Little did they know that the Hundred Faces Nightmare had been personally dealt with by the massive red shadow outside the Panlong dreamscape; He Lingchuan had barely needed to lift a finger. When he set out to pursue the curse master, he was at full strength, able to hit hard and take a beating.
His opponent had summoned the Hundred Faces Nightmare, brought in the Fan brothers, and laid a chain of traps—one could call the scheme thorough and meticulous.
Against anyone else, it would have been a dead end.
Yet He Lingchuan, of all people, managed to escape with his life.
For Zhongsun Mou and the others, this was truly a case of one wrong step leading to a cascade of errors.
A defeat made all the more bitter by sheer bad luck.
"Though it's likely the curse master has fled far away, we should still give chase and try." He Lingchuan pulled a chair leg out of his storage ring and pointed at the bloodstains on it. "Take a sniff. Which way did he run?"
"..." How many times had he used him like a hound now? Jiao Yu couldn't even be bothered to argue anymore. He took a careful sniff. "This guy chewed too much tobacco. His blood reeks of it."
"No, no, I just pulled that out of the burning building." Was this fellow really reliable?
"Just saying." Jiao Yu cleared his throat and circled the inn, sniffing as he went.
He Lingchuan was burning with impatience, but couldn't press him.
Fortunately, Jiao Yu finally picked up the scent. "This way."
One man and one tiger raced northwest.
The low houses along the street grew fewer, replaced by sprawling estates. Exquisite walls and grand architecture lost none of their magnificence in the night.
Finally, Jiao Yu came to a halt before a grand estate.
Of all the houses He Lingchuan had passed, only this one had official seal-strips pasted across the gates.
"No way..." Though it was a bit hurtful to the tiger, He Lingchuan couldn't help saying, "Are you sure you didn't lead us the wrong way?"
This was the Jiao residence.
The place where Fu Songhua had lived before being arrested.
Why had the curse master fled here?
The tiger sniffed forcefully twice. "No mistake. The blood scent is heavy, and it leads straight here."
"And then?"
He followed the tiger leaping over the wall into the side wing.
The tiger walked and sniffed around the front hall, finally stopping beside a grove of bamboo. "The scent vanishes here."
"Here?" He Lingchuan drew his saber and slashed twice into empty air.
The gangqi on the blade set the bamboo grove rustling; birds and bats roosting in the nearby trees fluttered into the air in fright.
Aside from that, there was no other movement.
"No one's here." Otherwise, it couldn't escape a tiger endowed with origin power.
He Lingchuan slowly sheathed his saber. "Someone met him and helped him slip away."
There were plenty of ways to erase a scent and conceal tracks. Back when he was a patrol guard, he had learned at least three or four methods.
For the wounded curse master to flee here, someone must have been waiting to receive him.
The two circled the front and back of the house a few times. Finding nothing new, they had no choice but to head back.
Jiao Yu said through gritted teeth, "No wonder that fellow Zhongsun Mou was so composed. He was certain we wouldn't catch anyone."
He then asked He Lingchuan, "You were ambushed by him—are you really completely unhurt?"
"The curse master invited a nightmare into my dream to harm me, but I broke it. The backlash from the curse on him must be considerable."
"A nightmare?" Jiao Yu was surprised. "Such things actually exist? I had only ever heard the name before."
"Nightmares harm people without leaving a trace." He Lingchuan remembered something and instinctively came to a stop.
The tiger stopped to wait for him too. "What is it?"
"Nothing." He Lingchuan shook his head and continued walking toward the inn. "Just recalled a strange matter from before. Looking back now, perhaps that was a nightmare's doing as well."
When He Chunhua had traveled to take up his post in Xiazhou, just a few days before reaching Dunyu, the head of the foremost of the Four Great Clans, Old Master Li, had suddenly dropped dead.
The old man, who had eaten well, slept soundly, and enjoyed robust health, had passed away in his sleep without a single mark on his body. Supposedly, the evil-warding talismans had all been in place, yet failed to trigger.
Thinking back on it now, could that have been the work of a nightmare?
He Lingchuan sighed, realizing he wasn't surprised in the least.
Perhaps deep down, he had understood what happened all along. After all, once Old Master Li died, all of Dunyu was swiftly brought under the new Chief Administrator of Xiazhou's control.
Returning to the inn, He Lingchuan clutched his abdomen and said, "It's still early before dawn. I need to tend to my injuries."
"Good night." Jiao Yu gave his tail a flick. "They probably won't make another move tonight, right?"
He Lingchuan closed the door, drank some water, and applied medicine to his wounds.
He had even acquired a souvenir in the dream; he had to hurry back and take a look.
According to the habit he had formed over the past few months, he had to unbuckle his saber and lay it beside him first; otherwise, whether meditating or sleeping, it pressed uncomfortably against him.
Yet when He Lingchuan reached for the scabbard this time, he suddenly felt something wrong with the weight.
Looking down, only the scabbard hung at his waist.
Fusheng had vanished into thin air.
Wait, where was his saber?
Having kept him company day and night for months, the saber's presence had become as natural as breathing. He Lingchuan froze for a few breaths before his expression changed drastically.
Hadn't it clung to him like the divine bone, returning automatically even if thrown away?
Could he actually lose this saber?
Suddenly, a fluttering rustle came from outside, followed by noise against the window paper.
He Lingchuan's heart tightened. He lunged toward the window and shoved it open, only to see a starling whose wing was caught in a tree branch, struggling desperately.
Night flights often led to accidents.
He Lingchuan casually slashed through the branch. Freed, the bird flapped its wings and flew away.
Wait. Slashed?
He slowly lowered his head, staring at the long saber in his hand.
The feel was unmistakably Fusheng. But where had it just appeared from?
As if in answer to his confusion, Fusheng vanished in the very next second.
Could it be?
He Lingchuan was stunned for a moment, then seemed to understand what was going on. In his heart, he silently willed, *Come, saber.*
The instant the thought arose, the long saber reappeared in his palm.
The grip fit his hand perfectly.
A grin spread across He Lingchuan's face from ear to ear. "Unity of man and saber?"
In the dead of night, to suddenly present him with such a grand gift—why so generous?
In truth, calling it "unity of man and saber" was a bit of an exaggeration; the Fusheng Saber had merely been stored inside his body.
In ancient and medieval times, immortals could use their own bodies as scabbards, nourishing magic artifacts with their own true power.
Unfortunately, in later ages, the spiritual nature of artifacts waned, and the cost of storing them this way grew heavier and heavier. Cultivators simply gave up doing so, wearing them at their waists like common iron.
In this era, likely only quasi-divine artifacts and above could merge with their masters.
"What's going on? Have you leveled up again?" He Lingchuan stroked the blade, remembering the powerful nightmare the Dafang Pot had consumed tonight. "Could it be because you took in nourishment tonight?"
Even the massive red shadow had intervened in person. That nightmare must have been quite a feast for them, right?
Fusheng naturally offered no verbal reply, but after checking it over, He Lingchuan found that its traits seemed to have changed slightly as well.
"Army Breaker": Penetrates the opponent's origin power to deliver the full damage intended, though the chance of triggering is exceedingly slim.
Now, that "exceedingly slim" had become "possible."
In other words, his chances of triggering the "Army Breaker" trait had increased significantly.
As expected of his treasured saber—give it some good food and it yielded a return. Not like that Dafang Pot, which kept up that same cold, aloof attitude no matter how many rare treasures it devoured.
He Lingchuan felt that tonight, he would wake up laughing from his dreams!
A knock sounded on the room door, and the tiger demon's voice drifted in. "What happened?"
It had heard He Lingchuan open the window again. What was keeping him busy over and over in the middle of the night?
"Nothing."
Yet the tiger still scratched at the door.
He Lingchuan had no choice but to let him in.
The tiger leapt straight onto the couch and curled up. "Fine, I'll stand guard for you."
When He Lingchuan lay down, the tiger began licking its fur. Being a nocturnal beast, it was naturally more energetic after dark.
He Lingchuan looked up and saw it lying in the moonlight, its eyes like lanterns.
...
This time, entering meditation brought him straight into the dreamscape. He Lingchuan found himself standing once again beneath the Juluo tree.
Evidently, the Panlong dreamscape understood his needs very well.
The net bag remained securely wedged in the fork of the branches. In the eyes of the people of Panlong City, the bag held only a large rock; even mischievous urchins showed no interest in it.
He Lingchuan took the net bag down, only to discover that the nightmare's head had shriveled by half again, shrieking frantically to him for help.
He asked the Juluo tree, "Did you sneak a bite?"
The moment the words left his mouth, a tree root detached from the monstrous head.
He Lingchuan didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Wasn't it a bit late to destroy the evidence?
This Juluo tree was still young, after all; it couldn't resist sneaking a treat, yet felt guilty after getting caught.
He Lingchuan turned into a deserted street corner before lifting the nightmare's head to interrogate it. "Answer my questions obediently, or I'll bury you beneath the tree as fertilizer."
Its life was in his hands; what else could it say? "Ask away."
"Who sent you? Name."
"I said I don't know..." Resentment still lingered deep within it.
He Lingchuan held it up and turned to walk away. "Forget it, make yourself useful as tree fertilizer."
"Stop, stop, stop! I'll talk!" the nightmare head yelled repeatedly. "The curse master is named Cheng Yu. He has made offerings to us for years. Whenever he runs into a thorny target, he calls on us to act."
"You're that accommodating, granting every request?"
"Not quite, but targets that Cheng Yu can't handle usually possess very powerful, delicious souls."
"What's this Cheng fellow's background?"
"We genuinely don't know that." Seeing He Lingchuan move his hand, the grotesque head cried out, "I'm telling the truth! We don't pay much attention to reality."
"What about the Fan brothers?"
"What brothers?" The grotesque head looked thoroughly baffled. "Who?"
He Lingchuan gripped it and made as if to throw it toward the Juluo tree. The grotesque head screamed, "I swear, I don't know any Fan brothers! Never even heard of them."
Very well. He Lingchuan had only asked in passing.
As for this nightmare that the Dafang Pot had personally moved against, he was quite curious about it. "Why do you say 'we'? How many faces does your true body have?"
"A hundred and twenty-seven. Our title is the Hundred Faces Nightmare, but we actually have more than a hundred faces," the grotesque head replied. "Every time a consciousness awakens, a new face grows."
"Then where did the original 'hundred faces' come from?"
"When in the mortal realm, the true form was named Bai Zhu, an immortal. Many years ago—exactly how long, I can no longer remember—he was gravely wounded and near death. Unwilling to perish between heaven and earth, he exhausted every means to escape into the dreamscape, settling here from then on."
"Why was he gravely wounded?"
"Can't remember that either," the head said. "While we nightmares devour the essence of humans or demons, we also absorb their memories. Those messy, jumbled memories gradually overwrite our original ones. Over time, we don't even remember where we came from. It's the same for the true form; it only remembers its original name and has forgotten everything else."
Chapter 495