The Lord of Void and Real

Shen Luo’s eyelids twitched slightly, squinting, and then opened a little bit immediately, just then hastily raised his hand to cover his own eyes.

“Sss…”

As a result of this action, a wave of muscle exhaustion and pain akin to spasms immediately overcame him, and his consciousness also instantly awakened.

An intense panic immediately arose from the bottom of his heart, Shen Luo sat up on the bed, shrinking his body and hurriedly surveyed his surroundings.

Situated not far from the wall in front of him, there was a narrow desk cluttered with a stack of old, ancient books. Not too far away from the desk, a window and door stood side by side. Everything was extraordinarily familiar.

An ecstatic expression emerged on Shen Luo’s face. Lowering his head, he inspected his own body.

His clothes were intact, and although his body was sorely aching, there were no wounds at all. The feeling was more like the discomfort brought about after excessively strenuous exercise.

A familiar smell of mildew mixed with sandalwood suddenly overwhelmed his nostrils, causing him to sneeze involuntarily.

At this moment, Shen Luo finally believed that he was in his room at Spring and Autumn Pavilion, rather than the eerily gloomy Ghost Village.

“What happened last night was just a nightmare!” Shen Luo touched the veritably real wooden bed beneath him, took a long sigh of relief, the occurrence from last night fresh in his mind, for a time, it provoked in him a sense of despair.

Shen Luo rolled up his sleeve, wiped his forehead, and only then did he discover his forehead and temples were soaked in cold sweat, and even his back was damp, some glued to his back, it was very uncomfortable.

He sat in a somewhat trance-like state on the bed for a while before he realised his regular wake-up time had already passed and even his morning practice session was about to be compromised.

“It’s just a dream…” Shen Luo mumbled to himself twice, seemingly trying to forcefully persuade himself. Then his body moved, and he got off the bed.

But as soon as his feet touched the green cloth shoes, as he tried to stand up, his legs felt weak and he simply fell forward. When he tried to support himself with his arms, he found that they were also weak, and so he fell straight to the ground.

“Ah…”

Shen Luo cried out in pain, struggling to get up from the ground and slowly resettling himself at the edge of the bed.

At this point, he noticed that there actually was something wrong with his body. Although his body wasn’t particularly well-built, now it was clearly extremely weak.

“What on earth happened?” He started to feel somewhat horrified, it wouldn’t be like this if it were simply a case of waking up from a dream.

In fact, ever since the intrusion of the Yin Qi into his body, Shen Luo had had many nightmares. He had encountered all kinds of odd and bizarre dreamlands, but now that he thought about it, the feeling was completely different from what he experienced last night.

Moreover, if it was really just a dream, then why were his memories of the dream so clear and realistic? And why was his body so exhausted? It felt as though he had actually gone through an intense battle.

But then if it wasn’t a dream, how could it be explained? Could it be that he really sleepwalked down the mountain, went to some village below, and then sleepwalked back up?

But that doesn’t make sense either, last night in that mountain village, he had suffered near-death experienced and his body was covered with wounds. His clothes were torn to shreds, it certainly shouldn’t look like the way it was now.

Thinking of this, Shen Luo’s face showed signs of uncertainty, and the more he thought, the stranger the events of the previous night seemed. It felt as though his head was expanding.

He rubbed his forehead with his hand, inclined his body backwards and simply lay down on the bed again.

“Thump.”

Shen Luo felt as though his head had hit something hard and immediately sat up again, quickly turned around to take a look.

He saw on the head of his bed, a long, narrow yellow object– the “treasure” he had found earlier–, the ancient jade pillow. The original rattan woven pillow had been squeezed to one side, against the wall.

Shen Luo was dumbfounded!

Last night, he had actually slept the entire night laying on this jade pillow without noticing it himself!

He was sure that he had placed this object next to the ancient books on the desk before he slept last night, how did it end up on his bed?

“Could it be… last night’s nightmare was related to this? Or could it be that there’s something unclean within this jade pillow?”

He remembered in Zhang Heavenly Master’s Demon-Subduing Chronicle, one story mentioned a scholar from Lingnan Qian’an County who, during a spring outing, found a bronze mirror by a river. Seeing the words “Free and Easy” inscribed on the mirror in gold, he kept it as he thought it was antique.

As it turned out, the Free and Easy Mirror contained a female ghost who would come out on the night of full moon to absorb his Yang Qi. If it weren’t for Zhang Heavenly Master passing by, who helped him, the scholar would have lost his Yang energy, and he would have died without knowing the cause.

Thinking of this story, Shen Luo disregarded his exhaustion and hurriedly got off the bed, grabbed the wolf hair awl from the desk, used the handle to prod, and lightly prodded the jade pillow on the bed.

The jade pillow moved a bit backward. Neither was there any unusual glow, nor did any Yin Sha or ghost emerge. It seemed no different from ordinary objects.

But Shen Luo was still somewhat uneasy. He took out a small porcelain bottle, poured out some cinnabar, rubbed it between his hands to cover his palms, then carefully extended a finger and touched the jade pillow with his fingertip.

Besides the icy cold touch of the jade pillow, there was still no anomaly.

“Could there be some sneaky and silent possession… ” Shen Luo drew back his hand, still slightly frowning, not quite at ease.

After considering for a moment, he glanced at the jade pillow, then quickly walked to the door, sat cross-legged on the mat, embraced the ball with both hands, focused his mind, and began to run the Small Transformation Yang Skill silently.

However, his concentration was somewhat affected by the nightmare from last night. He was unable to settle his mind for a long time and it took him two hours to finally complete a small cycle of the Small Transformation Yang Skill.

The skill ran very smoothly, and the Yang Gang Qi inside his body filled every part of it.

After the skill operation was over, Shen Luo slowly opened his eyes, exhaled a light breath, and then did he feel relieved.