Transcending Dreams

B3 - Chapter 2

William touched his forehead, his fingers catching a few drops trickling down his skin. It looked like the thought of Lord Paddlington not being entirely on his side concerned him more than his own thoughts showed.

“Elder Yu,” he started slowly, “I will admit upfront that this isn’t the whole story, but this is as close as I can tell.”

Elder Yu’s eyes sharpened with concern as she gave him a brisk nod.

“A… spirit beast interrupted my mission in the Abyss. It broke the border and forced Kae and me out before bringing us to a small island surrounded by water on all sides. A gate took us to another place—one with a rotting castle.”

“What did this beast look like?” Elder Yu’s expression suggested that she already had an idea. It was likely she knew the place he was led to.

“… I’m not sure I should say, but I had to face an avatar at the end,” William figured that should be enough to clue her in if she actually knew where he went. If not, then he would stay silent for self-preservation.

It would be easier to explain if the sect’s administration could easily connect the dots rather than needing to be walked through the entire adventure.

“That’s all I need to know,” Elder Yu swiftly held up her hand. “Wait.”

It wasn’t like he could go anywhere. He watched her leave the room, returning a short minute later with the Elder who had left him here days ago. With the context clues easily put together, he realized this wasn’t an Elder. This was the Sect Master.

William glanced at the over-the-top robes—the overwhelming gold jewelry making it more so—when he suddenly recalled an old memory.

"Sect Master Guan Feng has a… taste for mortal metals. You must tell me, Junior Brother, if you feel such a desire. I will be able to fix it before it becomes an issue."

Lan Yin told him that while they were walking the streets of Xuanjing City. This almost confirmed his guess of who this man was.

Still, there was a slight chance he might be wrong, so pretending to be clueless was the right thing to do. If he greeted the man like a sect master and happened to be incorrect, that would be a faux pas of the highest order.

Elder Yu raised a brow at the silence in the room, unimpressed by the near-staring contest that sprung up. “It seems you were not introduced. Wei Liang, meet Sect Master Guan.”

Elder Yu cleared up the confusion in William’s mind, which was typical.

He bowed deeply. “Thank you for the retrieval, Sect Master.”

The Sect Master nodded briskly. “I wished to introduce myself in different circumstances, Disciple Wei, but it’s not to be. And I would have preferred to let Elder Yu deal with this issue, but unfortunately, the situation is more severe than I imagined.”

William immediately assumed that the Sect Master was aware of Sophia’s avatar. Still, he stayed silent, wanting him to say it directly. Lord Paddlington was unpredictable, and the sect’s administration knowing of the gate leading to the avatar without his direct admission might give him plausible deniability.

… He knew that was a stretch. With Lord Paddlington’s seemingly random moods, there was an equal chance of the turtle not caring or deciding he deserved instant death.

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“The Sect Master is trying to say that we know about Empress Sophia’s avatar,” Elder Yu cut in bluntly. “The avatar is an essential part of the sect, so if you can, let him know what happened.”

“Thank you for that, Elder Yu,” the Sect Master said drily. "I don’t need to know every detail of what you experienced in the Abyss. I don’t even need to know how you managed to escape—just the condition of the avatar.”

William fidgeted uneasily. “… The avatar was destroyed.”

The Sect Master and Elder Yu stared at him in shock. He didn’t blame them.

“You destroyed the avatar?” The Sect Master asked with disbelief.

William would have been willing to tell the truth if Elder Yu hadn’t said the avatar was essential to the sect. “I was able to cause some damage, but the spirit beast that led us there was the one that finished it.”

“I might have been mistaken,” Elder Yu muttered before speaking louder. “This beast, it was in the shape of a turtle, right?”

“Er, yes,” William confirmed hesitantly.

There was a moment of uneasy silence before the Sect Master broke it. “If the Empress’s companion went this far, then perhaps it was for a good reason.”

“That doesn’t stop the consequence we will—”

“Enough,” the Sect Master cut Elder Yu off. “We’ll speak of this later.”

William got the idea that this was more troublesome than the Sect Master admitted.

“Before I leave you, the dimension that the avatar was in… does it still exist?” The Sect Master stared a hole into William.

“It collapsed a few minutes after the avatar was destroyed.”

“I see,” the Sect Master sighed before nodding. “It seems I have more work on my plate. Elder Yu, Disciple Wei, I’ll take my leave. Do fix your eye issue quickly. Some people are asking after you.” He swiftly left the room after that.

William turned to face Elder Yu as the door closed. She looked lost in thought, a rarity since that was usually his role.

“Elder Yu?”

“Hm?” She snapped out of her state and focused on him. “Right, let’s deal with your eye. Does it feel like a foreign object?”

“Uh, no. It feels completely natural. I wasn’t even aware my eye had changed until I was told.”

“That’s… concerning,” Elder Yu narrowed her eyes. “Something like this shouldn’t be accepted this quickly by your body unless the transplant was done by someone near the Dao Seeking Realm.”

That wasn’t far off the mark. All William knew was that the treasure that did this was for cultivators in the Spirit Severing Realm. If it happened to be powerful enough, what Elder Yu suggested might be true.

“I suppose that’s irrelevant now,” Elder Yu said, placing two fingers near his right eye. "This might feel odd, but it will highlight the eye's connection to your spiritual pathways. You could find it yourself, but I would rather not have any mishaps happen under my watch.”

He resisted moving away. The thought of a ‘mishap’ involving his sight was undesirable, to say the least.

“Prepare yourself,” Elder Yu warned.

William immediately felt thrumming heat, highlighting the connection of his new eye to his spiritual pathway. He closed his eyes to block out the view of Elder Yu’s face covering most of his vision and focused on the new discovery.

He sensed why he couldn’t detect the eye—if spiritual energy was the main factor. The eye drew so little Qi from his pathways that it might as well be nonexistent. He was sure that more Qi would be lost through regular evaporation when brought to reinforce a part of his body.

“Do I cut off the access to Qi?” William asked with his eyes still closed.

“That’s the simplest way,” Elder Yu’s confirmed. “I’ll be withdrawing my Qi. Tell me if you lose sense of the connection.”

He frowned when locating the tiny sips of Qi suddenly became exponentially harder. However, he now had the benefit of knowing the general area where it was. He concentrated his Qi to try and replicate what Elder Yu had done.

That was a mistake.

“AHH!” William screamed in pain as his eyes flew open. He could feel his right eye drinking up all of his Qi as the world gained a blood-red tint.

Elder Yu was reaching out to him, but at a pace that made it seem like she was slower than a weak mortal. He tried to fight through the pain and ask what was happening, but it felt like his jaw was clamped tight. His lips were moving near the same rate as Elder Yu.

He felt like several seconds had passed before Elder Yu’s fingers finally touched his cheek. Not much had changed while he was stuck in that hellish state other than some dim lights appearing in parts of Elder Yu’s body.

William gasped in relief when the connection was forcibly cut off by Elder Yu’s Qi. The world returned to its standard color, and the eye was no longer sucking up all of his Qi.

[-1740 Spiritual Energy]

That was a terrifying amount for what he suspected was a few seconds of use.