"How do you feel now?" Roland asked.
"I feel wonderful. I lived an entire lifetime in the dream. I dreamed that I studied as a resident of the tower, gradually mastered Seris, passed the eighth-level exam, and apparently even translated several works and produced quite a few arcane findings..."
"We were able to monitor all of that, but we still don't know how this sort of dream affects your consciousness. Can you understand and absorb the knowledge you gained in it?"
Conventional theory generally held that dreams were manifestations of the subconscious, devoid of rational cognition.
The Yther School's Dreamscape Deduction Method and the Homir School's Virtual Reality, also known as True Dream, had broken through that barrier, but neither had gone further and overcome the limitations of time.
Now, that was precisely the breakthrough they were attempting.
"I can absorb most of the preprogrammed material, just as designed."
"Then it looks like we really succeeded. Wonderful!"
Roland then asked several more questions about historical events in Romance of Seris and the ideas in the Analects. Diego answered them all fluently.
Diego had already mastered Seris beyond the fifth level and was preparing to earn his sixth-level certificate, but he still lacked a genuine understanding of some of the historical and cultural foundations beyond the language itself.
Now, not only had he grasped them, but he had even developed fresh insights and ideas of his own.
He believed that the rites emphasized in Confucian teachings were actually an artificially established social order: rites for eminent men and gentlemen, with no relevance to ordinary people.
This bore a striking resemblance to the doctrine of noble bloodlines, except that the transmission of bloodlines had been replaced by the transmission of a cultural tradition, with the words and teachings of sages taking the