The instant that she awoke, Bianca sat up, looking around and seeing her companions in their beds, eyes shut and breathing slow, suggesting each and every one of them was asleep.

  However, she had that awful feeling, the same one that she had felt when she had initially gone into the room, that there was more than met the eye – or her spiritual perception, for that matter. Thus, even if she couldn’t know for sure that the others were being affected, she chose to wake them all right away, starting with Song Ming.

  “Wake up, honey! Wake up!” Bianca almost shouted into her ear, and luckily, that seemed to do the trick, “There… Before you ask, did you see any weird golden entities, or tendrils, or… did you dream, at all?”

  “I… Mistress, I felt… I’m not sure how to describe it, but it’s like I was hearing something, but that something was a colour…”

  “… Not the strangest thing I’ve heard. What colour was it?”

  “Probably… gold.”

  “Alright, no sleeping here any time soon. Wake up the others, you take that side of the room and I handle the other,” Bianca nodded and immediately went on to wake up Han Rushu.

  The bcksmith groaned loudly the moment she awoke, and looked about ready to kill Bianca, until she noticed or realised something, as her expression became more tense than angry.

  “… What’s going on?”

  “Did you dream of anything that made you think ‘gold’, by any chance?”

  “Do I need to repeat myself?”

  “I think it’s Li Wusu. Her aura felt very metallic when I first saw her, and when I fell asleep, I was being attacked by a horde of golden entities that felt exactly the same. I know it’s a bit of a stretch to say that it must be her, but-”

  “It’s her ship, with the barriers that her ship’s room produced. The only one that could’ve really affected us is Hu- Chang Shuang and Li Wusu. I don’t see our friend here having the power to invade dreams and thoughts, and to create those… golden entities of yours, so it must be our captain,” the bcksmith reasoned, and looked to the side, where Song Ming was shaking Jia Bo Xun awake, “Right, get the others, I’ll… be trying not to fall asleep again.”

  “Good enough,” Bianca moved on, though she could feel the bcksmith’s gaze on her still.

  “… You feel different, somehow.”

  She didn’t reply to that, and instead she and her pet handled waking up the rest of them as quickly as she could, not stopping for more conversations until everyone was up, looking rather confused and groggy. The only one that seemed to have taken this well was Huang Su, who needed only a moment on waking up to realise that something was amiss.

  “So, quick check – was anyone dreaming about golden entities or, perhaps, a bluish light?”

  “I… Yes, I did have a peculiar dream,” the Sect Master nodded, “It felt like something was trying to writhe its way into my consciousness, but… I can’t be certain if it succeeded.”

  ‘If it did… that would be incredibly concerning, as Li Wusu would have a chance at knowing that Huang Su is the Sect Master of the Phoenix Sect, which would in turn…’ Bianca decided not to think about the subject too much, and instead confirmed that the others were nodding along, or at least seemed to have a look of recognition in their eyes, “We’re in danger. Whatever Li Wusu’s archetype, she’s able to invade our minds, and chances are that if you don’t put up a fight, she’ll be able to check your memories.”

  “That would indeed be concerning… That would mean that sleeping isn’t safe, as she only seemed to do this when we were sleeping,” Xue Yaling concluded, giving Bianca a quick smile, “You seem to be quicker to come to conclusions today. Good job, Sect Mistress.”

  “Shush, you…” Bianca couldn’t help but smile even as she reprimanded the kitsune, ‘Even if I hate this kind of praise, it is nice to see people acknowledge my efforts…’

  “Actually… Mistress, if I may, I can’t help but wonder how you’re able to interact with mental spaces this well. You were able to endure mine, and now you put up a fight against the field that Li Wusu specialises in, while being at a lower realm than she is…” Yu Juan said, her brows furrowing, “What is your archetype?”

  “I don’t think this is the time. She could come in and attack us any moment-”

  “Don’t you worry, I won’t be doing such a thing,” a familiar voice interrupted them as the barrier at the entrance of the room receded, and the ship’s captain stepped inside, followed by a number of the crew.

  Her grey eyes were glowing with the same blue light that had filled the surroundings of Bianca’s mental realm, and the aura around her seemed even more… metallic than before. It felt a little easier to look at now, although strange memories still crept up in the back of her mind, helping her figure out the nature of Li Wusu’s archetype.

  ‘Something to do with memories… and those golden entities all seemed to behave as though they were beings of their own, acting as those beings would – at least until they were merged together,’ she thought, ‘More on that after she leaves, though. If she showed up, then she probably knows…’

  “I must admit my own curiosity regarding your archetype, but I will find that out in time. For now, Bianca, I wanted to apologise. I had thought you some fool, being led around by Chang Shuang and Xue Yaling for their own purposes, but considering your performance minutes ago, I can believe that you’d somehow bring those two under your sway. Impressive.”

  “Hey, she walked in without you letting her in, right? So, the room’s barriers…” Han Rushu suddenly said, before shutting up.

  “Of course I can manipute them, it’s my vessel. Do you really believe that I would allow people to do as they wish while they’re so close to me?” Li Wusu asked, looking almost disappointed at the bcksmith’s shock, “Besides, you already knew that I could spy on you. I’m gd that you were able to realise so soon… you’ll make for far more interesting targets.”

  “… What do you want?” Bianca said, staring at the ship captain without letting her guard down even for a moment, “If you think you can persuade us to sleep and let you pilfer our memories, that won’t happen.”

  “Oh, you understood even that… You do misunderstand one thing, though. Dreams are not the only pce where I have power – otherwise, I’d have never been able to keep hold of this vessel,” Li Wusu smiled, chilling the room despite her doing nothing to threaten them directly so far, “No, no, I like such interesting people like you. I won’t be interfering with you… too much.”

  Bianca shook her head right away, “I don’t believe you.”

  “Of course you wouldn’t, but I can assure you, I can do plenty if I truly wished you harm right now,” the smile widened as she gestured to the crew that accompanied her, “For example, have you seen my companions? Such strong and dependable fellows, don’t you think? Quiet and obedient, too.”

  For a moment, Bianca thought that she might’ve been trying to threaten them with these people, but then it dawned on her that – aside from the captain clearly not being an idiot, nor making a joke – that the crew had said nothing since entering, and that they were oddly still throughout the whole encounter.

  A single closer look exposed that despite looking almost human from the outside, they were actually formed from an intricate arrangement of golden strands, each one about as thick as a pencil, but when pced together like they were… somehow, they looked nearly indistinguishable from humans.

  ‘What even are those things… they’re clearly not just phantoms either of us imagined now that they’re appearing out here, so…’ Bianca tried applying her mind for a moment, and got a tiny glimpse into a theory that she had to put forth, if only to test the captain, “That’s what you need the memories for. You can manifest them in the outside world as well as in people’s minds…”

  “You really are a wellspring of knowledge now, Bianca. I feel like I unintentionally helped you figure something out in your own mind, but… whether or not that’s the case, you understand why I’d want you ripe and ready, don’t you? The richer your memories and thoughts, the more perfect you will all become. The closer I’ll be to- ah, I got carried away,” Li Wusu chuckled, “Now, I really must be going. Be good and don’t cause trouble until I let you depart on the western shores.”

  “… What else did you find out?” Huang Su spoke up as the captain turned to leave, “And do you really think the world will let you get away with this?”

  “Oh please, don’t start lecturing me. I’m not one of your disciples, and if I keep being threatened, I can easily reveal a few things to them… such as where their leader has run off to,” turning only her head, Li Wusu spoke even more softly than before.

  Despite that, it got the Sect Master to shudder ever so slightly, and swallow down whatever words she might’ve pnned to say.

  Bianca felt even more concerned, as it proved that Li Wusu’s abilities were able to reach inside all of their heads. She fought the captain off, and there was a chance that Yu Juan’s peculiar mental ndscape proved a challenge as well, but the rest of them had little chance to protect themselves. Therefore, anything that the others knew would likely also be known to the captain.

  ‘Although, it is possible that Li Wusu only peeked into the minds of the others, and that Huang Su was able to block it, but…’ she didn’t feel comfortable assuming that, just in case Li Wusu took advantage of that assumption.

  The captain turned again and walked out, the golden entities following behind her, the barrier at the room’s entrance sealed up again, and they were left to their own devices.

  A moment of silence followed, as all of them were uncertain how to proceed. Likely, all of them were also thinking over the situation, but Bianca ended up speaking first, having already spent much of the day – and her dream – contempting matters.

  “I had noticed that Li Wusu didn’t want any kind of toll or fee for taking people aboard, and that suggested to me that something was amiss. Now, it’s obvious why – she is able to use the memories of those that board her ship and produce entities from them that can partially replicate the abilities from those memories. I don’t think she’s able to directly use those herself, because otherwise… She’d just know every skill and technique around, and that sounds too powerful for any given technique from my understanding.”

  “… you’re not wrong, which feels strange. Such a detailed breakdown for someone who was struggling with the basics of cultivation just yesterday,” Xue Yaling muttered.

  “You heard what Li Wusu said, right? I spent a while in my mental realm and… met myself, weird as that may sound. I managed to sort out a problem I had, and now I’m… a little better than before,” Bianca said vaguely, although she knew that she was both over and under-stating the matter.

  For one, she felt a lot more capable of grasping and thinking about the various aspects of cultivation, and plenty of things that she’d learnt before were practically springing up to be remembered and used. It was a lot better than she was expecting, although considering the performance of her other side back in her mental realm, perhaps she should’ve been expecting this much already.

  On the other hand, however, she could still distinctly feel a certain… friction with these matters.

  It wasn’t too bad, and it didn’t interrupt her thought process much, but she knew that accepting that part of herself didn’t instantly mean that she liked it, nor that she was happy to come to it each time a cultivation-reted question came up. If only that was as simple to sort out…

  ‘And I do still wonder what influence the Demonic Tyrant does or does not have. It’s a little worrying to have a thing like that in my head and not be able to do anything about it,’ Bianca thought, before remembering that she wasn’t in private and couldn’t just be drifting off whenever she wished, forcing her to return onto the main subject, “Anyway, I was talking about Li Wusu, yes?”

  “Mhm, although I think I get the idea already,” Han Rushu was leaning back in her bed, resting her back on the wall, her whole posture radiating sleepiness, “Should we just wait until we get to where we need to be?”

  “It will not be that simple. I doubt that she has any intentions to let us go, not after appearing in front of us and revealing a lot about her own archetype as a result,” Huang Su shook her head, “We’re guaranteed a confrontation by the end of the journey, if she even attempts to bring us to where we need to be.”

  “I think so too… but that does mean that we’ll have a while to prepare. Importantly, we cannot speak out loud what we’re pnning, or else she’ll definitely be able to tell…”

  “Mistress, how would you suggest we handle her, then? I could think of some skills myself, but we couldn’t coordinate, and besides…” Song Ming’s shoulders dropped, “It’s likely that, if she went through our memories, she’d know our abilities quite well.”

  “I wouldn’t be sure that she knows absolutely everything, and she’ll probably be unable to fully contempte the full range of things we could do with our abilities… that being said, it would be prudent to assume that she will see some things coming…” Bianca found herself sighing, “Cultivation sure makes things complicated, doesn’t it?”

  The Sect Master stood up rather suddenly, “We must be extremely careful, whatever we do. Her knowledge is dangerous, and we must ensure that the world knows of her misdeeds…”

  She looked rather agitated, so Bianca acted before thinking and grabbed Huang Su’s hand, giving it a – hopefully – reassuring squeeze.

  “We’ll handle it, but it’ll take us leaving this pce first. Afterwards, it wouldn’t be hard to spread the message, and I’m sure there are plenty of people that would happily team up to get rid of her… something like that happened with those Reapers, right?” Bianca said, and despite her uncertainty, it seemed that the Sect Master rexed anyway.

  “Yes, it was… My apologies, Mistress, I should control myself better than that,” Huang Su bowed, withdrawing her hand to herself once Bianca let go, “And you are correct, the Reapers became too significant a threat to the Eastern Continent, and thus the forces at rge gathered and got rid of them.”

  “See, so if people feel that Li Wusu’s skillset is sufficiently dangerous, they’ll group up, surround the ke, then… well, I don’t know what they did with the Reapers, and I have a feeling I won’t be particurly comfortable with it, since I don’t know if that group deserved it, but… I’m a little concerned as to where Li Wusu could go with her powers.”

  She struggled to understand the higher levels of cultivation, still, if only due to a ck of experience with it. Bianca had never seen the capabilities of a cultivator in the seventh realm and above, but from her understanding, those people were effectively gods amongst men.

  Li Wusu could already scan people’s minds easily, and manifest constructs from the memories she viewed, so if she was able to go further, to edit those memories, manipute them within people’s minds, to create wholly complete people from them… She’d have an army at her beck and call, and she’d be able to change any person that dared to threaten her into a loyal supporter of whatever she chose to pursue. She could easily become an empress amongst men, someone that would be worshipped by all…

  It sounded terrifying, but at the same time, Bianca couldn’t deny the appeal. If she got to be in that spot, sitting in a throne that presided over the world and could get any woman to kneel before her, lick her feet and suck her-

  “Ahem… Let’s take things slowly for now. No sleeping, and if you do sleep, someone who is sensitive enough to Li Wusu’s energy needs to be ready to wake you up – I can manage, but if I need some rest, I’m not sure what options we’ve got,” Bianca forced herself to get back on track, “The rest of our time should be spent looking into the ship, Li Wusu, and anything we can find that could give us an edge.”

  “Are you sure you should be saying that out loud?” Xue Yaling teased.

  “She’ll be assuming that we’ll do this anyway, there’s no point in hiding the obvious,” Han Rushu shrugged, “Unless she’s so deluded that she’d think that we’d all lie down and wait for her to do whatever she wanted, we’ve only really got one course of action.”

  “Indeed. Ah, by the way, could you take a look at some of the items I bought?”

  “What for?”

  “If you could add any inscriptions or artefact properties onto them…”

  “… Fine, though I’ll need Hu- Chang Shuang’s help. Doing it alone will be too boring,” the bcksmith sighed, “And she’d be better at this than I am, since… I’ll be honest, working with existing items like this isn’t my specialty.”

  “Very well, I will assist you, so long as you refrain from any untoward comments. They would disrupt my concentration.”