2 pieces from Tales of the Marvelous — each retold in modern English and traced to its source.
The companion to the pillow-dream, and a wry ancestor of isekai. Drunk under an old pagoda tree, Chunyu Fen is carried into the Kingdom of Huai'an, marries a princess, and governs a province for twenty years — then wakes to find the whole kingdom was an ant colony among the roots of the tree.
The 1,200-year-old ancestor of every 'lived a whole other life' story. At a roadside inn a discontented young man borrows a Daoist's porcelain pillow, sleeps, and lives an entire ambitious lifetime — high office, disgrace, wealth, sons, old age, death — then wakes before the innkeeper's millet has finished cooking. The transmigration tale that started them all.