Spicy Dream

Song He fell silent in shock for a moment. "Could it also be a malfunction?"

"Yes, it could also be a malfunction."

"Have you looked at the overflow data?"

"There's too little for now. The personnel stationed on the moon are putting Xuanzhu through intensive training. Once enough data has been gathered, they'll send it to us." As Xiang Xiaotong spoke, she pulled out several more sheets of paper.

Song He took them and flipped through them. There really was too little data to tell anything yet. If a supercomputer could talk in its sleep, the data on these few pages was roughly equivalent to one bout of sleep-talking. Some brilliant psychologists could diagnose someone by listening to their sleep-talk, but Song He's cultivation was not there yet.

"There's another piece of bad news," Xiang Xiaotong said. "Intelligence indicates that the Lighthouse Aerospace Bureau recently signed a pile of contracts with private rocket companies. They're sending liquid payloads to the Lunar Base in enormous quantities, marked as explosives."

"The intelligence system is stepping up its investigation into exactly what kind of explosive liquid it is. Hopefully, it isn't a leak of Explosives Diatom technology."

"The security measures around Explosives Diatom are extremely strict." Song He remained calm. "I'm inclined to think it's fuel or liquid explosives. They want to expand their lunar base, after all, and they'll need explosives to blast through the strata."

"They were constantly doing blasting work before. They either used solid explosives or explosive slurry, sending solid powders up and mixing them with oily solutions to make liquid explosives, like making juice from concentrate and water," Xiang Xiaotong explained.

"But this time, they've broken pattern and are sending explosive liquids straight up?" Song He caught on. "That is a little suspicious. Still, we can't guess the answer by blindly speculating. We can only wait for news from intelligence."

Xiang Xiaotong nodded and looked through the documents on the desk. Clearly, she had only just received the news herself and had not finished reading it.

"All the signs are escalating. Will there be a major war this year?" Song He asked worriedly.

"I don't know. I think there's an important sign for predicting when a lunar war will begin." Xiang Xiaotong paused. "Launching supercomputers!"

Song He suddenly understood. "Exactly. If they want to fight, they need decent supercomputers. The Russians' and the Lighthouse's supercomputers are still being upgraded. Once both sides launch their new supercomputers, war won't be far off."

On the fourth day of the Lunar New Year, at the Brain Institute Experimental Building.

Song He paced back and forth through the corridor, his gaze sweeping over one laboratory after another.

Every lab presented the same scene: rows of folding recliners, volunteers lying on them with their heads covered by pristine Dream Control Helmets, their hands and feet twitching from time to time.

The volunteers Song He had asked Wei Liqun for had all arrived today, putting him in an excellent mood. The Black Technology Blueprint required ten thousand experiments, and with hundreds of volunteers working at once, they should finish quickly!

Of course, ten thousand was merely an estimate. The real requirement was successfully creating all sorts of dream elements: sight, sound, touch, smell, taste, plus emotion.

Song He carried a notebook in his hand. On its last page was a long checklist listing every dream element that needed to be created. Whenever one was completed, he would tick it off and write down the date and laboratory number beside it, then distribute rewards based on merit later.

When he reached the laboratory at the end of the corridor and looked inside—

He happened to see Xiang Xiaotong remove her Dream Control Helmet. Her face was completely red, her skin alarmingly crimson, as if she had suffered some kind of allergic reaction.

Song He hurriedly pushed open the door and entered. Several white-coated staff also rushed over to surround Dean Xiang.

"What happened to you?" Song He asked in surprise. "You're red like a boiled crab."

"It's spicy!" Xiang Xiaotong put on a mask of agony. "It was so spicy I nearly broke down! Where's the spray? Hurry!"

A white-coated staff member immediately handed her an aerosol can. Xiang Xiaotong snatched it and sprayed it over her neck and arms.

In reality, skin turned red when it came into contact with chili peppers because capsaicin was absorbed through the skin, stimulating the nerves, dilating blood vessels, and causing localized congestion.

Unexpectedly, the Dream Control Helmet worked just as well. By directly deceiving the brain, it could also cause blood vessels throughout the body to dilate.

It seemed the helmet still carried risks. The brain's misjudgments could trigger the body's automatic regulatory responses, and if those responses went too far, trouble could easily follow.

"Then the spicy category passes, right?" Song He opened to the final page of his notebook and prepared to tick it off.

"No, no!" Xiang Xiaotong repeatedly waved her hands.

"Professor, you're red like a spicy crayfish. How could this not pass?" Song He froze.

Xiang Xiaotong said nothing more. She truly could not bear the heat any longer, and tears were nearly spilling from her eyes. "It was spicy in the wrong place! Wait a moment, I need to spray my body."

She got up and ran to the restroom, presumably intending to strip naked in a stall and spray herself all over.

After waiting for ages without seeing her return, Song He's impatience flared. He lay down directly, grabbed a Dream Control Helmet, and said, "Give me the mildly spicy set!"

"Dean Xiang just had the mildly spicy set too," a white-coated staff member kindly warned him.

"That was mildly spicy?" Song He was stunned. "That's ridiculous! How could mildly spicy make her turn red all over? What did you do?"

"Boss, you wrote the instructions," the white-coated staff member said weakly.

Song He was left speechless. He really had to take the blame for this one.

No one else knew how to write the instructions; only he did. Yesterday, he had spent the entire day writing hundreds of different commands and saving them to the computer. They could be run with a single click.

Naturally, the commands he wrote were also estimates, and the actual results could easily deviate. The point of the experiment was to test whether the commands worked, then revise them according to the actual data and experience.

"Cut the signal strength in half. Let's do it." Song He put on the helmet.

He closed his eyes, and his consciousness quickly blurred.

He had not slept last night. He was exhausted precisely so that he could test the helmet's command effects again and again today.

After each kind of dream element was successfully created, he needed to experience it personally before ticking it off. Thus, he needed to fall asleep over and over.

After a brief blur of consciousness, the sound of cars rose beside his ears.

Song He opened his eyes and immediately realized he had entered a dream!

An endless desert of rolling yellow sand stretched before him. An off-road vehicle sped across the dunes, driven by none other than Xie Yuanxun. Xie Yuanxun looked terrified, his foot pressed to the floor on the accelerator!

Song He sat in the passenger seat and glanced back. The Honeycomb Drone was still sitting on the backseat.

Every dream setting seemed to be an environment experienced in reality. This dream was clearly a memory of when he and Xie Yuanxun had worked on drones together, with the off-road vehicle racing through the Badain Jaran Desert.

Except this time, they were here to test the sensation of spiciness in dreams... What did a desert have to do with spicy food?

The car jolted violently, making Song He feel like vomiting. He could not help saying, "Slow down, slow down! What's the rush?"

"What nonsense are you talking about? It's about to rain! What if we get stuck out here?" Xie Yuanxun cursed as he floored the accelerator. "We have to get back to the dormitory to save our lives!"

Song He was about to say that a little rain was nothing to fear when he looked up at the sky outside the window and was stunned.

Thunderclouds covered the entire desert, growing thicker and more turbulent.

But instead of gray-black, the clouds were dark red!

Blood-red clouds gathered high overhead, blanketing the entire sky. The heavens were so red that they looked like they had caught fire!

"Why are the clouds red?!" Song He was dumbfounded.

A peal of thunder rolled out, lightning split the clouds apart, and then torrential rain came pouring down in an instant!

"We're finished!" Xie Yuanxun cried out in despair.

Song He saw the raindrops on the window clearly and cried out in despair as well. "Now I know why Xiang Xiaotong was red all over—it was this!"