Radiant Blade of the Wilderness

Chapter 132: The Power of Belief

”My Dream Tribulation?” Chen Jindong was simultaneously furious and amused.

He looked at Ding Songyan in the dream and said, ”The Dream Tribulation conjured up someone like you? That’s a bit of an insult, don’t you think?”

Even if Zheng Zhuxi’s junior brother had something special about him, what made him worthy of serving as the Dream Tribulation’s trial?

He was only at the early stage of the Great Proliferation Realm, without so much as a trace of any physical anomalies!

Ding Songyan rose, drew the crystalline, ethereal Frostshade, began moving with the Southern Dipper Calamity-Averting Steps, and thrust at Chen Jindong.

Chen Jindong, clad in a cyan robe, stood perfectly still and watched the sword—forged as though from ice crystal—pass within a hair’s breadth of his cheek. It didn’t cut a single strand of hair.

He threw his head back and roared with laughter.

”I have eaten the Fuyu Mountain Cinnabar Grass. I am Resolute within the dream, making me fully lucid. This is my dream, and I can do as I please. Right now, I am a Grandmaster. This is Dharma Realm-level misfortune warding!”

......

”I have eaten the Fuyu Mountain Cinnabar Grass. I am Resolute within the dream, making me fully lucid...”

Chen Jindong sat cross-legged by the roadside, eyes half-closed, laughing out loud.

He Yuanzhi’s expression darkened further at this.

Resolute in the dream, fully lucid?

Doesn’t that mean everything you just said is true?

The Shao family’s fourth daughter, the visiting merchants and martial artists, all the wrongs committed—all of it true?

How could you have a Dream Tribulation like this?

Can Soul Displaced Sickness really affect the Dream Tribulation this much?

This time, not only Marshal Zhong Pinglan, but even Divine Physician Zeng and the two constables who had come along grasped what was happening and were shaken to varying degrees.

This is the Huangliang Sect’s hope for the future?

Have we just heard something we shouldn’t have...

What if we get silenced for it?

Zheng Zhuxi let out an almost imperceptible sigh.

In her heart, she offered quiet comfort to the spirits of the Shao girl, the father of the Lü siblings, and all the others who had died wrongful deaths, letting them know that their killer had exposed his own crimes, and that the truth of their deaths would come to light.

The killer would pay a fitting price for this!

......

Inside the dream.

Ding Songyan thrust several consecutive strikes, each passing harmlessly around Chen Jindong without causing any damage.

Despite that, his expression didn’t change. With a flash from Frostshade, he struck at the void itself.

The filthy, grim prison erupted with fissures like black centipedes crawling across every surface. Everything in it—instruments of torture, cell doors, walls—crumbled inch by inch.

The collapse rushed toward Chen Jindong, but still he didn’t move.

In the blink of an eye, he found himself adrift in a dim void, neither falling nor floating, without so much as a scratch.

He stood in a world that looked as though all of heaven and earth had been laid to waste. With his chin slightly raised, a smile suffused the corner of his mouth. He appeared godlike yet demonic.

”Do you see? This is Heaven-Man Realm-level misfortune warding!

”How could someone who has eaten the Fuyu Mountain Cinnabar Grass be lost in a Dream Tribulation?”

The words had barely left his mouth when Chen Jindong noticed new changes all around.

He saw the packed-earth road, the sparse trees along the roadside, the horses lingering nearby, and Divine Physician Zeng, Marshal Zhong, and the others who stood further away. Together, they reconstituted the scene as it had been before he triggered the Dream Tribulation.

Almost simultaneously, Chen Jindong noticed that the Dream Tribulation’s manifestation of Zheng Zhuxi’s junior brother had changed dramatically. He was slightly taller, his back broad as a bear’s, his eyes like a horse’s, his face like a serpent’s, blue-black scales spreading across his skin. Then...

He Yuanzhi!

His master, He Yuanzhi!

”Wretched disciple, you have fallen into the demonic path! I will purge this sect of you today!” The He Yuanzhi conjured by the Dream Tribulation bellowed and strode forward.

Chen Jindong shot to his feet from his cross-legged position as the familiar pain of a whipping flared across his back.

When he’d been sneaking around committing his crimes, his fear of being discovered was half rooted in terror of being thrown in prison and living a fate worse than death, and half in dread of his master finding out and erupting in fury.

He had been taken on as He Yuanzhi’s personal disciple at age thirteen and subjected to strict discipline. His fear of his master had long been carved into his bones.

”Now this is more like it. This is my Dream Tribulation...” Chen Jindong wasn’t surprised in the slightest. He even muttered it with a smile.

He dipped slightly at the waist, his movement light and nimble as he closed in on the dream’s He Yuanzhi, smiling through gritted teeth.

”You old fool, I’ve wanted to kill you for years!”

......

”You old fool, I’ve wanted to kill you for years!”

Watching his personal disciple bear down on him with a frenzied expression, hand raised to strike, He Yuanzhi nearly flew into a rage.

He was a Grandmaster with a Resolute state of mind. But Resolute only meant he was undisturbed by doubt in his own choices and unperturbed by changes in circumstances. It didn’t mean he was without ordinary emotions.

When the personal disciple he had poured his heart into raising from childhood—the one he’d placed his highest hopes in—not only called him an old fool but also said he’d wanted to kill him for years, even a Heaven-Man Realm Supreme Master would feel a brief flare of anger.

Furious as he was, He Yuanzhi didn’t lose his head or strike to kill his unfilial disciple on the spot.

With his Resolute state of mind, he understood that Chen Jindong’s current behavior was likely the result of Soul Displaced Sickness and the Dream Tribulation combined. Those dark thoughts might be real, but they had to have been amplified. Besides, who had never harbored dark thoughts?

Judge a person by their deeds, not their thoughts. If one was judged by their thoughts, no one in the world was without fault!

”Wretched disciple!” He Yuanzhi cursed, raising both hands.

He bent both thumbs, ring fingers, and little fingers halfway, while the remaining four fingers angled diagonally toward each other, forming a strange hand seal.

He extended the seal forward, just barely intercepting the fist Chen Jindong swung at him.

As he formed the seal, He Yuanzhi kept his eyes half-closed as a faint glow seeped out from between the gaps.

The Great Dream of Three Thousand Years!

He intended to use the Great Dream of Three Thousand Years to let his disciple live through an entire lifetime, working in tandem with the Fuyu Mountain Cinnabar Grass’s Resolute to find the opening for him to clear the Dream Tribulation.

......

All of Chen Jindong’s thoughts surged and churned within his sea of consciousness, swept into He Yuanzhi’s Huangliang True Qi reaching in from outside.

He became the slightly timid boy again who had always been hungry for satisfaction and always full of strange ideas.

Pa!

Kneeling on the ground, he received a lash across the back from He Yuanzhi that split flesh from bone.

The searing pain made Chen Jindong wince, and he heard his master say in a low voice, ”All you ever do is chase after girls. How do you expect to focus on your martial arts?”

Chen Jindong lowered his head further. Resentment and fear of his master swelled in equal measure.

Year by year he grew. He showed a talent for the Great Dream of Three Thousand Years that far exceeded his fellow disciples. At last he earned his master’s approval, saw him smile more and more, and stopped suffering any punishment.

He grew arrogant quickly and began quietly experimenting on all manner of ideas—some were genuine innovations on the Great Dream of Three Thousand Years, others were pure indulgences of his darker impulses.

Every time he committed some wrong in secret, Chen Jindong would feel an inexplicable pain in his back, as though his master had somehow found out and punished him from the beyond.

He grew increasingly afraid of his crimes being uncovered. At some point, another self had taken up residence inside him, one that was more vicious, more cunning, more single-minded, and having none of his guilt over doing evil.

With this other self around, Chen Jindong was free to play the part of the Huangliang Sect’s future hope and the orthodox path’s pillar-in-waiting. He no longer had to commit wrongs himself; all he did was enjoy the results.

But that other self had acted on its own and taken the Shao girl’s life. His intention had been for her to miscarry. Then, once he became a Grandmaster and could eliminate his evil alter ego, he planned to be less afraid of his past crimes surfacing and court her properly for marriage. However, the madman had caused two deaths instead!

What’s more, the madman grew increasingly sinister and wanted to replace him entirely, taking every opportunity to suppress him. Chen Jindong was forced to use the windows at night when he could still act, finding someone to steal the Fuyu Mountain Cinnabar Grass and delay the madman’s chance of entering the Dharma Realm.

After deceiving Zheng Zhuxi and her junior brother of the Brightnight Sect into helping him, Chen Jindong finally reunited both selves into one, passed through the Dream Tribulation, entered the Dharma Realm, and became a Grandmaster.

He found a more wonderful woman, married someone renowned on the Peerless Beauties of the Jianghu, and step by step improved the Great Dream of Three Thousand Years. Twenty years later, he ascended to the Heaven-Man Realm, becoming a titan of the orthodox path and the greatest cultivator the Huangliang Sect had produced in a thousand years!

Listening to his fellow disciples’ congratulations, looking at his beloved wife and cherished children, thinking that none of his past crimes had ever been discovered, Chen Jindong was filled with satisfaction, at ease in body and spirit.

Then a sharp pain shot through his back, as though his long-dead master had given him one last lash.

The lash jolted him lucid again and restored his awareness of the dream.

The dream around Chen Jindong shattered all at once, reverting to the grim and filthy prison.

Not far in front of him, the Dream Tribulation had at some point taken the form of another him, eyes closed, taking in the Great Dream of Three Thousand Years.

”It’s no use. The Fuyu Mountain Cinnabar Grass will always find a way to keep me lucid, free from illusion,” Chen Jindong said to the Dream Tribulation before him with a smile.

The Dream Tribulation opened its eyes and took the shape of Ding Songyan once more.

Wearing his scholar’s headscarf and cyan robe, he thrust the sword at Chen Jindong again without any facial expression.

Chen Jindong let out a scoff and watched the ice-crystal sword hang suspended before his chest and abdomen.

”I have returned to my senses. This is my dream...” Chen Jindong sneered.

But before he finished speaking, a sudden, bone-deep pain erupted in his chest and abdomen.

Chen Jindong’s eyes went wide. He lowered his head in bewilderment and looked at his chest.

A sword wound had appeared there at some unknown moment in time. It hadn’t pierced the organs, but fresh blood was seeping out.

”Impossible, impossible...” Chen Jindong murmured to himself. ”As long as I am Resolute, as long as I am lucid enough, I am undefeatable in the dream. No one can break my misfortune warding.”

Despite those words, the wound was very real. It had undeniably originated from within him and had already altered the dream to some degree.

It was as though someone in the waking world had inflicted genuine damage.

But in his Resolute state, Chen Jindong knew that his master’s Great Dream of Three Thousand Years had been more of an assist. No one else had attacked him.

”Why, why...” Chen Jindong couldn’t make sense of it.

The undeniable reality led his Resolute mind to believe that the Dream Tribulation could break through his misfortune warding inside the dream and genuinely harm him.

He had not yet shaken free of his disbelief when a clean, icy sword light blazed before him and shot toward him like a star piercing the pre-dawn sky.

The strike was faster than Chen Jindong had expected—the speed of a first-rank Spirit Resonated Grandmaster.

Thud!

Frostshade drove into his throat, followed by sword qi erupting upward.

Only then did Chen Jindong raise both hands.

Excruciating pain and the terror of imminent death surged up together, wrapping Chen Jindong’s sea of consciousness in something all too vivid and real.

”Hu...” His eyes went wide, unbelieving.

After the sword ran through his throat, Ding Songyan stepped in close beside him and said softly with a smile, ”You wavered.”

The first sword wound Chen Jindong suffered had not, in fact, been inflicted by the Ding Songyan inside the dream.

With his consciousness split in two, the real Ding Songyan had, from the waking world, stirred the Manifesting the Way and its Virtue sword intent already lying dormant within Chen Jindong’s Crimson Palace.

Sword intent could not harm someone directly, but it could influence a target’s spirit and will. Naturally, it could also damage the dreams composed of that spirit and will, just as Zheng Zhuxi’s Candlelight Sword Intent had once disrupted a dream.

This damage was entirely real to Chen Jindong within the dream, and it genuinely originated from within him—undeniably manifesting in his dreaming body, and shaking his conviction that he could ward off all danger in the dream.

Resolute meant being undisturbed in one’s choices and unconfused by one’s circumstances. It was not omniscience, nor did it make a person wise. Were it not for the Fuyu Mountain Cinnabar Grass’s specific property of resistance to enchantment, a person who had taken it would still feel affection for someone and yearn for someone.

Resolute might mean holding firm to the right path without wavering. It might equally mean charging headlong down the wrong one without a second thought.

When Chen Jindong, who lacked full knowledge of what was really happening, came to believe that the Dream Tribulation could harm him inside the dream, his Resolute state only deepened that belief.

I wavered... Chen Jindong’s spirit was adrift. His gaze lost focus. He couldn’t form a single word.

The excruciating pain of death swept rapidly through his consciousness.

By the roadside on the official road.

Chen Jindong, who had already risen to his feet, suddenly clapped a hand over his throat and began to convulse.

Thud. He fell backward onto the ground, eyes bulging, life draining rapidly away.

”Jindong!” He Yuanzhi lunged forward, his entire being shaken to the core.

What is happening? Can someone end up like this during a Dream Tribulation? While Marshal Zhong and the others looked on in bewilderment, Ding Songyan circled forward from behind Zheng Zhuxi.

He looked at Chen Jindong’s body and murmured with an expression of regret and pity, ”To think that Soul Displaced Sickness could be so terrifying...”