Chapter Fifty-Four: The Awkwardness Upon Waking

At this moment, Li Hao witnessed tens of millions of living beings engaged in a brutal slaughter. In the sky, countless colossal creatures, each thousands of feet tall, clashed in titanic battles. On the ground, innumerable red-armored and black-armored cultivators fought in a tangled melee.

A young red-armored cultivator, his face still bearing traces of youth, had his head mercilessly cleaved off by a black-armored opponent. His head flew dozens of yards before his body, spraying torrents of blood, finally collapsed. The black-armored cultivator, unable to relish his victory, was immediately assailed from three sides by three enraged red-armored warriors wielding long spears. Before he could react, his body was pierced through by three lances, and he fell unwillingly to the ground.

Elsewhere, a black-armored warrior swung a massive blade toward a red-armored foe, nearly splitting him in two. But another red-armored cultivator stabbed through both his arms with a spear. Even with his arms crippled, the black-armored cultivator refused to yield. As the red-armored warrior tried to retrieve his spear, the black-armored foe, face twisted in agony, let out a furious roar and kicked him away. The red-armored cultivator crashed to the ground, but as the black-armored fighter rushed over, he threw his spear, which pierced straight through the black-armored warrior's brow.

Throughout this bloody conflict, countless young and aged cultivators alike lost limbs or perished outright, littering the battlefield with mountains of corpses and rivers of blood.

The ground battles were the cruelest, but the fiercest fighting raged in the sky. There, a black demonic wolf, thousands of feet tall, had its body bitten cleanly in two by a golden dragon ten thousand feet long. The dragon hurled the wolf’s enormous corpse down onto a dense cluster of black-armored cultivators, crushing dozens of them into mangled flesh in an instant.

The gigantic beasts in the sky collided with such force that space itself seemed to tremble. Some slain behemoths crashed to earth, sending dust flying and shattering the mountains and rivers below.

In the sky, a tall, middle-aged man clad in golden armor and wielding a golden spear, with a towering golden avatar gathered behind him, was locked in fierce combat with a burly man in black armor, who brandished a black halberd and summoned his own colossal avatar. For a thousand miles around their battlefield, nothing dared approach. Any giant beast that inadvertently drew near was sent hurtling thousands of feet away, coughing blood from the aftershocks of their clash.

Suddenly, the golden-armored man was caught off guard. The black-armored man seized the moment, striking him with full force and hurling him to the ground outside the battlefield. The golden-armored man's avatar smashed a massive crater into the ground, sending dust billowing for miles and reducing buildings to ruins.

Then, a flash of golden light appeared from nowhere, plunging straight into the roiling dust. As the haze cleared, the golden-armored man in the pit rose in a surge of murderous fury. The beasts in the sky roared in rage, and the red-armored warriors on the ground were instantly consumed by wrath.

In the next moment, the battlefield vanished from Li Hao’s sight. Another scene unfolded: in the vastness of the cosmos, a burly old man supported a barrier of laws seven or eight times his size, clutching a baby in his arms. The old man and child sped through space, passing planet after planet—near, then far—before fading from view.

The last image Li Hao saw was the old man gazing with tenderness at the child lying on a strange, red-and-white stone bed. Then, the old man disappeared, and the visions ceased.

At that moment, Li Hao felt as if he were lying against something soft and fragrant, an exquisite comfort. He tried to open his eyes, curious to see his surroundings, but found he lacked even the strength to do so. He wondered, “Am I still dreaming?”

Li Hao struggled for a while, then drifted back to sleep.

All the young cultivators struck by the illusion of the Realm Within the Realm had lost consciousness, falling into a deep slumber. In their dreams, just like Li Hao, they relived their pasts—everything that had ever happened to them played out swiftly in their minds.

Elsewhere, Lu Yao slowly awakened. Rubbing her temples, she looked around and realized she was alone, bathed in warm sunlight on the grass by a lakeshore. She checked herself and, to her surprise, found she was uninjured; even more astonishing, she had broken through to the peak of the Foundation-Building stage. Ecstatic, she wanted to share the news with her brother Li Hao, but seeing he wasn’t there, she felt a pang of disappointment.

She murmured softly, “Brother Li Hao, Sister, where are you? Where should I go to find you?”

Lost and uncertain, she plucked a leaf from a nearby tree and tossed it into the air. When it landed to her left, she chose to follow that direction.

Lu Xuemei and Lu Zhengtian, the siblings, awoke almost simultaneously. Exchanging glances, they understood that they had seen similar scenes in their dreams.

Lu Zhengtian surveyed the area and discovered that he and his sister were atop a mountain peak.

“I wonder where Brother Li Hao and Sister Yao are. If only we could summon the Golden Winged Roc, it would be so much easier,” he sighed.

Lu Xuemei replied, “Brother, let’s split up to find them. In three hours, whether we succeed or not, we’ll meet back here. What do you think?”

Lu Zhengtian said, “That’s a good idea, but we don’t know what dangers might lurk here. I’m worried about you being on your own.”

Lu Xuemei answered, “Then we won’t go far—let’s search within a hundred miles of here. If we don’t find them, we’ll move on to another place.”

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“All right, it’s settled. Let’s go, and be careful, Sister.”

“You too, Brother!”

With that, the siblings set out in different directions.

Lin Huashu woke up to find himself lying in a stream, which so annoyed him that steam seemed to pour from his nostrils. Realizing he was alone, he spread his divine sense to search the area, but after a long while found nothing. Not knowing where to look for his sister, he chose a random direction and began to walk.

Kuihu, Qin Zhen, and Li Zhan all woke up together, finding themselves lying head to head on a single rock.

“Did you guys dream just now?” Qin Zhen asked.

“Yes!” they both replied.

“You too?”

Qin Zhen nodded.

“It seems the young master isn’t here,” Kuihu remarked. Li Zhan and Qin Zhen both probed with their senses and confirmed it.

Li Zhan asked, “What should we do now?”

Kuihu suggested, “Qin Zhen, why don’t you try sensing their whereabouts?”

“I’ll give it a try,” Qin Zhen agreed. He sat cross-legged, sending his senses deep into the earth. After a long time, he shook his head.

“That makes things difficult,” Li Zhan sighed.

Kuihu nodded. “Let’s each search in a fan shape, keeping a hundred meters apart.”

Li Zhan said, “That’s a good plan, but which direction do we choose?”

Qin Zhen thought for a moment. “Let’s each pick a leaf, write a direction on three of them—left, right, and forward—and add one blank leaf. We’ll play rock-paper-scissors; the winner draws a leaf at random. If it’s the blank one, we go in the one direction none of us chose. Otherwise, we follow the direction on the leaf. What do you think?”

Kuihu and Li Zhan agreed. Qin Zhen won and drew the blank leaf. With “left,” “right,” and “forward” already chosen, they turned and set off in the remaining direction—backward.

Lin Xueyou woke up around the same time as the others, feeling a heavy weight on her chest. Rubbing her eyes, she forced them open and was nearly stifled with anger—Li Hao’s face was pressed squarely against her bosom, sleeping soundly.

“This scoundrel, how did he end up on top of me?” she thought. “If I wake him now, I’ll never be able to face anyone again!” Her large, expressive eyes darted around as she decided to quietly move him off her.

She gently wrapped her snow-white hands around Li Hao’s head, trying to lift him away. But as soon as she raised him a bit, his hand, resting on her abdomen, shifted slightly. Startled, Lin Xueyou let go, and Li Hao’s head fell right back where it was.

The sudden jolt woke Li Hao. He opened his eyes, which shone like stars, and found himself staring into Lin Xueyou’s round, almond-shaped ones. Both of them froze.

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Lin Xueyou broke the silence. “Aren’t you going to get up?”

Only then did Li Hao come to his senses. In an instant, he rolled off her and sat up, muttering to himself, “Luckily, that was just a dream, or this would be truly awkward!”

Hearing this, Lin Xueyou’s anger flared. She reached out and knocked him sharply on the head. Li Hao winced in pain and looked at her.

He went on muttering, “Strange, I remember being knocked out by a thunderball. If this isn’t a dream, why don’t I feel any injuries?”

His puzzled soliloquy nearly drove Lin Xueyou insane with frustration. In the end, she had no choice but to explain, “Are you really that clueless, or are you pretending? That was a dream. This isn’t.”

“Ah!” Li Hao, reminded of the recent events, felt his face flush a deep red, even redder than Lin Xueyou’s. At a loss for words, he scratched his head awkwardly.

Then he stammered, “Sister Xueyou, I didn’t mean it. I saw that huge thunderball about to hit you, and you weren’t reacting at all. I was afraid you’d get hurt, so I had no choice but to knock you down.”

Hearing that he’d acted out of concern for her, Lin Xueyou’s heart swelled with happiness. To have such a handsome young man willing to risk his life for her—wasn’t that every maiden’s dream?

She understood that illusions could bewilder the heart, conjuring all manner of visions. After being “slept on” by Li Hao, she was embarrassed and nervous, but she couldn’t bring herself to blame him.

“You really saw me in danger?” she asked.

Li Hao nodded earnestly.

“Then you’re not to breathe a word of what happened today,” she warned.

He nodded again.

Still puzzled, Li Hao asked, “But I was sure I got knocked out by that thunderball. Why am I not hurt?”

Lin Xueyou, hearing his confusion, softened and explained, “That was an illusion. Illusions trick the heart, making you see all sorts of things. Because you were worried about your friends, you saw me in danger. If you hadn’t tried to save me at that moment, you’d have lost consciousness completely and become an idiot. The reason you fainted was because your soul was struck by the illusion. The dreams you saw were what you cared about most in your heart.”

Hearing this, Li Hao felt a chill run through him. If he’d hesitated even a moment when he saw Lin Xueyou in danger, he’d have been doomed.

He thought to himself, “All these years, I’ve kept my loneliness to myself, but I really do care about the truth of what happened back then. Wasn’t what I just dreamed about my ordeal ten years ago? It must have been. Too bad I didn’t see whether my father won in the end. I hope he wasn’t hurt.”

Lin Xueyou saw him lost in thought and didn’t interrupt. After a while, Li Hao remembered something and looked around.

“Sister Xueyou, why are we the only ones here?”

“Right? If anyone else had been here, I’d have gouged out your eyes, chopped off your head, and maybe your hands too.”

“Whoa, that’s brutal! I only slept on you for a moment—and it was to save you! If you want, you can sleep on me to even the score.”

Lin Xueyou was left speechless by his innocence and could only retort, “Who’d want to sleep on you anyway!”