Bao Gu had obtained the Xuantian Sword more than twenty years ago. As its master and a cultivator of the Xuantian arts, she actually understood the sword less than that “outsider” Ba. Thinking of the contempt in Ba’s eyes when she looked at her, Bao Gu couldn’t help breaking out in a cold sweat.
She really couldn’t be called diligent in cultivation, and when it came to practicing with the Xuantian Sword, “lazy” was the only word that fit. In her hands, the Xuantian Sword was truly like a pearl cast into the dark.
Her passion lay in feng shui and formations. She only refined pills when she had to, practiced sword arts so her combat strength wouldn’t be utterly pathetic, and as for the Xuantian Sword—she was very embarrassed to admit it—it came dead last on her list. She had almost forgotten it was actually a sword, treating it more like a piece of protective armor.
Talismans, sword skills, cultivation realm, alchemy—none of these were things you could achieve in three to five years. They all took long, patient accumulation. She poured all her time and energy into feng shui formations and pill refinement, so naturally she had no attention left for the Xuantian Sword. If she were told to put aside formations and focus solely on the sword, she simply didn’t have that kind of patience or perseverance. With how half‑hearted she was toward the Xuantian Sword, even Bao Gu herself sometimes suspected the Xuantian Patriarch had definitely picked the wrong disciple.
Now even someone with origins as terrifying as Ba coveted the Xuantian Sword. Bao Gu was forced to take it seriously. More precisely, she realized there was some enormous secret within the Xuantian Sword that she had completely overlooked, and she no longer dared ignore it.
After Ba left, Bao Gu rose and went into the living cabin of the return ship. She sat cross‑legged on the soft couch where she usually cultivated and comprehended the Dao, and sank her consciousness into the Xuantian Sword that had already merged with her body.
In the mortal world, the quality of a sword was judged by its material and craftsmanship. In the cultivation world, a magic treasure was evaluated on many more facets; material was important, but not the most important.
Bao Gu had handled countless magic treasures, and had even owned and seen immortal treasures, but her actual understanding of them was shallow.
Two artifacts made from the same primary material could be worlds apart in grade, depending on the Dao runes imprinted on them and the power contained within.
In Bao Gu’s eyes, the true measure of a magic treasure lay in its “spirit.” This “artifact spirit” was not exactly the treasure’s consciousness, and yet it was its consciousness. The way she phrased it seemed self‑contradictory, but that was only because she didn’t know how else to describe it.
Just like the Xuantian Sword.
All this time, she had never sensed any separate will inside the sword. But whenever she calmed her mind and sent her divine sense into it, she would feel the sword’s “sword intent.” Guided by that intent, countless sword moves and forms would surface in her mind. The Xuantian sword art she currently used had all been comprehended from that.
Now, as her cultivation realm had risen—and perhaps because the sword had been nourished by her for so many years and fully fused with her—she could sense the Xuantian Sword’s sword intent even more clearly. When she sent her consciousness into it, it was like stepping into a vast, boundless world.
That world was hazy and indistinct, as if it both existed and did not. It was like the void—yet unlike pure emptiness, because at every moment she could feel sword intent and sword qi within it. She could sense their existence, but could not touch them.
She couldn’t find any concrete “things” in there at all, so she simply let her thoughts disperse, drifting freely through this mysterious domain like a rootless duckweed.
It was an indescribably strange feeling. It was as if this world was her, and she was this world; as if this world was inside her mind, within her consciousness. It was incomparably vast, and at the same time incomparably small. Countless sensations surged up all at once—wondrous beyond words.
Her divine sense roamed through that world. Something seemed about to surface from the depths of her mind, yet she couldn’t quite grasp it. She didn’t rush, but slowly felt out this presence.
It was a bit like how a person, after being in the dark for a long time, gradually adapts and is no longer blind, but begins to see or sense more things within the darkness.
It was still the same sword intent and sword qi of the Xuantian Sword, but now that sword intent and sword qi seemed to coil around her fingertips, circling and winding, and also to surge through her body, crashing through her limbs and bones, radiating a vast power that wrapped around her.
Images flickered through her mind in a rapid blur, too fast to grasp before they vanished, yet leaving a faint imprint behind. Then those images transformed into one sword move after another, clearly appearing in her mind. When the sword moved, intent moved, and spirit moved.
The sword was a sword, and yet not merely a sword. A sword was a weapon, but also a vessel—a medium that gathered the power of the Great Dao of heaven and earth to unleash heaven and earth’s might.
A sword was a sword. For her to cultivate the sword was not to practice sword techniques, but the Way of the Sword itself—to enter the Dao through the sword.
Enter the Dao through the sword!
Bao Gu seemed to gain some new insight.
Sword Dao, formations, talismans—they were actually interconnected. Different paths, same destination. Whether it was Sword Dao, formations, or talismans, in the end what one cultivated was still the Dao. They were just different expressions of the same Dao. Interlinked, and yet not identical.
Bao Gu sank ever deeper into enlightenment. She sat cross‑legged, completely motionless.
***
After looking over the account books, Ba came to find Bao Gu. Seeing Bao Gu sitting there without moving, she called out a few times. There was no response.
She wrinkled her nose in displeasure, but did not disturb this “cheap master” of hers and turned to leave.
When her meat‑eating day came around and she found herself short of medicinal herbs for stewing, she ran back to look for Bao Gu. She called Bao Gu several times in a row, but still got no response. She raised a hand to slap Bao Gu’s shoulder—but before her palm could land, a surge of danger rose up in her heart.
Startled, she cautiously pulled her hand back, every sense on high alert as she stared at Bao Gu. That was when she saw it: Bao Gu was shrouded in an extremely thin layer of almost undetectable sword qi, a power so strong it made her heart palpitate.
A chill ran over Ba’s entire body. If she hadn’t been alert just now, that one slap would have triggered the Xuantian Sword’s sword qi eruption and ground her claws to dust!
Seeing Bao Gu was cultivating the Xuantian Sword, her eyes instantly turned green with envy. This was the War God Sword of the War King clan! Swords forged by outsiders who practiced the War King clan’s techniques might also be called War God Swords, but within the clan, only swords that had been enshrined as gods and tainted with divine power could bear that name.
The War King clan’s “deification” was different from how the Immortal Dynasty and the various feudal powers conferred gods. The Immortal Dynasty’s so‑called deification was actually just an official position—entering the celestial ranks, becoming a proper god of the court. Such “gods” were not truly gods, but immortals.
The War King clan’s deification, however, was tied to the Chaotic Mist.
Legend had it that the birth of the Chaotic Mist was related to a god. It was formed from the chaotic fog slowly seeping out over endless years from the corpse of a true divine beast that could rightly be called a god. Every part of that dead divine beast’s body was a divine treasure—just like the Xumi Treasure Realm Bao Gu carried.
That treasure realm could contain an entire world. Once adhered to Bao Gu’s body, no matter how jealous Ba was, if Bao Gu didn’t take it off herself, Ba couldn’t steal it even if she killed her. The moment the Xumi Treasure Realm stuck to someone’s body, it vanished without a trace. If she killed Bao Gu, that Xumi Treasure Realm could still wrap up Bao Gu’s soul and tear through the boundary to flee in an instant.
And that Xumi Treasure Realm was just a piece of skin!
For a War God Sword to be deified, its master had to enter the Chaotic Mist, find the divine beast’s corpse, and fuse divine blood or divine bone from it into the sword. The War King clan all cultivated the art of merging with weapons—sword and man were one. What was merged into the sword was effectively merged into their own bodies. Whether divine blood or divine bone, even a single drop or shard was unimaginably powerful and difficult to bear.
Only the elites of the War King clan could enter the Chaotic Mist, at least king‑grade powerhouses.
A so‑called king‑grade powerhouse was someone who had cultivated to the Golden Immortal level. For such an existence to appear once in three to five generations was already outstanding. If a hundred Golden Immortals entered the Chaotic Mist, not even one was guaranteed to come out alive. Even those of the Emperor realm risked falling within!
And even if a Golden Immortal did somehow emerge alive, the odds of successfully fusing divine blood to deify their sword were lower than the odds of surviving the Mist after finding the divine beast’s remains in the first place. If the fusion failed, they died.
If one War God Sword could be deified out of ten thousand Golden Immortals, that was already good fortune.
A War God Sword was a king‑grade weapon, not an emperor‑grade one, yet it was an extremely rare king‑grade artifact that could rival emperor‑grade weapons, leaving ordinary king‑grade immortal weapons ten thousand leagues behind.
In Ba’s memory, there had only ever been three War God Swords.
She knew she had been “dead” for who knew how many tens of thousands of years. Maybe the War King clan had since produced a few more peerless monsters and forged one or two more War God Swords—it was possible. But even if there were newly forged ones, they were still War God Swords—complete, undamaged, with intact artifact souls!
She dared swear on her own head that even counting the one in front of her that had appeared after her death, there would not be more than five War God Swords in existence.
And right now, that “extra” War God Sword was sitting right in front of her.
How could she not be jealous?
She herself had a cauldron that had once fused divine beast blood—given to her by her father. But it was damaged, and who knew how many years it would take to repair. On top of that, she still needed to use that cauldron to raise a dragon…
“Ah!”
Thinking of the cauldron suddenly made her remember that she had left her father’s only keepsake behind in the Primordial Mountain Range. She couldn’t hold back a shout.
She slapped her slim jade palm to her forehead and cried out:
“How could I forget my father’s cauldron!”
The internal minor world in that cauldron was already so shattered that only a single corner remained, full of cracks. If she wasn’t in the Primordial Mountain Range to watch over it and some blind idiot went in and bumped it a few more times, that cauldron would definitely break into pieces.
Her father was no longer around. Aside from herself, that cauldron was the only thing he’d left behind.
Ba instantly panicked.
She had to go back for the cauldron!
She called out to Bao Gu:
“Hey, hey, Bao Gu, cheap master, Bao Gu…”
No answer.
Ba reached out, wanting to slap or poke Bao Gu awake. But as soon as she stretched her claws out, she remembered the sword’s dangerous backlash and worried that if she wasn’t careful, the War God Sword would lop her hand off. Then she thought of how even if she woke Bao Gu, Bao Gu had no way to send her back. And even if she did, she would definitely refuse.
Ba ground her teeth in frustration, then furiously opened her Blood Prison World right in front of Bao Gu, yanked a cultivator out, and this time didn’t bother to twist his neck. She simply pinched once with her palm and killed him.
She opened her mouth and bit directly into the man’s neck, one bite severing his artery. To avoid wasting the jetting blood, she drank in great gulps.
The blood of cultivators was the pinnacle of delicacies, containing massive amounts of pure yang energy, the best thing to ease the cold discomfort brought on by the thick death aura in her body. She still remembered that when she had first gained intelligence, she’d had almost no resistance to fresh blood. She would want nothing more than to pounce on any living thing she saw and drink it dry, then even refuse to spare the flesh.
She had originally planned to eat someone alive in front of Bao Gu to spite her, but discovered Bao Gu was completely oblivious, still wholly focused on cultivating. The delicious blood in her mouth, however, did improve her mood a fair bit.
She drained the cultivator’s blood in one go, and along the way sucked his essence qi until there was nothing left. The man, alive and breathing just moments ago, instantly shriveled into a dried corpse, mouth stretched to the limit, face twisted in terror.
Ba then hurled that dried corpse at Bao Gu.
A dull bang sounded in the air, followed by a tremor in the qi flow. A heart‑shaking sword qi burst out, and the instant the corpse touched Bao Gu, it was shredded to powder. Bone ash, scattered hair, and tattered bits of clothing slowly drifted down toward Bao Gu, only to be stopped by the faint layer of protective force around her body and settle in a ring on the floor around her.
The blood‑food rations in the Blood Prison World suffered yet another shock. Even with the powerful will and firm minds of cultivators, after years of this kind of terror and despair, quite a few had gone insane.
Ba had once thought that eating people raw was the ultimate gourmet experience, but now she found that the bloody taste lingering in her mouth was far inferior to the flavor of spirit delicacies. The stench of blood drifting in her mouth made her feel like some primitive savage who ate meat with its hair still on, so she pulled out the wash kit Bao Gu had prepared for her, ran off to rinse her mouth and brush her teeth, and only then felt a bit better.
After brushing, she returned to Bao Gu’s room and sat cross‑legged beside her, staring at her with big, hopeful eyes—only for her jealousy to surge again.
She had long since noticed that although Bao Gu had merged with the War God Sword, she had not merged with its sword intent at all. She simply didn’t know how to use it, not even drawing out a tenth of the War God Sword’s power. Looking at her now, though, Bao Gu seemed to be in the midst of fusing with the sword intent and sword soul.
Ba couldn’t help thinking: if Bao Gu succeeded and could wield the full power of the War God Sword, would Ba still be able to beat her? Should she put on her divine metal armor and take this chance to stab Bao Gu a few times, ruining her fusion?
But then she thought again and felt that would be too petty, too underhanded.
Then she remembered how Bao Gu was always tricking and conning her, treating her like an idiot to be cheated. That wasn’t exactly upright either. But just because Bao Gu wasn’t upright and did sneaky things, if she copied Bao Gu, wouldn’t she be just as much a petty villain?
Besides, Bao Gu had only tricked her and lied to her. She hadn’t literally stabbed her in the back. At worst, Ba could just lie and cheat back. Ba knew full well she’d already tricked Bao Gu plenty. Just take becoming Bao Gu’s disciple as an example: the War King clan basically only passed down their arts to their own bloodline. It was extremely rare to take disciples from outside, and those very few were all chosen with the utmost care.
Even though Ba had the Heavenly Emperor’s bloodline, she was now something neither ghost nor immortal, sustaining herself by eating humans—an undead thing. The War King clan would absolutely never accept such a corpse‑type creature that survived by devouring life.
Bao Gu didn’t understand that, which was the only reason she had taken Ba under her wing at all.
In the end, since this was her cheap master, Ba couldn’t bring herself to attack. She silently rubbed her nose and slipped back out.
She knew merging with a War God Sword was no easy task, but she hadn’t expected Bao Gu’s fusion to drag on and on without end, leaving Ba with no spirit treasures or herbs to stew her meat with.
Eating raw, the bloody taste now put her off. Cooking the meat without premium spirit herbs made it taste even worse than eating it raw. Even someone as unpicky as Ba couldn’t choke it down, no matter how she held her nose. She had wasted an entire person for nothing.
With Bao Gu in deep fusion and impossible to wake, Ba had no choice but to find spirit treasures on her own. Fortunately, some of the battleships had begun planting spirit herbs. The three‑to‑five‑year varieties were already mature enough to eat, and Ba promptly set her eyes on those patches of spirit medicine.
The effect of stewing meat with second‑ and third‑tier spirit herbs was completely different from using seventh‑, eighth‑, or ninth‑tier spirit herbs. After three months of angrily tossing aside pot after pot of cooked human meat that still tasted wrong, Ba stormed into Bao Gu’s living quarters, intent on waking her up.
She stood in front of Bao Gu and glared at her for a long time. In the end, she still worried that if Bao Gu was at some critical juncture and she disturbed her, Bao Gu might suffer qi deviation or have her consciousness wiped out. Then Ba would never get to enjoy high‑quality spirit treasures again.
In the end, Ba could only swallow her grievances and go rob the tiny medicinal gardens the cultivators were experimenting with on the two ships. She grudgingly limited herself to eating human meat stewed with low‑grade spirit herbs once every month or two.
Ba had no idea when Bao Gu would finish fusing and come out of seclusion. There were only those two little test gardens on the two battleships. How could she possibly let the cultivators touch her precious spirit herbs now?
Every day, aside from checking whether Bao Gu had woken so her high‑end lifestyle could resume, she squatted in the herb gardens on guard. Not to mention a cultivator daring to pluck a single sprout—if she saw a caterpillar, she’d burn it to ash.
With Bao Gu nowhere to be seen and Ba having seized the spirit herb gardens, three hundred thousand cultivators went without supplies for half a year. Panic spread through them like a plague.
Out here in the void, without the supplement of spirit herbs and pills, even if they were allowed to leave, that would still be a death sentence.
The consequences of Bao Gu’s disappearance, they gradually realized, were far more terrifying than Ba eating people. Ba, at least, had to eat them slowly. Even with three hundred thousand cultivators, it would take her many, many years to finish them off.
But if Bao Gu stopped supplying pills and spirit herbs, even Nascent Soul cultivators would grow weak and wither. They would be lucky to last a year or half before collapsing. At most, they could drag it out for three to five years before dying.
In their current situation, they were better off in Ba’s Blood Prison World. At least the consumption there wasn’t so great, and they could still draw a bit of spiritual energy from heaven and earth to maintain basic survival. But the Blood Prison World wasn’t something you could enter just because you wanted to. Once inside, it would probably be like throwing meat buns to a dog—no return.
The looming specter of starvation made them shudder, and Ba’s increasingly foul temper only added to their unease. She would often eat a few mouthfuls of someone, toss the rest aside, then drag out another “ration” to cook. She’d nibble a few bites, decide the flavor was off, and toss that one too before grabbing a fresh victim to stew again.
Second‑ or third‑tier herbs simply could not produce the flavor of seventh‑ or eighth‑tier spirit treasures. Likewise, herbs that had grown for three years could never taste like ten‑thousand‑year medicine. Having gotten used to the good stuff, Ba could only grit her teeth and endure the coarse food. Month after month she endured, to the point that her mouth watered just at the thought of that luscious human‑meat‑and‑treasure‑herb stew.
Without ten‑thousand‑year treasures and high‑grade herbs that brimmed with life essence, the vitality within her could no longer suppress her death aura. Her entire body felt wrong, that bone‑deep chill welling up from time to time. Anything brimming with life and yang energy became especially tempting.
Just the scent of a living person was enough to make her drool, but once she actually put the flesh in her mouth, it was never the flavor she craved. It drove Ba nearly mad—clawing at her heart and lungs in restless frustration—her temper spiraling more and more out of control.
