, not-yet-dissipated three souls and seven spirits.
There was no way to save the person’s life. The only thing they could do was use this method to reshape the soul.
But the process of shattering and then reshaping a soul inflicted tremendous damage. It was nearly impossible to preserve the soul’s consciousness; whether the person would still have normal thought afterward was anyone’s guess. Even if the soul-consciousness remained whole, the reshaped soul would be weaker than a wild ghost. A whole lifetime of cultivation would be gone. If they wanted to cultivate again, they could only become the weakest type of ghost cultivator.
The best method was, after reshaping the soul, to find a mortal couple with excellent spiritual roots and physique. While the womb had only just conceived and the fetus had not yet taken form, before a native soul-consciousness arose, they would send this damaged soul into the womb to seize the fetus and be reborn, borrowing another’s body to live again.
But finding a fetus whose fate and life pattern matched and who had outstanding aptitude was extremely difficult. Being able to encounter one in several decades, even a hundred years, would already be quite lucky. The effort required was enormous; the one you struggled so hard to “save” might as well not have been saved.
On top of that, how many people had enough pull, like Siruo, to ask someone to squeeze through loopholes like this to rescue a person?
Jade Shura helping this once was merely giving Siruo some face; it was no big deal. The execution had already been carried out—she was just helping “collect the remains,” which didn’t violate Kan Gang’s rules or Bao Gu’s orders. But having her sit there permanently “collecting corpses” and saving souls for everyone? What, did she have nothing better to do than park herself right on the storm’s crest and look for trouble?
Many people could only swallow the loss in silence. Some had anger stuck in their chest but, hampered by all kinds of concerns, could only watch and see. And some… were just about ready to roll up their sleeves and start swinging.
So, after Bao Gu beheaded the beloved disciple of a certain hot-tempered, vicious, and overwhelmingly powerful loner—someone who had been strutting sideways for years with hardly anyone daring to provoke him—the old man choked hard on his rage. With others fanning the flames, he came storming up to the Kan Gang Command Envoy’s residence, killing intent boiling.
He roared at the top of his lungs:
“Bao Gu! Get out here and give me an explanation! What right did you have to kill my disciple?!”
The sound of his shout rolled out in waves. The sonic boom alone made the golden-armored guards at the gate cough up blood on the spot. Forget trying to block him—they retreated to the sides as fast as they could.
His cultivation was too high. With their peak Nascent Soul level, he didn’t even need to hit them. The aftershock from the edge of his palm wind was enough to kill them.
The racket immediately drew cultivators from the surroundings to gather and watch.
Yu Mi was in the middle of reviewing case files. Hearing the commotion outside the Command Envoy’s estate, she frowned and sent out her divine sense to scan. The moment she sensed who it was, she let out a low exclamation.
“Damn it, who went and provoked that monster?”
A clerk who was helping her write, standing beside her with brush in hand, answered respectfully:
“Lord Command Envoy, have you forgotten? In that batch of people executed the day before yesterday, there was one called ‘Young Master Jinguan.’ He’s the one under Treasurer Sun of Earth Dragon Fort, who manages the Taizhou trade route. He was beheaded.”
Yu Mi had interrogated far too many people and couldn’t remember them all at once. With that reminder, she recalled that the guy outside did seem to have a disciple, though she hadn’t known exactly who.
Scattered across the world, temperamental, and terrifyingly strong solitary cultivators like him were people most avoided provoking. Everyone kept a respectful distance. You might have a big clan and flourishing sect, but he could drop by any time, kill a few of your disciples to vent his anger, then leave. If you wanted to deal with him, you’d have to pour vast amounts of manpower and resources into tracking his whereabouts and pursuing him across the realm, then send your very strongest experts to fight him to the death. If anything went wrong, you’d end up dying in his hands instead.
This man was one of the earliest in this world to step into the Tribulation stage. He was a rogue cultivator, not relying on any Five-Element Immortal Stone to comprehend the Dao. Rumor had it he was already in the late Tribulation stage, not far from Great Ascension.
Anyone who dared storm in like this clearly had the strength to back it.
Yu Mi had been in the cultivation world for many years and knew the strength of these peak experts like the back of her hand—who you could afford to offend, and who you absolutely had to walk a wide circle around. She knew it down to the last detail.
This one was firmly in the category of “must detour when seen”—ferocious, unreasonable, and absolutely not someone she could afford to provoke.
And now he had come crashing in? Was she supposed to call people together for a group beating? Or activate the Qingzhou grand formation to blast him?
Either way, their face would be gone. The man had come to the door for a one-on-one reckoning. If she responded with a gang-up or used the city’s grand formation to kill him, it would be utterly against the unwritten rules of the jianghu. From then on, her reputation in the world would be thoroughly ruined.
While Yu Mi was hesitating, the man started pounding on the gate.
His broad palm slammed down on the great door. Each blow made the gate of the Command Envoy’s residence boom, and the courtyard’s protective formation flared to full strength. Fortunately, the residence’s defenses were powerful enough to withstand the strike intact.
One palm fell, then a second, a third, a fourth…
The continuous palm strikes rolled on and on. The spreading shockwaves shattered the stone tiles outside the gate.
No one dared get within ten zhang of the scene.
Everyone around Yu Mi turned to look at her. Yu Mi kept her face calm and said lightly:
“It’s fine. Bao Gu will handle it.”
She lowered her head and continued to work through the case files, but her divine sense remained locked on the commotion outside.
Bao Gu was huddled in a side hall, dealing with the punishment dockets just sent up by the Punishment Hall, when she too heard the noise outside the Command Envoy’s residence.
The Punishment Hall officers were working around the clock to process the detainees. The case files were being sent ten times a day, each time hauled in by cart. They were stacked into a mountain before her; the main table was nearly full. Both walls of the side hall were lined with tables piled high with jade slips.
She was so busy she barely had time to lift her head, and now someone came to make trouble outside.
She immediately called out:
“What’s going on?”
The maidservant standing by her side hurried out to inquire. Very soon she returned to report:
“Lord Command Master, it’s the Qiu-Ran Old Devil. His disciple Xu Jinguan was executed by the Kan Gang Punishment Hall a few days ago, and he’s come to take revenge for his disciple.”
“Qiu-Ran Old Devil?” Bao Gu had no particular impression of the name. She extended her divine sense and felt him pounding on the gate again and again, murderous aura soaring, like he was ready to fight to the death.
She let her divine sense sweep once more across the surroundings outside the estate and discovered that quite a few cultivators were watching from a distance, talking among themselves.
She knew that Kan Gang’s people were entangled with all sorts of other powers. Executing such a large batch all at once was bound to provoke discontent from other factions. Now a late Tribulation expert had shown up and made a scene like this. If she didn’t go out, there’d be no one who could suppress him. And if they failed to suppress him, other powerful figures would band together and come demand Kan Gang release people. Kan Gang would then face enormous pressure.
Bao Gu pondered for only a moment. She set down the jade slip in her hand, rose, and took a single step. Her figure appeared in the front courtyard. With a lift of her palm, she sent out a sweep of power and flung open the tightly shut main gate of the Command Envoy’s residence.
Just as the gate opened, another fierce palm from the Qiu-Ran Old Devil came crashing in.
Bao Gu snapped up her hand and struck in midair. Her slender, jade-like white palm swung out, transforming into a massive phantom hand shimmering with the radiance of the five elements, sweeping out with world-shattering force straight toward the Qiu-Ran Old Devil’s descending palm.
Her palm wind smashed apart his incoming force in a single blow, then, without losing momentum, continued straight for him.
The Qiu-Ran Old Devil was no weakling. He took one step forward, sinking his knees and channeling power through both palms, and solidly caught the strike Bao Gu had sent his way.
Seeing Bao Gu appear, he roared:
“Bao Gu! Give my disciple’s life back!”
He summoned a massive dragon-headed warblade, pitch-black as ink and wreathed in the feral aura of fierce beasts, and slashed it down at Bao Gu. With a heavy stomp, a ripple of power spread out from his feet, and in an instant he was upon her.
Bao Gu saw the way he was coming and had no intention of being courteous. She summoned the Xuantian Sword and slashed down at the Qiu-Ran Old Devil as he closed in.
This strike, she put her full strength into it. The sword came down from head to toe, unbelievably fast and astonishingly clean.
As the Xuantian Sword flew out and traced an arc through the air, a surge of terrifying power erupted from both her and the sword. It forcibly tore open the force of his descending blade, and with an unstoppable momentum ripped through the protective qi around his body. The sword edge cut straight down the center of his skull, all the way through his body, even slicing the dragon-headed warblade in his hands clean in two.
All anyone saw was the Qiu-Ran Old Devil charging at Bao Gu with a force like a thousand mountains crashing down. Then they felt an explosive surge of battle intent erupt from Bao Gu’s body, followed by a flash of sword light from the Xuantian Sword.
In the next instant, the Qiu-Ran Old Devil who had reached Bao Gu’s side was suddenly split right down the middle with a soft “shff.” He—and the blade in his hands—were cleaved from the center into two perfect halves. Not a sliver more, not a sliver less. Clean and neat.
His bisected body flew off to either side, spraying blood that shimmered with a faint golden sheen. His heart was still pounding, “thump, thump,” for over a dozen beats before it gradually stilled.
Pure, overwhelming spiritual power poured out of the Qiu-Ran Old Devil’s body. The rising spiritual light looked like clusters of fireflies on a summer night, glowing here and there, strangely beautiful. Within that light, there were faint traces of gold.
Cultivators of low realm might not notice those golden flecks, but those with higher cultivation understood exactly what that gold meant. It showed that his body was already stepping toward the physique of an immortal; he had already brushed against the threshold of the Great Ascension stage.
Even among Tribulation-stage cultivators, a strongman like this was the kind who could walk sideways wherever he went—an apex existence.
Yet in front of Bao Gu, he had been split apart by a single sword stroke.
The surroundings fell utterly silent.
Yu Mi stared, eyes wide and jaw slack.
Bao Gu sheathed the Xuantian Sword and said calmly:
“Anyone who’s injured, go down and heal. Clean up the bloodstains on the ground. Replace the broken tiles outside the gate.”
She didn’t spare a glance at the bisected corpse, and turned straight back toward the side hall to continue working through the jade slips.
The Xuantian Sword could cut even divine metal. Qingying, a Great Luo Golden Immortal, hadn’t dared to take head-on the War God Sword fused with divine blood. A late Tribulation-stage cultivator wanted to withstand the Xuantian Sword?
The might of a single stroke from the Xuantian Sword was enough to tear open the sky and split realms. It was known as the “Realm-Cleaving Sword.”
Bao Gu’s cultivation realm wasn’t as high as the Qiu-Ran Old Devil’s, but the Xuantian Sword was an upper-realm supreme king weapon, with battle power approaching that of an emperor artifact. After being fused with Bao Gu, using it to chop down one Tribulation-stage cultivator really was no different from slicing tofu.
Bao Gu was very clear on the true level of her own cultivation. Her ferocity today was entirely the Xuantian Sword’s merit. If she didn’t use the Xuantian Sword and had to fight the Qiu-Ran Old Devil barehanded, the outcome would have been far from certain.
She’d fought Qingying for several hundred years and even crossed hands with an Earth Immortal. Using an upper-realm supreme king weapon to hack apart a late Tribulation cultivator was nothing she could brag about. After she finished chopping the man and resolving the trouble, she hurried back to deal with her proper work, lest Qingying and her master’s wife, who knew the inside story, catch wind of it and laugh at her for bullying people with the Xuantian Sword.
What everyone else saw, however, was simply that Bao Gu had split the Qiu-Ran Old Devil in half with one sword.
Many of them were secretly asking themselves:
Just how terrifying is the Kan Gang Command Master’s combat power?
Even Yu Mi, who shared the same bed with her, felt a chill in her heart. The Qiu-Ran Old Devil, late Tribulation stage—gone with a single sword.
She couldn’t help mulling it over: maybe she should drag Qingying over someday to be her sparring partner, help her practice sword and give her some pointers?
