Chapter 559: It Was Hou! |
The Slumbering Scholars Sect was built across three mountain peaks in the eastern provinces of the Dream World. It specialized in theoretical dream cultivation and historical research, which meant that most of the disciples spent their time in libraries rather than in training grounds.
The main courtyard reflected that, even at the early hour, it was busy with disciples in dark blue carrying scrolls and jade slips as they went about their academic business. Near the central fountain, there was a group of younger students in a circle, practicing dream construct formations, and their creations kept flickering in and out of existence as they struggled with the basics. The instructor stood nearby, watching them with frustration.
"No, no, you need to believe in the permanence," he called out to one struggling student, "the construct knows when you doubt it, that's why it keeps fading."
Over by the eastern pavilion, two older disciples were in the middle of a heated argument about the interpretation of some historical text and their voices carried across the courtyard, both of them convinced they were correct despite the fact that their interpretations contradicted each other.
"The Eternal Dreamer states that consciousness precedes form—"
"You're misreading the context, he was speaking metaphorically about—"
They were going to be at it for hours because the Slumbering Scholars Sect attracted a type of person, the kind who enjoyed thinking about the nature of thinking, analyzing reality through layers of philosophy, and then arguing about it with other people who enjoyed the same thing.
The dream walking facility was in the northern building.
From the outside, it looked like a normal meditation hall, but inside it was a different situation.
When a cultivator entered dream walking meditation, the pod's protective formations activated on their own.
The formations did many things at once, they shielded the physical body from any external interference while the cultivator's consciousness was traveling in other realms, they monitored vital signs and spiritual fluctuations, they maintained the environmental conditions for sessions that could last a long time, and most importantly, they were capable of emergency intervention if something went wrong during a walk.
Dream walking was dangerous and everyone in the field knew it.
When consciousness left the body to go exploring other realms, the physical form was left vulnerable, and without protection, a cultivator might come back to find that their body had been damaged or worse. The pods existed to prevent that from happening, they were expensive to construct and maintain, which was why only established sects like the Slumbering Scholars could afford to have as many as fifty of them.
On this particular morning, three junior disciples were on watch duty.
It was a boring job where all they had to do was monitor the pods and respond to alerts if any came through. Usually, dream walking sessions ran for hours without anything happening, but today was different.
A red flash came from pod seventeen.
A young woman, Song Xu, noticed it first because she had been reading a cultivation manual when the light caught her attention.
"Senior Brother Wang," she called out, "pod seventeen is showing red."
Wang Tao looked up from his own book with a frown because red meant emergency, it meant something had gone wrong during the dream walk. He moved over to check the monitoring formations around the pod.
"Spiritual backlash," he said after examining them for a moment, "damage to the projection, the cultivator is being forcibly ejected from whatever realm they were in."
The third disciple on duty, a nervous young man named Liu Pin, came over to join them, "should we prepare medical intervention?"
"Check the registry first," Wang Tao said, "see who's assigned to that pod."
Liu Pin activated the jade slip that tracked pod assignments and his face went pale when he read what it said.
"It's Elder Lu Chenyang," he said.
The atmosphere in the room changed because Elder Lu was one of the most respected members of the sect, and was an Oneiric Sovereign cultivator. If something had damaged him badly enough to trigger an emergency ejection, then whatever had happened to him out there must have been catastrophic.
"Alert the medical hall," Wang Tao ordered, "and notify the other elders now, this is serious."
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Song Xu ran for the door while Liu Pin activated the emergency communication talismans.
Wang Tao stayed by the pod, watching as the ejection sequence ran to pull Elder Lu's consciousness back from wherever it had been.
Elder Lu's physical form convulsed, and his eyes snapped open, but they were unfocused and confused looking. Blood was trickling from his nose and from the corners of his mouth. His hands grabbed at his chest like he was trying to hold something inside that was trying to get out.
The pod burst open with a flash of silver light and he came stumbling out. His legs were unable to support his own weight; he fell to his knees and started coughing up blood as his spiritual pressure flickered in an erratic way.
Wang Tao moved to help support him, but Elder Lu waved him off weakly and tried to stand on his own. He managed to get one foot under himself before collapsing again.
The disciples from the medical hall arrived and started examining Elder Lu, the expressions on their faces grew more concerned the longer they looked.
"His spiritual foundation is cracked," one of them said, "multiple fractures throughout the primary channels, this isn't cultivation deviation, something attacked his consciousness."
Elder Lu's eyes managed to focus, he looked around the room like he was trying to remember where he was and his gaze settled on Wang Tao. He tried to say something, but nothing came out except a weak croak.
He tried again, forcing sound through whatever was left of his damaged spiritual pathways.
"Hou..." was all he managed to say.
Wang Tao leaned in closer, to see if he could hear better what the elder was saying.
"Elder Lu, what happened to you, who did this?"
The old man's eyes were wide, trying to convey something important. He gathered whatever strength he had left for one attempt.
"Hou... finish..."
And then his eyes rolled back, and he went limp as his spiritual pressure dropped to nothing. His body had entered protective shutdown. The medical disciples moved, getting him onto a stretcher.
"Take him to the healing pods now," the lead medic ordered, "his condition is critical, if we don't stabilize his spiritual foundation within the next few hours, the damage could become permanent."
They carried Elder Lu out of the chamber while Wang Tao stood there frozen, turning the elder's last words over in his mind again and again. The name stuck with him, Hou, Elder Lu had used whatever strength he had left to say that name before losing consciousness.
Song Xu came back through the door out of breath from alerting the other elders, she stopped when she saw the blood on the floor.
"What happened?" she asked.
"He's hurt," Wang Tao said, "they took him to intensive healing, but before he passed out, he said a name, Hou."
"Hou?" Song Xu repeated, "is that who attacked him?"
Wang Tao didn't know the answer to that because Elder Lu's tone had been urgent but not accusatory. He could have been warning them about someone, or asking them to find someone, or something else entirely. Without more context, the meaning wasn't clear enough to say for certain.
But other disciples had heard it, so word moved through the facility and then throughout the sect. Elder Lu Chenyang, one of their most powerful members, had come back from a dream walking expedition severely injured, and the last word he had spoken before losing consciousness was a name – Hou.
One person heard the news and reacted differently from everyone else.
Xiao Wen had been Elder Lu's disciple for over a hundred years.
At that time, Xiao Wen had been a promising Dream Disciple, and Elder Lu had taken a personal interest in his development. The old man provided guidance and resources that went far beyond what most inner disciples ever received, so Xiao Wen's progress to Dream Architect was directly tied to his master’s investment in him. Which was why he loved Elder Lu like a father, if not more than a father. And now someone had hurt him.
Xiao Wen stood in the healing ward looking through the transparent wall as medical specialists worked on Elder Lu's unconscious form in a healing pod. The pod was larger than the dream walking pods and was filled with medicinal solutions and layers of restorative formations. Elder Lu floated in the center of it with his face peaceful but a deathly pale color that was difficult to look at.
The lead healer, Elder Fang, came out of the treatment room and her expression was grave.
"How is he?" Xiao Wen asked.
"Stable for now," Elder Fang said, "but the damage is extensive, his spiritual projection was torn apart by something, whatever attacked him was designed to harm dream cultivators."
"A Nightmare Enforcer?" Xiao Wen asked.
"I suspect so," Elder Fang said with a sigh, "this is one of the worst cases of Nightmare Enforcer damage I have ever witnessed."
"Will he recover?"
"His physical body will be fine," Elder Fang said, "but the spiritual damage is harder to estimate. We won't know the full extent of it until he wakes up, and we can properly assess him, for all we know, he may never be able to dream walk again."
"Never dream walk again," Xiao Wen repeated and his hands had clenched into fists at his sides, "all because of that Hou, do you know who that is?"
Elder Fang's expression darkened, "we're investigating but none of the sect's records mention anyone by that name in connection with Elder Lu's recent activities, and he didn't file a formal expedition report for this latest dream walk so we don't even know which realm he visited."
That was concerning because Elder Lu was meticulous about documentation and for him to skip reporting procedures meant either the circumstances had been urgent or the expedition had been kept secret for some reason.
"When he wakes up," Xiao Wen said, "I want to be notified, regardless of what time it is."
"Of course," Elder Fang replied, "you're listed as his primary contact anyway."
Xiao Wen left the healing ward and went back to his quarters.
The small room felt empty and cold. He sat down at his desk and thought about what had happened to his master.
Someone had done this to Elder Lu, someone had damaged his master so severely that full recovery wasn't even guaranteed, that person needed to answer for what they had done, and the only name he had was Hou. But Xiao Wen was realistic enough to be honest to himself about his own current capabilities.
He was a Dream Architect, which was respectable for his age, but nowhere near the power level that would be required to challenge whoever had been capable of crippling an Oneiric Sovereign.
If this Hou person could do that to Elder Lu, then they were at least the same cultivation realm or possibly higher.
Direct confrontation right now would end with him dying pointlessly.
He needed to cultivate and grow stronger.
At the very least, he needed to advance to Oneiric Sovereign.
But more likely, he would need to breakthrough to Lucid Lawbearer.
Whatever the cultivation realm required, he would reach it.
And then he would face this Hou person and make them pay for what they had done to his master.
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