Washington, D.C., outskirts. Yorton Manor.
Edward removed the brainwave amplitude amplifier. The blood vessels in his eyes had burst, and the veins at his temples throbbed horrifically. Every synapse in his brain seemed ready to leap out of his skull, while every thought seemed to be burning. He gritted his teeth and endured the backlash, his face twisted into a savage grimace.
"Master, let me cool your head."
The butler, the very image of an English gentleman, hurriedly prepared a white towel soaked in ice water and wrapped it around Edward's head, cooling his brain, which was so hot that steam rose from it.
He then poured the Nutrient Solution he had prepared earlier into Edward's mouth, filling his stomach until he felt slightly bloated. Only then did Edward tell him to stop.
After a long while, Edward finally exhaled, and his expression gradually relaxed.
The butler summoned the maids to wipe the sweat from Edward's body.
"I'm going into a deep sleep to recover. Keep a constant watch on my condition."
Edward's face was exhausted. Although the bloodshot veins in his eyes were slowly fading, an irrepressible weakness and sense of helplessness remained. Right now, he did not even want to move a finger.
"Yes, Master. I'll remain by your side at all times."
The butler quickly had the maids bring velvet quilts and pillows, then moved Edward onto the apparatus beside him. Once Edward had fallen asleep, he sent the maids out of the room and activated numerous instruments for monitoring the body, keeping a constant watch over Edward.
Entering the Dream Dimension was the best way to nourish the mind. After entering its deepest layer, one might spend billions upon billions of years there, while only an instant passed in the outside world. Upon waking, one would be fully recovered.
Edward entered the Dream Dimension once more. This time, however, the ten-layer Dream Dimension he had created to trap someone to death had undergone an earth-shattering transformation.
The original ten layers of the Dream Dimension had now spread to one hundred.
From the eleventh layer to the hundredth, each seemed to record countless kinds of information. Countless streams of information spread like the grasping tentacles of an octopus, as though trying to force themselves into the minds of everyone who entered the Dream Dimension and overload them.
"How did it become like this?"
Since the age of twelve, after mastering psychology and learning to manipulate humanity, he had never experienced such a tremendous shock.
The ten-layer Dream Dimension he had constructed had originally been a magnificent, towering paradise of ten realms—Eden. It was a place of birdsong and flowers, bright sunlight, and towering sacred palaces adorned with carved beams and painted rafters. Barely clad goddesses, saints, and angels filled the surroundings. Every beautiful thing in the human world existed in this paradise.
Each layer held completely different scenery and desires.
Here, one could obtain everything the mind found most pleasurable, everything it yearned for, and everything one dreamed of but could never attain.
Yet beginning with the eleventh layer, it had become a vast information archive, endlessly releasing knowledge that threatened to overload the brain's nerves.
"Is this His knowledge?"
Edward speculated.
He had severed a portion of His Psychic Power. That Psychic Power had manifested here, forming enormous layers of information and throwing this beautiful Dream Dimension into chaos.
He arrived at the tenth layer and was instantly stunned.
He-El sat upright on a crystal throne, an open book in one hand. He leaned back as he read, his gaze cool and bored. He radiated boundless majesty and power, like a god. The sight of him stopped Edward in his tracks.
That dense might was like vines binding him in place, leaving him unable to struggle free.
"You finally came."
"Perhaps in reality, you merely opened your eyes and placed a cold towel against your overheated brain. Only a few minutes have passed."
"But here, I have already lived through seven hundred ninety-seven sextillion sixty-two billion years."
He-El casually tossed aside the book in his hand. It fell to the ground, sending ripples across the surface before sinking into the white jade floor and vanishing.
He looked at Edward with a smile.
Edward stood rooted in place, having lost all control over the Dream Dimension.
But at that moment, his eyes were wide open, as if he had seen through everything.
"I understand now."
"He abandoned this portion of His Psychic Power when He escaped the Dream Dimension."
"With His past memories and the Psychic Power maintained within this Dream Dimension, you became a new life-form."
"A psychic life-form within the Dream Dimension!"
"You intend to seize a body and become a true life-form with a physical form!"
Edward's face twisted into madness, and he revealed a savage grin.
"Hahahaha... I get it!"
"I imagine you and He possess the same past memories. You long to become real, to become your true self, and to become the one and only true self."
"Your desire is the reason you want to destroy Him."
"Alien, you created a psychic construct that covets your invincible body."
Edward threw back his chest and laughed savagely, spreading his arms as he realized his own end.
The He-El in this Dream Dimension needed a physical body. By coming here, Edward had already delivered one to him.
At the same time, Edward believed that this psychic construct would surely attack the original and become the true He-El.
"Why do you think I would attack Him?"
He-El looked at Edward as though he were an idiot.
"Having existed in the Dream Dimension through a severed fragment of Psychic Power and formed an entirely new self, Edward, why do you think I would seize the original's body?"
"Covet that powerful body?"
"Possess the same memories, yet deny my own existence?"
Edward was bewildered, and question marks seemed to appear across his face.
"The eleventh through hundredth layers of the Dream Dimension are His thoughts, reflections, inspiration, sensations, and insights after coming to this world... Now, using the ten-layer Dream Dimension as its foundation, it has spread to the hundredth layer, but that is only a tiny corner."
"I only maintained it at one hundred layers because I feared the Dream Dimension would collapse. Its true number of layers should exceed ten thousand."
He-El shook his head. He opened his great hand and extended his index finger toward the bewildered Edward, touching it to his brow.
Just as before, when they had left the round-table meeting in the sewers, He-El had descended from the vast full moon and pressed one finger against Edward's brow.
"With a mortal body, you created the Dream Dimension. When He praised you by saying 'brilliant,' you had already achieved the greatest accomplishment humanity had ever seen."
Edward's mind gradually transformed into Light Points. His bewildered face dissipated, and all confusion vanished as though he had ascended and transformed into the Dao. He no longer possessed any subjective consciousness.
Every Light Point that had once been Edward was absorbed by He-El one after another.
He officially became a life-form and gave himself a name: Jor-El.
Jor-El revealed a humanlike smile. With a casual wave of his hand, the hundredth layer of the Dream Dimension continued spreading downward. Like a staircase, it extended to the thirty-three thousand three hundred thirty-third layer, recording in full He-El's thoughts, ideas, inspirations, sensations, cellular evolution, memories, and everything else from before he severed that portion of Psychic Power.
Even though Jor-El understood and knew all of this, he could not help feeling astonished and awed.
Only the ignorant dared to raise their fists against Him.
"He possesses the myriad worlds."
"My journey is this sea of stars."
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