Chapter 72

Shen Qingqiu stood frozen. Seeing no answer, the figure he’d called ‘Luo Binghe’ took a step toward him.

Instinct screamed at Shen Qingqiu to draw his sword, but his hands found only empty air at his waist.

“System!” he yelled inwardly. “What the hell is this punishment program?! You want me to fight a boss bare-handed?!”

[Hello. All non-punishment system functions are suspended during the penalty phase, including inquiries. Thank you for your understanding. Good luck.]

Fucking hell!

He had absolutely no idea what to do.

Luo Binghe’s hands were tucked into his wide sleeves. A faint, amused smile touched his lips. “Shen Qingqiu. What are you doing here?”

Okay. That confirmed it. The person in front of him was absolutely, positively not his world’s Luo Binghe.

His Luo Binghe called him ‘Shizun’ before and after every sentence, the address dripping with honeyed reverence. He wouldn’t dare use his name so directly, and never with such a casual, almost flippant tone.

Since this was a punishment program, he probably couldn’t actually die. The thought allowed a sliver of tension to leave Shen Qingqiu’s shoulders.

“This is Qing Jing Peak,” he stated, forcing his voice to remain level.

Luo Binghe glanced around at the scorched desolation. “Now that you mention it, I suppose it is.”

Why would you need reminding?!

If this really was the original novel’s Luo Binghe, wasn’t Qing Jing Peak exactly what he’d burned to the ground in the first place?

“Why are you here?” Shen Qingqiu countered.

Luo Binghe shrugged. “Not sure.”

Then, he fixed Shen Qingqiu with a bizarre smile.

It was the kind of smile one might give a pet dog that had suddenly started reciting poetry. A chill crawled up Shen Qingqiu’s spine.

“You’re not afraid of me?” Luo Binghe asked.

The one outside? No. This one inside? YES!!!

Luo Binghe raised a hand, crooking a finger. “Come here.”

If he were the original goods, a summons from the blackened Luo Binghe would have sent him scrambling in obedient terror. Shen Qingqiu had no intention of playing the fool.

He turned to bolt.

A black-robed figure materialized directly in his path, so close Shen Qingqiu almost crashed into him. He stumbled back, nearly losing his balance. Luo Binghe reached out, two fingers lightly snagging Shen Qingqiu’s sleeve to steady him. His voice was deceptively gentle. “Running away?”

Looking at that face now, Shen Qingqiu’s emotions were a tangled mess. He could no longer face it with simple, detached indifference.

He couldn’t bring himself to fight. Yet his fear wasn’t pure either. It was a sickening, complicated brew.

Desperate, he hammered at the silent system. Is this really the original novel’s Luo Binghe?! Not mine, right?! What do I have to do to pass the punishment? Beat him? Are you kidding me?!

[Hello. All non-punishment system functions are suspended…]

Shen Qingqiu mentally swatted the dialog box away.

Luo Binghe studied his face for a long moment, a faint frown creasing his brow. “You seem… different. Are you really Shen Qingqiu?”

Shen Qingqiu’s eyes widened. A spark of hope flickered in his chest. Luo Binghe’s gaze was searching, tinged with confusion. Slowly, he reached out and took Shen Qingqiu’s right hand.

His palm was, as always, dry and cool. A familiar sensation that made Shen Qingqiu’s heart give a strange, painful lurch. He opened his mouth to speak.

A sudden, shocking cold bloomed at his right shoulder.

For a moment, there was no sensation of separation. He simply saw something dark fly through the air. The right side of his body felt oddly light. His mind, blank with confusion, failed to process it.

Then, world-obliterating agony exploded through every nerve, searing his body and shredding his thoughts.

Luo Binghe had just torn his right arm clean off.

A violent surge of spiritual power erupted from Shen Qingqiu’s traumatized body in a reflexive backlash. Luo Binghe casually swatted it aside, dispersing the energy like smoke.

Blood fountained from the ruin of his shoulder, impossible to staunch. Dizziness swamped Shen Qingqiu. He might have been screaming—a distant, raw sound—or maybe the high-pitched ringing in his ears was just that loud. All he knew was he had to get away. Now.

He staggered backward, legs buckling. After only a few steps, his heel caught on a charred bamboo root. He crashed onto his back.

The agony from his severed arm was so overwhelming he barely registered the impact of his skull against the ground. Luo Binghe followed at a leisurely pace. This time, his hand came to rest gently on one of Shen Qingqiu’s calves.

A human stick.

Luo Binghe was going to turn him into a limbless human stick!

Pain stole the air from his lungs. Shen Qingqiu grabbed at Luo Binghe’s robes with his remaining hand, shaking his head wildly, gasping out broken pleas. “Don’t… please…”

Don’t use that face to do this.

Luo Binghe pinned him effortlessly with one hand. His gaze was almost tender.

“Shizun,” he murmured, voice soft as a lover’s. “You really mustn’t refuse me anymore.”

An instant later, rending, soul-deep torment erupted from his left thigh, consuming his entire being.

Shen Qingqiu could bear no more. A raw, ragged scream tore from his throat—

And then, abruptly, the pain vanished.

Shen Qingqiu jolted upright from the ground.

The System’s flat, emotionless voice chimed. [Punishment concluded.]

Punishment?

Ha.

System, your mother has exploded!!!

He didn’t even have the energy for his usual mental cursing or imaginary slaps. On his knees, Shen Qingqiu watched beads of cold sweat drip from his chin and hit the stone floor. It took a long time for the reality of his escape to sink in.

A voice spoke beside him. “What is wrong with you?”

He startled. He wasn’t alone.

And he hadn’t been pulled back to reality. This was still a dream. The cave looked familiar—the same one where the Dream Demon had lurked as a cloud of black mist during his first foray into the dream realm.

The person beside him was, in fact, the Dream Demon.

Shen Qingqiu fought to steady his breathing. “Why am I here?”

“You were trapped in an exceptionally powerful and hostile dream,” the Dream Demon said, stroking his beard. “Your primordial spirit was in severe distress. Seeing the situation was dire, this old man pulled you into this warded space.”

So, he hadn’t been fully turned into a human stick. He had the Dream Demon’s timely intervention to thank for that.

From what he remembered, the Dream Demon hadn’t been particularly fond of him. That he’d seen fit to pull him out was a surprise. “Thank you,” Shen Qingqiu said, sincerity bleeding into his voice. “You saved me.”

The Dream Demon snorted. “Save your gratitude. I was merely… surprised that you managed to last in the Holy Mausoleum until that boy woke up last time. You helped him considerably. Helping him is helping me.”

Luo Binghe.

At the thought of the name, Shen Qingqiu’s left hand instinctively flew up to clutch his right shoulder.

The phantom memory of having his arm ripped off was now branded into his nerves, a latent agony waiting to be triggered.

He took several slow, deliberate breaths before he could say the name without his voice shaking. “Where is Luo Binghe?”

Logically, the one most eager to drag him into dreams should be Luo Binghe. Usually, the moment Shen Qingqiu fell asleep, the kid was there pestering him (…). This time, the Dream Demon had gotten to him first.

The old demon’s expression soured. “How should I know? Ever since that brat mastered my Oneiric Art, I haven’t been able to enter his dreams. He is the sole master of his own mindscape. I cannot influence it in the slightest.”

If he didn’t see his own sweet, white-lotus Luo Binghe soon, Shen Qingqiu felt he might go mad. Every thought of that name would make his missing limbs ache, sending him spiraling into panic.

Hurry up and appear, you pure-hearted young master! Give me a damn peace of mind pill!

The Dream Demon shot him a sidelong glance, taking in his ashen face and bloodless lips. His tone was gruff. “The boy will come for you himself. Why are you in such a hurry? Weren’t you avoiding him before?”

Was that… an attempt at comfort?

Looking at the Dream Demon’s deliberately aloof expression, Shen Qingqiu suddenly found the old man somewhat endearing.

After a pause, a memory surfaced. “Senior Dream Demon. Back in the Holy Mausoleum, when I was leading Luo Binghe east, we encountered two people. One was a woman. Did you, perhaps…?”

Back then, Qiu Haitang had lost consciousness briefly. When she woke, she’d gone inexplicably mad and fled. Shen Qingqiu strongly suspected something had happened to her in the dream realm during that blackout.

Luo Binghe had also been unconscious at the time, his mind burning like charcoal, and certainly in no state to invade her dreams. That left the Dream Demon as the most likely culprit.

Sure enough, the Dream Demon gave a smug little stroke of his beard. “This old man may have employed a minor stratagem.”

Though he called it ‘minor,’ his tone couldn’t hide a thread of pride. Shen Qingqiu pressed, “What exactly did you show her?”

Typically, the Dream Demon broke people by forcing them to relive their darkest, most painful memories. Had he shown her the massacre of the Qiu family?

But that didn’t fit.

If that were the case, the first thing Qiu Haitang would have done upon seeing Shen Qingqiu was attack him with murderous hatred, trying to put a few hundred new holes in his body. Why had she screamed and sobbed and run away instead?

“What I showed her,” the Dream Demon said, “was not her memory. It was yours.”

Shen Qingqiu understood instantly.

It was a fragment of memory left behind in this body—a memory belonging to the original Shen Jiu!

He’d been intensely curious about the unwritten backstory the original author, ‘Towards the Sky Plane,’ had hinted at. “Senior,” he said urgently, “could you retrieve that memory and show it to me?”

The Dream Demon looked at him but didn’t question why a man would need someone else to access his own memories. He only asked, “You do not remember?”

Shen Qingqiu was ready with an excuse about qi deviation and memory damage. He nodded. “That’s right.”

The probability of memory loss from qi deviation was astronomically low. Yet the Dream Demon didn’t press or express doubt. Instead, he sighed. “Some things are better left forgotten.”

Don’t leave me hanging like this!!!

“I humbly request your assistance, Senior,” Shen Qingqiu insisted.

“You truly wish to see it?”

Shen Qingqiu nodded fervently.

The Dream Demon raised a single, bony finger. “Close your eyes. Do not open them until I remove my hand.”

He placed his fingertip against Shen Qingqiu’s forehead.

Shen Qingqiu did as he was told and closed his eyes. The Dream Demon added, “Your memories are fragmented, skipping and disjointed. You may see faces blurred beyond recognition. This is due to your own condition—do not dwell on it.”

The implication was clear: if there were glitches, it was a problem with his own source files, not the Dream Demon’s technique!

Shen Qingqiu counted silently to ten in his mind. When the pressure on his forehead vanished, he opened his eyes.

A gaunt, pale-faced youth knelt on the floor before him, bound tightly with coarse rope, his unkempt hair hanging loose. Delicate features were marred by a lingering gloom, with dark bruises staining his forehead and the corner of his mouth. This was Shen Jiu, still young.

Back in Huayue City, when Shen Qingqiu had escaped Luo Binghe’s dream realm, he’d inadvertently fallen into a fragment of Shen Jiu’s residual consciousness. This was the exact scene he’d witnessed then.

Shen Qingqiu glanced around. The room was spacious, combining a study and a bedchamber divided by a sandalwood moon gate. The furnishings were lavish, the walls adorned with elegantly mounted calligraphy and paintings.

Crossing his arms, Shen Qingqiu leaned against a curio shelf and waited in silence.

Ahead, the carved wooden door swung open without a sound.

Shen Jiu’s head remained rigid, but his eyes rolled upward. Reflected in his pupils was the silhouette of the person entering.

The man who stepped across the threshold was young, dressed in rich, ornate robes.

One look at that face—bearing a sixty percent resemblance to Qiu Haitang’s—and Shen Qingqiu knew. This had to be her brother, the one who suffered most in the Qiu family massacre.

So, the figure young Shen Jiu had seen in his eyes back then was actually Young Master Qiu. That was unexpected. Given how abused Shen Jiu appeared, Shen Qingqiu had always assumed it was a trafficker.

Judging by this scene, Shen Jiu’s days in the Qiu household were nothing like the “exceptionally kind and affectionate treatment” Qiu Haitang had described.