But although Kelly was gloating, she was also worried that her reckless friend in front of her might get into trouble because of this.

"In the next few days, Ethan Green might come looking to cause you trouble..."

William Carter patted his chest confidently. "Don't worry, even if that idiot gathers a whole team, I'll still beat them all down."

"That's not what I'm worried about! I'm saying you need to be more careful in what you do, keep a lower profile, and don't offend Ethan Green too much. After all, he's from the Lin family!"

William Carter was stunned for quite a while after hearing this. "Hey, whose side are you on, anyway? You're actually pleading for that guy."

"You! Ugh, forget it if you can't understand..." Feeling her good intentions were wasted, Kelly lost interest and waved her hand. "I'm going to rest."

"Alright, see you tomorrow."

———

After saying goodbye to Kelly, William Carter put the chessboard into his backpack and returned to his dormitory.

Yangcheng Academy provided its students with very generous accommodation. The academy had cleared out a lakeside castle to serve as the dormitory building, offering vast space. Most students lived in spacious two-person suites, while a few exceptionally gifted students even had a room to themselves, without having to worry about being disturbed.

With William Carter's aptitude, he certainly didn't deserve the treatment of a genius student, but the special admission order from the dean made the dorm manager have to be extra cautious, so William Carter got quite a good deal, living in a top-floor room of the castle along with several genius freshmen.

"But who knows how much longer I can stay here."

The periodic assessment that Kelly mentioned was a motivational measure set up by Yangcheng Academy for its students, with clear rewards and punishments. Those with outstanding results naturally received all kinds of generous rewards, while those with poor performance could even be expelled—there was precedent for that.

And judging by William Carter's current progress, expulsion seemed inevitable.

Since the start of the semester, he had only performed well during the first phase of meditation, able to easily calm his mind, focus on one thing, and have no distracting thoughts. But ever since moving on to the "waking dream" phase, he had become somewhat at a loss.

"Waking dream," as the name suggests, means daydreaming. But for William Carter, dreams themselves were a baffling thing... From birth until now, William Carter had never had a single dream.

So how could he daydream? For William Carter, understanding dreams was simply inconceivable. No matter how much Grace Howard tried to guide him, he could never sink into a dream, so the waking dream phase was out of the question.

William Carter didn't know if this trait meant he had no talent, or if his aptitude was just that bad, completely unfit to become a Dreamweaver... Although a month ago, that dying Dreamweaver outside the city had sworn that William Carter was the most gifted person he'd ever seen in his life, it was easy to imagine that a dying man might say some nonsense. That man disappeared in a flash not long after speaking—maybe it really was just nonsense, and he was punished by the heavens for it?

It seemed the path of the Dreamweaver was a dead end. In a while, he'd probably be expelled.

Once expelled, of course he couldn't stay in this spacious dorm, and the free three meals a day in the cafeteria would be gone too. Every time he thought of this, William Carter couldn't help but feel a sense of melancholy... "Luckily, I'm prepared. After the assessment, I'll just sneak in and change my grades... The one in charge of recording grades should be Teacher Grace Howard, right? Where does she live again?"

Opening the dorm window, William Carter gazed into the distance, his eyes passing over the Illusory Lake beside the castle and landing on a row of villas on the opposite shore. That was the teachers' dormitory at Yangcheng Academy, and Grace Howard lived in the third villa of the second row.

For these teachers, the academy provided even better accommodation than for the students. On one hand, most Dreamweavers teaching at Yangcheng Academy had quite high cultivation; on the other, if these powerful Dreamweavers lived too close together, their training would inevitably interfere with each other.

However, this arrangement of separate villas also made things much more convenient for William Carter's activities. In the month since school started, he had already explored most of the academy under cover of night, and the teachers' residential area was by far the least guarded—he could come and go as he pleased.

Of course, "unguarded" only referred to the outside of the villas; he had never ventured deep inside, since Dreamweavers' abilities were not to be underestimated, and William Carter didn't think he was more skilled than his master.

Thinking of his master, William Carter couldn't help but picture that one-eyed, lame, hunched old man. Although he looked unremarkable, after living with him for twelve years, William Carter knew just how formidable he was. As an expert in sleight of hand, William Carter was already top-notch, but compared to that old man, he was still far behind... And even that old one-eye repeatedly emphasized: never provoke a Dreamweaver lightly.

It was precisely because of all the years of the old one-eye's constant talk about Dreamweavers that William Carter developed a strong curiosity and even longing for the profession. When that dying Dreamweaver outside the Free City suburbs asked him to enter Yangcheng Academy and learn to become a Dreamweaver, he agreed without much hesitation.

It's just a pity that he had no aptitude for becoming a Dreamweaver at all. In the future, it seemed he'd still have to rely on his sleight of hand skills to make a living.