With a clang, Kevin's door flung open. The three deviant tenants huddled in the living room watching TV immediately turned their heads and saw Kevin scampering out of the room, a small piece of metal in hand. "Great discovery, great discovery!"
Lily was always the most agile. Kevin had barely shouted a few words when the girl transformed into a flash of white light and darted over to him. She leaped and hopped, reaching for the small piece of metal. She jumped several times before seeming to realize it was a dog's behavior. She quickly swished her tail back onto the sofa, pretending to watch TV. Kevin glanced at Lily in astonishment. "Why are you in werewolf form again? Are you out of control again?"
Lily's ears twitched, quite sensitive to the word "out of control." "No, no, let your tail out to get some air."
"What happened?" Vivian was steady, waiting until Lily's madness subsided before she stood up. "Everything went well in the dream plane yesterday, right?"
"Oh, it went pretty well. I fought seventy or eighty wild wolves, and finally woke up when a tornado threw me into the sky," Kevin waved his hand nonchalantly. "The key is that I brought something back from 'over there,' and you recognize it this time!"
Vivian was about to say, "Your evening wasn't much smoother either," when Kevin's attention was caught by the metal piece he was waving. She was slightly startled. "This... isn't that the thing we saw in the basement the other day?"
"Yes, that's it," Kevin said, grabbing Vivian's arm and heading towards the small staircase leading to the basement. "Do you remember where we put it? Let's go look for it together. These two look so much alike!"
After Kevin and Vivian had stormed off, Y'zaks and Lily exchanged a bewildered glance. The Great Demon asked in a muffled voice, "What's going on with these two? I'm late, so I'm not sure..."
"Oh, they must be having an affair," Lily said, her mind as free-spirited as ever. "I saw it on TV."
Y'zaks uttered an "oh," and then, after a long moment of serious thought, looked up. "So, when are they getting married?"
For the next ten minutes or so, these two deviant fellows began to discuss the marriage process on Earth. Of course, this was a minor topic and could be omitted for now. Kevin and Vivian quickly found the wooden box they had left in the basement storage room two days earlier. After two days of sorting through his box of childhood junk, it now looked... even more tattered. The small diamond-shaped piece of metal lay among the antiques, like a discarded part from something. Kevin moved the entire box out of the storage room and placed it on the low table in Vivian's room. Then they began to examine the two pieces of metal. Actually, there wasn't much to examine; they were clearly identical. "Is this really from the Dream Plane?" Vivian stroked the pattern on the iron sheet. This was the piece Kevin had just brought back last night. It looked newer, and the rust wasn't as severe as the first piece. "The pattern is exactly the same, and the material is the same."
"Absolutely true," Kevin nodded vigorously, then recounted his experiences in the Dream Plane last night, including how he had achieved a powerful shield and gained a rigid shield. He finally focused on the small piece of iron. "I found this in a nomadic hut on that grassland. There was nothing else around it; it was just buried in the soil. Oh, and those huts look abandoned for about six months."
"What exactly is the Dream Plane like?" Vivian's face showed a look of curiosity. "There are mountains, rivers, and people there? And are the people there the same as outside?"
"I haven't seen anyone living there yet, but it's like a normal world. It has everything, and even things that aren't in the real world are there." "Talking wolves come in packs," Kevin described the dream plane to Vivian. He mentioned the strange wolf packs, the endless prairie, the brilliant starry sky, the nomadic huts, and, of course, the most amazing sight of the dream plane: the twin moons. "There are two moons over there! One large, one small. The smaller one is only half the size of a fingernail, and the larger one is several times larger than Earth's moon. It's truly magical to look at at night... If only I could get you in there. Do you think Lily would go crazy if she saw two moons? One on Earth is enough to excite her."
"Two moons..." Vivian, also a species highly sensitive to moonlight, couldn't help but glow a little red at the mention of this. "I really want to see it. You must take me there someday! Hey, I once dreamt of seeing two moons in the sky. I remember that dream so clearly. Under the protection of two moons, I finally escaped my bad luck and became incredibly wealthy. Unfortunately, before I even dreamed about spending money, I was woken by the woman who came to collect the rent.
Kevin: "..." Every time he listened to Vivian's stories about her past, he felt like he was attending a reunion. How poignant. Vivian recalled the wonderful experience of becoming incredibly wealthy in her dream, then, coming to her senses, quickly wiped the saliva from her mouth and got down to business. She held the two small pieces of metal and waved them in front of Kevin's eyes. "Now it seems these two were brought from the Dream Plane. It's impossible for someone in the real world to coincidentally create something exactly like what's in the Dream Plane, and it's just a seemingly useless lump of scrap metal. You mentioned that you got this first piece of metal as a child... Do you remember the circumstances?"
"No," Kevin shook his head. "Like I said, it just came to me at some point."
"There are two possibilities. First, someone else has been to the Dream Plane, and this piece of metal was brought from there, and then somehow it came into your hands. Didn't Raven 12345 say that many people throughout history have encountered the Dream Plane and brought things back from there? You're not the first one," Vivian wiggled her fingers. "Second...you were there as a child, and this piece of metal was brought from there. Which possibility do you think is more likely?" Kevin took the two pieces of metal from Vivian and fiddled with them silently. After a long moment, he shook his head. "Neither possibility is very likely. The first possibility requires too many coincidences. According to that five-digit psychopath, only one person on Earth can access the Dream Plane and bring something out alive every few hundred years. And then it takes hundreds of years for this thing to reach me. How lucky is that? The second possibility...how old was I back then? How could I have entered the Dream Plane and come out alive? That place is full of man-eating beasts running around, and on a clear day, a wind blows at force 15 or higher. I've encountered two life-threatening dangers in the two times I've been there. If it weren't for my enhanced body, I would have died long ago. How did a child of a few years old wander around in there until he woke up naturally? And then again, I don't remember such a thing happening when I was a child." "Overall, the second possibility is more likely," Vivian patted Kevin's shoulder. "You just need to be lucky. Besides, children don't remember things well, and they tend to avoid nightmares. So maybe you simply forgot. Don't you see people like me forget things all the time?"
Kevin glanced at Vivian silently, not daring to say it was because of your age...
"What do you think it's used for?" Afraid of accidentally speaking his mind, Kevin quickly changed the subject.
"It's just a decorative ornament," Vivian said uncertainly. "It's such a small piece of metal, with no signs of a sharp edge, and the material itself isn't sturdy enough. It's neither a weapon nor a tool. I'm guessing it's a decorative emblem, like a crest, usually inlaid somewhere."
"A herdsman would need a crest?"
"Who can say for sure about the dream plane?"
Kevin thought about it. That made sense. There were even prairie wolves there who spoke Beijing dialect (though that was the translation system's credit). What was impossible? The origin of the first piece of iron was a murky subject, after all, even Kevin himself couldn't quite remember what happened back then. But now he was certain it had also been brought from the Dream Plane. Raven had always spoken of the inextricable connection between the Dream Plane and the real world, and now, seeing the evidence before their eyes, Kevin and Vivian had a clearer and more direct understanding of this.
The two pieces of iron, along with a tuft of wolf hair Kevin had brought from the Dream Plane, were carefully placed together in a sturdy iron box. Kevin felt the possibility of discovering more interesting finds in the Dream Plane in the future, so he decided to start collecting them today.
The next few days passed without much incident, and soon the full moon arrived. It was time for Lily's super evolution.