Qinyang once again found herself back on the small sampan boat surrounded by the Fog of Time.
She followed the very same sequence of actions until she discovered the records of past repeats.
Even her previous reactions and contemplation was there for her to see.
"If this really did happen once, how come I don't have my own memories?"
This felt eerily real to be ignored!
"This is bad." She was stumped by this absurd situation.
"Even when I survived in the dream, it didn't trigger a change to the next scene. How so? Did I still die due to my injuries? Or is it something else I have to do?"
She sighed.
"Let's tackle one thing at a time." She reorganized her thoughts.
"Bao Zhi!" She broke the silence. "Can you check my soul foundation right now?"
Bao Zhi opened his eyes to mere slits, a hint of curiosity flashed in them.
"Come closer. The effect of mortal gu are greatly suppressed here."
After some attempts, Bao Zhi successfully gauged Qinyang's soul foundation.
Before he could ask the relevance of this, Qinyang already began explaining.
"We don't have much time, so I have to be brief. Dream realms erode the soul when people enter them."
"Dream realms?" Bao Zhi had never come across a dream realm.
Dream realms wouldn't surface en masse and become common until the great era of Great Dream Immortal Venerable one hundred thousand years from now.
From the Legends of Ren Zu he knew dream realms were a source of danger and their weakness to fire.
Qinyang passed over an information path gu worm. It contained her hastily recorded knowledge of dream realms.
It explained how it could trap people, how people get drawn in deeper the more their emotions get stirred and lose their self, and how completing the layers can let one escape.
Some dream realms were exact reenactments of historical events. These accurately detailed many aspects, but some where wholly chaotic and undecipherable, or anything between the two extremes.
"We are already trapped here." Qinyang explained. "These events we are experiencing have already happened. It is like a dream realm."
"Did we already have this conversation too?"
Qinyang shook her head and showed Bao Zhi her records as proof.
Bao Zhi closed his eyes as he mulled over these significant revelations.
He exhaled deeply.
"This explains the premonition I had."
His human path intuition told him there was no immediate danger. However it had no way of warning him of being stuck in time.
"It seems there is no inheritance to be had here, but merely a strange trap."
"The biggest problem right now is that we forget the events. But as you saw, I have a method to recover some of mine. This will be the key to make progress. But I will need your help. I'm afraid our souls are just too weak for dream exploration so we lose our selves right when we enter the dream... I don't know how many times we can even try. Eventually our souls will dissipate and we die."
There was no need to explain this to Bao Zhi, this is how he died when Spectral Soul fatally injured him.
"I will support you. Start preparing, we don't have much time until this mist solidifies."
Qinyang made her preparations. She familiarized herself with the looks and effects of Zhou Yang's gu that she activated previously.
"The movement gu that looks like a jade token is the most important. Then the defensive and offensive gu, but those are still unknown."
She also set up multiple functions in her system. One to wake her once in the dream, and one to start the system by itself and deliver a recording as soon as they entered the grotto heaven.
At the same time Bao Zhi activated his immortal killer move — Alive in Aspiration, Human in Perception!
The human qi of the two of them entangled each other, Qinyang once again gained the effects of Bao Zhi's attainments.
"Get ready. The mist is gathering." Bao Zhi warned.
"I will try to find you inside the dream."
* * * * *
Silver Wind Valley
Zhou Yang heard a beeping sound in his head, then Qinyang regained her self from the character she was embodying.
"Good. I need to start probing this dream realm."
She scanned her rank four aperture, the gu worms swimming in the yellow golden primeval essence seemed more than familiar.
"This must Bao Zhi's doing." She realized.
Thanks to Bao Zhi's grandmaster attainment in formation path, she could intuitively identify these information path gu. Formation path often combined gu from various paths, thus a formation path expert had to have a broad knowledge in this regard.
"Now, how do I find you?" She activated her investigative methods.
Zhou Yang, as an information path gu master had a natural edge in this aspect. Qinyang successfully located the other gu masters in short order.
"These should be all the people here. Now then which one are you?"
Often the best option was the most straight forward one. Should she just check, and try waking all of them?
Qinyang readied a messenger gu toward the closest gu master.
"Wait a moment! Aren't all of these the gu immortals from the other boats?"
She put away the gu that resembled a paper crane.
Recklessly approaching the wrong person could easily backfire. She decided to take another approach.
She activated her concealment gu, turning invisible, and left the hiding spot that Zhou Yang chose.
Next she used the contract quill gu.
Large golden letters appeared in the air, the contents were addressed to Bao Zhi directly, urging him to remember who he is.
The text shimmered and swayed in the air. It was very eye catching, yet there was no reaction.
"It would have been too easy, wouldn't it?" She accepted the result.
As the sun began to set, she knew time was running short.
"If surviving the explosion didn't resolve the dream, maybe the goal is to save everyone else?"
She changed the effect the contract quill gu's effect to a warning of the imminent calamity and headed to climb to the top of the opposite hill.
"It is a long shot, but maybe this makes a difference."
Qinyang decided to investigate the source of the explosion instead.
The setting sun's golden light illuminated the lush green hill, in the depth of the valley the moonlight lotus slowly began to reveal itself, its petals glowing with an ethereal silver light.
Qinyang quickened her pace, using the movement type gu to its full extent.
She reached the edge of the tree line, from here on out it was a grassy clearing.
"The source of the explosion should be right about this way." She oriented herself and noticed the dark silhouette of two people against the golden rays of light.
She activated her investigative gu worms, but she couldn't expose anything about this two mysterious figures.
"Let's see what you two demonic thugs are up to."
Luckily, the listening wind gu worked as expected.
"Blowing up hills and valleys, making me suffer death twice in a row? I won't let you get away with it!" She was ready like a bloodhound that caught the scent of prey.
Then the conversation became clearly audible to her.
A male voice spoke gently: "—your future husband. My name is Hong Ting."
Then a female voice carried the reply: "You are the future Immortal Venerable?"
"Don't be surprised, we were fated to meet here." Hong Ting replied.
Qinyang: "..."
"Huh?"
"Red Lotus Demon Venerable?"
She instantly recognized the iconic scene. How could she not? This was an important event in Red Lotus' life.
The idea to save his beloved wife and being unable to do so, was what twisted this future immortal venerable into a demon venerable.
"Then... Then what is the explosion? There was no explosion on their first meeting! This is a historical fact. Something is off..."
"I have to find out." She decided to approach anyway, the more information she could record the better her chances of figuring this out.
She took a step towards the couple, when something struck her like a flash of lightning.
She died right in that instant.
* * * * *
Time Fisher Grotto
As soon as the dazzling white light faded from Qinyang's eyes, her gu activated on their own and information flooded into her mind.
"This is a trap? Dream realm? Red Lotus!"
The information she received also contained instructions from her past self.
There was already a portion of information ready for Bao Zhi as well.
"Did I really do this? How pleasant, for once past me didn't procrastinate and leave all the work for future me." She joked to lessen her unease.
She sat quietly, processing the last portion of the records. There were no notes on that yet, she had to see for herself.
"This is huge! Finally some clues. Red Lotus was said to be the most mysterious venerable. But I know a lot about him and his life."
"For example, not many know that, historically he didn't even reach rank nine cultivation when he died at the hands of his master, Duke Long. His power was borrowed from a future where he was a rank nine vernerable with a killer move because he had to sacrifice his cultivation when using Spring Autumn Cicada."
Red Lotus Demon Venerable has lived the shortest life among the venerables, but this didn't account for the many many attempts he made traveling back in time in search for a way to save Liu Shu Xian.
"That explosion, could it be the use of Spring Autumn Cicada?"
"No. Spring Autumn Cicada doesn't create a world-shaking blast, it uses its energy to send a will back through the River of Time. Wasting this much energy that could devastate a whole valley?"
"No, that's not necessarily correct. I'm not thinking with the right frame of mind." She shook her head. "My experience is from the point of view of a mortal gu master."
"I have only read about the rank six and rank seven Spring Autumn Cicada. What if this was the rank nine one? That's right, Red Lotus definitely had its most powerful version. Then there is the killer move of Spring Autumn Success, that eliminates the random chance of failure of the gu's usage. I have no concept of what that killer move would look like from a measly gu master's point of view."
The more she thought about it the more convinced she got.
"I think I got it. This dream realm doesn't reflect the current historical events, but the ones that Red Lotus has experienced, one of the many histories that got erased by Spring Autumn Cicada."
This was a bit of progress. Qinyang has read what Red Lotus did in his youth and what he did at the end of his life. But she had to admit, this part of his life where he time traveled was a gaping hole in her knowledge. Nobody could know this other than Red Lotus.
"Still, I know his motivation and that's enough. Since this is his dream realm, he is looking for a way to save his wife."
"Her wife dies because rank nine Fate gu decrees her death to happen at his venerable ascension. The eventual solution he finds is the use of rank nine Love gu because love is also a kind of fate."
She continued with the review of the records, she wanted to know her last cause of death.
"Let's see." She skipped forward. "Ah, no I'm already dead. Rewind."
"What? It happened so fast!"
"Let's go frame by frame."
And then she caught a blurry object in the recording.
"Oh don't tell me." She had a confident guess about what the object was.
"Oh Duke Long, you bastard! Why is it you?" The strange thing turned out to be an immortal killer move, Spiraling Dragon Fang.
"Can't you even let a mortal gu master approach your gu immortal disciple?!" She tapped her fingers indignantly.
One had to know, Duke Long was a legendary rank eight figure, merely half a step below the realm of rank nine, people often referred to them as pseudo venerables.
If Duke Long decided to act, there was no way of stopping him. Not even Bao Zhi in his former days would stand a chance.
"Hmm. I guess, it makes sense. This is a fated event that I tried to interrupt. One way or another something would have happened."
The time of entry into the dream realm drew closer once again.
She asked Bao Zhi to check her soul this time too.
It was the same!
Then Bao Zhi activated his killer move Alive in Aspiration, Human in Perception. He couldn't do much to help her from here.
If he could regain lucidity in the dream as well, that would be another story.
* * * * *
Silver Wind Valley
Qinyang didn't idle this time at the bottom of the valley.
She shot out like an arrow, not wasting a moment on the other gu masters.
She combed the hillside as she neared the top.
The last rays of the sunlight shone through the canopies when she spotted her target.
"Red Lotus!"
Hong Ting turned to look at her in surprise. "How did you change..." He uttered in confusion.
"Are you an otherworldly demon?" His gaze swept over Qinyang.
She felt naked before the methods of a venerable, there was nothing she, or rather Zhou Yang, could hide.
"No, you aren't. This simply shouldn't happen." Hong Ting was still puzzled. "You are fated to be at the gathering in the valley."
"I came here to help you save your wife." Qinyang's heart hammered in her ears, she could feel her pulse at her fingertips.
This was a venerable she was talking to!
"Oh?" Curiosity lit Hong Ting's face for a moment, only to be eclipsed by a thin, wary frown of dark shadows.
"Shit! I didn't think this through, I just went and exposed his greatest secret." She thought in panic.
But next, Hong Thing broke out in a desperate laugh. "Here I am talking to you, when I couldn't even change a word I say at other times."
"Tell me how! Why is fate different now!" His voice turned stern and interrogative.
"You sent me here from the future." Qinyang stammered. "I have to tell you that Love gu is the solution to damage Fate gu."
"Another kind of fate..."
"So you don't have to use Spring Autumn Cicada to go back further." She added, but Hong Ting wasn't there anymore.
The dream realm has advanced to the next stage.
* * * * *