Chapter 530: Within a Month, I Want Everything There Is to Know About Him

Xiao Mo had not only escaped that scrape with his life, but had also successfully completed the mission. Xiangniang had thought that, at least for a while, assignments with that kind of near-certain death would not be foisted on Xiao Mo again but who could have anticipated that over the days that followed, the leadership of the Ten Thousand Demons Alliance in Quicksand City kept assigning Xiao Mo one extremely dangerous task after another.

And every one of these were mandatory assignments, leaving Xiao Mo no room at all to say no.

Xiangniang was certain in her heart that this had to be the First Prince of the Heavenly Demons Kingdom deliberately targeting Xiao Mo.

So she tried to go and find Elder Tushan Hongxia, hoping to ask her to take a stand for Xiao Mo but when she finally managed to get an audience with Tushan Hongxia, she received only a flat reply, “Capable people just have to work harder. The more dangerous the missions Xiao Mo completes, the higher his merit. The Ten Thousand Demons Alliance will not shortchange him."

Hongxia's words left Xiangniang seething with frustration.

This had nothing to do with being shortchanged or not.

What good was high merit if there was no life left to spend it with?

But Xiangniang had no way to say any of this to her face.

To her, being able to even meet with Tushan Hongxia was already a courtesy granted only because she was a junior member of Tushan.

She had no standing of her own. How could she possibly hope to change the Elder's mind by force?

Undeterred, Xiangniang then tried to use a portion of her spirit stones to bribe the administrators of Quicksand City, hoping to get them to "overlook" Xiao Mo but the moment they heard the name "Xiao Mo," they refused to accept so much as a single low-grade spirit stone, terrified at the very mention.

As though Xiao Mo himself were some kind of jinx, bringing misfortune to anyone who got involved.

"Damn it! Does that Chen Jue really have that much influence? Does the entire Ten Thousand Demons Alliance have to help him come after you? What a bunch of dogs, this so-called Ten Thousand Demons Alliance! Born without an asshole if a son, and have to work in a brothel if a daughter! Damn his ancestors! Spit!"

After running into wall after wall, Xiangniang let loose a fierce stream of curses in front of Xiao Mo, her whole body shaking with frustration.

"So that is what you have been so busy with these past days." Watching Xiangniang's furious display, Xiao Mo smiled faintly. "I see, so this is what it has all been about. All right, all right, there is no need to keep wearing yourself out over it."

"Sir!" Xiangniang stepped forward quickly and pressed her hand down on the book in Xiao Mo's hands, her voice urgent. "I am only doing this for your own safety!"

"Have you heard a particular saying?" Xiao Mo raised his head and looked at Xiangniang, his expression calm.

"What saying?" Xiangniang blinked, looking entirely lost.

"The emperor is not worried, yet the eunuch fusses about." Xiao Mo gave a faint smile, closed the book, and went into his room.

"Hey, sir, sir!"

Xiangniang wanted to follow him in, but Xiao Mo had already laid down a formation, leaving her stamping her feet helplessly at the doorway with nothing to be done.

Realizing she truly had no other recourse, Xiangniang could only accompany Xiao Mo on his missions but Xiangniang knew her own limits clearly enough.

If a mission was too dangerous, she did not dare force herself to go along.

She understood that if she insisted on staying close to Xiao Mo, rather than being any help, she might end up dragging him down and getting him hurt.

So at times when Xiao Mo went out on a mission, Xiangniang could only stay alone in the courtyard, waiting anxiously for him to return.

"What is Xiao Mo actually doing all this for?"

While waiting for him in the courtyard, this question often surfaced in Xiangniang's mind.

It was true that the more dangerous a mission was, the greater the merit it accumulated.

There were certainly cultivators near the end of their lifespan, or those desperate for a breakthrough, who would actively take on missions with such slim chances of survival, all for that one slender opportunity to advance but Xiangniang also understood clearly that Xiao Mo was never the kind of cultivator who pursued raw power for its own sake.

And besides, Xiao Mo was still young, with a long road ahead of him.

The phrase "running out of time" simply did not apply to Xiao Mo at all.

Fortunately, every single time, Xiao Mo managed to turn danger into safety, returning from the very gates of death by sheer force of will.

Over time, Xiangniang had even grown somewhat accustomed to this constant anxious waiting and every time Xiao Mo escaped death and returned, his cultivation level would inevitably advance by some degree.

After all, for a cultivator, sudden enlightenment in the moment of life and death is the deepest and most direct kind of understanding.

Even for a Daoist cultivator, this held true without exception.

At this rate, Xiangniang felt Xiao Mo was on the verge of entering the Nascent Soul realm.

Reaching Nascent Soul before turning thirty.

This was the stuff of legendary prodigies and here it was happening right beside her but where some rejoiced, others naturally grew anxious.

Every time Xiao Mo came back alive, the First Prince of the Heavenly Demons Kingdom, Chen Jue's, expression would darken by another degree.

Every assignment the Ten Thousand Demons Alliance handed to Xiao Mo was the most dangerous one available.

Chen Jue privately reflected that if he himself had gone on these missions, he would very likely not have survived and yet somehow, this Xiao Mo simply could not be killed.

There had been several occasions where a group of a dozen or so cultivators went out together, and everyone else was lost out there, with only Xiao Mo returning alive.

"Could it be that this Xiao Mo is genuinely impossible to kill?"

In his room, Chen Jue's face turned a livid shade with fury, and he grabbed his teacup and hurled it to the ground, shattering it into pieces.

If it were not for his father and the others repeatedly insisting that Xiao Mo had to die accidentally, ideally at the hands of the enemy, with everything clean and well-justified, he would have already begged his father to have Xiao Mo put to death directly.

As for Xiao Mo himself, naturally he had no idea what was passing through Chen Jue's mind.

And even if he had known, he would not have given it the slightest weight.

Whenever Xiao Mo had a free moment, beyond his daily cultivation, he simply sat quietly in the courtyard reading.

Later, having idle time on his hands, Xiao Mo bought a small building in Quicksand City and opened a bookshop.

He gave the shop a name: Word Mirror.

The books in Word Mirror covered a wide range of topics, from cultivation manuals to insights on refining tools, sword technique compendiums and alchemy methods, a vast and varied collection.

Most of these books Xiao Mo had exchanged from the Ten Thousand Demons Alliance using his own merit.

For some of the better books, Xiao Mo would add annotations alongside the text, recording his own insights and understanding.

As for the prices of these books, they were strikingly low.

Compared to ordinary market prices, Xiao Mo's prices were set at the equivalent of thirty percent of standard rates.

Some books, even with plenty of money, could not necessarily be found anywhere else in the market and for cultivators who found themselves short on funds, they were welcome to browse the books freely in the shop, so long as they did not take them outside.

Before long, people of every kind, human and demon alike, flocked to Word Mirror to read, with human cultivators making up the larger share.

With the money earned from selling books, Xiao Mo turned around and used it to support human cultivators who found themselves in difficult circumstances.

Before long, word of Xiao Mo's Word Mirror bookshop had spread throughout all of Quicksand City, and naturally reached the ears of the upper leadership of the Ten Thousand Demons Alliance.

They began considering whether to order Xiao Mo to close the shop but Quicksand City had no formal prohibition against this sort of thing.

After all, who in the past would have given away the rewards earned through their own merit, almost for free, in this way?

In the end, after careful weighing of the matter, Tushan Hongxia decided to allow Xiao Mo to continue operating his bookshop.

After all, he would not be alive much longer anyway. Whatever he wanted to do with himself, let him do it.

Gradually, Xiao Mo's reputation throughout the city continued to spread.

Half a year passed.

Among the cultivators and ordinary people of Quicksand City, there was almost no one who did not know of the bookshop called Word Mirror.

No one who did not know that the shop's proprietor was exceptionally good-looking.

Though he was a cultivator of the Daoist arts, his entire bearing carried the refined elegance of a scholar.

The only thing these cultivators could never quite puzzle out was what exactly the proprietor of this bookshop hoped to gain from it.

After all, this merit had been earned with his own life.

They did not understand the reason for it, but Xiangniang knew the truth perfectly well, Xiao Mo was simply being a good person again.

She had watched, helpless, as Xiao Mo squandered away merit that had cost him near-death experiences to earn, and it pained her more than spending her own merit ever would but what could she do about it? She knew there was no talking Xiao Mo out of it.

Without quite noticing, another two years passed quietly.

The Holy Demons Alliance and the Heavenly Demons Alliance finally joined forces and launched a full assault on Quicksand City.

Until this point, both sides had merely engaged in small skirmishes, testing each other's strength. But this time, it was a genuine fight to the death.

Every cultivator on the front line of the Ten Thousand Demons Alliance went out of the city to meet them in battle.

Countless flying vessels and warships collided violently in the sky above.

Demons of every shape and form transformed into their massive true forms, locked in brutal slaughter across the plains.

Countless techniques rained down upon the earth, spreading upward into the sky.

Until the vast land was thoroughly stained red with flowing blood.

Until the setting sun at the horizon was reflected back, blazing hot, by the blood that covered the ground.

"Keep yourself alive. Whatever happens, do not lose your life."

Xiao Mo gave Xiangniang a quick warning, then charged straight into the depths of the enemy lines.

Any demon who drew close to Xiao Mo would, without ever realizing it, fall into his illusory technique.

They became like marionettes, raising the weapons in their hands and slashing furiously at their own comrades beside them.

Beyond this, Xiao Mo also activated the Transformation of the Butterfly chapter from the Great Dream of the Yellow Millet.

In an instant, the ground within five li centered on him began to shake violently.

Dozens of massive stone figures slowly rose up from deep within the earth and crashed down with thundering force onto the enemy lines.

In the sky above, the layered banks of white cloud also seemed to come alive, transforming into magnificent white dragons that dove down to strike at the bird and beast demons among the enemy ranks.

Though the Great Dream of the Yellow Millet was a Daoist text, when it came to lethal power, it lacked nothing at all.

It could be said that as long as Xiao Mo's imagination ranged wide enough, anything in the world could become a weapon of slaughter in his hands.

When this brutal battle reached its third day, Xiao Mo, with cultivation at the peak of the Golden Core realm, forced his way across a level and killed a cultivator at the early stage of the Nascent Soul realm.

After this, something stirred within Xiao Mo, and he directly invoked a thunder tribulation on the battlefield itself, forcing a breakthrough into the Nascent Soul realm.

In an instant, thunder roared and the heavens and earth changed color.

Neither the leader of the Holy Demons Alliance nor the leader of the Heavenly Demons Alliance had ever imagined that such an unparalleled genius could emerge from within the Ten Thousand Demons Alliance.

Not only daring to undergo tribulation on a battlefield where karmic entanglements ran at their deepest, but succeeding in it as well.

What was more astonishing still was that this person was not even twenty-five years old.

A Nascent Soul cultivator so young. The Demon Realm had not seen the like in a very long time.

A pity that he was human but also, perhaps, fortunate that he was human.

Xiao Mo's projection of heaven and earth rose into being, towering and majestic as a mountain range standing between heaven and earth and behind the head of that projection hung a bright moon and a blazing sun.

Yin and yang intertwined, light and radiance crossing each other, dazzling enough to be nearly unbearable to look at.

Watching that projection from a distance, Tushan Hongxia's brow drew tight, her expression carrying a deeply complicated weight.

"If only you were a demon." Tushan Hongxia let out a heavy sigh, and in those aged eyes a quiet regret that could not be hidden showed clearly but in the next instant, that regret in Tushan Hongxia's eyes transformed quickly into a cold and certain killing intent.

She knew, this could not be allowed to continue, this path Xiao Mo was on.

Otherwise, for the whole of Tushan, this would become a catastrophe beyond measure, an endless source of future trouble.

This earth-shaking battle lasted five days and five nights in total, rivers of blood flowing and bodies covering the fields.

In the end, though the Ten Thousand Demons Alliance suffered tremendous losses, it had at least succeeded in repelling the combined assault of the Holy Demons Alliance and the Heavenly Demons Alliance.

The Ten Thousand Demons Alliance had even shattered the joint forces of these two great alliances head-on, dealing a devastating blow to their morale and Xiao Mo's name, along with this, gradually began to spread among all three major demon alliances, and indeed across the entire Demon Realm.

In particular, the human cultivators throughout the Demon Realm found themselves bursting with excitement that their own people had produced such a prodigy.

They felt that heaven itself had finally begun to favor the human race.

The human race would rise.

"Entered Nascent Soul before turning thirty? The human race shall rise?"

Three months after the war had ended, a flying vessel from the Four Seas was making its way slowly toward Tushan.

Aboard the vessel, a young woman dressed in a pale blue green skirt read aloud, in a quiet voice, the battle reports she had gathered over these recent days, her expression carrying nothing but disdain and scorn.

Over the years, she had encountered far too many so-called "prodigies" to count, so many that she had grown utterly numb to the term.

Only those who survived and made it into the Upper Three Realms could truly be called prodigies.

Before reaching the Upper Three Realms, every one of those prodigies could turn out to be a mere stepping stone for someone else but as the woman in the pale blue green skirt continued reading, her once-distracted eyes suddenly went sharp.

Her fingers tightened involuntarily around the battle report in her hand, her heart suddenly racing, her breathing growing visibly quicker.

"This person is called... Xiao Mo."

The woman stared blankly at the name, unable to look away for a long while.

"Could it be..."

"It should not be possible. Perhaps it is simply someone else with the same name. Things like that have happened plenty of times over the years."

"But... what if it is?"

The woman in pale blue green pressed her lips tightly together, falling into a deep inner conflict.

"Han'er."

At last, the woman raised her head and called out loudly toward outside the room.

"Elder Sister."

A maidservant named Han'er answered the call and walked into the room, giving a respectful bow.

"Go!"

Little Green handed the entire battle report into the maidservant's hands, her tone urgent and decisive.

"Within a month! I want everything there is to know about this man called Xiao Mo!"