Chapter 12: Into the Dream
At the hour when day meets night and yin intertwines with yang, Li Qingfeng concluded his daily cultivation and lay on his bed.
Bathed in the dim light of an oil lamp on the table, he turned over restlessly, fiddling with the Soul Banner in his hands.
His gaze was unfocused, his mind adrift far beyond the room.
The decade long term had finally come to an end. The Immortal Master of Eight Directions City was about to depart, and they had even promised to take with them those with immortal destiny.
Unfortunately, the news had arrived four whole months too late.
“Soul Banner... Should I go and witness the righteous Immortal Master guarding the city?”
Li Qingfeng was torn, eager to meet like-minded cultivators, yet anxious about the implications of his own cultivation method.
A sect’s inheritance was no trivial matter.
Many bore the lifelong brand of the master they first apprenticed under.
Could one simply change their allegiance as they pleased?
Moreover, he possessed five spirit roots.
Without relying on demonic cultivation methods, could he even progress quickly in his path?
The side effects of the Blood Fiend Grand Method were relatively mild. It only required Blood Fiend Qi to assist cultivation, enabling rapid accumulation of spiritual power.
The downside was that it affected the mind, easily arousing violent tendencies.
Righteous cultivation techniques, in contrast, emphasized harmony and balance.
Tu Shanjun remained silent at Li Qingfeng’s murmuring.
Though he had considered this matter long ago, he still took a moment to deliberate once more.
In the end, he firmly opposed Li Qingfeng making contact with righteous cultivators. At least, not yet.
Soon after, the soft sound of snoring echoed through the room.
Wubao gently extinguished the oil lamp, shut the door, and retired to the side room.
Li Qingfeng, now breathing evenly in sleep, still clutched the Soul Banner tightly in his hands.
A perfect opportunity for Tu Shanjun.
“Enter the dream.”
The dreamscape was simple.
Tu Shanjun only needed to recreate a single scene.
He conjured a mountain peak, shrouded in swirling clouds under the midday sun.
Cliffs surrounded him on all sides, as if the entire world had shrunk to this tiny summit.
Li Qingfeng felt himself falling. He opened his eyes midway through the descent and suddenly found himself standing atop this strange mountaintop.
At the edge of the mist stood a solitary figure.
Since he had constructed this setting and drawn the banner master into the dream, Tu Shanjun now needed a suitable identity.
He considered using the identity of Zhao Shixian.
After all, Li Qingfeng had buried Zhao Shixian and received his cultivation techniques and artifacts. He might feel a sense of affinity or even reverence for Zhao as a master.
Using this identity could yield twice the results with half the effort.
But Tu Shanjun dismissed the idea.
Building a foundation on lies often leads to countless others, riddled with cracks from the start.
Appearing as a reclusive immortal, however, seemed far too out of place.
As long as Li Qingfeng remained rational, he would question why such a lofty being would visit him in a dream.
Five Spiritual Roots marked one as a “false root” no true expert would take notice.
More likely, he would suspect the being was a spirit or ghost trying to deceive him.
So Tu Shanjun chose to appear as the banner’s primary soul and meet Li Qingfeng face-to-face.
Li Qingfeng found the figure familiar.
Suddenly, a wind rose and the mist parted.
The figure turned.
A green face, crimson eyes, wild scarlet hair.
A terrifying ghostly visage.
Li Qingfeng nearly leapt out of his skin and instinctively turned to flee.
But he remembered what happened earlier that afternoon, this was no time to run.
He tried to summon his spiritual power, only to find it unresponsive.
Panic surged through him as he reached inside his robes, but found them empty.
The Soul Banner that should’ve been resting quietly at his side had vanished.
“The artifact is gone?”
Without it, fear gripped him.
He took a few steps back, only to find a sheer cliff behind him, nowhere left to run.
The grim ghost was clad in a dark robe, surrounded by a haze of black mist, his features indistinct.
But his grotesque face was clear as day.
And then, recognition dawned.
It was the primary soul from the Soul Banner, the ghost that had once leapt out before him.
“You...”
Li Qingfeng’s heart was still pounding in his chest, but he was far calmer than before.
At least he recognized the ghost.
Tu Shanjun studied him for a moment.
A fair and refined scholar, with a handsome face and a hint of heroic spirit between his brows.
He looked every bit the elegant young man.
Li Qingfeng forced himself to stay alert, pupils narrowed with tension, his arm trembling under his sleeve.
Facing a ferocious ghost directly, even knowing it was from the Soul Banner gave him no comfort.
All his previous calculations seemed meaningless now.
His life now hung by a thread, in the hands of this malevolent ghost.
How could he not be afraid?
Tu Shanjun stepped forward, towering over him.
To Li Qingfeng, the ghost loomed like a giant, easily over seven feet tall.
While he himself was only five feet six.
The oppressive aura of ghostly malice made his skin crawl.
Yet the ghost didn’t harm him.
Instead, he assumed a ready stance.
Like a martial instructor assessing a student.
Li Qingfeng didn’t know why he felt that way.
But looking into those crimson eyes, seeing the ghost’s every motion, it became clear. The ghost meant to teach him something.
“No way...”
Li Qingfeng forced a crooked smile, his stiff limbs refusing to cooperate.
The ghost, as if understanding his unease, patted his shoulder.
With that one gesture, the tension in Li Qingfeng’s body melted away.
The ghost gestured toward the sky, where dark mist coalesced into words. A martial scripture appeared before his eyes “Demon Ape Focus Fist.”
Li Qingfeng read aloud, one word at a time: “Demon Ape Focus Fist.”
“It’s really a fist manual!”
He memorized it, engrained the forms in his mind.
And to his amazement, the ghost corrected each of his stances personally.
He wouldn’t stop until every move met the standard.
Even the best-paid martial schools didn’t offer such attentive instruction.
Martial arts, like sacred texts, weren’t passed down lightly.
Taught to insiders, not outsiders; to sons, not daughters.
Even book learning required guidance, his family had spent a fortune to buy commentaries from a down-on-his-luck scholar whose ancestors once ranked as palace graduates.
But none of that compared to the strangeness of this moment.
A ghost teaching him martial arts in a dream.
No one would believe it.
Before this, if someone had told Li Qingfeng they had learned martial arts from a ghost in their dreams, he would’ve thought them delusional.
Or possessed, soon to die at the hands of some malevolent spirit.
Yet here he was, living such a tale himself.
Once Li Qingfeng had mastered the three forms with practiced ease, Tu Shanjun deemed the timing right.
With a wave of his hand, the clouds swirled back into motion.
The sunlit sky faded into clear mist.
Li Qingfeng opened his mouth to speak, but his eyes flew open.
He had awakened.
“It was a dream?”
Li Qingfeng was baffled by such an absurd dream.
Could it be, as the saying goes, what one thinks about during the day, one dreams about at night?
But it all felt far too real.
He slipped on his boots, lit the oil lamp, and rushed to transcribe the fist manual.
And to his shock, he actually remembered it.
After burning the written copy, Li Qingfeng sat in dazed reflection.
The dream’s details remained vivid.
He tried the three moves. Clumsy at first, but it felt as if he’d practiced them dozens of times before.
Suppressing his excitement, Li Qingfeng cradled the Soul Banner.
The banner’s primary soul not only hadn’t tried to harm him but it had taught him martial arts, this was truly the most benevolent treasure!
When he had faced that ghost, he had known he stood no chance. Its presence was overwhelming.
But that only confirmed what he now believed:
The primary soul had no intention of turning against him.
The ghost’s intelligence both amazed and unsettled him, but it proved one thing, it wouldn’t act against him on a whim.
He opened the window and looked at the night sky, it was already past the third watch.
In half an hour, the yin and yang would shift again.
Rather than return to sleep, Li Qingfeng began circulating his cultivation method, refining essence into qi.
His daily routine was a cycle of studying scriptures and refining energy.
The foundational technique for the Spirit-Seer Eyes was easy to learn, a most basic spell.
The second spell, Banner Control, required at least the third layer of Qi Refinement. For now, he could only use spiritual power to perform simple refining rituals.
In the end, it all came down to one thing:
Improving his foundational cultivation.
(Chapter End)