[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"origin-the-dragon-of-a-thousand-faces":3,"chapter-the-dragon-of-a-thousand-faces-the-dragon-of-a-thousand-faces-chapter-319":6},{"origin":4,"title":5},"chinese","The Dragon of a Thousand Faces",{"chapter":7,"nextChapterSlug":19,"prevChapterSlug":20,"totalChapters":21,"novelImage":22},{"id":8,"novel_id":9,"title":10,"slug":11,"index":12,"content":13,"wordcount":14,"created_at":15,"updated_at":15,"volume":16,"translator":17,"content_hash":18},2269965,4431,"Chapter 319: The Transformed","the-dragon-of-a-thousand-faces-chapter-319",319,"\u003Cp>These heroic souls are truly hard to wipe out completely—each has ways to interfere with the mortal world. Lex, look at yourself: hailed as the Hero of the Continent, yet you’re the only one who stubbornly follows the rules. Aren’t you ashamed?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Li En had asked Lex what it was like when he was possessed.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It was roughly a half-dream, half-awake state—thoughts stalled, leaving only a thin sense of self and instinct, like a server in divine slumber, retaining only basic responsive functions.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Li En estimated this was the result of “computational power (soul)” being siphoned to his side—or rather, that the complete personality of the heroic soul within the dream was the part whose computational power had been extracted from him.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But clearly, not all heroic souls were in this state.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Some entities were hard to kill off completely; to shut them down after awakening required their own willingness.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Others had their own methods to escape the constraints of this mechanism.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Of course, this was also why the mechanism was designed from the start without sealing the door completely.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Fiestrian and Kuku each have their own methods (class abilities) to directly interfere with the outside world, while the Serpent can simply leap out of the pool—only Suhl and Lex have been bound within it from start to finish. Class discrimination?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Li En thought about it—this wasn’t because these two “conventional heroic souls” were weak; they could probably crush Kuku effortlessly.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The main reason was that one was a paladin and the other a warrior—both were plain, unadorned strength, pure melee units.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In fact, Li En suspected Suhl might also have hidden abilities—paladins could manipulate radiant power too, not as “simple” as warriors. But given Suhl’s personality, even if he had extra abilities, he’d still follow the rules unless in an emergency.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Of course, Li En would never again underestimate any class path—every class was a path to heaven, each with strengths and weaknesses; how far and how strong one ultimately became depended entirely on the individual.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Before awakening “Heart’s Voice,” Fiestrian had virtually no combat capability; bards sang epic tales and fairy tales, but whenever a bard appeared in these stories, they were invariably a clown, a minor villain’s henchman, or a chronicler—combat power wasn’t tragic, it was nonexistent.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>After all, “singing to cast spells” had extremely subtle effects, offered many functions but lacked precision, and suffered from serious efficiency and stability issues.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The minotaurs had already smashed your front-line warriors, seized your priest, and torn open your mage—yet here you were, a bard, still strumming and singing? Are you cheering for the enemy?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Thus, while there were indeed strong bards, their strength rarely resembled that of a bard at all—poets wielding swords or casting spells made one question whether the bard class tradition had ever been meant to be anything but a background role, and reality matched this stereotype—even adding an extra “troublemaking” function.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Fiestrian was the most traditional bard imaginable, his ability setup entirely unrelated to combat—but once he truly grasped the power of “sound” and used it to interfere with the world, he instantly became an absurdly dangerous force.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>After communicating with him, Li En understood just how terrifying his upper limit was.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>If he truly wished, he could continuously plant “latent melodies,” spreading them to every corner of the world, then detonating them all at once to deliver a final, fatal blow to existence itself.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Matter—whether living or dead—is constantly singing. I merely learned to hear them, understand them, echo them. After we became friends, I sang with them.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This sounded deeply unnatural—and using it was even more so.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It seemed that as long as one “sang,” one could rewrite everything.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But when Li En tried to understand it through another framework, he seemed to find an answer.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Dimensional Chord Theory. If all matter in the world is composed of waves and strings vibrating at fixed frequencies, then by reading these frequencies and adjusting them, one could naturally interfere with all things.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>If the bard’s “echo” referred to this, then this power directly touched the world’s root—its upper limit was not merely high, but extraordinary.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Of course, this interference came at a cost.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Just as one wave colliding with another cancels itself out to cancel the other, if you interfere with another being’s “vibration,” your own vibration is likewise consumed in the clash.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“So I merely ‘persuade’ them to transform themselves.”\u003C\u002Fp>",736,"2026-06-19T21:45:42.084Z",1,"Qwen3-Next 80B","113deb2c8969a4f060b9491228d35162a785777eb2233546aa662cb1f204b1ac","the-dragon-of-a-thousand-faces-chapter-320","the-dragon-of-a-thousand-faces-chapter-318",362,"https:\u002F\u002Fnovelzhen.com\u002Fimages\u002Fcovers\u002Fthe-dragon-of-a-thousand-faces-cover.jpg"]