Stranger Danger

“It’s not really my fault though. I can’t help that I’m too young and impulsive!”

Ye Qing cocked his head to one side and smiled at Giggle. “Don’t you agree, Giggle?”

“Hahaha…”

The little Stranger was emulating Ye Qing’s behavior and sitting crosslegged on the ground. When it heard Ye Qing’s question, it simply giggled in response.

Ye Qing wasn’t expecting an answer from Giggle, of course. He was just talking because he felt like it.

Besides, he didn’t really look or feel regretful despite his claims.

Yes, part of the reason he turned down Yu Longzi’s offer was because of passion, but his choice wasn’t without its due consideration.

First, there was no free lunch in this world. Would Yu Longzi really surrender everything to him just to make Dragonrider Mountain great again? Would he really support him from the bottom of his heart? Did he really have no other request besides this?

Ye Qing couldn’t believe that such a person existed.

Dragonrider Mountain might be far below its prime, but it still had hundreds of years of accumulated wealth and power. Only they knew if they had other unpredictable tricks up his sleeve. He had caught Dragonrider Mountain by surprise when he paid them a visit, but now? He was the one out in the open, and they in the dark. If they really wanted to, they had the means to catch him by surprise and kill him. At that point, it would become a matter of survival.

Suppose that his fears were just his cynicism talking, and everyone in Dragonrider Mountain was willing to accept him as their new mountain lord. However, that only worried him more. To begin with, Yu Longzi was fully invested in rejuvenating Dragonrider Mountain, but he wasn’t. On top of that, he knew very well that he wasn’t gifted in this area. Even with everyone’s support, he had no idea if he could bear that level of responsibility on his shoulders and answer their hopes and dreams.

He did not think that he was a good person, but he certainly wasn’t the kind of scumbag who would treat others’ hopes and dreams like a joke either.

Third, Yu Longzi had made the offer without knowing that he was really a wanted man of Chu, and that his nemeses included the Chief Libationist’s favorite disciple and the son of the Grand Mentor. What would he do when he found out the truth?

Logically speaking, selling him out would rejuvenate Dragonrider Mountain faster than supporting him, wouldn’t it?

Yu Longzi was willing to give up everything to support him now for the sake of rejuvenating Dragonrider Mountain. It was very likely that the old man would betray him for the same goal.

This wasn’t his paranoia talking. This was just the human condition.

Fourth, he did not want to drag Dragonrider Mountain down with him. He already obtained a reward from Trueman Dragonrider. It was against his morals to knowingly drag them into his mess for his own self-interest.

Finally, he did not want to be shackled. The world was a big place, and the jianghu a never-ending festival of violence and intrigue. He saw no reason to shackle himself to a sect before he was done walking the paths or reviewing all there was to review in life.

Did his heart ache at what he had given up? Of course. But did he regret his decision? Not at all.

Plus, it wasn’t like he had gotten nothing out of this little adventure. On the contrary, he would say that he had made out like a bandit.

First, he successfully took revenge for Giggle.

Second, he successfully tempered himself and solidified his current cultivation.

And finally, Trueman Dragonrider’s “Dragons Memoir” had enlightened him to a great many things. One could say that it was the biggest reward he got out of this venture.

Although the “Dragons Memoir” was hardly a step-by-step guide on how to enter the Grandmaster stage, like the light of dawn burning away the mist of the night, it had opened his eyes to possibilities he had never even considered before. If before, he was like a lost traveler who had no idea how to make it to human civilization, now he had a path to follow. It had reduced the number of detours he had to take and cleared up some of the brambles he would have encountered in his martial path.

What really delighted him was the fact that Trueman Dragonrider’s martial insights and understanding, while not very useful for his body-tempering, was extremely beneficial for his “Dream Butterfly True Scripture” and “Call of the Nether”.

It made sense if he thought about it. Trueman Dragonrider was an ancient qi practitioner who focused on cultivating the qi and spirit, and both the “Dream Butterfly True Scripture” and “Call of the Nether” were qi and spirit-focused. Although Trueman Dragonrider had never cultivated these martial arts before, his main cultivation art shared many characteristics with the two martial arts, meaning that many of his martial insights could be applied to them as well.

Speaking of which, he had begun cultivating the “Dream Butterfly True Scripture” and “Call of the Nether” as soon as he obtained them. However, he had only cultivated them for a short time, and both martial arts could carry a warrior all the way to the Grandmaster-stage. Naturally, they were as extraordinary as they were difficult to understand. Even with his excellent talent and the aid of Nanke, he just barely managed to put his foot in the initiate level. After that, well, he couldn’t even make sense of the seemingly nonsensical passages jotted inside the manuals, much less make any progress whatsoever.

That was until he obtained the “Dragons Memoir”. Trueman Dragonrider’s martial insight was like a ray of sunshine that revealed the truth hidden within the shadows, or a candle flame that showed him the way when all hope seemed lost. It enlightened him such that some of the obscure, seemingly nonsensical parts of the “Dream Butterfly True Scripture” and “Call of the Nether” suddenly became clear to him.

The more he read the “Dragons Memoir”, the more his understanding and mastery of the two martial arts deepened, and the better his cultivation became. For a time, he even felt like he was receiving a personal lesson from Trueman Dragonrider himself. Every line, every word hit the nail on the head, provoked insightful thoughts, and enlightened him. He had absorbed all the knowledge hungrily like a dry, barren land.

Like a poor man who encountered his benefactor, or a dry land that finally welcomed a hearty rain, Ye Qing’s cultivation in both martial arts—especially the “Dream Butterfly True Scripture”—had improved by leaps and bounds. This was because the “Dream Butterfly True Scripture” shared some similarities to the “Paranirmitavaśavartin Heavenly Demon Sutra”, and he was more invested in the “Dream Butterfly True Scripture” than the “Call of the Nether” anyway.

Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime. He could tell that his progress for the past nine days or so was equal to years of blind cultivation. This was what the people meant when they used the idiom, “Reaching heaven in a single bound” to describe their progress.

It was how he managed to leave Dragonrider Mountain without anyone noticing, and conversed with Yu Longzi inside a dream. Like a ghost, he had entered a dream with his target through an art.

If he was who he was before, forget conversing with Yu Longzi inside a dream, he did not think he could have left Dragonrider Mountain unnoticed without much difficulty. After all, Yu Longzi was an elite who was half step away from becoming a Grandmaster. On top of that, he was an expert in the “Dragonslaying Art” and a warrior with a powerful spirit. Even the slightest disturbance would have jolted him to alertness, making it extremely difficult to fool his senses and even harder to put him to sleep and enter his dream. No, he could not have done it before no matter what he tried.

But now, he was much better at the “Dream Butterfly True Scripture” and in possession of many secret arts and Magia he did not possess before such as Butterfly Transformation, Dream Entering, Dream Viewing and more. That was how he was able to enter Yu Longzi’s dream and slip past Dragonrider Mountain’s defenses unnoticed.

In fact, he was confident that he could now toy with everyone in Dragonrider Mountain except Yu Longzi. He could even massacre the whole sect with the “Dream Butterfly True Scripture” alone.

“Oh well. The world is like a dream, pain and joy last but a moment. So why should I care or worry?”

Ye Qing rose to his feet and patted away the dirt on his clothes. Then, he looked at Giggle and laughed. “Let’s go!”

As Ye Qing took his leave, the hill he was resting on suddenly scattered into countless butterflies. But unlike Dream Master’s colorful, soul-stealing butterflies, his were invisible, formless, and indistinct. Some people might not even call them butterflies.

The next moment, all of the butterflies soared toward the east where the first ray of dawn broke.