Who could have guessed that the Hundred-Faced Nightmare would be dealt with personally by the giant red figure beyond the Panlong Dreamscape? It had nothing to do with He Lingchuan at all. By the time he came after the curse master, he was still in perfect condition and perfectly able to fight.

His opponents had been able to summon the Hundred-Faced Nightmare, hire the Fan brothers, and lay down one trap after another. It was a careful, meticulous setup.

If almost anyone else had been the one facing it, it would have been a dead end.

And yet He Lingchuan had survived it.

For Zhongsun Mou and the others, this was what it meant to make one wrong move and then keep going wrong, step after step.

And what a wrongful, frustrating mistake it was.

“Even if the curse master has probably fled far away by now, we still have to try chasing him.” He Lingchuan pulled out a broken chair leg from his storage ring and pointed at the bloodstains on it. “Smell it. Which way did he run?”

“...” He’s using me like a dog... How many times has this happened already? Jiao Yu could not even be bothered to argue anymore. It bent its head and sniffed carefully. “This man smokes too much. His blood reeks of tobacco.”

“No, no, I just took this out of the fire.” Is this fellow actually reliable or not?

“I’m only saying.” Jiao Yu coughed once, then circled the inn, sniffing as it went.

He Lingchuan was anxious to death, but he could not very well rush it.

Fortunately, Jiao Yu finally found the direction. “This way.”

The man and the tiger ran northwest.

The low houses by the roadside grew fewer and fewer, replaced by spacious estates that covered large plots of land. Their elegant walls, imposing architecture, and quiet grandeur lost nothing to the night.

At last, Jiao Yu stopped in front of a large residence.

Of all the residences and courtyards He Lingchuan had passed, only this one had official seals pasted over the gate.

“It can’t be, right?” Even though it was a little hurtful to the tiger, He Lingchuan still could not help saying, “You’re sure you didn’t take the wrong trail?”

This was the Jiao Residence.

This was Fu Songhua’s home before her arrest.

How had the curse master fled here?

The tiger sniffed hard twice. “No mistake. The smell of blood is strong. It leads right here.”

“And then?”

He followed the tiger over the wall and into the side quarters.

Jiao Yu sniffed its way through the front hall, then finally stopped by a clump of bamboo. “The scent disappears here.”

“Here?” He Lingchuan drew his saber and made two testing slashes through the air.

The force from the blade made the bamboo grove rustle violently, startling birds and bats from the nearby trees into flight.

But other than that, nothing happened.

“No one’s here.” Otherwise, the tiger, with origin energy reinforcing it, would not have missed them.

He Lingchuan slowly lowered his blade. “Someone came to receive him.”

There were all sorts of ways to erase scent and conceal one’s trail. Back when he had served as a patrol guard, he had learned no fewer than three or four of them himself.

But if the curse master had fled here while injured, it could only mean that someone had been waiting to help him.

The two of them searched the front and back of the residence several times without finding anything new, and in the end, they had to turn back.

Jiao Yu said angrily, “No wonder Zhongsun Mou looked so calm. He was certain we wouldn’t catch the man.” Then it asked He Lingchuan, “You were hit by his scheme, yet you’re perfectly fine?”

“This curse master invited a nightmare into my dream to kill me, but I broke it. The backlash he suffered should have been severe.”

“A nightmare?” Jiao Yu was surprised. “So such a thing truly exists. I’d only ever heard the name before.”

“Nightmares kill people without anyone knowing, without a trace.” He Lingchuan suddenly remembered something and came to an involuntary stop.

The tiger also halted and waited for him. “What is it?”

“Nothing.” He Lingchuan shook his head and continued toward the inn. “I just remembered an old, strange case. Thinking back now, it may also have been the work of a nightmare.”

A few days before He Chunhua arrived in Xia Province to take up his post, the head of the Li Family, which had been the foremost of the four great families in Dunyu, had suddenly died without warning.

Old Master Li had eaten well, slept well, and been in excellent health. Yet he died in his sleep, without a single wound on his body. They said even the talismans meant to ward off evil were still there and had simply failed to work.

Now that he thought about it, could that have been a nightmare too?

He Lingchuan let out a sigh and realized he was not surprised at all.

Perhaps deep down, he had understood long ago what had happened. After all, the moment Old Master Li died, all of Dunyu had swiftly fallen under the control of the newly appointed Governor-General of Xia Province.

Back at the inn, He Lingchuan pressed a hand to his abdomen and said, “There’s still a long while before dawn. I need to hurry and treat my injuries.”

“Good night.” Jiao Yu flicked its tail. “The other side probably won’t move again tonight, right?”

He Lingchuan shut the door, drank a little water, and applied medicine to his wound.

He had even brought back a souvenir from the dream. He needed to get back in and check on it.

By long habit, developed over the past few months, he first had to unfasten his saber and place it beside him. Otherwise, whether he meditated or slept, it pressed uncomfortably against him.

But this time, when He Lingchuan reached for the scabbard, he suddenly felt something was wrong with the weight.

Looking down, he saw only the empty scabbard hanging at his waist.

Fleeting Life was gone.

Huh? Where’s my saber?

For months, it had accompanied him like his own shadow. Its presence had become as natural as breathing. He Lingchuan stood frozen for several breaths, then his expression changed sharply.

Wasn’t it stuck to me like the divine bone, refusing to leave, and even returned on its own when thrown?

How could I have possibly lost the saber?

At that moment, something fluttered outside. There was movement beyond the window paper.

He Lingchuan’s heart tightened. He lunged to the window and flung it open, only to find that a starling had gotten one wing caught in a tree branch and was struggling frantically.

Flying at night is just asking for trouble.

He Lingchuan casually cut the branch. Freed, the bird beat its wings and flew off.

Hm? Cut?

He slowly lowered his head and stared at the changdao in his hand.

This is definitely Fleeting Life, but where did it just come from?

As if answering his question, the next instant, Fleeting Life vanished again.

Could it be?

He Lingchuan paused, then seemed to understand. In his mind, he silently thought, “Saber, come.”

The thought had barely formed before the changdao reappeared in his grasp, and it fit his hand perfectly.

He Lingchuan broke into a huge grin. “Man and saber as one?”

To suddenly give me such a generous gift in the middle of the night, well, now, isn’t that awfully polite?

To call it man and saber as one was perhaps a bit of an exaggeration. What had really happened was that Fleeting Life had simply been absorbed into his body.

In the Ancient and Middle Eras, immortals could use their own bodies as containers, nurturing magical artifacts with their own true energy.

Unfortunately, the spiritual nature of later magical artifacts grew weaker and weaker, while the cost of storing them this way kept rising. Cultivators eventually gave up and simply wore them at the waist like ordinary iron weapons.

In this era, probably only quasi-divine artifacts and above could truly merge with their masters as one.

“What happened? Did you advance again?” He Lingchuan stroked the blade and remembered the powerful nightmare that the Generous Pot had devoured that night. “Could it be because you all got a good meal tonight?”

Even the giant red figure had gone out personally. For it and the others, that nightmare must have been a powerful tonic.

Fleeting Life, of course, gave no response. But after examining it, He Lingchuan discovered that one of its properties had changed slightly.

Army-Breaker: Even if the enemy bears origin energy as armor, the strike will pierce their protection and deal damage that originally should have been dealt on a small chance.

Now that “very small” had become “small.”

In other words, the odds of him triggering the Army-Breaker property in the future had increased by more than a single degree.

As expected of his treasured saber. Feed it something good, and it gives benefits in return, much unlike the Generous Pot, which remained exactly the same indifferent thing no matter how many priceless treasures it devoured.

He Lingchuan felt that tonight he might laugh himself awake in his dreams.

There came a knock at the door, and the tiger monster’s voice sounded from outside. “What happened?”

It had heard He Lingchuan opening the window again.

“Nothing.”

But the tiger still scratched at the door.

He Lingchuan had no choice but to let it in.

The tiger leaped straight onto the bed and lay down. “Fine. I’ll stand guard for you.”

As He Lingchuan lay down, the tiger began licking its fur. It was a nocturnal animal to begin with, so it was naturally more alert after dark.

Looking up, He Lingchuan saw it stretched out in the moonlight, its eyes glowing like lanterns.

* * *

This time, as he settled his breathing, he entered the dreamscape directly. Once again, He Lingchuan found himself standing beneath the juluo tree.

Clearly, the Panlong Dreamscape understood his needs very well.

That net bag was still wedged securely in the fork of the branches. In the eyes of Panlong City’s people, it contained nothing more than a large stone, and even mischievous children felt no interest in it.

He Lingchuan took the net bag down, only to find that the nightmare’s head had shriveled by another half. It was screaming at him frantically for help.

He asked the juluo tree, “Did you sneak a bite?”

The moment the words left his mouth, the roots wrapped around the grotesque head fell away.

He Lingchuan could not help but laugh. Trying to destroy the evidence now is a little late, isn’t it?

This juluo tree was still young, after all. It had snuck a bite and then felt guilty about it.

He Lingchuan ducked into an empty side street before lifting the nightmare’s head and questioning it. “Answer properly. Otherwise, I’ll bury you under the tree as fertilizer.”

Its life was in someone else’s hands. What could it possibly say? “Ask.”

“Who sent you? I want their name.”

“I already told you that I don’t know...” It was still full of resentment.

He Lingchuan held it and turned to leave. “Forget it. Fertilizer it is, then.”

“Wait, wait, I’ll tell you!” the nightmare’s head cried out in a panic. “That curse master is called Cheng Yu. He’s made offerings to us for years. Whenever he runs into a difficult problem, he asks us to act.”

“You’re that conscientious? Somebody asks, and you always answer?”

“Not always. But the opponents Cheng Yu can’t deal with usually have rather potent souls and spirits, and they’re delicious.”

“What’s this Cheng fellow’s background?”

“That we really don’t know.” The moment He Lingchuan’s hand shifted, the grotesque head shrieked, “I’m telling the truth! We don’t pay much attention to the waking world.”

“And the Fan brothers?”

“What brothers?” The grotesque head looked utterly baffled. “Who?”

He Lingchuan lifted it as if to toss it toward the juluo tree, and the head cried out, “I swear, I don’t know any Fan brothers! Never even heard of them!”

Well, He Lingchuan had only asked in passing anyway.

He was more interested in the nightmare itself. After all, it was the kind of thing that had made even Generous Pot act personally. “Why do you keep saying we or us? How many faces did your true body have?”

“One hundred twenty-seven. We’re called the Hundred-Faced Nightmare, but in truth, there are more than a hundred faces.” The grotesque head replied, “Each time a new consciousness awakens, a new face grows.”

“Then where did the original hundred faces come from?”

“In the human world, the true body was called Bai Zhu. He was an immortal. I can’t remember exactly how long ago, but many years ago, he was gravely wounded and near death. Unwilling to vanish between heaven and earth, he tried every possible method to escape into dreams, and from then on, he settled here.”

“Why was he gravely wounded?”

“Can’t remember that either.” The grotesque head said, “When we nightmares devour the vitality of humans or monsters, we also take in their memories. Over time, those messy borrowed memories gradually overwrite our own original ones. If enough time passes, we can’t even remember where we came from. The true body is the same. It remembers only its original name. Everything else has already been forgotten.”