Xue Qing understood what Bao Gu was thinking, but had no choice except to remind her.
“To activate an Interworld Gate, you need an enormous amount of spiritual power. The spiritual energy in this realm is thin. If you rely only on the gate to draw energy from heaven and earth, it will be nowhere near enough.”
When Bao Gu heard that, she immediately thought of the Ascension formation formed by the nine dragon veins. She pondered for a moment and asked,
“Master-Mother means that if the Huangtian Realm wants to build an Interworld Gate that connects to the outside, it still needs a Nine-Dragon Ascension Ground?”
Xue Qing nodded lightly.
“The Nine-Dragon Ascension Ground is itself a grand spirit-gathering array. Not only can it draw in spiritual energy endlessly along the nine dragon veins, gathering the power of heaven and earth, it’s also a natural blessed land in its own right, capable of nurturing massive spiritual power and all kinds of rare treasures.”
She paused, then continued,
“Back then, in order to build the Interworld Gate, Xue Yu practically scoured every corner of this realm. He only found one place whose terrain matched a Nine-Dragon Ascension Ground—that was where Qing Ying had been sealed. Because she was sealed there, even though he could tell it had once been the site of the old Interworld Gate and likely still held Five Elements Immortal Stones, he didn’t dare act rashly and had to give up. In the end, he used a great deal of power on an Eight-Python Burial Ground, forcibly creating a mountain range and transforming it into a Nine-Dragon Ascension Ground instead.”
She deeply admired that kind of reckless courage cultivators had—courage that did not fear death. If the cultivation world had not received Xuantian’s legacy, and if the person standing here weren’t Bao Gu with this kind of temperament… or if Qing Ying were still in that pre-seal state, mind in chaos and slaughtering anything living she saw, this realm would likely have ended as a dead land. Even she herself would have had to borrow the Myriad True Spirits Cauldron to escape this world.
Si Ruo frowned.
“Senior means that to build an Ascension Platform you must have a Nine-Dragon Ascension Ground… and this realm no longer has one?”
Xue Qing nodded.
“There is one. In the Holy City of the Demon Domain, there’s a Nine-Dragon Ascension Ground rebuilt at great cost from a ferocious Eight-Python Burial Ground. As for this realm now—don’t speak of Nine-Dragon Ascension Grounds, you won’t even find a second Eight-Python Burial Ground.”
The breath in Si Ruo’s chest stuck for a long time and wouldn’t go out.
Back then, the only Nine-Dragon Ascension Ground in the realm had been within her own Yue Kingdom’s borders, completely under her control. She’d handed it over… and then watched, wide-eyed, as someone else destroyed it.
Bao Gu thought for a moment, then asked,
“Master-Mother, do you still plan to return to the Upper Realm to take revenge?”
A dimness flashed through Xue Qing’s eyes.
“I know what’s in your heart, but everything has to be done within one’s limits.”
She paused, then said,
“Even a Demon Emperor who has proved the Dao can fall. How could a Demon Emperor who has not proved the Dao sit securely on the demon throne? The Celestial Fox Imperial Clan was wiped out overnight, but ever since our forefather, the Celestial Fox Demon Emperor, fell, the imperial clan gradually declined. Forget about Emperors who have proved the Dao—we didn’t even have a single King Realm powerhouse. The Celestial Fox Imperial Clan held heavy treasures, but their descendants no longer had the strength to guard them. How could we not be slaughtered?”
Her tone was calm, but speaking of this, what surfaced in her mind was still the scene of the Celestial Fox clan’s massacre, and Xuantian fighting to the death…
Hate?
Of course she hated.
It was a bone-deep hatred of clan extermination and home destroyed.
But what did she have to use to repay that blood-debt?
Qu Yirou was quietly shocked. From Bao Gu’s tone, could it be that Bao Gu actually wanted to fight her way up to the Upper Realm to help Xue Qing reclaim the Demon Emperor’s throne?
The Demon Saint frowned inwardly and asked Bao Gu,
“What are you thinking of doing? You haven’t even become an immortal yet, and you want to go to the Upper Realm to contend for the emperor’s seat?”
Xue Qing said to Bao Gu,
“In the immortal realm, immortals are divided into Immortal, True Immortal, Profound Immortal, Heavenly Immortal, Golden Immortal, and Da Luo Golden Immortal. I’m a direct descendant of the Celestial Fox Imperial bloodline; Demon Emperor blood flows in my veins. I was born with the strength of a Golden Immortal. I cultivated in the Upper Realm for over ten thousand years and still could not take that step beyond the Golden Immortal stage.”
“Xuantian was able to surpass Golden Immortal only because he risked nine deaths out of ten to enter a Chaotic Remnant World, fused god-blood to forge his sword, and only then broke through Golden Immortal, attaining the body of a Da Luo Golden Immortal and becoming a King Realm powerhouse. As for those who prove the Emperor Realm—that’s a half-step divine existence. One may not appear in tens of thousands of years.”
“Even if all three hundred thousand elites you brought back, plus the Kan Gang’s million cultivators, all cultivated to the True Immortal stage and you brought them to the Upper Realm, the Demon Domain wouldn’t even need to exert its full strength. Any one of its clans could easily wipe out your entire force.”
“As for going to the Upper Realm, your only real option would be to seek refuge with the War King Clan. But the War King Clan is a royal clan of the Immortal Domain. They will not risk inciting a war between the Immortal and Demon Domains—a calamity that could exterminate their clan—just to interfere in a struggle over the Demon Emperor’s throne.”
“Your master, Xuantian, honored as the War God, the War God in the hearts of the War King Clan—back then, when he wanted to protect me, he only had two choices.”
“One: I utterly abandon everything of the Demon Domain, give up the Demon Emperor imperial artifact, relinquish the Demon Emperor bloodline inherited from my ancestors, hand over everything I possess in the Demon Domain and sever all ties to it, then go alone to take refuge with the War King Clan. From then on, there would be no more Xue Qing in this world—only the wife of War God Xuantian. Then the entire War King Clan would protect me fully.”
“The second path: War God Xuantian could not use any of the War King Clan’s strength. In his own name, on his own strength alone, he would protect me, this Demon Domain princess. Whether he could protect me or not depended entirely on his own ability.”
As she spoke of the past, her eyes grew misty.
“The first path was surrender. War God Xuantian’s wife, the eldest princess of the Celestial Fox Imperial Clan—both of us were always proud and dignified. If I bowed my head, if I surrendered, what I lost would not only be my own pride and dignity, but also the last shred of dignity of the Celestial Fox Imperial Clan.”
“That man who stood tall between heaven and earth carried Xuantian Sword on his back and stood in front of me, using his broad back to shield me, using his sword, his body, and his life to protect my life, my dignity, and my pride.”
Bao Gu was Xuantian’s disciple. Xue Qing often saw Xuantian’s shadow in her. She understood Bao Gu wanted to help her reclaim everything she had lost, wanted to avenge her master, wanted to repay their kindness. But the world had never been such that every grudge could simply be avenged just because you wanted to.
Without the power or ability, rushing up was not revenge—it was going to die.
Her vengeance—if there was ever a chance—she would avenge herself in the future. Xuantian had already died fighting for her. She did not want anything to happen to Bao Gu as well.
Bao Gu spoke calmly.
“The future is unknown. We just walk one step at a time.”
Hearing the implication in Bao Gu’s words—she actually intended to walk the path that led to challenging the Demon Emperor of the Upper Realm?—Jade Shura couldn’t help laughing and called out,
“You really won’t give up?”
This was even more outrageous than a mortal vowing to chop down the number-one expert of the cultivation world, a person who appeared once in tens of thousands of years.
Fine, she shouldn’t be mocking other people’s ambitions. But this ambition, this aspiration, was simply too immense, too far away. Even if Bao Gu was a genius, even if she someday cultivated to the point of proving the Emperor Realm, going from True Immortal to Emperor was far harder than a mortal cultivating to become an immortal!
In the old days when ascension was possible, every few decades or centuries there would still be one or two who became immortals. Just now Xue Qing had said that in the Upper Realm, even after tens of thousands of years there might not appear a single Emperor who had proved the Dao. The disparity between the two was obvious.
Bao Gu’s voice was low and even.
“It’s not about giving up or not. As long as we’re alive, there are some things we just have to do.”
Xuan Yue saw tears in her mother’s eyes. Her always-gentle, always-calm mother—whose expression had never changed even if Mount Tai collapsed before her—now actually showed a faint trace of helpless sorrow and desolation.
Ling’er secretly sent Xuan Yue a voice transmission.
“Yue’er, don’t you feel that Aunt is a bit off today?”
Xuan Yue gently squeezed Ling’er’s hand and sighed inwardly.
She understood that she and Ling’er had disappointed and saddened her mother. Especially Ling’er, the youngest generation and final bloodline of the Celestial Fox imperial line—her mother had placed too many hopes on her. Yet because of their relationship, her mother had been forced to give up those hopes.
Her mother had personally lived through that catastrophe that annihilated their clan. She and Ling’er had not. As for revenge, as for that old hatred—for them, it was something that had happened tens of thousands of years ago, too distant.
She didn’t understand why Bao Gu was even more stubborn than her mother.
Since ancient times, no power had ever remained forever strong, no expert had ever remained forever unbeaten. The Celestial Fox Imperial Clan’s decline and extermination were, in the end, just another round of power changing hands—the winners are kings, the losers are bandits.
Xuan Yue suddenly recalled a comment she had once heard from some passing cultivators during her travels in the cultivation world, when they’d been talking about Bao Gu:
“Bao Gu, a woman of chaotic times.”
At the time she hadn’t taken it to heart. Bao Gu loved to hide in the mountains and forests and avoid the world—what kind of chaos could she possibly stir up?
Looking at it now, maybe there was some truth to that evaluation.
She glanced at Yu Mi and saw that Yu Mi was extremely calm, with no reaction at all.
Qu Yirou thought for a bit, then asked,
“Bao Gu, what are your immediate plans?”
To build an Interworld Gate, you needed a Nine-Dragon Ascension Ground. Continue cultivating?
Bao Gu said,
“We’ll see as we go.”
Sensing that the mood at the banquet had grown heavy, she shifted her thoughts, turned her head toward Yu Mi, and said,
“Senior Sister, have you looked at those jade slips I gave you?”
Yu Mi shook her head.
“Not yet. Why, is there something special about them?”
A spark flashed in her mind; she slapped her forehead.
“Right, those are all the jade slips you got from the War King Residence.”
At that, Jade Shura’s eyes immediately lit up. She smiled brightly at Yu Mi and called out,
“Lend them to me to copy a set.”
Yu Mi looked at Bao Gu.
“Are you planning to sell those jade slips?”
Bao Gu shook her head.
“You decide.”
Yu Mi smiled.
“Easy enough—one hundred top-grade spirit stones for each jade slip copied.”
Jade Shura exploded.
“Why don’t you just rob me? Are you even my sworn sister? Don’t you know how poor I am—”
When she got to the “poor—” part, she suddenly remembered her master was sitting right there. Complaining about being poor in front of her own master left her feeling a bit guilty.
But then she thought about it again: she was the one who was poor. She really was poor!
So she straightened her back and glared right at Yu Mi all the more righteously.
Yu Mi glanced at Jade Shura and winked toward Qu Yirou, then said with a laugh,
“Someone who’s being supported by her master doesn’t have the right to complain about being poor.”
Jade Shura huffed angrily.
“You say that like you don’t have a wife to support!”
That single line left Yu Mi staring, eyes wide, utterly speechless.
While Yu Mi and Jade Shura bickered, Bao Gu quietly transferred part of the Five Elements Immortal Stones she had acquired in the War King Residence into one storage artifact, then moved the large amount of resources she’d collected in the starry skies into another storage artifact. She handed both to Xue Qing.
Xue Qing took them, swept them with her divine sense, and looked at Bao Gu in slight surprise.
Bao Gu chuckled softly.
“Please don’t refuse, Master-Mother.”
These were all things Xue Qing could use, even things she urgently needed. She inclined her head slightly, thanked Bao Gu, and accepted them. Then she thought for a moment and asked,
“Qing Ying’s cauldron…”
After accepting Bao Gu’s gifts, and knowing Bao Gu had promised Qing Ying to help her get the cauldron back…
Bao Gu naturally would not let her own Master-Mother suffer losses.
“May Master-Mother make things convenient and name a fair price, so this disciple can redeem the cauldron for Qing Ying.”
A glint flashed in Xue Qing’s eyes. She smiled.
“Have her come to me herself.”
The moment her words fell, a figure silently appeared at the bow of the ship. It was Qing Ying.
From the way she popped up the instant they mentioned her and her cauldron, it was obvious she’d been hiding in the dark listening to their conversation, and had run over as soon as she heard her name and the word “cauldron.”
Bao Gu knew Qing Ying’s style too well and was used to it.
The others, however, felt their scalps tingle at this ba-fiend who liked to skulk in the dark spying on people. She was so silent you never knew when she might be watching you from the shadows. Just thinking about it was terrifying.
Qing Ying didn’t care in the slightest about the strange looks the others gave her. She walked to Bao Gu’s side, looked at Xue Qing, and said,
“You little bad fox, name your price. I’ll have my master pay the bill.”
She looked like a delicate girl of sixteen or seventeen, but she lacked the easy, childlike manner she had when she usually clung to Bao Gu. Serious and solemn, she forced everyone to take her seriously.
Bao Gu glanced at her in surprise. She had just been about to ask whether they had offended Qing Ying somehow, then suddenly remembered…
They actually had.
They hadn’t called her over for the meal, and only packed up some Earth Immortal meat for her afterwards.
To Qing Ying, if you didn’t invite her to eat, you weren’t the same people as her!
Bao Gu frowned slightly and chided in a low voice,
“What ‘little bad fox’?”
Qing Ying wrinkled her nose.
“A bad foxy little fox. If that’s not a bad little fox, what is it?”
Xue Qing did not argue with her over whether or not she was a bad little fox. Instead, she looked at Qing Ying and said,
“Whatever price I name, your master can’t afford it.”
As she spoke, she lifted her hand and a simple, imposing cauldron appeared on her palm. A deep and ancient aura washed over them. The cauldron’s radiant light was all drawn inward, yet still faintly shimmered with divine brilliance. Even with its aura suppressed, it still gave off an unfathomable feeling.
Seeing the Heaven-Refining Cauldron—which had once been shattered beyond recognition—now fully restored, Qing Ying’s expression changed dramatically. Excitement flooded her face, mixed with shock as she looked to Xue Qing.
“You repaired it?”
Xue Qing nodded.
“An imperial artifact of this level must of course be restored. To nourish a treasure of such supreme level with endless blood and deathly aura would only sully it.”
Qing Ying inclined her head.
“Thank you.”
Then she added,
“From now on I won’t call you a bad little fox anymore. You’re a good fox.”
Xue Qing: “…”
Bao Gu: “…”
Qing Ying asked again,
“What will it take for you to give the cauldron back to me?”
Xue Qing rose to her feet.
“This is not the place to talk about that. Come with me.”
Qing Ying was about to say, “What’s wrong with talking here?” when she noticed Xue Qing glance toward Bao Gu and immediately realized Xue Qing wanted to avoid Bao Gu. She thought for a bit, then followed her away. When they reached the lakeshore, Xue Qing set up a domain barrier around them, isolating all outside sense.
Qing Ying asked,
“What is it you can’t let my master know? Are you embarrassed to scam her disciple in front of her, so you have to do it behind her back?”
Xue Qing answered,
“Your master is the type who repays both kindness and hatred. What I want to discuss with you—if she knew, she would definitely interfere. You are very clear about her strength. I don’t want her involved in those matters.”
Qing Ying remained silent.
Xue Qing continued,
“I can return the cauldron to you, but you must promise to help me with one thing in the future.”
“Say it,” Qing Ying replied.
“I have a blood-debt of clan extermination and the hatred of a slain husband that I have yet to repay. If, one day, I return to the Upper Realm to take revenge, I hope you will carry the Heaven-Refining Cauldron and lend me your strength. In return, if the Immortal Domain hunts you in the future, I will provide you shelter.”
Qing Ying thought for a moment.
“I promise.”
Xue Qing recalled the wisp of divine soul she had refined into the Heaven-Refining Cauldron and returned the cauldron to Qing Ying.
“I want to ask you a question.”
Qing Ying caught the cauldron and probed it with her divine sense, confirming it had been fully repaired and that Xue Qing had not tampered with it. Her mood instantly improved. She grinned.
“Ask away.”
She hugged the cauldron like a beloved toy, then shrank it, enlarged it, shrank it again, playing with it to her heart’s content.
Seeing Qing Ying flip the Heaven-Refining Cauldron around like a child playing with a toy, Xue Qing was briefly stunned. After a moment, she came back to herself and asked,
“In the past, when you drifted through the stars, you followed Bao Gu because you had no other choice. But now the world is vast and you can go anywhere. Why do you still stay with her?”
Qing Ying answered matter-of-factly,
“She tricked me into bowing to her and formally acknowledging her as my master. I’ve knocked my head to her and served her tea. Of course she has to support me. If I want her to feed me, I obviously have to stay by her side.”
Xue Qing was so startled by that answer she froze on the spot.
Qing Ying added,
“My cheap master is also really easy to coax. If I act a little spoiled, she gives me anything I want. With her feeding me and giving me whatever I like, why would I tire myself out looking for food on my own? She’s good to me. She’s not afraid of me or disgusted by me, even though I’m soaked in death qi like some ghostly thing. Dad’s gone, and Grandpa Tree was badly injured—his mind isn’t right anymore, he’s crazy and won’t even play with me. Other than her, no one else treats me well…”
Saying that, her face sank with loss.
The last bit of worry and hesitation in Xue Qing’s heart vanished. She withdrew the domain barrier and left.
Qing Ying hadn’t expected to get the cauldron back so easily and was overjoyed. She ran back to Bao Gu like a happy child, thrust the Heaven-Refining Cauldron in front of her, and called out,
“Cheap Master, look, I got my dad’s cauldron back! Your Master-Mother is really easy to talk to. She said she has a clan-exterminating blood-debt and the hatred of her slain husband that she hasn’t avenged yet. Someday she wants to return to the Upper Realm to take revenge. I promised that when she goes back to avenge her clan and husband, I’ll bring the Heaven-Refining Cauldron and help her. Then she gave the cauldron back to me! She also said that if the Immortal Domain hunts me down in the future, she can give me shelter.”
Bao Gu: “…”
