Chapter 13: Master and Disciple

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Ye Minwei replied, “I heard that the Sect of Ten Thousand Phenomena does not accept disciples.”

“Given our relationship, could you perhaps open a back door for me?”

“You want to be my disciple?”

“Yes.”

“What do you want to learn?”

“You don’t remember anything now, right?”

“Mm.”

“Then teach me the art of numerology. Do you remember when we first met, I asked you to be my numerology master?”

As dawn gradually broke, Xie Yuzhu lifted some creek water to wipe her face clean, speaking with ease, “Teach me whatever you can. Once you find your Nightmare Beast, regain your memories and cultivation, then teach me all your skills. Then I’ll be the chief disciple of the Sect of Ten Thousand Phenomena!”

Ye Minwei looked puzzled. “But you just said my situation is extremely dangerous. Do you still want to stick with me?”

“Hey, when I reached the city gate, I suddenly remembered that I ran away from home to seek adventure. No matter where the adventure is, it’s more exciting to follow you.” Xie Yuzhu wiggled her feet and sighed deeply.

“Besides, you don’t understand the ways of the world at all. I really can’t bear to leave you alone.”

Golden sunlight spilled over the rooftop, flooding the long stone-paved street. Some early risers passed by, occasionally glancing at the two ragged girls sitting by the creek like beggars.

The shimmering water beside Xie Yuzhu illuminated her profile brightly. Ye Minwei gazed at her quietly for a moment before saying, “But I don’t know what kind of person I am, nor how to be a master.”

Xie Yuzhu waved her hand as if it were no problem at all. “My father said that in a master-disciple relationship, the disciple is more important. It’s the disciple who makes the master a master. You don’t know who you are, so let’s take it step by step. First, you’ve agreed to be my master, so you are Xie Yuzhu’s master.”

She then leaned closer to Ye Minwei and whispered softly, “Isn’t that right, Master?”

Ye Minwei didn’t fully understand what Xie Yuzhu meant. But the identity of being “Xie Yuzhu’s master” was different from those vague descriptions before. It was neither from rumors nor people’s interpretations.

As long as Xie Yuzhu was by her side and called her that way, she could own this identity.

“All right,” Ye Minwei agreed.

Xie Yuzhu smiled and waved her sleeves, black and red patches fluttering in the air. “Great! I’m the chief disciple of the Sect of Ten Thousand Phenomena!”

The two sat at the street corner of Liangshan, the creek babbled by. Amid a vision filled with countless adjectives, Ye Minwei wrote a new phrase.

— Xie Yuzhu’s master.

In fact, Ye Minwei had been to Liangshan before and walked along this creekside street. She had followed this path all the way to Fujian City to attend a coalition meeting held to deal with herself.

She came alone, but left with someone accompanying her.

Elsewhere, in a dreamscape vast and white as scattered paper, a tall figure appeared, clad in colorful clothes stained with blood.

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He walked through the dream, shedding his bloodstained garments without a glance, throwing them to the ground to be buried by the falling white sheets, leaving only his pure white inner robe.

He proceeded to undo his hairpin and jade ornaments while walking forward. At the edge of the swirling white paper stood a scholar hunched over a desk, seated in a dim, cramped room, sweating profusely as he dipped his brush in ink, striving to write on the white paper—but no ink ever remained.

No matter how hard the scholar tried, the only thing flying from his brush was white paper, covering sky and earth, endless and despairingly pure.

The bell in Wen Ci’s hand jingled brightly, and in that instant, inked characters appeared on the fluttering white sheets—dense and neat. The papers, each bearing a strategic treatise, drifted down to cover the vast white ground, burying a man’s long and steadfast half-life.

The scholar exhaled deeply, carefully holding the paper finally marked with ink, his fingers trembling, sweat pouring down.

Wen Ci stood opposite him, in that narrow partitioned space. The scholar dwelled in shadowy grayness, while Wen Ci stood in an empty white space. The scholar did not see Wen Ci, only clutching his brush and paper, his back shaking as tears of joy streamed down.

Wen Ci bent down to pick up the inked papers one by one, reading carefully.

What is the most indestructible paper in the world? It is the paper of a scholar’s decades of hard study and ambition.

The white paper was so formidable because the scholar wished it to be whole and sharp, earnestly pleading it not to be damaged. Such deep and sincere fear forged it into a sharp blade.

Fear is the source of all nightmare arts.

Profound fear combined with exquisite control—that is true mastery of nightmare arts.

The bell in Wen Ci’s hand rang lively and clear, like a child laughing carefree while running away. He continued forward, and not far from the scholar’s confined space, a tall wall rose from the empty white, plastered with a never-ending imperial ranking list.

Wen Ci spread his five fingers in the air, and a brush appeared in his hand. With his arm raised high, he wrote three characters under the top rank on the imperial list: “Sun Yijing.”

In that moment, all the papers lifted off the ground, swaying and rising into the air. Suddenly, firecrackers and drums sounded, red sparks flew through the sky, and a procession of indistinct faces holding high-ranking plaques passed by, their congratulatory voices echoing through the heavens.

Between heaven and earth stood the scholar who had emerged from the gray enclosure, tears streaming, his temples gray.

Alas, fame is but a sheet of paper; the wind and snow cross a thousand mountains.

Wen Ci bowed deeply, his snowy figure merging with the dreamscape, his voice fading as the dream dissipated.

“Tonight was hard work. May the nightmares end and sweet dreams come true.”

The bell ceased. The sun rose in the east, the sky brightening. This night came to an end.

After this thrilling night, Ye Minwei and Xie Yuzhu found an inn in the city, changed clothes, and cleaned up. Xie Yuzhu, too tired even to tend to her wounds, collapsed asleep until late morning. After buying medicine and dressing her wounds, they finally sat down at a table in the inn.

Xie Yuzhu was ravenous and ordered a table full of delicious dishes. Ye Minwei searched through the dishes but did not see any dried persimmons and sighed regretfully.

Xie Yuzhu ate ravenously for a while, filling herself halfway before noticing Ye Minwei hadn’t touched a bite. She suddenly understood, “Oh right, Master, you can already fast without food, probably don’t even need to sleep, right? No wonder you never eat, no matter how good the food is. Is there nothing you want to eat?”

Without hesitation, Ye Minwei said, “Dried persimmons.”

“...Why do you like dried persimmons so much?”

“Because they’re delicious.” Ye Minwei answered matter-of-factly. Seeing Xie Yuzhu still puzzled, she thought a moment and added, “There’s a persimmon tree next to my house on Kunwu Mountain. It bears one fruit every day.”

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Xie Yuzhu asked curiously, “Oh, what kind of immortal tree is that? Did you plant it or did the Dream Ruins Master plant it?”

Ye Minwei shook her head; she did not remember.

Xie Yuzhu’s hunger eased, and now she had the leisure to consider other matters. Tentatively, she asked, “Master, how much do you know about the Dream Ruins Master and your own past?”

“The Dream Ruins Master and I were close friends for fifty years, living in seclusion on Kunwu Mountain, where we studied nightmare arts and nightmare cultivation together. Twenty years ago, we split after a great battle, and he disappeared. I failed in nightmare cultivation; my Nightmare Beast took away my memory, cultivation, and spiritual artifact...” Ye Minwei answered swiftly.

The more Xie Yuzhu listened, the more familiar it sounded. She raised her chopsticks to stop Ye Minwei from continuing.

“...You’re not going to ask me to repeat everything you just told me, are you?”

“In these three months, I’ve learned the most from you.”

Xie Yuzhu was silent for a moment, then nodded. “I understand, Master. Besides what I’ve told you, you know nothing else. But that’s okay! I’ve heard your story since I was little, heard it all. I’ll skip the exaggerated parts and tell you from the beginning.”

Setting down her chopsticks to think, she cleared her throat and banged an empty bowl on the table, as if awakening a sleeping fortune teller.

“So then...”

Let me tell you about Ye Minwei: from a young age, she entered cultivation, apprenticed under one of the three great immortal sects, the Carefree Sect. She was the dearly favored disciple of the old sect leader. The Carefree Sect possessed a supreme sacred ground, the Xi Ming Pagoda, supported by the treasured floating realm stele. The ninety-nine-story tower pierced the clouds; only the sect leader and the successor could ascend its peak.

Ye Minwei entered the Carefree Sect at twelve, ascended the Xi Ming Pagoda at thirteen, and by fifteen accompanied the old sect leader to the tower’s summit to cultivate. By her early twenties, she became the sect’s top disciple, second only to the old leader in cultivation. She was a prodigy among prodigies and especially skilled in arcane arts.

Decades later, the old leader passed away without naming a successor, but everyone believed Ye Minwei would take over as sect leader.

“At that time, during the once-every-five-years Grand Dao Forum, you, Master, represented the Carefree Sect but somehow clashed with the other sects and left on bad terms. After that, you disappeared from the Carefree Sect and never assumed leadership.”

“Let’s pause your story here and return to the Dream Ruins Master’s background.”

This leads to a legend passed down for a thousand years in the Central Plains—of an otherworldly place where all wishes come true. As the name implies, reaching that place would grant the fulfillment of any desire. For centuries, it remained only a legend; no one knew if it truly existed or where.

A hundred years ago, suddenly more than a dozen large ships sailed from the East Sea. The people aboard called themselves the Wu Tribe, inhabitants of islands in the East Sea who came to the Central Plains to escape disaster.

The Wu Tribe differed from the locals—they were extremely long-lived, aged slowly, and were born with the ability to traverse dreams. Their ancestors were said to have visited the “Wish-Fulfilling Place,” from which they gained their dream-traversing power.

For the first time, the Central Plains confirmed the existence of the Wish-Fulfilling Place through these alien people and were thrilled. They spent ten years building the Eight Winds Tower with the Wu Tribe to open a path to the Wish-Fulfilling Place.

When the Eight Winds Tower was completed, the Wu Tribe and the elite of various sects gathered beneath it, ready to journey together to the Wish-Fulfilling Place—a grand event in the immortal path’s history.

“No one knows exactly what happened that day, but something went terribly wrong. The Eight Winds Tower went out of control, all attendees perished, and a ten-mile radius around the tower became a wasteland filled with dead men’s nightmares—a chaotic terror no one dared enter.”

That place later came to be called the Dream Ruins, and the horrifying tragedy was known as the Dream Ruins Catastrophe.

During the catastrophe, the Wu Tribe suffered near annihilation; nearly all were buried in the Dream Ruins. Yet fate showed mercy—one bloodline survived: the tribe leader’s youngest son. Born with a serious illness, he was entrusted to the Elder of Heavenly Secrets on Kunwu Mountain for care, thus escaping the disaster.