This heaven had no Dao

"Whether I want to go back is my business. Whether I can go back is another matter. Stop playing dumb with me!" Zhao Changhe had no patience for debating philosophy with her. He charged at her in a fury, trying to seize the blind woman's collar.

But the scene was utterly uncanny. The blind woman clearly stood beside the bed, yet no matter how he charged toward her, he remained just short of reaching her. He could not touch her.

On closer inspection, he was simply running in place.

This mysterious phenomenon finally gave Zhao Changhe some sense that he was dreaming. Calming down a little, he asked, "So am I just dreaming of you, or are you using some supernatural power to contact me?"

"Life is nothing but a grand dream of spring and autumn. What difference does it make which it is?"

"You read the Spring and Autumn Annals too?"

The blind woman: "?"

"Don't give me that crap!" Zhao Changhe sneered. "You're still playing mysterious games with me at a time like this? What the fuck are you playing at? Just kill me and be done with it. I know you're strong."

The blind woman was momentarily at a loss for words, then shook her head slightly. "It's barely been any time at all, and you've already become like this... Back then, the worst you could call someone was sick in the head..."

"Isn't this exactly what you wanted to see?"

"What I wanted to see?"

"Those arrangements that seemed like fate-what were they if not your manipulation?" Zhao Changhe sneered. "Are you some so-called Heavenly Dao, controlling everyone's lives to give yourself a twisted sense of satisfaction?"

The blind woman said indifferently, "The Heavenly Dao?... This heaven has no Dao."

This heaven has no Dao... Zhao Changhe paused, unsure how to interpret those words. Did she mean this troubled age had no moral order, or that this world had no Supreme God? If it was the former, he felt this world had at least not descended into complete chaos. The empire had not collapsed, and basic order remained. If it was the latter, then without a Supreme God, where had the Book of Troubled Times come from?

He deliberately argued, "Why do I think heaven does have a Dao?"

The blind woman calmly asked in return, "Really? Have you spent so long in the Mountain Stronghold that you've forgotten what you actually saw at your very first glimpse of this world?"

Zhao Changhe's expression changed slightly.

"Take a look at what the other Demon Cult bandit dens are like." The blind woman waved her slender hand. The night sky remained unchanged, but the scene transformed.

Zhao Changhe felt as though he were floating in the void, looking down upon the mortal world stretching below. Beneath the night, all living beings were like ants.

In a bandit stronghold somewhere, torches blazed and voices clamored. A gang of bandits drank, laughed, and caroused. Several corpses were impaled on the wooden poles around them, while inhuman acts of rape unfolded on the ground at the center. Women's sobs and anguished cries drifted upward, reaching the heavens only to scatter like wind.

The sight sent Zhao Changhe's fury blazing sky-high. "Save them, damn it!"

The woman did not answer.

The view suddenly shifted. Elsewhere in the mountains, countless bandits swarmed a caravan. Screams rang through the night sky, and blood streamed through the mountain ravine. Jubilant, the bandits plundered the goods and headed up the mountain to make merry.

The view shifted again. Across a plain of ice and snow, riders of the foreign tribes swept in with wild cries. Wherever they passed, corpses littered the land and wild crows circled overhead.

The view shifted a third time. Within a religious sect, blood stained everything a deep crimson. A hideously grimacing cultist peeled the skin from some innocent victim alive and offered it as a sacrifice to the Blood God.

As Zhao Changhe watched, he slowly fell silent.

The blind woman asked, "Does heaven have a Dao?"

Zhao Changhe said coldly, "What are you trying to say? That since I've become a stronghold chief and joined the Demon Cult, I ought to do things like this too?"

"What you do is your own business," the blind woman said indifferently. "I am merely answering your ridiculous accusation about manipulating the mortal world. You know perfectly well whether these things arose from anyone's manipulation. And what becomes of the North Mang Mountain Stronghold, what becomes of you-isn't that up to you yourself? Who has ever controlled your actions?"

Zhao Changhe took a deep breath and said bluntly, "I don't want to know what will become of the North Mang Mountain Stronghold. This world has nothing to do with me! What will it take for you to send me back? Name your terms."

"I told you, I am not the Heavenly Dao. I cannot let people travel freely back and forth."

"?" Zhao Changhe said, "Then how did I get here? You're telling barefaced lies... uh..."

"Sending you here meant borrowing the rules of the Heavenly Dao. Something like... making a Great Vow. So your way back really is to complete the objective-in other words, kill that demoness." At this point, the blind woman tilted her head slightly. "Of course, there is a more reliable method. Once you master the Space-Time Barrier yourself, you can naturally come and go as you please."

Zhao Changhe snapped, "How fucking long will that take? By the time I get back, my whole household could be gone!"

"If you truly reach that level, you can naturally find a way to return to the moment before you crossed over. Your family and friends would never even know you had left." The blind woman spoke slowly. "Of course, that might be a little far-fetched for you. Your intelligence might not even be sufficient to understand changes in time..."

Zhao Changhe: "?"

You started mocking me for being single back in the modern world, and you still haven't fucking finished?

I'm not single anymore! As for everything else, just you wait!

But the blind woman sighed. "Looking at it this way, the demoness option is probably still the easier one..."

Zhao Changhe said coldly, "How much easier?"

"That depends on how quickly you cultivate."

"For example, seeing you today was the result of reaching the first heaven of internal-external unity?"

"More or less. Once the Profound Pass is breached, a resonance between heaven and man naturally arises... As for whether you sensed me or I sensed you... Which is dream and which is reality? Who knows?"

As she spoke, the blind woman's figure gradually faded, as though she were about to disappear.

Zhao Changhe still had a bellyful of things to say. How could he let her spout a few inexplicable lines of bullshit that solved none of the mystery, then simply run off? In his urgency, he instinctively reached out again. "Wait!"

Whether the blind woman had let her guard down or this unthinking attempt worked better than his earlier deliberate grab, his hand actually caught hers.

The blind woman seemed startled as well. She vanished instantly, leaving only a lingering fragrance in the night.

Zhao Changhe lowered his head to look at his hand. Just now, he had felt that faint, white-jade coolness, soft and smooth, as though her hand had no bones.

Was it a dream?

He suddenly opened his eyes.

He was still in the stronghold chief's room, lying on the wooden bed. Everything he had just seen, everything they had said, that touch-it all seemed to have been nothing but a dream.

He rolled out of bed and looked out the window. The sky had already turned the pale white of a fish's belly.

Looking down at his palm again, he found it covered in fine beads of sweat.

This experience, which might or might not have been a dream, had not quite left him without any progress in unraveling the mystery...

At least it had confirmed one thing...

The deeper his cultivation became, the more likely he was to sense the blind woman, or be sensed by her.

Or there was another possibility... Perhaps she had sensed him and come to "enter his dream" to talk not because of a mere breakthrough to the first level of the Profound Pass, but because he had appeared in the Book of Troubled Times?

Before, he had been utterly unable to understand her purpose. Looking at it now, though, he could make a few guesses... Was she casting a wide net, then watching them devour one another like venomous creatures in a jar?

Zhao Changhe suddenly felt that those people who had sincerely invited her into their dreams before him might also be here. More likely, the grass on their graves was already three feet high.

This heaven had no Dao. This was not a civilized world where everyone could live safely. In her elusive way, she had been trying to wake him to that truth as well.

"Chief! Chief! Trouble!" A cultist hurried over from outside. "The brothers set up a checkpoint at the foot of the mountain and stopped a couple of youngsters, but then some tough customers happened along and started causing trouble!"

Zhao Changhe wiped away his sweat and discovered that even his voice sounded weary. "What, did they run into some righteous heroes..."

"No, they seem to be a bunch of outlaws. They're saying there's nothing so great about number two hundred and fifty on the Hidden Dragon Ranking, and they're going to wipe out our stronghold today."

Zhao Changhe let out a derisive laugh.

He was not laughing at the outlaws, but at the mole.

The Hidden Dragon Ranking had shone across the sky, so it seemed anyone might come looking for trouble. But who knew where to find Zhao Changhe to trouble him?

Yue Hongling had known he was in the Blood God Cult, yet even she had not realized he happened to be in North Mang. She had gone so far as to challenge the cult leader and spent over a month running all over the place before finding him. Other people did not have even the faintest clue, yet someone had come knocking the very next day. How had they found him? It would be a miracle if a mole wasn't stirring things up.

That mole was not necessarily Fang Buping, either... It could be anyone.

"Demon Cult bandits. Truly pathetic." Zhao Changhe picked up the Steel Saber and strode outside. "As it happens, I'm in a rotten fucking mood today. These people have come at just the right time. Let's see how many great heroes this little North Mang Circuit has to offer!"