Chapter 130 - 130: The Great Dream Sovereign, The Truth of Dream Ruins City!
He instructed He Zhao to clear some of the dust inside the houses, revealing traces of battles, a common sight in several homes. This indicated that the inhabitants of this relic didn’t leave willingly but were forced out, likely due to an invasion that led to a massacre in their own homes.
In the center of the relic city was a large square, dominated by a temple. The temple had nine tiers of steps, each about ten feet high, making it the tallest structure in the city. Following Ru Shou’s direction, He Zhao made his way towards the temple, taking half an incense stick’s time to reach its base.
The temple was grand and towering, its steps much taller than He Zhao. Ru Shou, considering He Zhao’s cultivation level and the time it would take for him to climb, used a spell to fly up to the temple, taking He Zhao with him.
Inside the temple’s main hall, they found a statue of a woman. Carved from black jade, the statue was unique, with a stark white forehead contrasting with the rest of its material. Strikingly, the statue had no facial features – despite its detailed craftsmanship down to individual hair strands, its face remained blank, devoid of any carving marks.
Ru Shou thought about the architecture in Dream Ruins City, its customs and language, the hunted Dream Tapirs, and the fierce Nightmare Demons and Evil Spirits. When he saw this statue, a bold idea formed in his mind.
“There are no ghostly entities in this temple,” Ru Shou observed. “You two search here for more clues… I’ll check the entrance.
After he left, Ru Shou, standing next to a stone pillar at the temple entrance, made sure Gong Gong and Shebi Shi were not observing him. Then he crouched down and pressed his palm to the ground, quickly drawing an intricate array.
Stepping into the completed array, Ru Shou’s form split into two — one was the wooden puppet housing his spiritual projection, and the other, a figure in a green robe, was Ru Shou’s true form.
“Indeed…” The green-robed elder’s expression shifted. The array he had drawn, called “Dispel Illusion”, was not for combat but rather to help cultivators discern if they were in the real world or not.
“If this place is an illusion, the puppet will vanish. If it’s real, my spiritual projection and the puppet won’t separate…”
He realized where he was. “Dream Ruins… Dream Ruins… The resting place of dreams, this is the domain of the Great Dream Sovereign!’
Ru Shou’s eyes deepened with understanding. He was well-versed in ancient history, recognizing terms like Sovereign, Heavenly Lord, Saint, Ancient Emperor, and Demon Emperor as titles for beings of the same realm.
Dreams, especially for the Great Dream Sovereign, were not mere fantasies. Legends spoke of an ancient “Realm of Dreams,” where all dreams were interconnected, occurring in this realm.
Back then, if one missed someone unreachable in reality, they could meet them in dreams. Some preferred solitude, creating barriers in their dreamscapes to fashion private worlds. Others, busy with cultivation, replaced sleep with meditation, rarely appearing in the Realm of Dreams.
The master of this realm was the Great Dream Sovereign. The Realm of Dreams was essentially her dream made manifest. She should have been simply named Dream Sovereign, but was respectfully titled “Great” by the people.
This world, straddling reality and illusion, harbored native beings, nations, civilizations… It could even manifest briefly in the mortal realm, allowing people to physically enter it.
If the Dream Sovereign could one day bring the Realm of Dreams into reality, turning it into a true great realm, she would achieve perfection in her Dao and become the foremost Sovereign of all times.
But, for reasons unknown, the Dream Sovereign fell. The Realm of Dreams collapsed into countless fragments, and with her death, its inhabitants vanished. Dreams were no longer interconnected; everyone’s dreams became isolated, reflecting only their reality. People could no longer dream of things they hadn’t encountered or understood in real life, even the monsters in their nightmares being composites of real elements.
Ru Shou knew many secrets. Some said the Dream Sovereign had perished completely. But he knew as long as dreams existed in the world, she remained immortal, bound to return.
“The basis of the beings in the Realm of Dreams is that the Dream Sovereign is alive. Logically, after her demise, Dream Ruins City should not exist. And yet, this world is eroding. Dream Tapirs, originally gentle creatures created by her to consume people’s nightmares, have become aggressive in Dream Ruins
City.”
Ru Shou recalled what he had seen: “And the Nightmare Demons, those birds with two heads… such beings never existed in the Realm of Dreams.. Someone is invading this world, eroding the remnants of the Dream Sovereign’s power…”