Immortal Paladin

138 Fireflies in the Soul Sea

The mind was a complex maze of everything from the surface area, the small rooms tucked with little secrets and all sorts of things…

It had been two weeks since I started diving into Lu Gao’s soul, and I meant that quite literally.

Dreamwalking wasn’t a plug-and-play technique. Especially not when the base mechanism involved something called Soulful Guiding Fire… a temperamental flame that could lead a practitioner through another’s subconscious while fending off invasive forces. Which, in Lu Gao’s case, was a devil knight squatting deep in his mind like it paid rent.

And to make things harder?

The fire couldn’t run on purely Mana. It ran on pure Qi.

Unfortunately, my cultivation path leaned on a different energy entirely… Mana through the Road of Immanence, not Qi through the Meridian Paths. Sure, I had Qi-based techniques for backup and managed to replicate most of them rather perfectly, but integrating a full-on soul technique? That was like trying to power an antique golem with a solar charger.

Maybe if I was a Succubus with a dreamwalking ability, but that wasn’t the case…

So, I had to get creative.

Careful.

And paranoid.

Mostly because I didn’t want to get catfished by a floating skull.

Jue Bu, so far, had been… tolerable. Honest, even. Which made me more suspicious.

The soul contract we’d formed wasn’t a casual pinky promise. This thing was soul-binding in the deepest sense. It even had layered seals and special runes I barely understood… and I’d seen my fair share of crazy contracts. Something about Jue Bu’s essence felt ancient. Deep. Maybe even older than this world.

I didn’t say it out loud, but it kind of freaked me out.

How did Alice and Joan even manage to capture this guy? What dumb luck or weird fate had tangled them together?

Still, the results spoke for themselves.

Two weeks later inside Lu Gao’s mind, I could now shape the Soulful Guiding Fire, albeit in a slightly jankier form.

A soft thrum filled the cave as I exhaled and held my palm forward. A swirl of green flame gathered in the air, folding into itself with alien elegance before erupting outward in the shape of a butterfly.

Its wings beat once.

The ground cracked beneath my feet.

Cave walls groaned.

I stepped back, one hand shielding my face as the air thickened with the scent of ozone and wet moss, a side effect of merging Mana with what the Skull called the soul essence.

“Damn,” I muttered, blinking through the wave of heat. “No wonder this thing was so hard to control.”

One reason for the difficulty? Jue Bu had no Qi. Not a drip. Which meant no demonstrations, no examples, and no hands-on feedback. Just him sitting in the corner and giving lewd commentary like a discount Daoist grandpa with boundary issues.

Still, he hadn’t lied.

Not once.

And for an undead, that said a lot.

The butterfly circled around me once, brushing the edge of my robes, then zipped down the tunnel and vanished into the shadows.

I let out a slow breath.

Showtime.

I only hoped my Holy Spirit, Dave, was buying me time. The last time we spoke, he was still pretty tired, but he’d do his best to protect me in the outside world. Good old Dave. Hopefully, he wasn’t too depressed after what happened with Shenyuan. Admittedly, Dave had undergone a few levels of evolution, I couldn't measure him by LLO standards anymore.

“Alright,” I said to the dark, cracking my knuckles. “Let’s dreamwalk just a bit more.”

A flick of my fingers sent the butterfly to its destination.

I stared into the swirling green flame ahead, Soulful Guiding Fire fluttering like an anxious butterfly near the threshold of Lu Gao’s soul sea. I turned around to face theSkull.

“Hey. You coming?”

“I’d rather stay,” he said, lazily spinning in place. “Dreams are for the young and horny. I’m ancient and exhausted. My legs are tired.”

“You know that I know it’s lie that your legs are tired, right?” I narrowed my eyes. “You don’t have a choice. Let’s go or I will turn you into a Eunuch.”

Then I cast Compel Duel on him.

A thin and invisible string of power etched itself into the air between us, slamming into his bony chest with a satisfying thwump. A pair of halos appeared above me and above him. His eye sockets flared blue as the binding took hold. The terms were simple: he strays too far from me, his stats tank. It didn’t hurt him, but it definitely made everything suck.

“Oh, come on!” he groaned, shaking his skull like a disappointed father at a tavern brawl. “You’re working me to the bone here. Again. Literally.”

“Welcome to the club.” I walked ahead, not waiting for his complaints to finish echoing. "Come on, time is gold... Act more like your age. You are ancient, act more like it... or you'll lose my respect. Ah, I forgot, I don't have any for you."

"Sarcastic prick."

The butterfly bobbed along the path like a lantern guiding the dead. Stones shifted underfoot. It was warm, but not oppressively so, like we were walking deeper into memory, not magma.

Naturally, I took the opportunity to probe for answers.

“Jue Bu,” I called back, voice casual, “You… Earthling?”

He floated up beside me, pausing mid-rattle. “Am I what now?”

“Earth. Blue orb. Rich with culture. Exclusively mortal plane. Lotta debt. Slightly too obsessed with cats.”

He tapped his chinbone thoughtfully. “Ahhh… that Earth.”

My heart jumped. I stopped walking and turned to face him again.

“You’re from…”

He snapped his fingers. “The fairy tale! Right, right, Earth. The mythical paradise where everyone lives for ten thousand years in peace and watches boxed dramas on demand. Yeah, what about it?”

The fire behind my eyes dimmed. 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

“You think it’s a fairy tale?”

“Sure.” He shrugged. “I mean, that place where everyone’s born powerless but somehow still destroys stars with flying metal birds and pocket screens? C’mon. Next, you’ll tell me they cook food with invisible fire and drink water from underground pipes.”

I stared at him in silence.

“...You’re serious,” I said at last.

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“As the grave,” he replied, then paused. “Which, incidentally, is where I’ve spent the better half of the last millennia.”

I walked again, mind spinning. This guy knew of Earth… but not as a place he’d lived. He knew it as a story.

A story.

So… what did that make me?

A walking myth?

A main character in someone’s bedtime tale?

It left a weird taste in my mouth. Bitter nostalgia and existential confusion.

I didn’t know what to ask next. My thoughts churned with too many questions and not enough answers. I could press him. I should press him. But what if I asked and hated what I heard?

Jue Bu floated beside me, silent for once.

Even he could feel the weight of it.

Or maybe he was just waiting to make another sex joke.

Probably both.

The butterfly pulsed again, brighter this time.

“Found you,” I muttered as I sprinted through the dim caverns, chasing the flickering green of the Soulful Guiding Fire.

It fluttered ahead like a signal flare, weaving through collapsing stone and thick dust. My Divine Sense flared, a rippling pulse through the fractured soulscape, and I felt it… Something foul was hiding just beyond the veil.

I reached out, clenched my fist, and grabbed the air.

Stone cracked like glass around my wrist as the illusion crumbled, revealing blackened steel and a suffocating miasma of rage. I yanked hard and pulled a knight in demonic armor from the shadows. Horned helmet, serrated pauldrons, and a cape made of something that didn’t move so much as shiver with malice.

“I know you,” I said. “Saw you back at Hell’s Gate.”

The demon knight didn’t speak. Instead, it slammed its helmet into my face.

CRACK!

My vision flared white for a half second, but the backlash from Reflect Damage triggered instantly. The idiot knight had hit me with a critical, so the counter was even worse.

The echo of his headbutt exploded inward. Cracks spiderwebbed through his armor. His entire body shattered like a statue struck by divine lightning.

Chunks of the knight clanged onto the floor. Smoke curled from his broken core.

“Okay…” I muttered, rubbing my nose. “That hurt more than I thought it would.”

The butterfly was still glowing.

Good. That meant the bastard wasn’t gone yet, just hiding deeper.

Behind me, Jue Bu floated in lazily, arms behind his head like a retired war criminal on vacation.

“Hey,” I called back. “Any tips on my cultivation method?”

His jaw wobbled as if preparing for a sermon. “It’s shitty.”

“Wow,” I said. “Thanks. That really clarified things.”

“No, really,” he replied, floating closer. “You’re using an inferior energy system. You’re taking a high-resistance channel and trying to ram cultivation methods meant for Qi through it. Plus, you’re stacking it on top of some inherited power that was never meant to blend with this world’s laws.”

“So… like a weird smoothie?”

“What even is a... smoothie?"

"An unhealthy mixture that tastes good. You mix crushed ice with fruits, I think?"

"You think? More like mixing sulfuric acid with cooking wine. It’ll burn through your stomach, but hey, maybe you’ll get drunk.”

“...Metaphor noted.”

He spun once in mid-air. “There’s a reason everyone uses dantian-based systems here... and the rest of the Greater Universe. Gathering ‘power’ in the heart is… unconventional. Not useless, but limited. Your method might let someone rush to the Fourth Realm fast, but after that? They’re stuck.”

I felt something tighten in my chest.

I looked down at my hands, at the threads of mana coiled just beneath the skin.

“Stuck…”

Yeah. In my case, I was stuck at Will Reinforcement, Nine Star, so it was a bummer… I thought I'd broken my level cap back in my fight in Hell's Gate and would get to earn lots of EXP after slaying so many demons. Such a bummer.

Nongmin had said something similar once, behind closed doors. He didn’t put it that bluntly, of course. That man had the tact of a scheming tactician, and he’d used words like “potential bottleneck” and “room for architectural improvements.”

But Jue Bu? He just called it crap.

And the worst part?

He wasn’t wrong.

Nongmin thought I could overcome it if I followed him to the World Summit. There, he said, I’d meet figures who understood energy systems beyond even his grasp… and learn from their demonstration. Tools and relics. Laws of nature tied to other domains. A real solution.

But it came with a price.

Even if it wasn't the intention behind it, I'd be encumbered by the said price... and refusal would screw me more than benefit me.

I wasn’t Nongmin’s puppet.

…Right?

I didn’t feel strings on my arms. But if I kept dancing to the tune he played, if I followed the trail he set… was there really a difference?

Oh man.

It’s so much harder to wish for independence when the person trying to help you is smarter than you. Or, at the very least, better informed.

I blew out a breath, eyes flicking back to the flame.

“Alright,” I muttered. “Let’s keep going.”

“Lead the way,” Jue Bu said, tossing me a lazy salute. “If we die, I’m blaming your heart cultivation nonsense.”

I cracked my knuckles.

“Bring it on, demon bastard. Let’s see what else you’ve got hiding down here. And it’s called Mana Road Cultivation.”

After a couple more days of cat-and-mouse, chasing the demon knight through a maze of collapsing dreams and shattered memories, I finally caught a break, literally.

His arm.

Just lying there in a broken alcove, still twitching like it hadn’t gotten the memo that the rest of its owner had fled. The black armor on it was cracked, jagged like volcanic glass. But the essence? Still strong. Still demonic. Still cocky.

I scooped it up and sighed. “Well, that’s one limb down.”

From behind me, Jue Bu floated along with the enthusiasm of a man forced to supervise a toddler's attempt at rocket science. “Congratulations,” he drawled. “You’ve crippled the air. With a bit more time, maybe you can defeat a particularly hostile breeze.”

“Appreciate the support,” I muttered, dusting off my robe.

As we walked through another warped corridor of dreamspace, I figured I might as well pick the skull’s brain. “Hey, what’s the cultivation system like in the Greater Universe? You know, out there. Beyond this world.”

He didn’t answer immediately.

I looked over my shoulder to see his empty sockets glowing faintly.

Then he shrugged.

“They use Quintessence,” he said. “Universal energy constant. Think of it as an evolved form of Qi, a raw law-adherent force. The Realms aren’t chopped up into twelve or twenty-four like you bumpkins do. Just a few big steps.”

“Like…?”

“Well, what do you people here think is the Eleventh Realm? Perfect Immortal? That’s bottom barrel in the Greater Universe. They call it the starting point of the realm, ‘Ascended Soul.’ Like… you just graduated from being dirt.”

I blinked.

“Ouch.”

“Yeah. Harsh world out there. Stronger, cleaner, more efficient. Less stupid.”

“Gee, thanks.”

He drifted closer and jabbed a bony finger into my shoulder. “Also, what’s taking you so long? You’ve been chasing one single demon for days. You should’ve killed it three times by now. You’re not even trying! You need more practice with the Soulful Guiding Fire!”

“Hey, hey, I have a plan,” I said, holding up my hands. “Watch this.”

To be fair, the demon had been very slippery and was very insistent on not clashing with me. And he was right, I needed more practice with this dreamwalking ability. Still, it was too early to give up.

Thus, I decided to take a leap of faith and try to lure the demon. I took a deep breath and called out, voice echoing into the warped dreamspace like a carnival barker on discount week:

“Heyoooo~ devil knight! Can we talk?”

Silence.

I pushed harder, channeling just a bit of charm through my Mana-infused vocal cords.

“Let’s make a contract, so that you can get inside my body! Woohoo~! I’m a delicious piece of meat, loaded with crazy thoughts, soul scars, and repressed trauma. The full package!”

Stone cracked above me. The shadows shifted. I could feel the knight’s presence circling like a wary animal.

Behind me, Jue Bu groaned in disbelief. “You are courting death, you know that, don’t you?”

“Yup,” I said cheerfully. “But I’m also baiting it.”

The Skull clacked his teeth together. “There’s reckless. And then there’s you. Do you even understand how insane it is to offer your body to a demon?”

“Sure,” I replied, grinning as my Soulful Guiding Fire began to flare with activity. “But what better way to lure him out than to pretend to be dumber than I really am?”

Jue Bu didn’t respond. He just floated a little farther away. Smart.

Suddenly, the world went quiet.

No howling winds. No crumbling dreamspace or soulscape. No demonic shrieks echoing down psychic corridors.

Just silence.

I looked around, frowning. My Soulful Guiding Fire hovered nearby like an overworked secretary trying not to scream... and then the butterfly sputtered out, as if the effect of the technique had met its conditions. I used my Divine Sense, scanning this imaginary realm inside Lu Gao, and I found out that...

“The hell…?” I muttered. “Did he just… run?”

The demon ran.

Jue Bu floated up beside me, his usual smirk practically carved into his jawless skull. “Yup. Demon boy took the express wagon to coward town.”

“Disappointing,” I said with a sigh, folding my arms. “I had this whole plan, too. Thought I’d let him move in with you. You know, you two could share a corner of my soul with Eldritch-chan. Start a weird little sitcom or something.”

Jue Bu shuddered. “W-what? This better not be a jest… What eldritch?”

But I was serious.

"Hmmm... You know what an eldritch is?"

"No, no! We can't talk about them! They are a weird bunch!"

That really was my plan. It was the safest prison I could think of… inside me. Between the literal curse-wrapped pseudo-divinity clinging to my core, the eldritch being napping somewhere in the deeper recesses of my soul, and my personal brand of unpredictable mental instability, I was basically a one-man maximum security facility.

Still, I turned to Jue Bu and said, “Anyway. You held your end of the bargain. You taught me the technique. I chased down the knight. Didn’t catch him, but I learned a lot. So… it’s my turn now.”

“Oh?” Jue Bu’s sockets glowed with mischief. “You’re going to let me in, huh?”

I nodded. “Yeah. Time to formalize this arrangement.”

He wiggled his bony phalanges. “Just so you know… the moment you drop your possession technique, I’ll already be inside you.”

The way he said it made my neck stiffen.

“Don’t phrase it like that.”

“Inside you~,” he said again, voice thick with innuendo. “Deep… inside.”

“Alright, alright! I get it!” I waved him off like swatting flies. “No need to make it weird.”

“You made it weird by making the deal,” he said with a shrug.

And yet… I hesitated. Just a little.

Something about all this… it felt too smooth. Too easy.

Was I forgetting something?

Some detail?

Some danger?

I stared at the flames flickering off my Soulful Guiding Fire, a pulse of green fire dancing against the fractured dream-walls.

Nah.

Probably fine.

Right?

“…Right?”

But Jue Bu was already laughing to himself, voice echoing like clattering bones in a haunted bathhouse.

“Too late now, Da Wei. We had a deal, souls be vowed!”

I sighed, rubbing my temples.

Then I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and canceled the effect of Divine Possession.

“Ah, shit… the gender bender bullshit… Don't tell me-”