Chapter 010: Crisis

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Quite apart from the immortal-sect disciples and servants outside the bronze mirror, who had been left utterly aghast, the three Nightmare Masters locked in combat within the dream were equally dumbfounded as they watched ash fill the sky around Yun Chuan.

The drummer was the first to shout, “We’ve run into a monstrous evil today! The contest has gone completely haywire. The Xie family’s young lady has shown up, and now even a spirit bandit has appeared! What on earth are you trying to do, girl?”

Zhao Laoliu, who controlled the locusts, was even more exhilarated. Laughing uproariously within the whirlwind of insects, he said, “Excellent! I love a lively scene!”

Yun Chuan carried Xie Yuzhu upward on a cloud of ash. Dodging the waves of sound, branches, and locusts, she made one circuit around the center where the three nightmares converged, her fingers moving rapidly across her clothing as if calculating something.

Xie Yuzhu obediently played the hostage and asked in a mosquito-like murmur, “What are you calculating?”

Yun Chuan lowered her voice as well. “Who I can beat.”

“Who?”

“No one.”

“Then what do we do?”

“Pick someone and help him defeat everyone else.”

The instant Yun Chuan finished speaking, she flicked her wrist. Ash flew out, severing the branch that was about to stab Zhao Laoliu and blocking the venom at the same time.

Zhao Laoliu turned toward her in astonishment. “Little girl, you actually helped me?”

“If you win in the end and all the dreams are destroyed, I’ll be able to get out.” Suspended in midair, Yun Chuan answered honestly.

Xie Yuzhu stiffened and protested with a whimper. “Why help him instead of the scholar? Isn’t repaying kindness with treachery utterly dishonorable?”

Yun Chuan replied gravely, “A truly honorable person should kill me now to save you.”

“…”

“Only dishonorable people will stand on my side.”

Xie Yuzhu, swaying whichever way the wind blew, immediately conceded, “You’re right.”

Sure enough, Zhao Laoliu did not care that Xie Yuzhu had been taken hostage. Having received Yun Chuan’s assistance, he was positively smug.

Xu Shu’s face turned livid as he shouted, “This girl is a spirit bandit! I suspect all this chaos was caused by her! Everyone, let us capture her first!”

The moment the branches rushed toward Yun Chuan, the drums thundered, the locusts soared, and ash fell like a storm of arrows. All three sides attacked at once.

The nightmare of the forest was torn apart in an instant. Xu Shu’s furious face vanished together with the dream.

On the high platform, Xu Shu, who had been asleep, woke with a dark expression.

Outside the bronze mirror, the immortal-sect disciples witnessed the scene and erupted in indignation, their voices soaring into the heavens. The honorable had been defeated by the dishonorable and those who had seized the advantage—what an outrageous injustice!

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Within the dream, Yun Chuan merely clapped her hands and said with satisfaction, “One dream destroyed.”

Then the drummer Nightmare Master actually tried to persuade Yun Chuan to help him. Yun Chuan was still rather principled when it came to forming alliances, so without a word, she helped Zhao Laoliu wipe him out instead.

Thus, this suddenly appearing, utterly lawless spirit bandit formed an unspoken alliance with the half-mad Zhao Laoliu.

Zhao Laoliu had already been quite formidable, and Yun Chuan’s bracelet was exceedingly powerful as well. On the carved wooden board, Zhao Laoliu’s nameplate sent anyone it touched crashing downward. It wobbled and swayed as it climbed higher and higher, utterly invincible and unstoppable.

The groups had already descended into complete chaos, and Yun Chuan’s intervention accelerated the contest tremendously. In less than half an hour, Zhao Laoliu’s nameplate soared upward, closing in on the supreme leader’s position at the very top. Yet its fierce momentum came to an abrupt halt when another nameplate, rising with astonishing speed, knocked “Zhao Laoliu” from the board.

Yun Chuan and Xie Yuzhu had not even realized what was happening, nor had they seen the Nightmare Master who had struck down Zhao Laoliu’s nameplate, when they plunged into another dream and landed heavily on the ground.

Xie Yuzhu climbed dazedly to her feet and discovered that her surroundings had transformed into Fujiang City. An open square at the heart of the streets connected to roads in every direction. Silk shops, apothecaries, butcher shops, and other establishments stood in rows along the street, their doors tightly shut. Vultures perched on the rooftops, high and low, while in the distance she could just make out the golden pearl atop Moon-Plucking Tower.

She struggled to recall the place for a moment, then cried out in realization, “This is… West Willow Street in Fujiang City?”

Xie Yuzhu looked down at the ground. Every crack between the paving stones was already filled with blood. It gradually overflowed, spreading across the street and reflecting the blood-red moon overhead.

West Willow Street became an execution ground every autumn.

Her heart tightened. Before she could understand what was happening, she heard footsteps as dense as a torrential downpour.

A mass of corpses came rushing from every alley and street. None had heads. Their clothes were tattered, their bodies of every height, their hands clawing wildly. The bowl-sized wounds at their necks still gushed blood with a wet, labored hiss. They ran while scattering blood behind them, until the street truly became a river of gore.

Xie Yuzhu was once again terrified out of her wits. Amid her shrieks, Yun Chuan seized her and pulled her close, maintaining the posture of a hostage-taking bandit. She then plucked an apple from a nearby tree and smashed it onto the ground.

The instant the apple struck, it sprouted at tremendous speed, sending out a dense tangle of branches that blocked the approaching corpses.

The apple tree flowered and bore fruit in a flash. New apples dropped one after another, and fresh apple trees burst through the paving stones and rose from the ground. They shredded the corpses and drank from the river of blood as they grew lush and green toward the sky. Their slanting branches spread toward Yun Chuan and Xie Yuzhu, wrapping around them and hoisting them high into the air.

Relying on the branches to pull her out of the tide of corpses, Yun Chuan dodged from side to side while plucking apples and hurling them into the mass below. Each impact felled a cluster of corpses, only for new apple trees to grow in their place. Before long, the execution ground threatened to become an apple forest.

The outermost three rings of Yun Chuan’s bracelet spun with such speed that they nearly sparked.

Xie Yuzhu covered her mouth as she watched the corpses climb over one another, heedless of death, using each other as footholds. Though they had no heads, their cries of injustice rose and fell like waves. No one could tell where the voices came from. To have died unjustly in life was already tragic enough; to be trampled beneath the feet of other wrongfully slain souls and used as a ladder after death—truly, when would this cycle of vengeance ever end?

Could this be an executioner’s dream?

Compared with this, the earlier nightmares of water, trees, and insects had been nothing short of paradise.

Seeing the corpses move faster and faster until throwing apples could no longer keep pace with them, Yun Chuan scattered a handful of ash into the air and blew upward.

The ash spread across the sky. Beneath the blood-red moon, it transformed into dozens of wild wolves that plunged downward, tearing into the corpses and dragging them from the apple trees.

Yun Chuan did not lower her gaze. Still looking upward, she fixed her eyes on a certain rooftop in the distance.

Xie Yuzhu followed her gaze and saw a middle-aged man in his early forties standing beneath the blood moon. He wore a deep blue-green scholar’s robe. Tall but lean, with a bristling gray beard and eyes bright as torches, he stood upon the roof tiles.

Xie Yuzhu recognized him. She had seen him when she slipped out earlier.

He was none other than the famed Nightmare Master, Ren Tang.

Her thoughts raced, then suddenly clicked into place.

So this was Ren Tang’s dream!

The only Nightmare Master capable of defeating Zhao Laoliu in an instant was Ren Tang. Now that Zhao Laoliu was gone as an ally, Yun Chuan could not possibly defeat any Nightmare Master alone—much less Ren Tang.

Ren Tang’s gaze moved from the bracelet on Yun Chuan’s wrist to her face. In a deep voice, he asked, “Are you the spirit bandit from Fu Estate?”

At once, Xie Yuzhu understood the situation. Waving her arms and legs, she shouted, “Mr. Ren! Mr. Ren, stop! I’m the Sixth Miss of the Xie family! She’s got her hand around my throat! Save me!”

Yun Chuan cooperated by pressing a sharp branch against Xie Yuzhu’s neck. “Let me out, or I’ll kill her.”

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Ren Tang gave a cold laugh. Blood instantly welled from the branch in Yun Chuan’s hand, and it shrank as though melting.

Yun Chuan immediately tossed it away.

Ren Tang’s voice rang out from afar. “Spirit bandit, I fear you still do not understand. You stand within a dream I control. Against me, there is only one possible outcome: defeat.”

It was common knowledge throughout the world that nighttime belonged to Nightmare Masters. Within nightmares, they were gods—and gods were naturally omnipotent.

Ren Tang raised a hand.

The earth began to shake violently and split apart. A fissure suddenly appeared between Yun Chuan and Xie Yuzhu, widening at terrifying speed. A dark tide of corpses swept over from the rooftops like beetles. Their stench filled the heavens as they crawled crookedly along the treetops and surrounded Yun Chuan. In an instant, every leaf was dyed scarlet.

“Do not be afraid, Miss Xie. I will certainly keep you safe,” Ren Tang declared.

Xie Yuzhu stood rigidly where she was, staring across the newly opened chasm at Yun Chuan on the opposite side. In a dry voice, she began, “Actually…”

Before she could finish, the blue light on Yun Chuan’s bracelet flickered, then went out with a faint pop.

The trees stopped growing. The wild wolves vanished. Ash drifted across the night sky, veiling the blood-red moon. Xie Yuzhu’s words caught in her throat.

No way!

That miraculous bracelet had never broken before. Why did it have to fail at this exact moment?

How unlucky could a person possibly be?

Xie Yuzhu wailed inwardly as Ren Tang shouted from the other side, “A mere spirit bandit dares invade a dream, disrupt order, and sabotage the Nightmare Masters’ Assembly! How dare you show such contempt for Nightmare Masters? Who gave you the courage?”

Ren Tang pointed at Yun Chuan and said coldly, “This shall be the place of your burial!”

Xie Yuzhu was so anxious that her thoughts seemed ready to burst into sparks. Yet Yun Chuan only looked bewildered.

“You said…”

Before she could finish, the headless corpses swarmed toward her. Their bloody, mangled hands reached for her face.

As Xie Yuzhu screamed, the situation changed in the space of a breath.

A long slit suddenly tore open in the sky, resembling a mouth stretched wide in laughter. Countless sheets of white paper came crashing through it, booming like hailstones striking the earth.

The white paper was astonishingly heavy. Once it landed, it did not move an inch. Layer upon layer covered the streets, the rivers of blood, and the trees, crushing the corpses beneath it and burying them completely.

In the blink of an eye, the paper had piled into a thick blanket, turning the entire world into a boundless white plain.

Yun Chuan, Ren Tang, and Xie Yuzhu were all buried up to their knees. The three stared at one another in bewilderment.

A sheet of white paper drifting through the air suddenly stopped. New sheets began pouring from it in a frenzy, cascading downward like a waterfall of paper. Gradually, the shape of a person emerged.

The papers suddenly spun upward and scattered in every direction. At the center stood a beautiful woman in multicolored robes, facing Yun Chuan with her back to Ren Tang.

It was Wen Ci.

Wen Ci examined Yun Chuan from head to toe. Her gaze passed over the bloodstains on Yun Chuan’s clothes, then paused for a moment on the smoking bracelet.

Grimacing, she said sarcastically, “You really are astonishingly capable.”

With that, Wen Ci turned toward Ren Tang and lifted her chin slightly.

“Invasion of a dream, disruption of order, sabotage of the Nightmare Masters’ Assembly—the person you were talking about just now…”

Wen Ci raised a finger and pointed at herself.

“That person is me.”