Radiant Blade of the Wilderness

Chapter 112: Great Dream of Three Thousand Years

When Ding Songyan and Zheng Zhuxi returned to the Ding family residence, Xu Chang’an was practicing the palm techniques and movement arts of the Blameless Profound Art under Yang Shiduo’s guidance.

"Brother Ding, why didn’t you come back last night?" Xu Chang’an stopped and asked with concern.

He knew Ding Songyan and Zheng Zhuxi had to report to the county office each day, but surely that wasn’t reason enough to be gone for a full day and night.

"We went to pursue some wanted criminals," Ding Songyan offered the unvarnished truth.

"Oh." Xu Chang’an and Yang Shiduo both took this in stride.

In their minds, both Zheng Zhuxi and Ding Songyan were more than capable of such things.

Xu Chang’an stepped forward, hesitant.

"Brother Ding, Heroine Zheng, Master Liang came looking for me last night. He said to let him know if you came back, that he wanted to pay you a visit. C-can I tell him?"

Good, he knows not to decide on matters by himself... Ding Songyan had actually been meaning to speak with Liang Qian these past few days. Seeing no objection from Zheng Zhuxi, he considered briefly and said, "Around 7pm is fine."

"Great, great!" Xu Chang’an’s face broke into an immediate grin.

In all his years, last night was the first time the biggest fence chief of the prefecture city had ever treated him with such warmth, familiarity, and genuine respect. Now that Brother Ding had agreed to see Master Liang, he could hold his head up.

Zheng Zhuxi added offhandedly, "You don’t have to keep calling me Heroine Zheng either. It’s too formal."

If not Heroine Zheng, then what? I can’t possibly call you Sister-in-law... can I? Xu Chang’an stood dazed for a moment, his imagination running away with him.

"Miss Zheng or Miss Zhuxi are both fine." Ding Songyan cut off Xu Chang’an’s train of thought before it could go further.

He then turned to giving Yang Shiduo and Xu Chang’an pointers on their cultivation. Zheng Zhuxi, with her hard-won experience from multiple life-or-death fights, occasionally chimed in with a remark of her own.

After a while, they had a simple meal. Zheng Zhuxi was about to return to her room to rest and let herself recover, when she saw Ding Songyan beckon to her.

"Something else?" the young woman asked, puzzled.

Ding Songyan said with a smile, "Senior Sister, conducting an after-action review is a good habit."

Zheng Zhuxi understood the concept well enough despite the Go reference. She tersely agreed and followed Ding Songyan to the main room, the two of them settling on opposite sides of the square table.

Ding Songyan started from the beginning, walking through how he had thought through each situation, what concerns he’d had, what actions he’d taken, and where things could have been handled better or where significant gaps remained. Zheng Zhuxi chimed in occasionally with her own thoughts.

At the end, Ding Songyan said with a smile, "Senior Sister, I’m not asking you to adopt my methods. Neither do you need to. Everyone has their own way of doing things. If you simply imitate me, you’ll more likely drift off course and stumble, and your character could even regress. I just want you to understand what aspects need to be considered in a given situation, what reasons inform each decision, and why a particular course of action is ultimately chosen.

"Once you can think through all that clearly, you’ll be able to make the corresponding choices in your own way, reaching the same ends by different means. On this, you might ask Master for guidance more often. The two of you have quite similar styles."

Seeing that her junior brother wasn’t trying to push her toward his own way of adapting, but was instead affirming her own approach, Zheng Zhuxi felt her mood lighten all at once. She also found herself taking away a great deal from the review.

She worked through Ding Songyan’s considerations and choices in each situation, putting herself in his place to imagine what she would have done. When something stumped her, she asked her junior brother on the spot.

Time passed. Zheng Zhuxi, still not fully recovered and still faintly weak, covered her mouth and let out a yawn. Sounding a little pitiful which she did not intend to, she said, "My head is a complete muddle. Let me go rest for a bit."

After seeing his senior sister out of the main room, Ding Songyan went to the meditation chamber beside his bedroom and laid the pre-Dharma Realm manuals of the Great Dream of Three Thousand Years out on the writing desk.

He sat cross-legged and leafed through the texts carefully. The body tempering Chapter struck him as largely redundant. It was fully subsumed by the Nine Primal Arts. Whatever advantages it offered, the Nine Primal Arts already had; whatever the Nine Primal Arts offered that it didn’t, the Nine Primal Arts still had.

For the qi cultivation section, Ding Songyan followed the illustrated diagrams and meridian descriptions, circulated his Presence-Absence Myriad Forms Qi through three full cycles, and considered it done.

Rather than rushing straight into aperture refinement visualization, he read through the Human Realm and Great Proliferation Chapters several times each, deconstructing and analyzing them carefully. Only then did he proceed with practiced ease—first using the Celestial Heart imprint to split his mind in two, one part memorizing the visualization diagrams while the other simultaneously carrying out aperture refinement, then circulating the Celestial Heart Art to self-deceive and internalize the whole state as a bodily instinct, needing only a single trigger to reproduce it.

This was how he practiced the Human Realm Chapter and how he practiced the Great Proliferation Chapter, too. There was no need for aperture forging, meridian condensation, or viscera installation. Everything evolved from within the apertures, viscera, and meridians that corresponded to Chaos.

When he encountered non-human organs that Chaos did not contain, the Chaos force could conjure them from nothing, constructing a temporary phantom structure to serve in their place.

In the meditation chamber where sunlight fell in sheets of gold, Ding Songyan—no longer using the Celestial Heart imprint to conceal his physical anomalies—felt his face sharpen considerably, and dark blue-black fish scales spread across his neck and the backs of his hands.

At that moment, aside from lacking six legs and horse eyes not yet close to his ears, he bore all the other outward features of the Ranyifish.

This meant he had mastered the Great Dream of Three Thousand Years to the perfected Great Proliferation Realm.

Ding Songyan rose, fetched a bronze mirror from his bedroom, and examined his reflection carefully.

Having corresponding alien apertures and non-human organs really does alter one’s physical anomalies, even when both are conjured through derivation... Ding Songyan mused silently, and a thought suddenly struck him.

Could this be used to disguise myself?

If I used derived techniques from other sects and schools to fabricate physical anomalies, then adjusted my apparent age with the Celestial Heart imprint to produce a corresponding appearance, wouldn’t that turn me into an entirely different person?

Anyone who doesn’t know me well would have no chance of recognizing me.

Even if they thought I resembled Ding Sonyan, they would instinctively assume it was just two different people who happened to look alike...

Chaos is too powerful!

Ding Songyan then began probing the finer details of the Great Dream of Three Thousand Years.

His consciousness spread outward naturally, covering a range of about 95 meters. Compared to Chaos, which at perfected Dharma Realm could only sense within 20 meters of his body, the range was staggering.

However, this kind of spiritual coverage didn’t let Ding Songyan perceive everything within range. It could only involve one thing: dreams!

With his eyes closed, Ding Songyan felt the entire Ding residence become a boundless void with nothing in it—except for a hazy mist several meters away.

That was Zheng Zhuxi’s dream.

His soul and mind never left his body. His consciousness simply spread across and seeped silently into the mist, and his vision abruptly changed. He saw the Dipper-Mansion Training Ground lit by rows of lanterns.

He immediately withdrew his consciousness and pulled out of Zheng Zhuxi’s dream, without looking further.

With strangers, Ding Songyan had no qualms about peeking into their dreams. But with close friends and elders—especially someone like his senior sister, who was both upright and proud—he felt her privacy deserved respect.

He had only been confirming whether dream entry was possible, familiarizing himself with the Great Dream of Three Thousand Years.

Ding Songyan then tested the Ward Against Misfortune and Evil and the Embodying Nightmares aspects of the art. Ward Against Evil could merge seamlessly with Banishing Demons and Warding Off Evil, the two becoming inseparable. Ward Against Misfortune was defensive in nature. Even a full volley of pear-blossom needles fired directly at him couldn’t harm him as long as he stood still. It did have limits, though. Enough accumulated danger would overwhelm it, and it couldn’t defend against influences that didn’t bring direct danger.

Embodying Nightmares can be used directly in combat, without waiting for an opponent to fall asleep. It functions like an art that affects the enemy’s mind. If you know enough about them such as what their mental weak points are, the effect would be extraordinary by shaping the nightmare around those. Ding Songyan reflected for a moment and concluded that using Embodying Nightmares this way was still somewhat crude.

He felt this ability could be combined with other arts—especially those that already affected the mind—to produce something far more profound.

If I fused Embodying Nightmares into the Candlelight Sword Intent, could it deliver a devastating blow against heretics who fear the light—enough to frighten them to death on the spot? Ding Songyan paced back and forth, thinking it through. The trouble is, I can’t simultaneously derive Huangliang True Qi and Candleflame True Qi. The two can’t coexist, so fusion is impossible... Huangliang True Qi can only coexist with Presence-Absence Myriad Forms Qi, since it’s essentially derived from it. Could I instead fuse Embodying Nightmares into the Sword Intent of Winter?

Being a man of action, Ding Songyan drew Frostshade and practiced repeatedly, finally fusing Embodying Nightmares into the Sword Intent of Winter, though for now there was no one to test the blade on.

He sheathed Frostshade, dispelled the Ranyi features, and used the Celestial Heart imprint to conceal his Chaos anomalies again. Then he took stock of his condition.

He was considerably weaker than before, his spirit listless, and somewhere deep within, the flame of his life had dimmed noticeably.

Used up roughly four-plus years of lifespan... Ding Songyan barely hid his exhaustion as he walked to the bed and collapsed onto it.

When he woke, the sky was already dark. The orange-red sun had long since sunk behind the mountains, and Zheng Zhuxi, who had been seriously ill and hadn’t rested properly the night before, was still asleep.

"Second Master, Liang Qian from South Stone Lane wishes to see you. He has been waiting in the front hall for a quarter-hour." The gatekeeper stepped forward with his report when he saw Ding Songyan enter the front courtyard.

Ding Songyan gave a small nod and instructed the gatekeeper, "Have the kitchen prepare some food and send it to Heroine Zheng’s room when she wakes."

With that, he turned into the front hall, where he found Liang Qian. Sitting quietly in the left-side chair, the thin man appearing fifty-plus in age had an avian-shaped face and pale patterns across his skin.

After a few pleasantries, Ding Songyan settled into his seat, set down his sword, and asked with a smile, "What brings you here, Elder Liang?"

He deliberately kept a distance between himself and Liang Qian.

Liang Qian put on a smile.

"Young Hero Ding, I’ve come to ask a favor of you and Heroine Zheng. Please don’t spread word of my mind-reading-like ability.

"Over the years I’ve had dealings with many people. I’ve never deliberately listened in on their secrets, but they may not believe that. If they learned of my ability, they’d likely want me dead before I could cause trouble. My martial arts are decent, but I can’t hold off an endless stream of enemies. Besides, a thief can steal for a thousand days, but no one can guard against a thief for a thousand days.

"I ask that you help conceal this on my behalf, Young Hero Ding. I will repay you in the future."

No need to wait. The Mirror Lake Divine Reflection could settle it right now... The thought had barely surfaced before Ding Songyan forcibly pushed it back down.

That would be exploiting someone at their most vulnerable. It would simply be extortion.

My master is known throughout the world for keeping her word and upholding righteousness. My senior sister is open and principled, always first to help those in need. I might harbor all kinds of scheming thoughts, but there is no need to seize things by force and shame them both. There would be other chances to trade for it through legitimate means.

Moreover, I’m a personal disciple of the Brightnight Sect’s sect master, not a member of the Sage-Severing Way.

There is no need for jianghu chivalry when dealing with heretics, but I can’t apply that standard to everything...

In my past life, I had never done anything criminal either. My character was fundamentally decent...

Amidst his thoughts, Ding Songyan said to Liang Qian seriously, "This is something I ought to do. You’ve already helped us considerably in the matter of He Luo."

Having made that decision and spoken those words, Ding Songyan couldn’t help but reflect inwardly, It seems that even as I’ve been teaching my senior sister how to be more flexible, her way of doing things has been quietly rubbing off on me...