Chapter 938: Chapter 937: Becoming Friends with Oneself_1
The voice was neither male nor female and echoed in every corner of the jewelry store.
"Playing the trickster."
Shi Xiaole pointed with his sword, and the void cracked like glass, unexpectedly causing a person to fall out, dressed as a wealthy merchant, with a round pale face, only his eyes shining with sharpness.
"Young Master has great skills, Green Bean admires them,"
said the man in the wealthy merchant’s attire with a beaming smile.
Yet Shi Xiaole found it strange.
How could he not tell that the entire jewelry store was shrouded in an Array System of the Divine Barrier Realm, which his sword intent could easily break, but the person seemed unaffected?
"Young Master, this is my territory, where only the God can intervene,"
the wealthy merchant dressed man said, still smiling.
Shi Xiaole, however, didn’t believe it and this time exerted thirty percent of his strength, only for the Sword Qi to be extinguished as soon as it was released.
Fifty percent.
Seventy percent.
None were effective.
Shi Xiaole’s complexion changed as he sensed an inexplicable presence: "You’re called Green Bean?"
"Correct, because my eyes are very similar to green beans, so the God has named me that."
"Who is the God?"
"He is, of course, my master, and also the master of Mist Rain Town."
Shi Xiaole had enquired about the Mist Rain Town before and had never heard that the town had a master, let alone a "God," and his confusion grew.
Green Bean declared proudly, "Everyone who enters Mist Rain Town sees different things. And not everyone is qualified to meet me or hear my master’s great name. I can decide to give this red bead to the Young Master, but you must help me retrieve my dog from the Wang family’s iron shop in the eastern part of the town."
The other party’s words were bizarre, yet they made Shi Xiaole realize that Mist Rain Town had been occupied by a mysterious force.
"Why should I agree?"
"I never coerce,"
said Green Bean, and then vanished into the void, even the red bead disappeared, leaving only a voice behind: "Our deal is always on the table, until the next person comes."
Shi Xiaole weirdly exited the shop. The inns and taverns he visited before had none of these anomalies. Even more astonishing was that when he tried to leave Mist Rain Town, he found himself trapped!
With his spiritual power, he couldn’t even find a flaw; no matter which way he went, he was always circling within the streets of the town.
"I’ve caught someone’s attention, so I am trapped? Then those who entered before me, a portion must be the same as me, and since no information leaked out, it means they never left?"
He felt a sinking feeling in his heart. Shi Xiaole couldn’t help but shake his head and smile bitterly. It was an unexpected calamity, but panicking would not help. After thinking it over, he still headed eastward.
Half a 2-hour period later, Shi Xiaole saw a dilapidated storefront with four characters—Wang Family Iron Shop.
"Are you sent by Green Bean?"
From inside the Wang Family Iron Shop came a man with half his face scarred, staring at Shi Xiaole with a cold gaze. Behind him, a large yellow dog was chained up three feet away.
"He asked me to help," Shi Xiaole replied, observing the other person carefully. And to his horror, he realized that he couldn’t see through the other person’s cultivation level.
"You touched my wife’s face with your hand, so I took his beloved dog. Tell him to exchange his arm for the dog."
After saying that, the scar-faced man turned and went back inside. After a few steps, he abruptly turned back: "Leave now, Scar-face Old Six doesn’t have a good temper."
A surging murderous aura came his way. As it rushed forward, it provoked Shi Xiaole’s inherent Sword Qi, which was split in two with a hissing sound.
"Dare to resist?"
This action seemed to enrage Scar-face Old Six, who leaped towards Shi Xiaole and swung a fierce fist at him.
Shi Xiaole did not dare to take it lightly and quickly drew his sword, but when the punch came near, he realized he had still underestimated the man. The force seemed like a spike containing another spike, and the Wind-raid Sword Qi was pierced through. Shi Xiaole dodged to the side, and the punch soared into the sky, even punching a hole in the distant horizon.
"My apologies for the offence. I shall take my leave,"
he said as he retreated thousands of meters, Shi Xiaole withdrew his gaze and left with a bowed fist, also hiding the light in his eyes.
"Hmph."
Scar-face Old Six just sneered, and for some unknown reason, he did not chase after Shi Xiaole but returned to the Wang Family Iron Shop.
When Shi Xiaole relayed Scar-face Old Six’s message to Green Bean, Green Bean’s mocking laughter was incessant, ridiculing his delusions and even casting a more disdainful glance at Shi Xiaole.
"An incompetent fool, wasting my time,"
Green Bean said as he waved his hand, and suddenly spikes of light sprang up inside the jewelry store, trapping Shi Xiaole in the middle before he could react and disappearing him into the void.
But strangely, Shi Xiaole could still see the outside scene.
Stranger and more startling things happened afterward.
Just after half a 2-hour period,
a middle-aged man with a waxen complexion and a long sword hanging from his waist, who looked exactly like Shi Xiaole after a disguise, entered the jewelry store. Even the following dialogue was as if copied, and afterward, that person was also imprisoned by Green Bean.
"Who are you?"
"Who are you?"
Two Shi Xiaoles, like reflections in a mirror, showed surprise in their eyes at the same time.
Array System? Illusion?
Neither was correct.
Because by using the time before, Shi Xiaole had already seen through the peak Void Origin Realm Array System of this place and had found the flaw. Illusions, fundamentally the same as Array Systems, couldn’t deceive him, either.
But he still couldn’t break out of this damned prison.
"I understand now, this is a terrifying dream, the moment we stepped into this place, we began the cycle, with no beginning and no end. You think I’m you, an extension of you, but little do you know, maybe you are an extension of me, with no beginning and no end, the beginning is the end."
The Shi Xiaole opposite spoke with a light tone, yet it was extremely striking.
Shi Xiaole naturally thought of this, so even he was not clear about who was really who.
Following that, a third, fourth, fifth...
Continuously, Shi Xiaoles were imprisoned here, questioning, until in the end, Shi Xiaole felt as if his consciousness had been torn into hundreds of parts, transformed into hundreds of pairs of identical cold eyes.
"I have a way."
Suddenly, one Shi Xiaole drew his sword and moved it toward his neck.
The crowd was confused, then simultaneously moved, right, if only one person is left through death, who began and who will end will become clear, and this terrible cycle could be stopped.
But like triggering another reincarnation, many more Shi Xiaoles appeared and, in the end, all Shi Xiaoles died until only one remained, repeating over and over.
Afterward, Shi Xiaole thought of many methods, but the situation got worse, any change couldn’t stop this nightmare from happening, it only made things more complex.
Gradually, even the normally composed Shi Xiaole began to feel irritated, then delirious, and after delirium came chill silence.
His usually cold eyes turned bloodshot, his gaze like that of a half-conscious, half-delirious madman, it was a kind of deep-seated despair.
"Submit to me, and I will let you go."
One day, Green Bean appeared with a smile in front of the many Shi Xiaoles, looking down at them with a superior gaze.
No one could endure such torment, not even the strongest man, in fact, Shi Xiaole’s performance had already greatly exceeded Green Bean’s expectations.
"You are a man I value, as does the God. Before you, three people have joined my ranks and all have been put to great use, but you surpass them."
Green Bean spoke slowly, already regarding himself as a triumphant giver of rewards. For him, recommending a worthy talent was indeed a great achievement.
"Submit? I am always free, what submission are you talking about?"
Suddenly, all the Shi Xiaoles raised their heads at the same time, the despair in their eyes gone, replaced with a mocking sneer.
Green Bean’s face changed, "What did you say?"
"You’ve said it from the start, this is a dream, and what you see, what you made use of, is just my desires. I myself am my greatest enemy."
The many Shi Xiaoles disappeared, leaving only one.
"Thank you for creating this dream. In truth, all the difficulties were conjured up by my imagination, surface consciousness can never overcome the subconsciousness, and what you did was to guide my subconsciousness, making me my own enemy! Only now do I truly understand, the most important thing for a person is to forgive oneself, to cooperate with oneself, that is the only way out in any predicament."
"Impossible!"
Green Bean’s face turned pale.
"That punch from Scar-face Old Six was too strange, I had an intuition at that moment, that even if I let him hit me, I would not get hurt. Now that I think about it, it must have been a warning from my subconsciousness. And your appearance, I set it myself as a checkpoint, salvation or downfall, all in a thought’s time."
Shi Xiaole looked firmly at Green Bean: "I’ve won!"
Crackling sounds.
The scene before his eyes shattered like a broken mirror.
Shi Xiaole stood perfectly unharmed in the jewelry store, holding a red bead in his hand; what Green Bean, what Scar-face Old Six, all had vanished.
"So it turns out, even to this day, my heart still harbors such mixed thoughts and fears, binding me from moving forward."
Shi Xiaole took a deep breath.
What enabled him to awaken, apart from doubts about Green Bean and Scar-face Old Six, was another significant but less obvious reason: in the midst of the repeated torments, his Illusion Martial Way had reached an unprecedented peak of ninety percent, just half a step away from perfection, allowing him to sense the true and the false even more clearly.
Holding the red bead in his hand, Shi Xiaole smiled and put it away, wondering what rewards he would receive after collecting all the beads of different colors.
Before he could quell his excitement, the ground suddenly rumbled and plummeted downwards. Once it stabilized, Shi Xiaole walked out of the jewelry store, only to discover that Mist Rain Town had expanded many times over, as far as the eye could see!
...
"Eh, someone passed the Dream Martial Demon Emperor’s test?"
In a deep mansion with mottled walls, a young master reclining on a rocking chair looked slightly stunned, then revealed a smile.
"Among the twelve generals under our lord, the Dream Martial Demon Emperor’s test is the most difficult, and this was just the first layer."
The attendant by his side said. Although an attendant, his aura was ten times stronger than many magnates of the Martial World.
"I do hope someone can pass through all of Dream Martial’s tests. Nowadays, of the twelve generals’ doors, only three remain unopened, heh, those Martial World forces have plotted for years, and they haven’t disappointed me."
The young master said indifferently.
"Master, rest assured, it’s said that those forces have called forth their most outstanding disciples this time, prepared to give their all to break through the remaining three doors and uncover the greatest secret of this place."
The attendant spoke calmly, but the young man detected a wicked glee in his voice.
"The secret, haha..."
