Chapter 577: Cultivation is Creation - Chapter 572: Aftermath

I stood there looking down at Sun Tao, who was lying unconscious in the crater that his own body had made when it hit the ground, his chest was rising and falling slowly which meant he was still alive at least. The fight had only lasted maybe two seconds from start to finish which was honestly embarrassing for him considering how confident he had been walking into this.

The other cultivators were all staring at me and each of them had a different expression on their face. Pan Jun, the nervous one, looked relieved, making it obvious he was just glad it had been me that Sun Tao had gone after instead of him. Xu Feng, the earth cultivator, had this calm thoughtful look on his round face and his eyes were following the movement of my right arm as the vines pulled back into my skin and disappeared. Xie Ling didn’t show anything at all on her face, her pale eyes were watching my arm though, tracking where the vines went as they retracted.

I let the transformation finish fading. The red sun energy and the dream qi pulled apart from each other and flowed back into the separate channels that I had spent the past week carefully building inside this body. My arm looked like a regular arm again, just normal skin and bone, even though I could still feel the burning heat left over from the technique working its way through my meridians.

Song Wei walked over to the edge of the crater and crouched down next to Sun Tao. His one hand moved through a complicated pattern as he sent his spiritual sense through Sun Tao’s body in waves, the pressure of a real Lucid Lawbearer doing an inspection made the air around all of us feel heavier and more dense than it normally did.

“He’s badly injured,” Song Wei said out loud, he was just stating a fact without any judgment in his voice at all. “Interesting, his spiritual foundation is intact but completely drained.”

I didn’t say anything back. What was I supposed to say to that.

It hadn’t been on purpose that the red sun energy had pulled so much from Sun Tao’s cultivation base, but I also hadn’t put any real effort into stopping it either. Sun Tao had threatened me and Pan Jun, he had been planning to cripple us just to prove that he could, and I had felt the cruelty underneath his spiritual pressure when he had been thinking about doing permanent damage to someone who couldn’t stop him.

Still, draining someone’s dream qi completely wasn’t a small thing. It would take Sun Tao weeks just to get back to a basic level of spiritual energy, and months before his cultivation stage recovered to where it had been before this. And that was assuming there was no permanent damage to his spiritual foundation, which was not something that could be guaranteed given how aggressive the energy drain had been during those few seconds.

The reason I had walked to Stillwater City instead of using faster travel methods was because I had been using that time to prepare myself for the fights I knew were coming. The expedition to the Sunken Dream Palace wasn’t going to be easy and I had wanted to make sure I could use everything available to me when the time came.

The problem I had was actually straightforward even if solving it wasn’t. Most of the red sun runes that I used regularly were inscribed on my physical body back in the cultivation world, but the body I was using now as Hou Hongyun didn’t have any of those inscriptions. When I had first arrived in the Dream World after reincarnating, I had only been able to use my natural abilities and whatever I could put together using dream qi by itself.

The permanent channel I had established between this body and my inner world had changed that situation somewhat. Through that connection I could draw on the runes that existed inside my inner world. The array I had set up around the Genesis Seed gave me access to several useful techniques that I wouldn’t have otherwise.

The Fundamental Rune formed the base that everything else built on, it anchored my ability to manipulate red sun energy. The Worldroot Conduit let me channel elemental energy more efficiently than I could without it. The Shroud let me hide my energy signature when I needed to go unnoticed. Soul Ward protected me from attacks aimed at my soul. Hawk Eye made my perception sharper. Leaf Storm gave me options for attacking at range.

All of those were valuable and having access to them through the channel made me significantly more capable than a normal Oneiric Sovereign would be in the same situation. But the runes that were actually most useful for direct combat weren’t among them. Blink Step for rapid short distance movement, Explosive Seed for plant-based explosive attacks, Titan’s Crest for enhancing physical strength, Scorpion Rune for surprising opponents, all of those were inscribed on my actual physical body in the cultivation world and not in my inner world at all.

So during that week of travel, I had recreated those inscriptions on this body using dream qi.

It had been an interesting problem to work through. Dream qi operates on different principles than the red sun energy I normally use when I’m doing rune work. Red sun energy is forceful and dominating, it pushes reality into the shape the rune demands. Dream qi is more fluid than that, it works more through belief and imagination shaping what is possible rather than brute force.

But when the two energies were combined, they produced something that neither one could do alone.

The dream qi created the framework and the belief that the runes could actually exist on this body, while the red sun energy coming through the channel from my inner world gave them the actual power they needed to function. It took three full days of careful work before the first rune was stable enough to hold, but once I understood the technique, the rest of them came together much faster.

By the time I reached Stillwater City, I had access to my full set of combat techniques again. Which explained everything that had happened after Song Wei gave the signal for the fight to start.

Sun Tao had moved first, I had expected that. Fire cultivators prefer to attack immediately and aggressively, and a Late Stage Oneiric Sovereign has enough speed to make those opening attacks genuinely dangerous. He had vanished in a burst of fire using some movement technique to close the distance between us in less than a second.

His fist had been covered in those red flames, and he had put what felt like the majority of his power behind the strike which was aimed directly at my head. The spiritual pressure behind that attack was impressive and if it had actually connected, it probably would have been fatal for most Oneiric Sovereigns.

But I had already activated Blink Step before his fist arrived.

One moment I was standing in the path of his punch and the next I was thirty meters away watching his devastating attack hit nothing but empty air. The force of his own attack had carried him forward into the ground and created that first crater.

I had used the moment when he was off balance and vulnerable to activate the transformation technique.

Physical transformation wasn’t something I had much practice with, most of my red sun techniques were focused on creating external effects or enhancing my body as it already was rather than actually changing its structure. But the combination of red sun energy and dream qi together made it easier than it should have been by any normal standard.

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Dream qi is well suited for imagining possibilities and making things that shouldn’t be real seem like they are. I had imagined my right arm transforming into something more primal and more dangerous, the dream qi created the framework that made that belief possible, and then the red sun energy coming through from my inner world provided the actual power to turn that belief into a physical reality.

The result had been those massive vine-like appendages covered in thorns, they had been strong enough to slam Sun Tao across the entire training ground and then drive him into the earth hard enough to leave a crater.

The transformation had felt natural while it was happening, like my arm had always been capable of doing that and the ability had just been sitting there unused, which was probably the dream qi’s influence making the wrongness of it seem normal and unremarkable.

Complete transformation was still not something I was capable of doing.

As much as transforming into something large and powerful would have been useful and impressive, that level of change required more skill and control than I currently had. But partial transformations like what I had done with my arm worked well enough for practical purposes.

I had made the choice to end the fight as quickly and decisively as possible for several reasons that all made sense to me.

First, in expeditions like this one the cultivators who appear weakest end up doing the worst jobs. They carry the equipment, they stand the extra watches while others rest, they get sent into the dangerous spots first because nobody minds much if they don’t come back. I had absolutely no intention of being in that position and it was much easier to avoid it by establishing my strength now at the beginning than trying to change perceptions later.

Second, winning decisively would discourage anyone else from trying the same thing that Sun Tao had tried. He had attacked me because he had looked at me and assumed I was weak and therefore a safe target. If I had barely managed to beat him or had struggled during the fight, other people might have reached the same conclusion he had and decided to test it for themselves.

An overwhelming and fast victory sent a message that was hard to misinterpret.

But I had also been careful not to show more than a certain amount of strength.

Demonstrating power at the level of a full Lucid Lawbearer would have made Song Wei uncomfortable with having me around. The leader of an expedition needs to feel like he is the most capable person present and that he has the ability to control whatever situation might develop. Adding another Lucid Lawbearer to the group would have shifted that dynamic and made him suspicious of me.

That probably also explained why there were no other Lucid Lawbearers present despite the fact that the Sunken Dream Palace was one of the most dangerous locations in the entire Dream World. Song Wei wanted to be in complete command and that meant only bringing Oneiric Sovereigns who would naturally defer to his greater strength and authority.

So I had performed at the level of a Half-Step Lucid Lawbearer. Powerful enough to be useful to the expedition, powerful enough that nobody would assign me to carry boxes and stand extra watches, but not so powerful that Song Wei would feel like I was a threat to his control. It was a careful line to walk but I thought I had managed to land on the right side of it.

“I… I didn’t realize demonic cultivators would be joining the expedition,” Pan Jun said, and even though the words were directed at Song Wei, his eyes kept sliding back to my arm.

His concern made sense to me. Demonic cultivation had a terrible reputation in the Dream World just as it did in the cultivation world. People who drew their power from nightmares and fear were considered dangerous and unpredictable and likely to eventually turn on the people they’re supposed to be working with. The vine transformation I had used probably looked like a demonic technique to anyone who didn’t have knowledge of red sun energy and how it actually worked.

But I had done research on Song Wei before I ever walked into that tavern.

The previous expedition he had led to the Sunken Dream Palace forty years ago had included demonic cultivators among its members, which told me that Song Wei valued results and cared much less about whether the methods used to get those results were considered orthodox or not.

Having different types of cultivators in an expedition group also improved the odds of success in a dangerous and unpredictable environment. Different specializations meant different approaches available when problems came up, different techniques to handle situations that a more narrowly composed group couldn’t handle at all. A group made entirely of fire cultivators or entirely of water cultivators would run into serious trouble the moment they encountered something their element couldn’t deal with. A mixed group had options.

That was clearly the reasoning behind how Song Wei had put this group together.

Sun Tao had used fire techniques. Xu Feng was obviously earth based. Xie Ling’s ice cultivation had been demonstrated pretty clearly when she froze that other cultivator. Pan Jun appeared to use some shadow or illusion method based on how he had been trying to conceal himself earlier. And I brought plant manipulation plus everything else I was capable of.

My reading of the situation was confirmed when Song Wei turned to respond to Pan Jun’s comment, his face showing no concern whatsoever about the question that had been asked.

“Everyone is welcome on this expedition,” Song Wei said simply. “Orthodox cultivation, demonic cultivation, it makes no difference to me. What matters is competence and following orders when the situation requires it.”

I hadn’t let myself smile at that, but I had wanted to. When I had walked into the tavern earlier, I had allowed a small amount of red sun energy to leak out into my aura, not enough that most cultivators would have noticed it, but enough that a Lucid Lawbearer who was monitoring everyone who came through the door with his spiritual sense would have picked up on it.

So Song Wei had recognized that I wasn’t a typical Oneiric Sovereign. He had seen something that interested him enough to want me included, and after I had taken my seat, I had felt the formations around the tavern activate and seal it off from anyone else trying to enter.

There had probably been other cultivators hoping to join, maybe some of them even more conventionally powerful than the people who had been selected, but Song Wei had gotten the specific group composition he was looking for and had closed things off once he had it.

All of us here had met whatever requirements he had been using. We were each valuable in our own way.

Song Wei’s hand began moving through complicated patterns above Sun Tao’s body. Spiritual energy came from his fingertips in visible streams of silver light, and the energy sank down into Sun Tao’s chest and spread through his meridians. Sun Tao’s breathing became deeper and steadier, color came back to his face, and the worst of his internal injuries began closing themselves up under Song Wei’s direction.

But Song Wei stopped after about thirty seconds, pulling his hand back. Sun Tao was stable and no longer in danger of dying from his injuries, but he was still unconscious and still weakened. Then Song Wei reached down and pulled the storage ring off of Sun Tao’s finger.

“What are you doing?” Xu Feng asked, and there was surprise in his voice along with disapproval.

Song Wei held the ring up and looked at it briefly before putting it into his own robes. “I said I would heal him. I didn’t say I would do it without compensation.”

“But…” Xu Feng stopped, looking uncomfortable. “Will he be alright being left here like this?”

Song Wei stood up and brushed dust from his robes with his one hand. “That is not our concern. He challenged another cultivator and he lost. The consequences belong to him. If someone finds him before anything dangerous comes along then he will be fortunate, and if not…” He shrugged and left the rest of it unsaid.

Nobody had anything to add after that.

The silence went on for several seconds. Pan Jun looked relieved but guilty at the same time. Xu Feng looked troubled but didn’t push it further. Xie Ling’s expression hadn’t changed at all, like she had seen situations like this so many times that they no longer registered as anything worth reacting to.

Strength determined how these situations resolved, it always had and it always would. Sun Tao had been strong enough to bully the people below him but not strong enough to back up the challenge he had thrown at me, so now he would lie in that crater while we took his resources and moved on without him. This was the way of any cultivation world.

Song Wei turned to face all of us, his spiritual pressure expanding just slightly to pull everyone’s attention back to him. “Now that this matter is finished, we can focus on the actual reason we are all here.” He gestured toward the exit of the training ground. “The Sunken Dream Palace is waiting. We leave now.”