Chapter 656 The building blocks

The Eternal Duality Valley entered a period of heightened activity, as all training areas and fields were filled with people honing their skills. freewёbnoνel.com

Wu Long’s Dao Family, Frozen Garden Palace, as well as select people from Wu Long’s subordinates like Butler Bang and General Feng mainly trained within Fen Baihu’s Dream Realm.

The trick was that much like a dream, anyone who went inside this realm lost their perception of what was real.

The sequence of events leading up to the current time, as well as any questioning of the current reality, was lost as the events happening to them became prevalent in their minds.

That happened even if one consciously tried to keep track of entering an illusion.

Thus any danger, any battle within it, felt completely real, raising the stakes high and keeping the tension throughout.

All the attacks of the enemies carried real weight and danger, and thus felt incredibly genuine.

For all intents and purposes, this was a real battle.

What’s more, as a Celestial Fox, Fen Baihu had access to people’s memories through their dreams, fantasies and imagination, and the less powerful was the Soul, the more she could learn.

Wu Long allowed her to read part of his memories that he selected for this combat training, so what they actually faced were his past enemies.

Her mysterious power allowed her to recreate those enemies as if they truly came to life, doing actions that Wu Long did not even see them do, and that could not be found in his memories, and yet that belonged to those people.

She was not actively controlling those illusions, since as soon as she manifested them they came to life and acted on their own.

This was an absolutely insane ability, one that allowed Wu Long to break the norms of what training could be in the Seven Boundless Worlds, effectively cheating and creating true combat experience in a safe and controlled environment.

And it was possible only due to Fen Baihu’s identity.

Of course, it required quite a fine control to not actually kill them within that Realm, but Fen Baihu was a Mythical Beast with profound power over her abilities.

It was not linked to her learned skill but innate ability, much like simply moving a finger for an average human, and thus such things were very easy for her. The multiple Illusion Arrays made by the combined efforts of Lian Zhiqiu and Liang Yuhan, however, were a slightly rougher and less sophisticated version of this training, used by all other members of the Eternal Duality Valley.

First difference was that while Fen Baihu’s Dream Realm blurred the border between reality and dream, battle in the Illusion Arrays were happening not to the physical body of the practitioner, but to the mind, as the body sat on the platform with the Array Circle in a trance-like state.

Of course, the quality of these Illusion Arrays were high because of the combined knowledge from Wu Long and high skills of the two ladies who created them, so the power and abilities one could exert within that illusion always equaled their own.

But it still lacked the physical aspect of training the muscle memory and actually tempering the body.

Secondly, what they were fighting were not actual enemies with a mind of their own, but pre-designed patterns.

And while the ones undergoing this training could not tell the difference, these enemies did lack the versatility and freedom of the ones Fen Baihu made.

Thirdly, if they were in the heat of battle they could forget this was an illusion, but this effect was a lot less sophisticated, and if the ones undergoing the training concentrated they could gain their awareness that this was not real.

Although to mitigate that Wu Long used pills made by Yu Huan’s Mystic Fire Pavilion, that numbed the sense of awareness and made one more susceptible to illusions.

The fourth difference was that Illusion Arrays operated autonomously on pre-designed patterns, drawing power from massive amounts of Spiritual Stones.

And thus the control over what was happening inside was not as minute.

People undergoing training were getting internal injuries when they got hurt within illusions, thus having to take a pause and recuperate after for at least a day.

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This meant that generally, they spent more time on normal training fields, sharpening their skills and improving their techniques.

And then went to the Illusion Arrays at the end of a period of training to consolidate what they practiced and gain more insight into what they were lacking, keeping schedules to not overcrowd the arrays. This more closely resembled training within the Seven Boundless Worlds, one that was not as out of norms as Fen Baihu’s Dream Realm.

Although they were of course were still privileged, as the quality of Illusion Arrays they were practicing in, as well as pills, cultivation techniques, battle skills and manuals that they were given, were miles above what the average Nine Mortal Realms cultivator in the Seven Boundless Worlds got.

Apart from the quality of Spiritual Qi, they were essentially given the same cultivation environment as Core Disciples of the top powers within the Boundless Mortal World.

And though there was a disparity in the quality, the quantity of Spiritual Qi was not as much a problem now, as using the network of Grand Formations that they built previously for the war, Wu Long and Lian Zhiqiu constructed flows of Spiritual Qi from the other Spiritual Lands, saturating the air within the Sect with it.

As this was happening, the Sect was gradually moving inside Fen Baihu’s core realm, building a foundation inside that hereto pristine and untouched world.

At the same time there was vigorous activity on all Three Continents, as recruitment was happening across almost all Palaces of the Eternal Duality Valley, and its affiliate groups.

Wu Long himself, could not take advantage of training in Fen Baihu’s Dream Realm, however, as his Soul defenses were too powerful, and he would not experience the authenticity of battle.

To truly become immersed, he would need to drop his defenses, but he was not naive to do that with Fen Baihu, as he was the only one keeping her in check.

Thus, during this time, Wu Long concentrated on other tasks. He was constantly working on his cultivation, as well as improving his control and understanding over his Dao Runes.

The most recent Sound Rune puzzled him, as he acquired it the most easily. It could be said that it appeared on its own, and thus he did not have as much understanding of it as he did at least partially other Dao Runes.

Though, in truth, the only Dao Rune that he truly had somewhat an understanding of was the Water Rune.

And at the same time it was the one which powers he wielded the most freely. And thus he knew that the key to expanding his power was understanding them.

Apart from working on his own strength, Wu Long also spent a significant portion of his time with Xia Jung and Feng Huan, directly mentoring them in both battle and knowledge they might need.

It was during one of such trainings that Xia Jung mentioned that Bahshi Assassins might become a problem if he encountered them outside of this Fractured World when it eventually reconnected with the world outside.

It was not that there were no other powers on the same level, it was just one of the organizations he knew was quite troublesome to deal with.

“Hmm, that is a valid point”, Wu Long nodded, though his mind went to the other possibility.

‘If he could turn every Bahshi Assassination Group’s branch into allies instead, it would instantly jumpstart his ability to deal with any issues…’, Wu Long thought weighing this idea.

After all, the techniques had multiple levels of control, and thus imparting a technique that would allow Xia Jung to control the assassins was not impossible.

There were only two reservations he had with this method.

First, that he could not give Xia Jung the highest level of the technique, only an intermediary at best which would open him up to possible manipulation in the future.

And second was that the technique and the assassination group currently belonged to someone he knew, and using both for personal purposes without first discussing it was something he felt at least a slight aversion to.

She did, in fact tell him that he could use her assassins however he liked if he needed in the past.

But at the same time, using her assassins and giving an outsider like Xia Jung the power to do so was not the same.

At that moment, a face came to his mind, a face uncovered under the mask, one of thousands like it, and a light smile touched his lips.

‘Hmm, that may be cheating, but that would technically be a good option’, he thought as he wrapped up the training session and headed out of the Sect for a bit.