Chương 176: A Sleepy Dreamwalker

There's something oddly peaceful about working on potentially lethal techniques while traveling through monster infested wilderness at the same time. Maybe it's the multitasking aspect of it, the conscious mind stays alert for any threats while the spiritual senses dive deep into the intricacies of qi manipulation at the same time. Or maybe I'm just strange. Azure would probably vote for the second option.

"The key," Azure was saying as we kept walking, "is keeping the pollen's structure intact while making the qi infusion subtle enough that it doesn't set off alarm bells in beasts that are higher stage than us." I watched through my spiritual sense as thin strands of qi twisted through the half-finished construct we were building together in my inner world.

It had to be delicate, if it was too weak the whole thing would just fall apart on itself, but if it was too strong then it would announce itself to anything nearby, so there wasn't a lot of room for error here.

"Think of it like making soup," Azure continued, apparently deciding I needed a more relatable metaphor.

"You want the flavors to blend together well, not hit someone over the head with individual ingredients."

"Did you just explain a battle technique to me using cooking."

"Would you have preferred I used sewing instead, something about tension and proper thread work maybe."

"No, cooking is fine," I smiled.

"But now I'm wondering if we could actually try—""Master," he cut me off before I could finish, "one dangerous experiment at a time please." Fair enough, the technique, which we ended up naming Dreamshade Miasma after going back and forth on names for way too long, was already complicated enough without me trying to throw cooking cultivation into the mix on top of it.

The idea behind it was simple enough on paper, a cloud of pollen soaked in spiritual energy that would affect lower stage beasts but slip right past the notice of anything stronger, the actual doing of it though, that was another matter entirely.

"Try cutting the qi density down in the outer layer, maybe thirty percent or so," Azure suggested, "and put a little spiral into how it's distributed while you're at it." We had been doing this for hours at this point, going back and forth, tweaking little things here and there, and the good part about building techniques inside your own inner world is you can test out a theory without the risk of blowing yourself into pieces, the bad part is that to anyone watching from outside you look checked out.

"You've been quiet," Liu Chang said, pulling me out of my own head, "worried about the mission?"

"Just thinking through formation stuff," which wasn't entirely a lie since formations had crossed my mind earlier too, so it counted as half true at least.

"Ah, the formation practitioner life, always somewhere up in their own head." He smiled.

"Actually that reminds me, we should probably go over what everyone here can do before we get to the village, good teamwork could end up being the only thing standing between success and getting ourselves killed." Su Yue nodded along at that.

"Especially with beast waves, individual strength doesn't matter near as much as everyone being able to work together." That was true. Beast waves were pure chaos, hundreds or sometimes thousands of beasts all surging forward at once, pushed by some instinct that even the people who studied this stuff for a living still didn't fully understand. Individual strength meant next to nothing if the group couldn't move as one.

Though like with everything else in this world, that rule only held up to a point, because if you were strong enough then numbers didn't matter anymore. I had heard the stories of elders wiping out entire beast waves with one move, Life Realm cultivators treating armies of a thousand beasts like nothing more than bugs swarming around their ankles, it was one of the unspoken laws of how this world worked, enough power would always beat numbers eventually.

But none of us were anywhere close to that yet so coordination it was, no way around it.

"I'll go first," Su Yue offered up.

"My method is the Crimson Sun Breathing Technique, it builds a sun inside my inner world that lets me pull in and refine fire essence." She lifted her hand and a little flame appeared, dancing around between her fingers like it had a mind of its own.

"Most of what I can do comes down to heat, I can throw up barriers made of superheated air, send out focused fire attacks, and other attacks like that." The flame got bigger, twisting itself into shapes before it just disappeared.

"My strongest move is called Solar Devastation Wave, it's a concentrated burst of solar fire that keeps burning until whatever it's hitting is gone." She grinned at that part.

"I try not to use it near towns though, it tends to terrify mortals." Yeah, I didn't blame them, it would probably terrify some cultivators too.

"Immutable Titan Scripture," Liu Chang said when it was his turn, "my inner world is the Titans Colossus Realm, it's full of stone giants the size of mountains, all of them built around the idea of a will that can't be shaken." Stolen story; please report. He stomped his foot once and I felt the ground under us go solid.

"Mostly defense and stability with me, I can harden my skin until it's unbreakable, and as long as I'm touching the ground, my injuries keep healing on their own." I had to admit I was impressed, the Immutable Titan Scripture wasn't some method you'd just find sitting in a regular sect library, this had to be a Heaven Rank technique, probably came out of the Capital City, from one of the big cultivation clans most likely.

The fact that Liu Chang was out here with us instead of training with his own clan made me think there was either a really interesting story behind that or a really sad one, maybe both. Everyone looked at Chu Feng next, and he let out this big dramatic sigh before answering.

"Fine. Sky Sundering Sutra. Wind techniques. Can we move on?"

"That's not a lot of detail," Su Yue pointed out for my sake. They all knew each other, I knew that this exercise was just an excuse for them to ask about my cultivation, and Chu Feng was making that plan of theirs difficult to carry out.

"What more do you need," he shrugged.

"I make wind blades, they cut beasts, end of story." I caught Liu Chang and Su Yue trading a look between them, and it was pretty obvious an answer like that was just typical Chu Feng behavior. Then it was my turn and I had to think carefully about what I was going to say here.

Obviously, I couldn't mention the runes or the red sun energy or any of the other stuff that would bring up questions I really didn't want to answer, better to just stick with whatever any random outer disciple could find out from others if they asked around the sect.

"World Tree Sutra," I said, figuring I'd just lead with the obvious one.

"It's a wood attribute method." Liu Chang's eyebrows went up a little at that.

"World Tree Sutra, isn't that the one that…"

"Kills most of the people who try it? Yeah, that's the one."

"Brave of you," Su Yue laughed.

"Every year, some idiot picks that up thinking they'll be the exception, usually ends with them fertilizing the sect's garden beds, if you know what I mean." She gave me a look, sizing me up.

"But somehow you're still not dead, try to keep it that way, or at least until this mission is done."

"I'll do my best," I said dryly.

"Wouldn't want to inconvenience everybody by exploding into tree saplings at a bad time." Chu Feng, who had gone unusually quiet through all the explanations, was watching me now with an intensity that didn't really match the nervous personality he was supposed to have, like the World Tree Sutra had grabbed his attention for some reason.

"Master," Azure's voice cut back in, "there's a spiritual beast coming from the northeast, Qi Condensation Stage 6, it's headed toward the village."

"How fast is it moving?"

"Slow, extremely slow actually." That was strange, but I still opened my mouth to give everyone a heads up. Except Chu Feng must have sensed it too because before I could even get a word out, he just vanished in a blur of wind, leaving nothing left behind but some disturbed leaves and two confused teammates.

"Well," Su Yue sighed, "I guess we're fighting now." We followed the trail he left and got there just in time to see him already locked in combat with, and I honestly didn't know what to call the thing we were looking at. It looked like someone tried describing a sloth to an artist who had never actually seen one and then told the artist to make it more cultivation themed, the being was massive, maybe fifteen feet tall with fur shifting through different shades of green as it moved.

"A Sleepy Dreamwalker." Azure identified it for me.

"They are usually solitary, they stay deep in spirit forests and don't bother coming out. They feed on dreams and spiritual essence, mostly from plants but sometimes from cultivators dumb enough to fall asleep on their territory. This one's energy patterns are off though, something's not right with it."

The fight itself was even stranger than the creature was, Chu Feng, who should've been able to handle a Stage 6 beast without trying, was struggling against it, his wind blades passed straight through its fur without doing anything, and its slow swipes somehow kept forcing him to dodge at the last second every single time.

The Dreamwalker meanwhile seemed more focused on getting past him than actually fighting him, its movements were erratic and almost desperate looking, like it was being pulled toward something past where we were standing. But what really got my attention was the look on Chu Feng's face, the man was fighting that sloth like it had insulted his entire family line going back nine generations.

Every hit he threw came with way more force than you'd expect for what should've been a routine beast encounter: wind blades cutting through the air everywhere, trees coming down, rocks splitting apart. And through it all, the sloth just kept trying to disengage the whole time.

"Enough," Liu Chang said, stepping in, qi surging through him as his skin took on the look of living metal. The power gap was obvious right away, three stages higher than the beast meant his presence alone made the being falter, it even let out something close to a whimper. I stayed back, partly to just watch how the three of them worked together and partly because it felt excessive to have all four of us ganging up on one Stage 6 beast.

Liu Chang didn't even bother with a named technique, just a single qi enhanced palm strike straight into the thing's core was enough. The impact sent shockwaves through the whole clearing: rocks shattering, tree trunks splintering apart, and the beast's ribcage caved in with this sickening crack as it dropped. But before the body could hit the ground, Chu Feng was already there, moving faster than he'd shown the entire fight, and he had the corpse stored away in his ring before any of us could process it.

"I need the body," he said quick, noticing everyone staring at him.

"I'll pay you back in spirit stones for the help, but…" and his tone went a little sharp here, "I don't remember asking anyone to jump in."

"You looked like you were struggling," Liu Chang said.

"Are you still hurt from the last mission?" Something flickered across Chu Feng's face, an expression between annoyed and maybe scared, it was hard to tell which.

"Yeah," he said after a second.

"But it won't affect the mission, I can handle myself fine." Liu Chang and Su Yue traded another look but neither of them pushed any further, and as we got moving again, I noticed the two of them had shifted how they were walking, keeping Chu Feng more in the corner of their eyes than before.

"Master," Azure said, sounding thoughtful, "there was something off about that beast."

"What do you mean."

"Right before Chu Feng put the body away, I picked up on a strange energy signature, just for a second, but…"

"But what."

"I'm not sure," Azure admitted.

"It happened too fast and he had the body stored almost instantly after. But whatever it was, he knows about it, and he's putting in a lot of effort to make sure nobody else finds out." I turned all of this over in my head as we kept walking, a supposedly nervous cultivator fighting at inconsistent skill levels, a beast that seemed more interested in reaching the village than fighting anyone, and now some mystery energy signature that Chu Feng clearly wanted buried. What in the world was going on?