Chương 551: Chapter 546: Fortune Teller

Lu Chenyang watched the young cultivator called Hou stand and begin testing his restored abilities. The demonstration had been impressive, a little too impressive, for someone who had claimed this was their first dream walking expedition. The boy had said his Dream Gate had only recently formed and connected him here. That this was new territory, but something didn't add up.

This person who called himself Hou, moved through the city like he belonged there, the way he possessed Du Yanze was something Lu Chenyang had never seen before, and the way he integrated his own cultivation with Xuan Yi without any adjustable period was not something that fit the profile of a first-time dream walker.

A first timer would have been confused by the realm's laws, they would have made mistakes that announced to a veteran like himself just how much of a novice they were, but this Hou hadn't made a single one of those mistakes. On the other hand, when it came to dream cultivation, he didn't seem to have the basic knowledge that most Dream Architect cultivators would have. How did a dream cultivator seem more comfortable with a foreign cultivation method over their own?

And then there was the matter of Du Yanze – the cultivator that killed Lu Chenyang seventeen times. Seventeen. He'd stopped finding it embarrassing around the twelfth time and had started treating it as a data point. For anyone arriving from outside of the Realm of the Cursed, Du Yanze was the single most dangerous person. The man hunted dream walkers in a way that made most of the realm's other threats feel almost friendly by comparison. He called them parasites.

He had opinions about foreign spiritual corruption that he expressed primarily through lethal demonstrations. And despite all of this, Hou had gone up to him and asked him if he could possess him. And what was more shocking than that was how Du Yanze had said yes. The madman hadn't negotiated, fought, or done any of the screaming that Lu Chenyang had come to associate with the man's general approach to problems.

"Senior Hou," Lu Chenyang said, keeping his tone careful, "Can I ask a question?"

"Of course."

"You mentioned this was your first time dream walking." He gestured at the space around them, "Your familiarity with this realm suggests otherwise. And your relationship with Du Yanze seems deeper than a chance encounter."

"Let's say I've had some unusual experiences that prepared me better than most," Hou smiled. That answered nothing and somehow still felt like a complete response. Lu Chenyang decided not to push. Whatever the young cultivator was carrying as secrets, he wasn't sharing them. And Lu Chenyang had been alive for three hundred years, which was long enough to learn that demanding answers from someone who had just saved your life was a poor strategy on multiple levels. There was also a more practical consideration.

Three hundred years of dream walking across dozens of different realms had taught Lu Chenyang one truth above all others. When you encountered someone with unusual abilities and an unexplained background, the correct move was to stay on their good side. This Hou had already demonstrated cultivation that went well beyond what a Dream Architect should have access to. Either he was a hidden genius, or he had backing from someone extremely powerful. Probably both.

Lu Chenyang had been stuck at Oneiric Sovereign for seventy years. Seventy years of the same ceiling, the same sense that the next stage existed somewhere just past the edge of his comprehension without ever getting closer. He'd collected insights from a dozen different dream worlds. He'd studied every text his sect owned on advancement methodology. He'd consulted seniors who'd broken through before him and received advice that was technically accurate and practically useless.

Maybe what he'd been missing wasn't more knowledge. Maybe it was a different way of looking at the knowledge he already had. Maybe it was someone like Hou. The fortune teller's words surfaced in his memory, and he found himself turning them over again. It had been right before this expedition. He'd been preparing for his eighteenth attempt at gathering useful insights from the Realm of the Cursed when he'd passed a small divination shop in his sect's city. He didn't know what made him go in.

He wasn't someone who consulted fortune tellers. The practice had always struck him as a way for charlatans to exchange vague statements for spirit stones. But he'd gone in. The woman behind the low table was ancient in a way that went beyond years. She sat surrounded by bones and shells and formations that made his spiritual sense feel slightly itchy, which was not a sensation he had a good explanation for. She told him to sit before he'd decided whether he was staying. He sat.

She'd started speaking before he offered a name or a question. She knew about the seventeen deaths, which he hadn't mentioned to anyone. She knew he'd resigned himself to small benefits and minor insights, that he'd stopped expecting the breakthrough he actually needed. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

"Can you tell me if this journey will be different?" he'd asked. She'd cast the bones and looked at them for a long time.

"Different, yes. But beneficial? That depends entirely on you."

"What do you mean?"

"You will encounter someone unexpected, someone young and new to the path you walk, but carrying wisdom you lack." She tapped one of the bones.

"This person will offer you opportunities you've never imagined, but only if you are kind."

"Kind?"

"Benevolent," the fortune teller clarified.

"Generous in spirit if not in resources. Play the role of the wise senior nurturing a talented junior, and great things will follow. But if you act with selfishness or cruelty, you will return in a worse state than you have ever before." He'd paid her and left thinking she was exactly the kind of charlatan he'd always assumed fortune tellers were. But now? He wasn't so sure. Just like the fortune teller had prophesised, he had encountered someone unexpected, someone who was new to the path.

Did that mean the rest of the prophecy would come true? All he had to do was be benevolent and play the wise senior nurturing a talented junior. That was easy enough, Hou was genuinely likable despite his mysterious nature, and Lu Chenyang had already benefited from treating him well, it was because of Hou that Du Yanze had spared his life. Otherwise, his expedition would have ended already. Who knew what other benefits might follow if he continued down this path?

Having made his decision, Lu Chenyang settled on the grass to watch what this cultivator did next. Hou had separated his hands, Xuan Yi energy in his right and dream qi in his left. Silver light moved around one hand and golden energy around the other. He brought them close, then drew them apart, testing the boundary between them, watching how each responded to the proximity of the other. His expression was focused without being tense. This was someone who genuinely enjoyed figuring out how things worked.

Lu Chenyang felt a small, honest pang of envy. He'd tried to possess cultivators in this realm during his previous visits. He'd managed it with Proclamation Realm practitioners a handful of times, brief and unstable sessions that ended when the vessel's consciousness reasserted itself and ejected him.

The fundamental problem was that strong cultivators in the Realm of the Cursed believed in themselves with such absolute conviction that their Xuan Yi energy treated foreign spiritual presence as an attack on their identity. It fought back automatically. The stronger the cultivator, the faster the ejection. Du Yanze at Peak World-Writ Sovereign should have been impossible.

A man who had spent his life hunting dream walkers, who treated possession attempts as personal offenses against the fabric of reality, should have been the last person to agree to serve as a vessel. And yet. If Lu Chenyang could understand how Hou had managed it, it would change everything about how he approached dream cultivation. Even without understanding the possession, watching how Hou worked through the realm's energy systems was more educational than most of his previous seventeen visits combined.

He'd gathered insights before, learned that belief could temporarily push physical capabilities past their normal limits, discovered that written declarations could reshape local reality if the practitioner's will was strong enough. He'd integrated some basic Xuan Yi principles into his own cultivation, making his dream constructs more stable by believing in their permanence more completely. But watching Hou now, he understood how shallow that had been. Hou was doing more than testing what the energies did.

He was comparing their underlying nature, building a framework from first principles rather than collecting observations and hoping they eventually formed a picture. Lu Chenyang had tried to do this. Without a stable vessel, without the ability to manipulate Xuan Yi energy directly while maintaining his own cultivation, he'd never managed to get the kind of clear results that Hou was generating in real time. Hou raised his right hand and began writing a golden calligraphy character in the air.

Lu Chenyang's eyes widened at that. This was Xuan Yi Inscription; this was a fundamental skill for World-Writ Sovereign level practitioners. It wasn't something you learned in an afternoon, but Hou had claimed this was his first visit, and his ignorance regarding dream walking doesn't seem manufactured. So where did he learn World-Writ Sovereign calligraphy? The possibilities that ran through Lu Chenyang's mind didn't satisfy him.

Were Hou and Du Yanze somehow the same person operating as separate streams of consciousness? Lu Chenyang quickly dismissed it since it didn't make sense. Du Yanze had killed him seventeen times. That man's personality was consistent across every encounter, he was paranoid, precise, and absolute in his conviction that dream walkers needed to be removed from his world. Nothing about Du Yanze suggested the capacity for the calm nature that Hou had. They were definitely separate people.

Which left a more likely scenario, that Hou wasn't a junior after all, but a senior dream walker playing the part. As for why someone would do that? Lu Chenyang didn't bother to think about that, cultivators were strange by their nature. And as much as he wanted to ask who he really was until he found out the answer, a part of Lu Chenyang told him not to, and after hundreds of years of cultivation, Lu Chenyang had learned to listen to his gut feeling.

As Hou finished the calligraphy character, it hung in the air, golden and pulsing, then he raised his left hand and wrote a second character beside it using dream qi. Silver this time, formed from a different energy entirely, following the same basic calligraphic structure but expressing something fundamentally different in its nature. The two characters floated side by side as Hou stared at them.

"Now it makes sense," he murmured. Before Lu Chenyang could ask what had made sense, the air around Hou changed. Silver dream qi began moving in patterns that had nothing casual about them. The energy was building toward something, accumulating with something that Lu Chenyang recognised from the rare occasions he'd witnessed cultivation advancements in progress. Above Hou's head, a Crown of Clarity formed, forcing Lu Chenyang to step back. The crown was the mark of an Oneiric Sovereign cultivator.

Lu Chenyang would know better than anyone, he'd worn one himself for seventy years. He stood there and tried to find a way to make what he was watching consistent with what he understood about how cultivation advancement worked. It required preparation, a stable environment, and usually decades, if not centuries, of careful accumulation followed by a period of concentrated effort that could still fail.

First-time dream walkers didn't break through to Oneiric Sovereign in the middle of a grove during an expedition, while simultaneously conducting comparative energy research and managing a possession. Hou's gaze fell on him.

"Thank you, Senior Lu," he said, as if he hadn't just done something that should have been impossible.

"Your guidance was exactly what I needed." Lu Chenyang looked at the Crown of Clarity hovering solidly above the young cultivator's head and said nothing for a moment. This wasn't just talent or good fortune; this was something completely different from normal cultivation progression. Who exactly was this Hou Hongyun? And more importantly, what other impossible things might he accomplish if Lu Chenyang continued to stay on his good side? Lu Chenyang didn't know, but he planned to find out.