During the night...
After Qi Yuan rejected Li, he brought out blankets, pillows and lit a fire inside the cave itself. The supplies he brought out were in pairs of two, one for him and one for Li.
Without many options, Xuan Li could only comply and try to sleep while QI yuan did the same.
The night was meant to be peaceful but instead, screams and shouts drowned the peaceful silence.
The culprit? It was Xuan Li and his recurring nightmares that have plagued him when he awoke to this strange but vast world.
Qi Yuan wanted to tie up Li and stick cloth in his mouth to shut him up but looking at his terrored and pitiful face, he decided against it. Instead, he inspected Li's body with his Qi but like Saphire's investigation, he had no abnormalities. His body seemed to be completely fine and he was not under any magic.
At that point, most mages and cultivators would have just ruled it out as normal nightmares or trauma that they couldn't overcome but Qi Yuan was different. He found these nightmares too strange, especially when Li told him that they reoccur every single night with each night the nightmare has differences but the end is his grandfather dying.
Even if others like Qi Yuan found Li's nightmares too strange, there was little they could do unless they specialised in dreams. But studying dreams and anything related to it was seen as useless in a world where power decides everything in the end, A mage or cultivator that specialises in dreams wouldn't have much fighting capabilities in the first place!
What could they do? Make the opponent fall asleep and kill them? If it was that easy, the power of dreams would dominate the world yet it doesn't because of the strong mental fortitude of a cultivator and mage.
Now, Qi Yuan was not a cultivator that specialised with dreams itself, to his core, he was a swordsman. However, everyone in this dangerous world would have a few tricks and unconventional abilities up their sleeves.
He had Xuan Li fall back asleep and reassured him that his nightmares won't affect his sleep for at least this night. After half an hour, Li began to dive into deep sleep and wouldn't really be aware of his surroundings. Another half an hour passed, his face started to slowly become uncomfortable and he would occasionally let out a groan of displeasure.
His nightmare was starting.
Qi Yuan calmly stared at Li and sighed.
"Why is this experiment becoming so troublesome? I didn't expect I would need to deal with your problems...but…*sigh* you're my only hope." Qi Yuan outstretched his hand over Li's head.
His pure snow white Qi encased his hand and spread throughout his body, the cave itself began to tremble from his force. His outstretched hand clutched the air but stopped before they could fully close, as if there was an object blocking his hand.
"Soul interference" He softly spoke, and his Qi travelled from his hand, down towards Li's head. As the Qi travelled, it seemed to have encased the air and the Qi took the shape of a handle that his hand was holding. It travelled down, and a curved sword that reached all the way to Li's head was outlined by the white Qi.
If anyone saw it, they would just see Qi thats formed into a curved blade shape like a katana but its not as long as one. The Qi traveled further to Xuan Li's forehead in a thin line which began to calm the disgruntled Li.
"Lets see your terror!" He twisted his outstretched hand and as if a lock was opened, Qi Yuan's consciousness entered Li's dream.
Suddenly Qi Yuan's vision shifted from the cave to some tall buildings covering the two ends of a straight road. However, Qi Yuan couldn't recognise the buildings and they were all very strange to him.
He proceeded down the narrow street while examining the weird tall buildings and white and black pathway. After a short moment, he saw some kind of metallic gate but it looked quite advanced, clearly different from any wooden or stone gates from his world.
"What a strange place...what are these things?" Qi Yuan muttered to himself.
He couldn't open the metallic gate but luckily a portion of his strength remained in this dreamland so he was able to jump over it.
There was another building after the gate but this one was very wide with tons of windows across it. For us, we would recognise it as a school but Qi Yuan had never seen a school like this before.
Not far from the school, Qi Yuan saw Xuan Li's figure crouched down, hiding his face, while his back was attacked by numerous pebbles thrown by three other figures who were part shadowy but also had a human face and body.
'Are they causing his nightmare?' He thought to himself.
"Ugly!"
"Go die you beast!"
"Hahaha, you really thought we were friends?"
The shadow like humans kept shouting hurtful words at Xuan Li while his back continued to bleed from the constant pebbles being thrown at him.
Not wasting anymore time, Qi Yuan dashed towards Li's side and did a sideways slash at the three shadow humans, instantly beheading them.
He proceeded to gather his Qi onto his hands, which showed an outline of the sword that was used above his head earlier and did a 360 degree rotation. His Qi was released into a circular slash, completely cutting the school and all the buildings previously by half!
The whole dreamworld trembled from the aftershock of the buildings and soon after disappearing into nothingness.
"You're okay now." Qi Yuan rested his hand on the crouched Xuan Li.
"Stay away!" Li shouted out, still covering his face.
"Why? I took them out. They aren't going to hurt you." Qi Yuan slowly said.
"I...I'm hideous....don't look at me!" He shouted but his voice started to break as he broke into tears.
"It's just a nightmare, it can't be that bad"
With Qi Yuan's face, he forced Li to reveal his face and immediately after seeing it, Qi Yuan backed far away in horror.
This was the first time that he was horrified by another person's appearance even though he is the type to be quite indifferent to appearances ugly or not. However, Xuan Li was truly another realm of ugliness with his disproportionate eyes and crooked nose, full pimpled face with burnt like scars across one of his eyes.
It was truly disgusting to see.
"See...I am hideous...I am a monster!" Xuan Li cried, making his face look further distorted.