The New Generation Dreamscape!

Lu Geng glanced at the phone lying on the lectern, and his expression turned solemn!

The degree of his transformation was like a believer suddenly witnessing a deity manifest, or a loyal old minister suddenly seeing the emperor's carriage!

"Everyone, please wait a moment. I have an important call to take!" Lu Geng removed the tiny microphone from beside his ear, picked up his phone, and put on a slightly ingratiating smile. "Hello, Teacher?"

The students throughout the classroom immediately held their breath. Seeing Teacher Lu's expression, they could more or less guess that the call had to be from Dean Song!

Hundreds of curious gazes focused on the lectern as Lu Geng turned slightly away.

"Oh, right, you're teaching at this time?" Song He's voice came through the phone. As always, his memory was excellent; he had every teacher's schedule in the entire academy memorized.

"No problem, no problem. Go ahead! We're having an in-class test here, and the students are all doing their papers!" Lu Geng lied without batting an eye.

The students throughout the classroom cooperated perfectly. No one laughed aloud, and quite a few deliberately found papers to flip through, creating the background sound of turning exam sheets in a testing hall.

"There's a small task. As the person in charge of the academy's publicity, find some time to handle it. Wei Liqun will help with this too." Song He explained, "Second Generation Teacher Bai is almost ready. I just finished training Teacher Bai in basketball. Its skill level crushed professional teams, but directly publicizing that wouldn't have much impact. We need to take a roundabout approach and make the publicity more sensational. I'm planning to hold a basketball tournament with an astronomical prize. The championship prize will be fifty billion!"

"Have every reputable basketball team in the world sign up. Eliminate them round by round, and finally select the strongest team. The Former University of Science and Technology should also put together several teams from its various colleges to participate. When we hold the New Product Launch Event in July, have the strongest team play a globally livestreamed match against Teacher Bai's team as the opening program!"

"I've already shot a short video here. It shows five Teacher Bais shooting baskets. Post it on your video account today as a warm-up. We can arrange the subsequent matches slowly; there's still plenty of time."

"Got it, got it!" Lu Geng agreed repeatedly. "I guarantee I'll complete the task!"

The call ended, and the students throughout the classroom were extremely curious. A murmur of whispered discussion spread everywhere.

Lu Geng lowered his head and tapped at his phone, fiddling with it while temporarily leaving the class aside.

"Teacher, what did the dean want with you?" one student finally asked.

The whole classroom immediately erupted in laughter. Someone had spoken first, and the others grew bolder, firing off questions from all directions.

"Don't get restless, don't get restless!" Lu Geng couldn't help laughing. He put away his phone and picked up a piece of chalk. "I scheduled the post. You'll know when you check my video account during lunch! Now, let's continue the lesson!"

Song He and Xiang Xiaotong returned to the Dream Control Helmet laboratory.

They arrived at exactly the right time. The Red-haired Gorillas lying throughout the room stirred slightly, and the indicator lights on their Dream Control Helmets changed as they were released from their dream states one after another.

At last, the first Red-haired Gorilla removed its helmet and began breathing deeply, its expression filled with shock.

"How was it?" Song He walked over and asked. "Was everything normal? Was it any different from before?"

"I don't know." The Red-haired Gorilla shook its head, looking somewhat dazed.

Although they had been volunteers for a long time, the Red-haired Gorillas still entered a period of dullness after leaving the dream each time. Their eyes went unfocused, making normal communication difficult, while their expressions revealed an impossible-to-hide shock. This was a condition the old-version helmet had never caused.

"Nothing went wrong, right?" Song He had no choice but to ask. "Was there any obvious abnormality?"

"No, no!" The Red-haired Gorilla began grinning foolishly. "I... I saw her again!"

Song He's head filled with question marks. Xiang Xiaotong struggled to hold back her laughter, while the Child Prodigies behind them burst out laughing.

More and more Red-haired Gorillas removed their helmets. Every one of them looked dazed, still immersed in shock and unable to pull themselves out of it. They looked as if they were only a step away from drooling.

Song He was somewhat baffled. Logically speaking, no matter how shocking something was, after experiencing it continuously for several months, they shouldn't still lose control like this. Could it be a cultural difference? Many humans habitually tried to maintain a more dignified appearance, keeping their excitement inside instead of showing it on their faces. The Red-haired Gorilla volunteers were relatively young, so perhaps the slightest emotion made them willing to express it in an exaggerated way?

Regardless, at least these volunteers weren't displaying abnormal reactions. Their shock was the shock of positive emotions, so there shouldn't be any problem.

Song He and Xiang Xiaotong sat down in the prepared chairs and each picked up a helmet.

"Should I go in first and scout the way? I'll call you in afterward?" Song He was a little uneasy and looked at his wife.

"What are you being cowardly for?" Xiang Xiaotong immediately fastened the helmet over her head and reclined.

Song He laughed at himself, then put on his helmet and reclined as well.

His consciousness gradually blurred, then recovered its clarity!

Entering a dream with the old-version Dream Control Helmet generally took several minutes, but Dream Control Helmet 3 was faster. Song He felt that only half a minute had passed. He even suspected that his consciousness recovering its clarity did not mean he had entered a dream at all, but that he had simply woken up again.

He hesitantly opened his eyes. The instant he did, he realized that he had truly entered the dream. Before him stretched boundless darkness!

With a soft sound, light shone down from above!

White light enveloped Song He, leaving a white circle on the dark floor.

He lowered his head and looked around. He was wearing a simple, pure-white tracksuit and sitting in a brown leather chair. In front of him was a pale-yellow wooden table, with a questionnaire on it, a pencil and eraser resting on top.

You are experiencing the Dream City test version of Dream Control Helmet 3. Its functions are not yet complete. We apologize for any unpleasant experiences and ask that you provide us with feedback.

Before entering the test version of Dream City, please complete the following initial settings. Simply check the boxes with the pencil.

Song He picked up the pencil and looked down. They were all small questions, each with selectable boxes numbered from 1 to 10 underneath.

1. Please set the clarity of near-object vision. The higher the value, the clearer the vision.

Note: The higher the clarity, the greater the signal requirements. Physical energy will be consumed faster in Dream City, requiring more meals to maintain your strength. It may also reduce sleep quality, leaving you more exhausted after waking.

Warning: If you choose a clarity level of 8 or above, do not build a residence in Dream City that is too similar to your real-life home. At minimum, set up clear and conspicuous markers to distinguish the dream from reality.

Song He checked "10" without hesitation.

As soon as he finished, another white light descended from beside him!

A small wooden table appeared next to him, with a pot of emerald-green plants sitting on top.

Song He picked up the pot and examined it closely. He was immediately stunned by the extreme clarity!

The entire plant resembled a miniature Red Mangrove Forest. Dense branches and aerial roots stood everywhere, while countless sesame-sized leaves formed a lush canopy!

This was not a native plant of Earth, but the appearance of an alien plant calculated by a student of the Interstellar Exploration Academy. It was lifelike, yet carried a trace of otherworldly bewitchment.

When he leaned closer, he could see the veins on every sesame-green leaf. He could even see the fine fuzz covering the leaves. The hairs were so tiny that an ant could use them as handkerchiefs, yet every single one of the tens of thousands was rendered with perfect clarity!

Amazing! The texture was like that of a top-tier work of art!

If this thing had been a jade-carved ornament, its sheer fineness would have been enough to sell it for nine figures at an auction!

Song He reached out to touch the tiny leaves, but then noticed his own fingers.

The faint, shallow lines on his skin were crystal clear. He could even count the rings in his fingerprints. Tiny, uneven reflections shimmered across his nails. When he clenched his fist, the raised veins and joints on the back of his hand, along with the changing red and white hues of his palm, were all visible!

"Holy crap!" He couldn't help swearing.

This was too realistic!

It even felt more realistic than looking at his own hand in reality! After all, his eyesight had declined somewhat from overusing his eyes to read books and data in real life. But here, looking at the skin of his palm didn't feel like looking through a magnifying glass. It was practically a microscope!

He looked at the questionnaire, then had a sudden thought. He used the eraser to remove the checkmark from 10, then checked 1 instead.

In an instant, the scene before him became completely blurred.

It was like watching a video when the membership expired halfway through, with the image quality dropping from 4K to standard smooth playback.

It was like using eye drops before they had dried. Everything on the table became hazy, the tiny leaves in the pot disappeared and turned into a green cloud, and the fingerprints on his fingers were smoothed away. The skin became flat and lifeless, devoid of detail. The writing on the questionnaire even seemed to have lost resolution. The drop was brutally severe!

Song He erased the checkmark after 1 and began trying each level from 2 onward. At clarity level 4, it felt more or less the same as the old-version Dream Control Helmet. When he changed it back to level 10, he couldn't help marveling again. Top-tier image quality was indeed excessively clear!

For a couple of seconds, he actually felt somewhat dazed. The near-object image quality at level 10 was so clear that he couldn't tell he was in a dream at all! Were there dreams more realistic than reality?

2. Please set the clarity of distant-object vision. The higher the value, the clearer the vision.

Note: The higher the clarity, the greater the signal requirements. Physical energy will be consumed faster in Dream City, requiring more meals to maintain your strength. It may also reduce sleep quality, leaving you more exhausted after waking.

Song He first checked 1.

He raised his head. In the boundless darkness ahead, a glimmer of light suddenly appeared, but it was too far away to make out any details. Even its distance was difficult to judge.

He erased the checkmark after 1 and checked 10 instead.

The bizarre effect appeared immediately. His vision was as if he had put on a telescope. The distant light became clear. It was another white lamp illuminating a small wooden table, with a pear sitting on top.

Song He estimated that the pear was at least a kilometer away, yet he could actually tell that there was a pear on the table!

With such heaven-defying distant vision, he truly had eagle eyes. Humans absolutely had no such eyesight in reality. It was like looking down at a grassland from several hundred meters in the air and being able to see a fist-sized rabbit in the grass, or standing two intersections away and making out a passerby's facial features!

The first two settings on the questionnaire made his hair stand on end. He had already known that the combination of Dream Control Helmet 3 and the Second Generation Brain-Mimicking Supercomputer could multiply sensory clarity several times over, but data was merely data. Only experiencing it personally allowed him to directly understand how outrageous it was!

If these two questions could also be set to level 10 in reality, the gaokao would be impossible to administer. A test taker in the front row could flip over their answer sheet, and a test taker in the last row would easily be able to see every option on it! Each exam room would have to contain only one student, or screens would have to be placed between the students!

3. Please set auditory sensitivity.

Note: The higher the auditory sensitivity, the greater the signal requirements. Physical energy will be consumed faster in Dream City, requiring more meals to maintain your strength. It may also reduce sleep quality, leaving you more exhausted after waking.

Warning: "Zhong Kanfu once suffered from excessive hearing. He heard ants moving beneath his bed and thought it was oxen fighting."

Song He grew a little nervous when he saw the warning.

The so-called oxen fighting beneath the bed referred to an old man whose body had grown weak while his hearing had become abnormally sharp. Lying in bed, he heard ants crawling beneath it and felt that the noise was as loud as oxen battling.

The anecdote came from the bizarre Book of Jin. The Book of Jin was an oddity among historical records. It stuffed all kinds of absurd accounts of supernatural phenomena inside without verification. Compared to it, Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio could practically be considered a work that respected science. It was also quite possible that these records had been left behind in hallucinations after people got high on the popular Five Minerals Powder at the time.

In normal reality, experiencing oxen fighting beneath the bed was absolutely impossible. But now, in a dream, it was suddenly within reach!

Song He took a deep breath and checked 10!

The instant he finished, he heard a clear thumping sound, like someone lightly pounding on a table with a fist. It continued without pause!

It took him several seconds to realize that the sound was his own heartbeat!

The knocking sound was accompanied by the whoosh of strong wind, the sound of air being drawn through his nostrils. It sounded like a car speeding along a highway with the windows open!

He subconsciously inhaled hard through his nose. The sound suddenly intensified, like a carrier-based aircraft preparing to take off!

He hurriedly erased the checkmark after 10. The sound of the eraser rubbing against the paper was even more frightening, like a bulldozer driving straight toward him!

After trying repeatedly, he found that auditory sensitivity above 8 was utterly outrageous. The chirping of crickets could be amplified to the level of a tiger's roar and a dragon's cry. It wasn't until he lowered it to around 5 that it felt normal.

No, this setting had to be cut, or at least every option above 6 had to be removed. Apart from torturing people and causing psychological trauma, they served no purpose whatsoever.

4. Please set tactile sensitivity.

Tactile sensitivity will include two aspects: the absolute threshold and the difference threshold.

The absolute threshold refers to how much dust must fall onto your hand before you can notice that there is dust.

The difference threshold refers to how much dust must be added to or removed from your hand before you can notice that the amount of dust has changed.

Note: Excessively high tactile sensitivity will intensify pain and the sensation of spiciness.

Song He was honest this time. He didn't go to the extreme and choose 10, instead trying values above and below 5.

He quickly reached a conclusion. This setting could also be cut. It was better to continue using the previous tactile sensations. In particular, since the tactile setting affected the sensation of spiciness, it would influence the flavor of food throughout Dream City's catering industry. This setting would be closely tied to money!

The fifth setting was smell, and the sixth was taste. Song He tried them carefully, then decided to cut them all. There was no need to put unnecessary settings in front of customers.

The seventh setting was even more interesting!