Chapter 31: How Brightly We Once Laughed

The air was filled with the enticing aroma of wild boar meat, snapping Ye Chen back to his senses. He pushed aside all other thoughts—for now, even if the sky were to fall, filling his stomach took precedence.

At that moment, Fang silently brought Ye Chen a bowl of wild boar meat. Ye Chen took it, casting Fang a sidelong glance. Fang's face was drawn and mournful, clearly still reeling from the recent blow.

After all, Fang had always been lucky, even making breakthroughs that set him above the other tribesmen in strength. Yet he had suffered a baffling defeat, and the bitterness in his heart was all too real.

"Did you see what the enemy looked like?"

Ye Chen was deeply curious about the method that could turn the young and strong of the tribe into wraiths. Though it wasn’t permanent, it was no small feat.

"I only saw a single Ghost-faced Cuckoo," Fang replied, his voice laced with hatred. "The bird swooped at us, and then we lost all consciousness—couldn't sense anything from the outside."

"If it was only the Ghost-faced Cuckoo, it couldn't have transformed you all into wraiths," Ye Chen said, shaking his head. Fang's face flushed with shame—indeed, that was the reason for his devastation.

Clearly, someone else was manipulating things from behind the scenes, but they had failed to detect a trace. The frustration was suffocating.

Ye Chen didn't pursue the matter further, nor did he try to comfort Fang's broken spirit. A true man must lick his wounds in silence, biding his time for vengeance; any words of solace would seem hollow and powerless.

The effects of the wild boar meat were immediate. Ye Chen could feel a surge of vitality coursing through his body. Previously, it was divine power that had rejuvenated his aged frame. Now, the rich essence of the meat washed through his limbs and bones, as though granting him new life, erasing the marks left by time, and restoring him to his prime.

The entire Bamboo Tribe was bathed in the faint reddish glow of the bonfire. The atmosphere was peaceful and quiet, oblivious to the lurking monsters coveting them in the dark. Moonlight spilled down, swaying with the nighttime breeze, casting broken, jagged shadows of mountains and forests. The inky darkness stretched over the dilapidated bamboo huts, shifting with the wind, as inscrutable as fate itself.

They didn't spend long eating the wild boar. Even with the nourishment, a sense of exhaustion lingered.

"Disperse now," Ye Chen said, seeing that the tribespeople were nearly collapsing with fatigue. They desperately needed rest; any further discussion could wait for dawn.

The Shaman studied Ye Chen for a moment but offered no objection. Once the others had drifted away, he asked in a low voice, "If the Cuckoo Tribe is behind this poison plot, shouldn’t we at least warn our people?"

"There's no need," Ye Chen replied—not out of arrogance, but with a gentle laugh. "Even if we told them, what good would it do besides making them afraid?"

The Shaman hesitated, then gave a wry smile. It was a humbling truth: for whatever reason, the tribe's youth had nearly been wiped out. Had their enemies not had ulterior motives, they would all be dead by now. Staying up all night would have changed nothing.

"Our tribe is too disappointing," the Shaman sighed. "But it can’t be helped. All our true core members, capable of supporting the tribe, were targeted and are now dead. Only those on the margins, overlooked and underestimated, survived by chance—not due to strength, but because they were seen as weeds, not worth the effort to eliminate."

Fortunately, the tribespeople had already left; if they'd heard this, they would have been furious.

But it was the truth. The Bamboo Tribe at its height was nothing like this ragtag group.

"How does the Cuckoo Tribe, without even a totem, seem to have deeper foundations than us? It just doesn’t make sense."

Hearing this, the Shaman fell into a daze, recalling the brutal battles with the Cuckoo Tribe, the fields strewn with corpses and bones. Before setting out, everyone had been so optimistic—now those memories were unbearable.

The brighter the laughter then, the colder the bodies now.

"How did you decide to attack the Cuckoo Tribe in the first place?" Ye Chen asked out of curiosity. "There are plenty of tribes in this region—surely not all are as tough as the Cuckoo Tribe. Was it just bad luck? A coincidence? To pick the hardest bone to chew and suffer for it?"

The Shaman pondered, a look of uncertainty on his face. "It is strange. We didn’t deliberate for long—it was almost an unspoken agreement to strike the Cuckoo Tribe. Like an idea that just popped into everyone's head."

He grew anxious, taking a deep breath to steady himself.

"Could someone have manipulated our little tribe? Isn’t that absurd?" He could hardly believe it; if Ye Chen hadn’t brought it up, he wouldn’t have sensed anything amiss.

Had their reaction been too slow? Even if they’d missed it at first, after such heavy losses, they should have realized something was wrong.

From the very beginning, there was an air of strangeness about it. The Shaman turned pale, chilled to the bone.

Apart from the Cuckoo Tribe, it now seemed there were other hidden enemies with sinister intentions. Yet the Bamboo Tribe had nothing remarkable about it—what could be worth scheming over? And even if they were targeted, making all the tribe’s leaders lose their senses collectively was no easy feat. What kind of method could achieve that? The Shaman was at a loss.

Ye Chen’s eyes flickered. He couldn’t figure it out either. He had combed through the Shaman’s memories inside and out; some things he knew, but if even the Shaman had no idea, Ye Chen could hardly guess the answer out of thin air.

"What is truly special about the Bamboo Tribe?" Ye Chen mused. "Even Ning Peachblossom said that the Bamboo Tribe is a pivotal node of fate, shrouded in mist. Even as a Dream God, I can’t fully unravel its secrets—perhaps it’s simply beyond my current power to fathom."

Some things remained hidden from Ye Chen, mere glimpses of the truth. At this point, all he could do was guess—and guesses were unreliable.

Ye Chen decided not to dwell on it, shaking his head. "Enough. No point in overthinking; when the boat reaches the bridge, it will straighten itself out."

"Shaman, you should rest early," he added. The Shaman, old as he was, had no reason to force himself to stay awake here.

"If an enemy comes tonight, I’d rather not die in my sleep, unaware," the Shaman said gravely. "Even if I can’t help much, I want to know how I die."

"As you wish," Ye Chen replied, offering no more persuasion. Instead, he let his mind sink into the realm of dreams.

The power of the Illusory Realm shrouded the tribe from above.

Ye Chen felt his spirit rise, merging completely with the world around him, as if in perfect harmony with heaven and earth. The entire tribe appeared before his mind’s eye.

Night’s darkness could not hinder him at all. With awe-inspiring might, Ye Chen took the tribe firmly in hand.

It was the authority of the Dream God, wielded fully—divine power enfolding the tribe. Not even a single insect could hope to slip in unnoticed.

Ye Chen cast a great net, waiting quietly for his prey to arrive.