dream fish?

{since the chapters are so long I plan on posting them bi-weakly from now on}

{story}

Tide felt like he could finally let loose, [I no longer have to try keeping my mouth shut in front of this fish], "Now that I have your absolute loyalty, I can start to reveal the plan. The plan is. . ."

{Vision of future}

Tide was bleeding out, and in front of him was Hong Yu with a rank-6 enslavement path gu

Tide: "How!?", The question was simple, but Hong Yu knew exactly what Tide was asking, 'How did he a blessed land spirit break free from the control of its master'

Hong Yu started laughing softly, "hmhmhmhm", then he broke out into hysterical laughter, "hahahahaha. You Fool! I'm not a Blessed Land Spirit, never have been. I'm a Blessed Land Will. Unlike a spirit, I can lie as much as I want." He paused for a moment taking in a breath of fresh air with a smug look on his face, "How do you think I get no tribulations? Gu Immortals have many ways to avoid tribulations: Giant Sun uses a nice little gu called Divert Disaster Gu, and many others will try to delay them through absorbing apertures, although quite reckless because One, it's incredibly hard to kill another immortal. And Second, getting the blessed land spirit's loyalty to absorb them. But most of all, when absorbing an immortal aperture it needs to be of the same path. But The most prominent method used for apertures when the gu immortal is dead, is to absorb a fragment of the Immemorial Nine Heavens", He smiled like he was still hiding something.

Tide tried to use gu worms to heal himself with little to no result, "There's a flaw in your statement, If the howl point of Paradise Earth sending me here was to keep my existence hidden, then why would he have sent me to an immortal aperture that absorbed a fragment of the Immemorial Nine Heavens"

Hong Yu's smile grew even larger, the sides of his lips almost touching his eyes at that point, "You're a smart one, I can see why he sent you. You're absolutely right I didn't absorb a piece of the Immemorial Nine Heavens.", He kept smiling watching Tide bleed out

Blood was coming out of Tide's mouth at this point, but he still pulled out some words, "Before I become enslaved, the least you can do is to tell me how"

Hong Yu's smile lessened a little, like he was thinking about it, "Well I suppose there's no harm in telling you. 'Paradise' Earth... What do you think the Paradise part stands for?", He didn't wait for tide to answer, "Some think it's because he made livable places for the non-humans. But I know the truth, It's because his knowledge of modifying Immortal apertures is higher than that of any of the other venerables! I'm sure you can connect the rest."

{End of vision}

Tide stood still with his mouth agape like he had just seen a ghost.

After waiting for a bit, Hong Yu spoke, "Umm... Tide? You ok?"

Tide immediately recovered his composure, "Give me a minute to think", [This Lying piece of sh...], he took a deep breath to calm himself, [I'm gonna kill this piece of shi...]. he took another deep breath, [Ok think, Paradise Earth wouldn't send his inheritor to someone he doesn't trust, unless he had no choice. But if that's the reason, this fish would have already read my mind by now. If I had to guess he's completely loyal to Paradise Earth, Just not to me. That means I must have done something to make him question my loyalty to Paradise Earth], Tide's brain was starting to hurt from thinking, but it was used to pain at this point, [I can assume that he betrayed me when I was a rank 6 gu immortal, because he was using a rank 6 immortal gu. And I can also assume that he thinks I have fallen for his scheme, but this is a good thing. That means he will have to pretend he's absolutely loyal to me. This also sadly means that I have to share some secrets to ensure he does not catch on to me knowing his scheme], "Alright, I'm ready to tell you about the plan"

Tide started to share information about this world that he knows, he didn't share how he knew, but he heavily implied that this info was from Paradise Earth.

{1 hour later}

"So this Fang Yuan fellow has Spring Autumn Cicada, And you have knowledge of the whereabouts of some inheritances. Are you really an otherworldly demon?"

[Me being from another world doesn't automatically mean I'm not loyal to Paradise Earth, if anything this is better. That way I can show him that I'm not loyal to central continent like Thieving Heaven Demon Venerable], "Are you not upset that you've been tricked?"

"I was aware that you were keeping secrets. So Paradise Earth wants us to stay out of Fang Yuan's way till at least after fate war?"

"It would be best to stay hidden from all the venerables and heaven's will, so I shouldn't leave until we get a method to hide from heaven's will"

"Are you referring to that inheritance in central continent?"

Tide nodded, "Thieving Heaven Demon Venerable's inheritance will make it very easy to hide from heaven's will, The question is how to sneak in there though..."

Hong Yu thought it odd that an otherworldly demon would be an inheritor, but after thinking about it, he didn't mind too much, "You said the southern border has Divine Travel gu. If we get Divine Travel gu then make Fixed Immortal Travel gu. After using it we break it and then we give back Divine Travel gu, that way no one will notice"

"I have thought of that, but how do we get that gu without central continent's heaven overseeing tower noticing us?"

Hong Yu pulled out 6 message gu, "I have a few immortal friends that are good at sneaking around, at worst heaven overseeing tower will notice them, but no one should be able to connect them back to you."

Tide was concerned, "Can we trust them?"

"Who needs trust when you have gu?" - Hong Yu pulled out a rank 6 poison vow gu

"What I mean, is how are we going to make a gu vow with them unless they come here, wouldn't that be unsafe?"

"Hmf, don't underestimate a 100,000 years old blessed land will"

{1 week later}

After successfully refining some discerning thought gu. Designed to help discern someone else's intentions.

Hong Yu: "Any progress on transforming apertures?"

"Well I found a way to transform their arms and legs, but as the transformation gets closer to the center it stops, do you have any progress on Divine Travel gu?"

"The immortals will be here soon: 2 beast-men, 2 mermen, and 1 beast"

"Beast?"

"It's a large whale, raised by paradise earth immortal venerable himself."

"Oh him", [I would love to get inside it and get some gu, but that might mess things up, especially when I know that this is the timeline where fang yuan has used spring autumn cicada]

A message gu came flying to Hong Yu, he paused for a moment then used a method to look outside his aperture, "They're here"

...

{reef palace}

deep in breathable water ocean is a palace with hundreds of rank 6 and some rank 7 colorful plants and rocks

"Come in, come in, where's Blue Dragon Whale?"

Bogart (toad beast-man): "He's busy, but he promises that if what you're doing will help Le Tu (Paradise Earth). Then he will gladly lay down his life.", he looks to the side at a plant, [Is that a rank 7 fly trap]

Hong Yu: "None of you need to worry, this mission shouldn't be threatening"

Slitheous (snake beast-man): "Then why ask for 4 immortals and one whale to help you?", [When this discussion is over I need to make sure I ask for the rank 6 material, blue viper essence]

Hong Yu: "I Just want to make sure it's quick and that no one catches onto what we're doing. Oh 'Yu Zi' you're looking lovely today, is that a ne...."

Yu Zi(mermaid): "I didn't come here to flirt with a dead fish. Unless of course, you're offering your blessed land?", [Shouldn't a fish flirt with its own kind?]

Hong Yu coughs, "Ahem, the mission is to get Divine Travel gu!"

All four of the immortals widen their eyes, "What!"

Aegeus(merman): "That gu has been missing for hundreds of years", [If I had an immortal gu, I could easily get married to the next saintess]

Hong Yu was pleased with the change in everyone's demeanor, "Yes! It's in southern border, and here's the best part. It's guarded by a dying land spirit"

Slitheous: "And you're certain that this isn't a trap? I mean one can never be too careful."

Hong Yu: "I can guarantee the validity and scarcity of this information, I just need you guys to get it without anyone finding out about it. Because we're going to need to return it when I'm done using it."

Slitheous: "Why should we return it?", [Has this fish gotten too old for his own good, this is an immortal gu that we're talking about]

"This is a part of Paradise Earth Immortal Venerable's plan, and that's all you need to know" - Hong Yu grumbles under his breath, "Kids these days"

Bogart: "I'm as loyal to Paradise Earth Immortal Venerable as much as anyone here, but how are we going to get to southern border and not get found out?"

Hong Yu: "That's one of the reasons I called for Blue Dragon Whale. His excellent hiding skills would be very useful in going undetected"

Slitheous: "I don't mean to be rude, but for such a dangerous task shouldn't we first talk about payment?"

Hong Yu was getting tired of Slitheous, "You dare! I should smite you down for what your grandfather did to me 1000 years ago!"

Slitheous: "Calm down, calm down, I was just jokin..."

Aegeus quickly interrupts, "That snake is right! You can't expect us to risk our lives for free, can you?"

Yu Zi: "Aegeus! This is to help paradise earth immortal venerable! He helped to save our mermen clan in our time of need and you want to earn payment? You should be on your hands and knees, begging to help."

Aegeus: "You must have heard of the stories of this land spirit. It is actually a will, in other words, it is more than capable of lying"

Yu Zi: "We also know that out of all fish in the world, this one wouldn't lie about something to do with Paradise Earth Immortal Venerable!"

Hong Yu starts to tear up, "Thank you Yu Zi, you have the heart of a true saintess"

Bogart: "I fully agree with the mermaid on this, I'm more than willing to help out for free"

Aegeus bows his head, "I would like to apologize for my rude behavior"

Everyone looked at Slitheous, waiting for him to say something

Slitheous rolled his eyes: "I will just chalk this up as repaying an ancestors debt"

Hong Yu smiled, "All good. For now, let's come up with a plan. Even if Blue Dragon Whale isn't here physically he can still be part of the discussion"

...

{refinement water pot}

Tide was busy refining gu when he suddenly gets another vision.

{Vision of future}

Hong Yu: "The plan failed, the Wu clan leader noticed the gu immortals enter southern border. luckily Yu Zi made it out alive"

Tide was fighting against beasts, when He heard Hong Yu make that statement, he activated a water path killer move to kill all the beasts, "Show me the recordings"

[recording]

Slitheous: "Damn that Wu clan! How did they find out! I should never have agreed to this plan"

Wu Du Xiu was holding Bogart limp in her hands, "What are beastmen and mermen doing in southern border?"

Slitheous's howl body was visibly shaking, but then he clenched his fist and raised it, "Yu Zi get out of here, I'll stall this old hag!"

Yu Zi nodded. As she flew away there was a loud boom, she looked back and saw that Slitheous had been turned into a paste by a rank-8 killer move. But suddenly the paste took the shape of a dragon, it looked at Wu Du Xiu and instead of charging towards her, it grabbed Yu Zi and flew at the speed of a rank-8 movement type method, straight for the border walls.

Wu Du Xiu: "You're testing my patience!" - she was about to chase after them, but as soon as she was about to, she grabbed her chest, and some blood came out of her mouth. Under her breath she said, "I'm getting way too old for this.", she then yelled, "Just remember this! That Wu clan is the one that chased you out of southern border!"

[end]

{End of Vision}

[was that a snake beast-man? Is he one of the guys Hong Yu called in? Did I do this in my last life as well? Based on my other visions so far, I've roughly saved 3 months then from my first life, of course, I can't root out the possibility that I'm not connected to spring autumn cicada, and I might have actually found a different method for sending memories back in time, but the fact that one of my visions was connected to him makes it highly unlikely. If I remember correctly Wu clan's leader was some sort of rank 8 wind path gu immortal, I think he made some sort of bamboo house, but before him, there was his mother. In other words, I just have to wait for her to be too old to make a move against the non-humans. I will inform Hong Yu to take his time. The wolf tide happens in 2-3 years from the start, and it has only been about 6 months since I got here, in other words, we have plenty of time to wait for that old woman's eventual demise]

....

{reef palace}

A message gu flies into reef palace heading to Hong Yu.

Bogart: "Did you contact others for this mission as well?"

Hong Yu quickly read the message, [Tide thinks we should take our time before going to southern border? Is this another one of his gut feelings, a while back I bought some beast thought gu, just to check them, only to find out that they had been tampered with.], "While There is someone else that I've contacted they said they couldn't come. Also, it will take a while before it's safe to go get Divine Travel gu. Until then let us wait for Blue Dragon Whale to come and assist us with the plan"

{27 days later, refinement water pot}

Tide: "The transformation path method called 'thoughtless transformation', while it was originally planned for adding transformation path dao marks to thoughts to make them more rigid, but didn't work because almost no thoughts were rigid enough in the first place to survive the process. However, with mini apertures, it has a 100 percent success rate!"

Hong Yu was frowning very deeply, "You neglected to mention that the method uses rank 8 materials!"

"Progress waits for no man! If we are to see success, we must first be willing to pay the price!"

Hong Yu was about to yell 'It's my resources', but he caught himself because technically it was Tide's resources because Tide owns him.

Tide noticed how unpleased Hong Yu was about the cost of all these methods brought from rank-8 gu immortals, but he couldn't care less, as far as he was concerned he was going to bleed Hong Yu dry for 'enslaving him'. "While waiting for the transformation path methods I experimented a lot with different poison gu, and I've found that if I make the membrane too soft, it will likely pop. so I've settled for these 3 gu: Muscle-melting gu. Paralyzing gu, to reduce the pain. And poisonous thought gu, to make the mini apertures more effective on the membrane"

{1 hour later}

Tide: [The expansion is currently slow, but as time goes on the mini apertures will get more dao marks. The pain is bearable and hurts less than it did when I was punching it with my mini apertures, but my biggest problem is that I can't take breaks, Causing lots of stress in my mind. Not to mention I can longer use the mini apertures for practice. Ah! How could I forget about the tales of 'Ren Zu'? I was too invested in training, that I forgot something so important], "Hong Yu I get me a copy of the tales of Ren Zu!"

Hong Yu frowned and shook his head because he thought Tide was trying to raise his human path attainment, [He'll realize after a month that raising attainment doesn't just happen because you want it to] - He takes out a book gu a gives it to Tide

Tide carefully grabs the gu and makes one mini aperture stop pushing to temporarily activate the gu

. . .

Tide finished the book in under an hour, "It's nice, full of peril and emotion, twists and turns. But it feels confusing like there's fog in front of my eyes. Maybe I'll understand if I read it a few times!"

{2 weeks later}

Tide: [I must have read this book from back to cover over 100 times,(sigh) I'm not used to thinking in allegories. But I still feel like I'm missing something], Tide sighs and stretches his limbs, [I'll just have to read it 100 more times]

Hong Yu had been watching Tide read the book, "Don't you think it's about time you dropped that book? I mean nothing's going to happen just because you want it to."

"No way, I'm gonna read this till I'm a human path master!"

"If someone could become a human path master just from reading it 1000 times, then everyone would be doing it. Wouldn't it be better to do other things." - Hong Yu was starting to get concerned. At first, he was pleased with Tide's willingness to put all his effort into it, but at a certain point it's no longer called persistence, but instead called disillusioned.

"My apertures are busy, besides it will be useful in the future to have human path attainment", [Everyone worth something in this world, has gained something from the legends of 'Ren Zu'. If I Don't do this now then when will I?]

"I'm telling you this for your own good. You'll rot your brain if you read that anymore"

"Rot? Aha, I remember that you will notice different things when you're in different states of being. Like how when I'm paranoid I'll look around for anything that might be dangerous. Hong Yu! get me a sword I'm going to kill and read at the same time"

Hong Yu sighs and shakes his head, sarcastically replying, "Would you like to refine some gu at the same time while you're at it?"

Tide frowned, "I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that"

{1 week later}

[One would think after having their limbs ripped off a couple times, they would give up, but noooo! This man wants to prove a point], Hong Yu sighs in defeat, [Well at least he's practicing his fighting at the same time]

Tide was reading the book aloud while fighting, "In the legend, before Ren Zu died, he gave birth to ten children. The eldest son Verdant Great Sun, second daughter Desolate Ancient Moon. Among the ten, there was one named Northern Dark Ice Soul. Ren Zu's legends whether real or false, alluded to many secrets in Gu Master's cultivation. Ren Zu's ten kids individually represented ten types of ultimate aptitudes.", At the end of that paragraph Tide felt something different, so he continued to focus on the last statement, 'Ren Zu's ten kids individually represented ten types of ultimate aptitudes', [Individually... something feels off about that. Maybe I should stop treating my mini apertures as a collective and instead as individuals], Tide felt he was getting closer and closer to understanding the problem, [While they all look like me and roughly have the same experience as me, they don't all act the exact same in a battle, similar of course, but there's a slight difference.]

Tide's mind suddenly felt lighter, like the fog was dissipating, allowing more light to come through,[Did I... just get enlightenment?], Tide called out to Hong Yu.

Hong Yu noticed the change in Tide's demeanor and commanded the beasts to stop attacking Tide, [Did he actually do it?]

After collecting his breath from fighting, Tide spoke: "My mini apertures will be treated as individuals from now on, they will be given names, and different gu worms that suit them specifically"

Hong Yu squinted his eyes, "You want to give all of them different names?"

"Hong Yu from now on we will study my mini apertures individually, and ascertain the small differences in them like: brave or careful, kind or cold, straight-forward or round-about, introverted or extroverted, violent or pacifist"

Hong Yu squinted his eyes, "Care to explain?"

"My mini apertures aren't all the same. I've now only recently noticed that they individually all have something unique and different about them, and we are going to find that out what that is"

{2 weeks later}

Tide was busy organizing his mini apertures, [The straight-forward, bold, and brave ones will be in the front pushing. The caring, supportive, careful ones will act as support. The calculative, manipulative, and leadership types will be finding better ways to expand the membrane faster] - Tide look towards Hong Yu, "I've been meaning to ask, aren't the mini apertures made using a water path gu called 'paradise water gu'. I don't recall Paradise Earth Immortal Venerable ever using water path?"

"He needed the flexibility of water path to make it work, I also helped him in making the recipe for the gu"

"You did!?... Then how come you know very little about it?"

"I only helped in giving him some insight into some questions. When I was alive I was a great grandmaster in water path. Sadly when I was a rank 6 gu immortal I was met with a serious problem. I was going to face a dream path tribulation! Can you believe it?... When I found out what was going to happen, I went and begged Paradise Earth to help me, but the best he could do was stop my aperture from ever getting tribulations again. Later, when I became great grandmaster in water path, he came to me with the idea of making a gu that will fundamentally change an aperture down to its structure. A gu that will give apertures their own sentience. I had originally thought the plan was for the aperture to raise its rank on its own without the need of the gu master, but as time went on I realized the plan was much larger than that. Just as every venerable..."

"Wait, wait wait, wait, I feel like you skipped over something very important, you said dream path tribulation?"

"The reason for my dream path tribulation was due to me refining dream path fish"

Tide's mouth was agape, "You practiced dream path!?"

"I dabbled, but sadly I didn't even get to master. If only I had some talent, then maybe I could have become Great Dream Immortal Venerable! but alas it was a fool's dream."

[Fool's dream indeed], "Does that mean you have dream path gu?"

Hong Yu frowned, "Before I give them to you, I need you to know this. Dream path is more dangerous than you can imagine.", he takes a breath, "Just be careful, alright?"