Chapter 567: Dream Qi, Blue Sun Energy, Red Sun Energy, And Qi!

Cultivation is Creation

I sat cross legged in the cultivation chamber with the formation arrays glowing around me in silver light. The room was enormous, fifty feet from wall to wall, the walls carved out of some polished black stone that seemed to swallow up every sound that touched it, so the place was quiet no matter what I did inside.

Lu Chenyang had pulled strings to get me in here, since elder level cultivation chambers were not something a visiting Oneiric Sovereign got to use, especially not one who had only been at the sect for a week.

I wasn’t sure why he went through the trouble of arranging it for me. Part of me thought maybe he was worried I would lose control again during my experiments, which after what happened with the dream pod explosion wasn’t an unreasonable thing to worry about. But then another part of me figured maybe he just wanted to help however he could, even with his own injuries still healing up slow in the background, because that was the kind of man he seemed to be.

Either way I was grateful for the privacy it gave me. What I needed to do took a lot of concentration and space, in case something went wrong and I hurt someone who happened to be standing close, which was the last thing I wanted on top of everything else going on.

The past three days had been productive if I was being honest with myself. I had spent all my waking hours in this chamber, going through and testing how the dream qi reacted and interacted with the three energies I had managed to reclaim from my main body.

As for any information about Tian, neither Lu Chenyang nor the sect had told me much more than what I already knew from my main body anyway. Tian had left Moonhaven City to go on some journey, chasing after a treasure or maybe a herb, something that could fix his father's cultivation which had apparently been damaged somehow.

My plan, such as it was, stayed simple.

First, I needed to travel out to the Sunken Dream Palace and grab the Celestial Dream Lotus, the treasure that could heal Lu Chenyang's connection pathway for good.

Second, I had to track Tian down and put an end to this tournament one way or the other.

If I went after the lotus only after I beat Tian, I would only get one shot at it instead of as many tries as I needed, and that was not a risk worth taking.

So, before I left for the palace I figured I should go back over everything I had learned these past few days first, since understanding how these energies worked together could end up being the difference between this plan succeeding or falling apart.

I held my right hand out palm up and pushed dream qi into it, watching as the silver energy pooled there and swirled around, this being my baseline in this world, Oneiric Sovereign level dream cultivation, which was respectable enough, even powerful by most people’s standards.

Then I started pulling qi in from my main cultivation base, going through the permanent dream gate connection I had set up.

The feeling of it was different than what I was used to, the dream qi welcoming the qi in and the two of them starting to move together in intricate little patterns that I couldn’t have forced into being even if I tried my hardest.

The silver energy in my palm started changing, growing denser and more solid while somehow staying as fluid as before, and the spiritual pressure coming off my hand shot up fast, multiplying.

I closed my fist and felt the merged energy responding to what I wanted from it.

Dream qi gave me the imagination and the flexibility, the part that let me shape reality into whatever I wanted it to be, while qi brought the raw authority and the power, the fundamental force behind it all that made other energies fall in line and obey.

Put together they made something that felt qualitatively different from either one on its own.

I figured this combination would let me go toe to toe with a Lucid Lawbearer cultivator, the power increase was that significant. Of course, I had never watched a Lucid Lawbearer fight in person before so I couldn’t say for certain, but the jump in my cultivation base suggested I was at least somewhere in that ballpark.

I let the energies go and they dispersed back to where they came from, the qi flowing back through the gate into my inner world while the dream qi settled itself back down into my own dream cultivation base where it belonged.

Next test. I held my right index finger out and started writing in the air with blue sun energy mixed together with dream qi. A character to start with, the word for "Stop."

The character blazed to life with more power in it than blue sun energy alone would ever have given it, and more importantly it felt a lot more flexible too, more responsive to what I wanted.

When I pushed dream qi into the technique I found I could change its parameters as I went, alter how long it lasted, how strong it was, even what "stopping" meant in the first place. Pure blue sun calligraphy tended to be stiff and absolute, locked into one interpretation the moment I created it, but adding dream qi in gave me options to work with.

I reached out and touched the character, and it responded to my will, shifting from "stop all motion" over to "stop sound" and then to "stop time" as I fed different intentions into it through the dream qi part of the mix.

Good, that was good. This meant I would be able to adapt my techniques on the fly during an actual fight if I needed to.

I dismissed the floating character and nodded to myself, satisfied. Two down, one left to go.

Red sun energy had given me the interesting reactions out of all three when mixed with dream qi, and I had spent more time testing that particular combination than any of the others because the results were so unusual, and a little dangerous too if I was not careful with it.

I started to channel red sun energy through my body, watching every part of the process closely as I went. Red sun energy was by nature, domineering, it wanted to devour anything it touched and turn weaker energies into more of itself, so combining it with dream qi required…

A knock came from the door, echoing through the chamber.

I cut off the red sun energy before it could even fully form, no reason to take a risk like that with someone waiting outside. I got up off the floor from my meditation position, stretching out a little since three days of nonstop cultivation had left me stiff.

I walked over to the door and opened it up.

Zhang Yun was standing there, the young inner disciple who had watched over me during my first attunement session. He bowed politely at me, though I caught his eyes flicking past me into the chamber for a second, checking to make sure I hadn’t blown anything else up during my experiments this time.

"Senior Hou," he said. "Elder Lu Chenyang asked me to let you know the farewell ceremony is ready now. The sect leadership and the disciples are all gathered in the eastern courtyard waiting."

I held back a sigh. I had told Lu Chenyang and the other elders more than once that this ceremony was unnecessary, I was not some honored guest who deserved formal recognition from anybody. But they had insisted anyway, and pushing back on it further would have been rude at that point.

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"Thank you, Zhang Yun," I said. "I'll be there."

He bowed again and headed off. I turned back around to look at the cultivation chamber one more time, taking in the space that had served me so well these past few days, the formation arrays still glowing soft, waiting for whoever the next cultivator would be to come use this room after me.

I gathered up my few belongings, which was the clothes Lu Chenyang had given me, and headed out the door.

***

Walking through the Slumbering Scholars Sect gave me time to think about why they were making such a big production out of my leaving in the first place.

The sect elders probably wanted a close relationship with a young genius who had reached Oneiric Sovereign so fast, which made political sense if I thought about it from their angle. Plus, that spectacle with the dream pod explosion had clearly left an impression on them, destroying an elder level cultivation facility and then walking away unharmed afterward made it seem like I had access to powers they didn’t understand or know how to deal with.

They had even offered me elder status, inviting me to join the sect, and I had politely turned it down. As much as I appreciated how the Slumbering Scholars approached cultivation, I couldn’t commit myself to staying in one place right now. I had a friend who needed healing and a tournament I still needed to win, no time to settle down even somewhere as nice as this.

When I got to the eastern courtyard I found it was more crowded than I had expected it to be.

Disciples filled up the space, two hundred of them standing in neat rows. The inner disciples wore deep blue robes with silver trim on them while the outer disciples wore simpler versions without any of the decoration added in. They all stood at attention as I walked in, their expressions ranging anywhere from curious to respectful to envious depending on who I looked at.

There was a raised platform set up at the far end of the courtyard where the senior leadership of the sect was waiting for me.

Lu Chenyang stood at the center, still looking pale but better than when I had first shown up here. Elder Mei Yunxiao was there too, the white-haired woman who had confronted me at the gate that first day, and Elder Wan Shuhua stood nearby with a smile on her face. There were other elders that I recognized from dinners and conversations over the past few days. As for the Sect Master, word was he was away at some scholars retreat and wouldn’t be back for this.

"Senior Hou Hongyun," Lu Chenyang called out. "Please, join us up here."

I walked forward through the crowd of disciples as they parted to let me through.

"That’s him? He looks so young."

"I heard he destroyed pod seventeen, just walked out of the explosion like nothing even happened."

"Elder Lu vouches for him personally, that has to mean something."

"Did you see his spiritual pressure during the breakthrough? Even Elder Mei looked impressed by it."

I made it up to the platform and climbed the steps. Lu Chenyang gestured for me to come stand beside him, facing out toward all the assembled disciples below us.

"Disciples of the Slumbering Scholars Sect," Lu Chenyang began. "We gather here today to honor a guest who has spent these past days among us. Hou Hongyun came to our sect to check up on my health and to seek out knowledge of dream cultivation, and in the short time he has been here, he has shown exceptional talent and character to all of us."

This was shaping up to be a longer speech than I had been hoping for.

Lu Chenyang kept going. "His advancement from Dream Architect all the way to Oneiric Sovereign in a matter of days represents the dedicated cultivation that our sect values. But more than his speed of advancement, I have been impressed by his genuine curiosity about dream cultivation theory and his willingness to engage with our research here."

Elder Wan Shuhua stepped forward at that point. "I had the privilege of dining with young Hou and discussing cultivation philosophy with him directly. He showed remarkable wisdom for someone his age, asking questions that showed a deep understanding of the principles behind our techniques. Too many young cultivators these days only focus on power, but Hou understands that true mastery requires comprehension as well."

She turned and addressed me directly after that. "You mentioned you are searching for something important. I hope you find what you are looking for, and that you remember the Slumbering Scholars Sect fondly when you do. Our doors will remain open to you whenever you need them."

"Thank you, Elder Wan," I said, bowing to her. "I've learned more in these few days than I could have ever imagined learning. Your hospitality and your teaching have been invaluable to me."

Elder Mei Yunxiao spoke up next, her tone more serious than the others had been. "When you first arrived at our gates, I must admit I was suspicious of you. A young cultivator showing up unexpectedly, asking for entry and asking about Elder Lu, my role is to protect this sect and I took that role, so I hope you did not take any of it personally back then."

She paused for a second and I thought I caught the hint of a smile on her face. "You have proven those initial suspicions of mine wrong since then. Elder Lu's trust in you was well placed after all. I offer my apologies for how harsh your reception was."

"No apologies necessary," I told her. "You were protecting your sect, that is what you should have been doing in that situation."

Song Xu stepped forward out of the crowd of inner disciples then. The young woman who had been working the monitoring desk when my pod exploded bowed deeply toward me.

"Senior Hou, on behalf of all the inner disciples I want to thank you for your patience with our questions about cultivation. Several of us have been stuck on bottlenecks for a while now, and your perspective helped us understand our problems in a different way than before."

That part was true. During my three days of experimenting, I had taken breaks to eat and socialize with the sect's disciples here and there, and a lot of them had come to me asking about cultivation challenges they were dealing with, and I had done my best to help where I could. It wasn’t anything special on my part, sharing some observations and suggesting they look at their problems from a different angle than what they were used to.

"I'm glad I could help," I said. "All of you are dedicated cultivators, and the Slumbering Scholars Sect is lucky to have such promising disciples among its ranks."

One of the outer disciples then, a nervous looking young man named Liu Pin, raised his hand hesitantly. Lu Chenyang nodded to give him permission to go ahead and speak.

"Senior Hou, is it true that you learned dream gate creation in less than a week?"

I had to think about how to answer that one. The gate I had created led back to my inner world, which was not dream gate creation by their definition, but I had learned the theoretical framework that Lu Chenyang taught me, and with Azure's help I was confident I could pull it off if it came down to it.

"Elder Lu is an exceptional teacher," I said carefully, choosing my words. "He explained the principles clearly and I was fortunate enough to understand them. But understanding the theory and mastering the practical application of it are two different things, and I still have a lot left to learn."

Another disciple called out from somewhere in the crowd. "What’s your secret to advancing so fast?"

That was a harder question to answer. I couldn’t explain to a courtyard full of people that I was a wisp of consciousness from another cultivator living in a different world, fighting in a tournament that existed outside of this reality.

"Necessity," I said after a moment. "I have urgent reasons for needing to grow stronger. When cultivation becomes a matter of life and death for people you care about, you find motivation in yourself that you didn’t even know was there before."

That seemed to land well with the disciples and several of them nodded thoughtfully at what I had said.

Feng Shan, one of the Dream Architects I had shared meals with during my stay, spoke up next. "Will you come back to visit the sect again? After you've finished whatever mission it is you're on?"

"I hope so," I said. "The Slumbering Scholars Sect feels like a place where I could learn a great deal more if I had the time. If circumstances allow for it, I would like to come back here someday."

Lu Chenyang raised his hand for everyone’s attention at that point. "We have prepared a modest gift for Senior Hou to take with him on his journey."

One of the outer disciples came forward carrying a wooden box that had silver formations inlaid into the surface of it. Lu Chenyang opened the box up to reveal three jade slips sitting inside along with a small pouch.

"The first jade slip contains detailed maps of the northern territories, the area you'll be traveling through," Lu Chenyang explained to me. "The second slip holds emergency communication talismans keyed to our sect. If you find yourself in danger out there, activate one of them and we will send assistance if it’s possible for us to reach you."

He picked up the third slip next. "This final slip contains research notes I have personally compiled over the years on dream cultivation theory. Consider it supplementary reading material for your continued studies going forward."

"Elder Lu, this is too generous," I protested, even though I had a feeling it wouldn’t do much good.

"Nonsense," he replied firmly, cutting me off. "You are a promising young cultivator with a good heart, these gifts are an investment in your future, and a hope on my part that you will remember the Slumbering Scholars Sect with fondness no matter where your path takes you."

He picked up the small pouch then. "This contains one hundred high grade spirit stones inside it. I know you already declined our offer of formal compensation earlier, but please accept this much at least, your journey is going to require resources along the way."

I wanted to refuse the gift but the look on Lu Chenyang's face told me that would insult him at this point. He needed to give me something back, needed to feel like he was the one helping for once instead of just being helped.

"Thank you," I said, accepting the box from him. "I will treasure these gifts and use them wisely, I promise."

Elder Wan Shuhua clapped her hands together happily at that. "Now then, let’s not send our young friend off with only serious words. Zhang Yun, have the kitchen staff brought the refreshments out?"

"Yes, Elder Wan," Zhang Yun called back from somewhere near the edge of the courtyard. "They're ready to go."