The dream realm progressed to the second stage.
Qinyang found herself in a bustling city with people coming and going.
The buildings before her bore ornate decorations and the air was filled with anticipation and the spirit of celebration.
"The scenery changed so much." She collected herself.
"But I kept my consciousness!" She suddenly realized.
"Good. It seems I only have to regain my lucidity once and it will persist for all levels of the dream realm."
Piece by piece she analyzed and pieced together the rules of this dream realm.
"Of course, if I immerse myself too deeply and get emotionally drawn in, I will lose myself."
Now she had to familiarize herself with this new situation of the second layer of the dream realm.
It didn't take long for her to figure out the what the hubbub was about.
"Today is the wedding ceremony of the young Immortal Venerable, Red Lotus!"
She frowned as she pondered, but there was nothing she could recall regarding it, this event was a blank in her memory.
"How am I to solve this second stage?"
"I already know how the previous stages are solved. The first stage is nothing, we just have to wait inside the boats. Thereafter Red Lotus needs the clue to use Love gu to counter Fate gu, and then the second stage is immediately cleared."
Although Qinyang has misjudged where the boundary of reality and dream laid regarding which layer was the first or second, her conclusion remained correct.
"This event is chronologically after Red Lotus and Liu Shu Xian met each other. Then the current Red Lotus should already know about Love gu's usefulness."
"So if this stage is just like the previous, then it depicts Red Lotus' rebirths when he was attempting to change fate. But there is only one way that is historically accurate, and that is the one where he eventually progresses. That is the solution I need to find!"
Next she inspected herself and discovered she had gu master cultivation.
"I have red steel primeval essence in my aperture. That means I am a rank two gu master here." She sighed.
This was better than nothing, but this low cultivation considerably limited her influence on the events.
But what she noticed next caused even more concern.
She saw her hands, like thin twigs with spotted skin, just raising them made her feel this person's joints protesting painfully.
She stepped to the side and looked at her reflection in a window.
"I became such an old hag!"
...
"Hey granny, are you selling or not? These buns are going to go cold if you keep gawking." A young girl grumbled in front of the food stall.
A small queue of hungry people was already forming.
"Suit yourself. It's free." She waved her hand and left the food stall behind her.
Qinyang tried to orient herself and locate Red Lotus but the city was too big.
She followed the mass of people towards the center, and it soon became too crowded to take another step. Many people from Central Continent came to witness the historic ceremony.
Above her Qinyang saw colorful streaks of light. The people sitting on chariots and pagodas whooshed through the skies. Evidently, many gu immortals have also came to attend.
"How do I get closer? I need to meet Red Lotus!" She tried to force her way forward.
When she found out that without an invitation nobody could enter the inner court, her hopes were crushed.
"I need to find another way..."
However the security of the place was very tight. No matter which route she tried to take, her path was blocked.
Out of breath, she stopped to sit down to ponder. She couldn't walk much more even if she wanted to.
"I can't just do nothing! The more one sinks into a dream realm, the more they lose themselves. I have to find Bao Zhi to help me."
The deeper she got into the dream realm's layers the less she could feel the connection made by Bao Zhi's human path killer move.
There was no way around this, the killer move Alive in Aspiration, Human in Perception could only connect people's perception via their human qi. If one person became fully unconscious the effect would be greatly diminished.
Qinyang kept exploring the city, aimlessly walking, looking for something she could perhaps use.
"How do I find someone in a dream realm?"
When entering a dream realm people usually acquire different looks and mental states according to the character in the dream realm that they embody. If the person wasn't aware that they are dreaming, their actions would not be different from any other character's that is conjured up by the dream realm.
"There are simply too many people here. There has to be a way to tell apart real people from the dream's fake ones."
Qinyang has been thinking long and hard for the better part of the day.
"The key difference is in agency. I have free will while the others follow a script according to the historical events. The other dreamers also have their own free will."
"But how do I tell who else has free will? They are all asleep, immersed in the dream realm!" She sighed as her reasoning led her in circles, always back to the same issue.
"Even if I introduce changes to the events, the dream realm reacts accordingly and I won't be able to tell if the source of the induced change is another person or the dream realm itself."
She shook her head in defeat as the task at hand seemed impossible to solve.
"Previously, when I encountered Red Lotus, he acted differently as a reaction to the changes I made."
"But even if I somehow find out who is real and who is fake, how do I wake them up?"
"The only way I know is the one I have experienced myself... Having a near death experience."
She wasn't sure whether she regained lucidity because she specifically has already experienced death in her first life before transmigrating into the gu world and the familiar situation jolted her awake or whether it was a general principle that death was a way to escape a dream's influence.
She was fiddling with her hair anxiously while she walked.
"I could do this. I know it seems desperate and heavy handed... but what other options do I have?"
She stopped in her track for a brief period to contemplate.
At the next moment, she attacked the closest passer-by!
A fatal wound!
Blood spurted from the neck of her unsuspecting victim.
The image in the young man's dread-filled eyes reflected Qinyang standing over him.
"Wake up! Remember who you are!" Qinyang shook the person at his shoulders as he was struggling in vain to plug the wound on his neck.
A shocked crowd was gathering in a circle, keeping their distance from the violent murder scene.
"I will remember you." She murmured at the dying body.
Plop.
"Not a real one." Qinyang wasn't going to wait any longer than the moment it took her to record the reaction she invoked.
She wasted no time and activated her gu worms and she leapt to another person striking them too!
Chaos erupted as the people quickly realized they were in danger and fled in all directions.
Qinyang took the lives of multiple passer-byes in quick succession.
"These aren't people. These are not people, just constructs in a dream." She repeated in her mind trying to ignore the screams and the warm feeling of blood on her hands. "These aren't people, I am looking for the real people."
She quickly ran out of breath.
When her old body was eventually confronted by another gu master who rushed to the scene, the killing spree ended immediately.
Qinyang had met her match and she got slain on the spot.
Once again her mind found itself back at the endless white waters, sitting on the boat.
"The difficulty of the second stage is immense." She started reviewing the recordings.
"This strategy will not work. How foolish!" She ridiculed her previous attempt. "There are too many people attending the wedding. Finding where Bao Zhi ends up is like looking for a needle in a haystack."
"Not to mention, with just the rank two cultivation I could only check the people weaker than me. And what are the chances he is among the mortals or rank one gu masters to begin with?"
Trying to check each person one by one would be a huge waste of time. There were tens of thousands present at the second scene!
"And even if he is among them and I find him, now there are two weaklings who can't even get close to the main events." The more she analyzed with a clear head now that she wasn't directly in the scene the more faults she found with this approach.
"Bao Zhi, take these gu worms." Qinyang passed him the information path gu worms and the electric brain gu she was using.
After the usual introduction to the situation, Qinyang added. "In the dream realm my killer move system will wake you up. You need to send a message to Red Lotus. You can see the details for yourself."
"Even though this way I will remain immersed and not wake up this round, Bao Zhi's actions in the dream realm will be recorded. Then I just have to check the footage to find out who he is. Simply brilliant!" She thought in glee.
Bao Zhi took the gu worms and activated the killer move.
The mechanical voice rang in his mind and his minds eye was scanning through the recordings from Qinyang's perspective in the dream.
Their sampan boat once again got sucked in the whirlpool as before, and their minds entered the dream realm again.
"!!!"
Bao Zhi's consciousness was jolted awake by the beeping sound in his mind.
Silver Wind Valley's scenery was just like he saw in the recordings, but from a slightly different vantage point.
After a brief round of self-inspection he found that he was the rank four wood path gu master!
Just like Qinyang has instructed, he sent a letter gu towards the direction of Red Lotus.
Bao Zhi curiously studied the scene and clicked his tongue in wonder.
This was his first time experiencing a dream realm. People naturally had dreams in their own sleep, but those could not compare in depth and faithfulness to dream realms.
He tried his wood path gu worms in his aperture. They seemed real, looking as expected, consuming his primeval essence and producing their respective effects.
"Dream realms are fascinating!"
Bao Zhi still had some time to experiment so he started probing the limits of the dream.
He confronted the other contestants who were lying in wait for the moonlight lotus to bloom.
"Old geezer, stop stirring trouble. The time has not arrived yet!"
The old man didn't heed the advice and thick vines burst forth from his grey robes.
"Hehe, fight me for a hundred rounds!" Bao Zhi laughed as he attacked.
A woman in red immediately intervened, burning the vines to ashes.
But Bao Zhi was undeterred, his attack was only a distraction as a second set of vines made their way underground and bound his target in place.
The vines tightened with great force, the man who was reprimanding Bao Zhi struggled for air with a reddened face as his lungs were squeezed.
Bao Zhi frowned.
This much force should already have crushed his target, but not only was he still living, the expenditure of Bao Zhi's primeval essence has sharply increased now.
He arrived before the struggling gu master to deliver the finishing blow personally.
"Nooo!" The female voice roared.
"Too late!"
Searing heat was already at Bao Zhi's back, a fierce attack from the red robed woman was launched his way.
Booom!
But instead of delivering the finishing blow, Bao Zhi disappeared into the ground and the fireball hit the tightly bound man instead.
Bao Zhi emerged at a distance away. Masked by the noise of the fireball's explosion he reached to snatch the moonlight lotus, however his movement killer move failed and he suffered an intense backlash.
"I see." He hid himself in retreat.
Bao Zhi discovered some discrepancies, and the more he probed and combined the effects of gu worms the more fundamentally wrong these wood path gu were!
Bao Zhi was a wood path great grandmaster, his judgement was not incorrect.
"There seem to be differences to dreams and the real world after all." He surmised.
At first there were no issues, but the more Bao Zhi exerted his influence to change the course of the dream realm the more unexpected problems occurred.
Bao Zhi, with the combat experience of a rank eight gu immortal could draw out every last bit of fighting power from this rank four gu master's body.
Yet even when breaking the limits of rank four, the dream realm forced him back.
"There seems to be a corrective force in effect. The other gu masters also outperformed themselves this time."
"My movement killer move had no flaws, but the activation failed nonetheless and injured me. This clearly shows this dream realm has rules that cannot be broken, while others can be bent."
Bao Zhi recalled Qinyang saying that dream realms themselves are the manifestations of emotions, obsessions and desires, they are the remains of countless wills and not necessarily the reflections of reality.
"Dreams are dreams after all. Otherwise how could there be a wood path gu master in Red Lotus' time?"
It was common knowledge that wood path was created by Genesis Lotus Immortal Venerable, and he came many years after Red Lotus Demon Venerable's era.
As Bao Zhi was hiding and licking his wounds, suddenly the scenery began to change as his letter gu reached the young Red Lotus.
The second scene began and Bao Zhi found himself among the clouds steering an immortal gu house.
Every corner and tile of this daoist temple was alternating between emitting the light of the sun and moon.
The beautiful light shone on the surrounding clouds, making them look auspicious, and creating a scene of an immortal sanctuary.
Rank seven immortal gu house — Sun and Moon Temple!
* * * * *