Chapter 93: Chapter 66: Entering the Dream (Part 2)
They arrived at the second floor of the Holy Sanctuary.
Everything was the same as the first floor.
Even the decorative paintings on the walls were clearly visible. The figures within them were still moving—one even blew a kiss at Sean and the other two.
Sean asked again, "Do you believe me now?"
Sopea didn’t answer.
He clearly still didn’t believe it.
Sean had been to the second floor in the Void Technique Space, so it was barely plausible that the dream could contain details of it.
But as they went higher, Sopea began to feel that something was wrong.
Sean actually led them up to the third floor.
He had been spending all his time in the library lately, not wandering about, so he wasn’t very familiar with what was on the 3rd Floor of the Holy Hall. Yet, this dream of Sean’s presented its layout in perfect detail—dormitories, a museum, the Alchemy Room, the Cultivation Chamber...
It made Sopea wonder if Sean was the one who had gone up to the third floor before him and stolen the Book of the Past.
And that wasn’t all.
After showing them around the third floor, Sean led them up to the fourth.
Everything on the fourth floor was also clearly visible!
Sopea: "???"
"Are you controlling the dream?"
"Not at all, Mr. Dream Builder."
Sean said, "If I were controlling the dream, could I have escaped your perception?"
As he spoke, he led the master and apprentice toward the library.
He decided he probably wouldn’t take Sopea and Koni to the higher floors. ’After all, as the host, I have to maintain the Holy Sanctuary’s sense of mystery. I’ll just treat the fourth-floor library as payment for Sopea’s help, and as compensation for not seeing the Book of the Past on the third floor.’
Sean had assumed his counterpart from this point in time wouldn’t be in the Holy Sanctuary, that he would have already started working on the statues. He never expected that upon entering the library, he would see an incredibly familiar back. The sense of familiarity was as potent as the sense of strangeness he had felt when Koni led him into the hospital during her dream. With a single glance, Sean knew for certain that it was him.
Sopea didn’t notice that Sean had stopped in his tracks.
His attention was completely captured by that back, because he heard someone address the figure as "Mr. Blake"!
Koni was also stunned.
’Did they... just happen to run into Lord Blake?’
At that moment, Blake was talking with several people gathered around a display case, seemingly discussing which book would be best to place inside it.
The more Sopea listened, the more convinced he became. This was Lord Blake in the flesh!
’The only reason one can’t make out the faces on those statues is because of the perception-distorting Arrays embedded in them. Blake himself wouldn’t have an Array like that on his face—how would he even live his life otherwise?’
’This means I now have the chance to clearly see and remember Lord Blake’s appearance and the events surrounding him. I could become the first—and only—Wizard in centuries to truly remember this legendary figure!’
Sopea was overjoyed, completely forgetting the underlying logic of the dream.
But Blake seemed to sense his gaze. He abruptly stopped speaking, falling silent.
The moment he stopped, everyone else in the library also froze, as if they had all received a command.
In that instant, it was as if time on the entire fourth floor of the Holy Sanctuary had frozen. All sound vanished, replaced by an absolute silence. The familiar-feeling scene made Koni’s heart tremble, and goosebumps erupted on her skin.
The next second, Blake turned his head.
His ink-black eyes seemed to transcend space and time, piercing through the myriad barriers of space and the great rivers of time to land directly on Sopea, here and now.
This Power that ignored all dimensional distance made Sopea feel both thrilled and horrified, so much so that his heart skipped a beat. The horror came from the immense pressure of that gaze, but the thrill came from the fact that this person *could* exert such pressure. For a mere illusory image in a dream to make someone break out in a cold sweat—throughout all of history, only Lord Blake could do that!
And indeed, it was just as Sopea had anticipated.
He was, in fact, Blake.
And there was indeed no perception-distorting Array on his face.
But when he finally got his wish and saw Blake’s face clearly, his delight turned to horror.
Because the Lord Blake before him and the Sean of the present had the exact same face, without the slightest difference.
Sopea: "???!!!"
...
