Chapter 1 The nomadic settlement on the prairie

These small houses built on the prairie, though not shaped like tents as Hao Ren imagined, still had the characteristics of nomadic dwellings: sturdy wooden strips formed the skeleton of the houses, creating a roughly cylindrical structure. The spaces between the wooden strips were filled with flexible straw mats and woven materials whose texture was no longer discernible. The roofs were made of thick braided grass, weighed down with heavy stones. The base of the houses was reinforced with hard, fired clay cylinders. Overall, the houses looked simple but sturdy. Each cylindrical house was less than ten meters in diameter, and they were all similar in appearance. About a dozen such houses were scattered sparsely within a fenced-in area, forming a primitive "village."

Hao Ren was eager to learn about the human civilization in this dream plane, so he didn't carefully observe anything in the village square. Instead, he directly pushed open the door of the house closest to him. With a series of cracking sounds, the door woven from rattan and tough grass... was pulled right off.

"This doesn't look like they left recently..." Hao Ren stared blankly at the decayed doorframe. The door was hinged to the frame with ropes, but those once-tough ropes had long since rotted away and broke at the slightest touch. It seemed the wolves' sense of time wasn't very accurate; the herdsmen here might have left a long time ago.

"Hopefully, this house won't suddenly collapse," Hao Ren muttered, carefully entering the herdsman's hut. The data terminal floated beside him, emitting a constant glow, barely enough to serve as a flashlight, allowing Hao Ren to see everything inside.

Unsurprisingly, the house was empty. Its former owners had left in an orderly fashion, taking all their belongings with them. The floor of the hut was bare dirt. Hao Ren found some fibrous fabric of indiscernible material in the corner, suggesting that there had once been a rug or straw mat there. On each wooden strip of the curved wall, metal hooks were visible, which probably had hung weapons or tools. In the center of the hut, the ground was lower, with a dark, sunken pit that might have been a hearth.

Apart from that, there were no traces left behind.

Hao Ren was somewhat disappointed. It seemed there were no valuable relics here, not even a scrap of sheepskin.

But the existence of the hut could still explain some things: there was indeed human civilization in the dream plane, and its level of development was probably not low. They had metalworking skills (the metal hooks left on the walls), architectural technology, and could survive on the wolf-infested prairie. The dream plane was definitely not a desolate and bizarre space filled only with beasts and monsters—although Raven 12345 had told Hao Ren this before, it was only now, having witnessed it with his own eyes, that Hao Ren truly felt it.

"Do you know anything about the dream plane?" Hao Ren asked the data terminal that was floating beside him. "Hey, stop shaking; can't you keep the light steady?"

"Go back and study the manual properly! You never use me correctly! I am a high-tech auxiliary device, not a flashlight, not a brick, not a meteor hammer, and certainly not a pet for you to play with!" the data terminal complained, but still answered Hao Ren's question, "I don't have a lot of pre-installed information. As a standard device for inspectors, I only have the necessary work modules pre-installed. However, I can retrieve some information from the local universe channel... Retrieval complete. Dream plane characteristics: reality, vastness, linear development, self-consistency, influence on the real world. Do you need me to explain them one by one?"

"Explain away; I'll listen carefully," Hao Ren said, wandering around the hut, looking for any possible clues.

"Reality: the dream plane has definitive real attributes. It is a real world with effective and calculable rules. Although it is distorted, everything in it has an internal logic. Nothing in this space is an illusion. Vastness: for various reasons, the study of the dream plane has never truly begun, but based on the results of a few rough spatial sensing attempts, the size of the dream plane is very likely comparable to the real world. Its vastness is worth anticipating. If the universe management gods decide to begin a major exploration of the dream plane, the inspectors will be very busy. Linear development: the dream plane is a space of development and change. Although it is strange, the things within it do change linearly. There is historical change and the evolution of all things. All present conditions have linear causes and effects. Therefore, there are no inexplicable or unmotivated things here. This entry is a new entry, and its veracity is yet to be verified. Self-consistency: everything in the dream plane is self-consistent, which is also a reflection of its reality. Influence on the real world... this entry is nonsense. I don't think it needs explanation."

Hao Ren forgot half of what he heard, picking up on what he could understand. Then he was suddenly drawn by a flash of light in the corner of the hut.

He walked over quickly and found a small iron piece half-buried in the dirt.

The moment he saw the small iron piece, Hao Ren felt a tremor in his heart. A sense of familiarity spread from the depths of his being. After he dug out the metal piece, he was truly stunned.

It was a rhombus-shaped metal piece, smaller than the palm of his hand. The surface was partially corroded, and the material seemed to be iron. The most striking thing about the metal piece was the pattern of what looked like hieroglyphs. Hao Ren stared at the patterns for a long time and finally realized that he had seen them not long ago—on the metal piece he had found when he and Vivian were rummaging through the junk in the basement!

"What the..." Hao Ren muttered to himself in astonishment, "Why would I have..."

Before he could finish speaking, he was interrupted by a strange howl that suddenly came from outside.

"Hoo—woo—" A series of high and low-pitched howls seemed to come from all directions at once. Immediately afterward came the creaking sounds of the house shaking. Hao Ren looked up in shock, and in that instant, he saw the entire roof being blown away!

The grass-woven roof, weighed down by heavy stones, vanished without a trace. Bright starlight and moonlight suddenly filled the entire hut. Before Hao Ren could react to what was happening, he saw the walls of the house also shaking violently and then being uprooted from the ground!

The word "hurricane" flashed through his mind like lightning, but before Hao Ren could react, he felt his feet lift off the ground and he flew into the sky with the entire hut!

Body enhancement had given Hao Ren tremendous strength and a robust physique, but not the ability to stand firm as a pine tree. The bizarre hurricane that suddenly swept across the prairie instantly blew this unlucky kid to a height of who-knew-how-many meters. Before he knew what was happening, he was spinning freely in the sky for thirty-some revolutions. In the crazy circles, Hao Ren kept bumping into various things that were also swept up into the sky. He was dizzy and disheveled, but he soon realized that the thing he was colliding with most frequently was not the fragments of the hut that had been torn to pieces by the wind, but a palm-sized piece of glowing metal. He was instantly furious: "Data terminal! Are you getting revenge on me?!"

The data terminal spun around and hit Hao Ren on the head while explaining very sincerely, "I really can't control my direction. This hurricane is so terrible..."

"Terrible, my ass! You've already smashed into my face four... five times against the wind!" Hao Ren roared, but he didn't forget the important thing. "What the hell is going on? How can there be a tornado when it's so clear and bright?"

"How would I know? Raven 12345 screwed up my natural disaster warning function! She replaced it with a trial version of an extreme weather radar, and the trial period just expired last night—go write a complaint to headquarters if you have a way!"

"You..." Hao Ren had just managed to squeeze out the first two words of an angry curse when he suddenly felt a darkness before his eyes.

A sense of weightlessness surged into his heart. Then he heard a thump, and Hao Ren felt himself fall onto a hard ground. He opened his eyes and saw his familiar bedroom. Bright sunlight was shining on him.

It was the time to wake up, set before entering the dream plane.

Hao Ren was still immersed in the terrifying state of being blown into the sky by a tornado. Entering the dream plane was indeed a test of one's heart. He panted for a long time before finally getting his heartbeat back to normal. Then he felt something hard poking him under his butt.

He reached out and touched it, and a rhombus-shaped metal piece came into view.