“Talk about dreams?” Her Majesty’s voice held neither pleasure nor anger. It was clear as spring water over stone, warm as the fine jade of Lantian. “Let me tell you a story first.”

“Hahaha, a story — yes, yes, and just the hour for one!” The white-haired old man they called Mr. Chunyu laughed out loud at that, stroking his beard, easy in his own skin. “How many people in this world ever get to hear Her Majesty tell a story? To be so lucky is a thing worth celebrating. This old man has come ten thousand li, and it seems the journey will not be wasted after all.”

A flicker of surprise crossed the middle-aged scholar’s face, and was gone as fast as it came.

He turned his wide sleeves back and folded his hands behind him.

Stood there.

As though he intended to give his full attention to whatever story Her Majesty was about to tell.

Her Majesty seemed not to notice the mockery under Mr. Chunyu’s laughter. She remained as unclouded as a mirror-still lake. “A young friend of mine once told me a story like this. There was a man fond of dreams. He dreamed often, and imagined that one day his dreams might come true. One day he got drunk and lay down under a great tree in his courtyard, and in the haze between sleeping and waking two envoys of a certain kingdom arrived and invited him to visit a place called the Kingdom of the Great Locust. Everything he saw and heard there told him its people fell far short of him — he felt he stood among them as a crane stands among chickens. It happened that the Great Locust was holding its selection of officials, so he entered his name to try it. He found no difficulty in it at all. He passed three examinations one after another and placed first on the list. The king of that country, seeing what a fine man he was, gave him his own daughter in marriage, and for a time it was a story everyone told with pleasure.”

“A man at the peak of his life, and married to a princess besides. His happiness knew no bounds. I confess I do not see what Your Majesty means to say by it.” Mr. Chunyu could find no problem in it.

“…” The middle-aged scholar was frowning over it too.

“The story isn’t finished.” Her Majesty paused a moment and went on. “The man was made lord of a province. He was diligent in office and good to the people, honest and dutiful, and the country came to respect him. He had several sons and daughters, so his line was secure — at the peak of his life, as you say, with happiness beyond measure. If the story ended there, it would hardly be worth either of your ears. But there is more to come. Are you both willing to keep listening?”

“Tell it. This old man would very much like to hear the ending.” Mr. Chunyu laughed loudly. “This old man knew from the start there would be a turn in it. What he doesn’t know is how far Your Majesty means to twist it. Hahaha!”

The middle-aged scholar said nothing. A knowing light moved in his eyes, as though something had begun to come clear to him.

Her Majesty was not provoked by anything Mr. Chunyu said. She went on as calmly as still water. “Just as this man’s life was full and pleasant and he had lost all count of the days, the neighboring kingdom of Tanluo sent troops against the Great Locust. In the first engagement the Great Locust could not hold. It was beaten back several times. The enemy was strong, and no one could stand against them.”

Mr. Chunyu laughed out loud. “Well, in that case — why not send that talented provincial lord out at the head of the army?”

Her Majesty waited for him to finish enjoying himself, then picked it up again. “That is exactly what happened. With the whole country out of ideas, this man stepped forward and led its finest soldiers against the enemy. Unfortunately he knew nothing of the art of war. For all his courage, he only led the army further into trouble, and in the end he brought about a rout along the entire line. His soldiers were lost, his officers were lost, and the army was broken past reassembling.” Mr. Chunyu’s laughter faltered at that. The middle-aged scholar’s brows eased slightly, as though he had already worked out why Her Majesty was telling it this way. Her Majesty paused briefly and added, “Beaten, the man fled home, meaning to have his wife plead with the king for him. What he had not known was that his wife had already died of a sudden illness. With nothing left to try, he could only return to the capital and present himself to the king to beg pardon. The king was furious. He reduced the man to a commoner, stripped him of every rank and office, took away every child the princess had borne him, and finally sent him back to the village he had come from, never to be employed again…”

Mr. Chunyu listened to that with a bad taste in his mouth.

He badly wanted to argue with some part of it.

He could not think what to say.

The middle-aged scholar said nothing either, but something in his expression suggested he had seen this coming for a while.

While the two of them stood there in awkward silence, Her Majesty spoke again. “The story isn’t over, in fact. It ends like this. Sent back to his home village, the man was so overcome with shame that he cried out — and woke from the dream. He found that none of it had happened. Neither the good years nor the ruin. And when he looked more carefully, he found, under the great locust tree in his courtyard, a nest of ants…”

“Ahem. Ahem, ahem!” Mr. Chunyu began to cough violently at the ending, his old face gone red.

“Her Majesty’s lesson is thought-provoking indeed. The world’s rank and riches, its happiness and pleasure, truly are like drifting clouds — here in an instant, gone the next. All of us common creatures scrabbling to get ahead of one another, every one of us wanting to rise above the crowd and accomplish something great, are in the end no more than so many ants. Set against endless time and boundless space, set against the all-powerful ancient gods, our struggling and our fighting amount to one anthill quarreling with itself. How absurd. How laughable. The pity of it is that there are so few in this world who can see through it as clearly as Your Majesty.” The middle-aged scholar was startled for a moment, then burst out laughing and applauded her without stopping.

“Hall Master Dongfang is called the first wise man of the Heavenly Realm and possesses wisdom beyond ordinary men. Why understand a thing and not act on it?” Her Majesty sighed faintly, and put the question back to him, quietly.

“Some people take no interest whatsoever in an anthill. Others enjoy studying one.” The middle-aged scholar’s point was that temperaments and tastes differ from man to man.

“The ants have never bitten anyone. Why hold on to this so stubbornly?” Her Majesty asked.

“They haven’t bitten anyone, no. But the dream was too good. Perhaps that man couldn’t bear to give up his beautiful princess of a wife, or the children he had in the dream, or any part of everything that had been his.” The middle-aged scholar laughed, and answered it lightly.

“Everything good in a dream comes to nothing but a dream in the end.” Her Majesty had not finished speaking before the white-haired, child-faced Mr. Chunyu cut in against her. “This old man cannot quite agree with Your Majesty on that. What a man thinks of by day is what he dreams of by night, and what a man pursues is his dream. To achieve one’s dream is the happiest and most glorious undertaking in a life. As for it all coming to nothing — that is a matter of ability. If the man in the story had the strength to command three armies, how would he have lost the battle? And even waking from it, if the man in the story had real talent and real learning, he would naturally find room to use them in the waking world too. The illusion Your Majesty describes is nothing but the whimpering of certain failures. They fail to grasp that in this world things are made by men. So long as a man has the will to act, anthill or waking world, dream or reality — where is there that a man cannot make something of himself? That conclusion is this old man’s answer to Your Majesty’s ‘talk about dreams.’ What does Your Majesty think of it?”

“What I think of it hardly matters. What does Hall Master Dongfang think of it?” Her Majesty turned the question on the middle-aged scholar.

“There are a hundred ways to live in this world. Some hold that it is all a dream. Some hold that things are made by men. I find neither impossible.” The middle-aged scholar’s answer did not leak a drop.

“In that case — if this were the dream, right now, how would the two of you conduct yourselves?” Her Majesty’s voice went suddenly cold, with the still, chilled hush of snow quietly melting, and both the middle-aged scholar they called Hall Master Dongfang and the white-haired old man they called Mr. Chunyu went instantly alert.

They knew what this Tianra Imperial Palace was, and what this Mirage was.

It was not a place a man walked into lightly.

Even in the year the Heavenly Realm’s three great powers stormed the Sky Tower, with the Prison Emperor holding them off alone, and the four of them fighting until the sky went black and the earth with it — even then, with the Sky Tower standing there like a castle with no defenses at all and a crowd of Heavenly Realm powers watching hungrily, waiting for the Prison Emperor to fall, before that happened not one of them dared set a foot inside this Tianra Imperial Palace. Not one dared set a foot inside this Mirage.

The middle-aged scholar had spent several thousand years thinking, and several thousand years searching, before he finally found a Mr. Chunyu who could break a dream.

Only then did he dare set foot in this Tianra Imperial Palace for the first time.

A forbidden place.

An absolutely terrifying forbidden place… the Sky Tower’s own martial artists may have forgotten it, but as the first seat of the Central Divine Hall, and the Sky Tower’s bitterest enemy, the middle-aged scholar had not forgotten for a single day that this Tianra Imperial Palace, this Mirage, existed.

The Sky Tower’s three parts — the Demon Abyss, the Sky Stairway and Longteng Continent — had declined one after another. The Demon Abyss had been sinking ever since the Conquest Queen was sealed, and in ten thousand years nobody had risen out of it. Longteng Continent produced talent generation after generation, but in ten thousand years the only man there the Heavenly Realm ever feared was the Prison Emperor; if it had not later acquired a Yue family third young master whose rise outran anyone’s imagination, Longteng Continent would have sunk further than the Demon Abyss ever did.

Only the Sky Stairway, though it had begun to decline tens of thousands of years ago, still had its guardian to this day.

This Majesty, who stayed in the Tianra Imperial Palace and never came out, dormant in the Mirage from one year’s end to the next.

To the powers of the Central Divine Hall, she was the single most dangerous person in the Sky Tower.

So long as she was there, nobody was invading the Sky Tower.

It had taken the middle-aged scholar several thousand years to secure a Mr. Chunyu who specialized in breaking dreams, and only that had given him the confidence to set foot in this Tianra Imperial Palace… and now, facing Her Majesty’s counterstroke, was he really a hundred percent certain of the “break through it, fight it and win” part? On that point the middle-aged scholar had no absolute certainty at all.

Now everything came down to Mr. Chunyu.

Him.

He was the one who broke dreams.

If Mr. Chunyu could break out of the dream, then conquering the Sky Tower was no longer worth discussing.

Apart from this Majesty, the middle-aged scholar did not much concern himself with the Sky Tower’s rising talents — the Yue family third young master, or the Human Supreme, or whoever else. These newcomers were all far too young. So young you could very nearly leave them out of the count entirely. Word of the Yue family third young master and the Human Supreme had certainly reached his ears, but the middle-aged scholar’s arrangements had accounted for every contingency long ago, and he did not believe there was anyone alive who could get out from under a plan he had spent several thousand years laying… except this Majesty. Only she. Only her dream held that possibility.

“Your Majesty, as to your question.” Mr. Chunyu was on his guard inwardly, but he made a show of ease and laughed. “This old man’s answer is: if this is a dream, then this old man will turn it into reality. If this is a dream, this old man will break out of it — and turn everything in the dream into reality along with him!”

“You are not me. And you have the nerve to stand there and claim you can alter my dream?” Her Majesty gave a cold laugh.

“Inside a dream, I am God!” Mr. Chunyu’s face was full of pride. He raised both hands to the sky, and light blazed out of him for ten thousand feet in every direction, like the fierce sun coming up in the east, until all heaven and earth were lit by him. His voice came like an echo out of the ages, like words cut into metal and stone, and it went into their ears one word at a time. “I am God. God of the dream! And inside a dream, therefore, there is nothing I cannot do!”

Mr. Chunyu swept both hands up at the sky, and where the heavens had been clear for ten thousand li —

Numberless black clouds gathered on the instant.

Lightning cracked and thunder rolled.

Rain came down in sheets.

Mr. Chunyu pressed both hands down, and as the raindrops struck the ground, the water turned to flame and set fire to everything that would burn. When the white-haired, child-faced old man raised his hands again in front of his chest, every one of those burning flames turned into a blazing flower.

“Whose dream it is does not matter. I am God. I am the ruler. Under my will, all things without exception fall to my name, and nothing escapes it. I am the god of the dream, and my will is the will of all things. Whether it obeys me or sets itself against me. Whether it was born of heaven, made by earth or built by human hands. Whether it is living, dead or manufactured. Whether it is righteous spirit, stray thought, or any ripple drifting loose in the world. Whether it is conscious or unconscious. If it exists in the world, if it exists in the dream, then it belongs to me, it answers to me, and it is mine to command!” Mr. Chunyu’s white-haired, child-faced form was shining, majestic as a god.

“Bloom…” He pointed at the flowers covering the ground, and every one of them opened in a great, slow swell.

“Fall…”

Another point of the finger, and every one of those open flowers withered and dropped, and then a light gust of wind took them, and in an instant they were gone.

Mr. Chunyu tipped his head back and called down a meteor that would have destroyed heaven and earth, and in the instant before the enormous thing came down on top of the Tianra Imperial Palace he turned it into a skyful of scattering petals, drifting harmlessly to the ground, until fallen blossom lay everywhere, bright as spilled blood.

Finally Mr. Chunyu closed his fist and nodded to the middle-aged scholar with assurance. “Whoever’s dream this is, I am the god inside it. Here I can command time and space. I can create and destroy. I can accomplish anything. Whatever this dream is, I can break out of it — and turn it, completely, into reality.”

The middle-aged scholar inclined his head slightly.

Several thousand years of effort, several thousand years of preparation, had finally produced a result.

It had taken a little longer than he would have liked, but that was not unacceptable.

Destroying the Sky Tower sooner would certainly have been more satisfying. But preparing step by step, and pushing it toward an abyss it could not climb back out of, was hardly a poor consolation.

On the various questions of dream-breaking, the middle-aged scholar was reasonably at ease.

Mr. Chunyu did, after all, possess a talent unmatched at breaking dreams, and an ability that governed every dream there was. The middle-aged scholar had spent several thousand years bringing Mr. Chunyu to his absolute limit, precisely so that he would win today’s dream. Without those several thousand years of preparation he would never have believed Mr. Chunyu could release so much as a thread of power or will inside this Tianra Imperial Palace. Fortunately, the time and the patience had paid.

The one thing the middle-aged scholar still could not work out was this.

Why?

Why had Her Majesty spent all that time beforehand, at her leisure, telling him and Mr. Chunyu that story about a dream?

“What does Your Majesty think?” The middle-aged scholar was not pleased. In point of fact he would not allow himself to be pleased until this opponent had thoroughly conceded.

“A decent dream. About on a level with that story.” That was Her Majesty’s assessment of Mr. Chunyu declaring himself the god of dreams.

“What did you say?” Mr. Chunyu was furious.

“To borrow the words of a certain badly behaved little brat — you’re out of your mind. Talking to you is a waste of breath. I’m going to rest now. Don’t let me keep you.” Her Majesty added it very coldly. “I think I have made myself clear enough.”

(End of Chapter 1222)