Ever since Bao Gu found six cooks for Ba, Ba’s attitude toward her had turned ridiculously affectionate. All day long she would stick to Bao Gu, hugging her arm, acting cutesy, and calling her “Master,” making Bao Gu blush to the roots of her hair.
She had tricked Ba into taking her as a master, sure—but how old was she? And how old was Ba, really? Ba looked like a naive, sweet girl of fifteen or sixteen, but Bao Gu figured her age was probably older than even her own master’s wife. And even if you didn’t talk about age, in the cultivation world strength was everything. Ba’s combat power left her ten thousand leagues behind.
Now Ba was truly treating her like a revered master, clinging to her to act spoiled and begging her to teach her things. The whole situation felt unspeakably awkward to Bao Gu. Every time, she could only stiffen her face, forcefully pull her arm out of Ba’s embrace… then the moment she saw Ba’s small, pitiful eyes looking up at her, her heart would soften again.
So her pills, spiritual treasures, and precious medicines flowed into Ba’s mouth like water. The pill-concocting arts, fengshui formations, even bits and pieces of the Xuantian cultivation method that her saintly aunt had passed to her—she would now and then teach some to Ba as well.
Ba was overjoyed. Every time she saw Bao Gu she smiled so wide her eyes curved like crescent moons, clinging to her like she wanted to stick to her body permanently. Then, in order to get Ba off her, Bao Gu would hand over even more good stuff. And so the vicious cycle went on.
Bao Gu deeply felt that her attempt to win Ba over was basically digging a giant pit for herself. Wouldn’t it have been great to just ignore her? But if she really ignored her, where would she get three hundred thousand laborers?
Yet whenever she thought of how all those spiritual treasures and rare medicines were being eaten by Ba like snacks, her heart ached. She hadn’t even raised her own senior sister that well!
Bao Gu felt that such a powerful combat force like Ba couldn’t be wasted. Under the current circumstances they didn’t even have any external enemies. To make use of Ba’s strength, the best she could do was use her as a sparring partner, someone to practice her sword against and trade blows with.
She dragged Ba to train with her.
Ba walked up and casually slapped her, and Bao Gu flew out like a ragdoll. The blow left her internal organs rattled; she coughed up a mouthful of blood and almost couldn’t get up.
Ba hurried over, scratching her head innocently.
“Um, I did hold back my strength.”
Bao Gu couldn’t help it and spat out another mouthful of old blood. She missed her senior sister so much it hurt. When Yu Mi had trained with her, she hadn’t even hurt a single hair on her head. She’d always been gentle and careful.
Seeing Bao Gu vomiting blood nonstop, Ba helped her up.
“Master, where’s your healing medicine?”
Bao Gu fished out a bottle of healing pills from her extra-large storage bag and held it in her hand.
Ba opened the bottle, sniffed, and her eyes lit up.
“How many at a time?”
“One.”
Ba poured out a pill and fed it to Bao Gu, then stared at her with big, longing eyes.
Bao Gu ignored her, sat cross-legged, and circulated her energy to heal. When her injuries had recovered and she opened her eyes, Ba was still squatting beside her in that same posture, staring at her pitifully. Her heart softened again.
“I’m fine. The injury’s healed.”
She stood up and summoned the Xuantian Sword.
“Again.”
She suddenly felt something off about Ba’s movements. Out of the corner of her eye she caught Ba’s hand flip over, and a narrow slit of the Blood Prison World opened behind her and vanished in a flash. In that instant, the entire bottle of healing pills she’d just given Ba was tossed into the Blood Prison World.
Those were revival-grade healing pills. She’d only eaten one—and the rest were gone like meat buns thrown to a dog.
Bao Gu gave Ba a long, gloomy look and thought, You did that on purpose. You hit me just to waste my pills, didn’t you?
Out loud she said, “Hold back. If you hit me that hard again, I’m docking three days of your food.”
Ba slanted her eyes at her.
“If I don’t hit hard, how are you ever going to improve?”
She finished speaking and sent another palm strike flying toward Bao Gu. Bao Gu was so scared she hurriedly raised her sword to meet it. Two exchanges later, she was slapped flying again.
“Master, your reactions are too slow,” Ba called out. “I really am holding back a lot.”
Bao Gu, suspended in midair, spat another mouthful of blood.
She had just wanted to make full use of her resources. How had that turned into her looking for abuse?
Ba hurried to help her up again.
“Master, where’s your healing medicine?”
Bao Gu felt another mouthful of old blood surge up and forcibly swallowed it back down. Her face turned a bruised purplish-gold.
“No need for medicine.”
She sat cross-legged again to circulate her energy, but there wasn’t a trace of spiritual energy in this void. The spiritual power in her dantian had already been scattered by Ba’s slap. Bao Gu had no choice but to pull out another bottle of healing pills.
“Master, let me!” Ba shouted, and before Bao Gu could refuse, she snatched the bottle from her hand.
“One pill, right?”
She popped one into Bao Gu’s mouth, then flicked her wrist and tossed the rest into her Blood Prison World.
Bao Gu: “…”
Ba happily ruffled Bao Gu’s hair and coaxed her.
“Come on, Master, you can do it. Once you can fight me without getting hurt, you won’t have to lose any more healing pills.”
Bao Gu: “…”
Ba asked, a little nervous, “You’re not going to stop asking me to train with you, are you? I’m the strongest one here! What was that saying again? Right—once this village’s gone, there won’t be another inn!”
Bao Gu: “…”
She glared at Ba in fury and screamed inwardly, I never should’ve fed you so many spirit treasures and rare medicines to help you regain your wits.
But that could only stay in her heart. She couldn’t say it out loud. Ba could hold back when sparring and not slap her to death. If they ran into a real enemy, would the other side hold back?
Spending a few bottles of healing pills to get such a powerful sparring partner was still a bargain.
Bao Gu healed herself again, got back to her feet, and said, “Again.”
Ba was stunned for a moment.
“Aren’t you afraid I’ll make you cough blood again?”
She suddenly remembered how she’d once broken every bone in Bao Gu’s body. Compared to that, these little injuries now were nothing at all. Back then, when she’d beaten Bao Gu so badly, she hadn’t managed to scare Bao Gu into surrender at all. Instead, she’d grown a faint bit of respect for her.
In any case, Bao Gu had left an impression of having iron bones, not fearing death, and not fearing a beating.
After making Bao Gu vomit blood twice in a row, Ba didn’t quite have the heart to hit her as hard this time. At least she didn’t knock Bao Gu to the point she couldn’t get back up.
The two traded blows. Ba thought Bao Gu’s speed was unbearably slow. Bao Gu felt Ba’s speed was ghostlike and impossible to track.
After a few rounds, Ba would occasionally give Bao Gu a pointer or two on her movement techniques.
With practice came skill. As Bao Gu swung the sword more and more, she grew ever more at ease with the Xuantian Sword. Insights she’d never quite managed to understand in quiet cultivation started to click into place during real combat. When she executed the Xuantian Sword Art now, it grew increasingly overbearing. Every so often, when Ba deliberately slowed her tempo, Bao Gu was even able to counterattack a couple of moves, sometimes forcing Ba to defend.
That greatly boosted Bao Gu’s morale.
With Ba not exactly going easy on her—and with any slip-up meaning a serious injury plus the loss of another expensive revival pill—Bao Gu was forced to fight at full strength in these sparring sessions. Not just sword techniques: she brought out formations, talismans, anything and everything she could use when facing Ba.
Under this pressure, her cultivation realm and combat strength both soared.
Only then did she understand why Yu Mi had always loved going to the Xuantian Sect’s main plaza to spar with fellow disciples, why she’d always wanted to go out and temper herself in the world.
This kind of cultivation forced you to stay at your peak at all times, pushed you to constantly dig out your own potential. Only like this could you truly release your abilities and gain real improvement.
Bao Gu thought, If I’d understood this earlier, if I’d left the courtyard sooner to go out and train with Senior Sister, maybe we wouldn’t have had to suffer this painful separation.
But there was no “if.”
Life in the void was painfully idle. Other than cultivation, Bao Gu had no way to pass the time.
The main ship’s project was simply too massive. No matter how much they wanted to speed up the construction, there was a limit to how fast it could go. Bao Gu could only cultivate while patiently waiting.
In this darkness, time was the easiest thing to lose track of. It stretched so long it made one despair, yet it also passed so fast it was terrifying.
Day after day of cultivation.
Day after day of mining meteorites.
Day after day of forging the ship.
Bao Gu was building the ship and cultivating to advance her realm for the sake of that stubborn sliver of hope she refused to give up. The longer they were apart, the stronger her longing to see Yu Mi became. By now the thought circled in her mind so fiercely she couldn’t suppress it. Even if there was only the slimmest, faintest chance—even if she had to crawl—she would crawl back to the cultivation world to see Yu Mi.
Yu Mi was her heart’s obsession, the tribulation she could neither cross nor let go of.
Bao Gu knew they needed to build many main ships, but she hadn’t expected that building just one would take thirty years. It took over thirty years before the first was finally complete.
Thirty years. Half a mortal lifetime. Even though cultivators lived long, Bao Gu still felt like the wait had nearly dried out her heart. But looking at this main ship, she felt those thirty years had been worth it.
The main ship had nine levels, each twelve zhang high. Every level was divided into several zones, all modeled after scenes from the cultivation world. The ceiling was shaped like a sky, with formations simulating the four seasonal weathers. On the ground there were streets and houses, courtyards and shops, medicinal gardens and orchards, pastures and lakes.
Everything looked almost exactly like the world they’d once lived in. The only difference was that the “sky” here was very low, and always somewhat illusory and unreal. The sun that shone down didn’t have the scorching heat of midsummer or the cozy warmth of winter. It always felt like there was a transparent barrier between it and your skin.
Although the main ship was “finished,” it wasn’t truly complete yet. For example, they hadn’t yet tested whether it could sail as planned. For example, while the lakes existed, there were no fish in them yet. They’d laid out a grassland and spread soil over it, but hadn’t even sown grass seeds, so it was just a stretch of fertile earth. As for the streets and buildings: they were there, but all empty.
Of the three hundred thousand cultivators, fifty thousand were still working all over the ship, and more than two hundred thousand were still mining meteorites without rest.
Bao Gu discovered that after nearly forty years, they’d only mined about half of the meteorites.
If she weren’t so uneasy about taking off the extra-large storage bag from her arm, she would really have liked to just stuff all those meteorites into it and refine them slowly later.
In the void, anything could happen. Bao Gu felt that before they set sail, they had to be fully prepared. This was the life and death of three hundred thousand people. She couldn’t act rashly.
After the main ship was built, she had the cultivators continue to mine meteorites, while she personally led Ba and the cultivators who’d designed and built the ship to activate it for trial runs.
As expected, they discovered plenty of problems on the first test. They fixed, adjusted, and tested again, over and over, for nearly ten years. They ran so many trials it was almost a hundred times.
By the end, even the lakes and grasslands inside the ship had become vibrant with life. Under the four-season weather formation, the spiritual herbs and plants were releasing spiritual energy on their own.
Only then did Bao Gu dare to say the main ship was truly ready to sail.
The meteorites still weren’t fully mined. Bao Gu returned the cultivators’ natal magic treasures to them and supplied them with enough pills. She had them use their treasures to smash the meteorites apart, then move the raw meteorite ore into the ship’s warehouses.
She didn’t believe they’d instantly stumble on a path out and miraculously escape the void. She figured they were going to be sailing through this emptiness for a very long time. They’d have plenty of time to slowly refine the meteorite ore aboard the ship.
Once those cultivators got their natal magic treasures back and saw the meteorite belt that fifty years of mining still hadn’t exhausted, it took them less than three days to smash what was left and, with the help of spatial treasures, move everything onto the ship with almost no effort.
One after another, they were so overwhelmed they were on the verge of tears and wanted nothing more than to hug each other and bawl.
Was it easy, huddling in meteorite craters in the void, facing the constant risk of being crushed into meat paste by stray rocks, just to dig ore?
They’d been mining for fifty years without even having water to bathe. Their clothes and armor were tattered like beggars’ rags. Their skin was as black as coal. They couldn’t bear to waste even a sliver of spiritual energy to use a body-cleansing technique on themselves.
When they finally boarded the main ship and saw the array-formed sun hanging overhead, saw that long-lost light, then went to the notice board and learned that the Lord had already assigned them housing and that they could go back to living normal lives like in the cultivation world…
Many people covered their faces and wept, crying with a raw, heart-wrenching sorrow.
