Chapter 2264: Something insidious
Wu Kong had not expected that attempting to investigate the Dream realm would cause all of his clones to teleport alongside him. Such a wide scale teleportation from across the universe disrupted many of his plans, big and small.
Most of those losses were tolerable, but there were a couple of clones whose teleportation caused his mood to plummet. It was not easy to infiltrate a Sage race within their main realm, and now that his clones had been exposed, it would become even harder to infiltrate them again.
It was to the point where he entirely gave up trying to infiltrate them via clones, and had to start considering other means of fulfilling his objectives. This one single setback had disrupted countless years of efforts, with nothing to show for it.
While he usually maintained a jolly and cheerful mood, he found it hard to feel anything other than immense irritation these days. As if that was not enough, the Dream realm itself was not something he could so easily disregard.
If it was dangerous for mortals and immortals, it was even more so for Dao Lords. It was as if for all the countless years it had been sealed, the Dream realm had been nurturing a battalion of Sandmen capable of affecting Dao Lords. For a long time, they had nothing to do, but now that the realm had opened up once more, they became hyperactive, running around doing their best to catch Dao Lords.
Wu Kong had to dismiss all his clones because the more of his clones that were spread throughout the realm, the higher his chances of getting targeted. He roamed the realm, mostly undetected, searching for a way to exit when he stumbled onto something unexpected.
He stumbled onto a Dao level altar which seemed to be producing a tremendous amount of Dao essence - a liquid that only Dao Lords could produce. This kind of liquid was the most stable energy source in the universe for powering Dao level formations, tools, weapons and so on. Its applications were numerous, but the commonality was that it was useful for Dao Lords.
Yet Dao Essence was notoriously difficult to produce, to the point where many wars had been fought over the Dao Fields which could naturally produce them - the very same Dao Fields which had been offered to the Innkeeper in exchange for using the taverns to enter the Dream realm for a few years!
Without a Dao Field, it would take about a hundred Dao Lords working in unison to produce one drop of Dao Essence in one thousand years! The number of Dao Lords working together could not be increased or reduced, nor could the Dao Lords be changed during the process.
In comparison, a Dao Field would allow a single Dao Lord to produce one drop of essence every hundred years.
While this demonstrated how difficult it was to get Dao Essence, and how valuable Dao Fields were, it did not adequately show just how precious the essence itself was. The fact that, very often, Dao Essence itself served as currency between Dao Lords, however, demonstrated just how valuable it was.
So, to see an altar that was continuously producing Dao Essence was unbelievable. Had someone discovered another way of producing Dao Essence? He had to find out.
This was such a big discovery that Wu Kong momentarily forgot that he was in a bad mood. He didnโt even need to worry that this altar was a trap someone had laid out for him, because as an agent working for Nuwa, Wu Kong had long ago been taught the Masterless technique. Even other Dao Lords could not easily investigate him which was the very reason he could often steal from other Dao Lords without getting caught.
That was also why he was always so impressed by the Innkeeper discovering his actions. He had met only one other Dao Lord who could so easily see through the Masterless technique, and that was Eclipse. Of course, she could only see through it within her own realm where she had her Seat of Power.
Regardless, he was sure that he had not been secretly led to this altar. In fact, he had a feeling that the very reason he even found this altar to begin with was because the Dream Master could not sense his location, and so could not keep him from stumbling onto the altar.
Suppressing himself to the utmost, Wu Kong hid and sent a single clone to go and investigate.
Entering the altar was no easy task, especially if he wanted to do it undetected. In fact, Wu Kong spent several years within the Dream realm attempting to infiltrate the altar without success. Still, a few years was nothing to him, and he was undeterred.
Unexpectedly, however, one day he witnessed a living dream exit the altar, apparently on an urgent mission. To be safe, Wu Kong did not try to replace the living dream, but he did steal a few of his memories to learn what was within the altar.
This, too, proved to be much harder than he expected since it had a protective seal on his memories. Yet who was Wu Kong? The best thief in the universe. How could he be deterred so easily?
Eventually, he was able to steal a few memories without breaking the seal, and thatโs when Wu Kong was stunned. Within the altar were countless sleeping Dao Lords, effectively being used as batteries to continuously power the altar to produce the essence!
Of course, the living dream did not know thatโs what was happening. That was what Wu Kong surmised on his own based on the memories he saw. Still, even if he didnโt get the full picture, he was confident in his own investigative abilities. While he had still not figured out how exactly the altar was able to use sleeping Dao Lords to produce essence, at the moment it didnโt matter.
There was something insidious going on inside the Dream realm, and it had gone on undetected for over an Age.
Suddenly Wu Kong forgot about his own abysmal mood, and began to focus on this mystery. He needed to get to the bottom of it.
