"Damn it—"
Li Boda sat up abruptly from the bed, his face pale as a sheet. Beads of sweat the size of soybeans drenched his forehead, and even his clothes were soaked through with perspiration.
He panted heavily, his right hand instinctively clutching at his chest as he fumbled around for a moment.
"Huh? I'm fine?" Li Boda looked down at his chest, finding it completely intact, without the slightest trace of a wound.
Only then did he let out a sigh of relief. He cast a dazed look around and realized he was lying in his university dorm room.
"Big Bird, what are you howling about at the crack of dawn?" A chubby guy in the room woke up, complaining in a sleepy haze.
"Had a nightmare," Li Boda muttered offhandedly, though he couldn't help wondering: was it really just a dream?
It certainly felt like one. Li Boda pulled out his phone to check the time. He had simply slept through the night, and it was now the next day.
Even so, details from a mere dream ought to be hazy.
Yet Li Boda remembered many of the details from his dream with astonishing clarity.
It felt as though he had lived through the entire life of the person in that dream.
The person in the dream had a rather perfunctory name: Zhang San. From a young age, Zhang San had apprenticed under Liu Zhengfeng of the Hengshan Sect, learning a set of inner cultivation mental methods, a set of the Hengshan Sword Technique, and an unnamed set of palm techniques.
In his memories, Zhang San hadn't been particularly diligent in his martial arts training. After practicing for over a decade, he hadn't achieved much to speak of.
Later on, when Liu Zhengfeng held his golden basin hand-washing ceremony, Zhang San—as a disciple of Liu Zhengfeng of the Hengshan Sect—was pierced straight through the chest by members of the Songshan Sect.
Even now, the suffocating sensation of a sharp sword piercing his chest and shattering his heart at the moment of death still lingered in his mind.
"Was it really just a dream?" Li Boda instinctively recalled Zhang San's martial arts practice and found that many of those memories remained quite vivid.
As for the inner cultivation portion of Zhang San's martial arts, it was blurry; he seemed to have retained less than thirty percent of it. It was severely fragmented and entirely unpracticable.
The palm techniques were remembered fairly well, retaining about fifty to sixty percent. The Hengshan Sword Technique, however, was remembered much more clearly—nearly seventy to eighty percent of it remained intact.
Li Boda was baffled by how he could possibly remember the details of martial arts practiced in a dream.
True, people sometimes dreamed of becoming superheroes, martial arts masters, or immortals wielding supernatural powers.
But upon waking up, who could ever remember such extraordinary techniques with that much clarity?
And yet, right now, his mind was crammed with all this knowledge.
Could it be because I played an extra in The Smiling, Proud Wanderer last year? Li Boda couldn't help muttering to himself.
During the summer vacation of the previous year, Li Boda had returned to campus a bit early. With nothing better to do, he wandered around Hengdian, and by pure coincidence, ended up landing an extra role in the crew of The Smiling, Proud Wanderer.
He played a disciple of Liu Zhengfeng who gets killed by the Songshan Sect members during Liu Zhengfeng's golden basin hand-washing ceremony—a role so minor he probably didn't even get a clear shot of his face.
After that, Li Boda had returned to school. More than half a year had passed, and now, completely out of the blue, he had experienced such a dream: the life of a guy named Zhang San who got skewered by the Songshan Sect's swords.
The next moment, Li Boda scrambled out of bed, grabbed a pen and paper, and began writing furiously.
Dreams were elusive things. Right after waking up, the memory of them was vivid, but after a short while, they could fade away completely.
Li Boda didn't know whether the martial arts in his dream were real or fake.
Nor did he know if he would forget them soon.
To be safe, he had to write them down first.
Li Boda transcribed the Hengshan Sword Technique, which he remembered most clearly, followed by the palm techniques, and lastly the inner cultivation methods—ranking them strictly by the order of how well he remembered them.
It took him quite a while to finish writing.
Afterward, Li Boda felt a sudden urge to test things out.
Spotting a relatively straight broom in the dorm room, he picked it up and tried to execute a sword flourish just like he had in the dream.
It felt clumsy, exceptionally clumsy. There was none of the familiarity that came from actually having practiced swordplay; it was as if the dream had simply been a dream after all.
"Big Bird, what are you doing?" The chubby guy in the room frowned, watching Li Boda flailing the broom around the dorm, and couldn't help asking.
"Nothing, just checking if this broom still works."
"Are you out of your mind, Big Bird? What time is it? First you're shouting out of nowhere, and now you're playing with a broom."
"Go back to sleep." Li Boda put the broom back in its place.
"Only if I can actually fall back to sleep. I was sleeping soundly until you suddenly woke me up," the chubby guy grumbled with dissatisfaction.
"Fine, I'll go buy breakfast right now and bring you back a portion."
"Thanks, Dad." The chubby guy immediately cheered up.
Li Boda flipped him the middle finger, grabbed his meal card, and headed out.
Yet on the way to the cafeteria, Li Boda kept turning his dream over in his mind.
The dream felt far too real, as though he had truly lived through the entire life of that man named Zhang San.
The sword techniques, the palm techniques, and even the inner cultivation mental methods—he remembered a great deal of them with absolute clarity.
And that Zhang San seemed to belong to the world of The Smiling, Proud Wanderer.
Coincidentally, Li Boda had once cameoed as an extra in The Smiling, Proud Wanderer. Though that extra role had no name and no identity—merely a nameless disciple of Liu Zhengfeng—the manner of death, where that extra was struck down, matched the fate of Zhang San in the dream down to the smallest detail.
"Could this be a Golden Finger?"
"System?"
"Big Boss?"
"Dad?"
"Son?"
Li Boda muttered a flurry of names in his mind, but absolutely nothing happened.
"It still feels a bit abnormal. Yet just over half a year ago, I played an extra in The Smiling, Proud Wanderer, and today I dreamed of that extra's entire life?"
"There has to be something more to this."
"Is it because I played an extra that I dreamed of an extra's life? If I keep acting, does that mean I can keep dreaming about the lives of other people?"
"If I play Liu Zhengfeng, or even Linghu Chong, would I acquire even more martial arts, or perhaps legendary swordplay like the Dugu Nine Swords?"
The more Li Boda thought about it, the brighter his eyes shone.
At that very moment, Li Boda suddenly caught a glimpse of the path he wanted to take in the future.
To be honest, as a slacker majoring in civil engineering at a third-tier university, Li Boda felt quite lost regarding his own future.
After all, throughout college, he had spent his time either playing video games with others or reading novels, passing three-plus years in a daze without learning practically anything.
Senior year meant internships, and barring any accidents, he would end up hauling bricks on a construction site.
Now, however, an unexpected variable had appeared. He didn't want to haul bricks on a construction site anymore. He wanted to go into acting; he wanted to become an actor; he wanted to dream about more powerful figures and master greater skills.
He was going to become a martial arts master, an immortal even! He was going to live forever!