Chương 566: Chapter 561: Sunken Dream Palace

"Come," Lu Chenyang said and gestured toward the main compound of the sect.

"We should talk somewhere private." I followed behind him as we walked through the gate and into the Slumbering Scholars Sect, and the first thing I noticed was that the architecture here was different from Azure Peak Sect which I had gotten used to by now.

Azure Peak was all grand open spaces and huge imposing buildings that made you feel small by standing near them, but this place was different, it felt contained somehow, like everything was designed to fit together to make sense for people who spent most of their time studying rather than training.

The buildings were all connected by covered walkways that formed this network of passages, and it meant you could get from one building to another without being exposed to the weather, but the design still allowed for airflow, so it didn't feel suffocating. Everything about this place screamed quiet studious work rather than martial training or power displays.

The disciples we passed in the walkways all bowed respectfully when they saw Lu Chenyang, though their eyes kept drifting over to me with this curiosity that they weren't even trying to hide. Word about what had happened at the gate had probably spread through the sect by now, that kind of thing always traveled fast in cultivation sects, and by the time evening came around everyone would probably have their own version of the story with all sorts of details added in that never happened.

Lu Chenyang's walking pace was slower than I expected, even accounting for the fact that he was injured and still recovering, it was slightly slower than it should have been, but I noticed it because I was paying attention.

His breathing was controlled and steady on the surface but it took more effort than it should have for someone at his cultivation level, and every few steps his hand would move up toward his chest without him seeming to realize he was doing it, like he was checking to make sure something was still in place. The damage he'd taken was worse than what he was letting on to everyone else.

We climbed a set of stone stairs that wound up along the side of the central peak of the sect compound, and the higher we went, the fewer disciples we came across until eventually we reached a section of the mountain that seemed to be set aside for senior members of the sect. The buildings up here were bigger and more spread out compared to the lower levels, with private courtyards separating each residence from the ones around it so that everyone had their own space.

Lu Chenyang led me to one of the residences and the outside of it was simple looking but well maintained and there was a small garden in the front courtyard that had plants in it that I didn't recognize. Some of the plants had this faint glow coming off them that indicated spiritual energy, so they were probably cultivation resources of some kind rather than being there to look nice. Inside the residence was what you'd expect from someone who spent most of their life as a scholar.

Books were everywhere, stacked on every available surface, and there were jade slips piled up on shelves along with scrolls that were carefully rolled up and labeled. A large desk took up most of one wall and was covered in papers and writing implements of various kinds. Several comfortable chairs were arranged near a window that had a nice view looking out over the surrounding mountains.

"Sit," Lu Chenyang said and gestured to one of the chairs near the window.

"I'll make tea."

"You don't have to…"

"I want to," he cut me off, and his voice sounded so exhausted that it made me stop arguing.

"Let me have something to do for a few minutes. Something that isn't laying in a healing pod while everyone outside whispers to each other about whether or not I'm ever going to recover." I sat down in the chair and watched him move around the small preparation area in the corner of the room. He picked out tea leaves from a ceramic container, measured out water and then started the heating process using a small formation instead of creating flame manually.

The silence between us while he worked felt awkward with all the things that were going to need to be said. I kept looking at him across the room and feeling this tightness in my chest that I couldn't quite shake. He was injured because of me, he had made the choice to protect my escape instead of protecting himself, and because of that, the Nightmare Enforcer had torn his spiritual manifestation into pieces while I was severing my connections and retreating back to my physical body.

Lu Chenyang finished with the tea and carried two cups over and handed one to me before carefully lowering himself into the chair across from mine with a small sound of discomfort that he tried to pretend hadn't happened. I held my cup without drinking from it yet and let the warmth seep from the ceramic into my hands.

"Before we get into anything else," I said, "I need to know how you are doing. And I mean actually doing, not the polite version you've been giving everyone else." He took a slow sip from his cup and I could tell he was using the time to figure out how to answer.

"I'm recovering. The healing formations did their work well. My physical body should be fine within a few weeks."

"That's not what I asked you." He smiled a little bit, which told me he'd known that was coming.

"You're not going to let me dodge this are you?"

"No." Lu Chenyang put his cup down and leaned back in his chair, the movement hurt him, but he settled into the position anyway and his expression became more serious as whatever casual front he'd been maintaining dropped away.

"The Nightmare Enforcer destroyed my spiritual projection," he said.

"Tore it apart and then consumed what was left. When something like that happens, there's always damage that feeds back into the physical body because the spiritual and the physical are connected even when the consciousness is traveling through other realms." I nodded because Moon had explained the basics of that risk to me already when we were going over the dangers of dream cultivation.

"Most of the damage ended up in my spiritual channels," Lu Chenyang continued, "fractures all throughout the primary meridians, destabilization in the secondary pathways, and general chaos across the energy circulation system. The medical team here has been working to repair all of that and they're doing a good job of it. My cultivation base is still intact, and I will likely recover back to my full strength as an Oneiric Sovereign."

"But?" I said, because I could hear that word waiting there even though he hadn't said it. He was quiet for a while after that. He picked his teacup back up and looked down into it for a long time like he was hoping to find the right words somewhere in the liquid.

"But the connection point is damaged," he finally said.

"The part of my spiritual foundation that lets my consciousness detach from my body and travel into dream realms. That pathway was destroyed when the Enforcer consumed my projection." My stomach dropped.

"Can it be repaired?"

"The medical elders aren't certain either way. Elder Fang said there's a chance it might heal on its own if given enough time, but we're probably talking years at minimum, maybe even decades. Or it might be permanent damage that no amount of time or healing will be able to fix." He took another sip of his tea and his hands were still the entire time he was saying this, which somehow made it worse.

"There is a possibility that I will never be able to dream walk again." Those words sat there between us for a while after he said them. I understood what that meant for him as a cultivator, because dream cultivation above Dream Architect stage required extensive dream walking as the core of the advancement process.

You needed to travel to different realms, gather insights from spiritual systems that operated on different principles from one another, and integrate all of that accumulated knowledge into your foundation. Without the ability to dream walk, a dream cultivator would be stuck at whatever level they were currently at with no way to ever push past it.

Lu Chenyang had nearly four hundred years of cultivation behind him, centuries worth of knowledge and experience, he had worked, fought, and studied his life to reach Oneiric Sovereign. And now he had hit a ceiling that had nothing to do with whether he was talented or knowledgeable enough, the physical pathway forward had been destroyed. My grip on my teacup tightened.

"This is why Nightmare Enforcers are so feared," I said.

"Yes," he confirmed.

"They can cripple dream walkers in ways that are arguably worse than death. Even if your physical body recovers and you survive the encounter, the damage to your projection ability can be permanent. Most dream cultivators would rather die in a realm than face a Nightmare Enforcer and risk losing the ability to walk at all." The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. I thought about what had happened in that realm.

The Enforcer pursuing us without any pause or hesitation through the Realm of the Chosen, and Lu Chenyang putting himself between me and that thing, positioning himself to give me the extra second I needed to get out. He had known what might happen to him when he did that. He understood that sacrificing his spiritual projection could mean the end of any further progress in his cultivation path and he did it anyway, for someone he had barely known. The weight of that sat heavily on me.

Lu Chenyang must have been able to see something in my expression because his face softened a little.

"Don't look at me like that. I made that choice knowing what it might cost me."

"That doesn't make it better," I said.

"You saved my life and the cost might be your entire cultivation future."

"Perhaps," he said and set his cup down and looked at me directly.

"Or perhaps I did something that mattered beyond just endlessly accumulating power. The fortune teller told me that great things would follow if I acted as a genuine teacher to you. She didn't promise that those great things would benefit me in any way."

"That's not right," I said and the words came out sharper than I had intended.

"You shouldn't have to give up everything just to help me."

"Life rarely arranges itself around what should or shouldn't happen," Lu Chenyang replied, and his tone was gentle but also firm at the same time.

"You're still young Hou. You still expect the world to operate according to fairness and some kind of equal exchange. It doesn't work that way. Sometimes good people suffer the consequences of choosing to help others. Sometimes sacrifices can't be undone. Sometimes there aren't any happy endings that tie everything together." He picked his tea back up and took a longer drink this time.

"I'm nearly four hundred years old and I've been stuck at Oneiric Sovereign for seventy of those years. If I'm being honest with myself, I had already started to wonder whether I would ever advance further than this. This injury just made explicit what was probably already the reality of my situation. I had most likely already reached my limit."

"You don't believe that," I said.

"Maybe I do and maybe I don't. Either way I'm tired Hou. Tired of endlessly dream walking just to collect techniques I know I'll probably never use. Tired of chasing advancement that never comes no matter what I do. Tired of being alone in ways that are hard to describe." He smiled then and this time it reached his eyes.

"Helping you felt like the first meaningful thing I'd done in a very long time. If that's where my cultivation path ends, then I can make my peace with that." I couldn't accept what he was saying. He was framing his sacrifice as something noble, like it was a satisfying ending to a story, but it wasn't that, it was a tragedy, a good person crippled because he chose to help a stranger and now working hard to convince himself that what he lost didn't matter.

"Is there any way to heal the damage?" I asked.

"Any treasure or technique that could repair the connection pathway?" Something shifted in Lu Chenyang's expression when I asked that.

"There is one thing," he admitted, but he said it slowly like he wasn't sure he wanted to be telling me this.

"But obtaining it isn't possible."

"What is it?"

"Something called the Celestial Dream Lotus," Lu Chenyang said.

"It's a spiritual treasure that grows in places where dream qi builds up to concentrations. It has properties that allow it to rebuild damaged spiritual pathways, particularly the ones related to consciousness projection. Consuming one would almost certainly repair my connection point." Relief moved through me.

"Then we find one. Where does it grow?" Lu Chenyang laughed at that, it was an exhausted bitter laugh.

"Everyone knows where the Celestial Dream Lotus grows," he said.

"It's not some secret that needs to be uncovered. The problem is more than just finding it. The problem is surviving the attempt to get it."

"What makes retrieving it so dangerous?" I asked, frowning.

"The lotus is located in the Sunken Dream Palace, an ancient ruin that sits roughly five thousand li north of here. It has been there for thousands of years and in all that time countless cultivators have attempted to retrieve it."

"Why have all of them failed?"

"The Sunken Dream Palace is one of the most dangerous locations anywhere in the Dream World," Lu Chenyang explained.

"The palace exists partially submerged in something called the Nightmare Sea, which is a region where primordial dream energy has accumulated to the point that the environment itself is hostile to any form of consciousness that enters it. There are spatial distortions that can tear apart spiritual forms before you even have time to react to them. There are primordial dream beasts that hunt cultivators as prey.

There are environmental hazards that can trap you inside endless nightmares with no way to distinguish them from reality. And all of that is before you even get anywhere close to the inner chambers where the lotus is." Primordial dream qi though. That was interesting to think about. Lu Chenyang set his cup down on the table beside his chair.

"Every few centuries someone makes a serious attempt to retrieve a Celestial Dream Lotus. Usually Lucid Lawbearers are the ones who try it because they're powerful enough to survive long enough to make real progress. And every few generations we hear about another death. Sometimes they manage to send a warning talisman back before they die. Sometimes they just disappear and nobody ever hears from them again."

"How many attempts has there been?" I asked.

"In the last thousand years alone, probably somewhere between fifty and sixty serious expeditions by people who had the power and preparation to make a real attempt." Lu Chenyang's voice remained even throughout all of this, he wasn't trying to make it sound worse than it was.

"None of them succeeded. The furthest anyone has ever gotten was a Lucid Lawbearer named Song Wei who made it around eighty percent of the way to the chamber where the lotus grows before spatial rifts nearly tore him apart. He survived but he lost an arm in the process." Fifty or sixty attempts across a thousand years and every single one of them had failed, with the very best result being eighty percent of the way there before catastrophic damage forced retreat.

The Celestial Dream Lotus was essentially unreachable for any cultivator regardless of their power level. But I wasn't a normal cultivator, at least not in this context. The Dream World was protecting me, I knew that from everything that had happened during my training sessions with Moon. I had already died multiple times during that training and each time something had intervened before the death could stick. A branch catching me at the right moment before a fatal fall.

A boulder rolling into position to create shelter before a cave collapsed. A stream changing course to carry me away from a creature I had no possible way of defeating at the time. The tournament rules meant that the realm itself was working to keep me alive, bending circumstances and probability to make sure I survived whatever happened. If I went into the Sunken Dream Palace that protection would come with me. I could attempt the retrieval, fail, die, and be brought back to make another attempt.

Over and over as many times as it took until I either succeeded or found an approach that worked. It would be painful because dying over and over was never anything other than painful and unpleasant. But it was possible for me like it wasn't possible for anyone else.

"I'll get it for you," I said. Lu Chenyang's head came up fast.

"What did you say?"

"The Celestial Dream Lotus. I'll go to the Sunken Dream Palace and retrieve it and bring it back so you can heal your connection pathway."

"Hou that is insanity," Lu Chenyang said and the calm that he'd been maintaining cracked open and alarm showed through it.

"Did you listen to anything I told you? Lucid Lawbearers die attempting this. You are an Oneiric Sovereign who only recently advanced to that level. That place would destroy you within minutes of entering it."

"Maybe," I said.

"But I have certain advantages that other dream cultivators don't have access to."

"What advantages could possibly…"

"I'm not going to explain them," I said cutting him off.

"You'll have to trust me on this. But I can do this Lu Chenyang, I can get the lotus and come back with it and heal what was taken from you." Lu Chenyang pushed up out of his chair abruptly and it scraped loudly against the floor.

"No. I am not going to stand here and let you throw your life away because you feel guilty about a choice I made for myself."

"It's not just about guilt," I said, though that wasn't honest either.

"It's about the fact that something that can be fixed should be fixed. You helped me and you gave up your cultivation future to save mine, the least I can do is try to give back what you lost."

"The least you can do," Lu Chenyang said and his voice rose a little, "is stay alive. Keep cultivating. Accomplish the things that I was never able to accomplish. That would honor what I did for you far more than dying in some pointless retrieval attempt would." I didn't argue back against him. Arguing would just make him dig in harder. Instead I stayed quiet and held his gaze steadily and let him see in my expression that the decision was made and nothing he could say was going to unmake it.

After a long stretch of silence Lu Chenyang sat back down and he looked more tired than I'd seen him look even when he'd first come out of the healing pod.

"You're going to do this no matter what I say to you, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"You're stubborn for someone your age."

"I've been told that before," I said. He rubbed his face with both of his hands, which was clearly a sign of frustration and resignation happening at the same time, and then was quiet for a while before speaking again.

"I can't stop you. You're not my disciple and I have no authority over what you decide to do. But please Hou, I'm asking you, think about this seriously before you commit to it. Don't underestimate the Sunken Dream Palace just because you feel like you owe me something. That place has killed cultivators who were far more powerful and experienced you are right now."

"I'll be careful," I promised him. That was true, I meant it. I would plan the attempt as carefully and thoroughly as possible and prepare for every danger I could prepare for in advance and try to avoid taking any risk that wasn't necessary. But ultimately, if being careful wasn't enough to bridge the gap between what I was capable of and what the palace required, the protection the Dream World gave me would make up the difference.

I couldn't explain that part to Lu Chenyang without getting into things about myself that I wasn't ready to talk about with anyone yet. Even if I had to die a hundred times or a thousand times in that palace, I was going to retrieve the Celestial Dream Lotus. Lu Chenyang had given up his cultivation future to save me without knowing that the Dream Realm would have brought me back even if the Nightmare Enforcer had managed to kill me. He had made that sacrifice without knowing that.

The least I could do was use the advantage I had to give him back the future he'd given up. Lu Chenyang must have seen that I wasn't going to be moved on this because he sighed deeply.

"Let's talk about something else," he said after the silence had stretched long enough.

"Something that doesn't make either of us feel terrible."

"Alright," I said, and I was grateful for the shift.

"You came here to learn the rest of the dream gate creation technique," Lu Chenyang said.

"We were interrupted before I could finish walking you through the third stage of the process. If you're set on throwing yourself into mortal danger, then you might as well be informed before you do it." I felt some of the tension in my shoulders loosen. This was better ground. Practical instruction about techniques. Something concrete and useful that didn't require either of us to sit with uncomfortable truths about sacrifice and loss.

"I'd appreciate that," I said.

"You'd finished explaining the second stage. Tracing the spiritual signature of an object back to its origin realm through the dimensional layers."

"Yes," Lu Chenyang said and settled back more comfortably into his chair, and as he shifted into teaching mode.

"The third stage is where the gate creation happens. And this is the stage where most attempts fail, even among Oneiric Sovereigns who have been practicing for decades." I leaned forward in my chair and paid close attention. This was the kind of knowledge I needed.