Chapter 584: Cultivation is Creation - Chapter 579: Frenemies

Tian stepped in front of me before saying anything which I thought was a good sign because it meant he was trying to protect me or at least show that I was with him, and he said, “This is Hou, my sworn brother, I thought he was dead but he survived and he can cultivate now.”

The Lucid Lawbearer moved his eyes past Tian and looked directly at me, and I felt his spiritual pressure reach out and press against my defenses like he was trying to figure out what I was, whether I was dangerous or not.

I looked back at him without shying away. I had been through worse than this before.

After a moment, the Lucid Lawbearer’s face changed a little, not much but enough to notice, and he raised his hand and pulled the spiritual pressure back.

Pan Jun actually made a noise of relief when it lifted, and Xu Feng, who had been bracing himself against the wall, straightened up and breathed normally again.

“Forgive me,” the Lucid Lawbearer said, and he bowed slightly in my direction, “I was concerned that Tian had encountered cultivators who meant him harm, the Sunken Dream Palace draws many types of people and not all of them have good intentions.”

“That is understandable,” I replied and returned the bow, “everyone here is on edge.”

Tian gestured toward him. “This is Shen Bolin, he has been teaching me dream cultivation techniques that are more advanced than anything I knew before while we traveled here together.”

Shen Bolin nodded.

“And behind him,” Tian continued, turning a little, “is Li Na. She is part of the group as well.”

I blinked because I hadn’t noticed there was someone else in the chamber at all and that was embarrassing when I thought about it, but now that Tian had said something, I could see a young woman five feet behind Shen Bolin wearing simple gray robes.

She was standing with her shoulders slightly forward and her posture was scrunched inwards, as though she didn’t want to take up much space. Her cultivation was Oneiric Sovereign, probably the middle stage of it based on the spiritual pressure I could barely sense from her.

What intrigued me about her was that there was something about how her presence felt that was difficult to describe, it was like my eyes naturally wanted to pass over her without stopping, like some part of my mind kept deciding she wasn’t important to pay attention to.

Li Na noticed that I was looking at her and immediately dropped her head so that her dark hair covered most of her face as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other.

“Li Na is a specialist in concealment techniques,” Shen Bolin said, sounding proud, “she can suppress her presence so that even Lucid Lawbearers fail to notice her, it is a rare ability.”

“I believe it,” Xu Feng said from against the wall, he shifted his position and then regretted it based on the expression on his face, “I couldn’t even tell she was there until Tian pointed her out just now.”

I nodded as well. A person who could move without being detected was valuable in almost any situation, and especially in a place like this where something could go wrong around any corner, having someone who could scout ahead without being noticed was an advantage that could change the outcome of the whole expedition.

The tension in the chamber had mostly gone away by now. Shen Bolin’s posture was more relaxed, and even Xie Ling had let the ice constructs she had been maintaining dissolve.

I wasn’t particularly surprised that there was another group attempting to reach the Celestial Dream Lotus because the treasure was legendary, what it was able to do was something that nothing else in the world could touch. So, of course there would be multiple groups trying for it. That was just how these situations worked.

And even though we were all competing for the same thing, that didn’t mean we had to be enemies right now. The early sections of the palace were dangerous enough on their own without adding fighting among ourselves into the situation as well. Everyone who had done any reading on places like this understood the principle, you work together through the hard parts and then you compete when you are actually at the treasure.

When we got closer to the inner chamber things would almost certainly become violent because cultivators don’t willingly share legendary resources, but that wasn’t now and there was no reason to treat it like it was.

“I’m Hou Hongyun,” I said, performing the proper greeting for a cultivator, “Oneiric Sovereign realm, I joined this expedition to help a friend who suffered an injury.”

Xu Feng pushed himself away from the wall slowly, his face did something painful-looking as his ribs responded to the movement. “Xu Feng, Peak Oneiric Sovereign, earth cultivation is my specialty, I am here because the payment offered was good. Also I have always wanted to see the inside of this ruin for myself, it is famous enough.”

That casual answer made Shen Bolin smile a little. “I respect honesty.”

Pan Jun got up more carefully than Xu Feng had, keeping his broken arm close to his body, there was dried blood running down the side of his face from the cut above his eye. “Pan Jun, Mid Stage Oneiric Sovereign. I was a clan leader before but I lost that position. I need the lotus to push my cultivation further so I can take it back.”

There was clearly more to that story than what he said, but he stopped there, and no one pushed him to continue.

Xie Ling didn’t move from where she was standing when she introduced herself. “Xie Ling, Half-Step Lucid Lawbearer, ice cultivation, my reasons are my own.”

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She clearly didn’t want questions and Shen Bolin didn’t ask any, he simply nodded and accepted it.

“Well then,” Xu Feng said, and despite the pain he was obviously still feeling, his face broke into a real smile, “now that we all know each other, can we agree to not try to kill each other for a while? At least until the next several trials are behind us?”

“That seems like the right approach,” Tian agreed, and I could see him looking between the two groups and thinking through how this worked tactically, “the Hall of Shattered Reflections is the next major trial according to what I have read, and it is supposed to be worse than the Drowned Vestibule was.”

“It shows you versions of yourself,” Li Na said quietly, she spoke just above a whisper but the acoustics of the chamber carried it clearly to everyone, “alternate versions. Each one is built around a choice you made and what would have happened if you had made a different one, most cultivators can’t handle what they see.”

Everyone looked at her, and she immediately tried to become smaller, pulling her shoulders in further, but what she had said carried real knowledge behind it, the girl had clearly researched this place carefully before coming here.

“That is right,” Shen Bolin confirmed, “the Hall of Shattered Reflections has destroyed more cultivators than almost any other part of the palace, the psychological damage alone is enough to break the minds of people who are otherwise very strong.”

“Wonderful,” I muttered, and then I looked at Xu Feng and Pan Jun, “the two of you should heal before we go any further, going into something like that while you are already injured seems like it would make a bad situation worse.”

Pan Jun nodded and looked grateful for it. His arm was still bent in the wrong direction, and the dried blood on his face made him look worse than he probably was.

Shen Bolin seemed to reach a decision quickly, he reached into his storage ring and took out two jade bottles and tossed one to Pan Jun, who caught it with his good hand, and tossed the other to Xu Feng, who nodded at him. “Healing pills, mid grade quality, they should be sufficient for anything short of a destroyed cultivation base or a missing limb.”

“That is generous,” I said, because it really was, “most cultivators wouldn’t give resources to people they are competing against.”

“We are not competing yet,” Shen Bolin said, and he was looking at me with an expression that I couldn’t fully read, “and I would rather have capable people around me in a dangerous place even if they are technically from a different group, you dying here would not benefit me.”

It was a practical answer that made sense in the cultivation world where alliances were always temporary and based on what the situation required. I thought it was the right way to think about the situation.

Pan Jun took one of the pills immediately and the effect started almost right away, his spiritual energy moved more smoothly, and the broken arm began to straighten as the bone repaired itself under the medicine. Xu Feng did the same and closed his eyes to focus on directing the energy toward his ribs, his breathing became easier within seconds.

While they were doing that, I found a clean enough section of floor and sat down with my legs crossed while keeping a portion of my spiritual sense extended outward to monitor the room.

Tian sat down next to me without saying anything, we had spent years sitting like this together when we were younger, practicing cultivation methods that failed to do anything, so the habit of sitting this way side by side was something the body remembered even when the mind was elsewhere.

“I keep thinking that it is not real,” Tian said quietly, he had closed his eyes, “that it can’t be true that you are alive and that we can both cultivate after how many years of trying and failing and being told it was impossible.”

“I know,” I said.

He nodded once and didn’t say anything else for a while.

Everyone in the chamber was quiet for some time, most of them had settled into meditation postures and were cycling their spiritual energy, and even Xie Ling had sat down, though she kept a noticeable distance between herself and the others.

Xu Feng was the one who ended the silence, he had finished with the healing pill and was carefully pressing his fingers against his ribs to test how they felt.

“Shen Bolin,” Xu Feng said in the easy conversational tone he seemed to use for everything, “who leads your group, is it you or is there someone else?”

The question was casual but it wasn’t an idle one, Xu Feng was collecting information about how the other group was structured.

Shen Bolin answered without any hesitation. “I lead it, and the group is just the three of us, myself, Tian, and Li Na. We kept it small because larger groups create more problems than they solve.”

That was a reasonable approach. Three people meant fewer resources divided between them, fewer people with different goals pulling in different directions, and less opportunity for someone to decide betrayal was worth it.

“What about your group?” Shen Bolin asked.

Xu Feng smiled. “We started with six people, our leader, me, Xie Ling, Pan Jun, Hou, and someone else, but we lost him before we even arrived at the palace.”

“How?” Tian asked, and he sounded concerned.

“He picked a fight with Hou and it didn’t go the way he expected,” Pan Jun said, and he sounded satisfied about it, “his name was Sun Tao, Late-Stage Oneiric Sovereign, he had been pushing the rest of us around, he decided Hou would be easy to deal with, but he was wrong about that.”

Shen Bolin’s focus came back to me sharply. “You defeated a Late-Stage Oneiric Sovereign, how long was the battle?”

“Around two seconds,” I said, “I didn’t want to delay the expedition, so I didn’t make it too long.”

Nobody said anything for a moment, they were all just staring at me, even Li Na, who had been doing an excellent job of staying unnoticed, looked up with surprise on her face.

“Two seconds,” Shen Bolin repeated, saying it slowly, “and your cultivation is Mid-Stage Oneiric Sovereign?”

“Early Stage actually,” I said, “the way my cultivation develops isn’t typical.”

That was true even if it wasn’t the full truth, but I wasn’t going to explain my access to red and blue sun energy and qi to someone I had met less than an hour ago.

Shen Bolin looked at me for a long moment like he was trying to figure something out and then he nodded slowly. “Very interesting.” The way he said it made me feel slightly uneasy. “And your leader, who is it?”

“Song Wei himself!” Xu Feng said, and he sounded proud of it.

“Song Wei,” Shen Bolin spat out, and his voice was different now, “you are telling me that Song Wei is the leader of your expedition?”

“Yes,” Xu Feng confirmed, clearly not noticing yet that something had shifted, “he reached eighty percent of the way to the inner chamber forty years ago on a previous expedition, he lost an arm during it, but he is still the most experienced person there is for something like—”

Shen Bolin’s spiritual pressure came out all at once, and this time it was nothing like the controlled examination from before, this was fury, and it was barely being restrained, it pressed down on the entire chamber with crushing force.

Pan Jun went down immediately, Xu Feng caught himself against the wall with both hands, and even Xie Ling’s eyes went wide as she started building ice barriers around herself as fast as she could.

I stayed where I was sitting, but I had to push qi through my body to keep from being forced down as well. The pressure was enormous and concentrated, it felt like the floor was trying to become the ceiling.

It was obvious that Shen Bolin and Song Wei had history together, and based on the intensity of what was in that spiritual pressure, it was the type of history that didn’t end until one of them was dead.