Chapter 35: This Heaven Lacks Justice

Chapter 35: Heaven Is Without Justice

“Whether I want to go back is my business; whether I can go back is another. Stop playing dumb with me!” Zhao Changhe, too impatient to argue philosophy, charged forward in fury, aiming to grab the blind woman by the collar.

But the scene was utterly uncanny. Though the blind woman clearly stood by the bed inside the room, no matter how he lunged, he remained just a hair’s breadth away, unable to touch her.

Looking closer, he realized he was simply running in place.

This mystique finally made Zhao Changhe feel a hint of dreamlike absurdity. He calmed slightly and asked, “So, am I just dreaming of you now, or are you using some divine power to contact me?”

“Life is nothing but a grand spring-autumn dream. What difference does it make which kind it is?”

“You read the Spring and Autumn Annals too?”

The blind woman: “?”

“Don’t give me that crap!” Zhao Changhe sneered. “Even now, you’re still playing mysterious with me? Screw that. Either kill me outright—I know you’re strong enough.”

The blind woman choked for a moment, then shook her head slightly. “It’s only been this long, and you’ve already become like this… Back then, the worst you’d say was ‘you’re sick’…”

“Isn’t this exactly what you wanted to see?”

“What I wanted to see?”

“That fate-like arrangement—what else could it be but your manipulation?” Zhao Changhe sneered. “Is it that so-called Heavenly Dao, pulling the strings of everyone’s lives, giving you some twisted satisfaction?”

The blind woman said flatly, “Heavenly Dao? … This heaven is without justice.”

This heaven is without justice… Zhao Changhe paused, unsure how to interpret that. Did it mean the chaotic world lacked justice, or that there was no supreme deity? If the former, he felt the world hadn’t yet fallen into utter chaos—the empire hadn’t collapsed, basic order remained. If the latter, with no supreme deity, how did the Chaos Chronicle come to be?

He deliberately argued, “Why do I think heaven has justice?”

The blind woman countered calmly, “Is that so? Have you been in the mountain stronghold so long that you’ve forgotten what you truly saw the very first moment you laid eyes on this world?”

Zhao Changhe’s expression shifted slightly.

“Take a look. What are other demon cult bandit dens like?” The blind woman waved her delicate hand. The night sky remained, but the scene transformed.

Zhao Changhe felt as if he were floating in the void, looking down upon the bustling mortal world. In the darkness, the masses were like ants.

Some unknown mountain stronghold: torches blazed, noise clamored. A group of bandits drank and laughed, while several corpses were impaled on wooden poles nearby. In the center of the ground, a brutal rape was taking place. A woman’s cries and sobs drifted faintly into the sky, dissipating like wind.

Zhao Changhe burned with rage. “Why don’t you save them!”

The woman did not answer.

The perspective shifted. Another mountain pass: countless bandits swarmed toward a convoy. Screams tore through the night, blood flowed down the mountain streams. The bandits joyfully looted the goods and headed up the mountain to revel.

The perspective shifted again. A frozen plain: foreign tribesmen rode howling, sweeping through. Wherever they passed, corpses littered the fields, and crows circled.

A third shift. Within a cult: the atmosphere was thick with blood. Fierce-faced disciples flayed the skin off some innocent victim, offering it as a blood sacrifice to their god.

Zhao Changhe watched, slowly falling silent.

The blind woman asked, “Is heaven just?”

Zhao Changhe said coldly, “What are you trying to say? That since I became a bandit chief and joined a demon cult, I should act like that to be reasonable?”

“How you act is your own affair,” the blind woman said flatly. “I’m merely responding to your ridiculous accusation that someone manipulates the world. Whether these things stem from anyone’s manipulation, you know in your heart. And what happens to the Beimang Stronghold, what happens to you—isn’t that up to you? Who has ever manipulated your actions?”

Zhao Changhe took a deep breath and said bluntly, “I don’t want to know what will become of Beimang Stronghold. This world has nothing to do with me! Tell me how I can go back—lay down the terms.”

“I told you, I am not the Heavenly Dao. I don’t have the power to let people come and go freely.”

“?” Zhao Changhe said, “Then how did I get here? You’re talking blind… uh…”

“Sending you here borrowed the rules of the Heavenly Dao, akin to… making a great vow. So the way for you to return is indeed to complete the goal—that is, to kill that enchantress.” The blind woman tilted her head slightly as she spoke. “Of course, there’s a more reliable method: when you yourself master the barriers of time and space, you can naturally come and go as you please.”

Zhao Changhe fumed, “How long would that take! By the time I get back, my family registry will be gone!”

“When you truly reach that level, you can naturally find a way to return to the moment before you traveled. Your family and friends won’t even know you ever left.” The blind woman said slowly, “Of course, that might be a bit far-fetched for you. Your intelligence might not even grasp the concept of temporal change…”

Zhao Changhe: “?”

You’ve been mocking me for being single since the modern world, and you’re still not done, are you!

I’m not single anymore now! As for the rest—just wait!

The blind woman sighed. “It seems that the enchantress option might be simpler after all…”

Zhao Changhe said coldly, “How much simpler?”

“That depends on your cultivation speed.”

“For example, meeting you today—is that the result of breaking through to the first level of Inner-Outer Unity?”

“Something like that. Once the mysterious gate is broken, one naturally attains a sense of the transcendent… Whether it’s you sensing me, or me sensing you… who knows which is dream and which is reality?”

As her words faded, the blind woman’s figure gradually grew faint, as if about to disappear.

Zhao Changhe had a thousand things to say. How could he let her spout a few cryptic, unhelpful lines and then vanish? In his anxiety, he instinctively reached out again. “Wait!”

Whether the blind woman was off guard, or this unintentional grab was more effective than his earlier deliberate attempts, he actually caught her hand.

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

Zhao Changhe looked down at his own hand. He could still feel the cool, jade-like touch of her skin—tender, smooth, as if boneless.

Was it a dream?

He suddenly opened his eyes.

He was still in the chieftain’s room, lying on the wooden bed. Everything he had just seen, said, and touched seemed to have been nothing but a dream.

He turned over and sat up, looking out the window. The sky was turning a pale fish-belly white.

He looked down at his palm. It was covered in fine sweat, though he didn’t know when it had appeared.

This experience—whether dream or not—hadn’t been entirely devoid of progress, after all…

At least it confirmed one thing for him…

The deeper his cultivation, the more likely he was to perceive the blind woman—or be perceived by her.

Or perhaps there was another possibility: that she had sensed him and come to “enter his dream” to communicate, not because of his mere breakthrough to the first level of the mysterious gate, but because he had appeared on the Chaos Chronicle?

Before, he couldn’t understand her purpose at all. Now, looking at it this way, he could guess a bit: she was casting a wide net, then observing and raising the strongest like a poisonous insect?

Zhao Changhe suddenly felt that those people he had once invited to dream with him might indeed be here somewhere—or more likely, the grass on their graves was already three feet tall.

This heaven is without justice. This was not a civilized world where everyone could survive easily. She had been subtly warning him, too.

“Chief! Chief! Something bad!” A cult disciple came rushing in. “Our brothers set up a checkpoint down the mountain and stopped two youngsters, but then a few tough nuts showed up to cause trouble!”

Zhao Changhe wiped his sweat and found his own voice sounded weary. “What, did we run into some righteous heroes?”

“No, they seem to be some arrogant thugs from the underworld. They said, ‘What’s so great about number 250 on the Hidden Dragon List?’ and vowed to take down our stronghold today.”

Zhao Changhe let out a snort of laughter.

He wasn’t laughing at the thugs. He was laughing at the traitor.

The Hidden Dragon List had blazed across the sky. It seemed everyone would come looking for trouble, but who actually knew where to find Zhao Changhe?

Yue Hongling knew he was in the Blood God Cult, but even she hadn’t expected him to be in Beimang. She’d gone so far as to attack the cult leader himself, searching for over a month before finding him. Others had no clues at all. Yet someone had shown up the very next day—how did they find him? It had to be a traitor stirring trouble.

And that traitor might not even be Fang Buping… It could be anyone.

“Demon cult bandits—so low-class.” Zhao Changhe grabbed his steel blade and strode out the door. “Good thing I’m in a foul mood today. These people came just in time. Let me see how many heroes this little Beimang road can muster!”