The children were being kept on mats in a hut which had a single room in it. There were eight children in total, all of whom looked like they were sound asleep, with their parents seated near them.
"Ah, people from the Rising Phoenix sect are here," the village chief said, introducing them.
Tang Ze and Chen Yu looked at each other, and a tacit understanding was expressed between the two of them.
"Alright," Chen Yu said. "We're going to ask that anyone who is not a patient step out."
"Lords?" the village chief asked.
"The methods we use for healing are top-secret," Chen Yu said. "I'm afraid that we need secrecy while utilizing them."
'Basically I don't need any more people seeing me dressed up as a woman than necessary,' - Tang Ze thought.
The villagers didn't seem to wholly agree with this, as some of the parents still wanted to remain by the side of their children, but before the authority of the only people who had been willing and seemingly capable to help them, how could they protest?
Once they were all gone, Chen Yu went to guard the door while Tang Ze changed into his 'work outfit.'
The children really did look like they were sleeping peacefully, though as Tang Ze shook each of them, he found that no matter how hard he did so, they wouldn't wake up.
Quite odd indeed.
And he soon encountered a problem.
"What's taking so long?" Chen Yu asked.
"It's not working!"
"What?"
"My healing magic isn't working!"
"Why - are you like, dressed wrong?"
"No… there's just something… off about them that might magic can't fix, wait," Tang Ze said, using another ability that this character had, which was to diagnose diseases. "They're all… trapped in something called a dream realm? That's what's wrong with them, but I have no way to fix it." Tang Ze could not sense how to 'cure' this ailment, only what it was called. Meaning the cure was beyond this character's abilities for whatever reason.
"What can't your powers fix?" Chen Yu muttered. "If you could heal our digestive tracks after eating that kind of food I'd thought that you were able to do anything…" He then trailed off as something that Tang Ze had said rang a bell in his mind. "A dream realm, did you say?"
"Yes, what are those?"
"I don't know too much about them," Chen Yu said. "There are dream path cultivators, but they are very rare. Basically, from what I understand, dreams occur in a separate reality from ours, and dream path cultivators can access this world. Sometimes, they can get stuck in them, or people can get stuck in someone else's dream. That might be what happened to them."
"So how do we fix this?"
"We can't," Chen Yu said plainly. "The only one who could break through a dream realm like that would be a dream path cultivator."
"Is there anyone in the sect division?"
"No, they're very rare. It's pretty odd for all these kids to fall into a dream realm like this though," Chen Yu said, scratching his chin. "What's special about this place that there would be a dream realm here?"
Dream realms, like secret realms, could also occur naturally, though there was little information on them. As for why only the children had been afflicted, Chen Yu shrugged and said that he figured that kids were more susceptible to them, though in truth he wasn't sure either.
Tang Ze changed back, and they invited the villagers back in, who had ashen expressions on realizing that the two of them had failed.
Chen Yu and Tang Ze left the place and stood near a tree beside the village, discussing what to do next.
As far as Chen Yu understood things, people who were caught in a dream realm, if they couldn't break out of them, would remain in them and their bodies in the real world would eventually pass away as they could not be fed.
"The difficulty for this mission is way beyond our paygrade," Tang Ze muttered.
Chen Yu nodded. "The sect probably didn't do a thorough search of how difficult this mission would be, because it was a charity case." The sect likely just took the villager's word for what had happened and hadn't seen the point in sending someone to investigate what the request was.
As far as Chen Yu understood things, it would take a Golden Core specialist in the Dream path to fix something like this at minimum. Neither of which were at their sect division. Xian Yue's attainment when it came to the Dream path was rather low, just barely enough to contact Tang Ze when he had been dreaming in the past. It would likely not be enough to tackle this problem which needed a dedicated specialist, moreover, such a thing would be far more taxing upon Xian Yue's soul than simply helping out Tang Ze while she was in a ring or reaching out to him. This was not simply trying to talk to someone who was dreaming, this was forcing oneself into someone else's dream and unravelling it - the effort involved to achieve the two simply could not be compared. Her soul could persist for a very long time, but the more it strained itself, the more of it would be used up. If her body was still around it would be a different matter entirely as she could rest and replenish any strain upon her soul it would cause, but that was no longer the case.
Tang Ze did not want her risking anything more for him, not when she had already helped him out immensely with the Grimoire of Heaven and he had yet to fix her dress for her. It was also questionable as to whether she would even lend her aid or not even if they asked; Tang Ze felt that the odds of that happening were exceedingly slim. To someone like her, the woes of a few village children would not be worth significantly damaging her remaining lifespan for.
"We could try meditating and seeing if we can enter the dream realm ourselves," Chen Yu said. "But then we risk being lost in the same dream realm. And that's even if we can do it - I've never tried something like that before."
Given that the request was far above their paygrade, if Chen Yu and Tang Ze returned to the sect and informed them of this, they would not be penalized for failing to complete the mission.
But that was not what they were worried about.
"Do you think they'll actually be able to get someone to help those kids?" Tang Ze asked.
Chen Yu shook his head. The odds of a village like this enticing a specialized Golden Core cultivator to come help them were practically nonexistent. Even if they managed to earn the sympathies of people who could help, such people were usually quite busy, and by the time they came around, several of the children would've passed away already if not all of them.
Just last night the two of them had been enjoying themselves at Chen Yu's house, and here those children were slowly drifting towards death.
And their parents - how horrible they must've felt while seeing this and being unable to do anything about it.
Truly, life wasn't fair. It was a saying often repeated in their cultivation lessons, but to see the stark difference in human fates saddened both of them.
The thing was that neither Chen Yu nor Tang Ze had anything that could help them with this.
"Any costumes you have that can get us out of this one…?" Chen Yu asked.
Tang Ze thought about it. Dream realms did not exist as a concept in most stories, but the idea of someone entering a dream… there was someone like that; said character wasn't a hero, but rather a villain which is why it had not come to his mind immediately.
But maybe he could use their powerset in this situation anyway?
"That look on your face - do you happen to have something?" Chen Yu asked.
"I do… I just don't know how it'll work," Tang Ze said. First of all, getting the costume done itself was going to be a huge challenge. There was a good reason why he didn't have one made already. Second of all, he didn't even know if the powerset would translate to this situation.
But, what was the alternative? Watching the kids die?
He couldn't live with himself knowing that there might've been something that he could do and didn't.
He started getting dressed, throwing the clothes atop what he was already wearing.
Chen Yu sighed. "Really… the wizard again…?"
"I'll be right back," Tang Ze said.
He teleported back to the sect, and then took off the wizard costume so that he wouldn't be jumped by some people for dressing up like that.
He first went to go see Yin Tiang to ask if he had more of the body paint, which didn't necessarily need to be waterproof, and Yin Tiang did. Tang Ze had asked for some recently while dressing up as Lieutenant Terra Firma, and there was still some leftover.
Next, he went to the sect stables to rent a horse. "I need a horse - oh, it needs to be a black one, preferably one that's completely black."
Doing this required him to spend some sect merit points, but he was determined to do whatever he could for those kids, even if he ended up taking a loss by taking this assignment.
Finally, he rented out a suit of armor from the armory, once again costing him some sect merit points. However, this was just a normal suit of armor, though he had asked for one that was painted either black or a dark purple, and it didn't cost as much to rent as one that was either endowed with magical properties or was made of a special kind of alloy.
The armorer didn't have a suit of armor in the required color, but was willing to give a certain suit a temporary paint job for a few extra merit points. Tang Ze agreed and thanked the man.
Armed with all of this, Tang Ze put on his wizard costume again and went back to the village.
"Alright, I have everything I need," Tang Ze said to a bewildered Chen Yu.
The horse was not a celestial beast, but did have higher intelligence than a normal horse would on Earth. As such, it was easier for Tang Ze to get it to cooperate as he used some of the body paint to make a purple flamed on either of its flanks.
The horse whinnied - the paint probably tickled, but it did not run away or misbehave, thankfully.
Next, Tang Ze put on the armor. It was missing some elements that the costume should have had, but it would do for now. Then, he put on a black cape behind him.
It was the first time that he was using a living animal in one of his costumes. He would normally use props, but he didn't have a prop horse handy, and he figured the real one would be closer to the actual character, and so would make his costume more powerful.
A more powerful costume, after all, meant that he might have a higher chance of saving those children.
"So, who is this exactly?" Chen Yu asked once Tang Ze was done.
"A character called Knightmare Night," Tang Ze said. He was a villain who appeared in a certain superhero show, and his powers mainly involved manipulating dreams. As a character, he only existed within nightmares and could trap other people within nightmares. In the episode that Tang Ze had seen of him, he had imprisoned an entire city in a nightmare realm and the heroes had to come to stop him. The imprisoned people in the city were deep asleep and trapped within nightmares, unable to wake up - much like the children here actually.
This costume was only about thirty percent accurate. That was to be expected, despite his best efforts and spending some sect merit points, the costume still didn't come very close. The issue was that the character in question had a very extravagant design which was hard to capture in real life, much like with Space Emperor Cygrixous. It looked nice and very cool as a drawing in a cartoon series, but that just looked odd when attempts were made to bring it to real life.
For one, Tang Ze did not have the character's sword - it was a rather peculiarly designed sword whose design he really didn't remember after all this time, which is why he hadn't bothered to try to replicate it. He also didn't have the characteristic gauntlets, and was unable to make the runes on the armor that the character had in this short span of time.
Hopefully though, this would be enough.
"Alright Mr. Horse, please don't throw me off," Tang Ze said as he got atop the horse. The horse also wasn't particularly accurate to Knightmare Night's steed, it did not have the flames coming out of its nostrils or eyes that were as pitch-black as the darkest night itself, but there was no way he could try to replicate those kinds of things.
The sect had a number of black horses, and Tang Ze had chosen this one because the prefect in charge of the stables said that it was quite docile.
Tang Ze had never ridden a horse before, and had made no attempt to learn during his time in this world. As it was, he hadn't thought that he would ever need to rely upon it as a skill, but here he was.
As he got atop the horse, it did not try to throw him off, thankfully, though as Tang Ze looked around, he noticed something different.
"What is that?"