Chương 568: Chapter 563: Creating A Dream Gate

It was a strange feeling coming out of a deep meditative state and opening your eyes to find a stranger you'd never met before, just sitting there staring at you like it was perfectly acceptable.

"Zhang Yun, I'm one of the Inner Disciples," the young man said matter-of-factly, as if he weren't aware he'd watched me sleep for however many hours.

"Elder Lu asked me to keep watch so he wouldn't worry about anything happening while he was away."

"How long was I asleep?" I asked.

"Six hours." Zhang Yun grinned like that was great news.

"Elder Lu said he expected your first session to last at least 12 hours, he told me to tell you he's really impressed." I stood up and felt my shoulders stiffen from sitting still for so long, six hours had felt more like two, which was fascinating insight into how the attunement state affects your perception of time.

"Anything unusual happen while I was asleep?"

"Your spiritual pressure changed a couple of times but nothing that indicated a problem," Zhang Yun said as he stood and stretched.

"No alerts from the formations either. Are you hungry? Dinner is going on in the Communal Hall right now." As it happened, I was ravenous. Apparently, that was what usually happens when you burn through your physical energy stores using dream cultivation, even though your body isn't doing anything.

The Communal Hall was a loud and crowded mess when we arrived; tables groaning with food, hundreds of conversations echoing off the ceiling, and people looked up when I entered with Zhang Yun, but most of them went back to eating after a couple of seconds, which worked for me. We grabbed our plates and headed to a relatively quiet table and were soon joined by two other sect members, Feng Shan and Liu Qing, both Dream Architects in the middle of writing their master theses on dimensional stability.

"You're the one Elder Lu is directly teaching Gate Creation to, right?" Feng Shan asked, and he had a friendly smile that appeared interested instead of competitive.

"That's quite an ambitious goal. I've spent thirty years researching the theoretical basis and I'm not at a point where I'd consider attempting it myself yet."

"I think it's because Elder Lu is a good teacher," I replied.

"The best one we have," Liu Qing added quietly.

"His success rate for creating gates is the best in the entire sect, seventy three percent I believe, which is an amazing percentage given all the ways things can go wrong with the technique." Seventy three percent? That sounds impressive, but what it really means is that nearly one out of four of all the times he's tried to make a gate, something has gone wrong.

I knew intellectually that creating gates was dangerous, but seeing a statistic attached to that danger made it seem far more tangible and real than it had previously.

"Don't get cold feet now," Zhang Yun laughed.

"You've already decided to pursue it, there's no use second-guessing at this point." The rest of dinner passed in a wide-ranging discussion about cultivation theory and internal politics of the sect. Apparently there's a long-standing debate amongst the elder members of the sect regarding whether the Slumbering Scholars Sect should focus more on developing practical applications (dream walker missions) and less on purely theoretical research.

For the most part, I listened and soaked in what they were saying about their work and their sect. This sect was a world apart from Azure Peak Sect. The hierarchy here was significantly looser, there seems to be far more actual collaboration between members at various levels, and the disciples appear to take genuine interest in their research rather than merely viewing it as a means to ascend the ranks towards ultimate authority.

I could see myself spending the rest of my life in a place like this had my circumstances been different.

Over the course of the next four days, I fell into a relaxed, productive routine. Each morning consisted of performing attunement sessions with the meditation stone in the training chamber. Afternoons were spent perusing the texts on dimensional theory in the Archives that Song Mei had recommended on my initial visit. Evenings involved dining with the other disciples and absorbing more knowledge about the sect and its members through everyday conversation.

Lu Chenyang stopped by my chambers daily to check on my progress, by the end of the fourth day I could maintain the attunement state for eight consecutive hours without experiencing drift or loss of concentration. And although the Realm of the Chosen still retained a somewhat alien and overwhelming presence due to its corruption, its spiritual signature began to feel familiar.

"You're ready to move on to the Tracing Stage," Lu Chenyang said.

"Tracing is more difficult than attuning. You'll be extending your conscious awareness along the spiritual connection, following it back to its origin, and the process is disorienting and difficult to mentally prepare for beforehand." He wasn't lying. Using the tracing technique was like slipping backwards through open space while trying to read something, and as I continued to follow the meditation stone's history, elements of its journey presented themselves to me.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Lu Chenyang purchasing it at some sort of auction, the Lucid Lawbearer who'd taken it from the Realm of the Chosen, and the Realm itself appeared golden and boundless with unshakeable confidence about its own significance.

I probed further past superficial observation and started exploring the underlying structure, the Realm's spatial coordinates embedded in such a manner that I didn't have the words to describe it but could still navigate by intuition. The tracing took three full days, and each session resulted in mental fatigue that I'd not experienced prior, but over those three days, I gained a clearer image of where the Realm of the Chosen resided.

When Lu Chenyang arrived on the eighth day, he said I was ready to attempt the Projection.

"This is where things become dangerous," he cautioned.

"In this stage, you are creating a functional gateway through dimensional space. If complications arise during this process, there is a risk of causing irreversible harm to your spiritual foundation. Are you sure you want to do this?" My reasons for doing this flashed through my mind. Wei Lin with the corruption consuming him, Du Yanze remained trapped in a time loop, and Wu Kangming who probably regained his full cultivation by now, that's what I expected from a protagonist like him.

"I'm certain," I replied. Lu Chenyang scrutinized my face for a minute as if trying to figure out if I was telling the truth, then he nodded.

"Well then, we'll do this properly. I booked one of the dream pods for you, it's a safer place to do this than a normal meditation room." We headed out toward the summit where the dream walking facility was situated next to one another in a single multi-story building. On the way Lu Chenyang explained what these pods were.

How they were specialized facilities created for deep consciousness projection work, they monitored essential life functions, ensured optimal flow of spiritual energy, had emergency intervention procedures should anything destabilize the consciousness during the process, and most importantly, they could sever the connection if the gateway begins to show signs of becoming unstable. When we reached the interior of the facility, it was dark.

There were rows of concave areas, around six feet in diameter and surrounded by softly glowing formation arrays. A small number of disciples sat nearby, each watching over an occupied pod and monitoring jade slips containing data concerning the cultivator currently undergoing dream-walking. Lu Chenyang escorted me to an unoccupied pod located near the rear wall. This pod's array system comprised of multiple layered defensive supportive systems that were more complex than any of the others.

It was clear that he had booked the best they had for me to use.

"Lie down," Lu Chenyang instructed.

"Once you start the technique, the formations will activate." I entered the pod and rested on my back. The pod itself was surprisingly more comfortable than stone should be, probably some characteristic of the formations. Holding the meditation stone against my chest, I closed my eyes.

"Just remember what you're building," he said, his voice reached me, but it sounded like he was speaking through water.

"One anchor is your spiritual foundation, the other is the Realm's coordinates, the gate is the pathway connecting them. Don't force its development, let it unfold naturally." I allowed my breathing to slow down as I transitioned into the meditation state, but instead of continuing like we had planned, I placed the meditation stone to the side.

"W-what are you doing?" Lu Chenyang's voice snapped at me sharply.

"I don't need it," I said.

"I've been to the Realm of the Chosen, so I have a better idea of its spiritual signature than any object could carry. Adding an unnecessary layer will only serve to complicate things." Technically speaking, that statement had some truth to it; but it wasn't entirely accurate because I had no intentions of establishing a gate into Realm of the Chosen. However, I couldn't exactly reveal where I planned on traveling without revealing aspects about myself that I wasn't prepared to discuss with anyone.

Lu Chenyang remained silent for long enough that I wondered if he would cancel everything right then.

"You're trying to create a gate using only your memory of a target's spiritual signature rather than relying on physical resonance that is right next to you," he said finally; he sounded stunned beyond belief.

"If your memories are incomplete anywhere, the gate could potentially open somewhere else entirely, somewhere fatal."

"I understand that," I said.

"I doubt you do," Lu Chenyang said as he stepped closer to the pod and his gaze bored into mine.

"What you're attempting is something a Lucid Lawbearer should try, you could permanently damage your spiritual foundation."

"The pod will protect me," I said, "you'll monitor everything, and if it gets too wild, you'll get me out immediately."

"You're impossibly stubborn," Lu Chenyang said, letting out a tired breath.

"Fine. But the first sign of destabilization and I sever the connection, your cultivation future is not worth whatever you're chasing."

"Thank you," I said. He didn't say anything else but I heard him settle into position nearby. I closed my eyes and allowed myself to enter a state that was deeper than any previous practice sessions. This time there was no stone to follow and no external signature to trace. Instead, there were only aspects inherent to my own memories and my own spiritual foundation. I thought about where I needed to go and eventually discovered the thread embedded within my spiritual foundation.

The thread connected two anchors: one representing my spiritual foundation and the other representing the coordinates of a location I had previously visited numerous times but never in this way. I extended my consciousness downward past conscious memory, and beyond anything that I could verbalize, until I arrived at the fundamental structural coordinates of a place that I needed to go. At that point, I began to project.

It felt like reaching inward and outward at the exact same moment, my spiritual foundation anchoring both ends of the connection simultaneously while the space between them stretched and opened. The formations surrounding my body emitted increased humming sounds as they reacted to my actions. I sensed Lu Chenyang's intense focus on monitoring my vital signs from outside of the pod as he waited for any indication that something was wrong.

The gate materialized before me, invisible to any normal observer but clear to me. My physical body went limp inside the pod as Lu Chenyang murmured something about my vital signs entering a deep dream state, but I was already moving forward spiritually, separating from my sleeping body and turning toward the gate I had created. The transition from one plane of existence to another was smoother than any world-walking experience I have had.

The Dream World dissipated rapidly, a void appeared filled with infinite potential, then reality coalesced around me once more, and the next thing I knew, I was standing somewhere I had never expected to arrive at through a dream gate. And then I felt it.

A vast presence that was so overwhelming in scale that my spiritual form started coming apart at the edges just from being noticed by it, and I couldn't speak or move or do anything at all, I was about to be scattered across dimensional space and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Then a voice came, it sounded surprised.

"Oh, it's you..." The pressure disappeared, and I stood there gasping and disoriented but alive.