Kneeling there in front of a crowd of tired huddled people, I was struck with a thought.

  I was only wearing pants.

  That my belt had made it this far was a miracle.

  So much of my clothing that I started the day with had been tossed away. It wasn’t like I was going to get another chance to go back and replace it. So if I had to live like this? About to be pants less? Abs on full display for the girlies? Going from Dad to Daddy? I would have to bear that in silence.

  As I stood up from the ground, minor fractures of rocks crackled around my touch. Several stones detached themselves from the ground and actually followed me up, as if the gravity of my personality was greater than that of the planet below me. And knowing what I had just done, it might just be that. Maybe the rock just wanted to be a part of the dream team.

  Where I had once seen a haggard crowd, now I saw a group of people who would follow me into hell. All of a sudden, those dreams that they were dreaming that had fueled my transformation had turned into something physical.

  My dream of having a weapon that I could actually use without it immediately break joined with my actual image of a bow staff. Wisps of qi turned into a solid staff and I poured my intent into it.

  The physical manifestation of their dreams had become the aura that I was now wielding as a tangible weapon. The long pole of forming Aura dropped gently into my left palm.

  “Alright.”

  I had trained extensively with the bow staff. The moon clan had lots of bow staff because of the bamboo farm way they did to support their cultural efforts to make paper to advance their unionist interests.

  This? This felt like the moon clan and Min conspiring together to make me a special spirit weapon. Or maybe the crowd just wanted me to have something badass to whack the doggies with. Either way, for the first time, the spare piece in front of me looked fearful. I have to the staff. Weighing it slightly, it felt just right for me. And I stepped into a fighting stance as I swept the staff around in an arc towards the rank and file of the spare abuse. They broke. Leaving a wide open area where I could dance through and even though they moved, they seem sluggish to me. Lee, on my flank, was still going through the motion slaying beast after beast, but she looked like she was just going through kata. She wasn’t doing anything different. There was something about this new realm that made the specific time in my life feel like a quick time event.

  **I** was going to take advantage of that.

  Fighting went from something that was potentially deadly and dangerous to a simple mop-up operation. Sure, my companions were still doing their work, but it felt like that was taking the backseat to me actually doing something. I kept moving forward as they corralled the beasts towards the walls. It was like we were increasing the range of our perimeter as we enclosed the horde of beasts. They didn’t want to face me, but then they turned and they didn’t want to face Moon Lee. Then they turned, and they didn’t want a face.

  I don’t know what got into the girl. But she was fighting as fast as Moon Lee was, even though she could probably at best be called a third round cultivator. And this is after having broken her cultivation and starting a new again.

  Then, I don’t say this lightly. She literally was on fire, using techniques that had drawn from the fire aura. Several of the cultivators inside of the group of refugees were tossing her lit flames she kept using as range attacks to hit BCs further on. She used their key, make more impressive fireballs and you know what? It’s exactly what the Mentor likes to see from his protégé.

  I would take that. The pack broke ranks slowly.

  Now when I say formation, what I mean is that they were shoulder to shoulder packed densely. It was like we were the Roman legion and we had just routed them. Clumps of them ran back towards the wall as I felt my newly enlarged sole core fill up once again. I knew it couldn’t advance again in this way, but I felt that as fast as I was spending the aura and turning it into key, the faster that I could earn myself a good rest. The more that they dreamed about me being their helper or the person who came to help them in their hour of need, the more I felt like I was just a couple of lessons away from becoming Batman without the money.

  Because Maxine had picked Superman as her superhero, I was proud to say that at least this meant that I picked the smartest superhero. She was hiding in plain sight. And I think that Xiran fighting alongside us, she was having the same thought she had before about me having a harem and I was ready to shut that down.

  The cultivators that were supporting us started flagging.

  I felt like this was a good time to mention that most people couldn’t feed off the dreams of others and that this was just a special oddity that had become a part of my path of cultivation. Dream or nightmare Aura wasn’t just a thing you found everywhere and the fact that I picked this path and gone down it well. It felt right. When I was working with clients before, I would always think about the things that I had to do to get them to accomplish not only the task in front of them, but to set them up to accomplish their dreams. And now, I could make so many people’s dreams come through even if it was just a dream of staying alive till tomorrow because the guy with the fro just destroyed a legion of spirit beasts. It took another couple minutes before the Open passageway through the outer wall was closed. By that time, both Kangs were now helping us corral the rest of the spirit beasts that were at least below second rank.

  This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  There was still a lot going on inside of the town, that, and I didn’t want to leave this group of refugees with no help.

  That was about the time that Maxine decided to land right by me and talk my ear off.

  “Did you just advance to the fifth realm in the middle of a battle? That’s so irresponsible.”

  “I might have done that, but honestly, it needed to be done and you should be happy for me. After all, this thing right here,” I said, holding up my dream bow staff, “was built off of the hopes and dreams of all the people here. I don’t know how long it’s going to last

  Regardless, what are you going to do with all these refugees?”

  I shrugged. I could take them back to the former red fang compound but it looks like there were hundreds more and we still have to go back into the town and clear out any remaining Spirit Beasts.

  She shuddered. “There’s so many of them.”

  This would not be a rescue effort. This would be more like a recovery and maybe we’d save a few people. Before we could even start recovering people and sorting out the dead and mourning them, you would have to deal with several of the higher ranked beer via had made their way in. I can still see the manager and fighting from this distance, and whatever he was fighting had to be stronger than me. Or at least it had to be stronger than I was.

  Not every single cultivator has to have a path that involves being stronger just for being stronger. Heck, the Kang family had formations experts that just made formations for the benefit of society.

  The next thing wasn’t immediately clear for us to do. Like sure, we had to go in and find any remaining spirit beasts. That was obvious. What was not obvious was how we would find them, but then I thought back to all the volunteers and all the worked to rehabilitate the people with me and Xueyie. “Hey! Do you think we can get these people to help us out?”

  Maxine scoffed. “Do you want to use these people to go house to house?”

  “What else are you proposing for us to do?” Xueyie said. “Some of them are going to want to help. And we can’t stay here and protect them, especially if there're thousands of people in there that need help.”

  Lee arrived. She sized up Maxine and gave her a nod. “I think that the Kang family can make a formation to keep these people safe. If we leave them here with the Kang patriarch. Then we can have our hands free to deal with the rest of that.”

  Everyone turned to look at the east side of Western Jewel, where the buildings began.

  “It’s inevitable that we’re going to have to go in there,” I said. “Is everybody ready to do that, though? Maxine, you look like you’re topped up on energy. Is that correct?”

  She nodded.

  “I’m ready to go,” Xueyie said. “I could do this all day. She looked like she had been through four marathons back to back and was still looking for the banana she deserved from the first one.”

  Her hair, drenched in sweat and blood, made me wonder which was worse. Because she had the classic black straight hair, she could hide a lot, to include her own blood.

  I just stared at her, slack jawed for a second. I instinctively reached out to her with my Nascent Soul and I could feel a strong core there. I received a death stare as if I had opened her underwear drawer and started rifling around for something I left there the night prior.

  “Sorry, I’m just checking,” I said.

  “Do you always fondle your harem around company?” Maxine said.

  “You can see that? I’m just trying to make sure that she’s not overdoing it.”

  “She’s not, and you should know. You told me once that you believed in women. Believe in her.” Maxine gave her a smile.

  Xiran bowed slightly. I was going to let this one go.

  However, Xiran was looking far worse for wear. Not only was her outfit singed all over as if she was missing some level of control of her flames, I could clearly see her undergarments and they were definitely from the newest collection of Resting Bitch Lace. It was an elastic purple sports bra for those keeping track as home.

  “At least this one has some class. Thanks for being a loyal customer.” Maxine smoothed down a smoky mess coming from Xirans basic cultivator costume. She probably would have pulled out a coupon if she had one on hand.

  I did not get the flashback to her preparing the girls for soccer practice or dance practice or anything like that; I swear. But it felt familiar.

  “Are you the newest addition to my ex-husbands harem?” she said.

  “I’m sorry, cultivator Pidge has a harem?”

  “He most certainly does not,” Lee said, coming in close to back me up. “He can barely satisfy one woman at a time.”

  It was utterly uncalled for.

  “That’s unfair,” I said. “I can make five women unsatisfied at the same time.”

  The groans were epic.

  “Maxine, can you help me out with her? I don’t want to ask you for this, but I feel you should know what we are dealing with RE, her backstory and...”

  “You don’t have to tell me., Joe. She’s doing the right thing. You’re all doing the right thing.”

  “This shitty day is just going to be one of many shitty days.”

  I looked at my newest recruit squarely in the eyes. I didn’t point, instead giving her a proper knife hand. It pointed right at her chest. She looked right directly at me. “If I tell you to not take part, are you actually going to listen to me or are you going to pull some dumb cultivator shit and stick around and get yourself killed?”

  Her silence spoke volumes.

  “Great! This is my ex-wife. She is now your mother. Stepmother?”

  “Stepmother, evil variety.” Maxine said.

  “Great. I don’t have the exact time to go over the entirety of our custody arrangement, but just understand that her word is law and you should probably think of it more than a natural law of the world, like gravity. Listen to me if you want to live, but if you don’t want to die, listen to her.”

  Xiran bowed to both of us

  “I will take your words under advisement cultivator Pidge. Teach me, master,” Xiran said to my ex-wife. “Please educate this poor lost cultivator.”

  Honestly, if this is how she was going to take it, I was happy to see her under Maxine’s tutelage.