Pressure from the Starry Sky

Pressure from the Starry Sky

"Grandpa, get some rest early."

"Doctor Liang is such a good person. How could something like this happen to her? You can look at the moon without fainting now because Doctor Liang took such good care of you."

"Good people will be rewarded. She'll definitely be fine."

"Sigh, Xu'er, you should get some rest early too."

"Yes, I'll go to bed after I wash the dishes."

Huang Ji had already returned home. Grandpa learned from him that Doctor Liang had been kidnapped, and he was anxious and upset, both bewildered and worried.

But there was nothing they could do. The police would investigate the matter. The old man could only pray that Doctor Liang would return safely.

Huang Ji helped Grandpa fetch water to wash his feet, supported him into bed, then went to clean up all the dishes in the kitchen.

After finishing all that, he walked into the courtyard and looked up at the sky. Grandpa's snoring was already audible beside him.

Grandpa had fallen asleep in the time it took to wash the dishes.

"Why... do I have to sense so much..."

Huang Ji stared at the moon, his expression growing complicated—helpless and despairing, yet with a trace of relief amid that despair.

Such a complicated expression was something he, who had once been mildly intellectually disabled, had never possessed before.

He had finally awakened.

Ever since he had fallen unconscious three days ago, his intelligence had recovered to the level of an ordinary person.

Perhaps he had never had an ordinary intellectual developmental disorder to begin with.

Ever since he was young, the world he saw had been different from everyone else's.

The world before his eyes was like an enormous database! Complex information was everywhere. Some of it remained unchanged, while some constantly shifted.

He had no idea what it was. Every flower and blade of grass, every bird and insect, every wisp of breeze, every cup of clear water revealed itself to him, as if every piece of data within them had been laid bare.

Yet he could not understand it.

Information would not automatically make him understand concepts he did not comprehend. For example, when he did not understand the concept of "age," information related to a tree's age was simply chaotic.

Only after Huang Ji understood the concept of age, understood what "years, months, and days" meant, understood that "a tree should have an age," and understood concepts such as "how long it has been since this tree was a seed,"

could he perceive a small part of that tree's information as "Age: seven years, three months, twenty days, nine hours, forty-four minutes, and one second..."

That information continued changing every moment.

By the same logic, he could sense the tree's species, volume, mass, how many molecules it contained at that very moment... how much water it had absorbed, how many fruits it had borne, the time it first sprouted after being planted, and every time it had borne fruit. It was like a historical record.

There was simply far too much information like this.

He could even know who had planted the tree, how many people had touched it, and how many insects had gnawed on it—such strange and bizarre information.

It was precisely because he possessed this inborn, extraordinary ability that he had become intellectually disabled...

Yes, an ability that seemed almost omniscient had instead made him an idiot for sixteen years.

That was because how much specific information he could perceive depended on the scope of his own understanding.

When he had just been born, he understood nothing. The entire world was completely unknown to him, a chaotic mass containing countless pieces of information he could not possibly comprehend.

This perceptive ability was too powerful—so powerful that it was unimaginably cruel for an infant.

Countless inexplicable, incomprehensible pieces of information flooded his senses and thoughts.

Under such circumstances, he became incredibly slow and dull-witted. His memory was terrible, and so was his eyesight.

Or rather, his so-called poor eyesight was because too much information blocked his vision—chaotic and complex, filled with countless indescribable things...

As for intelligence tests and reaction tests, he was even more confused. He did not even know what the doctors wanted him to do... In the doctors' eyes, that was an intellectual defect.

In truth, he was extremely intelligent. By the age of four or five, he could understand the concept of "parents," understand that he should learn to speak... understand that what he saw differed from what others saw...

Yes, being able to understand such things at four or five years old was already a miracle.

Teaching a child what father was, what mother was, what drinking milk was, what white was, what yellow was... took only a few repetitions and a little patience.

Because humans were simply that intelligent.

Yet for an exception like him, it was difficult. Father? Mother?

One mass of chaotic information pointed at another mass of chaotic information and said that this was Mother, then pointed at yet another mass of chaotic information and said that this was Grandpa...

The fact that he could understand was truly a miracle.

When the world someone saw differed from everyone else's, coming to know that world became incredibly difficult.

It was like teaching a blind person what purple was... what red was...

The young Huang Ji had been no different from a blind person.

Fortunately, as his body and brain developed, his control over his ability grew stronger and stronger.

At the age of four, he began to understand how to rein in the information spreading before him and block out by default the things he could not understand.

Of course, he could only block out a small portion of it, but at least he was no longer completely unable to see "the world others saw."

Afterward, the more mature his body became, the more he could block out.

Besides unknown information, as Huang Ji's understanding broadened, he could also block out information he had already understood.

That was also why, when he visited a doctor at the age of four and a half, he could be assessed as having an IQ of fifty.

Yes, if Grandpa had not believed the fortune-teller and had taken him to see a doctor when he was one, then he would not merely have been assessed as having an IQ of fifty and mild intellectual disability...

He would have been assessed as a complete idiot...

And his eyesight would not have been 0.2 either. He would have been considered blind... or rather, half-blind, barely able to perceive light.

Conversely, even with his thoughts dulled by the suppression of massive amounts of information, he could still be assessed as having an IQ of fifty, and he could communicate with people at the age of five. Perhaps that meant he was actually a genius...

There had never been anything wrong with his eyesight.

Everything was difficult at the beginning. As he understood more concepts, learned about a wider range of things, and his body matured further, his control over his ability became stronger.

The information was constantly being reined in. Huang Ji's intelligence gradually recovered, and his mind grew lighter and lighter.

By junior high school, his IQ had actually recovered to sixty and had begun recovering at an accelerating rate.

The reason his grades were so terrible was that forcing himself to think under the impact of all that information overworked his brain. His head would always ache as though it were splitting apart, leaving him unable to continue studying and sometimes even causing him to faint.

In truth, he loved learning, because knowledge could ease his symptoms.

The more things he understood, the more information he could actively block out, freeing more mental space that had been occupied by useless data.

After giving up the Junior High School Entrance Examination and returning home, freed from his heavy schoolwork, his learning became more flexible instead.

He observed the world and sought to understand it. He sat in the fields and pondered, stood by the roadside listening to people's idle chatter, and watched the various concepts being spread on television.

This gave him more time to digest and sort through simple common knowledge.

Yes, common knowledge! Things that other people might have understood when they were only a few years old.

Only after learning all the basic logic could he go on to learn knowledge.

Thus, the half year he had spent idling at home had actually been the most important half year in his return to normal.

Now, ever since he awoke from his last fainting spell, he could finally block out the vast majority of the information that ordinary people could neither see nor perceive.

The development of his body determined how much incomprehensible information could be reined in and blocked out.

The understanding of his mind determined how much comprehensible information could be reined in.

With far less impact and suppression from information and data, Huang Ji's intelligence had recovered to the level of an ordinary person, or perhaps something even better?

Now, he could block or reveal the information of all things in the world. Whatever he wanted to understand, so long as it was something he could comprehend, he could directly retrieve and query with his consciousness.

When he did not wish to investigate anything, the land and village, the crowds, mountains, and waters before him basically looked as they did to ordinary people.

"Except for the starry sky..." Huang Ji sighed.

Besides seeing information with his eyes, he could also experience information through hearing, touch, and smell.

Combined, these formed a unique perception he called Information Sense.

The information Huang Ji could now block out was merely the various kinds of information within human society. Once he raised his head and gazed at the starry sky, he would feel an immense flood of information assaulting his mind.

That was why, in the past, every time he looked up at the stars, his head would ache as though it were splitting apart, and he would even faint.

Every star in the sky contained an enormous amount of information. He could block out a star's ordinary information. For example, the sun was a very simple celestial body, and Huang Ji had been able to block out its information when he was six.

Yet even now, at sixteen, Huang Ji still could not block out planets with civilizations...

Yes... civilizations!

There were countless civilizations among the stars. At least among those he could sense, there were civilizations capable of living on stars!

Living stars, civilized stars—the light they emitted toward Earth and that he received contained information countless times more complex than sunlight!

More importantly, after he blocked out all kinds of information conceptually similar to the sun, the stars still contained a great deal of information he could not understand.

Fortunately, he only received the weakened light transmitted from civilized stars, rather than directly observing those civilizations at close range.

So once Huang Ji understood what stars were, what civilization was, and what aliens were, he could shut out more than half of the information from the stars.

But in the end, at sixteen, he still could not block it all out. The stars still unfolded far too much incomprehensible information before him.

Perhaps he needed to continue developing, needed a stronger body and a more developed brain.

In other words, even now, his mind remained in a state of being "forced into dullness." Whenever he thought about anything, he endured the pressure of information.

Even during the day, beneath these double pupils, he could sense information from the starry sky. It was merely much weaker than at night.

Huang Ji's IQ was being suppressed by the entire starry sky!

Even now, he was not at his most relaxed.