Radiant Blade of the Wilderness

Chapter 134: Wrapping Things Up

Because Marshal Zhong, Divine Physician Zeng, and the others were still nearby, Zheng Zhuxi suppressed her curiosity and didn’t press further. She mounted quietly and headed back toward Xuande County.

It was winter, and the sky darkened early. Before their group had even passed through the city gate, the last rays of the setting sun had already spread across the wall, painting it gold and crimson.

Divine Physician Zeng rode over and cupped his hands to Zheng Zhuxi and Ding Songyan.

"I must make a trip to my herb store. I’ll take my leave here.

"You and Chen Jindong were nothing more than passing strangers. By chance you discovered a hidden danger in him and, without fearing gossip, worrying about your reputations, or being afraid of a Grandmaster’s wrath, you rode hard to warn him. Truly the heart of a chivalrous hero. It’s admirable.

"The outcome may not have been ideal, but the intention was genuine, a bona fide heart of a true hero."

Zheng Zhuxi froze, her mouth moving slightly. It was a long moment before she managed to say anything.

"You flatter us, Senior Zeng."

She and her junior brother had no intention of warning Chen Jindong. From start to finish, the whole plan had been to force him to expose his own crimes...

It was true that they hadn’t feared gossip, hadn’t worried about their reputations, and hadn’t been afraid of a Grandmaster’s wrath. It was also true that they had seen injustice and drawn their swords on the side of righteousness. But their purpose was the complete opposite of what he had described!

In that moment, Zheng Zhuxi found herself thinking about the distinction between good and evil, about intent and deed, about sincerity and deception, about the Brightnight Sect and the Sage-Severing Way, about how what was false, when treated as true, became true.

Her thoughts were a little tangled, but she also felt as though she had grasped something.

Ding Songyan added a few modest words of his own and watched as Divine Physician Zeng turned toward wherever he grew his medicinal herbs.

Zhong Pinglan gave Ding Songyan a long, searching look before saying with a smile, "Wicked men have never had scruples, and their methods are vicious. Sometimes, heroes must be wilier than them and more cunning to stop them and bring them to justice.

"On behalf of the common people of Xuande County, I thank you both!"

The marshal said no more and led the two constables toward the county office to sort through the documentation and report to the court as soon as possible.

After returning her horse to the garrison soldiers at the gate, Zheng Zhuxi turned to look at Ding Songyan with a smile and muttered, "I’ve learned another trick."

"For your sake" was sometimes more effective than "punishing evil and eliminating treachery."

"Senior Sister, I don’t think you could bring yourself to say ’this is all for your sake’ with a straight face the way I did," Ding Songyan teased in an easy tone.

Zheng Zhuxi was quiet for a few breaths.

"True."

Ding Songyan glanced to either side.

"Aren’t we heading back to the inn?"

They were going the wrong way.

"The Lü siblings deserve to know the truth," Zheng Zhuxi said, her tone carrying a quiet weight.

Ding Songyan raised no objection. Before long, the two of them learned from Escort Leader Yu where the Lü siblings were currently renting lodgings.

To a gentle knock, Lü Huaijin opened the courtyard door. She was dressed in mourning white with a white flower in her hair, her eyes swollen from crying, her face frail and distraught.

"Heroine Zheng..." Seeing the ethereal Zheng Zhuxi, the seventeen-year-old Lü Huaijin quietly let out a breath.

Zheng Zhuxi glanced inside the courtyard.

"Where is your brother?"

"He kept vigil all last night and just fell asleep," Lü Huaijin answered honestly despite being puzzled.

Zheng Zhuxi thought for a moment.

"No need to wake him then. My junior brother and I came to tell you: your father did not die of sudden illness. He was killed by someone."

"Killed by someone?" Lü Huaijin was stunned. Confusion and bewilderment overwhelmed her all at once.

Zheng Zhuxi tersely acknowledged.

"In order to test an idea of his own, a wicked man caused your father to dream the same dream every night, a dream in which he fell ill with the same sickness. Within a month, your father had died from it."

Lü Huaijin’s eyes slowly widened. She couldn’t believe it in her bewilderment, but a slow fire of fury and hatred was kindling in her heart.

"That wicked man was Chen Jindong," Zheng Zhuxi told her plainly.

"Chen—Young Hero Chen—Chen Jindong?" Lü Huaijin’s disbelief deepened.

Isn’t he the pride of the Huangliang Sect?

The treasure the convoy had been escorting was meant for him. He had even offered his condolences to us, two complete strangers...

Zheng Zhuxi nodded slowly.

"Don’t dwell on it too much. The Heavens see all. Chen Jindong’s many misdeeds brought him to ruin himself. Shortly, Marshal Zhong will distribute his belongings and compensate you.

"You may light three sticks of incense later to console your father. The truth has come to light."

Lü Huaijin’s thoughts were in disarray. The fury and hatred had surged up inside her, but they had lost their target, turning hollow and insubstantial, slowly dissipating.

"My condolences," Zheng Zhuxi said in parting, and left with Ding Songyan.

Lü Huaijin called out instinctively.

"Heroine Zheng!"

"Is there something else?" Zheng Zhuxi turned around.

Lü Huaijin looked at the graceful, luminous young woman who seemed to light up the dusk itself, and pressed her lips together before speaking.

"I heard from Escort Leader Yu that you are from the Brightnight Sect in Dingjiang Prefecture?"

Then, in the remnant glow of the red-gold setting sun, she saw Heroine Zheng give a gentle nod.

"Yes. We are disciples of the Brightnight Sect."

...

Back at the inn, inside Ding Songyan’s room, Zheng Zhuxi finally asked with genuine curiosity, "Junior Brother, what is the true Great Dream of Three Thousand Years actually like?"

She took her seat with practiced ease, poured herself a cup of cold tea, and poured one for her junior brother as well.

Ding Songyan took a sip of the cold tea with a crisp aftertaste and said with a smile, "The true Great Dream of Three Thousand Years can invade a target’s sea of consciousness and cause their various thoughts to play out according to one’s own will. This includes past experiences, present thoughts, and hopes for the future. Combined, they form an entire lifetime.

"Through the dream, the target effectively lives out a long lifetime in a very brief span. This is the huangliang dream, which the Huangliang Sect’s name almost certainly comes from. Heh. Whether one can actually dream three thousand years, I don’t know. It may simply be hyperbole. But a hundred-year dream is very much real.

"A Grandmaster who deploys the Great Dream of Three Thousand Years can also edit, remove, or add to the target’s thoughts, shaping the life they live in the dream according to their own intentions and achieving different ends. For example, driving someone to mental collapse and shattering their state of mind, or helping a target achieve sudden profound enlightenment, recognizing that wealth and status are as fleeting as clouds, et cetera.

"The true Great Dream of Three Thousand Years has one drawback: the target must be asleep, and after deploying the technique, the user can hardly mount a physical attack. It becomes a contest of minds and spirits alone."

"You can’t invade a sea of consciousness yet?" Zheng Zhuxi asked after a brief pause.

Ding Songyan nodded.

"Not unless I can get hold of the Dharma Realm Chapters of the Great Dream of Three Thousand Years, or..."

Ding Songyan suddenly realized that among all the martial arts he knew, the most powerful for invading a sea of consciousness was actually the Divine Art of Heaven and Earth Transmutation, and there was still a Celestial Heart imprint sitting in his own sea of consciousness.

If he could learn the Divine Art of Heaven and Earth Transmutation and combine it with the Great Dream of Three Thousand Years, Ding Songyan felt the Dream Sword he had envisioned could take much fuller shape. But that was a daydream. This was not something he could even mention aloud, lest he end up paving the way for Demoness Ji’s own benefits instead.

"Or what?" Zheng Zhuxi took a sip of cold tea, her eyes bright with curiosity.

"Or learn another martial art that can invade a sea of consciousness," Ding Songyan said with a smile. "However, I have thought of a compromise approach, and I have Chen Jindong to thank for the idea."

Zheng Zhuxi’s eyes shifted slightly, a look of understanding crossing her face.

"That method he used to get past the good-and-evil inspection?"

It involved entering the inspector’s dream beforehand, constructing a vivid and detailed dreamscape, then guiding that dream to bury itself deep within their sea of consciousness. When the inspection began, Embodying Nightmares was used to trigger the planted dream and stage a "daydream" that felt entirely real.

"Exactly." Ding Songyan sipped his tea. "But his method is too cumbersome. It requires entering the dream a day in advance to construct the desired scene. I intend to work with something the target already has: an experience or a memory of their own.

"One branch of Embodying Nightmares draws out a deep-buried fear in the opponent’s heart and manifests the nightmare they dread most. What I need to do now is attempt to substitute a memory for that fear. It will take careful exploration and gradual refinement; it’s not something that can be done all at once.

"The downside is that it requires a fairly deep understanding of the target."

"For opponents you don’t know well enough, use a different martial art." Zheng Zhuxi didn’t think this was much of a problem.

Ding Songyan wholeheartedly agreed and then said with a smile, "I have to say, Chen Jindong truly had a gift for the Great Dream of Three Thousand Years. It’s no wonder he made it onto the Orchid Fresh List."

Having heard of Chen Jindong’s various ideas and what they had ultimately produced, Zheng Zhuxi couldn’t deny it. She simply said with a sigh, "This is the Huangliang Sect’s misfortune. To think such a talent is wasted on someone with a crooked heart."

"Perhaps it takes someone that brazenly reckless to push the Great Dream of Three Thousand Years to its peak," Ding Songyan said thoughtfully. "One of the Ranyifish’s traits is called Embodying Nightmares, and nightmares do lean toward the sinister side of things. I actually suspect the reason the Huangliang Sect hasn’t produced a Heaven-Man Realm cultivator in a thousand years is precisely because they turned to the orthodox path and became decent people..."

Zheng Zhuxi was taken aback and wasn’t sure how to respond.

"That’s a good thing. Every misfortune may yet turn to fortune," Ding Songyan said with a laugh. "Senior Sister, please don’t repeat this anywhere. We don’t want the Huangliang Sect’s people entertaining similar suspicions."

"You were just speculating anyway. I wouldn’t spread it around." Zheng Zhuxi glanced out at the evening glow beyond the window, a faint dimple showing. "I didn’t expect you to accomplish your goal in just two or three days in Qisong Prefecture. I thought we’d be here for at least ten days."

"We can stay a few more days. Since we’re here, how can you not get a look at what the other sects and martial halls have to offer? I’ll keep you company while I focus on refining the Dream Sword," Ding Songyan suggested with a smile.

Zheng Zhuxi had no objection.

Over the days that followed, she sought out renowned Great Proliferation Realm martial artists in Qisong Prefecture for sparring matches and never lost once, while at other times she and Ding Songyan toured the scenic spots nearby and sampled the local cuisine.

...

As winter’s cold deepened and snowflakes drifted down, every pillar lantern in the Dipper-Mansion Training Ground had been lit.

Ding Songyan drew Frostshade and smiled at Zheng Zhuxi, who stood not far away.

"Senior Sister, the Dream Sword is now in its first complete form. Would you like to try it?"

This was the 19th version.

Ding Songyan had spent an entire month on it.

Zheng Zhuxi thought back on the previous unpleasant experiences before pressing her lips together and smiled.

"Okay."