The cultivator shuddered so hard he pissed himself on the spot. A loud splashing sounded as liquid dripped onto the floor of the viewing platform, and a sharp stench of urine quickly spread.
Bao Gu wrinkled her nose, frowning. Holding her breath in disgust, she looked at the cultivator.
“Clean it up.”
She took the little cauldron, added some pre-cut, well-preserved demonic beast meat, then tossed in a few rare spirit herbs and set it back on the stove to simmer.
The petrified cultivator finally snapped back to himself. He scrambled up, pulled out a brocade handkerchief and a magic tool, and nervously wiped the floor clean. Then he cast a cleansing technique on himself, scrubbing away every trace of filth, and shrank into the very edge of the flying carriage, not daring to move a muscle.
Ba’s gaze fell on the little cauldron where the demonic beast meat was stewing, then shifted back to the cultivator. She very obviously wanted to toss him into the pot to cook, but the aroma of the beast meat was pretty good, and the person doing the cooking clearly had no intention of cooking people. After a brief hesitation, she decided it might be better to change flavors for once.
The cultivator caught Ba’s look and shrank tighter into the corner, trembling all over.
Bao Gu looked him over as well. His cultivation was nothing to sneeze at—mid Soul Formation stage—and his face was strikingly young. Pale skin, delicate features, and his clothes were better than anything Bao Gu herself was wearing. Her gaze swept up and down him in a quick glance. Inside his collar, she spotted a subtle embroidered emblem: a vertical longsword piercing through a wisp of drifting cloud.
Liuyun Sword Sect. In the Alliance Army, they were an unremarkable force, not even ranked in the top ten, but as a sword cultivator sect, they were still quite strong. Back when the Alliance Army entered Qingzhou, Liuyun Sword Sect had been among them. But after the battle of Qingzhou, Liuyun Sword Sect had already been erased from the cultivation world’s rolls.
She asked, “You’re from Liuyun Sword Sect?”
The cultivator flinched violently at Bao Gu’s words, looked up at her, and nodded hard. At some point, his face had already been streaked with tears. He had watched far too many people dragged out and eaten by Ba. Now that it was his turn, he was almost falling apart.
Bao Gu asked, “How many people from Liuyun Sword Sect entered the Archaic Wilderness Mountains?”
The cultivator wiped at his face. “Th… thirty… thirty thousand.”
“How many are left now?”
The question clearly triggered some especially terrifying memory. His entire body shook again. He instinctively wanted to look at Ba, but didn’t dare; he only lifted his eyelids a fraction.
Bao Gu repeated, “How many are left?”
“I… I… I don’t… know…” he stammered. Remembering his fellow disciples and relatives being eaten, his emotions nearly collapsed. Snot and tears ran down together.
Ba, annoyed by his weeping, flicked her hand and dragged him out of the corner. She seized him, one hand clamping around his neck.
The cultivator screamed, “Aaaahhhhh—!” and kicked wildly, struggling with everything he had.
Bao Gu jumped in shock.
“Wait! Watch the pot!”
Just as she yelled, the cultivator’s flailing foot smashed into the stove where the demonic beast meat was cooking. Stove and cauldron both flew out toward open air beyond the carriage.
Ba tossed the cultivator aside with one hand and, with a wave of the other, snatched the stove and cauldron out of the air and set them back in place, neat and steady. She glared furiously at the cultivator and raised her hand to slap him into paste.
“Stop!” Bao Gu shouted. “I still have use for him.”
Ba said coldly, “He bawls like some weak little woman. It’s annoying.”
Bao Gu: “…”
You’re the weak little woman here, okay? She could only curse silently in her heart.
She turned her head to the cultivator.
“If you don’t want to die, wipe your tears and answer my questions properly.”
But it was as if he couldn’t hear her. He huddled behind a chair in the carriage, eyes unfocused, face twisted with naked terror.
Bao Gu leaned over to look at him.
“You okay? Are you still in there?”
Ba said expressionlessly, “He’s scared stupid.”
Bao Gu: “…”
Ba added, “He’s useless now. We can cook him.”
Bao Gu: “…”
Ba snatched up the chopsticks from the table and, in a burst of anger, stabbed them down. The chopsticks slid through the jade tabletop as easily as poking into tofu. She stared at Bao Gu, her voice low and sinister.
“I said, cook him.”
Bao Gu glanced at Ba’s hand, the chopsticks clenched in her fist, and then at Ba’s savage, blood-drinking habits and obsession with eating people. The guess in her heart became even more certain.
Ba might have awakened some of the memories of the Heavenly Emperor’s daughter, but she was definitely no longer that daughter of the Heavenly Emperor of old.
Bao Gu thought again. The cultivation world was, after all, the lower realm. Patriarch Xuantian, her master’s wife, the Duobao Spirit Monkey, Ling’er’s parents, and even the demon immortal who had sealed Ba in the past had all descended to the cultivation world and been suppressed by the laws of Heaven, their realms plummeting. Would the daughter of the Heavenly Emperor be given special treatment by Heaven’s laws?
The only explanation was that the Heavenly Emperor’s daughter of old had also fallen in cultivation. Her refined body remained, but Ba’s comprehension of cultivation, her grasp of Heaven’s laws, and even her intelligence had not returned to a level equal to beings of the Upper Realm. For example, her habit of eating raw flesh and blood—on some level, she was still in a not-yet-enlightened, or waiting-to-be-enlightened, state.
Bao Gu pulled the chopsticks out of the jade table and asked Ba,
“After eating people for so long, you’re not sick of it yet?”
Ba choked for a moment, then regained her righteous tone.
“That’s why I want to change the recipe. Stew him!”
She pointed at the now-traumatized cultivator.
“Cook him.”
The cultivator heard the words “cook him” and clamped his arms around the chair, screaming at the top of his lungs, “Don’t cook me! Don’t eat me! Don’t cook me, don’t eat me…”
His heart-rending shrieks grated on even Bao Gu’s nerves.
Before Ba could make a move, Bao Gu used the Moving Mountains, Shifting Seas Art to whisk him into an oversized storage pouch and toss him into the Xuantian Mountain Range.
Ba’s eyes practically spat fire. She grabbed Bao Gu by the front of her robes.
Bao Gu quickly pulled out a seventh-grade spirit fruit and shoved it into Ba’s mouth.
“There are so many things in this world you can eat. Why do you have to eat people?”
The fruit was wedged between Ba’s teeth. When she bit down, rich, sweet juice burst into her mouth. The taste was extraordinarily good. She squinted in brief contentment, let go of Bao Gu, and began nibbling delicately at the spirit fruit.
Bao Gu asked, “Which is tastier, spirit fruit or humans?”
Ba shot her a sidelong glance and continued eating. After she finished the fruit, her beautiful eyes roamed slowly up and down Bao Gu, her divine sense sweeping Bao Gu inside and out.
Bao Gu brought out another plate of spirit fruit for her.
This time Ba clearly saw the fruit fly out from Bao Gu’s left arm. She grabbed Bao Gu’s arm and yanked the sleeve up, but failed to find any trace of a storage treasure. Helpless, she released Bao Gu’s hand and went back to eating the fruit on the jade table.
Bao Gu added a few more spirit herbs to the little cauldron and said idly,
“The people in your Blood Prison World—every one you eat is one less. Once you finish them all, what else will you eat?”
Ba said coldly, “If you hadn’t tricked me into coming here, I’d have more people than I could ever finish.”
Bao Gu said, “I’m not going to judge you, a sentient humanoid creature, for eating people. I’m only asking: in this place where you can’t catch anyone new, once you finish everyone in your Blood Prison World, what will you eat?”
She looked straight at Ba.
“And don’t count on eating me or anything on me. If I don’t want to hand my things over to you, even if you grind me into dust, you’ll never find my storage treasures.”
Ba tapped her fingers thoughtfully on the jade table.
“So, what do you suggest?”
“If I were you,” Bao Gu said, “I’d find a place where those people can survive. Put them to work.”
She pulled out all the spirit fruit, precious herbs, and demonic beast meat from the oversized storage pouch.
“Have them raise lots of meat animals you can eat, plant these spirit fruits and spirit herbs.”
She took out a pot of immortal-grade spirit wine, poured Ba a cup, and said,
“Try this. Can you brew something like it?”
Ba took the spirit wine, had a sip, and said nothing.
“There are people in your Blood Prison World who know how to brew wine,” Bao Gu went on. She looked at Ba calmly.
“Would you rather tear them apart and eat them now, or keep them alive and have them work—so they can produce spirit fruits and spirit herbs you’ll never run out of, spirit wine you’ll never finish…”
She pointed at the little cauldron.
“And meat.”
Ba’s eyes flickered. She propped her delicate chin in one hand and stared at Bao Gu, deep in thought.
Bao Gu refilled Ba’s cup.
“If you want endless spirit fruits, spirit herbs, meat, and spirit wine, just nod. I’ll make it happen.”
Ba stared at her and had just started to nod when Bao Gu added,
“Of course, the precondition is that you hand the people over to me.”
Ba frowned, hesitated for a long time, then said, “No. At most I’ll give you…”
She’d wanted to say half, but that felt like too much. Gritting her teeth, she said,
“One-third. You must guarantee I’ll have endless spirit fruits and herbs, spirit wine, and this kind of meat.”
Bao Gu nodded. “Fine. But…”
Ba snapped, “But what?”
Her eyes narrowed dangerously.
“What trick are you trying to play?”
Bao Gu spread her hands.
“They need somewhere to work, don’t they? Where will they plant herbs? Where will they brew spirit wine? Where will they grow fruit trees? Where will they graze the animals?”
Ba shot to her feet with a huff.
“Didn’t you just say that as long as I nodded, you’d handle everything? You’re tricking me again!”
Her delicate palm lifted, ready to slap Bao Gu.
“I said I’d handle it,” Bao Gu replied, “but I can’t do it instantly. I need time. Sit down and listen.”
She topped Ba’s cup off again.
Ba’s gaze dropped to the spirit wine, and she sat back down. She took the wine jug into her own hands and poured for herself.
Bao Gu asked, “If we had a Realm-Breaking Gate and the coordinates of the Upper Realm, do you think we’d have a chance to go up there?”
Ba’s eyes lit up.
“If there’s a Realm-Breaking Gate and coordinates, of course we can go.”
Her brows furrowed.
“But building a Realm-Breaking Gate costs an enormous amount. You know how to build one?”
Bao Gu nodded. “I do.”
“If they hadn’t released you, I could have actually built a Realm-Breaking Gate right where you were sealed.”
She snorted.
“Come to think of it, you really ought to thank those people you caught when you first saw daylight again. If not for them… heh, not only would you still be trapped under that seal, once my holy aunt arrived, she’d have finished you off for good.”
Ba said, “There’s no ‘if.’ I’m already free.”
“You just need to understand,” Bao Gu said, “that I can build a Realm-Breaking Gate. And if you’re willing to help me, I can build one for you. It’ll just take time. You know how much a Realm-Breaking Gate consumes—it can’t be finished overnight.”
Ba asked, “How do I help you?”
“I need people to work.”
Ba slapped the table and shot to her feet.
“You’re trying to trick me again! All this talk, and you just want to cheat me out of my food and save those people. You’re from the War King clan. Why would you bother saving these lower-realm ants?”
Bao Gu cast a cool glance at the jade table Ba had just smashed with a single slap.
“Fine. If you don’t want to give me people, I won’t force you.”
She said calmly,
“But without workers, are you going to do the work yourself? I can tell you how to build a Realm-Breaking Gate. Are you going to build it?”
“Do you know how to set up a Nine-Dragon Ascension Formation?”
“Do you know how to lay large arrays?”
“Do you know how to collect drifting meteor iron from the void, refine it into ore, and forge the Ascension Platform needed to construct a gate?”
“Or would you rather drift around this void forever until you finally starve to death?”
“Do you want to go back to those days of starving yourself into skin and bones, so thin even your chest shrank into two dried-up little sacks?”
At the last sentence, Ba instinctively clapped her hands over her chest. Her eyes blazed with fury.
“Who told you my chest shrank from hunger?”
Bao Gu said coldly, “My holy aunt did. What, you want to go bite her? Go on.”
Ba glared at Bao Gu, shaking with anger.
“If you hadn’t tricked me into coming here—”
Before she could finish, Bao Gu cut her off.
“There’s no ‘if.’”
Ba let out a wordless scream and lunged at Bao Gu, jaws snapping for her throat.
She was going to bite this damned War King clanswoman to death!
At the instant Ba slammed into her, Bao Gu stuffed another spirit fruit cleanly into Ba’s mouth, then threw herself backward, landing hard on the soft carpet.
Ba was sprawled on top of her, mouth full of fruit, blinking blankly. She bit down on the fruit again, then sat up, taking a chunk out of it. After two bites, she asked,
“Do you have a lot more of these fruits?”
Bao Gu let out a little hum.
“You should be grateful you didn’t manage to beat me to death or eat me.”
At the mention of eating Bao Gu, Ba instantly made a face of pure disgust.
