This was her Breakthrough Dream, a process that happens after every Breakthrough for a Cultivator. This process had led many cultivators to suicide before because they couldn't handle their own memories. This COULD be a deadly process.
Yet, here she was... Lucid.
Liyue walked out of the room in eery, cold fear.
She was walking in the Dream World.
The clouds outside the temple hall were dark and ominous, rain was falling in relentless sheets.
She remembered this day three years ago—storm-filled, rainy, and filled with the mumbling sounds of monks. It had been an ordinary day.
With quick steps, she walked to another room and found Mother Yue Li and Brother Han, they were flirting with each other while watching Wei Yuanfen train.
Mother Yue seemed as innocent as ever; trapped in his tight embrace, she was working hard to move out and train Wei Yuanfen like a cool master but Han Li's hand was too powerful, and no matter how many sweet words she said or not, she couldn't move out of the vice grip.
A slight smile graced Liyue's lips at the nostalgic scenery.
'3 years hadn't changed much,' she thought.
Then, she looked at Wei Yuanfen and this entire situation suddenly made Liyue pause. Dreams... they had rules of their own. In dreams, things that you didn't know of wouldn't happen. Even every person you had ever seen in your dreams would be someone you had passed by in real life.
A dream was made up of one's own experiences. She had heard about this scene before but she had never seen it happen in real time. She walked closer and Han Li's words grew clearer. "Yuanfen, the first thing one does in training is choosing a weapon. What weapon do you want to wield?"
'Wei Yuanfen's weapon choosing,' Liyue contemplated and tried touching Han Li but her hands passed through him like a mirage. She watched silently.
In the end, after trying many different weapons, Yuanfen ended up with a stick. It was not the spear but a stick—a Rod. It was 3 meters long and extremely powerful. Even though it lacked a spear's edge, Han Li's teachings made it every bit dangerous.
Why was this in her dreams?
Liyue thought, looking at her palm. It was a beautiful palm, she knew it was. The callouses faintly visible on her fingertips were even more beautiful, it was no longer clear in sight but it had been clear, it was the manifestation of her diligence in the art of spear. She clenched her hand. "It is said that only things affecting oneself happen in Breakthrough Dreams. So this event affected me?
Unknowingly?"
She remembered. Indeed, she had been a bit jealous when Wei Yuanfen was given a weapon. Due to not knowing the truth behind the girl's indifference to love, she had put a barrier between her. But that was long ago, after knowing the truth, she had apologized.
She and Yuanfen had a friendship between them that Liyue was proud of. She walked again and the surroundings shifted once more. It was another day. In the Grand Temple Hall.
First of all, she focused on herself in the Dream—That Liyue was biting her nails and looking at the events with nervousness. Fear.
She then looked at the center of the room. Han Li was there, Hua Yu was there, Monk Hen Shin was there... and so was Mother Yue. In Mother Yue's lap sat a white-haired girl of stunning beauty with a dazed gaze.
Only in Yue Li's lap was she not nervous, outside of her lap, Ruo would panic. Han Li was trying to feed her something but she refused to do that after a while, and after much soothing from Yue Li, she ate the resource.
Her body became bloody very quickly and she cried, even Han Li's eyes, which she had never seen being anything other than calm were shaking.
There was so much emotion, so much guilt, his trembling hands, his pale face. He was almost... Liyue shook her head. After eating the fruit, Ruo was healed. Her body slowly rebuilt itself and she had no worries of the Fang Clan killing the other Gu from there on.
Not that she would hesitate to provide it if he wanted a shoulder to cry on.
Again, the memories started to shift with no order.
She walked from one part of her life to the other.
Walking through, she saw Ruo smiling for the first time. All of them, Liyue, Yuanfen, Li Yao, Yue Li, and even Hua Feilan had teared up at the sight. Only Han Li and Hua Yu watched from the side, silent.
She saw how her mother Li Yao had been forced to become a Monk by Han Li. She wore Monk Robes but never cut her hair, she still drank alcohol, and she still had sex with Han Li oftentimes.
She no longer kept their relationship a secret and she had been given a bow and many arrows by Han Li to train with. She was, surprisingly, being taught in a long-range weapon.
Hua Feilan had joined Han Li's tutelage too. The training was fun but the woman seemed to have a story, as Big Brother had once said. She was not just a figure who could be named with a single term "Friend of All Woman." There was a painful story as to how that came to be.
Nobody knew it and nobody asked. Hua Yu knew it but she was the most alien one in their entire family. Even in the last three years, she had rarely ever talked to her.
Liyue witnessed everything once more. She saw her own faults. How she had been so scared of everything and anything. How she had been forced to sing in a Monk Festival by her Big Brother.
That was still a bit... embarrassing.
She wasn't too good at singing.
Then she saw Ruo speaking for the first time. It was to Han Li—she had asked him to make her a Honey Candy.
It was something he no longer had but he bought the materials from Monk Hen Shin and made Ruo a handful of them. That day, Han Li told her something that she still remembered, "Ruo is such a genius. She could see I was guilty of approaching her and she didn't want that, she wanted me to act like everybody else."
He had been happy that day. She had kicked his butt for not feeling happy for her like that but of course, he had dodged and thrown her into an icy pond. She laughed at the sight.
2 years since their arrival here when Ruo turned 16, they held a birthday party and the Ruo then was a different person. She still didn't talk much, she was a very silent person but her eyes had a shine to them. She was being taught in the monastery and the monks were all her teachers.
She even had friends her own age—subordinates would be a better term but still, she was a small sensation around the monastery.
There was a small incident of Han Li confessing to her but she didn't know what had happened on that front. She had forgotten to ask.
Liyue chuckled. "Among us, Ruo is the second-most luckiest after Mother Yue."
She walked again and her dreams shifted once more. It was the Southern Lust City, she was just three or four years old and she was outside her home.
Ice had accumulated in the city ground, kids were already making snowmen in some areas. She took the ice and made a little snowman. Liyue looked at her childish self and couldn't help but smile. She had been a loner since her youth.
Suddenly, she frowned. Liyue dug into the ice on the ground, her little palms red. Then suddenly, something like a dark ball grew visible underneath the ice. Startled and fearful, she touched it.
Everything vanished.
The dream vanished.
Darkness returned.