Event Achieved

Wu Pifu had a dream.

A very lonely, desolate, terrifying dream.

He was in boundless Void, with no front or back, left or right, above or below, nor any passage of time. There was only infinite emptiness. He drifted within it, lost, shouting until he was hoarse, going mad... yet nothing changed. The Void remained Void...

Wu Pifu rose from the wreckage of the bonfire. His pupils had vanished, leaving only the same pitch-black darkness. Yet this darkness was not black—it was lightless Void. Because even light could not shine upon it, it appeared black.

The faint calm spiritual radiance gained from bringing the Tiger Demon Art to mastery remained utterly still. Within his inward contemplation, something seemed about to surge back out...

But then, from afar, came a crisp sound of shattering, seemingly accompanied by the wails and groans of countless living beings. Pain, despair, death—all kinds of emotions rang out within that sound.

As the sound exploded, Wu Pifu's body jolted. The Void in his eyes began to fade. He staggered, pain wracking every inch of his body, but for some inexplicable reason, strength returned to him. A mysterious force was being born within his body.

(Could it be that, after the Tiger Demon Art reached mastery, it had begun instinctively evolving my body?)

Wu Pifu did not know why. Though he now possessed a single thought that never slept, keeping him clear-headed amid the distracting thoughts generated by the Tiger Demon Art, he had only just reached mastery. His overall thinking remained muddled and violent. Standing amid the bonfire, he instinctively struggled free and leaped from the flames. Then he saw the yasha.

The yasha was clutching its head and howling miserably. Its black-and-red muscles were shrinking, while great quantities of darkness turned into loose mud and dripped onto the ground. Its body shrank from two-point-three meters to two meters, then, before Wu Pifu's very eyes, gradually fell to around one-point-nine meters. The shrinking finally stopped, though it was still a large man both taller and broader than Wu Pifu.

The uncanny had dissipated!

Wu Pifu immediately understood what had happened. This Level 2 Nightmare's anchor had been damaged—or destroyed.

Once a Level 2 Nightmare left its original Dream World, ascending into a world with a higher Baseline Reality was fine. Its strength would neither rise nor fall. Some required anchors, while others did not.

But if a Level 2 Nightmare descended into a lower Baseline Reality, its uncanny density would be diluted by the greater uncanny density of the Dream World itself. It therefore needed to find an anchor in the Dream World it occupied. It could be living or inanimate; in extremely rare cases, it could even be some kind of concept. Once its anchor was damaged, the Nightmare's strength would greatly decline. If the anchor was destroyed, the Nightmare would dissipate and perish.

This yasha was not the Level 2 Nightmare's anchor!?

Of course. In its earlier fragmented words, it had indeed mentioned something like a master...

What arose in Wu Pifu's heart was not joy. At the mastery stage of the Tiger Demon Art, he had begun to possess an instinct akin to supernatural power. Though it was far inferior to Cicada Senses Autumn Before the Wind, it still surpassed the realm of mortals.

Tears suddenly rolled down his cheeks.

Somehow, he knew that he would never see Little Mute again.

"Give it to me!"

Wu Pifu himself did not know what he was saying. He simply strode toward the yasha... Though the yasha was still stronger than him, though even his remaining hand had fractured bones, though his body was grievously wounded and he was nearly at death's door, at this moment he moved like a tiger and willed like a demon. With every step, the faint roar of a demon tiger seemed to echo around him.

The yasha opened its mouth wide and let out a hoarse roar, but its feet slowly retreated.

"Give me... your life!!"

When they were five meters apart, Wu Pifu suddenly leaped forward, using Frenzied Tiger Pouncing into the Ravine from the Tiger Demon Art. The last time he had used it, he had been fleeing this Level 2 Nightmare. This time, he pounced upon the Nightmare's spawn.

The yasha frantically raised both hands to block, but although Wu Pifu looked near death, his strength had inexplicably risen by about thirty percent. With one collision, he knocked aside the yasha's hands and arms. In an instant, the splintered bone jutting from his broken hand pierced the yasha's throat, and the two crashed together. Bone fragments embedded deeply in the yasha's windpipe.

The yasha struggled madly. Its tremendous strength snapped the bones in Wu Pifu's arm clean apart, leaving a piece lodged in its throat. Wu Pifu's expression did not change in the slightest. He merely withdrew his arm, ignored his half-severed palm, and used the jagged stump of his wrist to keep stabbing at the yasha's face.

Once, twice, three times...

At first, the yasha struggled wildly, flailing with hands and feet, but Wu Pifu pinned it tightly against the chest and stabbed without pause. Even when his palm broke off and fell away, he did not care. Then the yasha's body began to twitch. It stopped moving, stopped making sounds. Large amounts of blackness turned into mud and flowed across the ground, devoid of all vitality.

Wu Pifu still did not stop. At that moment, his mind held only fury, killing intent, and sorrow...

After an unknown amount of time, all that remained on the ground was a mangled, fragmented corpse, no longer bearing even the slightest human shape. Only then did Wu Pifu raise his head and look toward the main hall.

There were still three or four living people on the platform before the main hall—nuns and patrons alike. Their skin had been flayed off, but they had not died immediately. They had originally been shrieking and groaning, wanting to roll about the ground in agony, but the sandy surface had prevented them from doing so.

Now, all of them watched Wu Pifu in terrified silence. They dared not move or make a sound. They had seen the entire fight with their own eyes.

They had witnessed a human and a yasha fight each other to the death. In the end, this human had actually tortured the yasha to death. But... was he really human?

Wu Pifu paid them no heed and simply walked into the hall, one step at a time.

Then he saw the collapsed, shattered Buddha statue—and Little Mute, crushed to death beneath it.

The Buddha statue had toppled and shattered on the ground, crushing Little Mute beneath it. Yet she was still clutching a table leg in her hand, one leg from the wooden table that had held the Buddha statue...

Everything became clear.

Wu Pifu looked sorrowfully at the scene before him.

Little Mute had saved his life... twice!!

Why?

Just because they had met by chance?

Just because they had exchanged a few brief words?

Or because he had promised to take her away?

Wu Pifu did not know. There were no more tears in his eyes. He merely bent down, lifted Little Mute with the arm that no longer had a hand, rested her against his chest, and slowly held her in his arms.

So light, so thin, so small...

Then Wu Pifu looked at the shattered Buddha statue. Mud was still flowing out from it, still alive. What he did was simple: he kicked the remaining large fragments of the statue with all his strength, shattering them to pieces. The mud let out horrifying screams. Outside the hall, the flayed people clutched their ears and wailed in agony before all of them fainted.

But as Wu Pifu smashed the final fragment, all the mud began to spread out and dissipate. Only at the very center did a black sphere roughly the size of a football appear, resembling both mud and rubber.

"Event achieved: Mud-Buddha Yasha."

"In the year 1124, the sixth year of Xuanhe in the Northern Song, a shocking murder occurred at Jing'an Temple in Ox Family Village outside Kaifeng City, Bianliang. All thirty-two nuns of the temple, along with thirteen visitors, met with disaster. Only four survived, but all four suffered the torture of flaying and died days or dozens of days later."

"According to their accounts, red light shot into the sky that night. A Buddha statue spat out mud, which entered the body of a wandering hero. The hero thereby became a Buddhist guardian yasha and slaughtered and flayed everyone in the temple."

"A strange man, alone with one arm severed, bravely entered the temple and battled the yasha. He ultimately killed the yasha on the spot, then destroyed the Buddha statue completely. He carried away the corpse of an unnamed nun and vanished without a trace."

"When he departed, an emerald-green bird landed on his shoulder. The bird may have possessed supernatural qualities and disappeared along with the strange man."

Wu Pifu sensed the information issued by the Main Brain in his mind.

This meant a Sanctuary had been established.

As far as Wu Pifu knew, there were three ways to establish a Sanctuary.

First, one could exchange equivalent valuables from the world one was in. For example, in the Republican-era Shanghai of Baseline Reality 0.9, he had bought a tailoring and hat shop for twenty silver dollars and established a Level 1 Sanctuary. The more expensive and famous the building, the higher the level of the Sanctuary it became after purchase.

Second, one could increase one's influence in the Dream World. For instance, by having slaves, farmers, soldiers, employees, partners, and the like under one's command, then forming a faction, one could establish a Sanctuary. If Wu Pifu became the master of Liangshan Marsh, then the Gathering Hall could be anchored by the Main Brain as a Sanctuary. Again, the stronger the faction, the higher the Sanctuary's level.

Third, one could accomplish some historical event—that was, an event the Dream World would record in its history. The greater its influence, and the stronger the dynasty that recorded it, the higher the level of the Sanctuary established.

Taken together, it was all about gaining influence within the Dream World.

Buying buildings itself meant gaining influence. Making money did as well, regardless of how it had been acquired—stolen, robbed, or earned through hard labor. All of it was influence. Factions and historical events were the same.

Essentially, this was a process by which the Main Brain used maintenance personnel like them to act within Dream Worlds, gain influence, and then invade the information code of those Dream Worlds... assuming these Dream Worlds really were nothing but programs.

The information in Wu Pifu's mind continued, but he merely tucked the black sphere beneath his arm, then tucked Little Mute there as well.

Just as the event description said, when he walked out of the temple, the emerald-green bird flew down onto his shoulder and kept chirping, "Jiujiu, jiujiu."

As though it were weeping about something...

That kind, tiny Little Mute, who could only cry "ah, ah," would never be able to answer it again.