Xuan Yi watched Bao Gu closely as she spoke, paying special attention to every flicker of expression. Bao Gu’s face was completely open and straightforward, with not the slightest trace of lying or putting on an act.
She asked again,
“Where is this Xuantian Sect you mentioned located?”
Perhaps aware that her repeated questioning already sounded like interrogating a criminal, she added,
“Bao Gu, please don’t take offense. The sword you’re using should be the life-bound treasure of a direct-line senior from my War King Clan. Now that the sword is in your hand, that senior must already have fallen. I only wish to confirm which senior left this sword behind when they died.
“You’ve inherited the legacy of my clan. You must also want to know which branch’s techniques you’ve learned. And if you comprehended cultivation methods just from a single life-bound sword left behind by a senior, your inheritance is inevitably incomplete. If we can confirm which line you come from, we can help you complete the set of techniques.”
Bao Gu nodded.
“I practice the techniques of Lingyun Peak of Xuantian Sect.
“When I was accepted into the sect, the three strongest in the sect were my Grandmaster, Zi Tianjun, the acting sect master, Martial Uncle Chen Yu, and Martial Uncle Feng. All three of them were Nascent Soul experts.”
Nascent Soul… experts?
Are you kidding me! Nascent Soul is barely entry-level. Since when does that count as an “expert”?
Xuan Tian stared at Bao Gu, running his gaze up and down her several times. He grabbed the tea cup at his side and took a long gulp, just so he wouldn’t lose his composure, roll up his sleeves, and argue about cultivation stages with a female cultivator.
Xuan Yi’s self-restraint was much better, but she, too, could no longer think of any good follow-up. She could only remain silent and wait.
Bao Gu continued,
“But I never expected that the sect would be infiltrated by spies sent from neighbor sects.
“After they learned I had obtained the Xuantian Sword, they joined hands with several other cultivation sects and attacked Xuantian Sect. The sect almost got wiped out.
“Before the grand protective formation was destroyed, Grandmaster and the others fought with their lives on the line to send us disciples in the Qi Refining and Foundation Establishment stages away. We got blasted out of our original world all muddle-headed and ended up in the great cultivation world.”
Her voice paused a moment.
“As far as I know, the Xuantian Sword was left behind by a senior who lived several tens of thousands of years ago.”
Xuan Yi realized she wasn’t going to get any more useful information just from questioning Bao Gu. If she wanted to confirm which branch of the War King Clan’s sword arts Bao Gu cultivated, the most direct and simple way was to exchange blows with Bao Gu and see her techniques and path for herself.
She said,
“Would you mind sparring with me for a few moves?”
As soon as she finished speaking, she noticed Bao Gu’s little apprentice at the side giving Bao Gu a sideways squint, her face carrying a half-smile, half-mocking expression.
She asked,
“Does this young miss have something to say?”
Qingying rolled her eyes at Xuan Yi and snorted.
“Young? What exactly about me is small?”
Xuan Yi smiled faintly.
“In terms of age, I’m older than you. Calling you ‘little miss’ shouldn’t be wrong, should it?”
Qingying rolled her eyes at her again. She crooked her little finger and pinched the fingertip with great seriousness.
“Compared to me, you’re only this tiny bit older.”
Then she turned her head to Bao Gu.
“Cheap Master, don’t you always pride yourself on being oh-so-smart? Someone fishes for your details and you just spill everything? Aren’t you afraid they’ll screw you over?”
Bao Gu lowered her head and rubbed her nose. Inwardly she thought: *Aren’t I just playing dumb so I can mix into the War King Manor and sound out the situation in this world?*
She looked helplessly at Qingying.
“This world is so big, and I don’t know a thing about it. I finally ran into someone with ties to the same sword lineage, and you won’t even let me acknowledge a connection and find a place to settle down?”
Qingying asked,
“You think you’re short on places to live? Stay in inns!
“We can sleep our way through every inn in this city, one by one. Whatever we like, we sleep there. Whichever room we like, we sleep in that one!”
Her tone was heroic and overbearing to the extreme.
Bao Gu said solemnly,
“Staying at inns costs money.”
Qingying jabbed a finger at Bao Gu in exasperation.
“And you call yourself poor?”
Bao Gu said,
“Who told me to raise a foodie like you?
“The spirit stones we save on inns go to buying rare herbs and treasures to refine pills for you. A place to sleep is a place to sleep.
“Inns are full of all sorts of people. It’s easy to attract trouble. What if someone comes knocking to make trouble or pick a fight?”
Qingying answered cleanly, without hesitation,
“Eat them.”
She sounded absolutely justified.
Bao Gu was choked speechless by how righteous and matter-of-fact she sounded. She took a deep breath.
“I’ll teach you a line of a cultivation technique if you shut up. Where we live is my decision. Otherwise I’ll dock one month of your rations.”
If Bao Gu hadn’t brought up rations it would have been fine. As soon as she did, Qingying immediately lost her composure. She frowned, looking wronged, and accused Bao Gu in a huff,
“You already ate up all my rations earlier.”
Bao Gu pressed a hand to her forehead.
If Xuan Yi and Xuan Tian weren’t here, she would have pulled out a ten-thousand-year sacred herb right on the spot and stuffed it into Ba’s mouth just to shut her up.
Thinking about it, and not wanting Ba to keep making a scene and lose face for her, she plucked a ten-thousand-year ginseng from the medicinal fields of Xuantian Mountain Range, lifted her arm, and stuffed it straight into Ba’s mouth, plugging it tight.
Qingying’s mouth was forced wide by the ginseng. She blinked, then finally reacted. Her eyes immediately curved in delight. She bit off a chunk of the ginseng in one go, chewing happily and swallowing it down.
“Cheap Master, wherever you say we live, we’ll live. I’ve got no opinion anymore!
“Remember, though—save the spirit stones from inns and use them to give me extra meals!”
After speaking, she clamped down on the ginseng and started slurping. The ten-thousand-year-old ginseng, thicker than an arm, golden in color, with intact root tendrils and a rich medicinal fragrance, visibly shrank flat. All of its essence turned into pure spiritual liquid that Qingying sucked into her stomach with audible “slurp slurp slurp” sounds. In no time at all, only a thin layer of skin and a bit of residue was left.
The shock and doubt in Xuan Yi and Xuan Tian’s hearts only grew stronger.
They had never seen anyone eat a ten-thousand-year sacred herb like this. They had never even seen anyone finish off a ten-thousand-year herb and leave only a tiny bit of dregs. Only by refining pills could you extract the impurities of a ten-thousand-year herb down to such a minuscule amount.
Yet the little girl in front of them—she looked sixteen or seventeen, utterly cute and innocent—had actually used just her mouth to “refine” the ten-thousand-year herb into pure essence and slurp it all down.
How many sacred herbs would you have to eat to acquire that kind of practiced, efficient skill?
Then look at this master and disciple pair: one shoves a ten-thousand-year sacred herb into a noisy child’s mouth like it’s candy, the other eats it like a kid given sweets.
Where did these two monsters even come from?
Qingying sucked the ten-thousand-year ginseng clean, then blew on the remaining residue. It turned into powder and scattered with a single puff. Still unsatisfied, she looked at Bao Gu.
“Master, you promised to teach me a line of a technique.”
Bao Gu sighed inwardly.
“Ancestor.”
She used divine sense to transmit a line of the Xuantian Sword’s technique directly into Qingying’s mind.
Qingying was completely content now. She propped up her cheeks with a hand, smiling, and began seriously pondering the line of cultivation method Bao Gu had given her.
After settling Qingying, Bao Gu turned back to Xuan Yi and Xuan Tian with an apologetic look.
“Sorry you had to see that.”
Xuan Yi smiled.
“It’s fine. Your disciple… is quite amusing.”
Bao Gu knew Xuan Yi was just being polite. She merely smiled and did not respond.
She understood that if she wanted to gain the recognition of the War King Manor, she would have to pass Xuan Yi’s testing. And she herself also wanted to see for herself what the orthodox inheritance of the War King Clan looked like—what kind of cultivation path it followed.
“Fairy Xuan Yi, if you don’t mind, shall we go out into the courtyard and exchange a few moves?”
She added a bit shyly,
“I rarely fight other people. I’m not very good at controlling my strength. Please bear with me and be a little more careful.”
She truly had rarely crossed hands with others before. Ever since she’d used Ba as a practice partner, she honestly no longer knew where her own combat power stood. Ba’s strength was simply too high. Using the strength she used on Ba to gauge her fighting power against ordinary cultivators would be extremely unfair—mostly to the other side.
Xuan Yi replied with confident ease,
“It’s fine. Just go all-out.”
As the young mistress of War King Manor, with one foot already stepped into the Great Ascension stage, she figured dealing with a newly advanced Tribulation Transcendence cultivator would be child’s play.
Bao Gu gave a soft “mm,” stood up, and followed Xuan Yi out into the courtyard.
Seeing that they were really going to fight, Qingying’s eyes lit up. She rushed outside and stood under the eaves, staring at them without blinking, ready to steal as many techniques as she could.
Xuan Yi made a “please” gesture.
“I’m older than you, so you go first.”
In the cultivation world, strength was king. A thousand-year-old Nascent Soul cultivator would still have to respectfully call a hundred-year-old Deity Transformation cultivator “Senior.” In terms of strength, Xuan Yi far surpassed Bao Gu. To Bao Gu, she was indeed a senior. Letting Bao Gu take the first move was a courtesy a “senior” should show.
Bao Gu cupped her fists slightly, hesitated a moment, then asked,
“May I ask, Xuan Yi, what realm you’re currently in? I can’t see through you.”
Xuan Yi froze for a moment in surprise, then laughed softly.
“I’m incompetent and have never managed to take that last half-step into the Great Ascension stage.”
Bao Gu silently sucked in a breath.
Half a step to Great Ascension—so at least late-stage Tribulation Transcendence, maybe even peak Tribulation Perfection.
She herself was only early Tribulation, and she’d only just advanced by some inexplicable fluke. The gap between them was not just a little.
When it came to the higher realms, the difference between early and late stage was like heaven and earth.
Even though her usual sparring partner had been Ba, with strength so overwhelming it broke all common sense, Bao Gu still didn’t dare act arrogantly in front of a cultivator who was so many realms higher than she was.
She said very seriously,
“Then I’ll go all-out.”
Xuan Yi nodded.
“Go all-out. There’s no need to hold back.”
*If you don’t go all-out, how am I supposed to gauge your true strength and figure out which branch’s arts you’re cultivating?*
Bao Gu still reminded her once more.
“Be careful.”
Xuan Yi nodded again.
Only then did Bao Gu move.
When Ba attacked, her speed was so great that Bao Gu never had time to hesitate or think. After so many years, her own attack and defense speed had become extremely fast as well.
The moment Xuan Yi nodded, Bao Gu had already made her move, unleashing her full strength without reservation.
A vast, overwhelming power, as if it could destroy heaven and earth, suddenly erupted from within her. That power surged outward and, in an instant, formed a sword domain.
The sword domain took Bao Gu as its center. Forty-nine illusory yet real Xuantian Sword shadows appeared, arranged according to formation positions, encircling the domain on all sides and sealing it tightly.
Within that domain, one sword wreathed in the power of the five elements, sharp enough to seem like a supreme imperial weapon, appeared in Bao Gu’s hand.
Man and sword became a single blur and vanished, as if they’d charged straight in Xuan Yi’s direction—
To Xuan Tian, it only *seemed* that way, because his eyes actually went blurry. He couldn’t clearly see Bao Gu’s figure at all.
By the time he saw her again, Bao Gu had already appeared right in front of Xuan Yi. All he could see was sword light crisscrossing in all directions, sword intent filling the air and chilling his heart. Then he saw the surrounding sword formation erupt toward Xuan Yi in an instant.
The moment Bao Gu took that step, the formation had already activated. The aura it released made it seem as if everything within the sword formation—space included—would be shredded to pieces.
That power was so terrifying it made his breath catch. He felt that whoever got hit by this formation would have no chance of survival. Frightened out of his wits, he blurted out,
“Sis, be careful—”
Before he could finish, he saw the full power of the sword formation, along with those forty-nine blades and the sword in Bao Gu’s hand, slam down on Xuan Yi—
Xuan Tian’s eyes went completely blank with shock.
A figure was blown away, flying through the air. Blood sprayed along her path like drifting rain, like fluttering scarlet plum blossoms. Mixed among the drifting blood and petals were tattered shreds of clothing sliced to pieces in midair…
Xuan Tian was stunned senseless, his eyes full of disbelief.
Only when Xuan Yi crashed heavily to the ground did he finally react. He leapt forward in a single bound and landed at her side.
One glance showed him that Xuan Yi’s entire body, apart from her face, which was miraculously unharmed, was covered in sword marks. Every single blade wound had landed on a vital point.
With wounds like these, even a late-stage Tribulation cultivator would likely be… unable to endure…
Xuan Tian stared at the half-dead Xuan Yi, his body trembling.
“Si… sis…”
Bao Gu had sent Xuan Yi flying with a single move. This outcome had completely exceeded her expectations. When she saw Xuan Yi lying on the ground, gravely injured and on the verge of death, she, too, went pale with fright.
She reacted quickly, rushing to Xuan Yi’s side in two steps, then pulled out seventh-grade Monkey Wine and poured it into Xuan Yi’s mouth.
Her resurrection elixirs were already used up, but she still had plenty of spirit pulp refined from rare sacred herbs and a number of top-tier healing medicines.
To injure someone this badly in a friendly spar had scared Bao Gu stupid. She couldn’t bother with anything else anymore and just started pouring medicine into Xuan Yi’s mouth in one big chaotic rush.
“You—”
Watching Bao Gu pour those heaven-and-earth treasures down Xuan Yi’s throat like they were worthless, Xuan Tian was so shocked he almost shut down. He stared at Bao Gu as if staring at an idiot.
Only one question kept circling his mind:
*Where the hell did this person come from?*
Under this kind of insane saturation of spirit treasures and sacred medicines, the near-dead Xuan Yi’s body suddenly burst with life force. Guided by Bao Gu’s spiritual power, her injuries began to heal at incredible speed.
In less than an hour, she had completely recovered.
She circulated spiritual power to form a layer of energy around her body, hiding the fact that her clothes were basically in shreds and she was nearly naked, so she wouldn’t be exposed. Then she stood and bowed slightly to Bao Gu in thanks.
Bao Gu lowered her head, embarrassed.
“I… didn’t expect it to turn out like this.”
“I didn’t expect it either,” Xuan Yi replied.
She hadn’t even managed to receive a single move.
She had almost been killed in a spar by an early Tribulation cultivator.
If it had been a sneak attack, she could have accepted it. Yet Bao Gu had repeatedly reminded her before acting, and she’d been on guard the whole time… and still couldn’t take even one strike.
She had never imagined that this Bao Gu had actually cultivated a sword domain. Not only that, she had merged formation arts into the sword domain, controlling it so freely that she could form a formation with a single thought and kill with a single thought.
If she hadn’t personally watched this girl undergo her tribulation, she would have wanted to ask:
“Are you really only early-stage Tribulation?”
To have this kind of combat strength in early-stage Tribulation—this was outright bullying.
When she’d been seriously injured earlier, Xuan Yi had forced herself not to spit blood. Now she almost wanted to cough up a mouthful of old blood just from frustration.
She took a deep breath and said to Bao Gu,
“You’ve met the Xuantian senior who passed this sword on to you, haven’t you?”
Bao Gu replied,
“His body died many, many years ago. I only saw something like the remnant of an unwilling soul thought that refused to disperse.”
“Then you should remember what he looked like.”
*Xuantian Sect has kept his portrait and statue up all this time. Of course I remember,* Bao Gu thought.
She nodded.
Xuan Yi took hold of Bao Gu’s wrist.
“Engrave his likeness for me. I’ll go through the ancestral records.”
She *really* wanted to see which ancestor had gone and picked up such a heaven-defying disciple just to torment their descendants. An outsider disciple had actually bullied a direct-bloodline Xuan to this extent. This was too much.
She dragged Bao Gu back into the reception hall, personally brought out a jade slip for carving, set it on the table, and handed Bao Gu the carving tool.
Bao Gu carved the portrait of the Xuantian Patriarch into the jade slip, then imprinted a wisp of the Xuantian Sword’s aura into it and gave the jade slip to Xuan Yi.
After examining the jade slip, Xuan Yi said to Bao Gu,
“This Misty Waves Palace is my personal residence. You will stay here with me.”
She summoned her personal maid, told her to arrange rooms for Bao Gu and her disciple in a side hall, and even assigned eight more maids to attend them—only for Bao Gu to politely refuse.
Bao Gu didn’t like being waited on, but as a newcomer here, there were many things she didn’t understand and many inconveniences she’d face. So in the end, Xuan Yi still left the maids to her, only forbidding them from entering the side hall itself. They were to wait outside, ready to act whenever Bao Gu gave instructions.
Bao Gu thought for a moment and realized she could probe them for information about this place, so she agreed.
Once Bao Gu and Qingying were settled, Xuan Yi took her leave from the side hall.
She copied the jade slip Bao Gu had given her, then carved Bao Gu’s portrait and aura into a second jade slip and handed both to Xuan Tian.
“Go back to the clan in person and give these two jade slips to Grandfather.”
Xuan Tian asked,
“Sis, is there something wrong with them?”
Xuan Yi shook her head.
“She’s a rare talent. Her strength is terrifying. She might even have a chance to reach the immortal fate.
“Since she cultivates our clan’s techniques, she’s definitely worth cultivating and drawing in.
“But we must clarify her origins. I keep feeling that her appearance is too strange, and both her and her disciple’s behavior is odd in every way.”
To say Bao Gu was just a rogue cultivator who had, by chance, obtained the inheritance of a War King Clan senior who died outside—this rogue’s background, fighting power, and cultivation path were all a little too terrifying.
Her foundation was terrifyingly deep. Her combat strength was terrifyingly high.
As for her cultivation path—yes, the War King Clan cultivated the sword, entering the Dao through the sword and through killing. Once they’d achieved something, most could indeed cultivate a sword domain.
But to merge formation arts into the battle domain and form a sword domain, and to arrange it according to the number of Grand Derivation—no one in the clan had ever done that.
“This matter is extremely important, so you need to go personally.”
Xuan Tian nodded.
“Got it. Sis, be careful.”
Xuan Yi gave a slight nod.
“Go. Don’t worry about me.”
Xuan Tian accepted the order and departed.
As for Xuan Yi, she stepped straight into the teleportation array and transported directly back to the ancestral estate to search the ancestral records.
