I very much doubt RJ was being serious in that quote either, he later says that most people have guessed wrong, and also that the 'intuitively obvious' was something one of his professors used to say about things thatw ere not obvious at all. I suspect that quote was intended to be ironic, and I would not suspect Etzel of being deliberately insulting like that (I've argued with him before, after all). But I've asked this question before and don't recall getting an answer.



The problem is not that Slayer hid in Emond's Field, but that Etzel assumes we should know that Slayer can travel through the Dreamworld, as we later learn he does. However, when Perrin fights Slayer in the Dreamworld, they are both outside the Two Rivers, beyond the Tarendrelle, and Perrin shoots Slayer and he disappears. Now, with the assumption that Slayer jumps in and out of the Dreamworld in the flesh, he should have reappeared at that very spot in the real world. But he didn't, he reappeared where he had been sleeping in Emond's Field, just like a Dreamwalker, or Perrin himself.