Chapter 620: Dream Authority, Soul Dwelling, and Dream Space
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 620: Dream Authority, Soul Dwelling, and Dream Space
It didn't take long for Elena to finish resurrecting the group. She then cast a series of Cleaning Spells and Air Purification Spells to scrub away the bloodstains and the metallic tang of gore; after all, her afternoon tea time wasn't over yet.
"What are you all still doing here?" Elena asked, glancing at the few remaining students. She had already brought everyone back to life—did they not intend to leave?
"Um... we were just curious about that image from before. Can mentors really monitor every student's situation in real-time?"
"Not exactly. Xiao Han simply chose to broadcast her feed publicly, which is why I can see it," Elena replied, shaking her head. However, she noted internally that with the Academy Network’s dominance over the ley lines, it was actually quite simple for witches to monitor any area covered by the network.
"A live stream? Xiao Han is streaming? How is she doing that?"
"Well... it’s a bit complicated. To put it simply, it’s done through a Great Knowledge Seed. But I’m too lazy to explain what a Great Knowledge Seed is. If you have the wit to find out on your own, then that’s your own capability."
"A Great Knowledge Seed... I think I’ve heard of that."
"I heard a teaching assistant mention it. Apparently, it only circulates among a small group."
"But I heard my mentor say she has one too. It seems like all the mentors have them..."
As upperclassmen, these students naturally had some inkling of the concept. They were, after all, students who studied directly under mentors, and curiosity was only natural for those in such proximity to power.
The few Wizard students who had stayed behind were stunned to hear the term. One of them stepped forward.
"Mentor Elena, is the Great Knowledge Seed you mentioned the Great Knowledge Seed? A while ago, our academy's mentors had an exchange with your school, and they mentioned a collaboration regarding those seeds."
"Oh? You’re quite well-informed. Your mentors are already talking to students about it?" Elena looked at the young man. Though her words were sharp, her expression showed no surprise. "It’s essentially that, yes. But you’ll have to wait. The technology hasn't reached a level where it can be popularized yet. As you can see, it hasn't even spread through the student body of the Witch Academy."
"So that’s how it is..." The Wizard students stared at the screen before Elena. As exchange students, they were naturally aware of the Great Knowledge Seed; having embedded themselves in the Witch Academy, they expected to be among the first batch of students to receive them.
They knew that simply possessing such a thing could grant a person photographic memory, among many other abilities. It was a prize that made anyone salivate with greed.
Elena had nothing pressing to do at the moment. Surrounded by a few wheedling students, she adjusted the stream’s visuals and audio to broadcast externally again.
Compared to the potential of the Great Knowledge Seed, the students were more concerned with the content of the broadcast. In the previous flash of imagery, they had seen something... something that looked like a massive Transcendent Crystal!
"Mentor Elena, where is Xiao Han? That place looks so strange."
"It looks like she’s in a zero-gravity state."
"Xiao Han is over at the Seed Vault. You should know about that, right? Isn't your intelligence network supposed to be top-notch?" Elena remarked.
"The Seed Vault... oh, the Space Maze!"
Someone realized it almost immediately.
"But why would Xiao Han go there? Shouldn't she be researching that tree?"
"Wait, shouldn't we be wondering why there’s such a strange place inside the Space Maze? Also, that Transcendent Crystal is huge! Is Xiao Han about to strike it rich?" a girl with a bit of a greedy streak asked.
"Right, Mentor Elena, you said Xiao Han is doing something 'big.' If you consider it big, it must be truly significant... So, what exactly is she doing?"
"She’s testing something. She’s experimenting with her own life; she wants to experience the boundary between dream and reality," Elena explained simply.
"This... the boundary between dream and reality? What is that?"
"I don't know, because I’ve never tried it myself," Elena admitted freely with a shrug.
"What? Even Mentor Elena hasn't tried it? Isn't Xiao Han just looking for death then?"
"Aren't you all constantly looking for death yourselves? You’re in no position to talk," Elena said, rolling her eyes at them.
"Well... uh, that’s a bit different..."
The group immediately shrank back. If it were a death they could understand, they wouldn't be afraid; they knew that as long as their soul essence remained intact, a Resurrection Spell could bring them back. But probing the boundary between dream and reality... that was a move they truly didn't dare to attempt.
The danger wasn't death—it was becoming lost!
The more they learned, the more they understood that "death" was categorized into many forms. Some deaths were so absolute that even a Resurrection Spell was useless.
Dreams were even more treacherous. A dream might not kill a person, but it could cause them to become lost within its depths. Even if the body lived, the person was effectively dead.
The more they knew, the more they feared an unknown death. It wasn't that they weren't afraid to die; they just knew they had never truly died with the Resurrection Spell as a safety net. Faced with absolute death, they were still terrified.
Suddenly, the atmosphere grew heavy. The only sound remaining was the audio from the live stream. Xiao Han’s commentary had ended, so everyone could only watch what she was doing.
They could see the bullet-chat comments flashing across the screen, discussing technical problems far beyond their comprehension.
They talked about the connection between the soul and dreams, the distinction between physical consciousness and dream consciousness clones, the soul convergence caused by deep-layer dreaming, and the absolute soul deprivation of a death state.
The students didn't even have time to be shocked that Xiao Han possessed a means like the Resurrection Spell before they witnessed the convergence point of the dream ley lines and saw a corner of the Primitive Dream Realm that looked like a lonely sea.
They didn't understand the resonance of domain orders, nor did they grasp the intent behind the fragment of Power of Knowledge Xiao Han displayed. They only vaguely understood that she was comparing dream and reality to two parallel lines...
"You don't understand, do you? That’s fine. This is what 'Transcendent' means. It isn't just about fighting and killing; it’s about academic subjects and research," Elena chuckled, her eyes filled with admiration.
"Though Xiao Han’s methods are a bit unorthodox, if I were to summarize her current experiment as a research topic, it would be aptly titled: 'The Resonance of Dream and Reality: Dream Overlap Phenomena under the Theory of Domain Order Resonance.' That fragment of Power of Knowledge she showed earlier is the theoretical foundation of her attempt. It’s a crude theory, but you can see it was derived from very basic formulas. It possesses a certain 'basic yet violent' aesthetic of logic."
"This..." Hearing this, the young men and women fell silent. What else could they say?
They literally couldn't understand a word of it.
Moreover, the academy hadn't taught this, and their own mentors had never mentioned such things... but they overlooked one fact.
To this day, Xiao Han didn't have a true mentor. She only had a counselor, and she had already left her class. As for the mentor she followed as a teaching assistant... that was the most "pure" of the new witch mentors.
Elena was watching intently when she suddenly spotted a comment. Seeing the content and the formulas within it, she immediately felt a wave of irritation and began to curse, disregarding her image.
"Oh, for heaven's sake! Why would they reveal that to Xiao Han early? She was clearly capable of simplifying it herself! Does this person have no brain, or is she just a Transcendent Witch who feels the need to show off her knowledge in front of a little witch?!"
* * *
The convergence point of the ley lines.
At this moment, I have shed the shackles of my physical shell. My soul oscillates between dream and reality.
Under the "knowledge tips" from many witch sisters, combined with the sensations from my own practice, I have come to understand the terrifying nature of the soul.
I also understand why, after ascending to a Transcendent Witch, one's soul essence must undergo a metamorphosis to become a true soul.
Because the soul is the cornerstone for traveling between dream and reality. Furthermore, I learned a concept from the Tree of Great Knowledge: the sublimation of every soul represents the perfection of Dream Authority.
This means that every soul possesses a capability, an innate talent born at its inception: Dream Authority.
When the Soul Truth Witch ascended to her throne, she loudly proclaimed, "Soul-based life has the right to dream freely." With a gentle voice, she soothed the witches into slumber, blessing every life on the path of the soul through Truth Dedication, granting them the authority to freely command their dreams.
Thus, ascending as a witch and becoming a soul-based lifeform also means receiving the blessing of the Soul Truth Witch.
And the place where my soul currently resides... is called the Dream Space.
This is one of the blessings bestowed upon every soul-based life the moment they touch the essence of the soul—a Dream Space born within the soul's consciousness, governed by the soul itself!
It is also the manifestation of the Dream Authority within the soul, seizing a portion of the Primitive Dream Realm to serve as the soul's dwelling.
The "Primitive Dream Realm" possessed by the Primal Witch was obtained in a similar fashion. However, back then, the Soul Truth Witch did not yet exist. To ensure that every Transcendent Witch could be linked and not fall into lonely decay in some corner of the void, the Primal Witch used her great power to seize the strength of the Primitive Dream Realm and refine it into the Primitive Dream Realm.
In this moment, as my soul's dream is born, I feel as though something within me has reached perfection.
My Sea of Consciousness and my Dream Sea—two spaces opened within my mind that are intertwined yet distinct—were previously linked by the phantoms of the Tree of Great Knowledge and the Tree of Great Wisdom Enlightenment.
But now, the soul's dream—this soul dwelling born of a higher dimension—has directly integrated the consciousness space and the dream space!
The two remain seemingly independent, yet they have been unified in a true sense.
Furthermore, the blessing of the soul has allowed me to gain a revelation from the Great Wisdom Enlightenment Art...
Perhaps the phantom of the Tree of Great Wisdom Enlightenment, which forms a dual-tree structure with the Tree of Great Knowledge, can become the true physical form of my spellbook!
My consciousness stands within the soul's dream. In the midst of this vast, empty Dream Space, I watch two interdependent great trees continuously grow and blend together.
This is the first time I have touched the essence of the Great Wisdom Enlightenment Art—this Great Spellbook—so directly.
Usually, in my spare time, I look over the research on the [Transcendent Knowledge] of this Great Spellbook given to me by Dean Mei, but I know I am still not qualified to command it.
But now, I am qualified to touch this book that I have "intentionally ignored." Today, it will become the physical manifestation of another derivative sequence—the Tree of Great Wisdom Enlightenment!
If you were to ask what function this serves, I would say it serves none.
But if you were to ask what the meaning is...
The meaning is this: if it is the Great Wisdom Enlightenment Art, it will always be just the Great Wisdom Enlightenment Art. If it becomes the Tree of Great Wisdom Enlightenment, then this is the first step in shaping it into a power I can truly command!
Making a change to a spell is the first step to dominating it. Even if the change is useless, its symbolic significance far outweighs its practical utility.
My understanding of power is very clear.
Power should do what I want to do; I should not do what power can do.
I am the master of power. I decide how it should function!
My only compromise with power is if it is physically impossible; I will not force it to do what it cannot.
It’s like using a Fireball Spell to extinguish a fire. Inherently, it cannot do that, so I do not force it. But if one day my level of cognition rises and I discover I can make a Fireball Spell extinguish a fire, then when I want to put out a fire, the Fireball Spell must be able to do it.
Returning to reality once more, the rewards from this attempt are incredibly bountiful.
The Dream Space, the understanding of the soul, the understanding of dreams, and the information derived from that fragment of Power of Knowledge have revealed the theoretical boundary of dreams.
With theoretical guidance, I can achieve so much more!
Now, there are only one... no, two things left.
First, I must unify the boundary theory for communication between the dream ley lines and the reality ley lines, proving the accuracy of my cognition regarding the boundary.
Second, I need to save that unlucky large dream creature and get it to cooperate with my research into its innate abilities.
Right now, I’m only missing one thing: the "Original Rune" that governs the boundary between dream and reality—the innate ability of that dream creature. I want to express it through a rune ritual. I call such a composite rune an "Original Rune," much like when I created the Nightmare Spells.
Then, by using Power of Knowledge to complete the deduction of this Original Rune and integrating it into the domain order—combined with the laws of domain resonance I’ve uncovered—I will be able to artificially create a dream overlap environment!
And not just create it; if my skill matures, I can even smooth out and resolve existing dream overlap environments!
After all, based on the relationship between dream and reality, I have summarized four states.
The first is the initial state of the Expansion Realm, a wasteland. At that time, there is only a flat material space, with no dream to "pick up" this piece of the world and turn it into a complete world.
The second is the dream overlap stirred up by dream creatures. This relationship is shallow; it is helping the Primitive Dream Realm reclaim material space and worlds.
The third is a dream overlap with strong correlation. This is the environment where my Dream Rewriting Spell can be cast. The dream has invaded reality too deeply, and information from reality is flowing into the dream, causing the dream to birth an environment identical to reality.
The fourth is when the Primitive Dream Realm has fully reclaimed the world, and dream and reality have returned to a state of calm. They no longer interfere or overlap; the two are like parallel lines that will never meet.
This is the utilization of the relationship between the concepts of dream and reality. What I am doing now is mastering the means to exploit it.
"Alright, friend. I was just experimenting with some preparatory work. Thank you for the unintentional help you just provided. Now, it’s time for me to get you out of there. Remember to keep your promise."
I smiled at the trapped dream creature. It had surely waited long enough.