Entering the Dream

At the hour when demons roamed, yin and yang shifted.

Li Qingfeng finished his cultivation for the day and lay down on his bed.

By the faint glow of the oil lamp on the table, he turned the Soul Banner over and over in his hands.

His gaze was unfocused; his mind had long since wandered elsewhere.

The once-in-ten-years handover mission had arrived. The immortal master in Eight Directions City was finally leaving, and he had promised to take away a group of people with immortal affinity.

Unfortunately, the news had come a full four months too late.

"Banner, should I go and see the Righteous Cultivator guarding the Prefecture City?"

Li Qingfeng desperately wanted to meet someone of the same path, yet he worried about the problem with his own cultivation technique.

The matter of one's lineage was no small thing.

For many people, whatever kind of master they acknowledged, that was the mark they carried for the rest of their lives.

Could one simply switch allegiances whenever one pleased?

Besides, he had a Five Spirit Root.

Without using demonic cultivation techniques, could he still cultivate quickly?

The side effects of the Blood Fiend Art were already considered minor. One only needed Blood Fiend qi to assist cultivation, and could rapidly accumulate spiritual power.

Its drawback was that Blood Fiend qi affected the mind, making one prone to violent and savage impulses.

Most righteous immortal arts were known for being upright, balanced, and peaceful.

Hearing Li Qingfeng's muttering, Tu Shan Jun gave no response.

Though Tu Shan Jun had already formed an idea the moment this question arose, he still considered it carefully.

In the end, he firmly opposed Li Qingfeng coming into contact with Righteous Cultivators—at least not now.

Before long, faint snores sounded within the room.

Wubao blew out the oil lamp, closed the door, and went to sleep in the side room.

Li Qingfeng's breathing had already steadied as he lay on the bed, his grip on the Soul Banner never loosening.

It happened to provide Tu Shan Jun with an opportunity.

"Enter the dream."

The dream was not complicated.

Tu Shan Jun only needed to recreate a scene.

The scene he recreated was an open space atop a mountain.

Clouds and mist curled around it beneath a clear blue sky and broad daylight.

Sheer cliffs surrounded it on every side, as though the entire world contained only this tiny patch of land.

Li Qingfeng felt himself falling. When he opened his eyes midway through, he found himself atop this inexplicable mountain peak.

A figure stood at the end of the clouds and mist, its back turned toward him.

Since he had constructed a scene and drawn the banner's master into a dream, he also needed an identity through which to make his entrance.

Tu Shan Jun had considered whether to take Zhao Shixian's identity.

Li Qingfeng had filled Zhao Shixian's grave and raised him a tombstone. He had also obtained Zhao Shixian's Immortal Cultivation Technique and magical artifact, so he ought to feel close to Zhao Shixian, perhaps even regard him as a master.

Approaching him with such an identity would undoubtedly yield twice the result with half the effort.

Yet Tu Shan Jun soon rejected the idea.

Using one lie as the foundation for everything often required countless lies to patch it up in the end, and cracks would naturally remain.

If he approached as some reclusive master beyond the mortal world, it would seem far too inexplicable.

So long as Li Qingfeng's reasoning was sound, he would wonder why there would be an immortal in a dream.

A Five Spirit Root was a False Spirit Root.

No reclusive master would ever take notice of someone with such talent.

In the end, Li Qingfeng would likely only associate it with spirits, monsters, and ghosts, believing some ghost had clouded his eyes.

Thus, after considering it, Tu Shan Jun decided to meet Li Qingfeng in the Main Soul's original appearance.

Li Qingfeng felt that the figure's back looked very familiar.

Suddenly, the wind rose, and the clouds and mist thinned.

The figure turned around.

A blue face, crimson pupils, and loose scarlet hair.

It was precisely the appearance of a hideous evil ghost.

Li Qingfeng was so startled that he immediately turned to flee.

But then he remembered what had happened at noon. The more it was such a moment, the less he could run.

He was about to use his spiritual power when he discovered that he seemed unable to mobilize it.

The inability to move his spiritual power instantly sent Li Qingfeng into a panic. He hurriedly searched his robes, but found nothing.

The Soul Banner, which should have been quietly resting there, was gone.

"The divine artifact is gone?"

Without the Soul Banner in hand, Li Qingfeng felt panic well up within him.

But after retreating only a dozen steps, he found a sheer cliff behind him, leaving no path of escape.

The Fierce Ghost wore a black robe, shrouded in faint black mist that obscured its body.

Yet the evil ghost's face was exceptionally clear.

Looking closer, was that not the evil ghost Main Soul that had leapt out of the Soul Banner?

"It's you."

Li Qingfeng's heart still hung in his throat, but he was far calmer than before.

At least he had recognized the dream ghost's true appearance.

Tu Shan Jun sized Li Qingfeng up.

A fair and clean scholar, handsome in appearance, with heroic spirit between his brows.

He looked dignified and imposing.

Li Qingfeng's mind was taut. His chestnut-colored pupils contracted slightly, while the arms hidden beneath his sleeves trembled beyond his control.

He was facing a vicious evil ghost head-on.

Even knowing that it was the Main Soul within the Soul Banner artifact, Li Qingfeng still had no confidence.

All his past calculations and estimates had now become drifting clouds.

Life and death hung by a thread, tied to the evil ghost's hand.

How could he not be afraid in such circumstances?

Tu Shan Jun walked before Li Qingfeng and looked down at him from above.

Li Qingfeng only felt that the vicious evil ghost before him was immensely tall, at least seven feet in height by sight.

One had to know that he himself was only five feet six inches tall.

The baleful and violent aura washing over him made him deeply uncomfortable.

Yet the towering evil ghost did not make things difficult for him. Instead, it assumed an opening stance.

It glanced at him as though it were an instructor at a martial arts hall.

Li Qingfeng did not know why he had such a feeling.

But when he met those scarlet eyes, every accompanying movement seemed to indicate that the evil ghost wanted to teach him something.

"No way."

Li Qingfeng forced out a smile, but his stiff body refused to move as he wished.

The evil ghost seemed to understand, and patted him on the shoulder.

With that pat, all of Li Qingfeng's tension vanished in an instant.

The evil ghost gestured toward the sky. Black mist condensed into words, and the principles and fist manual of the Demon Ape Mind-Settling Fist appeared before Li Qingfeng.

Li Qingfeng read each word slowly. "Demon Ape Mind-Settling Fist."

"It really is a fist manual!"

He read it thoroughly, memorized it, and firmly committed the three stances to memory.

The evil ghost actually corrected his movements one by one.

It did not stop until every movement fully met the standard.

Not even a martial arts hall one had paid for possessed a master who taught so personally, hand by hand.

Martial arts were like scriptures; they could not be lightly passed on.

Passed within, not without; passed to sons, not daughters.

In truth, even studying had explanations of scripture. His family's explanations had been learned at great cost from the household of a down-and-out scholar whose ancestors had once produced a jinshi graduate.

But none of that compared to the absurdity of this.

An evil ghost was transmitting a fist art, teaching him within a dream.

No one would believe it if he told them.

Before this, if someone had told Li Qingfeng that an evil ghost had taught him martial arts, he would have thought that person had most likely lost his mind.

Or perhaps they had provoked demons and ghosts, which entered their dreams to take their lives.

Who would have thought that he himself would undergo such a bizarre experience?

Seeing that Li Qingfeng had already thoroughly read the fist manual and practiced the three forms with decent skill, Tu Shan Jun felt that the time was about right.

With a wave of his hand, the clouds and mist began to whirl.

The clear blue sky and daylight transformed into pure qi.

Li Qingfeng opened his mouth to speak, but suddenly snapped his eyes open.

He had awakened.

"It was a dream."

Li Qingfeng was rather puzzled as to why he had dreamed, and such an absurd dream at that.

Could it be that what one thought of by day appeared in one's dreams at night?

But that dream had been far too real.

Pulling on his boots, Li Qingfeng lit the oil lamp and hurriedly copied down the fist manual from memory.

He actually wrote it out.

After destroying the fist manual he had written, Li Qingfeng stood there blankly, recalling the dream.

Everything that had happened in the dream remained vivid before his eyes.

He performed the three fist forms. They were clumsy, yet he felt as if he had practiced them many times already.

Li Qingfeng suppressed the excitement in his heart and held up the Soul Banner.

Not only did the Main Soul of his Soul Banner not backlash against him, it had even taught him a fist manual. It was simply the kindest treasure imaginable.

When he had faced the Main Soul evil ghost directly, he had known he was no match for it. Its oppressive presence had been overwhelming.

But that only further confirmed his thoughts.

The Main Soul evil ghost did not wish to backlash against him.

Though the evil ghost's intelligence being so high still shocked him, even making his scalp tingle the more he thought about it, at least it proved that the Main Soul evil ghost would not rashly harm him.

Opening the window and observing the sky, he saw that more than half of the third watch had already passed.

In another half hour, a new shift between yin and yang would arrive. Li Qingfeng simply did not go back to sleep, instead circulating his cultivation technique to refine essence into qi.

His daily routine consisted of studying scriptures and refining essence into qi.

The foundational spell Spirit Official Dharma Eye was easily cultivated; it was the most basic of techniques.

The second technique, Banner Control, required at least the third layer of Qi Refinement. At present, he could only use spiritual power to perform simple refinement upon it.

In short, he still needed to raise his fundamental cultivation.