Wang Ding led Bao Gu, Ling’er, and the Duobao Spirit Monkey into the reception hall of the Left Emissary Manor and bowed them to their seats.
Ling’er took out a jade token and branded the girl’s appearance and aura into it. She made three copies in one breath, gave one to Wang Ding and one to Bao Gu, then said to Bao Gu,
“Bao Gu, I’ll send the demonfolk out to investigate.”
She called,
“Little Monkey, let’s go!”
and headed out of the Left Emissary Manor.
Bao Gu stood up and called after her.
“Ling’er, don’t you dare enter the Desolate Ancient Mountains on your own again.”
Ling’er and the Duobao Spirit Monkey had fully intended to report back, then immediately return to the Desolate Ancient Mountains. Yu Mi had been taken there—how could they not go after her?
“I want to find Sister Yu Mi as quickly as possible,” she said.
Bao Gu’s voice turned cold.
“If Senior Sister really was taken by the Ba, do the two of you have any confidence you can snatch her back from the Ba’s hands?”
Ling’er met Bao Gu’s clouded gaze.
“You won’t know unless you try, will you? Bao Gu, I know you’re worried about us and don’t want us risking ourselves. But the path I walk, the path Sister Yu Mi walks, is the path of those who aim to stand at the very peak. If we’re afraid of death, that path is already cut off.
“To us, the Ba is a powerful enemy, but even more than that, it’s a whetstone that hones us. If I don’t even have the courage to face the Ba, how am I supposed to charge into the Upper Realm one day and take back everything that belongs to our Celestial Fox royal clan?
“You know my enemies, my opponents, may well be demon emperors of the Upper Realm—existences far stronger than the Ba could ever be.”
Bao Gu couldn’t refute her. She had no grounds to scold her either.
Everyone’s cultivation path was different. Some people’s road was, from the start, the road where one general’s success is built upon ten thousand bones—people like Ling’er, like Yu Mi, like the Mad Demon, like Qu Yirou. They carved their path out with the blades in their hands, fearless and unyielding, always ready to fight.
Ling’er was a descendant of the Celestial Fox royal clan. Of course she didn’t put a mere Lower Realm Ba in her eyes. To her, the Ba was a stepping stone, a grinding stone.
Yu Mi was born for battle. If even Ling’er was unafraid, how could she, Yu Mi, possibly be?
Where Ling’er and Yu Mi saw the “successful general,” Bao Gu saw only the heaps of white bones beneath that general’s feet.
She was afraid—afraid Yu Mi and Ling’er would become part of those bones. But she was powerless to stop them. This was the path they had chosen. If she blocked them now, she would be shattering their cultivation and their future.
Bao Gu could only remain silent.
Ling’er said to her,
“Unless I die, I will definitely bring Sister Yu Mi back.”
With that, she strode off with the Duobao Spirit Monkey.
Wang Ding stroked his chin and sighed.
“The younger generation really is terrifying.”
Daring to fight, daring to struggle, utterly unafraid of death—if such people could avoid dying young, they were destined to become overlords, even supremes.
He came back to himself, sent his divine sense probing into the jade token Ling’er had given him, then said to Bao Gu,
“I’ll send people at once to investigate this bare-assed girl’s background.”
Bao Gu pinched the jade token in her hand and withdrew her divine sense from it. Her voice was low and distant.
“The lotus mark on that girl’s brow is a Prison-Breaking Blood Lotus.”
Her heart sank to rock bottom.
Wang Ding’s brows furrowed.
“Prison-Breaking Blood Lotus?”
“There’s no need to send people out to investigate,” Bao Gu said.
A demon immortal from the Upper Realm had once used the Prison-Breaking Blood Lotus to suppress the Ba. Now that the Blood Lotus’s imprint had appeared on that girl’s forehead, there was no way she had no connection to the Ba. If they wanted to find out the girl’s background, they still had to go into the Desolate Ancient Mountains.
Yu Mi had fallen into that girl’s hands. Bao Gu had to make a trip to bring Yu Mi back—but whether she could return alive was entirely unknown.
Before she left, she had things to put in order.
Wang Ding couldn’t read Bao Gu’s thoughts and dared not say much. He only stood to the side with a bowed back, waiting for her instructions.
After a moment of silence, Bao Gu took out a top-quality piece of fine jade, refined it into a jade plaque, branded a wisp of her soul inside, then laid down seals and restrictions on it before handing it to Wang Ding.
“If the day comes when the seals on this jade plaque automatically undo themselves, summon Sun Dilong, the Mad Demon, and all the hall masters of the Kan Gang and make this public before them.”
Wang Ding asked,
“Lord, this is…?”
“You’ll know when the time comes,” Bao Gu said.
She could hardly tell him that this jade plaque was the testament she was leaving behind. The restrictions on it would only release of their own accord when she was dead, and its contents were her arrangements for the Kan Gang’s future.
While she lived, the Kan Gang was held firmly in her hand. If she died with no proper handover, the Kan Gang would plunge into chaos. And while she lived, if anyone tried to forcefully break the seals on this emblem, she would sense it immediately.
She ignored Wang Ding’s confusion and dismissed him.
Then she took out another jade token and engraved on it the formation diagram of the Qingzhou defensive grand array, along with an aura imprint that would allow entry to and exit from the Xuantian Archive.
Once it was done, she tossed out a teleportation platform and returned to Xuantian Sect, heading straight for Zi Tianjun to inform him of what had happened to Yu Mi.
Zi Tianjun didn’t even need to think to know what Bao Gu intended.
“You want to go to the Desolate Ancient Mountains to look for Yu Mi?” he asked.
Bao Gu gave a quiet hum in reply and lifted her head to look at the especially imposing Xuantian Hall ahead of her. She walked toward it—toward this hall she’d never before set foot in.
Inside, a statue of the Xuantian Patriarch towered over them. The round dome above was carved with a chart of the constellations.
Bao Gu stood at the Patriarch’s feet; she wasn’t even as tall as the ridge of the statue’s shoe.
Zi Tianjun, face stern, followed her into the Xuantian Hall and said,
“I once branded Yu Mi’s soul sense. If anything happens to her, I’ll feel it.
“I’ll have Feng Yi lead Xuantian Sect disciples into the Desolate Ancient Mountains to search for her trail. But you are not allowed to go. That is an order from the sect master.”
Bao Gu kept her mouth shut.
Zi Tianjun sat down on a nearby meditation cushion.
“If the girl who took Yu Mi really is the Ba and her goal is the Demon Saint’s whereabouts, with the Ba’s strength she could just search Yu Mi’s soul directly, or hold Yu Mi hostage to force the Demon Saint to appear. Why bother going to the trouble of abducting her?
“If that girl is not the Ba, then no matter how extraordinary her combat power is, with your senior sister’s wits and caution, she’ll be able to get out sooner or later.
“Bao Gu, you can’t lose your head the moment something happens to Yu Mi.”
In her heart, Bao Gu muttered, How am I supposed not to? The more you care, the easier it is to lose your composure.
Zi Tianjun stared at her, his gaze deep.
“The cultivation world thinks a world-ending catastrophe is coming. Everyone’s on edge, fully preparing for war.
“But then, the blood-reeking death aura over the Yue Kingdom and the Desolate Ancient Mountains suddenly vanished. Instead, a great many unprecedented spiritual treasures and strange beasts appeared.
“At first, the major sects were afraid of a trap and only sent deathsworn in to investigate. They found that aside from a lot of powerful rare beasts, there was no real danger. On the contrary, they stumbled across quite a few rare spiritual treasures.
“Once the news spread, more and more cultivators entered the Desolate Ancient Mountains and still found nothing wrong. No trace of the Ba, no corpse fiends or corpse ghosts, and even the skeletal monsters have vanished without a trace.”
He paused, then said,
“Do you know why I had Yu Mi keep such a close eye on the situation in the Desolate Ancient Mountains while Xuantian Sect is building its new mountain gate and I can’t spare myself?”
Bao Gu listened in silence.
Zi Tianjun went on.
“There are two main rumors in the cultivation world right now.
“One is that this Ba Calamity is different from the last and the future is uncertain.
“The second is—”
He looked straight at Bao Gu.
“That the Ba Calamity was a conspiracy orchestrated by you.
“Because of this calamity, the Kan Gang fought with all the major powers and wiped out dozens of factions. Half of their wealth ended up in the Kan Gang’s pockets. Over the past two years, the Kan Gang has been wildly selling magic tools and devices that restrain the Ba, raking in a fortune.”
Bao Gu asked,
“Senior Sister was worried someone would use the Ba Calamity as an excuse to attack me and harm me, so she wanted to go to the Desolate Ancient Mountains to investigate and get to the bottom of it?”
Zi Tianjun nodded.
“That was also my decision. The Desolate Ancient Mountains are tied up with too many things. If we don’t clarify what’s going on there, we’ll never feel at ease. And we’ll always have to worry about schemers making a fuss over it.”
“These days, I’ve been comprehending the rune imprints on the Five Elements Immortal Stone,” Bao Gu said. “I’ve made some progress.”
Zi Tianjun was momentarily thrown when she suddenly shifted the topic to the Five Elements Immortal Stone. He looked her over.
“Not bad. You’ve already reached mid-stage Nascent Soul. Very good.”
As expected, once someone with five spiritual roots entered the Nascent Soul stage, their progress became frighteningly fast.
Bao Gu raised her head to look at the nearly ten-zhang-tall statue of the Xuantian Patriarch.
“Patriarch, a world where one can ascend to immortality is not the same as a world where one cannot. A world with immortals… is far vaster, and far more unimaginable.”
Zi Tianjun was completely baffled.
“What do you mean by that?” he asked.
Bao Gu shook her head.
“There hasn’t been much time. My understanding is limited. If Grandmaster has time in the future, you can go see for yourself.”
She finished speaking and took out the jade token engraved with the Qingzhou grand array’s formation diagram and the entry imprint to the Xuantian Archive, handing it to Zi Tianjun.
“I spent almost two years using the Five Elements Immortal Stone to lay this formation. Its core lies in the Xuantian Archive, and the Xuantian Archive is within Xuantian Sect.
“There are restrictions in the archive—only those who possess five spiritual roots and have cultivated the orthodox Xuantian arts to a certain level can enter.
“This jade token carries my aura imprint. If you wear it, you can come and go safely.”
Zi Tianjun accepted the token and sighed.
“You’re more suited to be sect master than Yu Mi or I am.”
“You know my temperament,” Bao Gu said. “I’m withdrawn and cold. I’m not a suitable choice for sect master.”
Zi Tianjun sighed with feeling.
“You were such a bright, clever little girl when you were young…”
He shifted the topic.
“Since you’re back, go see the courtyard you and Yu Mi used to live in.”
Bao Gu shook her head.
“No. I need to return to the Kan Gang and deploy people to search for Senior Sister’s whereabouts.”
Zi Tianjun nodded.
“You can send people. But you must not take risks yourself.”
Bao Gu gave a quiet assent, tossed out the teleportation platform, and transported herself back to the Kan Gang. From there she used a domain gate to teleport to the outskirts of the Desolate Ancient Mountains.
The moment she stepped out of the domain gate, she activated a concealment formation.
Suspended in midair, she swept a wary gaze around. As expected, the blood-reeking death aura that had shrouded the Desolate Ancient Mountains was gone. Only the scorched earth below still bore the scars of the Ba Calamity’s rampage.
New plants had sprouted on the ground, but unlike before, these plants actually had teeth. Some even had eyes.
Those plants with eyes stared straight at her. Their eyes looked disturbingly human. At first glance, it was like some living person’s soul had been sealed inside these demonized plants.
The vegetation wasn’t dense—quite sparse, in fact. Clumps and individual stalks of plants were scattered far apart, as if each had its own territory, and in that territory there was only that one plant.
They were extremely strange, and made Bao Gu deeply uneasy.
She sent her divine sense probing into a plant beneath her—one that was several zhang tall, tree-shaped, its “trunk” made of arm-thick, blood-red thorny vines.
Her divine sense had barely entered when she heard shrill laughter, followed by wave after wave of women’s giggling, shrieking, and cursing. The sounds bored straight into her heart, pierced her eardrums, and made her soul shudder.
Startled, she hastily pulled her divine sense back.
In that instant, she saw the blood vines at the crown of the plant suddenly part, revealing a woman with skin as pale as snow, not a stitch of clothing on her body. She was curled up within the crown, her body bound tight by the blood vines. She lifted her eyes to look at Bao Gu, her red lips trembling as she silently mouthed,
“Bao Gu, save me!”
Those brows, that face, that aura—who else could it be if not Yu Mi?
For a heartbeat, Bao Gu’s heart seized so hard it felt like it might tear itself apart. Her entire body shook.
She knew that wasn’t Yu Mi. Yu Mi had been abducted; she couldn’t possibly be here. But the figure before her was so real—
The vines abruptly constricted around “Yu Mi.”
In the span of a blink, “Yu Mi” turned into a heap of white bone.
Bao Gu screamed and dove toward the Yu Mi who had been reduced to bones.
A harsh shout exploded by her ear.
“Stop!”
A long whip snapped around her waist and yanked her back with brute force. At the same time, a soft cry like cool spring water poured through her mind, clearing the confusion in her sea of consciousness and snapping her awake.
She twisted her head around.
Beside her stood a woman in fiery red battle armor, bright and strikingly pretty. One hand held the long whip coiled around Bao Gu’s waist, the other gripped Bao Gu’s arm.
“You’re looking to die!” the woman scolded, frowning. “Charging down like that—don’t you know these ghastly things eat people?”
She paused, then looked Bao Gu over.
“Huh? You look a lot like the Kan Blade Order Master!”
As she spoke, she released Bao Gu and let go of the whip.
Bao Gu looked down at the plant beneath them. The “Yu Mi” that had appeared there was gone. The crown was once again tightly closed.
“This thing can create illusions?” she asked.
The woman gave Bao Gu a sidelong glance.
“Is this your first day in here? I thought you were the Kan Blade Order Master from your face, but hearing you ask something that stupid, clearly you’re not!
“The Kan Blade Order Master’s sharp as they come. Unlike you, standing there slack-jawed and clueless.”
Bao Gu: “…”
