Five Realms

People sometimes had dreams that felt strangely familiar.

Or they would visit an unfamiliar place for the first time, yet feel as if they had seen it somewhere before, as if they had been there.

Shen Zhui stood inside a courtyard. He looked strangely at his own body, then at the surrounding furnishings.

A lush, verdant tree swayed in the wind. Above an ancient well, a mechanism turned. The doors and windows gently rocked. Beneath the tree, two half-grown youths were playing chess, while a slightly younger child hid beneath the tree and snored away.

It was tranquil and peaceful. Everything felt incomparably familiar, yet utterly real.

How strange.

At Shen Zhui's level, he believed the only place where he could no longer distinguish reality from illusion was the Virtual God Realm.

Yet this little courtyard made it impossible for him to tell the false from the real.

He raised his head. The distant peaks loomed in and out of sight, while a long, mournful sound echoed through the valley.

A birdlike artifact shrieked across the sky.

"Is this the same dream as last time?" Shen Zhui murmured unconsciously.

It was the same courtyard as before, only the three children seemed to have grown somewhat.

"Why do I keep having this dream?" Shen Zhui looked curiously at the two half-grown youths playing chess beneath the tree.

They looked somewhat familiar...

Shen Zhui drew closer and discovered that the two youths were playing the exceedingly difficult Exquisite Chess Game.

"Clack~" The fair-skinned youth with somewhat handsome features placed a piece, then smiled smugly at the slightly wooden-looking youth across from him. "Little Li, haha, I beat you again."

"Senior Brother, let's clean up and start another game." The wooden-looking youth's expression remained unchanged as he began clearing the board, picking up