Deep Pain Despite Victory
The crowd denounces young Thieving Heaven for sneak attacking, and his blinded opponent points the wrong way while demanding a rematch. Fang Yuan answers that the winner takes all. Then he loses control of the body and becomes an observer again. Pale and shaking, the youth asks why he used blurred grey eyes and chose a sneak attack, which he disdains. Sha Xiao laughs and praises him for using a killer move he never trained so smoothly, calling it the youth’s true nature. The youth blames Sha Xiao for controlling his body, but Sha Xiao says that he could have and did not, and the choice was the youth’s. ch. 1497
The youth leaves the stage still refusing to accept this, and the audience reads his firm face as arrogance and scolds even louder. Fang Yuan is shaken, because in earlier dream realms the outcome and the passing standard stayed fixed however much he participated. Here the fight has altered the dream realm’s next events. As a realistic dream realm it restores Thieving Heaven Demon Venerable’s life, yet accumulating deviations might change its final outcome. He grows more wary. ch. 1497
In the next match a heroic girl vows to avenge her younger cousin, and the youth says there is only a misunderstanding. When she charges, he asks her to hear him first, and she stops. Controlled by Fang Yuan, he then uses blurred grey eyes, and its white ash passes through her guard and covers her eyes. Though blinded, she listens to the wind and answers with a punch from a fist that clearly uses a Gu worm. Fang Yuan only feints a kick, probing her and exploiting the crowd, whose shouted reminders mislead the blinded girl. ch. 1497
She keeps attacking, so he dodges, catches her hand, strikes her abdomen with a knee and chops the back of her neck. She loses consciousness and falls without moving, and Fang Yuan wins. The crowd erupts in fury at his shamelessness and pities the girl. Fang Yuan is an observer again, and Sha Xiao laughs that the youth did it all by his own choice, as shameless as Sha Xiao once was. The youth almost cries as the values from his previous life take a huge impact. ch. 1497
The youth keeps winning the small competition, with Fang Yuan taking over every battle. Fang Yuan’s vast battle experience lets him read opponents’ schemes from a shift in their gaze, and he wins each one without difficulty. The youth, though, finds it an extremely painful journey. He wonders whether he is really such a person deep down, and concludes that he has shamed his clan, his teacher’s teachings and his family name. ch. 1497
