"I actually dreamed. This really doesn't feel good," Zheng Fan muttered, clutching his head. The waves of pain from his sea of consciousness told him that his body had grown somewhat weak. After a single dream, he had already passed beyond the Spirit Realm and become a Dharma Realm expert, someone capable of holding his own even in the battlefield world.
Dreaming was certainly not that simple. At the very beginning of cultivation, cultivators first had to gain complete mastery of themselves to withstand invasions by external demons. Yet they could not control themselves while sleeping, much less dreaming. Thus, cultivators just starting out avoided sleep. Of course, in a place like Buzhou, invasion by external demons was a joke. Buzhou's cultivators could therefore enjoy a good night's sleep every day. Still, the earliest stages of cultivation required constant accumulation, so using sleeping hours to cultivate was perfectly normal. That was what Zheng Fan had done.
The middle stage of cultivation was a rather broad concept. Some believed it began when cultivators recognized their own path; others thought it began when rigorous cultivation could no longer improve their strength. Still others believed that only surviving the first heavenly tribulation counted as crossing the first hurdle.
By the middle stage of cultivation, which was Zheng Fan's current state, dreaming was no longer something one could do at will. Everything that needed consideration had already been decided while awake, leaving nothing to dream about. A mighty cultivator had once created the Dream-Entry Art, hoping to achieve enlightenment through dreams. But after a single dream, that cultivator had developed the Dream-Entry Art to perfection, and that was the end of it.
In the late stages of cultivation, at the level of truly mighty cultivators, every movement could shake the Heavenly Dao. Even a