Bai Xiaosheng's figure vanished.
When he reappeared, a churning sea of clouds stretched before him.
The earth hung suspended above, while the sky drooped below.
Yet the seawater did not pour down in reverse.
The rules here were erratic, inverted, and chaotic.
Even a Dao God would not dare linger here for long.
Though a Dao God was immortal and indestructible so long as their divine kingdom endured, and no entity in this space could wipe out a Dao God, stepping inside risked getting trapped within a spatial bubble.
A single moment inside the bubble could mean ages had passed in the outside world.
Even a Dao God was unwilling to forfeit billions, or even tens of billions, of years for no reason.
And this erratic space was the headquarters of the Cosmic Alliance.
The powerhouses of the Cosmic Alliance resided here by relying on a certain divine treasure.
*What a pity. I am merely a sentient divine treasure, and my combat power is utterly ordinary. If I could devour Taiya, perhaps I could step into a new realm.*
The item known as Taiya was a peculiar divine treasure controlled by the Cosmic Alliance.
It was born within this very erratic space.
It was precisely by relying on this divine treasure that the Cosmic Alliance could dwell peacefully in this place.
Just then, a graceful figure appeared, carrying a distinct air about her. "Senior Bai Xiaosheng, please follow me into the Cosmic Alliance."
Though she was a God Lord, she was no ordinary God Lord.
Moreover, she did not possess a dense power of faith. To Bai Xiaosheng, it seemed she cultivated the system of the Yin Realm, or perhaps the Yang Realm.
"Why did someone different come to receive me today?" Bai Xiaosheng looked at the woman with great interest.
The woman smiled without answering, not saying another word.
Her sole duty was to lead Bai Xiaosheng into the Cosmic Alliance.
After roughly a hundred breaths had passed, they arrived inside a pale, austere palace.
Bai Xiaosheng halted in his tracks.
A hundred meters ahead, a young man clad in black sat casually upon a bronze chair. In his hand was an egg, which he examined intently before carefully peeling it.
Dao Lord Black Crow. His Dao was unknown, and his favorite food was eggs.
He was one of the few powerhouses in the Cosmic Alliance who had recovered Dao Lord combat strength.
This was all the information Bai Xiaosheng possessed regarding the black-clad man.
"You're here. Care for an egg?"
Dao Lord Black Crow casually tossed an unpeeled egg to Bai Xiaosheng.
Then he slowly ate the peeled egg himself.
When he ate eggs, he discarded the yolks.
Bai Xiaosheng crunched down on the egg along with its shell, then asked, "Why did you seek me out? Lately, the Nine Heavens Divine Palace has been keeping a close eye on me. If I'm exposed, these old bones of mine will probably bite the dust."
As he spoke, he glanced at the woman who had guided him.
Within the Cosmic Alliance, very few knew of Bai Xiaosheng's cooperation with them.
In the past, the same person had always escorted him to the headquarters.
This time, it had been replaced with a woman.
The more people who knew, the easier it was to be exposed.
"Her name is Wang Yuanyu," Dao Lord Black Crow said, putting down the egg in his hand. "Wang Yuanyu, tell Bai Xiaosheng about what happened back then."
Only then did Bai Xiaosheng understand that Wang Yuanyu had been personally involved.
The Cosmic Alliance's reason for summoning him was likely related to her.
"Seventeen years ago, while cultivating in our immortal's cave with my good friend Wu Shi, a mysterious aura suddenly surged forth and abducted Wu Shi," Wang Yuanyu recalled earnestly.
She opened a portion of her memories to Bai Xiaosheng.
Bai Xiaosheng's heart skipped a beat.
That timeframe, and that name... Why did it sound so familiar?
Despite the strange feeling in his heart, he showed no reaction on the surface. He simply listened attentively while observing the images within Wang Yuanyu's memories.
He first glanced at the dark shadow Wang Yuanyu mentioned, and then shifted his gaze to the Wu Shi she spoke of.
"This dark shadow... carries a bizarre aura." Though Bai Xiaosheng knew of all things and understood a bit of everything, he could not fully identify this aura.
"That is the power of Rebirth," Dao Lord Black Crow said, tossing the yolk aside as he ate his egg. "Back then, when this expert infiltrated, several Dao Lords were alerted. However, that person was far too bizarre. Even we couldn't keep him here. But one Dao Lord deduced that the aura on him belonged to Rebirth."
Dao Lord Black Crow was thoroughly intrigued.
Because Wu Shi, the one who had been taken, seemed completely ordinary.
In terms of aptitude, she was perhaps inferior even to Wang Yuanyu.
Yet a mysterious powerhouse had infiltrated the Cosmic Alliance's headquarters within this erratic realm just to abduct her.
The entire matter reeked of strangeness.
Fortunately, the other party did not seem to be an enemy.
Otherwise, had they leaked the method of infiltrating the Cosmic Alliance to their adversaries, the Cosmic Alliance would have suffered devastating losses.
"Besides Rebirth, there is another aura—it seems like unreality." At this moment, Bai Xiaosheng seemed to recall something.
"Unreality?" Dao Lord Black Crow narrowed his eyes. "Could it be... related to the Abandoned Land?"
At the mention of the Abandoned Land, Bai Xiaosheng's heart gave another thump.
The space where the Cosmic Alliance resided was erratic and tangled.
The Abandoned Land, however, was a realm of calamity and ruin.
Dao Lord Black Crow frowned and fell into deep thought.
"If it involves the Abandoned Land, finding this mysterious powerhouse will likely be extraordinarily complicated."
His original purpose in seeking out Bai Xiaosheng was to leverage his intelligence network to track down that person.
Yet if the party truly came from the Abandoned Land...
Things would become far more tangled.
The Abandoned Land possessed boundless space, and many of its regions were independent pocket realms with all manner of bizarre properties.
Its spacetime was completely disordered.
Past, present, and future were jumbled into a chaotic mess.
Mutating amid that chaos, the Abandoned Land constantly slid toward destruction and unreality.
Rumor had it that the Abandoned Land was the divine kingdom of a certain supreme expert.
Other rumors claimed it was the place where an expert had attained the Dao.
Naturally, such rumors were not necessarily true.
The Abandoned Land was vast beyond measure.
In certain areas, the temporal dimensions did not match the Rebirth Realm at all, and time could even flow backward.
Dao Lord Black Crow recalled something and asked, "Have you been in the Zhoushan Great Realm recently?"
"Yes."
"The Zhoushan Great Realm borders the Abandoned Land. Be careful that it doesn't get dragged into it," Dao Lord Black Crow warned.
Bai Xiaosheng smiled and said nothing.
Dao Lord Black Crow continued, "Putting the matter of this mysterious powerhouse aside for now... the Nine Heavens Divine Palace has grown increasingly powerful. Relying on Luofeng Ravine, they have been steadily extending their influence over the Yin Realm and have constructed the Mount of the Gods."
At this mention, Dao Lord Black Crow's expression turned grave with worry.
They did not know the Nine Heavens Divine Palace's ultimate objective in doing this.
But it was definitely nothing good.
Most living beings of the Cosmic Alliance originated from the Yin Realm.
They had arrived in the Rebirth Realm through the True Spirit Reincarnation Method.
Yet the moment many experts reincarnated, the Nine Heavens Divine Palace captured and penned them like livestock to serve as tools against calamities.
If the Nine Heavens Divine Palace's influence in the Yin Realm grew any further, the consequences would be unimaginable.
"Luofeng Ravine is already in the hands of the Nine Heavens Divine Palace. As for the other nodes... the Nine Heavens Divine Palace must never find them," Dao Lord Black Crow said solemnly.
After all, if those Yin Realm experts reincarnating via their true spirits descended near Luofeng Ravine, they would be reared by the Nine Heavens Divine Palace as livestock resources, their true spirits kept ignorant and benighted.
If they descended at other nodes undiscovered by the Nine Heavens Divine Palace, they still stood a chance to grow, eventually remembering their past lives and returning to the Dao Lord realm just as they had.
The more nodes the Nine Heavens Divine Palace controlled, the more experts who could overcome the Three Calamities and Three Tribulations in the Yang Realm.
And the Cosmic Alliance would naturally be weakened in turn.
"They'll find them eventually," Bai Xiaosheng sighed faintly, feeling helpless.
Though he was an exalted Dao God, his combat strength was utterly unremarkable.
What he excelled at most was self-preservation and bullying low-tier cultivators.
"Therefore, these nodes must be obliterated! Not only to stop them from rearing livestock, but so the Yin Realm never sees another Mount of the Gods!" Dao Lord Black Crow said in a heavy voice.
"How do we obliterate them?" Bai Xiaosheng asked.
Dao Lord Black Crow frowned.
This was indeed the core problem.
Even as Dao Lords, it was exceedingly difficult for them to completely obliterate those nodes.
Even if the void itself was destroyed, the nodes would still persist.
"If there were a Devouring Dao Lord, or a rare treasure formed from a being at the fourth tier of the Yang God realm who commanded the Dao of Devouring... that might flatten the nodes," Dao Lord Black Crow said.
Bai Xiaosheng shrugged.
Dao Lords were far rarer than Dao Gods.
Not to mention, this was the Rebirth Realm, hardly home turf for a Dao Lord.
Just then, Dao Lord Black Crow glanced at Bai Xiaosheng.
The space around the two of them froze solid, and all information particles locked into stasis.
"An old friend once deduced through fate that the Yin Realm once had a Yang God Tier Four powerhouse of the Dao of Devouring... However, before He could transform into a rare treasure, He inexplicably perished into nothingness."
"What?" Bai Xiaosheng was slightly astonished.
A Yang God Tier Four powerhouse... An encounter with one would spell instant death for a Dao God of his current caliber.
Only by devouring Taiya and overcoming the Three Calamities and Three Tribulations would he have the confidence to face a Tier Four Yang God.
"So we cannot count on that rare treasure. However... that old friend also deduced through fate that endless epochs ago... the Rebirth Realm also had a Dao Lord who attained the Dao through Devouring."
"Attaining Dao Lord in the Rebirth Realm? Tsk, tsk, such talent... is downright terrifying. And through Devouring, no less. Who was He? Did He pass the Three Calamities and Three Tribulations and go to the Yang Realm?" Bai Xiaosheng asked.
He had never even heard of a monstrously talented powerhouse like that.
Suddenly, something occurred to him.
Dao God Yuantian of the Nine Heavens Divine Palace had previously sought him out to look for Mingrixue, mentioning that it was connected to a fallen Dao Lord.
Could it be...
A terrifying guess rose in his heart.
"No. That Dao Lord is suspected to have fallen."
"Fallen? A powerhouse of the Dao Lord realm can fall?" The ominous premonition in Bai Xiaosheng's heart intensified.
In their own orthodoxy, those of the Dao Lord realm were practically omniscient and omnipotent. How could such a being fall?
"Therefore, we must find the Dao fruit left behind by that Dao Lord... and then unite the full might of the Cosmic Alliance to refine that Dao fruit into a Devouring rare treasure to flatten the nodes."
The Cosmic Alliance had summoned Bai Xiaosheng for these two matters alone.
First, to investigate the identity of that mysterious powerhouse through Bai Xiaosheng, and second, to find the Dao fruit of that fallen Dao Lord.
"Such a Dao fruit is exceedingly difficult to find. Is there any other way to flatten the nodes?" Bai Xiaosheng asked.
"The world is vast and full of wonders. Perhaps other methods exist, though they remain unknown for now. If Fellow Daoist finds one, feel free to inform this old man." Dao Lord Black Crow looked young, but spoke like a withered elder.
His meaning was plain: currently, refining the fallen Dao Lord's Dao fruit into a Devouring rare treasure was the only viable way to flatten the nodes.
A look of disappointment crossed Bai Xiaosheng's face. "Life is truly difficult!"
It was hard to tell whether he was lamenting the lack of alternatives, or something else entirely.
***
"Master, are we going to your old home? Heehee, is the ugly daughter-in-law finally going to meet her mother-in-law?"
Wu Shi wore a mischievous, impish smile.
Her slender, curved eyes blossomed into laughter, looking extraordinarily affectionate.
Anyone who didn't know better would assume Wu Shi was deeply in love with him.
Yet Bai Xiaosheng knew that with those peach-blossom eyes of hers, she would look affectionately even at a dog.
"Shoo, shoo! I'm an innate entity, born of nature—I don't have parents."
Bai Xiaosheng was somewhat exasperated, but his heart was burdened far more with gloom.
On the journey back, he had already pieced everything together.
He had arrived at a terrifying conclusion.
His disciple was precisely the person the Nine Heavens Divine Palace was looking for.
She was deeply connected to the "Wu Shi" who had vanished from the Cosmic Alliance.
Moreover, she was likely deeply tied to that fallen Devouring Dao Lord as well.
This troubled him immensely. What right or fortune did he possess to have picked up a disciple with such a heaven-defying background?
Should he... hand her over?
The moment the thought surfaced, Bai Xiaosheng snuffed it out.
First, he was relatively kind-hearted and held clear boundaries of gratitude and resentment.
Second, over the past decade or more, this disciple of his had become one of the few people truly close to him.
"Tough... tough... tough..."
He felt torn.
Sacrifice one person to save hundreds of millions?
Or something else?
"Master, why do you look so unhappy? Is something troubling you?" Wu Shi looked at Bai Xiaosheng, tugging at his sleeve with an expression of genuine concern.
She looked like a little girl worried that her piggy bank was broken, or a village woman anxious that her egg-laying hen had stopped laying.
Bai Xiaosheng knew she was merely worried he might stop spitting out gold coins in the future.
"How about you... disfigure your face and change your name?" Bai Xiaosheng looked down at Wu Shi's youthful yet utterly bewitching face.
Wu Shi instantly crossed her arms over her chest, her eyes widening and sparkling.
"Master, aren't you being far too possessive and controlling? Are you afraid others will fall in love with me and try to steal me from you, so you want to disfigure me?"
"Master, there's no need to disfigure me! Just keep me confined by your side and don't let me see outsiders. I promise to be good and never make you a cuckold."
"I don't ask for much, Master... Just favor me once or twice more each day."
"If you're afraid of gossip, Master, the worst that could happen is I sneak into your bed at night."
Wu Shi bit her lip and looked up pitifully at Bai Xiaosheng, mist shimmering in her eyes, presenting a picture of utter vulnerability.
From this angle, despite having a mature, statuesque figure, Wu Shi seemed delicate and petite, her waist so slender one could encircle it with a single hand, yet curves abundant in all the right places.
In short: a tiny waist, long legs, a voluptuous bust, and fair, breathtaking skin.
"You..." Bai Xiaosheng knew Wu Shi was saying all this on purpose, yet for a fleeting split second, his heart had fluttered with stray thoughts.
After all, he was an innately sentient divine treasure, and his actual age was not that old.
"Heehee!" Wu Shi suddenly burst out laughing, her chest heaving. "Master, you dropped gold coins!"
She looked delighted as she reached out to snatch the gold coins.
She had done it on purpose, of course.
Whenever Master experienced intense emotional fluctuations, he would drop gold coins.
This was a neat little trick she had mastered over the years.
Completely deliberate.
"You..." Bai Xiaosheng's face flushed red, then paled.
Having collected the gold coins, Wu Shi promptly transformed back into an obedient, dutiful girl.
"If Master wants to disfigure me, go right ahead." She stood beside Bai Xiaosheng with an air of total resignation.
"No need to disfigure yourself. From now on... wear a mask. Also... change your name. You can't be called Wu Shi anymore."
Hearing this, Wu Shi nodded earnestly. "Alright."
Master would never harm her.
If Master was doing this, he surely had his reasons.
As for that nonsense about possessiveness and control, it was merely her talking rubbish.
"Master, I like swords. Let's go with... Sword Maiden."
"Fine," Bai Xiaosheng nodded. "Also, regarding your background—you must never mention that you came from that snowy mountain. Understand?"
"Understood." Wu Shi nodded solemnly.
She could sense that what Master was speaking of was of vital importance.
After all, it had been a very long time since she had seen such a heavy look of worry upon his face.
As his disciple, it was her duty to... cheer him up.
"Master, may I ask you a question?" Wu Shi asked timidly, behaving just like the docile little kitten she had been when they first met.
She always liked placing herself in a lower, vulnerable position, looking up at her master with a crisp, pitiful gaze.
"Ask."
"Just now, when you spat out those gold coins... did your heart flutter for me even a little bit?"
The air froze.
Their eyes locked. Bai Xiaosheng looked away, but Wu Shi relentlessly pursued his gaze.
Immediately following came a furious, exasperated roar.
"Insolent disciple!"
"Are you trying to rebel against your master?!"
"Tch, what an unromantic block of wood."
"Drop gold coins!"
Chapter 614