Transmigrated back into the body of her child self, can the mighty Celestial Bing Meilu survive in a Xianxia world all the while staving off the advances of arrogant young masters and wannabe protagonists alike?
Why is life so hard for the Icy Beauty?
Any corrections or criticisms are welcome, I hope you enjoy Chapter 41: Lethal Mission
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"You need to remember these 'punishments' are to be taken in place of your public execution," the man bared his draconic fangs, not amused by Xi Fu's nervous attempt at humour. "If you can't select one, I can select one for you."
"Are there any other alternative punishments? Preferably ones that don't involve the loss of my manhood?" the spearman asked, smiling nervously.
"The last alternative is to secure a valuable item release and offer it as tribute. Traditionally, this is the Core of a Drake at the Peak of the Third Realm, something that can only be gained by a brutally dangerous hunt in the Ashen-."
"Oh, why didn't you start with that one?" Xi Fu exclaimed slapping his forehead. "Definitely that one!"
"Are you an idiot?" the interrogator exploded. "You're barely a foot into Foundation Establishment and you think you could survive a Drake hunt? You don't understand the danger. Even compared to a Core Formation human, a drake will be much stronger, with inviolable scales, incredibly powerful physical bodies and burning fire Qi. Even Core Formation Redscale clan members have to tread carefully around one. Even If you want to die, our public execution will be less painful than what a dragon will do to you!"
"Can I bring some friends?" Xi Fu shrugged. "Then I should be fine."
"You-you think this is an opportunity to escape, don't you? Hah, not a chance! If you go out, you'll be wearing an explosive tracking collar that could kill a man ten times your strength. If you try to escape or remove the collar, you're done for. You won't be able to run!" the man laughed.
"Senior, I was planning no such thing," Xi Fu shook his head. "But you have to answer my question."
"Sure, Any allies you want to take with you to the grave, you can." he rolled his eyes in dismissal. "At least you'd get to live if you chose the mines! Think you're too good for some physical labour, huh? You Sect brats..."
"One last thing Senior, could I perhaps get something made of Drake scales to study? As a Spearman, being familiar with the material could be very useful..."
"Trying to steal some valuable dragon scales? Do I look like an idiot to you?" The man narrowed his eyes.
"No, no Senior. You can supervise me. I swear, I really just need to study one for a short bit. If I do anything suspicious, you can of stop course little old me, who is barely even in the Second Realm, right?" Xi Fu smiled, lifting up his palms in surrender. "I'm no threat to one of your stature."
"Fine, you'll be dying shortly anyways," the interrogator said, rolling his eyes before he summoned a buckler covered in jagged red scales from his spatial ring and tossed it to Xi Fu.
The spearman set down the scales and inhaled deeply. While he projected a calm demeanour to the interrogator, he was actually terrified.
'A fucking invincible dragon at the peak of the third realm that Bing Meilu said is almost impossible to kill with stabbing or slashing? Aren't I, a Spear Cultivator, just fucked?' he cried internally. 'I'll have to pull out every stop!'
Even when he had been in Bing Meilu's trial, he hadn't felt so rushed to improve his Spearmanship. Back then, at worst, he remain trapped until he figured something out. Now, his Spear Comprehension was perhaps the only thing that could save him from painful death as a dragon chew toy.
'No, Senior Dragon, I'm skinny and lean. Not much fatty meat on my bones! Eat Jiang Hu Instead!'
Xi Fu inhaled deeply, claiming himself, as he began to run his fingers over the jagged red scales of the scale-covered buckler shield. If he could figure out what physical property made dragon scales so resistant to piercing, he might just stand a chance.
Hours passed, and his brow slowly furrowed. He got more and more confused. No matter how he looked at it... the physical composition of dragon scales didn't seem to be special at all?
'That can't be possible. Are these not dragon scales?
He enhanced his fingers with a bit of neutral Spear Qi and stabbed down, eyes widening as his Spear Qi sparked off the scales without damaging them.
'No, these must be dragon scales, else they wouldn't have blocked my attack! But... perhaps I've been looking at the wrong place this whole time, not the physical composition, but... the Qi!'
Xi Fu's spiritual sense began to examine the scales. They burnt with an incredible Fiery Qi, the lava and fury and flame of the dragon they'd been taken from. He pushed even deeper, tasting hints of the bestial Qi generated by the wild, untamed vigour of an apex predator. His spiritual sense combed through even further until he found a confusing trace of Qi.
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The vast majority of cultivators would conclude the blurry, muddled Qi was just one of many meaningless impurities but Xi Fu did not. Because no matter how you looked at it...
'This is a remnant of ...Heaven Defying Intent? Or is it Heaven Qi?'
It seemed decayed and frayed, like a complex patterned tapestry that had slowly wrong until it was just a ball of scrappy threads. It almost reminded him of the scraps of Berserk energy left in his feet after Bing Meilu's test.
Xi Fu's Spear Intent subtly gathered at his fingertip, and he poked at the strange traces of Qi. His eyes widened. There was a remnant of Will infecting the Qi, which began to vibrate and synchronize with his Heaven-Defying Intent. His eyes closed and he began to fall into a state of enlightenment, his mind and consciousness mingled with the remnant will in the ancient qi.
He suddenly heard a majestic, heaven-defying roar, something that shook his entire body.
'Henceforth, those of my kind shall have impenetrable scales!'
The declaration was not one of intent, but a simple fact. As if every word said became Natural Law.
Dragon scales were not impenetrable as a result of their hardness... They were hard as a result of their impenetrably! Like a reversion of causality, a backwards justification for a result already pre-determined. The Qi within the scales was a trace of a Law artificially written into the Dao of Heaven by an incredibly mighty cultivator from the distant past.
He could still feel it, the supreme, uncontrollable will and arrogance of the one who'd created it, like his Heaven-Defying Intent, only a thousand-thousand times more domineering. Not just to defy the Dao of Heaven, but to overwrite it completely, to rewrite the laws of the world forever more. Xi Fu was left with the sinking feeling that whoever was behind the creation of this heavenly Will must have been a God. He did not stop there, trying to grasp an even deeper understanding of the Qi.
'It's indeed a manifestation of Heaven Qi, just like my Heaven Defying Spear Intent. Except it's a manifestation that overrides the Dao of Heaven. Not defying Laws but creating them... It isn't inscribed into the world at all. Rather, the Law is contained within the scales themselves! But how?'
'It almost seems like a reality-warping Formation that actively alters the logic of the world around itself every moment. It's so incredibly complex yet subtle... If I hadn't seen the decayed Heaven Defying Spear Intent, I would never have been able to recognize it. I think I'll call this manifestation 'Heaven Overwriting Intent.'
'The remnant will serve as a needle to pin the scraps of Heaven Overwriting Intent into the Qi structure of the scales, ensuring that they are suffused with the property of impenetrability.''
'But, if the impenetrability of a dragon is the result of the Dao of Heaven, a Law, not a physical property- Then it can be overcome! But how?'
Xi Fu felt the Heaven Defying Spear Intent within his stir. He already knew the answer.
'I'll defy it like I would any other Law that restricts the path of my Spear! Without compromise!' he inhaled deeply.
Xi Fu slowly raised his hand, eyes closed in enlightenment. A technique began to formulate in his mind, quickly refining as he made version after version, change after change. Soon, he was satisfied.
'The second of my self-created Spear Intent arts. I'll call this one the Dragon-Slaughtering Spear! Form One, Law-Breaker, Form Two Scale-Peircer.'
As a Spear cultivator, Xi Fu's cultivation manual was not central to his cultivation. Instead, so long as his mastery of the Spear increased, so would his cultivation base. His comprehension was already so far ahead of his cultivation he would have been able to smoothly cultivate without bottlenecks until reaching Core Formation. But at this point, the gap widened so much he could feel his Cultivation Base begin to forcefully rise once more to compensate.
A huge vortex of Qi opened up around him, gushing into him like air returning to a vacuum. Foundation Establishment Second Stage. Third stage. Fourth stage. Slowly the Qi petered out.
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"He's just... staring at it?" the woman, Zheng asked. "It's been hours, what the hell is he doing?"
"Who knows?" Daoist Truth-Snake shrugged. "He's eyeing my old shield like he wants to fuck it, but I don't see what's so special about it."
"Hmm. Do you really buy that he wasn't up to something suspicious around Hong Long Xiyi's home? After the last assassination attempt..."
"No, he was definitely up to something," Truth-Snake nodded. "But when he said he wasn't up to anything nefarious, he was telling the truth."
"It's possible he could have convinced himself that assassinating an enemy of his faction isn't nefarious but righteous?" Zheng suggested.
"Perhaps, but he doesn't strike me as the type. Not to mention, from the info I have on him, his faction should be allied with the Rampage Squadron, whom we have a decent relationship with. Did you notice him doing anything else strange?"
"He left a weapon cultivation manual by the young miss."
"Huh? Why?"
"I don't know. I quickly checked it to make sure it was safe. It seems to be his own handmade techniques."
"A weapon cultivator handing out their own handmade weapon arts? That's something they would normally only give out to a child or disciple. Things like that are usually a well-kept secret. Why would he secretly give it to Hong Long Xiyi?"
"Maybe he somehow found out about her bloodline mutation and knew she was destined for great things. If he managed to get her to practice his own method of spear cultivation, it might bring him glory?"
"Perhaps. On that note, why'd you let the young miss be polluted by a low-level cultivator's weapon techniques?" he said disapprovingly.
"Well-" she blushed. "They look stronger than any Spear Arts we have, to be honest."
"You're joking, right?" Daoist Truth-Snake looked at Zheng in disbelief.
Both suddenly froze, heads snapping in Xi Fu's direction. Within the cage, a massive vortex of Qi had begun to form.
"Is he breaking through?" Truth-Snake asked, confused.
The vortex swirled for nearly ten full minutes, the jaws of the two cultivators progressively dropping. One sudden breakthrough of enlightenment was not unheard of for weapon cultivation. Four? In a row? From looking at a random First Realm magical treasure?
Xi Fu opened his eyes, smiling serenely.
"You guys can put the collar on me now, I need to go find my sect-mates."
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Bing Meilu and Li Ji strode into a modest sized shop. It seemed to be a small and unassuming flower shop, but she knew it was a secret outpost of the Grand Talon Trading Corporation, the largest merchant group in the whole continent. The shopkeeper, an old gray-haired man opened his mouth to greet them.
"Welcome to my humble store, what types of flowers are you interested in miss?"
"I need fifteen Instant Regeneration talismans, five buckets of True-Heal pills, nine bottles of Blood-Cooling Grease, twelve of blood-rejuvenating pills, six tins of bone mending paste, eighteen buckets of battle-continuing pills. Fourteen Dark Ice Flame Suppressing Lotus Leaves, twelve Xi Lao's herbal paste cans. Five anti-shatter soothing ferns and fifteen broken Qi reversal pills."
"Hmm? You might be in the wrong spot miss, this is just a flower shop."
"There's no need for secrecy with me, Mister Teng. I know you're a retailer for the Grand Talons. I want my order to arrive as quickly as possible."
"How the hell do you know that?" the man asked, his eyes widening. "Who told you?"
"Everything that happens in this continent is done with the approval of the Twelve-Headed Avian Sect," Bing Meilu vaguely replied.
In reality, she'd found out in her first life from a well-connected peer, Young Miss Heaven Sword, a genius sword cultivator from the Order of the Sharpened Heaven Peng, the second branch of the Twelve-Headed Avian Sect, ranked just below the Armada.
"I-I see. That will be five thousand and thirty-six first-rank Spirit Stones. Your order should arrive in three days or less, or it's half off."
This was one of the promises of the Drand Talong Trading Corporation, who were incredibly knowledgeable of the inns and outs of the Continent. Any order above three thousand spirit stones would arrive in three days or less at any official retailer. Of course, exceptions applied.
Bing Meilu went to pay the upfront cost when the door opened. Xi Fu, with a sheepish expression on his face, and the explosive collar of a criminal sentenced to death on his neck stepped into the store.
"Heeey, boss," he chuckled nervously. "I might need some help?"