At the first blush of dawn, the sky had already turned a pale white.
Wang Xiedi lay on the pile of musty straw, a brilliant smile on his face.
He tossed and turned in his sleep, seemingly lost in a very pleasant dream.
Illusions, dreamscapes, and reality blurred together, making his dream a bizarre and motley spectacle.
However, whenever he reached a critical moment in his dream, the old man who had cowered in a corner during the illusion on the Asking Dao Ladder would transform into a series of terrifying, ghostly faces that appeared again and again.
"Have you forgotten what your grandfather said?"
"Are you going to be a coward who shirks responsibility?"
The wrinkled face pressed in close, bloody tears streaming from its empty sockets, nearly shocking him awake on the spot.
Then, it seemed as if countless old men, clutching their butts and weeping tears of blood, were crawling toward him from all directions!
"You've made me suffer so much! Do you have any idea how I left?"
