As time went on, Tian devoted himself to his studies.

  The boy spent hours upon hours devouring books on dream cultivation theory; memorizing complex philosophical treatises and cultivation manuals that would be challenging for adult practitioners to grasp.

  But as impressive as his theoretical knowledge was, his cultivation progress was a different matter altogether.

  “Try the Basic Dream Sensing Technique again,” Tianming advised during one of their evening training sessions. “Just remember to allow your consciousness to extend outside of your physical body.”

  Tian closed his eyes and completed the meditation as described in the manual. His breathing was flawless, his posture perfectly erect, and his visualization clear and focused. However, there was no response to his attempts to tap into the dream qi, no wispy tendrils of spiritual energy hovered near his small body.

  “I understand why this is supposed to work,” Tian said after yet another unsuccessful attempt. “I can see every single step in my mind. But something is missing, something very important that I can’t remember.”

  “You’re only eight years old,” Yunmei offered reassuringly. “A lot of young people don’t show spiritual awareness until they’re much older. Just keep in mind that your actual assessment won’t take place until you’re fifteen.”

  Tian nodded, but in his heart, he knew that his issue didn’t have anything to do with age or development. There was something wrong with his spiritual foundation, and no amount of waiting or study would fix it.

  ***

  The first real sign of trouble came when Tian was ten years old.

  Feeling like perhaps he had inadvertently caused some harm to his son when he used the Genesis Dream technique to create him, Yue Tianming began to seek increasingly desperate forms of cultivation to make things right.

  After all, the last thing that Tianming wanted was for his son to be killed by his prophetic rival simply because he couldn’t cultivate.

  So, he had done everything in his power to help his son.

  Tianming had consulted with numerous experts, acquired expensive spiritual medications and even tried to re-create aspects of the original technique in an effort to gain insight into what might have gone wrong.

  Unfortunately, none of it made any difference.

  And even worse was that Tianming’s Oneiric Sovereign cultivation continued to deteriorate.

  As his dream qi grew weaker and less stable with each passing month, it became exhausting and possibly even dangerous to maintain the illusion of power in front of the clan. But Tianming couldn’t afford to show weakness. Weakness meant loss of status, which meant loss of access to resources, which meant less chance of Tian ever recovering from whatever it was that plagued him.

  But there was only so much that Tianming could do.

  One day, Tian discovered his father lying flat on the floor in the cultivation room, bleeding from the corner of his mouth, his face pale with spiritual exhaustion.

  “Father!” Tian sprang to his father’s side, supporting him to sit against the chamber wall.

  “I’m fine,” Tianming gasped, wiping away the blood. “Just got a bit tired during my meditation.”

  But Tian could tell immediately that his father was lying to him.

  “You’re getting weaker, aren’t you?” he asked. “Because of me.”

  “What? No, son, this has absolutely nothing to do with you.”

  “Yes, it does.” Tian’s tone was calm and unemotional but carried that unnerving sense of conviction that occasionally crept into his voice. “Something wrong happened when I was born. Something that hurt you. And it is still hurting you.”

  Tianming was shocked by his son’s words. “How could you possibly know that?”

  “I don’t know how I know,” Tian replied. “But sometimes I understand things without learning them. Just like how I can read high-level cultivation texts even though I’m not able to cultivate. And just like how I know that Liu Meiya will break our engagement even though everyone says she’s perfect for me.”

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  “Tian…”

  “It’s alright, Father. I know that you and Mother did something extraordinary to bring me into this world. I know that it cost you more than you ever imagined. And I know that you don’t regret anything, even though you should.”

  This conversation shook Tianming to the core.

  How could their ten-year-old son suspect the circumstances surrounding his birth?

  They had made sure to never speak about the Genesis Dream Technique again.

  The boy shouldn’t have any hint about the sacrifices they’d made.

  But as Tian matured, more strange incidents occurred.

  When he was around eleven years old, he was walking home from the clan library, loaded down with advanced cultivation texts, when one of the other boys blocked his path in one of the quiet courtyards.

  Song Wei was the same age but slightly larger, the son of a junior branch elder. His own cultivation potential was average at best, which explained why he was so resentful of the prophecy child.

  “Still lugging around books you’ll never be able to use?” Song Wei jeered, blocking Tian’s path. “Everybody knows that you can’t cultivate. You cripple.”

  “Excuse me.” Tian said quietly, trying to move past him. “I need to get home.”

  “What’s the hurry? Are you scared that someone will find out that the great prophecy child is actually a fake?”

  With that, Song Wei pushed Tian in the shoulder hard.

  Tian stumbled back, dropping a few of the books onto the floor.

  “Please leave me alone,” Tian said, crouching down to gather the scattered books.

  “Or maybe you’re afraid that your parents will have to fight for you? Ha! Wait, I forgot – your father’s cultivation is so weak now that he can hardly keep face at clan meetings.”

  A strange expression flickered across Tian's face at the mention of his father's condition.

  “Don’t,” he whispered.

  “Everybody’s been talking about it, you know,” Song Wei grinned, knowing he had found a vulnerable point. “How Yue Tianming used to be a prodigy, but now he can’t—”

  Without even thinking about it, Tian acted.

  One moment he was kneeling on the ground, collecting books; in the next he was somehow standing directly behind Song Wei, with his arm wrapped tightly around the other boy’s neck, locking him in a perfect rear-naked choke.

  “I asked you to leave me alone,” Tian whispered, his voice eerily calm. “I asked you politely.”

  Song Wei thrashed about wildly, desperately clawing at Tian’s arm.

  The nearby children who had been playing stopped to stare in shock and confusion.

  They didn’t know whether to help or find an adult, so they just stood there.

  After seven full seconds, Tian released his grip and stepped back.

  Song Wei fell to his hands and knees, gasping and choking.

  “Don’t speak of my father again,” Tian warned. “Don’t speak of my family at all. And leave me alone.”

  Song Wei quickly rose to his feet and ran, throwing terrified glances back over his shoulders.

  The other children stared at Tian in awe.

  “Where did you learn to do that?” one of them asked.

  Tian glanced down at his hands as if seeing them for the first time.

  “I don’t know,” he murmured. “I didn’t even know I could do that.”

  Word of the incident spread rapidly throughout the clan.

  Within hours, there were various renditions of how the prophecy child demonstrated martial arts skills that should not have been possible for someone with no combat experience.

  “This proves what we’ve always suspected,” Elder Liu explained to Yue Tianming later that evening. “The boy’s talents run far deeper than we originally thought. Maybe his delayed spiritual development is just a sign of something extraordinary developing beneath the surface.”

  While the clan was whispering his praises, Tian himself felt lost.

  That night, he sat by his window, flexing his fingers, trying to figure out where the knowledge to fight had come from.

  “It felt natural,” he told his mother when she came to check on him. “Like I had done it a thousand times before. But that can’t be possible, Father hasn’t taught me how to fight yet. He wanted me to focus on dream cultivation first.”

  “Maybe it was instinct,” Yunmei suggested, rubbing his head. “Sometimes, when we’re in danger, our bodies remember things our minds forget.”

  “Remembered from where, though? From when?”

  At that his mother grew silent, just like she always did when he asked questions.

  The question continued to plague him for weeks. He started paying greater attention to his bodily responses, and realised that he had exceptionally good balance, and faster reflexes than he should have considering that he hadn’t received any martial arts training. At times, while reading about combat techniques, his body would naturally transition into the postures described in the text.

  The following years were marked by a growing tension between expectation and reality.

  On one hand, Tian continued to demonstrate exceptional mastery of theoretical studies, creating poetry that inspired even the stone-hearted clan elders to tears and providing insight into dream cultivation principles that amazed visiting scholars.

  On the other hand, his complete inability to manipulate dream qi became impossible to ignore.

  “The assessment is still three years away,” some would say when others questioned whether the prophecy child would ever display the predicted abilities. “The prophecy specifically referred to eyes like sapphires, bright as dawn. Obviously, a clear sign such as this means that his abilities will reveal themselves when the proper time arrives.”

  Despite the reassurance he got from everyone around him, Tian knew better.

  It was just like he had always suspected.

  There was an emptiness inside him.

  An absence where his spiritual connection to the dream world should exist.

  It wasn’t a matter of delayed spiritual maturity, or hidden talent.

  There was something essential that he was missing.

  Something he needed to remember before he could access whatever power might be sleeping within him.

  Another timeskip coming up next chapter tomo!

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