The process of Hao Ren seeing through the truth of L'Haronne was even more complicated than he had let on because intuition and hyper-senses were difficult to explain using mere words. His judgment on the matter was thanks to the experiences he had gained in the past two years. Be it Lockmarton's corruption of reality through the nightmare, or the army-creating Dreamer, the nightmares created by them left a mark on him and allowed his psyche to evolve.
The effect of this slight evolution was his ability to better control his mental powers, and he was especially sensitive to the dissonance caused when entering an illusion or a dream. That dissonance was not perceptible to mortals or even demigods who were not as strong.
Those entering the dream would never realize that they were in one, yet Hao Ren was an exception. He would be very awake in any dream, even when he was in one created by gods.