Martial Dao: Peace by Force

Chapter 325: Chapter 185: Meeting an Old Acquaintance in Huangliang! You Hunted Me All the Way Here?

The mountain range was already vast, but now it was truly magnificent.

Each mountain was now more than twice its previous height. The distance between them had widened, and the open spaces in between had become bottomless canyons.

Wan Ze and Feng Jiuchen walked along the canyon floor. The mountain walls on either side soared into the clouds, leaving only a sliver of the Red Moon visible overhead.

Amid the breathtaking grandeur, a primordial aura washed over them.

It felt as if they had returned to a time long, long ago—to the dawn of creation, when all things were new and nothing had yet been tamed.

A raw Power pervaded the air, making one unconsciously tense up.

”ROAR!”

A beast’s roar suddenly echoed from deep within the mountains.

It carried an earth-shaking might.

The sound reverberated through the valley, crashing against the mountain walls. It bounced back and forth, amplifying with each echo until it became waves of sound. The sonic waves surged from the distance, washing over Wan Ze and Feng Jiuchen.

Wan Ze felt his chest cavity resonate with the roar. The sound threw his heartbeat off by half a beat and left him breathless for a moment.

”Damn it, speak of the devil!” Feng Jiuchen’s face turned deathly pale. He pursed his lips, sweat beading on his forehead as he stared toward the source of the roar in the distant mountains.

There, the faint outline of a terrifying figure could be seen, roaring.

The figure was so large that Wan Ze couldn’t even begin to comprehend its scale in relation to a human.

Its visible silhouette blotted out half the sky, like a mountain on the move.

Its every breath sent violent tremors through the air. The Red Moon’s Moonlight warped around it like demonic flames.

”Is that... something born from a newcomer’s dream, or was it already here in the mountains?” Wan Ze asked calmly.

He glanced around, already calculating an escape route in his head.

The beast was deep in the mountains, still far away, but if it started moving in their direction, he and Feng Jiuchen would have to get out of the canyon before it reached them.

”It’s the overlord of this place. It was here from the start.” Feng Jiuchen took a deep breath, his voice surprisingly steady. ”Its territory has been invaded by someone’s dream. Mountains sprouted on its doorstep and upended its lair—of course it’s angry. But even a beast of its caliber can’t alter the changes happening to this space.”

He paused before adding, ”Huangliang has its own rules. Dreams exist on a higher plane. You can think of Huangliang as a piece of paper and a dream as a drop of ink. When the ink falls onto the paper, the paper can’t change the ink’s shape, and the ink can’t change the paper’s material. They’ve simply come into contact.”

Wan Ze heard something and turned to look.

In the distance, within the area bathed in red moonlight, a shadow was rapidly approaching.

The shadow moved so fast it seemed less like a physical object and more like a projection of light. It crossed from one end of the horizon to the other in the space of just a few breaths.

”Shit!”

Feng Jiuchen grabbed Wan Ze’s arm and yanked him aside, pulling them both under a rocky overhang.

The overhang wasn’t large—just big enough to conceal their bodies. But with no cover above, all they could do was crouch there, motionless, their backs pressed against the cold stone wall.

A Fierce Bird shot past overhead.

The Fierce Bird was as large as a mountain. Its body was a dingy gray, its feathers looked as if they had been coated in soot, their original color completely obscured.

As its wings spread, they blotted out half the sky. The light of the Red Moon was completely eclipsed, and the ground below was plunged into sudden darkness.

The pressure from the flap of its wings forced the trees below to bow in unison. Thinner branches snapped and were sent spiraling through the air.

In the blink of an eye, the Fierce Bird descended deep into the mountains, landing right in the direction of the roaring overlord.

Wan Ze didn’t hear a collision, but he heard the sound of rock shattering—a continuous CRACKLE and RUMBLE that seemed to travel from far to near.

Feng Jiuchen’s expression was grim.

Wan Ze said nothing. He was waiting for the danger to pass.

Against a behemoth like that, if a single claw came down, he and Feng Jiuchen wouldn’t even have a chance to run.

It wasn’t a matter of speed; there was simply nowhere to run.

A single one of the Fierce Bird’s talons was larger than the rock they were hiding behind. One swipe would have pulverized them, rock and all.

After a long moment, the commotion in the distance slowly subsided.

The two behemoths seemed to have reached some sort of tacit understanding. Each claimed its own territory, and no fight broke out.

It looked like they were in a standoff.

It was hard to make out the details.

Feng Jiuchen let out a long breath, scrambled out from under the rock, and dusted himself off.

”Brother Feng...” Wan Ze asked, his voice hushed as if afraid of disturbing the two behemoths in the distance. ”If an ordinary person dreamed up a fierce beast, could it actually hurt us?”

”It could,” Feng Jiuchen answered bluntly, though his tone softened afterward. ”But an ordinary person’s Spiritual Power can’t sustain a form like that. Dreaming isn’t creation from nothing; it consumes the dreamer’s Spiritual Power. An ordinary person would be lucky to sustain a cat, a bird, or a dog at most. To dream up a beast of that magnitude? How much Spiritual Power would that take?”

He paused, as if recalling something. ’In all my years in Huangliang, I’ve only seen it happen once.’

”It’s really happened?” Wan Ze was surprised.

He had assumed Feng Jiuchen was only speaking of a theoretical possibility, not a real-life example.

Feng Jiuchen nodded, his voice dropping to a near-whisper as he shared the secret. ”That person later became a Qi Refiner and joined the Thirty-Six Grotto Heavens. You could say his future was limitless. The first time he arrived in Huangliang, he dreamed up a dragon. Not one of those big-bellied Western lizards, but one of our own—a Five-Clawed Golden Dragon. It was hundreds of feet long from head to tail. It flew a single loop in the sky and scared the Deceitful Beasts in that area into hiding for a solid month.”