Chapter 583: Cultivation is Creation - Chapter 578: Hou Meets Tian

I stared at Tian and my chest felt tight, his eyes were wide open and filled with disbelief and pain at the same time.

The spiritual pressure that had been coming off of him from his technique earlier had faded away now, and he was just standing there with his hands hanging at his sides looking at me like he could not believe what he was seeing.

Which, from his point of view, made sense.

“Azure,” I said inside my head while keeping my face calm on the outside even though irritation was rising up in my chest, “it would have been really nice to get a warning you know, just a small heads up that Tian had passed the first trial and was fighting against our expedition members right now.”

“I apologize Master,” Azure answered right away, and there was a sheepish feeling to it, “your main body specifically told me not to tell you, he wanted it to be a surprise.”

I really wanted to pinch the bridge of my nose, but I held myself back. Yeah, that was something I would decide to do. The main body was back in the tournament arena safe and probably thought the whole situation was going to be funny. Other me was genuinely an asshole sometimes, and this was a perfect example of that.

“Of course he did,” I muttered to myself internally.

But I couldn’t afford to think about that right now because there was a much more pressing situation happening, which was Tian standing twenty feet away from me looking like he had just watched someone come back from the dead, which was what had happened from his perspective.

The last time Tian had actually seen Hou Hongyun had been months ago.

I had pushed him out of the path of a demons attack and then the things tail had launched me off the edge of a cliff and he had watched me fall down into the Thornwood Deep, which was a place that was supposed to need Lucid Lawbearer level cultivation just to survive in without dying.

So, as far as Tian had known, his best friend and sworn brother had died saving his life. And I had never once bothered to find him and let him know that I was actually alive and okay.

That was pretty terrible when I stopped and thought about it honestly.

But it wasn’t my fault either because when I had first woken up in Moon’s cave, I hadn’t had any memories of my time as Hou at all, everything had just been blank, and those memories had only started coming back recently after I merged with the memories from my main consciousness. Before that point, I had been putting all my focus into learning dream cultivation and getting ready for the expedition to the Sunken Dream Palace.

I could just lie to him. I could tell him I had no memory of who he was and play the amnesia angle to keep everything simple and uncomplicated. But I looked at his face, at his vulnerable face, like he had forgotten he was supposed to hide how he felt, and I couldn’t make myself do it.

He had believed his brother was dead for months. The very least I could do was be honest with him about what had happened, or as honest as I could actually be with someone I was going to have to fight against, eventually.

“Brother Hou,” Xie Ling’s cold voice broke through what I was thinking, she had let her hands drop to her sides and the ice constructs she had been maintaining were already starting to dissolve away, “do you know this person?”

I turned my head just slightly to look at her, she was standing still with her pale eyes moving back and forth between Tian and me, clearly trying to work out whether she needed to attack or not.

I gave a single nod. “I do.”

“Is he an enemy?” She asked it directly, without wasting any extra words on it.

I took a moment to think about that because the real answer was complicated.

Technically, yes Tian was my opponent in the tournament. But if I fought and defeated him right now, the Dream Worlds protection would be removed, and without that protection, I would lose my safety net for retrieving the Celestial Dream Lotus.

One wrong move in this nightmare-filled ruin could kill me and force me back to the Cultivation World, which would leave Lu Chenyang crippled, unable to advance his cultivation or continue dream walking ever again.

The smart and rational decision was to work alongside Tian until after I had the lotus secured. Then we could deal with the tournament situation between the two of us.

I shook my head. “He’s my brother.”

The answer made relief wash across Xie Ling’s expression, and the temperature in the air around her, which had dropped during her fight with Tian began slowly rising back to normal.

“Brother?” Pan Jun said from where he was sitting slumped against the wall, “like actual blood relation or sworn brotherhood?”

“Sworn,” I said, “we traveled together for years.”

“Oh, thank the heavens,” Xu Feng said and broke into a smile even though it clearly hurt him to do it, “I thought we were about to have another fight and I really can’t handle another fight right now, my ribs are in bad enough shape already.”

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The two of them kept making comments after that, but I stopped paying attention to them and brought my focus back to Tian. His expression had shifted away from pure shock into relief and happiness that I was actually alive, but underneath all of that was a quieter thing, a hurt that was asking without words why I had never told him.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, “after the fall, I lost all my memories, everything from before was just gone, but at the same time something happened to my spiritual channels, I gained the ability to cultivate dream qi, the injury or the near-death experience changed something in me that I never expected.”

Tian’s eyes went a little wider at that. We had both grown up unable to cultivate at all, it was one of the main things that had connected us when we first met, we had spent years trying every method we could find and failing every single time to manipulate even the smallest amount of spiritual energy.

“I thought…,” he said finally, and then stopped for a moment, “Master Jian said no one could survive that fall, I wanted to go and search for you anyway but he wouldn’t allow it, said going into the Thornwood Deep would be the same as killing myself.”

“He was right about that,” I said, “if Moon hadn’t found me, I would not have made it.”

“Moon?”

“The spiritual beast who pulled me out, an Oneiric Sovereign level panda,” I said, and a small smile came to my face at the memory of it, “she had three cubs who decided I was a good climbing structure.”

At that, the hurt in Tian’s eyes started to recede and real happiness replaced it, “Master Jian is going to be so relieved when I tell him, he has been blaming himself for months, keeps saying he should have moved faster and killed that demon before it ever had the chance to attack us, he has been training twice as hard ever since like he is punishing himself for what happened.”

Master Jian had always been a good person, patient, and kind in small ways even with his gruff exterior. Knowing that he had been carrying guilt over my supposed death bothered me more than I had expected it to when I heard it.

“Tell him it wasn’t his fault,” I said, “tell him I made that choice myself and it was the right one to make.”

“You can tell him yourself,” Tian said, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, “I’m really glad you’re alive Hou, I really am.”

I felt something ease in my chest when he said that. Whatever complicated situation the tournament had created between us, there was a real person underneath all of it, someone who had cared about Hou Hongyun enough to actually grieve his death for months.

A moment of comfortable quiet settled between us.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer, “the Sunken Dream Palace isn’t a place people come to casually.”

His expression became serious immediately. “My father, his cultivation has been falling apart ever since I was born, he used a forbidden technique to create me, and it damaged his spiritual foundation, I need the Celestial Dream Lotus to stabilize him before it deteriorates too far.”

That matched with what I had already known about his situation.

“My friend’s cultivation was damaged,” I said, “the Celestial Dream Lotus is the only thing that can repair it.”

We looked at each other, and the reality of the situation we were both in settled over us without either of us needing to say it out loud. We both needed the lotus for people we cared about.

“Well,” Xu Feng said from his spot against the wall, his voice cutting right into the middle of what was a pretty heavy moment, “this is actually ideal when you think about it.”

Both Tian and I looked over at him, and Pan Jun was nodding along with whatever point Xu Feng was about to make.

“Neither of you needs the whole lotus, right?” Xu Feng continued, “just a petal or maybe two, that is the whole purpose of expedition teams. Nobody expects a single person to claim the entire Celestial Dream Lotus for themselves, it supposedly has seven petals, and anyone who makes it to the core chamber should have the chance to take what they need.”

“Should,” Pan Jun muttered from against the wall, “famous last words.”

Even with Pan Jun being pessimistic about it, I felt tension I hadn’t fully realized I was carrying drain out of my shoulders, because Xu Feng was right and the situation didn’t have to be a conflict where only one of us could win. The lotus was valuable enough that even a single petal could treat most cultivation injuries.

“That works,” Tian nodded, “I only need enough to stabilize my father’s spiritual foundation, one or two petals should be more than enough for that.”

“Same situation,” I agreed, “Lu Chenyang’s damage is serious, but it is specific to his projection pathway, one petal should be able to fix it.”

“Then we have no conflict,” Xie Ling said, not as a question, just as a fact she was putting on the table for everyone’s benefit.

“So, we are all working together now,” Xu Feng said with a smile even though it still looked like it hurt, “good, that is very good, because the trials ahead are supposed to be worse than everything we have already been through.”

He wasn’t wrong about that.

The Drowned Vestibule had been brutal and had tested every part of what we were capable of, but Song Wei had been clear that it was only the beginning and that each layer of the palace presented different challenges specifically designed to break the cultivators who had already survived the entrance.

I was about to ask Tian if he had come alone and whether he wanted to officially join our group, because with his protagonist aura and the strange luck these figures always seemed to have around them, things would probably work out significantly better with him here.

But before I could actually say any of that, pressure came down on the chamber.

It hit like a physical weight dropping onto everyone’s shoulders at once and made the air itself feel thick and hard to move through. This was Lucid Lawbearer level spiritual pressure, but it wasn’t Song Wei, this felt different from that, sharper somehow and more aggressive in how it pushed against everything.

I felt it pressing directly against my own spiritual channels, testing them, probing my defenses and trying to determine what my cultivation level and capabilities were.

Pan Jun actually staggered from it, his Mid Stage Oneiric Sovereign cultivation was not enough to properly resist a Lucid Lawbearer’s aura, he could barely stay upright.

Xu Feng grimaced but managed to hold his position, his earth element cultivation giving him a natural stability that helped.

Xie Ling’s ice qi surged outward in a defensive reaction and created a thin barrier between herself and the pressure that was trying to press in on her.

But around Tian, the pressure just parted.

A figure walked through the entrance into the chamber, male, appearing to be in his late thirties or early forties, though cultivators could hold that appearance for centuries without issue, wearing elegant robes in deep blue and silver that marked him as someone from a major sect or powerful clan.

His gaze moved across Pan Jun, Xu Feng, Xie Ling, and then me before it settled and stayed on Tian. When he spoke, his voice carried the exact same sharp edge that his spiritual pressure did.

“Tian,” he said, “who are these people?”