Despite his overwhelming strength, Lao Chen did not want to sleep, not out of fear for himself, but out of fear for what he could do in the event of a bandit attack.

And like promised, he could sense with his Spiritual Sense, a dozen li away, some three-hundred suspicious souls were closing in on the caravan. It looked like a battle the caravan would win. Despite their number, he could only feel the aura of early-stage Qi Condensation cultivators at most, and mortals at worst.

The caravan wouldn’t avoid damage, however. In the event of an attack, people were bound to die anyhow, and Lao Chen could do something.

Even if he knocked them all out and drove them off somehow, it wouldn’t help in the long run. These bandits would still exist, dangerous and strong as ever. They wouldn’t stop stealing, and Lao Chen would just have been a part of the problem, not a solution.

Violence was not a viable solution. Diplomacy was the answer, although he knew better than to talk them through it. People don’t usually listen, Lao Chen had learned. The Tiger Cage Elders were obscenely obstinate for two grown men. A bunch of bandits couldn’t possibly do better.

Knowing no other solution, Lao Chen used the pressure of his cultivation base to knock every bandit out, and channeled his Dao of Dreams, concentrating deeply along with his Spiritual Sense, opening up a wide network of souls connected by dozens of lines crisscrossing each other. Even he was connected to a line, stretching to the far West. The line was hollow, but nonetheless powerful.

It carried a compulsion to keep travelling. Perhaps he should humor it.

In time.

Lao Chen tried to reach out to tentatively touch one of the lines but was repelled by a wave of sheer emotion. Deciding to leave the lines, he hovered over to a soul of a bandit, finding that it was easy to distinguish between the travelers’ paler souls and the bandits’ much murkier and clouded ones.

Upon contact, Lao Chen was sucked into the soul, in a dark void of nothingness stretching to infinity. In this infinite void, there was him and a middle-aged traveler with closed eyes, floating alongside him. Lao Chen hovered over to inspect him. Once he came by an arm’s length, the man’s eyes darted open, startling him.

“Who… are you?”

The void around him began to change. Up became a light-brown, clouded sky while down became a muddy slum in some town.

“You live around here?” Lao Chen asked as he looked around the town. The man nodded.

“Takin’ care of me five children and their mam. Ain’t much to it,” the man admitted. When Lao Chen laid his eyes on the man, he was carrying a rickshaw.

“Are you a rickshaw puller?” Lao Chen asked, to which the man nodded.

“Been pullin’ for the better part of twenty years. It’s a tough livin’, but I ain’t a man for nothin’.”

Lao Chen nodded. The man began to run, and Lao Chen followed with ease. Faceless men and women paid the man to ride the rickshaw, and Lao Chen observed silently, following. Several hours of this passed, and Lao Chen asked another question. “What do you do for fun?”

“After work, I meet up with me boys to drink ourselves silly,” the man grinned. “Ol’ Lee and I have a standin’ bet on who can drink as many bottles without blackin’ out.”

“Is this the extent of your world, Mister?” Lao Chen asked again. The middle-aged man paused.

After a moment, the downtrodden reply came. “No… I keep dreamin’ about this, but the truth is. They’re all dead. Ol’ Lee. Me five children and the mam. All of ‘em. I’m a bandit, now.”

The scene changed to a dark cave filled with raggedy figures either playing dice, grinding their shoddy swords or drinking themselves into a stupor. “Been like this for a year, now.”

“You’ve been stealing to survive,” Lao Chen surmised. The bandit nodded.

Lao Chen continued. “Are you happy?”

The bandit scoffed, laughing mirthlessly. “No.”

“Are you sad?” Lao Chen asked.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because this is my life, and that’s all I can ever be. I am no cultivator. I can’t read or write. I can barely even count to save my life. I’m nothing. Just a poor man pushed to banditry after those very men destroyed my already-pitiful life.”

The cave disappeared, leaving a muddy stretch of land. Lao Chen frowned.

“You have an immense work ethic, my friend. Even in your dreams, you work. Is that not incredible?”

The man scoffed. “Even in my dreams, I can’t cut meself some slack. For us poor folks, it’s all about living until the next time you earn money. Ain’t no time for anything else, you know. Even as a bandit, it’s about bein’ the strongest, and I’m not even the strongest weakling.”

“What do you want to be, Mister?” Lao Chen asked. The man looked up, hope evident in his eyes.

“I want to be a poet. I heard the travelers recite beautiful poems once, and I wanna do that, too, you know? I can’t even read, nor can I write, but I dream of becoming a poet. Stupid, right?” The man chuckled ruefully. Lao Chen, completely straight-faced, shook his head.

“A noble pursuit, but you’ll never become a poet if you spend your free-time drinking yourself into a stupor with your friends, dicing or stealing from honest folks, like you used to be. Save up to pay someone to teach you to read. Apply yourself. Where there is a will, there is always a way.”

The man whipped his head away from Lao Chen in disgust. “That’s what they all say, ye know! ‘Where there’s a will, there’s a way’ but what if there isn’t a way! My life will always be this! The rickshaw, the drinking, the stealin’ and the occasional fucking! That’s all I’m ever going to be!”

Lao Chen laughed as he waved his hand, erasing the filthy landscape, replacing it with an empty grassland, clearing the blue sky of brown and mucked-up clouds.

“You don’t need to write to be able to make poems. Write from your heart! What do you see around you?” Lao Chen asked, morphing the environment into a thousand piercing mountains connected by rope-bridges, with beautiful castles and sprawling towns growing from the sides of these mountains. Below a certain length of the mountains, a thick layer of cloud obscured the floor.

The man sucked in a breath. “What is this?”

Lao Chen answered. “It is a figment of my imagination.”

“So… it doesn’t exist?” He asked, disappointed. Lao Chen shook his head mirthfully.

“Of course it does! It’s right in front of you, is it not?”

The man smiled. “I… I suppose so.”

“What do you see, Mister?”

The man took a deep breath, clearing his mind before speaking.

“A thousand cities on a

thousand mountains. The clouds are this celestial realm’s floor.

A summit piercing this very heaven houses a thou-

sand people. A thousand cities on a thousand mountains.”

The man’s sad smile became more determined, his eyes shining with passion. Lao Chen nodded approvingly. “You didn’t need to write to recite a poem. It helps to have somewhere to write it down, though, doesn’t it? Although… it could use some work. Too constrained within your chosen heptameter.”

The scene shifted and now they stood in the courtyard of a palace with the view of a sprawling city with hundreds and thousands of households igniting their lights during the night.

“What do you see?”

The man recited.

“In the Emperor’s humble abode

The whole world was exposed

To his curious peer, the world was there

The thousand thousand houses,

The million million people,

In the Emperor’s humble abode

The whole world was exposed.”

Lao Chen nodded. “True poetry comes from the heart. How do you feel?”

The man smiled as tears gushed out. Covering his eyes, he nodded. “Whole.”

Lao Chen smiled. “All it takes is dedication and passion, and you will reach your dreams!”

Lao Chen held the man on both his shoulders. "You. Are. Capable."

“You know what? I am!”

Lao Chen smiled. The man’s dream, his ambition became clearer and clearer as they spoke until it burnt with a fiery passion.

The scene shifted, and Lao Chen was amongst an audience watching the man on his knees, reciting poems as beautiful ladies with marvelous zithers played short tunes after each stanza.

Lao Chen stood up and left the hall, and consequently, the man’s dream.

The ocean of souls around him consisted of the travelers to the Port of Dalian and the bandits. Lao Chen saw into one’s heart, a hardworking, middle-aged man-turned-bandit that could not follow his dreams only because nobody told him that he could. He suffered from a disease of the mind, and one that was quite curable.

Lao Chen then vowed to dive into every bandit in the vicinity’s dreams and inspire them, one after another, changing his appearance each time. By splitting his consciousness into fragments, he managed to sway several people at once before the first bandit had awoken from their slumber, happy and impassioned.

The night ended peacefully, and the travelers looked around, completely puzzled.

“No bandit attack? Thank the heavens,” one muttered as they packed their bags. Lao Chen raised an eyebrow.

“Heard from the sentries. There wasn’t anyone in a dozen li to be spotted. Silent as a cat, they say. Ruffled some of the newbies’ feathers, havin’ to stress out all night.”

Lin-Lin stuck closely to Lao Chen as he heard passing conversations and hearsay. Apparently, the caravan had faced bandit attacks every night since they set out three months ago. The people were capable of repelling any bandits, and the fact that no one had shown up was indicative of their notoriety.

Little did they know… Lao Chen chuckled quietly. Spurred by the lack of violence, the caravan traveled much faster, talk and banter in the air lightening the mood.

Lao Chen hadn’t introspected yet, but deep inside his body, on his Eight Heavenly Meridians, a heavenly touch from his Dao rewarded him by clearing his second Heavenly Meridian, taking him another step forward, towards Immortal Ascension.

--

Wang Gen wasn’t at the moment taking part in his rebellion, executing dissenters and sympathizers, nor was he cultivating his strength.

In his bed-chambers, two well-endowed Kawans had just finished pleasuring him. Like the slaves they were, they did not sleep with him in the same bed. They stood at ease, perfect for him to have a good view of their manhoods.

Exquisite specimens. They didn’t make men like these fierce, dark-skinned individuals in the Jade Empire. It wasn’t that absurd that they would be sold at such ridiculously high-prices. Unfortunately, the city needed the money, and the Kawans had to be sold eventually.

Unfortunately enough, that also meant Jubo and Yari. Such was their fate at the end of the day. Slaves would always be slaves, and people as backward as the Kawans only deserved as much. To them, Wang Gen was a lit beacon leading them to a life where their incredible physical strength and sexual prowess can be put to good use.

Wang Gen sometimes surprised himself with his perversion. It wasn’t always like this, he reminded himself. Not after that divine whore that serviced him until his eyes nearly rolled into his skull. Ever since then, regular orgasms just didn’t do it for him.

Getting off his bed, Wang looked out his window, seeing a marching caravan entering the small Port-town. With a satisfied smile, he knew that the merchants of Dalian had returned with the required goods. Dalian would no longer remain a destitute port-town ruled under his father and a few select nobles’ thumbs. Dalian would be an economy for the people, by the people.

And it was all according to Young Master Wang Gen’s plans. His name was being chanted. He could hear it. It was real and well-deserved. He was a hero.

A hero who still felt profoundly horny, he thought as he looked back at the enticing forms of Jubo and Yari.

Well. The people could wait. His thirst hadn’t been quenched, yet.