Tian POV
Then, suddenly, sothing broke.
The dried vine bracelet he had worn on his left wrist since leaving ho crumbled.
He had carried that vine for years, it was the only plant that had ever responded to his care, and now it turned to dust between one breath and the next.
The spiritual energy that ca out of him in that mont scattered the formation stones across the ground and brought Master Jian to his feet imdiately.
"Tian." His teacher's voice was sharp with an alarm he was visibly working to contain. "Tian, are you with ?"
Tian opened his eyes and looked up at Master Jian.
This was the man who had declared him hopeless on the first day they t and then spent five years guiding him despite his lack of talent.
This was the man who had lost his best student because of Tian's weakness.
The least that he could do to pay the man back was be honest.
"I am not Tian," he said.
The certainty in his own voice was sothing he had not heard there before. It ca from sowhere below the level of thought or decision, from the part of him that the dreams had reached and the rest of his life hadn't.
"I never was. I am Ke Yin."
***
Moon padded silently through the darkened bamboo groves.
She was a massive creature with black and white fur, and nearly nine feet tall when standing upright. The air around her seed to ripple and distort due to the spiritual pressure emanating from her.
Moon's cubs were asleep in the den, lying curled together in the nest she had built for them. They were only three months old, and their eyes had just begun to open. As of yet, they had no cultivation, so they completely depended on her.
"Ho," she rumbled to herself, the single word having multiple anings, most of which would be understood only by other Oneiric Sovereigns.
Territory. Ho. Family.
All of these concepts encompassed everything important to her.
Moon was doing her daily patrol.
She was checking her territory to see if any threats had developed since her last check.
Lately, there had been demons roaming the area.
Even though most spiritual beings knew better than to venture into her specific area of the Thornwood Deep, the re thought of them encountering her cubs made her nervous.
As she rounded a bend in the path, she caught a whiff of human blood. It was fresh and plentiful, mixed with sothing else she couldn't imdiately identify. Moon's massive head swung towards the scent. Her nostrils flared as she analyzed the complex combination of scents being borne by the mountain breeze.
Curiosity eventually overca her caution.
Moon had t humans before, most of the ti they were rchants or traveling cultivators who passed through the lower valleys. Almost all of them gave her territory a wide berth once they sensed her spiritual pressure. Occasionally, so young and foolhardy warrior would decide to test her for the few rare herbs that grew in her domain. In those cases, the human fled in terror once she demonstrated a small portion of her real power.
This scent was different.
There was no aggression, no intentional invasion.
Only blood and pain and sothing that brought her ancient, maternal instincts to the surface in ways she hadn't experienced in a very long ti.
She followed the trail of scents through the dense underbrush, her massive body gliding effortlessly between the towering trees. The scent of blood grew stronger as she got close to a large pine tree that was growing horizontally from the side of a cliff.
When she arrived, she was puzzled.
There was a young human male hanging upside down from one of the pine tree's branches.
The wooden branch had pierced completely through his chest. Blood was pooling under him and staining the moss-covered rocks a deep red. His breathing was barely perceptible, and his skin was starting to take on a grayish hue.
However, there was sothing else, sothing that caused Moon to approach the human cautiously instead of turning her back and going ho. The human's scent contained elents that she had never slled before: layers of spiritual energy that did not seem to fit any of the patterns she had seen before.
Dream qi, yes, but sothing much deeper and more complicated.
Moon gently touched the human's dangling arm with one of her huge paws.
His skin was warm, and she could sense a spark of life remaining in his damaged body.
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"Play?" she rumbled.
Moon had always been interested in small, fragile things.
When she was younger and before she had achieved her current level of cultivation, she often found herself attracted to injured birds or abandoned wild creatures. She enjoyed helping them get better and seeing them beco stronger and healthier.
The human triggered the sa feelings in her, especially now that she had recently given birth to her cubs. He was so small in comparison to her, so clearly unable to fend for himself, so entirely dependent on others for his very survival. The similarity to her cubs was superficial, but the emotional connection was real.
She began by carefully removing the human from the branch.
Although her paws were large, she had the ability to use them with extre care as she worked the wood free from his chest. The wound bled excessively once the object was removed from his chest, however as an Oneiric Sovereign, she had experience treating such injuries.
After freeing him from the branch, she sat back on her haunches and positioned the human against her chest as one would position a large cub. As he rested against her chest, his breathing grew stronger, although he was still in a deep unconsciousness. She could feel his life force flickering like a candle fla in the winds.
"Ho", she decided, the decision being laced with determination and a protective nature.
To get ho safely, Moon had to navigate the area carefully to not aggravate the human's injuries. Her domain was riddled with hidden passages and secret paths known only to her, routes that avoided the more dangerous areas where hungry predators or territorial spirits might pose threats.
As a result of years of cultivating the area to expand her natural cave system, Moon's den was worthy of being called a ho. The main cave was large and warm due to the underground spring. The walls of the cave were covered with the softest materials that she could find. A screen of bamboo was placed around each area of the cave to provide seclusion and block the cold air. Spirit stones were placed around the cave to provide a soft glow and to enhance the healing properties of the cave.
In the largest alcove, her three cubs slept peacefully in a bed of silk and down. They were small as a house cat, their black and white fur looked like it had just been grood, and their spiritual channels were developing rapidly.
Moon could see the potential for great power in them.
She placed the human who was recovering from his injury next to her cubs and positioned him in a way that would not disturb their sleep. The difference in size and weight between the human who was lying next to her cubs and her three cubs was quite a contrast.
"Family", Moon said quietly, and as she said the word, the concept of family in her mind included this unexpected addition.
***
Over the following weeks, Moon developed a routine that t the needs of her cubs, who needed to eat frequently and stay warm, and her new human friend, who required a high level of dical care.
She washed his wounds with the clean water from the underground spring, applied dicine that she had grown in her garden, and gave him her own pure Oneiric Sovereign dream qi to stimulate his body to recover from the life-threatening injuries.
The branch had missed his heart by just a few inches and had damaged his lung and had caused him to bleed internally. His ribs were broken, his left shoulder was dislocated, and he had lost a substantial amount of blood.
However, there was sothing wrong with him, sothing that was not related to his physical injuries. His spiritual channels were intact, but they were surprisingly empty, as if they were designed to handle energies that he did not possess.
"Broken?" she thought, softly stroking his hair while her cubs fed.
Weeks passed, and she continued to care for him, and eventually, the human's body healed itself at a rate that was faster than she had anticipated once she had controlled the most serious of his injuries.
Yet, no matter what she did, he didn't wake up.
As for the cubs, they didn't seem to notice that the human was a stranger.
They played with him like he was one of them.
They jumped on his unconscious body and climbed over it like it was a jungle gym.
And when it was ti to sleep, they would curl into him.
"Brothers," Moon had decided when she saw this.
She didn't care that they were pandas and the stranger was a human, they were family, nonetheless. And she treated him like that while she took care of him. During the quiet hours, she spoke to him as best as she could even though she knew he couldn't respond. She spoke about simple things like the developnt of her cubs, the weather patterns, and the worries she has on her mind like the demonic entities that prowled around Thornwood Deep.
When her cubs began to take their first real steps in the den, she whispered "growing" to the human.
There were tis where she thought she saw his eyelids move as if there was so part of him that was able to hear her from deep within his unconsciousness, but those monts passed too quickly for her to be sure.
And it was like for another week until sothing changed.
That morning, Moon had gone out early to gather fresh bamboo shoots, leaving her cubs and their human brother asleep in the nest. It was a productive hunt; she had even been able to find a few dical plants that would aid in her human cub's final stages of recovery. But when she returned to the den, she experienced a strange feeling, sothing she hadn't experienced before.
It was then that she realised that he was awake.
The anticipation that had built up over the past few weeks propelled her through the underbrush to reach the den as fast as possible whilst also trying to stay as silent as possible. The last thing she wanted was to accidentally terrify the tiny cub.
But as soon as she arrived near the entrance of the den, she hesitated.
What she sensed coming from the den were feelings that were more complex than simple confusion or disorientation. There was a deep feeling of wrongness that was unrelated to the fact that he had woken up in an unfamiliar place.
And that is when she heard him speak.
"This…this can't be right," the human whispered, his breathing was short and shallow.
Realising the human was panicking, Moon froze.
Even though she saw the young human as one of her cubs, her protective instincts for her actual cubs began to flare up. They were sleeping soundly inside. What if the human, in his panic, hurt them?
The next few monts would decide whether she had found a new family mber or simply delayed an inevitable tragedy. Either way, Moon prepared herself to protect her cubs while hoping that the young man, whom she'd grown so fond of, would prove worthy of the faith she'd placed in him.
***
Inside the den, Hou Hongyun had no idea that a nine feet tall spiritually-enhanced panda was wondering if he was a threat she needed to eliminate or a child to spoil. Instead, he was staring at his reflection in the surface of the underground spring with pale blue eyes that were not his own.
What he was seeing didn't make sense.
The copper brown hair and strange facial features looking back at him was familiar in ways he couldn't explain but wrong.
"This isn't my body," he whispered, pressing his hands to his temples as he tried to figure out what was going on. "My last mory was entering the portal, going into the Dream World for the finals. But this..." He gestured at himself, at the den, at the sleeping cubs. "What is this?"
He then closed his eyes tightly.
He needed to calm down.
Panicking wouldn't get him anywhere.
And even if he didn't know what was going on, he knew soone who would.
"Azure," he called out internally, "Azure, what's going on? What happened to ?"
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