I Failed to Reform the Protagonist [Transmigration] - Chapter 23

Pei Jing froze, instinctively leaning back slightly.

Chu Junyu’s pale fingers paused on the blade, a flicker of stiffness vanishing as quickly as it had appeared. His gaze fell back onto Pei Jing’s face as he said, “I don’t use a sword often.”

Pei Jing sat cross-legged, lacking any proper decorum, and just laughed. “That’s a rarity! A sword cultivator who doesn’t use a sword often.”

The Changtian Secret Realm was a very ordinary forested valley, where massive trees intertwined to blot out the sun. Since there was no real danger, there was no need to stay in groups. After entering the realm, everyone bid their farewells and went their separate ways, as no one knew when or where their “fortune” might appear.

Pei Jing asked Chu Junyu if he wanted to go together. Chu Junyu gave him a single look, turned around, and walked away.

Standing before a tree, Pei Jing popped a candy into his mouth and said helplessly, “Fine then. I hope you find some lucky encounter in there.”

The Changtian Secret Realm still held the lingering aura of the Daoist Yunxiao. Having met the ancestor a few times and received his enlightenment, Pei Jing felt a sense of kinship with the plants and animals here. Consequently, many spirit beasts gathered around him, nudging him affectionately.

He had been here in his youth and knew the place inside and out, so he wasn’t particularly interested in exploring it again.

As time passed, Pei Jing sampled almost every fruit in the woods. While washing his hands by a river, a Five-Colored Deer suddenly leaped out from the forest. It looked panicked, and someone had slashed a wound into its leg that was bleeding profusely. Seeing Pei Jing was like seeing a long-lost relative; the deer’s eyes filled with tears as it huddled behind him.

Pei Jing blinked, stroking its head. “What’s wrong?”

The Five-Colored Deer whimpered but didn’t answer. However, the cultivators rushing up from behind inadvertently confessed.

“Zhang Yiming, move! We found that deer first!”

The aggressive leader was none other than the one who had tried to “teach Chu Junyu a lesson” that night. His four lackeys were with him as well, and everyone was clutching a longbow. It was clear they had made secret preparations before entering the realm.

Pei Jing patted the deer’s head comfortingly, his gaze turning slightly cold as it fell on their bows. “What are you doing with bows in your hands?”

The leader snapped irritably, “None of your business! Just get lost! This deer is our prey. Scram!”

“Prey?”

Mulling over the word, Pei Jing laughed from sheer anger. “This is a secret realm left by our sect’s ancestor to bless future generations, and this is how you treat it?”

These few hated Chu Junyu to the bone, but because the gap in strength was too wide and they couldn’t win a fight, they could only harbor their resentment in silence. After bottling it up for so long, they even found Pei Jing who was close to Chu Junyu to be an eyesore.

The leader looked back and saw his four lackeys were all armed. Feeling the confidence of numbers, he turned back to Pei Jing and roared viciously, “Enough talk! I’m asking you one last time: are you leaving or not? If not, don’t blame us for being rude! Fighting with fellow disciples isn’t against the rules inside the Changtian Secret Realm!”

Pei Jing smiled at the words and whispered to the deer to leave first.

“Hey, damn it!” The five watched as the deer bolted. “You really have to cross us, don’t you!”

“Don’t let it get away!”

The cultivators drew their bows and fired at the retreating back of the Five-Colored Deer.

The long arrow was shattered by a flash of chilly sword light.

With a clack, the arrow fell to the ground in two pieces. Pei Jing reached out, caught the arrowhead end, and threw it back with lightning speed.

His movement was incredibly fast and precise. Before anyone could react, the leader’s leg had been pierced through by the arrow.

“AH—!” He let out a loud cry, clutching his bleeding leg and wailing blindly. “My leg! My leg!”

The other four were stunned, having no idea what had just happened.

Pei Jing thought to himself: It didn’t even touch the bone; I don’t know why you’re screaming like that.

This batch of disciples was lacking in ability and mindset, but they certainly had plenty of crooked ideas. Pampered and spoiled, they were in dire need of a lesson.

The leader couldn’t even close his mouth from the pain, gasping for air as he pointed at Pei Jing, gnashing his teeth. “Avenge me! Chu Junyu isn’t here! It’s four against one; how can we possibly lose!”

The four snapped out of it and clumsily drew their bows to shoot at Pei Jing. They were all in the Qi Refining stage; they had to chant basic spells for ages, and their sword moves were far from fluid. In a real fight, they could only rely on their weapons and brute force.

Pei Jing sneered, “You talk as if I can’t beat you just because Chu Junyu isn’t here.”

Arrows fell like rain. He walked forward, the tips grazing his hair and robes, but not a single one harmed him. With a sweep of his sword, he cut the arrows in half, grabbed them, and threw them straight back.

The five screamed in panic but couldn’t dodge. They were turned into “hedgehogs”—the arrows didn’t go deep, but the pain was still agony.

Pei Jing walked over, wiping the water from his hands, his gaze cold. “Now, are you going to speak? Why did you bring bows? If you don’t tell me, your fate today won’t end here.”

With an arrow in his leg and a puncture wound in his arm, the leader’s pain made his speech slurred. He finally realized that even combined, the five of them were no match for Zhang Yiming. He immediately knelt, kowtowing repeatedly with tears and snot running down his face. “Ow, Brother Zhang, spare me! Don’t blame me! This was all Xiao Chen’s rotten idea! Xiao Chen said he asked many senior brothers and sisters, and not even one in a hundred found a lucky encounter in here. We might only get to come in here once in our lives, so we can’t leave empty-handed! This is a realm left by a Spirit Severing master; the plants and animals in here are treasures that money can’t buy outside. We should take as many as we can! It was him! He incited me!”

Pei Jing rubbed his chin. “Xiao Chen?” That name sounded a bit familiar.

The leader had lost all face from crying and now hated that bastard to the core. He added hurriedly, “The one who was punished by the Peak Master to work in the spirit garden! His head is full of crooked ideas! I really fell for his nonsense!”

Pei Jing remembered—the idiot disciple he had pranked before. It seemed several months of farming in the spirit garden hadn’t straightened out his mind; instead, he had doubled down and brought his schemes into the Changtian Secret Realm.

Interesting.

“Where is Xiao Chen?” Pei Jing’s hand rested on his sword as he asked coldly.

The leader’s face scrunched up. “How should I know? He went off on his own, headed north, I think.”

North.

Pei Jing turned and looked toward the north, trying to remember what was in that direction.

Suddenly, a series of explosions echoed from the north as the mountainside rumbled and slid. Immediately following was the roar of a wild beast, so powerful it made the ground tremble. At the same time, the cries of a group of cultivators reached his ears—running for their lives and scrambling about as they were chased by the beast.

“They really know how to cause trouble,” Pei Jing sighed.

The Changtian Secret Realm wasn’t dangerous because the beasts inside held no hostility toward Yunxiao disciples and wouldn’t go out of their way to attack them. But if someone deliberately provoked them, these spirit beasts weren’t exactly pushovers.

When he arrived, he saw a group of people screaming and running down the mountain, their faces pale. Behind them followed a monster resembling a crocodile—three meters long, half a person tall, with a massive mouth and blood-red eyes. It looked truly hideous. With one sweep of its tail, it snapped several trees. It opened its mouth to reveal three full rows of teeth.

The sight made everyone’s skin crawl.

Pei Jing grabbed a random person. “Where did you lot stir up this monster?”

The unlucky person he caught was pale with panic, looking back repeatedly as the monster drew closer. Unable to break free, he shouted in a breakdown, “Don’t ask me! I don’t know anything!”

Pei Jing said bluntly, “If you don’t talk, I’ll leave you here to feed it.”

The unlucky disciple was incredulous, as if seeing Zhang Yiming for the first time. He was on the verge of tears. “It wasn’t me! They were chasing a bird into the mountains! There was a cave, and once inside, someone must have triggered a mechanism. A stone wall opened, and this monster lunged out with its mouth open!”

A cave.

Pei Jing remembered. He gave the disciple a look that wasn’t quite a smile. “You lot are quite capable, aren’t you?”

Impressive. They stumbled right into the Pagoda Hall.

The Pagoda Hall was the place where the Daoist Yunxiao had once broken through his heart-demons. The ancestor believed in fighting poison with poison, so the hall was filled with malicious thoughts, evil spirits, and the origins of heart-demons. While it caused no physical harm, someone with stray thoughts who entered would suffer the sensation of their spirit being hacked by a thousand blades.

The monster guarding the entrance was actually a form of protection, chasing them out to stop them from entering. It was just to scare them. Once they left the mountain, it wouldn’t chase them anymore.

Pei Jing let go of him, and the disciple bolted instantly without a word.

The crocodile reached the foot of the mountain. Seeing everyone had left, its red eyes swiveled, and it immediately transformed from a fierce, man-eating monster into a dejected, lazy “salted fish.” It closed its mouth, drooped its eyes, retracted its claws, and began to crawl as slowly as an elderly person.

Pei Jing looked at the trees knocked over by its tail and couldn’t help but lecture it. “Can you find a different way to scare people in the future? Stop swinging your tail; you break several trees with every swing. If you keep this up, you’ll ruin the whole forest sooner or later.”

The crocodile lifted one eyelid, gave him a look of profound disdain, and said nothing. Its limbs moved forward slowly; it looked like it wanted to crawl back with its belly flat against the ground.

Pei Jing grumbled, “So lazy. No wonder you’ve gotten so fat over the last few hundred years.”

The crocodile turned a deaf ear, letting him follow behind.

Pei Jing intended to follow it back to the Pagoda Hall. Since the guardian beast was stirred up, those disciples must have broken something inside. He would go check, clean up the mess, and then deal with them once he got out.

Pei Jing had entered the Pagoda Hall during his last visit to Changtian and hadn’t been affected at all. Daoist Yunxiao had said it was because his mind was pure and free of stray thoughts. But now, standing before the cave entrance again, he felt a strange sensation in his heart.

The cave mouth was hidden among flowers and grass, pitch black. Green grass, red flowers, and a dense aura of spiritual energy—but deep within, there was a faint, ominous swirl of green and purple light.

Pei Jing asked the crocodile, “What’s the situation in this cave?”

The crocodile slowly extended its claw and, with a look of exhaustion, drew an ‘X’ in the dirt.

“You don’t know either?”

The crocodile thought for a moment, looked at Pei Jing with its red eyes and then began its performance. It closed its eyes, flattened its body, and settled its limbs comfortably as if sleeping. Just as Pei Jing was wondering what this sapient crocodile was doing, it opened its eyes again and patted the ‘X’ it had just drawn.

Pei Jing finally understood. “You’re saying you’ve been sleeping and don’t know a thing?”

The crocodile blinked, looking sleepy and lazy.

Pei Jing laughed and cursed, “What use are you!”

Gripping the Lingyun Sword, he stepped inside.

Upon entering, he felt a wave of cold, sinister, and malicious aura—something that didn’t feel like it belonged to this cultivation world. It felt familiar, very much like the Thousand-Face Woman. Thinking of her, Pei Jing’s vigilance rose. But after a moment of thought, he felt it was impossible; the Changtian Secret Realm was deep inside Yunxiao; how could filth sneak in so easily? And even if it could, why would it come here?

“Take me to the main hall first,” Pei Jing commanded.

The main hall housed several Profound Water Mirrors, which reflected every corner of the Pagoda Hall clearly, showing everything that happened within. The door was next to the pool where the crocodile lived and could only be opened by its tail.

The stone wall swung wide, and an eerie green light spilled down from above.

Pei Jing entered the main hall. The crocodile at his feet looked like it was about to die of exhaustion, unable to keep its eyes open.

In the air above the main hall, the Profound Water Mirrors reflected every direction.

Pei Jing’s footsteps stopped. His gaze fell on the central-most mirror—in the dark, lonely tunnel filled with heart-demons and malicious thoughts, right before the secret room where the ancestor once meditated. A youth stood silent, his greenish-blue robes fluttering, his expression cold and his eyes filled with violent rage.