Such dreams nested layer upon layer, recurring again and again.
No matter how Meng Chao struggled, tearing through one layer of dream after another, ever grander, more intricate, and more terrifying dreams awaited him ahead.
In the real world, perhaps only a brief instant had passed.
Yet time within the dreams seemed to stretch on forever, making Meng Chao live through more than a dozen, perhaps dozens, of different lives within a tangled labyrinth of thought.
These "lives" were either fragments personally experienced by the Ancient Dream Saintess, or the tragic fates of ratfolk she had witnessed with her own eyes.
Or they were the most painful, horrifying, and despairing elements she had extracted from the deepest dreams of ratfolk warriors after infiltrating the depths of their brains within the Great Horned Legion.
Thus, they seemed exceptionally vivid, profound, heartfelt, and soul-stirring.
The most despairing dreams of tens of thousands of ratfolk warriors from the entire Great Horned Legion bore down upon Meng Chao's subconscious like a dark mountain, crushing him head-on.
He could not move, was in unbearable agony, and nearly lost all sense of self.
This was the greatest difference between "dreams" and "illusions."
During the Monster War, Meng Chao had fought several demon gods under the Monster Mastermind who excelled at Mind Attacks and crafting illusions.
Among them, the demon god Wisdom Tree's colossal illusion, Peach Blossom Paradise Town, was a vast world without precedent or equal, where truth and falsehood were impossible to distinguish.
Anyone who fell into it, unless they possessed extraordinary resolve and an exceptionally sharp mind capable of spotting the flaws in an instant, might truly be trapped inside until Wisdom Tree completely brainwashed them, or until their body in reality became a curled heap of dry bones.
Yet no matter how exquisite