sechel83, is the source of your story the Rayatz’s Memoirs aka Likkutei Dibburim?
If so, I have already written in earlier threads that the stories therein are allegorical, as I have proven from the fictitious story about the sundial.
That, by the way, is not being disparaging. The Rayatz, I imagine, felt that to keep the chassidim strong in the times of Czarist persecution he had to teach lessons and hashkafa through “chassidic fiction”. Much in the same way that R Meir (Marcus) Lehman embellished his historical works of fiction in order to keep the youth in Germany attached to Torah and Mitzvos.