Chapter 520: The Feasibility of Applying the Great Knowledge Seed to the Fool's Dream
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 520: The Feasibility of Applying the Great Knowledge Seed to the Fool's Dream
After leaving the bakery, it was nearly noon. I didn't regret the words I had spoken back there.
If they could have been a bit more rational, I wouldn't have been so unresponsive. But more importantly, I simply didn't want things to become that troublesome.
Still, those girls at the bakery were truly... persistent. They had joined a club that offered them almost no practical improvement simply because I had once been a member. I wonder if the Shopkeeper has been treating them well.
With a sigh, I put their matters out of my mind. While I had to admit their behavior had stirred something in me, this chance encounter was destined to lead nowhere.
Our "pleasant conversation" earlier was nothing more than a facade. Even though I could use the Tree of Great Knowledge to understand their true natures, their weaknesses, and even their real-time emotional fluctuations, I realized I still didn't understand girls. I wasn't good at socializing with them. Perhaps it was just a fundamental difference in our ways of thinking; we were destined to be different kinds of people.
* * *
At noon.
I arrived at the cafeteria and ordered a feast. I had discovered that as my Five Senses Body Cultivation progressed, the heightened perception never left me. Just as Sister Bai said, every aspect of life is a form of cultivation, and eating is no exception. After all, taste and smell are among the primary senses through which a living body perceives the external world.
As I ate, I kept an eye on my private messages from Teacher Ji Niang. I had originally planned to visit her this afternoon, as it had been a while, and I wanted to give her a Great Knowledge Seed.
Since the Academy Dean had mentioned that even Transcendent Witches sometimes need the assistance of something like the Great Knowledge Seed, Teacher Ji Niang might find it useful as well.
However, it seemed she wouldn't be replying. I clicked on her personal profile on the Academy Network, and her status read: "Busy during the break. Leave a message if you need anything."
As for what she was busy with, it was undoubtedly her [Transcendent Knowledge].
The holidays were the perfect time to work without distractions. I suspected Teacher Ji Niang would be living in her research area for the entire break, treating it like her home. Since that place was shielded from the academy's signals, our next meeting would be entirely up to fate.
I left her a message. After lunch, I stopped by her office.
No one was there either. I placed a Great Knowledge Seed inside a box and left it for her—a little surprise, though I had no idea when she would discover it.
With that done, I didn't linger.
I headed back to the villa the academy had provided for me after I became a teaching assistant.
The basement there had been converted into a laboratory, where three members of the Fool's Dream clan were currently studying transcendent knowledge.
I had also asked those few Fool's Dream to help manage the villa. It had been a while since I'd checked in on them.
When I teleported back to my villa, I was met with a truly shocking sight!
The once-empty first-floor living room was now crowded with several Fool's Dream. A youthful, clear voice was methodically explaining something. Listening closely, I realized the topic was Runology!
My sudden appearance immediately broke the harmonious atmosphere.
"It's Sister Xiao Han!"
Yulan, who had been leading the lecture at the front, was the first to spot me. Her eyes widened in disbelief, followed quickly by a look of pure joy.
As the other Fool's Dream wondered why Yulan had suddenly stopped, her cry of "Sister Xiao Han" sent a jolt through them. They all scrambled to their feet and looked toward me.
I walked toward them with a smile.
"Yulan, what are you all doing?" I asked in a friendly tone, leaning down to pat Yulan's head as she rushed over to me.
"Um... I'm sorry, Sister Xiao Han. I brought them here without permission. I know this is your home..." After the initial excitement, Yulan was the first to realize the situation and quickly began to apologize.
Her apology immediately made the Fool's Dream behind her look worried.
"Now, don't start by blaming yourself," I said, immediately moving to comfort her. "This villa was just sitting empty anyway. I'm certainly not going to blame you. In fact, I'm very happy to have other Fool's Dream come here to play. But tell me, why did they want to come?"
The Fool's Dream's instinctive apologies stemmed from the fact that they didn't know me very well yet. They were afraid their independent actions might displease me. After all, I was a pivotal figure who could decide the fate of their entire race. Because of that, they held a certain degree of awe toward me and feared upsetting me.
I suddenly realized... my relationship with the Fool's Dream was, in a way, quite similar to my relationship with the Academy Dean. What a strange coincidence.
"Sister Xiao Han, I was the one who begged Sister Yulan."
"Yes, yes! If you're going to be angry, please just punish us. I was the one who asked Sister Yulan..."
"That's right, Sister Yulan only agreed because she had no choice."
Following my words, the other Fool's Dream nearby began to speak up in Yulan's defense. Even Yu Yun and Yu Guo stepped forward to plead for her.
"Alright, alright~ I'm not blaming any of you," I said as I stood back up. "If you want to come over and play next time, just come. I was just a little surprised this time."
As soon as they received my permission, their tension and worry vanished instantly. The Fool's Dream truly were quite simple in that regard.
I picked up Yulan and sat her on the edge of a nearby coffee table while I leaned back against the sofa cushions. I asked curiously, "Yulan, were you teaching them Runology just now? What made you think of doing that?"
"Mm-hmm. It wasn't my idea at first. They wanted me to go out and play with them, but I remembered what you said, Sister Xiao Han—that I needed to study hard so I could be of help to you. So, I said no."
"Then they asked what I was doing. I told them I was studying, and that I wanted to become very strong so I could help Sister Xiao Han! Then they all decided they wanted to study too. I couldn't talk them out of it, so I asked for your blessing. Yu Yun, Yu Guo, and I—the three of us asked together. The response from the Knowledge Shadow was that it was perfectly fine to teach them..."
"I see. Since the Knowledge Shadow thought it was the right thing to do, you should have pursued it with determination. Why would I blame you? You didn't need to apologize to me at all," I said with a smile and a nod.
I hadn't paid much attention to this before, but now that I had the information, I understood.
After comforting Yulan and the others, I began making arrangements for the Fool's Dream. They couldn't just stay in the living room forever. The villa had plenty of rooms, and I could easily set up a proper place for them to study.
I had come here today to bond with Yulan and the others. Their study progress was clearly recorded within the Leaves of Knowledge, but I had already phased those out. I was trying to find a way to let the Fool's Dream use the Great Knowledge Seed.
However, giving the Great Knowledge Seed to a Fool's Dream presented many challenges. The main one being... the Fool's Dream were not "true" living beings. Could they even open a Sea of Consciousness?
The Fool's Dream were not a race recognized by the Void. They had no power system of their own and, naturally, no ability to dominate transcendent energy. How could they possibly harness energy to nurture a Great Knowledge Seed?
These were significant hurdles, but I was confident I could solve them in time.
As I attempted to adapt the Great Knowledge Seed for the Fool's Dream, more problems began to pile up.
The area I understood the least was research related to "Life." I had searched the academy library, but the books I found didn't contain the information I was looking for.
So, I went back to looking for data on the Sea of Consciousness or the Sea of Spirit.
The Fool's Dream did possess their own mental power. As long as they had mental power, it meant there was a possibility of opening a Sea of Consciousness.
After searching through the records and finding little of use, I decided to just dive in and experiment.
I looked at the seeds I had nurtured overnight. Excluding the one I had set aside for Teacher Ji Niang, I had a few left.
Currently, my rate of condensation was about one seed every half-day or so. That was the normal efficiency without excessive consumption.
However, I could condense multiple Great Knowledge Seeds simultaneously. After all, the ability to condense seeds came from the Tree of Great Knowledge itself—an effect produced after developing [Transcendent Knowledge]. The Tree of Great Knowledge acted as the body of a "plant lifeform," and nurturing seeds was a natural reproductive instinct. What I was doing now was simply accelerating the efficiency of that process, essentially modifying the tree's reproductive method.
After explaining the effects of the Knowledge Seed to Yulan and the others, and my plan to replace the Leaves of Knowledge currently inside them, they happily accepted my proposal.
But after the initial attempt, I was—unsurprisingly—stopped by a situation I hadn't anticipated.
The Fool's Dream... I should have realized sooner.
The essence of a Fool's Dream was that of a dream creature. Their cute appearances were merely shells for them to act in reality. Their mental power was still a product of dream consciousness, fundamentally different from that of a normal human.
Therefore, the "Sea of Consciousness" opened by a Fool's Dream... I preferred to call it a Dream Space, a Dream Sea, or Dream Consciousness. Regardless, I couldn't find any records of such a thing in the witch academy's library, so I had to figure it all out on my own.
The problem I was facing now was that the Dream Sea opened by a Fool's Dream was not a suitable environment to host a Great Knowledge Seed. This was an objective fact I had observed.
I worked late into the night. With Yulan's cooperation, I even modified the Great Knowledge Seed, using my basic understanding of biology to add an "endosperm" structure.
In truth, this was designed specifically for cases like the Fool's Dream, who lacked transcendent energy to nourish the seed. The "endosperm" was essentially a spell structure that stored compressed, high-energy mana. Technically, it wasn't very difficult to create.
But even so, I concluded that the Dream Sea was not suitable for nurturing the seed. Under the nourishment of the high-energy mana, the Great Knowledge Seed sprouted quickly, but it was unable to take root and establish a connection with the host's consciousness the way it would in a Sea of Consciousness.
Even with an ample supply of mana, the seed continued to wither.
It was as if a seed removed from the soil was destined to die.
It was an apt metaphor. But did a seed truly need soil?
Perhaps people in the past thought so, but with the advancement of technology, soilless cultivation—hydroponics—had emerged.
The Main World didn't seem to have developed or popularized such technology, but I had seen it in my previous life.
While hydroponics didn't directly solve my current predicament, my sharp intuition drew some inspiration from it. The inspiration was... vague, requiring constant conceptual deduction and flashes of insight to produce a truly effective solution.
"Um... Sister Xiao Han... are we useless? We can't help at all..." Seeing me lost in thought, Yulan, Yu Yun, and Yu Guo approached me, looking dejected.
"It's not your fault," I said, leaning down to comfort them. "We've just hit a snag. We'll overcome it. When you run into trouble, there's no need to be sad or discouraged, and you certainly shouldn't doubt yourselves."
This was just a perfectly normal failure. While this failure was many times more difficult than the ones I faced when first researching the Great Knowledge Seed, I firmly believed I was a genius. I wouldn't belittle myself.
"Mm... okay..." The Fool's Dream nodded.
But their low spirits didn't lift. It seemed this had really affected them. After all, the first thing I tried to do for them after being away for so long had ended in failure. Naturally, it was a blow to them.
Therefore... this time, I would absolutely overcome this obstacle and bring these Fool's Dream a massive success!
I needed to understand one thing: there are always many paths to a solution. Solving a problem doesn't require me to find the "optimal" solution right away; rather, the first spark of inspiration I reach is often the method that best fits my way of thinking.
I was currently pioneering an unknown path, not racing against anyone. Speed and efficiency weren't my primary concerns. My only concern was to use every means possible to move... forward!
I firmly believed in that concept that had suddenly come to mind: "hydroponics." It gave me a faint, flickering inspiration. If the Sea of Consciousness was the soil for planting, and the Dream Sea was empty air, then did a "water" medium exist? Something that would allow the roots to extend, nutrients to be absorbed, and a connection to the host's consciousness to be forged?
I pondered for a long time before reaching an answer: yes, it existed.
If the Fool's Dream wanted to transcend their nature as dream creatures and become a race recognized by the Void, what was the first step they had to take?
Or rather... what was the first step I had taken for them?
I had severed their nightmares. That was equivalent to removing impurities.
And then?
I had used the... Great Wisdom Enlightenment Art on them!
At that moment, my mind sank into my own Sea of Consciousness.
Within that void, the massive Tree of Great Knowledge stood tall.
I looked at the reflection of the Tree of Great Wisdom Enlightenment beneath my feet, my gaze turning vacant once more.
"Tell me... what exactly is that Sea of Consciousness reflected beneath the Tree of Great Knowledge?" I asked softly.
"Who knows? Perhaps it’s the Dream Sea," the Knowledge Shadow suddenly appeared before me, her voice carrying a hint of a smile. "Why not try it and find out?"