"You've worked hard, Liu Jianxin—or should I say, Liu Jianxin. From this moment on, in this filthy, rotten Jianghu, you've been playing the Hero your heart truly yearned to be."
"I can imagine that the other you has suffered a lot of blows in real life…"
"Now it's time for us to go save him."
Liu Jianxin grew even more confused. He looked at the kneeling crowd of heroes and realized who the newcomer was. At the same time, he also figured something out…
This person's voice was exactly the same as the Spirit's.
In that instant, everything made sense to him.
"You… you… so you're actually Wen Xishu? You're the Spirit that's been in my head?"
The truth was a bit overwhelming. The sheer flood of information left Liu Jianxin at a loss.
He really couldn't understand why Wen Xishu would do all this.
Wen Xishu also knew that his appearance had crashed Liu Jianxin's brain.
The great demon everyone feared turned out to be the Spirit in his mind; along the way, he'd kept helping him kill off the Martial Arts fiends under his own command—how was he supposed to make sense of that?
Wen Xishu pondered for a moment, then decided to tell Liu Jianxin the truth.
"I'm the one who's been forcing you to go around playing the Hero. I'm the one who gave you strength at the critical moments along the way. I'm the one who made you give up every other Martial Arts and forcibly awaken the Original Heart Sword Technique."
"Every crisis you faced at a crucial juncture was arranged by me."
"Including you standing here on this platform right now, fighting for the so-called righteous side of the martial world—that's my script too."
Right now, Wen Xishu really did look like some final-boss villain.
And so strong it made people despair.
He hadn't used a single move or technique; just with words, with his voice, with the raw facts, he utterly defeated Liu Jianxin.
So I really was just a puppet?
I'd been resisting this whole "playing Jianghu house" nonsense all the way, only to end up as part of someone else's Jianghu house game.
Facing the Mighty Vajra Palm, facing the Demonic Zither of Heaven and Hell… he had never once let go of the sword in his hand. But at this moment, facing Wen Xishu, he felt that boundless fatigue and despair surge up again.
How is a marionette supposed to defeat the one pulling its strings?
If the other person's Martial Arts isn't traditional Martial Arts at all, but the power to control fate itself, then how do you fight that?
The despair on Liu Jianxin's face was undisguised.
Wen Xishu noticed this and thought, crap, I might have overdone the posturing and made him completely misunderstand.
Wen Xishu smiled.
"But I didn't do it to toy with you."
Liu Jianxin lifted his head and looked at Wen Xishu in confusion.
"You had so many people cooperate just to put on a show with me, and that's not toying with me? Heh… The gap between your strength and mine is astronomical. Now everyone in this Jianghu is trapped here…"
"I'm the only chance to turn the tables, but now you show up and tell me that all of my power comes from you."
Liu Jianxin couldn't go on.
It was a powerless feeling of being betrayed by his own cheat, and all his confidence crumbled to dust.
So it's not that I became strong because I have a heroic heart.
It's that someone made me strong and had me play the guy with the heroic heart. This was all just a joke.
Wen Xishu could more or less foresee that this might happen.
After all, he'd been playing the role of Liu Jianxin's cheat. The moment he laid his cards on the table, there was a good chance Liu Jianxin's Dao heart would shatter.
"I guided you, and I forced you to make choices. I know what you're thinking right now: if I'd known, I wouldn't have tried to be some great Hero. It's so hard, so painful, and I still ended up looking like a clown."
"All the highlights of your journey turn out, at this moment, to have been prepared by someone else in advance. But what if I told you…"
"That once upon a time, you already reached the top through schemes and betrayal, selling out your friends for glory?"
"If I wanted to kill you, it would be easy. Do you really think you're worth all this effort just to toy with?"
An invisible wall of force cut off everyone who tried to eavesdrop on their conversation.
Though the gathered heroes and the Martial Arts Alliance fiends were all present, no one knew what the great demon Wen Xishu and the martial world's last hope, Liu Jianxin, were saying to each other.
Wen Xishu's strength was clearly a whole tier above everyone else's. Probably only that Ye Jianxin could match him—or perhaps… even surpass him by a head.
Wen Xishu said:
"Next, I'm going to tell you what really happened."
"I'm actually not the Martial Arts Alliance Hierarch—you are."
"Originally, I was the one who should've been challenging this Jianghu. In this Jianghu game, if I chose to do evil, relying on betrayal and scheming, I could have lived very well. I could have completed the challenge meant for me. Maybe when I went back to the Bunker in the future, I could even learn a set of Martial Arts, or a kind of power outside the usual sequence systems."
"But if I did that, I would never be able to raise the Original Heart Sword Technique's Level high enough to uncover this game's hidden storyline."
"I'm sure you've felt it too: in the process of upgrading the Original Heart Sword Technique, you see all kinds of hallucinations."
"In truth, this Jianghu is just a shell. The real stage of the story is in another world—right there in the visions you saw."
"Let's call that world the True Realm, and this one the Native Realm. In the True Realm, there's technology you can't even begin to comprehend. In that world, the real you has already experienced betrayal, scheming, and all the petty, grubby struggles."
"Just like how, in this Native Realm, you were once a Young Hero full of lofty ambitions and a heroic heart. You swore to become a great Hero… but in the end, you didn't become one."
"I can imagine that the you in the True Realm is probably doing pretty well right now. Unlike all those miserable souls I tried to redeem in the past, you might actually be quite successful. Because in your childhood, you had a great father—just like how this Jianghu in the Native Realm once had a great Hero named Ye Jianxin."