Within the Grand Illusionary Realm, Jiang Chen guided his Sword Discourse Platform, charging straight toward the river of stars.
Two Sword Discourse Platforms met, and the scene shifted.
It was still that four-square room, simple and empty.
It was still Dugu Wudi and Zhen Wudi.
"Brother Dugu, long time no see!" Fatty Zhen was in high spirits.
The words had barely left his mouth before his person was swept up and borne away by a whirlwind, dodging the sword light Jiang Chen had sent flying.
"Hey, you strike right from the off! Won't you catch up on old times first?"
His mouth kept running, and his hands were not idle either.
Two crosswise blades of wind drove Jiang Chen back, then spearheads of earth rose up while tangling vines wove through the air.
Jiang Chen swung his sword and broke the wind, advancing.
He hacked the earth spears to pieces, advancing.
He cut through the vines, advancing.
The killing arts of the Purple Qi Eastward Sword Art were folded into every single move, and Jiang Chen kept pressing forward without stopping for a single breath.
The battleground was very open indeed, but even so it could not withstand Zhen Wudi's ceaseless retreat.
All the more since Jiang Chen deliberately kept up the pressure, driving him all the way toward the corner of the walls and sealing off his every room to maneuver.
Fatty Zhen discovered, to no small alarm, that after a while without meeting, his opponent had grown thoroughly proficient at dealing with his dazzling array of Dao arts!
No matter what uncanny tricks he threw out without cease, he was still being boxed in step by step.
With no choice left, he began to release the true extent of his strength.
His ten fingers flashed and moved; the speed at which he wove seals was near an illusion in itself! Every one of his Dao arts was now completed within half a breath, achieving the effect of a "Pseudo-Instant Cast."
Three glowing golden arrows opened the way in a triangle formation, and Jiang Chen barely managed to dodge them when a row of wind blades slashed in sideways.
Jiang Chen's sword surged with purple qi as it swept away the force of the arts, but Fatty Zhen had already wrapped himself in a howling gale and leapt clear of the trap in one bound!
His Pseudo-Instant Cast state could not be sustained, or he could have laid a whole series of attacks to crush Jiang Chen outright. But merely using it to escape was already sufficient.
Yet the moment he leapt out, what greeted him were two ropesnakes, lively and nimble to the extreme!
In truth, Jiang Chen's Dao arts had never been weak. Having perfected the Azure Dragon chapter of the Four Spirits Body-Tempering Art, he was especially attuned to the primal force of the wood element, gaining at least three-tenths more command over wood-element Dao arts.
It was simply that, during their earlier bout, Jiang Chen had realized his own seal-weaving was one to two breaths slower than the fat man's. So he used his Dao arts with great caution, holding them back until just the crucial moment.
The instant Zhen Wudi's "Pseudo-Instant Cast" faded and he thought himself free...
Those two ropesnakes not only blocked his only path but struck with angles so vicious and venomous he could hardly avoid them.
And behind him, Jiang Chen had already closed in, sword in hand.
"Thought I'd found myself a fat sheep... as expected, everyone who shows up in this dump of a place is a monster."
Even in a moment so dire, Fatty Zhen still found time to grumble.
He gathered a shield of water in midair to meet Jiang Chen's sword. His fat bulk did nothing to hinder a nimble turn, and he even reached out a hand to grab one ropesnake and smash it hard into the other.
Jiang Chen had already suffered the Heavy Water Shield once, and would not be fooled again. He angled his sword down and dove at full speed, slipping under Zhen Wudi and rising to strike at his back!
By then Zhen Wudi had just dealt with the ropesnakes, and pressed a fat hand down—a ball of fire greeted Jiang Chen's face.
The sword's gleam slashed across!
Jiang Chen meant to cut the fireball straight through, granting Zhen Wudi no chance to slip free again.
But his sword was unspeakably heavy!
That so-called Heavy Water Shield had been a lie all along. This was the fat man's trump card, the secret art he kept in reserve—not a shield of heavy water, but the ability to compress gravity onto any Dao art before him. At the very least, this fireball was just such an art.
Boom!
The bursting shockwave exploded outward. Jiang Chen had no time to dodge and was blasted into a cloud of ash in an instant.
Zhen Wudi slumped down onto his rear, wiping the sweat from his brow. "Dammit, this time I really nearly lost."
...
[The other party has declined your duel invitation.]
Back in his Blessed Land, Jiang Chen gnashed his teeth in frustration. He had just forced the fat man to reveal his hand, on the very verge of wiping out his shame at last—who would have thought the dead fat man still had a trick in reserve!
Even so, reviewing the battle just now, Jiang Chen judged that victory had not been beyond his reach. The chief problem was that, in the final stretch, he had grown a little too eager. Had he kept up his pressing tactics and given Fatty Zhen no opening, he might well not have lost the match.
The loss of twenty points of Merit stung to the bone. In total, only three thousand three hundred forty now remained.
The worst of it was that he had been ready to fight again at once, and the fat man had actually declined!
A plump paper crane flew in, carrying these words: Brother Dugu, I have had my fill of amusement for today. We duel another day!
Where was the promise that they would spar whenever they had the time?
When he was not inside the Grand Illusionary Realm, this fat man sent a paper crane begging for a fight every single day. Today he fought all of one match, and now he had had his fill?
Jiang Chen replied: Shameless!
Zhen Wudi: Why are you cursing at me?
Dugu Wudi: If you're not convinced, come fight.
Zhen Wudi: Heh, I'm not falling for your goading.
Jiang Chen could not be bothered to answer further. He began to review the whole battle in his mind once again, seeking the points where he had erred, so as to avoid making the same mistakes next time. This had always been his custom, and one of the reasons he improved so quickly.
Zhen Wudi: Why have you gone quiet?
Zhen Wudi: Brother Dugu?
[Zhen Wudi invites you to enter the Starry River Space. Accept / Refuse.]
Jiang Chen gave it thought, and moved by curiosity about the Starry River Space, he chose to accept.
The Sword Discourse Platform activated, and the surroundings shifted. Jiang Chen found himself in a little open pavilion.
The pavilion hung suspended in the void.
From afar, the river of stars hung upside down; up close, the sky was filled with stars. From time to time, meteors streaked past on either side.
It was a truly magnificent sight.
The inside of the pavilion, though, was beggarly in the extreme—only a single stone table and two stone chairs.
Fatty Zhen's bulk was piled up in one of those seats.
"Hey, hey, don't start anything now—this is no place for a duel!" he waved his hands.
Jiang Chen looked about without a word.
Zhen Wudi went on complaining on his own. "Can you believe this dump of a place cost me ten points of Merit? I thought I'd come out ahead a moment ago."
At this, Jiang Chen's eyelids twitched, for the ten points of Merit the fat man had just earned were his own.
"Ahem." Zhen Wudi switched tack, and said with great confidence: "After that fight just now, you must have figured out where I come from."
Within the Grand Illusionary Realm, he had no wish to reveal his identity. Yet in the last battle he had not been able to resist flinging open his first trump card—and since one had already been shown, broken jar rolls broken jar, he had promptly flung open the second as well.
This also meant his identity could no longer be hidden, because the signature secret arts of his clan were far too famous.
At least, that was how Zhen Wudi saw it.
In point of fact, Jiang Chen had no idea who he was.
"Ah, so you're..."
"Yes, I am..." Zhen Wudi waited a good long while, only to realize that Jiang Chen's half-finished sentence was never going to come.
So he had no choice but to chuckle and say, "You know what I mean."
Jiang Chen understood nothing whatsoever.
"Is there something you wanted to see me about?" he asked.
"Heh heh, doesn't Brother Dugu think the Grand Illusionary Realm is utterly boring? Every time you come in, there's only that little room a few paces to a side, and it's nothing but fighting on top of fighting. Deduce and reason as much as you like, the Merit it pays is pitiful. I've donated no small number of cultivation methods just to scrape together a little. And when it comes to fighting, there are so many freaks about!" By the looks of it, Zhen Wudi had stored up his grievances for a long time.
"You're the first person who's written back to me so much, so I invited you over for a chat, to make a friend." Zhen Wudi looked around, then went on: "Once the Hongmeng Space opens up later on, finding a place to talk and so on will be much more convenient, and it won't cost any Merit at all."
When it came to understanding the Grand Illusionary Realm, Jiang Chen was of course far inferior to the fat man before him. For his Void Key had been "found" for nothing, and the Grand Illusionary Realm had never allotted him a place of his own.
From Zhen Wudi's words, Jiang Chen gathered no small amount of information. One: the likes of Zhen Wudi made their base in the Grand Illusionary Realm in nothing more than a little room a few paces to a side—whereas he, Jiang Chen, had a Blessed Land, even if its ranking was sinking lower by the day...
Two: apparently, one could obtain Merit in the reverse direction by contributing cultivation methods to the Grand Illusionary Realm.
Three: the Grand Illusionary Realm would later open up a Hongmeng Space, apparently a sort of common public space. And entering it would cost no Merit at all, plainly encouraging interaction.
Under what circumstances would such a space need to be opened? Only one possibility came to Jiang Chen's mind—the number of people within the Grand Illusionary Realm was about to grow!
Perhaps, one day, the Grand Illusionary Realm would open to all cultivators.
And Jiang Chen, who had already tasted the benefits of the Grand Illusionary Realm, could easily imagine it. What a sweeping transformation that would be, what a mighty rising tide of humankind!
Perhaps it would outright overturn the entire transcendent order of the world as it stood now.