Oceans and Sand

Xia Yan dreams of the ocean. When Ng Yan was younger and his family was still alive and relatively wealthy, he had been a huge fan of scuba diving. Open water, cave diving, muck diving, he had many qualifications. Because of this love, dreaming of the ocean was one of the only things he could forcibly construct in his mind.

Despite his previous boastings, his control over dreams wasn't actually god-like. He couldn't construct a dream out of thin air, but he could to an extent manipulate the materials already provided by his mind. He could change a dream the same way he could switch channels but not know the what the next show would be. He could rewind something in his dream to alter it for the better but ultimately he couldn't fully predict the end conclusion.

Ng Yan has never minded it though, to him, dreaming was an adventure, a challenge and a reward all at once. Compared to other people who couldn't even force themselves to wake up in he middle of a nightmare, he felt he really was a master.

Still, forcefully constructing a dream from scratch had been something Ng Yan had recently learnt to do before he transmigrated. His depression had been worse than usual that year and his sleeping patterns become longer and his need to escape his life greater. Nothing had color, everything felt burdensome and tiring, to the point that even his dreams, one of the few things that can make truly happy, was starting to dull in his heart. It was at that point of despairingly going through the motions that he began to have dreamless dreams.

For someone who relied so heavily on dreaming for strength, it was almost torture to be deprived so cruelly of it like this. Ng Yan would wearily close his eyes and immediately open them to the next day, making him feel ill-rested and unhappy. Still despite everything Ng Yan was determined. Over time he'd forced himself to cling to the darkness of his mind, let his brain process the time slower so at the very least Ng Yan could spend longer inside his mind even with nothing to stimulate him.

By managing to cling to his endless black dream, Ng Yan has found that after a while he could change the color to some extent. Like the sky, the inky black would slowly shift to a dark blue. This discovery slowly evolved and became a new thing to look forward to. Once he'd gotten back his drive the dreams eventually came back to.

The point was- when Xia Yan drifted back to sleep, he had dreamt dreamlessly and decided to see if he still could manipulate it to some extent or if the body's influence was stronger than the soul.

What was produced made Xia Yan rather shocked.

The ocean was his strongest and stable construction but it had never been as vivid as what was laid before him. Floating above the swirling waves Xia Yan can smell the summer breeze, hear every crash of waves, even the sticky feeling of salt sticking to his face could be felt. For a moment Xia Yan wondered if his spirit had actually flew out of his body to see the ocean.

Lowering himself, he twists himself so he can reach down a touch the water. Warm and undeniably wet, with the pressure of the current powering it's movements. He brings his hand up and unhesitatingly gives it a lick before making a faintly disgusted face. Definitely sea water. He's accidentally swallowed enough in his childhood to make his own little ocean, how could he forget the taste?

Xia Yan looks around at the sea again with doubt in his heart. Was this really an ocean?

He looks up at the sky and realizes that this couldn't possibly be real.

There was no sun.

As soon as he thought about this, his mind seemed to tense and suddenly a burning light enters his vision as a dazzling bright sun appears in his line of sight. Looking quickly away, Xia Yan could feel his heartbeat quickening. What was going on?

Searching through his memories, Xia Yan found that, unlike Ng Yan who constantly had fantastical dreams and stories running through his head, Xia Yan was the type of child who didn't really dream and disliked going to sleep. What he did have, that Ng Yan didn't, was a larger than average and solid cultivation base. It was crippled now but according to the plot it was not completely unrecoverable.

He frowns at his dream ocean. Could this be a physical representation of his cultivation base or something? He doesn't feel any sort of power looking at the water other than vague awe at how amazingly real it looks.

Feeling a little anxious, Jia Yan clenches and unclenches his hands, wishing he had something to squeeze and soothe him. The next time he clenches his fists, he squeaks in surprise as his hands wrap around something small and soft. Bringing them up, he reveals two little pillows the size of his palm, exactly how he had wanted, right down to the pale purple colouring of the fabric. Silently, he pushes the two small items together and fuses them into a large normal sized pillow.

"This…" He mutters to himself dazedly. Cultivating requires an awareness of your internal spiritual force or qi, could this be the reason why he's able to control his dreams this easily? But, no, he's never heard of that sort of extra perk in any cultivation novel, and if there is it is certainly not in this novel. The closest thing Xia Yan recalls about anything to do with dream manipulation was the existence of dream demons.

Hugging the pillow tightly, Xia Yan walks around aimlessly, the crashing waves below seemingly mirroring the agitation in his heart.

Eventually, Xia Yan realises that overtime, he finds himself slowly feeling exhausted. His breathing became laboured and it feels like his energy is being slowly sapped away. Instinctively he knows that it would be very bad for him once that energy is all gone and decides to banish the shining sun in the sky. Once the light disappeared, Xia Yan felt himself breathe a little easier but not by much. He forces the pillow in his arms to leave as well.

With a sigh he helplessly looks down at the sea. So it turns out he is using energy to create the things in his dreams. Xia Yan scoffs at his own feeling of self-importance, of course it wasn't because he was a good dreamer in his past life. He had never controlled a dream so easily back then why should that skill suddenly improve in the next life? This wasn't a story with a convenient golden finger, obviously there will be costs. Hopefully this discovery didn't cost him to lose what little cultivation he had left.

With this thought in mind he quickly tries to disperse the sea into nothingness. Such a large body of water, the amount of power being eaten up by it must not be small.

However, to his surprise, Xia Yan found he could not do it. No, more like he would not do it. Every time he tried it was like tugging at a particularly deep-rooted weed, with the roots located in his own body. When he willed the water to become smaller, it felt like something inside him was being squeezed. When he pulled, he also felt like he was being pulled. The sensation was very uncomfortable to say the least.

Giving up, Xia Yan wonders at the significance of the ocean. It was the only thing present in the dream originally, and it was also one of the few things he could make in his previous life. Whatever the connection was, Xia Yan felt that there was something more to the ocean, something hidden and important.

So with a deep breath, Xia Yan gave a running start and dived head first into the water.

Warmth enveloped him first. Opening his eyes, he ignores the initial sting of salt and marvels at the pure, unending blue spread before him. Xia Yan itches to try imagine some marine life but the fear at how much energy that may cost stops him. Slowly, as he swims deeper, the temperature as expected drops and the surrounding blue grows darker to the point of blackness.

Wary at first, especially when the depth was so great Xia Yan could no longer distinguish up from down, he still continued to swim. He wasn't sure why. But more than his fear, there was something else, something indistinct, urging him gently deeper. The immersion of darkness seemed to slowly absorb into his skin, silence and nothingness soaking into him until it felt like he too, was merely a drop in this vast ocean.

Any doubt and anxiety, any awe and fascination faded from his mind, leaving it as blank and unfathomably empty as his surroundings. Xia Yan felt empty, he felt full, a calm lazy contentment flowed through his veins that warmed him even as his skin grew numb with cold.

Finally, he seemed to reach the bottom. Past the darkness was faintly glowing golden sand. Xia Yan stares at the unearthly scene, mind serene and detached. With a wave of his hand he scatters the sand, letting it scatter into the water around him like stars.

Closing his eyes he can still feel the presence of these shining grains of sand as they hover around him. The strange soothing warmth circulating through his body from before felt even more apparent, as if resonating with the sand. Focusing on the warmth, he feels it sluggishly move around him. Almost instinctively Xia Yan mentally prods at it, encouraging it to spread everywhere, from the space between his eyes to the tips of his toes.

The warmth was slow, frustratingly so really, but over time Xia Yan could feel it gain a minuscule amount speed. At the same time, he can feel the strange sand surrounding him move a little closer, as if attracted to the way the circulating warmth inside him moved faster. When he tried to reach for the grains physically, it was like separating oil from water with his bare hands. Apparently only by encouraging the strange feeling to circulate inside him could Xia Yan attract the grains.

Fuelled with some sort of goal in mind, Xia Yan let his mind clear once again, concentrating on circulating the molten warmth in his body while holding onto his awareness of the golden sand.

It was more difficult than he had thought it to be. The internal forces in his body were not only as slow as half-dead snails, they were just as uncooperative and insensitive. Not only was increasing the speed difficult, it was hard to maintain as well. Even worse, Xia Yan realised the grains of sand around him were not simple things either. The closest they got, the more fickle they became. If you focus too much on the grains they will retreat, if you accidentally ignore them they will retreat, if you move too suddenly, retreat.

Several times Xia Yan had to clear his mind as frustration slowly built up after each failure. It was like than trying to solve an incredibly complex riddle while at the same time playing a racing game in one hand and candy crush in the other. Too! F*cking! Hard!

Finally, after pulling out a string of patience and motivation that Xia Yan didn't know he still had, he finally felt a few grains of the star like sand stick to his skin. Unable to even breathe lest he frightens them off, he focuses even more intently on maintaining his inner circulation. If he wasn't currently submerged in cold, dark waters Xia Yan was sure he would be sweating heavily right now.

Unlike their appearance the small species of sand felt ice cold on his skin. The way they kept pressing against his body, clumsily forcing its way through, was almost blindingly painful. Squeezing his eyes, Xia Yan screamed out into the watery abyss but steadfastly kept his focus strong. The very moment when the first grain went in, Xia Yan finally felt his tense muscles ease just a little at the strangely pleasant feeling.

The grains were ice cold and the feeling moving inside him was warm almost to the point of uncomfortable. Once one grain was absorbed it seemed to immediately head to the core of his body as if magnetized. Like ice cubes sliding down a parched throat, it left a welcome, refreshing but ultimately teasing sensation inside him.

Even more determined, Xia Yan forces himself to concentrate so hard he felt his brain being squeezed. From one grain to three to nine... like a snowball rolling down a hill the momentum began to pick up. Each grain seemed to invigorate and nourish the liquid energy inside his body, circulating it became easier and easier and soon Xia Yan could regulate the speed like he could regulate his breathing.

It becomes both easier and harder over time. As more glowing grains of sand are absorbed into his body, the more fickle and reluctant the rest become. Only with faster circulation and the right amount of concentration could coax them closer.

He doesn't know how long it took. The process of time was nonexistent in dreams and the endless unchanging darkness hardly helped much either. However when Xia Yan finally absorbed all the shining grains, it was like all his previous exhaustion and stress washed away by the sudden burst of hot energy inside him. It was like a star exploding inside him, everywhere was overheated as it seemed to simmer with power to the point it was almost painful.

It was this pain that pushed him to open his eyes with a strangled gasp. Like breaking out of the water, Xia Yan greedily sucked in the fresh air that only reality could provide. Each exhale cooling down his body until he finally felt somewhat normal again.

Without any care to keep quiet, his sudden change in breathing patterns had immediately alerted the people outside his room. Within moments of calming himself down, Xia Yan had almost fainted in fright as the doors to his room suddenly burst open with a group of people rushing in.

"Xiao Yan!" A stunningly drop dead gorgeous older women with slanted phoenix eyes and a chest that defied physics was the first person to rush over to his side. Her eyes were full of happy tears, making her look even more attractive. "Oh Xiao Yan you're finally awake!"

"Ma," Xia Yan manages to croak out.

If Ng Yan had come into this world without the original Xia Yan's memories there was no power on earth that could have kept him so calm. Even now, it is still bewildering to realize such a young bombshell was actually a mother of five with a sixth coming along in the near future. Not only that, from both his memories and his knowledge of the story, his mother Xia An is not only very motherly but she has a backstory as being originally from a prominent Tian assassin family as well.

How Tian An was seduced into becoming Xia An was a very interesting story. Unfortunately this was not the time.

"Xiao Yan? How are you?!"

"Xiao Yan do you remember what happened?"

"You're body?! Is it sore?! Do you want a massage?!"

"Xiao Yan, can you tell us what happened last night?"

"Someone get Xiao Yan some water!"

"Food too, food too! Something light and easy on the stomach!"

Xia Yan weakly smiles at everyone as they all huddle around his bed while feeling like an injured duckling surrounded by clucking chickens. However his smile soon turns strained as he realizes the only one who wasn't shouting at him, but was constantly asking him about his memory was none other than his second eldest brother.

Xia Zhijun.

Xia Yan had to praise him for his acting. If he didn't know what he knew now, Xia Yan would've really bought his schtick. His concern and worry truly looked genuine. Whether these feelings were actually for his brother's well-being or his own selfish need to confirm that he had gotten away with what he's done is a whole other story.

Luckily, his smile had naturally begun to wane, already tired just from doing this much. No one noticed the flash of distrust and fear in his eyes when he looked at Xia Zhijun.

Well that's what Xia Yan thought at least.

He wasn't an actor in his past life and he was a temporarily crippled child in this one. Any loving family focusing on their sick baby would have noticed this, much less a high rank cultivation family as skilled and esteemed as the Xias. Only Xia Zhijun, who barely considered Xia Yan as a brother, didn't notice, too wrapped up with his own schemes.

However nobody said a word about this small seed of suspicion that grew inside them. Accusing Xia Zhijun without evidence was too rash. The crime was too heinous, and the Xia family's situation was already quite shaky.

Most sect leaders generally produced one child or, two or three children at most. Yet the influential Xia family in charge of one of the biggest sects had an unprecedented number of five. Even more terrifying, the children were all talented in their own ways.

The oldest son Xia Lin is a once in a century prodigy in sword art cultivation. The second child and oldest daughter Xia Ling was born with terrifying spiritual strength who enjoys wielding a giant axe and was regarded as the Ogre Princess. Xia Jingyi, the fourth child and second daughter, is considered one of the most beautiful girls across the land despite being only ten and so far has revealed a great talent in pill-refining. Even Xia Yan had yielded great results when they measured his foundations and potential for Qi and Spiritual cultivation a month ago.

Only Xia Zhijun was the exception. While he showed above average results in everything, and it was enough to make any other sect master proud, compared to the rest of the monsters in the Xia Family... well, Xia Yan could feel some pity toward the man in this respect. However that was all that he can afford to give him.

If that was all it was, then suppressing Xia Zhijun, while messy and cause some mud to be smeared onto the morality of the upstanding the Xia family, would still be relatively easy. This was a world where the powerful can live freely until someone even stronger beats them down. The problem though was while the Xia children were all powerful, their personalities were unsuitable for leading a sect.

Xia Lin has completed devoted himself to his cultivation and sword arts, and has a poor grasp of social skills to the point he becomes almost reclusive despite his young age. Xia Ling is the opposite. She is very sociable, too much so. Brash and unrestrained, in modern terms she could be described as a wild party girl that enjoys heavy drinking and wild sex every night. Considering this was still set in world based off ancient China, there was many older masters that disapproved of her as she refused to grow out of this phase.

Xia Jingyi for now held a mild and polite temperament however her body has slowly been showing some concerning signs of decline which Xia Yan knows will only get worse over time making her completely ineligible to be the sect head as well.

This left Xia Zhijun who wasn't skilled but was intelligent with a crafty but restrained personality and the too young Xia Yan. While there was still many protesters and fans of the other Xia family members that were against him being the heir, over the years his influence became more undeniable as he revealed strong management skills and a sly tongue that could outmaneuver the politicians of the royal courts. Before his true face as a white-eyes wolf was revealed he had been considered a widely popular man, gentle, modest and quick-witted.

Ironically if Xia Zhijun had been more patient, he would probably have eventually got his wish to be respected and above his siblings in the end.

However at this moment, when everyone was still quite young, their potentials spoke more than their personalities, the turmoil in regards to picking the next sect leader was very real. The older generations wanted the strong, silent and steady eldest, the less conservative ones enjoyed the idea of the passionate and equally strong second eldest leading, the scholars preferred a master with more intelligence and vision like the third and fourth children and the people on the fence were waiting to see Xia Yan slowly reveal his own colors in time. There were also the greedy ones who had chosen based on their own desires and secrets.

An accusation as bad as this against one of the children could be seen in so many conspiratorial ways it would make one dizzy trying to figure it out. If there wasn't proof to back them up, they might as well just hang themselves right there and then really, family or not.

Xia Yan was aware of this. That's why, despite being the sole witness he couldn't just come up and say Xia Zhijun was the perpetrator. Since the original body did not actually see him either, even using forbidden techniques to look into his memory wouldn't have worked.

While very unwilling to let sleeping dogs lie, he was the most aware of his own powerlessness. Xia Yan didn't want to live a life pursuing revenge, it was too exhausting. But who says revenge must be pursued? If he could live well and happy and strong isn't that its own form of revenge too?

Well, first he must become strong in order to be healthy and happy. Thus was the rules of a cultivation novel after all. Of course his situation was a little far from ideal it could've been a lot worse. He has access and prestige and most importantly of all, he has time.

Content and exhausted once again just from this short period staying in the waking world, he slips back into unconsciousness before the food and water even arrives, much to the dismay of almost everyone present.

He dreams once again of a deep blue ocean with golden sand.