Inside the World of Infinite Dreams:-

Lin Feng, at eight years of age, loved flowers. He also loved snow.

But when the snow came, the flowers always went away. He didn’t like that. He wanted both.

His mama sometimes told him stories where if you prayed to the Heavens nicely and were a good boy, it would grant your wishes.

He was a good boy. Everyone in the village praised him. So, all he would have to do was pray.

He shut his eyes tightly and muttered under his breath…

‘flower, snow, flower, snow…’

When he opened his eyes, he couldn’t help but scream in delight.

In front of him, the entire snow-covered lawn had been filled with sparkling crystalline flowers of ice.

He was really excited. It was beautiful. He wanted everyone to see it, especially mama.

He ran into the house, yelling for his mother at the top of his voice.

She was in the kitchen, cooking lunch and looked up, amused, when he ran into the room in such an excited state.

He was too impatient to explain and dragged her by the hand to the garden and turned to her and presented it proudly.

When she saw the garden resplendent in icy florets, the colour drained from her face and her hands started to shiver. The ladle she hadn’t had time to put down in the kitchen dropped out of her lax hands.

Lin Feng couldn’t understand why his mama just stood there shivering. He tilted his head in confusion. Was she cold? Yeah, it was winter so that must be it. He nodded to himself. Somehow, he didn’t feel the cold though. He felt at home in the snow.

*slap*

The sharp crack of palm against cheek resounded in the courtyard.

Lin Feng staggered to the ground at the unexpectedness of the blow.

Before he could come to terms with being slapped by his mother, she fell to her knees and hugged him to her bosom tightly and began crying.

“Sorry baby… I didn’t mean to hurt you… but promise me. Swear that you will never use that power again. It’s a curse… the worst thing that you can do… worse than the demons in the fairy tales. Promise mama that you’ll never do what you did today. Hmm?”

Lin Feng nodded through his tears. “I, I p-promise.”

She kissed him on his reddening cheek and embraced him, surrounded by a sea of sparkling ice flowers.

…

Expansive marble corridors…

Laughing along with Senior brother Jin as he caught me in a headlock…

Master boasting about me to the head of the Alchemy tower over multiple cups of alcohol…

My days with the Monks of Kunlun…

The coronation ceremony when I came back…

Master’s funeral, my tears mixing with the rain…

My dispute with Senior brother Jin…

The internal split in the Sect…

The recovery…

My journey across the land to cut my ties…

The profound darkness of the Void…

A glass pagoda…

Her habit of tucking her hair behind her ear, even when there wasn’t a single strand out of place…

A regal woman with flowing white hair…

The rank red eye on her forehead…

Drenched in cold sweat, the fourteen-year-old Lin Feng sat up in his bed with a jerk.

Dreams of a different life had been plaguing him for the last couple of years.

But the dream today had been the most vivid yet.

His breathing slowed as he tried his best to recall the details of the dream.

The fleeting images seemed to flow out of the seams of his mental grasp like water.

After a few moments, they were gone, only leaving a fuzzy feeling of incongruity behind.

Incongruity and an irrational fear of the moon.

Outside his window, the clouds parted and the light of the scarlet moon flooded the world, dyeing it in a sanguine shade.

Behind tightly closed shutters, he shivered.

…

Winter had draped a white cloak on the land and the villagers had retired to their homes early.

Lin Feng’s boots left deep footprints as he trudged through the snow into the forest.

After the incident with the icy flowers, he hadn’t dared to use his powers in public, but in private, he had experimented with the full range of his capabilities.

Ice bent to his will, warping along with his intent and on the days when it snowed, the world was his playground.

But, today he had come to test something that had been nagging at the back of his mind ever since he had begun to have the strange dreams.

He had dreamt of a glass pagoda. Although the images had faded with his awakening, he intuitively felt that if he tried to replicate it with his dominion over ice, he would be able to bring it out from the realm of dreams, into the world.

Maybe, if he had a locus on which to focus his thoughts, he could recall the rest of his dream.

Stopping at a secluded spot by the lake to circumvent prying eyes, Lin Feng inhaled deeply, letting the chilly evening breeze flood his lungs.

Waving his hands, the falling snowflakes in the region became static, then coalesced into a tall tower.

His fingers moved automatically as he fell deeper into a trance that elucidated the image in his mind.

Parts of the tower sloughed off as it grew tapered, various portions shaping themselves so that nine distinct layers became discernible.

The snow continued its silent symphony and Lin Feng was its conductor.

The tower shrank as the snowflakes fused together into frosted ice. The waning light of the day shone down on the emergent creation, filling the secluded clearing with rainbows…

*snap*

The sound of a breaking branch snapped Lin Feng out of his trance. The half-finished sculpture lost its support and crashed onto the ground, splintering into several pieces as he spun about towards the sound like a frightened rabbit.

His eyes locked onto his father’s gaze which was filled with swirling emotions.

Shock, loss, betrayal, rage.

…

Dragging her by her hair, Lin Feng’s father threw his mother onto the snowy ground of the village square, her body landing onto the prone figure of Lin Feng.

The alarm had been raised and the crowd was gathering.

Lin Feng could hardly focus on the sounds of their discussion over the pain flooding his mind.

The fingers of his left hand were broken and his left eye swollen shut.

When his mother fell on top of him, she jarred his mangled hand and elicited a pained moan.

She cradled him protectively and screamed at the gathered villagers, appealing to their rationality.

For a moment, the crowd stilled…

Then the first stone hit her on the head, drawing blood.

His face distorted with hatred and disgust, Lin Feng’s father spat out the word as if it denoted all that was vile in the world: “Witch!”

“Witch!”

“Demon!”

“Devil spawn!”

The mob worked itself into a frenzy as stone after stone hit her body.

Lin Feng, cocooned within her embrace, could feel her shudder from every impact.

“Stop.” He whispered.

Tears streamed down his face as another stone hit her arm with an ominous crunch.

“Stop!” He entreated.

A drop of her blood trickled onto his face, mixing with his tears.

“STOP!” His scream lost its way in the deafening howls of the mob. She coughed up blood, splattering his face and dyeing his vision red.

“I SAID, STOP!!!”

Silence.

His voice cracked as he looked into her lifeless eyes. “I’m sorry.”

Her limp body slid off him unblocking his line of sight to the sky.

It was a full moon night.

The scarlet brilliance shone upon the scene of a circle of nearly a hundred ice sculptures, each frozen with a rictus of hatred on its face.

Some were frozen with stones, large or small, held in their fists.

*shnck*

The sound of cracking ice resounded in the silence.

The figures shattered, filling the air with a glittering cloud of ice dust as the pieces tumbled on the floor.

In the centre of the carnage, slack jawed and atheistic, lay Lin Feng.

His glazed pupils reflected the light of the scarlet moon.