Chapter 23: Duty and Mission

No one knew how much time had passed. The energy in Huang Xiwen’s Baihui acupoint grew denser and denser, once again being compressed forward, steadily eroding the invisible barrier between his Ren and Du meridians. It was as though the Yellow River’s waters met an ice dam—current growing ever more forceful and urgent—until suddenly, with a faint crack in the thunderous depths of his consciousness, the energy in his two meridians broke through the obstruction and surged forth like a flood. The two streams of energy collided violently, churning up a towering wave.

In his sleep, Huang Xiwen let out a muffled groan, his face contorted in agony, as if suffering unbearable pain. Yet in a fraction of an instant, the two energies fused into one, once again becoming as tranquil as the surface of a calm lake. But beneath that stillness, the force of the current was many times more powerful than before, its speed many times swifter. The two energies could no longer be distinguished, surging rapidly through his Ren and Du meridians in a complete cycle, then dispersing swiftly through every meridian in his body, coursing with joyful, unending vitality.

“He’s broken through!” Lei Dong clenched his fist tightly, marveling at Huang Xiwen’s luck and innate talent: to accomplish such a breakthrough in his sleep and thus step into the Qi Refining stage, officially becoming a cultivator.

Now, Huang Xiwen’s expression had completely relaxed. As the energy within completed its first great circuit, he had clearly entered a profound and indescribable state, a faint smile playing on his lips.

For a long time, under Lei Dong’s watchful gaze, Huang Xiwen’s face grew increasingly joyful, as though he were having a beautiful dream.

A beautiful dream? Lei Dong’s heart stirred: every time he himself broke through a cultivation bottleneck, didn’t he dream that same dream? Could it be that Huang Xiwen was experiencing it too?

In a daze, Huang Xiwen seemed to sense something and slowly opened his eyes, then started in surprise. Lei Dong was sitting quietly at his bedside, his expression solemn, yet with a trace of doubt and anticipation in his eyes.

Just as Huang Xiwen was about to speak, Lei Dong quickly motioned him to silence, pointing toward the door. Without disturbing anyone, they slipped quietly out of the dormitory.

The corridor was silent, lit only by the chilly glow of the white energy-saving lamps at the far end. Lei Dong gestured toward the restroom, signaling Huang Xiwen to follow.

“Dragging me to the restroom in the middle of the night—what’s Lei Dong up to?” Huang Xiwen walked in slowly, only to see a window ajar, with Lei Dong standing outside beneath a large tree, beckoning him gently. Huang Xiwen paused, then, pressing lightly off the floor, his body flashed through the window as silently as a cat, far more agile and graceful than usual. He landed like a drifting leaf, making not so much as a sound.

“Sit and meditate—look inward!” Lei Dong’s eyes gleamed with appreciation, but he quickly lowered his voice. Though eager to know whether Huang Xiwen had experienced the same dream, Lei Dong understood that after a breakthrough, the best thing for a cultivator was to savor the subtle, delicate emotions of that state—neither joy nor sorrow, or a blend of both. This would greatly benefit future cultivation. Lei Dong was accustomed to breaking through bottlenecks consciously, gathering enough force to shatter obstacles. He wondered whether Huang Xiwen, having broken through in his sleep, could grasp that state. Without delay, he ordered him to meditate and examine the flow of his inner energy.

Huang Xiwen sat cross-legged under the tree and closed his eyes. Almost the instant he began his inward examination, his face showed a mix of shock and wild joy. His eyes flew open, a sharp gleam flashing from his pupils, and with a tremor of his shoulders, he prepared to leap to his feet.

Lei Dong was alarmed, knowing that if a cultivator lost control of his mind, the backlash from energy could severely injure or even destroy his cultivation. But with no energy of his own to help, he acted without thinking—striking Huang Xiwen’s Baihui acupoint and sharply whispering into his ear, “Hey!”

Fortunately, the sudden jolt dispelled Huang Xiwen’s inner demons. He forced himself to calm down, sat back, relaxed, and soon was again immersed in that subtle, mysterious state. Lei Dong let out a long breath, realizing that Huang Xiwen had survived this close call safely—and not only was his luck extraordinary, but his talent was remarkable, to be able to regain composure in so short a time.

After a while, Huang Xiwen opened his eyes and smiled gratefully at Lei Dong. “I broke through, didn’t I?”

Lei Dong nodded. “Congratulations, you’ve taken a great stride toward the immortal path.” He was about to say more when Huang Xiwen suddenly clutched his stomach with a groan, sprang up, dashed through the open window into the restroom, and dove into a stall, slamming the half-height door behind him.

Lei Dong knew exactly what was happening and wisely held his breath. In a moment, the sound of violent splattering came from the restroom, followed almost instantly by a stench.

The noise went on for five full minutes before finally ceasing, followed by the flush of water. Huang Xiwen emerged from the window again, pinching his nose, satisfaction glowing from his face. “Damn, that hurt! And the smell!”

Lei Dong fanned his nose, mockingly, “You call that pain? That a stench? Wait till you break through to the Foundation Establishment stage—then you’ll know real pain and real stench. And when you form your Golden Core, you’ll wish you could die from the pain…”

“It gets worse?” Huang Xiwen’s face twisted in dismay, but the excitement in his eyes told Lei Dong he couldn’t be happier.

Lei Dong glanced at him, opened his mouth, then hesitated, finally saying, “Enough for tonight—go back to sleep!” Best to let him savor his excitement a while longer; there was always tomorrow for questions.

Huang Xiwen, his senses now exceptionally sharp, caught every nuance of Lei Dong’s expression in the darkness. “What’s wrong? You want to say something? If there’s something on your mind, out with it—that’s not like you.”

Lei Dong smiled, “Nothing important. Tomorrow.”

But Huang Xiwen was stubborn. “No way! Keeping things bottled up is bad for you—out with it! I’m the team leader—I order you to speak!”

After a moment’s silence, Lei Dong gathered his resolve, his tone grave. “Just now, in the dorm—did you dream?”

He found himself inexplicably nervous.

Huang Xiwen gaped at him. “You… you could tell?”

Lei Dong’s eyes lit up. “You did dream? What did you dream about?”

“Well… can I keep it a secret?”

---

“Hell no! Out with it!” Lei Dong, seeing Huang Xiwen hem and haw, almost wanted to kick him.

Huang Xiwen’s dark face flushed. “Well… I dreamed… I dreamed the second daughter from our village was smiling at me. Such a sweet smile…” He gazed up at the stars, nostalgia softening his features.

Lei Dong’s heart sank. “Just that? Nothing else?”

Seeing Lei Dong’s bitter expression, Huang Xiwen grew serious. “That’s all… What’s wrong?”

Lei Dong’s heart plummeted: Huang Xiwen hadn’t dreamt as he had. Then that dream couldn’t be something all cultivators experienced. Ever since he’d begun cultivating at age three, he’d had that same dream at every breakthrough. Why? What did it mean?

Those earnest eyes—what did they signify? And those two cryptic, fragmentary sentences?

Seeing Lei Dong’s perplexed look, Huang Xiwen grew anxious. “Are you okay? What’s going on?”

Lei Dong shook his head, bitterness in his voice. “I’m fine—I just don’t understand what’s happening…” He paused, then looked up, his eyes resolute. “One day, I’ll find out. I will!”

They slipped quietly back to the dorm. At their beds, Huang Xiwen looked at Lei Dong, concern in his gaze. Lei Dong shook his head, signaling he was fine, and vaulted back to his bunk.

All the other team members were already deep asleep. From below, Huang Xiwen’s steady breathing soon joined them. Lei Dong lay on his bunk, hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling.

After a long while, his consciousness began to blur, darkness enveloping him. Dimly, two points of light flickered before his eyes. He knew—he was about to dream that dream again. But this time, he hadn’t broken through any bottleneck. Ever since joining the army, he’d completely stopped cultivating—so why would he dream it now?

His mind drifted from his body, watching as it walked step by step toward those two points of light. He knew they were eyes—familiar, as though seen even in the womb; and yet strange, different each time. The eyes seemed vast, filling the world—then tiny, mere pinpricks of light, but their brilliance made even his mid-Golden Core divine sense uneasy.

Step by step, his body approached the eyes.

“You’re here.” The voice echoed, at once near and infinitely distant, booming and yet intimate—the kind of sound that filled the world yet seemed meant for him alone.

Lei Dong stood still, silent.

“Today, you’ve changed a little—perhaps you don’t realize it, but you know. You are not alone. The friends and comrades around you are a part of your life. You care for them, you fight for them—remember: sometimes, a soldier fights for his comrades.”

“Who are you?” After fifteen years, Lei Dong could no longer restrain himself—he asked the question that had haunted him all his life.

The voice was silent.

“What do you want? Or, what do you want from me? How do you know what happened today? How do you know about the army?” Lei Dong’s rapid-fire questions met only silence.

Just as he was about to give up hope of an answer, the voice returned, ethereal as ever: “One day, you will understand everything. Just never forget your mission—never forget your responsibility…”

Mission. Responsibility—again! Lei Dong knew that once the voice said those words, the dream would end. It was as reliable as the Deyunshe chorus singing “The Plain Truth.”

This time, Lei Dong was determined to get to the bottom of it. As the word “responsibility” had barely left the voice, he opened his mouth: “What, exactly—”

But he was too slow. The shining eyes and the floating voice vanished in an instant, and his consciousness snapped back to his body. The dormitory ceiling appeared before his eyes, darkness closing in.

Damn it! Lei Dong gritted his teeth in frustration. What fate, what destiny, what damned responsibility—why can’t you say it clearly? If you don’t say, how am I supposed to know what you want from me? How am I supposed to know what this responsibility is? Isn’t this madness?

Three years passed in a flash. In those three years, An Jing received ten letters from Lei Dong. Every single one began the same way:

“Dearest, save me! I’ve been buried alive! That maniac set traps on the glacier and, after we fell in, started an avalanche. We had to claw our way out ourselves—I nearly suffocated…”

“Dearest, save me! Huang Xiwen is a total monster! He makes us run a hundred kilometers on a nearly airless plateau. When we’re exhausted, he stands there with a bottle of high-proof liquor and a golden roast chicken and tells us if we want to warm up with a sip and taste the Republic’s finest, we have to run fifty more kilometers… I’m starving…”

“Dearest, save me! We were stripped down to nothing but our military shorts, tied up with special knots on a reef, issued only a combat knife, and surrounded by sharks—sharks! I protest! This is inhuman!”

“Dearest, save me! We were just catching snakes in the rainforest, and that lunatic told us catching them wasn’t enough—we couldn’t let them escape, and couldn’t kill them either. What to do? Luckily I’m smart—I squeezed the snake’s head until its mouth opened, stuffed its tail in, and watched it spin in circles. Genius! But isn’t that a bit cruel?”

“Dearest, save me! Can you imagine being kicked out of a plane at ten thousand meters and not being allowed to open your chute until five hundred? The sky is so blue, the ground so dazzling, and the wind feels like knives! When the chute opens, it jerks you so hard you want to scream, and before the pain fades, you’re on the ground—if you land two meters off or your posture is wrong, it’s back up to try again!”

“Dearest, save me! I’m flying a helicopter now—I actually like flying, but those maniacs made a rule: altitude can’t exceed one meter! The grass outside the windows brushes the landing skids. You could open the door and stick your leg out as a brake! I mean, even for low-altitude flight, isn’t this a bit much…”

“Dearest, save me! We’ve been dumped in a swamp. The mud sticks to everything—it’ll take weeks to wash off. I look like a mud monkey. And the worst part is, floating everywhere in the swamp… ugh, never mind, it’s too disgusting to describe!”

“Dearest, save me! The maniacs are getting worse! As if the brutal training isn’t enough, now we have to spend an hour every day learning foreign languages! Japanese, fine. Minyan, fine. I can handle those. But that god-awful Uguchat language? It’s impossible! Sure, the East Uguchat terrorists are out of control, but why not just take them out? Why do we have to learn their language—and speak it fluently, too? I’d rather learn some obscure African dialect…”

…

Deserts and steppes, swamps and mountains, tropical rainforest, deep-sea islands—over three years, Lei Dong trained in more than twenty types of special operations terrain!

Every three months or so, during breaks between training rotations, Lei Dong would write a letter to An Jing, sending it through the Fire Dragon Unit’s special mail system.

Besides writing, in those three years, Lei Dong and his teammates from the third squad visited the academy five times—about once every six months, for half a month each time, mainly for “cultural courses” that drove them all mad.

For someone like Wu Yun, who worshipped simple violence, field training was torment enough—but he’d rather endure that than the agony of classroom study.

For Lei Dong, though, those brief two weeks were paradise.

What could be sweeter than seeing the one you yearn for day and night? What could be more comforting than the gentle words of your beloved? What could be more exquisite than bathing in the gaze of someone who seems to melt you with every glance?

For An Jing, too, those half-month reunions every six months were her most cherished memories—a balm for her soul amid intense studies.

Having switched from a doctorate in literature to graduate studies in information warfare, the shift was enormous. Despite her IQ of over 150, she’d never touched this field before and was under tremendous pressure.

Worse, she had no one to confide in.

Her mother lived far away and refused to move to the metropolis of Hanjing, saying she’d have none of that “urban punishment.” Old Mr. Tang doted on her, and the whole Tang family cared for her, but the age and status gap made it awkward to bother them with such “trivialities.” Lei Dong’s mother was kind, too, and happy to chat, but as her likely future mother-in-law, it felt too embarrassing to discuss anything important.

Her current classmates weren’t close enough yet, and her old friends, while familiar, could not be told anything involving military secrets…

Only Lei Dong could quietly listen—listen to her troubles, her longing, her happiness.

An Jing found herself looking more and more forward to his letters, more and more eager for their reunions.

A letter, then reading it, then meeting, then longing, and another letter, and so on—through this cycle, her moods rising and falling, An Jing suddenly realized she’d become deeply dependent on it. She could no longer bear a day without longing, without Lei Dong.

With every letter, she yearned for the next; with every meeting, she craved the next.

“I wonder when he’ll come back… At this rate, I’ll turn into a ‘waiting stone’…” Lowering her head, a rosy blush crept across An Jing’s delicate, fair cheeks.