Grandpa Train asked Li Banfeng if he still wanted to get out. Of course, Li Banfeng wanted to leave.

Zhao Dajun was still admiring the butt he had meticulously calculated, and Grandpa Train gave a cough.

"Huff, huff~"

A burst of steam hissed through the air, and Teacher Risa, who had been posing before Zhao Dajun just moments ago, suddenly aged fifty years in an instant.

Her peaches had fully ripped.

The once smooth and firm curves sagged visibly before his eyes. Zhao Dajun stared in horror and let out a shrill scream on the spot.

As Zhao Dajun screamed, Teacher Risa vanished, and the entire villa shattered. The garden crumbled next, and even the lake beyond the villa disappeared without a trace.

All that remained around them was a stretch of wild grassland.

Li Banfeng looked around and said, "The dream Zhao Dajun painstakingly built is just gone like that?"

Grandpa Train nodded and said, "He woke up."

After a moment of silence, Grandpa Train said, "Am I being too cruel?"

Li Banfeng nodded. "A little, yeah."

A breeze drifted past, and the two of them let out wicked laughter.

"HEK HEK HEK! If you say I was cruel, then that's right!"

"HEK HEK HEK! That was such a nice ass! Yet he wanted to fix them. Don't you think he had it coming?"

The two were laughing happily when the wild grass suddenly receded, and a brand new villa appeared before them.

Zhao Dajun had rebuilt the dream. He stood before the walls, scribbling equations everywhere, still dissatisfied with the bedroom's design.

Before long, the garden returned, the lake returned, and the teachers all came back as well.

Grandpa Train took Li Banfeng and left Zhao Dajun Station.

"See that? He woke up, but in the blink of an eye, he fell asleep again."

Li Banfeng glanced back at the dream world as it slowly restored itself, and he could already imagine what kind of state Zhao Dajun was in back in the real world.

He had opened his eyes, rolled over, and gone right back to sleep.

"Senior, I don't have the abilities of Dream Cultivators. Why am I able to enter other people's dreams?"

Grandpa Train turned around and said, "Because I can."

"Then why did you bring me here?"

Grandpa Train shook his head. "You still don't understand. I wasn't the one who brought you in."

As Grandpa Train spoke, he slowed to a stop once more.

A two-story house stood ahead. It was the sort commonly seen throughout Puluo Province, with weathered walls and a narrow balcony running along the upper floor.

A girl of thirteen or fourteen stood on that balcony in a daze as furious shouting and tearful cries sounded downstairs. Her eyes were terribly red, and both hands were clenched so tightly into fists that her knuckles had gone pale.

Her father was beating her mother.

The girl gritted her teeth, snatched up a wooden stick from beside the bed, and rushed downstairs.

Below, her father had a savage smile twisted across his face as he struck blow after blow. The beating grew more vicious with every moment and it was as though he could beat her to death at any moment.

The girl raised the stick and brought it crashing down.

The first blow struck the man on the head, and his face twisted in shock and fear.

The second blow split the skin, and he saw blood running down before his eyes.

By the third blow, he was already howling and begging for mercy.

However, the girl only tightened both hands around the stick, gritted her teeth harder, and kept swinging again and again.

She was too short. Under normal circumstances, there was no way she could have hit her father's head. And with how clumsy her movements were, she should not have been able to hit him at all.

However, this was the Dreambinding Tower. There were no nightmares here. And so, every swing of hers landed squarely on its mark.

Grandpa Train made the sound of a long train whistle and said to Li Banfeng, "She's trapped in her dream as well."

At the next stop, a woman sat at a mahjong table and won twenty rounds in a row. At the stop after that, a man locked himself in a room and slept with twenty different people one after another. At the following stop, another man knelt on the ground and kowtowed twenty times before someone else.

Li Banfeng frowned. "Kowtowing counts as a good dream?"

Grandpa Train replied, "I have been to this dream before. That person always dreamed of going to Vilefolk Hillock, but he never managed to make it there. In the dream, he finally arrived, so he was happy."

He paused for a moment before continuing, "Their hearts remained inside the dream, so they can never leave. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

Li Banfeng nodded. "I understand."

"You still don't want to stay here?"

"I don't."

Grandpa Train let Li Banfeng off by the roadside and slowly swung his arms. "If you don't want to stay here, then why did you come to the Dreambinding Tower?"

Li Banfeng didn't know how to explain it to this mad old man. "You carried me here. I never wanted to come in the first place."

Grandpa Train froze for a moment. The huffing sounds from his mouth gradually stopped, as if a train had shut down.

He looked at Li Banfeng very seriously. "I carried you to the Dreambinding Tower because I saw your dream. You had already entered the dream before you saw me. I only brought you to where you were supposed to go." 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

"I had already entered the dream before I saw you?" Li Banfeng couldn't figure out how that worked.

Grandpa Train asked, "Do you still remember what happened at the time?"

Li Banfeng described the situation to Grandpa Train.

Grandpa Train looked at Li Banfeng and said, "You were searching for New Land at Blackstone Slope, a crane operator pointed you the wrong way, and you ended up barging into the Inner Provinces?"

Li Banfeng nodded. It sounded a bit absurd, but that was exactly what had happened.

Grandpa Train stared fixedly at Li Banfeng. His gaze was so sharp it felt as though it could pierce straight through flesh and bone.

In that moment, Li Banfeng suddenly had a terrifying thought. If Grandpa Train accelerated without warning and disappeared from his sight at that incomprehensible speed, he would likely be crushed into a mangled lump before he could even react.

The overwhelming pressure made Li Banfeng shudder involuntarily.

Then, without any sign of movement, Grandpa Train appeared directly before him.

"You want my train, don't you?" he asked.

How did you even get that in your head? Isn't your train already in my hands?

While Li Banfeng was still thinking about how to respond, Grandpa Train suddenly gave a sinister grin. "Your master wants me to make him another train, right?"

Li Banfeng shook his head and answered honestly, "I don't have a master."

"They still haven't given up?" Grandpa Train muttered. "Do they really want my train that badly?"

"Huff... huff..."

Grandpa Train's breathing gradually quickened, growing heavier and heavier.

Li Banfeng picked up on something. "You are saying the people from the Inner Provinces want your train?"

Grandpa Train did not answer him at all. He simply went on grumbling to himself in that steaming, wheezing voice of his.

"So many of them..." he muttered. "One after another, sneaking into my dreams, trying to dig my secrets out of my head. Hah! Do they think being asleep makes me stupid?"

"Senior, there might be some misunderstanding between us."

Puffs of steam burst from Grandpa Train's ears.

"So many came before you, and not a single one succeeded!" he barked. "What makes them think you can?

"Huff! Huff!

"Just because you're a Wanderlust Cultivator? Just because you walk the same Daoist Path as me? Just because you look a little talented, they think you can cozy up to me and trick me into handing over my train?

Li Banfeng shook his head. "We are not that close."

"Exactly! We are not close at all!" Grandpa Train roared. "I don't even know your name, and you already want me to teach you how to build trains?

"Huff! Huff! Huff!"

Steam blasted from his ears in thick white bursts. He looked ready to charge like a runaway locomotive at any second.

"I never wanted to learn how to build trains," Li Banfeng said quickly. "I'm not even an Artificer Cultivator."

At the same time, Li Banfeng quietly prepared himself to run.

"We have never even met before, and now you want me to teach you how to build my train?" Grandpa Train suddenly burst into booming laughter. "What a wonderfully shameless dream!"

Li Banfeng shook his head again. "I really don't have such a dream."

After laughing for a while, Grandpa Train suddenly pulled out a toy train about a foot long.

"Most fools think you build the body first when making a train," he declared. "But my thinking is different! I start with the wheels!"

Li Banfeng widened his eyes. "So that's how it is!"

The moment those words left his mouth, Grandpa Train instantly put the train model back and bellowed, "Aha! So you really did come to steal my techniques! I knew I wasn't wrong about you!"

That finally made Li Banfeng furious.

"Old man!" he shouted. "I am going to say something right now, so listen carefully!"

By then, flames were already spurting from Grandpa Train's head like sparks from a furnace chimney.

"Go on then!" he roared. "Let's hear what nonsense you have got!"

Li Banfeng stared straight into his eyes. "Are we brothers or not?"

Grandpa Train froze.

"Are we?" he repeated blankly.

Li Banfeng nodded solemnly. "I will suffer a little and let you be the elder brother."

Grandpa Train blinked. "Did I actually gain anything from that?"

"No matter who profits or loses, brothers don't keep score," Li Banfeng said with complete sincerity written across his face. "Since we have got this brotherly bond between us now, how about we agree that neither of us mentions trains ever again?"

Grandpa Train fell silent. Steam puffed softly from his ears.

After a long moment, he narrowed his eyes at Li Banfeng and asked, "You were using some kind of Folly Cultivator ability?"

"I was?" Li Banfeng shivered.

Grandpa Train muttered to himself, "Folly Cultivators still exist in this world?"

"Good!" Grandpa Train nodded forcefully. "Since we are brothers now, we won't talk about trains anymore.

"Let's talk about tracks first. The reason I start with the wheels is because the wheels determine the type of tracks. There are many kinds of tracks, and the most common type is..."

"Elder Brother!" Li Banfeng hurriedly cut him off.

The old man was erratic and impossible to predict. He spoke nonsense half the time, and his moods changed without warning. One moment he was furious, the next he was happily rambling about trains.

Yet Li Banfeng understood him. The old man simply wanted someone to talk to.

"Elder Brother, let's not talk about trains or tracks anymore. I don't want to learn, and even if I did, I couldn't. But someone else can. Someone's watching and listening."

Grandpa Train went strangely still. Then he let out a sudden wheezing laugh and said, "I know they were watching. Back when I drove my train to the Inner Provinces, they knew.

"They don't like people wandering freely through their territory. However, they couldn't catch me back then, so instead they tried to win me over. They gave me pills, gave me land, even granted me a high status. Back in the old days, I would've been considered a lord in my own right.

"I didn't care for any of that. We Wanderlust Cultivators only care about freedom. We go wherever we want. Why should we be bound by them?

"Later, they set their sights on my train. I sold it, but they still kept watching me. I really wanted to play with them for a while, but unfortunately, I slipped up this time and got trapped by them."

Li Banfeng tensed. "Can they see your train?"

"They can't," Grandpa Train replied. "Most of the time, even I can't see it myself."

Li Banfeng quietly let out a breath of relief.

"But I can see the key, hehehe..." Grandpa Train suddenly bared a sinister grin.

If not for the fedora pressing his hair down, Li Banfeng felt certain it would have stood straight on end.

At some point, the surroundings had changed again. The dense forest had disappeared completely, replaced by barren stone stretching endlessly in every direction.

Whose dream is this? Grandpa Train's? Did he really see the key on me? Not necessarily.

We are in a dream right now. My dream and his dream have become tangled together, but our real bodies should still be very far apart.

The key is with my real body, so he shouldn't be able to see it.

Grandpa Train glanced at Li Banfeng's hand. "Why do you keep touching your pocket? Is there something inside?"

Li Banfeng didn't answer. Right now, he had no idea what he was supposed to say.

The surroundings grew even more desolate and not even a grain of sand remained. There was only endless emptiness stretching in every direction, without a single place to hide.

Grandpa Train lowered his voice. "Don't be afraid. They can't see us right now. No one can see us. I'll ask you one more time, and you must answer honestly. Do you really not want to stay here?"

Li Banfeng nodded. "I don't."

Grandpa Train let out a sigh. "Your cultivation is too low. Getting out of the Inner Provinces won't be easy for you, but we can still take a gamble."

"How?"

"If your real body has already entered the Inner Provinces, then there's no escaping anymore. You might as well stay here and keep me company.

"But if you have only entered the Inner Provinces in your dream, then I still have a way to send you back."

"Why are you helping me? Just because I am a Wanderlust Cultivator?"

Grandpa Train laughed softly. "That's what they think. They think that if they catch a Wanderlust Cultivator and send him to me, they can earn my trust. However, that's not what I think at all."

"Then what do you think?"

"Once you get out, you will understand what I think."

Author's Note:

PS: Grandpa Train is a little crazy, but he's not foolish.