Chương 575: Chapter 570: A Challenge

The journey to Stillwater City was one that would have taken an ordinary person traveling on foot the better part of a week to complete, but at the cultivation level I had reached I could have covered the distance in considerably less than a single day if I pushed myself to move at maximum speed, which I chose not to do.

Time spent traveling was time that could be spent thinking through everything I had learned about dream cultivation recently, and testing how consistently the connection between this Hou body and my main cultivation base was holding up under normal travel conditions.

"Master, the energy flow through the dream gate is remaining stable," Azure said.

"There are no signs of degradation or interference developing. The connection appears to have become self-sustaining at this point." I nodded even though there was nobody around me on the road to observe the gesture. Having Azure accessible through the permanent channel made almost every aspect of what I was doing easier than it would otherwise have been. His ability to analyze things I might miss or misread was invaluable in most situations I found myself in.

But beyond the practical usefulness of it, there was something else that I had not fully appreciated until it was absent, and that was the simple fact that cultivation was a lot less isolating experience when there was someone to talk to at every step of the journey. The road wound through forested hills for the first full day and I passed a small number of traveling merchant groups with their hired guards but none of them gave me any attention.

To anyone looking at me, I was just another young cultivator moving between destinations, and the world had no shortage of those. Sometime around midday on the second day, I noticed a gathering ahead of me on the road. A crowd of roughly thirty people had formed into a loose circle, and I could hear raised voices coming from inside it even before I was close enough to make out any of the actual words being exchanged. My spiritual sense extended outward to scan for anything that registered as a threat.

"Master," Azure said quietly, "I'm detecting multiple cultivation signatures in that group. One at the Lucid Lawbearer level and several at Oneiric Sovereign, along with a larger number of weaker cultivators." A Lucid Lawbearer was not someone I had any interest in encountering randomly but I kept moving toward the crowd to see what was actually happening.

As I got close enough to see clearly, I could make out an elderly man standing at the center of everything wearing robes that were elaborate enough to broadcast that they were meant to impress, and his spiritual pressure confirmed him as the Lucid Lawbearer Azure had identified. He was holding something small in his right hand that looked like a jade slip, and he was delivering what sounded like a formal address to the people gathered around him.

"The Dao of Eternal Fortune rewards those who demonstrate proper respect for their betters," the old man was saying.

"I am traveling to the Half Moon Sect to personally deliver enlightenment pills to my grand-disciple and anyone who chooses to assist me on this journey will naturally find that fortune smiles upon them in return for their generosity." Several of the younger cultivators in the crowd were nodding with obvious eagerness and a few had already moved forward to offer their services, either to carry the old man's belongings or to provide guard escort for the rest of the journey. I recognized this situation.

It was a well-established pattern that I had enough knowledge of by now to identify without needing to observe where it led. A powerful cultivator appears to require assistance from juniors. Ambitious younger cultivators volunteer hoping to gain access to resources or connections through demonstrated loyalty. Something then goes wrong that benefits the powerful cultivator and disadvantages everyone who stepped forward to help.

Whether through a staged attack by cultivators who were actually working with the old man all along, or an accusation of theft directed at one of the volunteers, or some other mechanism that served whatever the actual purpose of the entire arrangement was. The specific method varied depending on the specific scheme, but the underlying structure was always the same. Involving yourself with a random powerful cultivator on the road was a way to acquire problems you didn't have before.

Either you made an enemy of them through some misunderstanding that arose from the situation they had constructed, or you got pulled directly into whatever conflict they were actually traveling to deal with and had wanted more bodies for. I adjusted my route to pass well around the edge of the crowd.

A few people on the outer ring glanced at me as I went by, but I kept my expression neutral and my spiritual pressure carefully contained and gave no indication that I had any opinion about anything happening in that circle.

"Young man!" The elderly Lucid Lawbearer's voice carried outward with enough force that it was clearly meant to reach me.

"You there, the one with the copper brown hair! I can sense that you have reached Oneiric Sovereign realm at a very young age, surely you would have an interest in…" I kept walking. My pace didn't change by any amount and I didn't look back toward the crowd.

"How rude," someone in the crowd murmured.

"Elder Feng is offering a genuine opportunity and this junior simply ignores it?"

"He probably can't even recognize a real expert when one is standing in front of him," another voice added. I cleared the crowd and continued down the road. Behind me I could hear that the elderly man had already redirected his attention back toward the volunteers who were actually interested in whatever he was offering. Good. At least he wasn't one of those that couldn't accept a no.

"Master handled that well," Azure said, sounding satisfied.

"Anyone who accepted his offer would've likely regretted it before long." There was definitely something fishy going on back there and I had no intention of finding out what it was, I needed to reach Stillwater City, join up with Song Wei's expedition, retrieve that Celestial Dream Lotus, and then go find Tian to finally finish this tournament. The rest of the journey passed without anything worth remembering happening.

I spent one night in a cave that Azure confirmed was not currently occupied by spirit beasts or other cultivators. On the second night I reached the outskirts of Stillwater City as the sun was finishing its descent. The city was larger than I had built up an expectation of in my mind. The stone walls rose to roughly forty feet, guard towers were spaced at regular intervals along their length, and formation arrays were glowing faintly along the wall surfaces.

The main gate was standing open despite the hour, and city guards were processing the line of travelers waiting to enter. I joined the line. The majority of people ahead of me were merchants or mortal travelers with a small number of cultivators scattered through. The guards were moving people through at an efficient pace, asking basic questions about the purpose of the visit and checking for obvious indicators of criminal activity or demonic dream cultivation practices before waving each person through.

When I reached the front, the guard looked at me for a slightly longer period then he had looked at most of the people ahead of me.

"Cultivation level?" he asked.

"Oneiric Sovereign," I told him. He noted something on his jade slip.

"You are here for the expedition?"

"Yes."

"You are the seventh one today to come through for that." He gestured toward the city interior.

"The Red Phoenix Tavern in the eastern district is where they are meeting." I thanked him and he waved me through without any further questions. The eastern district wasn't difficult to locate because the city was organized in a sensible way with clear markings and a layout that followed a logical structure. The Red Phoenix Tavern was on a corner lot, and warm light was coming through its windows with the sound of conversation audible from outside.

I stopped before pushing the door open and extended my spiritual sense through the structure to check what was actually inside.

"Master," Azure said immediately.

"This establishment is not a real location." I waited for him to continue.

"The structure itself does not have genuine physical substance," he said.

"And around eighty percent of the people inside are dream constructs rather than actual cultivators. Only five people in there have genuine spiritual signatures. Everything else is a manifestation of some kind." That was interesting. A false tavern staffed mostly by constructs that someone was maintaining deliberately and for a specific reason.

The most likely purpose was observation, creating a controlled environment where potential expedition members could be watched to see how they behaved when they did not believe anyone important was paying attention to them. I pushed the door open and went inside. The interior looked pretty much like a typical cultivation world tavern, tables scattered all across the main room, lanterns hanging down from the ceiling beams, a bar running along one wall with a real plain looking man working behind it.

About thirty people total were in here, though knowing most of them were fake changed how I looked at the whole scene. If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

I scanned the room and managed to pick out the five real cultivators hiding among all the constructs, two men were sitting at the bar, one wore crimson robes with gold phoenix embroidery and he radiated this aggressive heat off him, the other had a round friendly face and wore earth toned robes, both of them were at Oneiric Sovereign level from what I could tell.

A woman sat by herself at a corner table, she had pale features and black hair, and the temperature around her felt noticeably colder than the rest of the room, her cultivation level was harder for me to read but I suspected she was probably Half Step Lucid Lawbearer based on the quality of her spiritual pressure alone. A thin young man stood near the bar looking uncomfortable, he was Mid Stage Oneiric Sovereign probably, hard to say for sure.

The barkeeper turned out to be the fifth real person there, and despite his plain appearance and average looking features, I had a strong suspicion he was actually the most dangerous person in the room.

"Master, the barkeeper is suppressing his cultivation level," Azure confirmed for me.

"Based on the residual energy patterns, he's likely the Lucid Lawbearer organizing this whole expedition, Song Wei presumably." Yeah I had figured as much, it made sense when you thought about it, create a fake tavern, fill it up with constructs, and just observe how potential expedition members acted when they thought no one important was actually watching them. You'd learn a whole lot about people's true character doing it that way.

I looked around for an empty seat but most of the tables were already taken, the only real option left was that corner table where the ice cultivator woman was sitting. I walked across the room and sat down across from her. The woman's pale eyes focused on me for a moment, she looked mildly surprised, but she didn't immediately attack me or anything, which I took as a pretty good sign. After studying me for a bit, she just went back to watching the rest of the room like nothing happened.

The crimson robed cultivator over at the bar turned to look at me then, his spiritual pressure flared outward and the temperature around him went up real noticeable. Great, here we go, this was going be one of those situations again. He got up and crossed the room and stopped right in front of my table.

"You," he said.

"Are you here for the expedition?"

"I am," I replied back.

"My name is Hou Hongyun, you can call me Hou."

"Hou." He said my name like he was tasting something nasty in his mouth.

"Never heard of you, what cultivation realm?"

"Oneiric Sovereign."

"What stage." I thought about the question for a second.

"Does it matter?"

"Yes it matters!" His flames flickered around his hands now.

"The Sunken Dream Palace isn't a training ground for juniors. We need to know if you're qualified or if you're just another desperate fool looking to get rich." I studied him for a moment, not really sure why this complete stranger wanted to start trouble with me. We had never met before, I hadn't insulted him or messed with anything he cared about, but somehow, he had decided I was a problem he needed to deal with. There were a few possible reasons for why he was acting like this.

Maybe he thought I was too young and wanted to establish some dominance over the younger generation, or maybe he saw me sitting next to the ice beauty and got jealous about it, or maybe he was just naturally aggressive and picked fights with everybody he met, or maybe I reminded him of someone he hated from before, or maybe his fire cultivation just made him hot tempered and he couldn't help himself even if he wanted to.

There was a lot of maybes, but at the end of the day, I didn't actually care what his reasons were. I didn't want any problems. I had come here to join an expedition not deal with some random cultivator's personal issues, but if somebody was going to start on me, I didn't have a problem defending myself when it came down to it. The conversation kept going, the fire cultivator who eventually introduced himself as Sun Tao made increasingly aggressive statements toward me.

The round-faced earth cultivator over at the bar tried to calm things down a bit but it wasn't really working. Sun Tao even threatened the thin young man for only being Mid Stage Oneiric Sovereign, apparently, he considered that too weak for the expedition entirely. Then Sun Tao started making these implications about the ice beauty sitting at my table, saying I had deliberately sat next to her just to look confident, that I was trying to get her attention somehow. I had no idea what he was even talking about.

Yeah the woman was objectively beautiful, I had eyes after all, but I had already learned my lesson about chasing after cultivation world beauties, Wu Lihua had been beautiful too and that whole situation had been nothing but problems from start to finish for me. I didn't need any more girl drama in my life thank you very much, I had sat at this table because it was literally the only available seat in this fake tavern, not because I cared about impressing anybody at all.

Sun Tao raised his hand then, flames gathering up for what looked like an attack coming my way. That's when the pressure hit. The barkeeper's disguise just fell away like smoke clearing, the entire tavern dissolved around us, the walls turned transparent and then vanished completely, the dream construct patrons broke apart into silver streams of energy floating away. Within seconds only five people remained standing in this empty space, Sun Tao, the earth cultivator, the thin young man, the ice beauty, and me.

The man stood where the bar used to be, he looked to be in his late thirties with hard eyes and a missing left arm, his spiritual pressure marked him unmistakably as a Lucid Lawbearer, no question about it. He looked at each of us slowly, one by one, when his gaze settled on Sun Tao his expression didn't change at all, but the weight of his attention alone was enough to make the fire cultivator take an unconscious step backward without even realizing it.

"This expedition has rules," he said simply. He gestured with his remaining hand and the empty space around us shifted. We weren't in a tavern anymore, instead we were standing in what looked like a training ground with packed earth beneath our feet and formation arrays glowing at the edges, the sky overhead was dark though so I couldn't tell if it was real night or just part of whatever dream space he'd created for this.

"My name is Song Wei," he continued.

"I reached Lucid Lawbearer realm many many years ago. Forty years ago, I led an expedition to the Sunken Dream Palace and reached eighty percent of the way to its heart before being forced to retreat. I lost my arm during that expedition, along with most of my team." He paused for a second.

"I am planning another attempt. This time I intend to reach the palace's core and claim the Celestial Dream Lotus. Anyone who joins this expedition will be compensated fairly for their contributions." The earth cultivator spoke up then.

"Senior Song, what are the rules for the expedition?"

"There are three main rules," Song Wei replied back.

"The first rule is that no one is allowed to attack their fellow expedition members. We will face enough external threats that we don't need to create internal conflicts amongst ourselves. If anyone violates this rule, they will be expelled from the expedition and marked as an enemy from that point on." That sounded fair, backstabbing was pretty common in treasure hunts after all.

"The second rule is that you obey my commands during combat situations," Song Wei went on.

"I have experience with the palace's dangers, so when I give an order in the middle of a fight you obey without arguing back. Hesitation gets people killed out there, I've seen that happen in every expedition I've been in." The thin young man nodded along nervously, while the ice beauty's expression stayed neutral the entire time.

"The third rule is that if you want to leave the expedition at any point before we enter the palace," Song Wei said, "you may do so without any penalty. But once we cross the threshold into the palace itself, it is too dangerous to leave, so, anyone who wishes to leave should do so before we reach that point."

"You mentioned compensation," Sun Tao said.

"What does fair compensation actually mean in specific terms?"

"One thousand high grade dream stones to each member upon joining," Song Wei said.

"An additional thousand upon reaching the palace entrance successfully. If we claim the Celestial Dream Lotus, then each surviving member receives a petal and first selection from any other gathered treasures." That was a generous structure. Two thousand high grade dream stones represented real advancement funding for a cultivator at my level, and a petal from the Celestial Dream Lotus was the kind of thing that could push a breakthrough that had been stalled for years.

"Anyone who finds these terms unacceptable may leave now," Song Wei said. Nobody moved. The thin young man looked like he was working hard to stay where he was, but he stayed. Sun Tao's jaw had tightened and he was looking between me and the thin young man with a calculation that wasn't difficult to read.

"Senior Song," Sun Tao began.

"Including cultivators who are not at adequate levels for what the palace actually requires creates a situation where stronger members have to spend their attention managing weak ones instead of focusing on actual threats. These two…" he pointed at me and the thin young man, "…are going to cost us more than they contribute."

"Your concern is noted," Song Wei replied.

"But everyone here was admitted because they meet my requirements."

"But the risk…"

"We are cultivators," Song Wei said, cutting him off without raising his voice.

"We are all adults who understand what we are agreeing to. If you have a genuine concern about another member's capability to contribute, there is an established way to address it." Sun Tao's eyes narrowed.

"You mean…"

"Challenge them," Song Wei said.

"Fight them. If they can't defend themselves at a level that meets your standard, they will most likely recognize that themselves and withdraw. That is how these things are handled between cultivators." The earth cultivator looked like he had opinions about this suggestion that he was choosing not to express. The ice beauty remained exactly as she had been throughout. The thin young man's color had dropped noticeably. Sun Tao looked between the two of us and made his calculation as his gaze came to rest on me.

"Fine," he said.

"I am challenging the boy. Hou Hongyun. Let us find out right now whether you actually belong here or whether you are using up a spot that should go to someone qualified." I sighed internally, I had really hoped to avoid this type of nonsense, but apparently that wasn't going to be an option today.

"I accept," I said.

"I will tell you now that you're going to regret this decision. I'm not saying that to intimidate you. I'm telling you so that you have the option to change your mind before this goes further." Sun Tao laughed harshly at that.

"Trash talk from a junior? That's adorable. Let me guess, you're going to tell me about your hidden master, or your secret technique, or some tragic backstory that's supposed to make me feel guilty about crushing you into the ground?"

"None of those," I said.

"I'm telling you a fact. That's all."

"Not a chance," he said, and the flames around his hands intensified.

"I'm going to enjoy this." I glanced over at the thin young man, he looked relieved that Sun Tao had chosen me instead of him, and I didn't blame him one bit for feeling that way. Song Wei moved forward slightly.

"The match will follow standard rules. No killing strikes."

"No," Sun Tao said.

"No rules. A real fight with no safety measures. He wants to threaten me? Fine. Let us see what he actually has." Song Wei's expression didn't change at all, but I could feel his spiritual sense focusing in on me now, he was checking something, probably trying to gauge whether I could actually survive an unrestricted fight against a Late Stage Oneiric Sovereign fire cultivator without dying.

I met his gaze and nodded slightly back at him, I understood what he was asking me, yes I could handle this, yes I accepted the risks involved. Song Wei studied me for another moment longer, then turned back toward Sun Tao.

"Very well, no rules then, the fight ends when one party is unable to continue or surrenders, those are the only terms." He stepped back giving us some space to work with, the earth cultivator moved to stand beside him, the thin young man hurried over to join them as well. The ice beauty remained at her table the whole time, which had apparently reformed when Song Wei created this training ground space around us.

Sun Tao rolled his shoulders, preparing himself for the fight, flames danced up along his arms and his spiritual pressure expanded outward aggressively now, he was done talking, he was ready to fight me. I stayed right where I was, hands at my sides. I didn't bother adopting a combat stance, and I didn't summon any dream qi or pull energy through my connection to the main cultivation base either, not yet anyway. Song Wei raised his right hand up high.

"Fight."