“First, describe in detail how you felt in your dream, everything about what happened in the dream—I need to figure out why you were dreaming in the first place.” Old King said calmly, with a slight smile. “Don’t be too nervous. As long as we can find the cause, I doubt there’s anything about you that could stump me.”

“All right.”

William Clark could only cheer inwardly at how impressive the expert was.

“I remember being extremely lucid, but I couldn’t move, nor could I change anything... I can’t recall all the images clearly anymore, but I still remember some of them. I’m sure it’s related to that space-time node—it let me see the scenery of another world...” William Clark explained bit by bit, in great detail, then looked at Old King expectantly.

Old King refuted each point: “First, after waking up, you can’t guarantee whether you were actually lucid in your dream. In other words, everything you felt in the dream could have been an illusion created by the dream itself! Including the feeling of lucidity, or the awareness that you were dreaming.”

“Secondly...”

“And finally, there’s a flaw in your last point. If you simply felt that the images in your dream were incredibly vivid and beautiful, but can’t recall them clearly, it’s very likely that you only thought they were real and beautiful while dreaming. The dream just gave you a false perception, and that’s not how things really were,” Old King said. “It’s very easy for a person to deceive their own perception.”

“No!” William Clark frowned. “I clearly remember certain scenes, and there’s no way those landscapes were created by my own mind! They were just too strange, too beautiful, far beyond my imagination!”

Old King smiled indifferently. In fact, ordinary people have a hard time understanding themselves, because they can’t concretize their own concepts—everything comes from perception.

And the perceptive ability, strength of consciousness, and ability to distinguish truth from falsehood in ordinary people are all extremely fragile.

But he didn’t argue further.

William Clark pondered for a moment, then continued, “At the very least, I remember two scenes. One was an endless forest of towering mountains. They were so steep and magnificent that I was utterly awestruck, like countless sharp spikes piercing the earth, fierce and majestic! In fact, each mountain was tens of thousands of feet high, and each had its own unique features. Every detail, from the ecological environment to the surrounding human culture, was crystal clear! If these were just landscapes I imagined, my brain must be fried.”

Old King’s expression changed, suddenly becoming serious. He said, “And the other one? Go on.”

“The other was a salt lake, a mirror of the sky,” William Clark said, then fell silent for a moment. “Because... before my parents passed away, they said our whole family would travel to Xihai this summer. I really wanted to see Chaka Salt Lake, but in the end... we never made it. So that lake left a deep impression on me. I remember that, from above, the lake looked like a duck, with a majestic castle built at the duck’s throat, a few households at the tail, and the rest of the area filled with salt mining pits...”

Old King pressed his lips together in silence, thinking quickly. After a long while, he finally made a direct conclusion: “You really did see the scenery of another world. Clearly, it was caused by the space-time node. But I didn’t expect that I was also a reason for it.”

“You were a reason?” William Clark was stunned.

“The Forbidden Mountains used to be the settlement of the Gaoren people of Yinda Prefecture. In ancient times, people called them demons, and they were constantly at war with mortals. I was born on the shores of Yan Lake, which truly is breathtaking—we called it the Realm of the Gods.” Old King finished calmly, then looked up at William Clark. “You saw the scenery of my world, and if I’m not mistaken, you saw those scenes from my perspective.”

“Your family actually had such a huge castle?” William Clark was utterly shocked. He could still vividly recall the image of Old King mending clothes in the dusk!

“...I really don’t know what to say to you. Is that what you should be focusing on right now?” Old King said helplessly. “If I remember correctly, that castle was the military base of the Wolf of the North family of the Kingdom of Jano by Yan Lake at the time, and my family was one of the few households at the tail. I was born into a salt worker’s family.”

“Oh.” William Clark nodded. “You’re saying those landscapes were from your perspective?”

“Yes!”

“How did you come to that conclusion?” William Clark found this even more absurd than the space-time node forcing him to watch a slideshow.

“First, that castle completely disappeared a thousand years ago with the fall of the Kingdom of Jano. Second, after the expansion of the Iron Horse Kingdom, Yan Lake was turned into a tourist attraction and stopped producing salt long ago. Third, many towns were later built around Yan Lake, and before I left, Yan Lake had already been designated as a spaceport. So there’s no way you could have seen a castle, a few households, and salt mines—you saw a scene from at least a thousand years ago.”

William Clark was dumbfounded.

Then Old King smiled calmly. “A thousand years ago, the Kingdom of Jano designated Yan Lake as a military forbidden zone. Anyone flying overhead would be seen as a provocation and attacked by the Wolf of the North.”

William Clark said blankly, “You... you’ve actually lived for over a thousand years!”

“……”

“Then how... how did you fly up there?”