Ten years had passed since the wedding day on which Elder Lu Fazhen prophesised the arrival of a destined child. Like fire, the prophecy had spread throughout the cultivation world. And within months, the marriage proposals had arrived one after another.

  Families of enormous wealth and influence offered dowries that could bankrupt kingdoms: millions of spirit stones, unique cultivation techniques, artifacts that had been held by their families for generations.

  The Heavenly Phoenix Sect offered a betrothal contract that allowed Tianming to use their legendary Fire-Dream fusion techniques. The Azure Mountain Clan offered to add Tianming’s unborn child to their main bloodline, allowing him to be granted immediate heir status. The Celestial Sword Pavilion had sent Tianming a proposal that included a role as a Grand Elder of the pavilion, access to their treasure vaults, and resources to help him break through to the level of Lucid Lawbearer.

  And all they wanted was one thing – his son.

  A son that still didn’t exist years later.

  A son that couldn’t exist.

  The cruel irony didn’t escape him.

  Yue Tianming had accomplished everything he had always dreamed of: a breakthrough, his clan elevated, marrying the woman he loved more than anything else in the world. However, the one thing that should have come easiest, naturally and logically, was forever out of reach.

  All because of a stupid mistake he had made at the age of 16.

  A mistake very similar to the one his own father had made.

  When he had stagnated at the Nightbound Adept realm, Tianming had decided to enter a Nightmare Realm that possessed what he thought he needed to break through to Dream Architect.

  After all, he cultivated the Dream Devouring Art, a cultivation method that promised rapid advancement by consuming nightmare essence. What better place to devour nightmare essence than a Nightmare Realm?

  Unfortunately for him, the entity hidden in the realm was far more powerful than he had ever expected, and instead of consuming it, he had been the one almost consumed. He had barely escaped with his life. And when the family healers examined him, they noticed a tiny speck of corruption in his meridians.

  The healers had been able to remove the signs of corruption and warned him to avoid such foolishness in the future. But the corruption had damaged Tianming more severely than anyone had realized. It had formed microscopic shards in Tianming’s lower dantian that disrupted the natural flow of his life force.

  It didn’t inhibit his cultivation, if anything, it made him more aware of dream qi fluctuations, which probably played a factor in his rapid growth years later. But the corruption didn’t provide these advantages for free. Yue Tianming now understood that it took away something from him that he never thought he wanted.

  It took away his ability to father children.

  After three years of failing to conceive, Tianming and Yunmei had visited a master healer that specialised in nightmare essence-related diseases, and it was then that Tianming understood it was his fault that his wife couldn’t have a child.

  “I’m sorry,” the healer had said. “The corruption is too deeply ingrained to be removed without risking your entire cultivation base. There are... ways that can be tried, but they would be experimental at best.”

  Yunmei had taken the news with her usual composure, holding Tianming’s hand tightly and telling him that their love was complete regardless of whether or not they had children. However, Tianming saw the fleeting glimpse of sadness in his wife’s eyes and saw her shoulders would slump just a bit when she thought he wasn’t paying attention to her.

  Without a doubt, Yunmei wanted children.

  She would never say it, and she would never blame him, but Tianming knew his wife well enough to realise the quiet sadness she carried.

  The situation was difficult enough without the prophecy making it worse.

  What should have been a private matter spread like wildfire throughout the cultivation world.

  Members of powerful clans visited the couple, offering increasingly elaborate “solutions” to their problems. Some suggested that the child didn’t have to be genetic and that maybe they could adopt a talented child that fit the prophecy’s description. Others weren’t so kind, suggesting that Yunmei take a secondary husband for breeding purposes and remain married to Tianming in name.

  Whatever ‘solutions’ were offered, they each felt like a stab in the heart.

  What Tianming found most strange was that it was around this time that Elder Lu Fazhen had disappeared.

  The prophet had been meditating at the Moonlight Monastery for his quarterly meditation retreat when he was seen walking into the forest one morning and was then never seen again. Search parties found no evidence of the old man: no body, no signs of a struggle, no idea of where he might have gone.

  It was as if the earth had swallowed him up whole.

  Some believed that the prophet had seen his own death coming and chose to leave in solitude. Others thought that he had been taken by those who feared his predictions. A few people thought that the elder had ascended to a higher plane of existence, his mission completed.

  Tianming suspected something darker.

  There were many that didn’t like the prophecy.

  Tianming and Yunmei had been lucky to survive the many assassination attempts that had tried to take their lives over the years.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  It wouldn’t surprise him if the poor prophet wasn’t as lucky.

  But the fate of the elder didn’t matter to Tianming.

  The old man’s prophecy had ruined his life enough as it was.

  With a sigh, Tianming stood from his desk, and made his way through the winding corridors of his compound to his private cultivation chamber.

  In the last four years, he had been developing something that was almost impossible to accomplish; a technique that could, theoretically, circumvent his physical shortcomings through purely dream-based cultivation.

  By conventional standards, the concept was insane.

  Tianming hoped to create a dream construct that was so perfect, so full of life essence and creative will that it could exceed the boundaries between imagination and reality. This was not going to be a temporary illusion, but rather something that could literally dream itself into existence.

  The technical challenges were numerous.

  Tianming needed to develop a life-dream synthesis technique that would allow him to manipulate reality manifestations. Also, he needed to develop sufficient creative visualization skills to enable him to manifest a dream construct that could exist independently of himself. And the final requirement was that he needed a partner that had sufficiently developed dream cultivation skills to provide a stable anchor for the manifestation of the dream construct.

  Fortunately, Yunmei had been enthusiastic about helping Tianming however she could.

  Not only did she throw herself into the project, but she also progressed her own cultivation to Nightbound Adept to better serve as a vessel that would give birth to their creation.

  And today was that day.

  The day their son would come into existence.

  When Tianming entered the chamber, he found his wife already there waiting for him.

  The cultivation chamber had been modified extensively for their purposes.

  The walls were covered with dream silk tapestries inscribed with visualization aids and resonance patterns. Pools of liquid moonstone provided ambient dream qi, while carefully arranged spirit crystals created harmonic frequencies that enhanced lucid states.

  At the room's center sat a dual cultivation platform: two meditation cushions positioned so the practitioners could maintain physical contact while their consciousness expanded into shared dream space.

  “The technique is ready,” Tianming said, getting straight to the point.

  Yunmei nodded and smiled softly but firmly.

  “May the Heavens bless us.”

  The two of them took their positions on the platform, hands clasped, eyes closed.

  The technique was called the Genesis Dream.

  It was Tianming’s own creation, resulting from years of theoretical study and desperate hopes.

  The principle of the technique was elegant in concept, but difficult to execute in practice.

  Tianming would create a child in his dreams, channeling all of his love, will, and creative energy into the task of creating a soul from pure imagination. Yunmei would serve as the physical anchor and her dream qi would help connect the two of their imaginations so that the dream child could become a reality.

  As their consciousnesses merged into the shared dream space, Tianming began the most delicate work of his life.

  First, he focused on the fundamental concept of who their child should be.

  A soul born from their love for each other.

  A kind, gentle, obedient son.

  Next, he created the physical appearance.

  He focused on characteristics that would honor both bloodlines.

  Dark hair, brown eyes, a true noble bearing.

  As Tianming continued to work, Yunmei worked on her side of the technique.

  She visualized the pregnancy, childbirth, and the happiness of holding their child in their arms.

  Over the next nine hours, they worked together to develop something that didn’t exist before.

  Slowly but surely, their collective energy was shaped into the figure of a living, breathing being.

  A small soul emerged.

  Tianming took a deep breath.

  They had made it far further than he had ever expected.

  There was one final step – the transfer.

  Yunmei's physical body was the focal point for the dream child's manifestation.

  Her cultivation would absorb the dream construct, and her body would become the vehicle through which their imagination could manifest into reality.

  When they directed the soul into her belly, nothing seemed to happen at first.

  The dream child was stuck between the state of existing and non-existence.

  Just when Tianming was worrying what went wrong, he sensed a shift in the deeper fabric of reality.

  Yunmei gasped as she reached down to her stomach.

  A look of awe appeared on both of their faces as they realized the impossible truth.

  The dream child was emerging inside her.

  But there was a problem.

  The transformation from a dream to reality was occurring much faster than Tianming had anticipated, and they had lost control of the process. Yunmei's belly was rapidly expanding, and her body was undergoing a drastic change in size as her pregnancy was compressing into minutes.

  "I…I can feel him," Yunmei whispered, tears flowing down her face. "He's alive. He's really alive."

  Tianming ignored her.

  Not because he wanted to.

  It was because he didn’t have time to talk.

  If he didn’t do something right now, his wife could possibly explode.

  He couldn’t let that happen.

  Tianming quickly placed a hand on her belly and began to channel his own cultivation into her.

  Her body began to glow with a golden light as the growth of the belly slowed down.

  When it finally reached the size of what one would expect a full-term pregnancy to be, it was time for the delivery. Because of Yunmei's superior cultivation level, the delivery was fast and pain-free.

  With one push, the baby slid out into his arms.

  They had done it.

  They had actually done it.

  But Tianming didn’t have time to celebrate, a searing pain ran throughout his meridian system.

  This was the punishment for playing god.

  Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth as his dream qi turned chaotic.

  The technique had been successful, but the damage to his cultivation base would likely take decades to recover from.

  If it even was recoverable, but Tianming didn't care.

  As he looked down at his son, who was taking his first breath, every sensation of pain disappeared.

  The baby was perfect, and he couldn't imagine how he could have created such a beautiful and perfect child.

  The smile on his face faltered when he saw the color of his son’s eyes.

  Sapphire blue…

  How was that possible?

  Tianming didn’t want his son’s fate to be decided by some prophecy.

  So, in an attempt to change destiny, he had envisioned his son as having brown eyes.

  It was meant to be the same brown that was characteristic of both families' bloodlines.

  But somehow it wasn’t.

  As if aware of his parents' gaze, the baby’s eyes found them and his features softened into a smile. It didn’t seem to be the random expression of a newborn, it almost seemed like the child was acknowledging them.

  "My love," Yunmei whispered, reaching for Tianming with concern as she saw the blood on his lips. "You’re hurt."

  "I’m fine," he said quietly, and he meant it.

  He didn’t care if his cultivation crumbled or if his spiritual foundation collapsed.

  Nothing in the world mattered more than the baby in his arms.

  Tianming saw an infinity of possibilities in the sapphire depths of their child's eyes.

  This was their son, born of love and determination, but was unfortunate enough to be destined for unimaginable greatness.

  It was at that moment, he realised there was no use fighting fate.

  If his son was destined to fight to the death with some unimaginable foe, then Tianming would make sure it was his son that made it out alive.

  "Tian," he whispered, the name came to him from within. "His name is Tian."

  Heaven. Sky. The limitless expanse of dreams and possibilities. Named after Tianming himself.

  As another wave of backlash shook his body, he held his son close and smiled through the pain.

  The cost didn’t matter.

  And the consequences didn’t matter.

  They had achieved the impossible.

  Their miracle had finally found its way home.

  Next chapter will contain timeskips that go through his childhood until he reaches adolescence.

  Nature VS Nurture will come into play for the development of the child's personality.

  And there will be more hints whether Tian is Ke Yin or Wu Kangming!

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