Red didn’t know what to expect as his consciousness faded away. Sleep was something that the youth naturally avoided for as long as possible, and only exhaustion or the crimson mist’s prompting were capable of dragging him into that land of dreams. This was the first time he force himself to sleep in such a manner, and he didn’t know what would happen to him.

The thing guarding the dagger seemed incapable of hurting him before he grabbed the weapon, but it still trapped him in its realm. Yet, would the youth find escape in his dreams? In his experience, they were often not the refuge he wanted at this time, but what other choice did he have?

Such thoughts continued to cross his mind without end. Soon enough, though, Red noticed something strange.

How could he still think with such clarity? Wasn’t he supposed to be asleep?

‘Could it be… Another waking dream?’

To verify his suspicions, Red tried to open his eyes. However, there was nothing to see - or rather, he didn’t have a vision to see. His other senses couldn’t detect anything either, and when he tried to move his body, he couldn’t feel the response of his muscles.

It was as if his body wasn’t there.

The youth was shaken as he found the whole situation to be very familiar to what he felt a long time ago in that inheritance realm. The Void.

He was quick to rein in his unsettled feelings, lest his mind wander to dangerous territories. Red didn’t let himself be swayed by first impressions and tried to think of things rationally. Back then, the only apparent reason he felt in such a state was because he was standing right on top of a gate to the Void, as someone he didn’t dare to think about explained.

How could that make sense in his state? Was him going to sleep a way to enter the Void? Even the most absurd theories Red had about his strange powers didn’t border on that realm. Instead, there was a far more reasonable explanation to this.

'Sleep Paralysis.’

The youth heard of such a phenomenon before. A state between waking up and sleeping where one was conscious but was unable to move or sleep. He didn’t know if his current state matched the symptoms of this state, but it wasn’t absurd to think that this could be a consequence of forcing his own body to sleep through some strange technique.

However, right now, he only traded a prison for another, still incapable of returning to the real world.

‘At the very least, I don’t think I will die in here.’

Despite saying that, Red would obviously not sit still and wait for whatever came next. Right now, he was technically ‘sleeping’, but it didn’t necessarily mean he was free from the domain of the bone dagger. What if he woke up and found himself trapped there again? The possibility was still there.

‘I need to find a way to escape.’

The problem laid, of course, in the fact the youth wasn’t a proper cultivator yet. He couldn’t see through illusions, much less break through them. He imagined the only reason he was still alive was because the bone dagger and that thing were incapable of affecting his mind, something he was very thankful for, but that alone didn’t provide him with a way to escape.

‘If only I could communicate with Aurelia.’

Even if the woman couldn’t help him directly, she would surely know a way to escape that realm of illusions. The only other options Red could think of were to invoke the images of certain beings in his head to cause a reaction in that world, but that was like putting out fire with more oil. It was likely to only complicate things for him.

There was also the possibility Aurelia would notice something wrong with him and free him from the outside, but this wasn’t something he was willing to rely on. Who knew how time passed in that place? From experience, he knew some cultivators were capable of manipulating the passage or perception of time, his master included. One week inside that illusory realm might not be more than a few minutes in the real world.

He wasn’t willing to gamble on that. The only thing left, then, was to find out a solution on his own.

‘A way to return or communicate with the real world…’

Like any field of cultivation, it was almost impossible to figure out a solution to a problem with no knowledge or experience on the field. Red didn’t even know the kind of state he was in right now. A floating consciousness? A half-sleeping brain? It was impossible to tell or figure out on his own, so he did what anyone else would do in his place.

He experimented.

The youth tried to meditate and reach his state of expanded awareness. To his surprise, however, he was already in such a state, this piece of transcendental perception wandering around empty space all the while. The reason he didn’t noticed it was because there was seemingly no physical body for this awareness to detect, so it was as if it wasn’t there in the first place.

Despite this discovery, Red tried to move this awareness around, hoping to find any traces of his body. As expected, though, he couldn’t feel anything, even as this perception extended all over where his body should have been.

‘Wait…’

As the youth moved it around, though, he noticed something strange. He still maintained some sense of space even in this state through the movement of his expanded awareness, and to his surprise, he felt this force move beyond where his body should have been. He tried to move it around again, feeling this awareness move far beyond the borders of what should have been possible into the void beyond.

The reason this surprised Red, of course, was because in the past, this expanded awareness was always limited to his own body. It couldn’t extend beyond that, no matter how hard he tried, and yet in this dream realm, it didn’t seem to be limited by anything.

Of course, this all might be just the youth’s imagination or erroneous perception of space in this state, but he felt it was worth pursuing. He started to move this expanded awareness around, hoping to find anything out of the ordinary in this space.

Unexpectedly, no matter how much this force of his moved, Red still felt like it was just by his side. It seemed that no matter the distance, the connection between his mind and the force would remain strong.

‘Or perhaps it is better to say that this awareness and my mind are one thing?’

His consciousness didn’t feel as if it had a ‘physical place’ in this dream, and seeing as this awareness moving about was the only sense of physical change he had in this environment, perhaps there was no point in thinking about them as separate entities. Where the awareness was, so would his consciousness be, just as it was with his body in the real world.

The youth felt a headache coming on just by thinking about this, so he let the matter go for now. What mattered is that the state didn’t feel unnatural to him, so he didn’t hesitate to continue.

Red didn’t know how far or for how long his awareness continued to move through this primordial nothingness. Yet, before the youth felt even compelled to give up, he felt something.

It was like a pulse, the weak aftermath of an energy reaching his awareness. Without hesitation, Red grasped into the direction of this sensation and headed towards it.

A similar pulse reached him again, but this time from another angle. Before the youth could consider changing directions, however, another pulse reached him from another direction. Then another. And another.

Soon enough, there were dozens of them, reaching him from all around without end, but they never seemed to stay in the same place. He made a decision to pursue where he felt one of these pulses as far as he could, but he never made contact with anything using his awareness.

At this point, Red was feeling quite frustrated. He could feel dozens of these pulses emitted by whatever energy in his surroundings, but he could never reach any of them to inspect them with his awareness. They all seemed to be in constant movement, too fast for him to catch up. It wasn’t like he had a vision to inspect them from afar either, his only option for interaction being direct contact.

His only option was to wait until one of these things accidentally got close enough to his awareness, which also seemed rather unlikely, considering the limitless size of this space. Just as Red was feeling at a loss, he felt another pulse reach him, accompanied by a pleasant voice that sounded inside his mind.

“Little brother, you’re doing it all wrong!” the voice said.

His mind trembled upon hearing this, but just like the other pulses, he couldn’t exactly feel where it was coming from.

The voice reached him again. “Don’t worry, little brother, I’m just here to help!”

Red could only display his general skepticism by moving away from where he felt this last pulse.

Yet, the voice still came to him. “Listen, these stars are too fast for you to catch. The only way you will see them is if you attune yourself to their energy. Do you understand me?”

The youth, in face, did not understand a word this person was a saying.

“Did they not teach you this at the temple?” the voice sounded amused. “Listen, all you need to do is concentrate on the vibrations they leave behind. Attune your radiance to their song and the world will be yours!”

Red was still quite skeptical of this voice, but above that, he didn’t understand how to do the things he asked.

“Trust me, it’s not hard.” the voice urged him on. “It’s like an instinct. If you have reached this state, then you can definitely do it. I believe in you!”

The youth was starting to get annoyed at the vagueness of these explanations, but seeing no other choice, he tried to do as the voice instructed. He assumed this attunement the voice referred to was to modify his expanded awareness to match the pulses emitted by these moving objects he felt all around him.

Red didn’t know if this was possible, but he saw no reason not to try.

He studied these pulses, listening to their “music.” It didn’t take long for him to memorize these common patterns, after which he tried to reproduce them with his own spiritual awareness. Initially, he was at a loss, confused about how to do it, but without the restraints of a physical body, the youth could get creative.

He started to contract and expand the formless mass that was his expanded awareness, trying to match the pulses he felt. At first, he didn’t feel anything, but some time later, he felt something resonating with him.

A bright point appeared in his mind. An image, interpreted through his awareness to his consciousness. It was like a shooting star, travelling through space with a pulsing glow while leaving a faint trail of light behind.

Suddenly, another resonance. Another glow, this one more intense, yet still travelling with as much speed as the last one.

Then came another. And with that, they didn’t stop coming until they almost filled the surrounding darkness. Glowing points of light, some moving, some still, some close by, some impossibly far. They came in all colors and intensities, and yet without exception they all seemed to pulse in the same rhythm, one Red was now attuned to.

A sea of stars.

The youth was in a daze as he took it all in.

The sound of laughter, however, quickly snapped him out of it.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” the voice from earlier said. “I was also at a loss when I first saw it. Trust me, though, it gets even better.”

At the same time, Red attuned himself to this sea of stars. He felt something else in there. A formless glowing mist, silver in color, yet not similar to star, floating not too far from him. The youth felt a strange sense of familiarity when he examined this formless mist.

It looked quite similar to his own form in this space.

The voice continued. “Now tell me, little brother… Are you lost?”