Seeking Entry to the Fourth Batch of Servers

This was already the second time Zhu Zhengwei had hypnotized someone in reality. He found himself growing more and more skilled, fully mastering his ability over "sleep and dreams."

But this power wasn't invincible.

If it came to a real fight, forget guns—a single knife would be enough to stab him dead. At his core, he was still just an ordinary person who had trained his body for twenty years, slightly stronger than most.

"Still, there's no way they can find the real me. No way they'll know I'm just a freshman at this school."

After all, there was a blind spot in their thinking. Based on their memories, he was a senior who had lived for over a hundred years, older even than their teachers.

Soon, Zhu Zhengwei returned to the school.

He secretly observed the other servers and found that basically everything was fine.

Even that young man Zhang Xia was still feeding his girlfriend during their passionate romance, reeking of love's sour stench, just as always.

"How strange. None of these people have any issues. Why did those old professors alone show abnormalities and remember things from that world?"

Zhu Zhengwei pondered this in his heart, guessing at the reasons behind these elderly men's anomalies.

There were two possibilities.

One: they were too old, their brains no longer clear, making the barrier between dreams and reality less solid, leading to leakage from the dream.

To put it in simpler terms—

An old computer is more likely to malfunction. The memory sticks aren't even stable anymore.

Two: another peculiarity of these old men might be that they had followed Zhang Zhi, who had taken them through some kind of experiment, causing the problem.

"But I lean toward the first possibility."

He took a deep breath, then reconsidered.

"But it's not necessarily limited to the old. Some young people might show anomalies too. After all, humans aren't machines—it's like getting a vaccine; there are always a few abnormal cases with allergic reactions."

This was absolutely not good news.

Even if the anomaly rate was only 0.1%, with a large enough population base, it would still be a huge problem.

"I have to find a way to solve this."

He returned to his dorm, mulling over the path ahead, only to see his two idiot roommates still gaming together in a blackout session.

Zhu Zhengwei watched them speechlessly.

"These two were grinding like crazy from enrollment until now. Now that half of freshman year is over, they've gone limp?"

But thinking about it, they'd just crammed for finals, found out they hadn't failed any courses, and were enjoying a few days of relief. They'd probably relax a bit and then start grinding again.

Knowing their personalities, once the holidays hit, wouldn't they go absolutely wild?

"Hey, you're back? Wanna join?" they said without turning their heads.

"Yeah, I'll play a couple rounds too." Zhu Zhengwei nodded uncharacteristically and played a few games with them to unwind.

"Then we're about to take off!"

"With us, the Crouching Dragon and Hidden Phoenix, plus you as the third-rate advisor, how could we not win?"

"Ah, what a blast!"

But as soon as he joined, they won every match.

And that was with him holding back.

Zhu Zhengwei found that as his spiritual power grew stronger, playing competitive games like this was just a matter of reaction, operation, and awareness—effortless.

"Everything's clicking today!"

The two were still raring to go, calling for more rounds, but Zhu Zhengwei didn't want to play anymore.

He lay down on his bed, staring at the ceiling.

"That world nurtured inside the Dream Egg has already begun its own life evolution, civilization restart, technological revival. The world map is even starting to expand and evolve on its own."

"It's as if a giant Pangu within the dream has fully awakened, swinging his great axe, slaying the three hundred chaotic demons of the dream, and cleaving open the world's giant egg—Pangu Creates the World!"

He himself might be the creator of that world.

Zhu Zhengwei glanced inside the world.

It was very calm, developing slowly.

Zhang Zhi hadn't made any big moves either. It would probably be a while before he came back to write the next diary entry.

"I still need to keep perfecting the world."

Zhu Zhengwei thought it over.

"And developing like this is too slow! Wouldn't Zhang Zhi's Longevity Diary have to keep going for a few hundred years before the next era? I need to find a way to stir up drastic changes in the world and officially push forward the progress of its supernatural civilization."

As for whether this was truly a four-dimensional world born above three-dimensional humans—a four-dimensional human born within human consciousness—that wasn't too important to him right now.

"First, my main goal is still reaping the leeks and increasing the number of servers."

Zhu Zhengwei looked out at the night sky beyond the dorm.

"To build a massive 'Rational World Civilization Sandbox,' I need to seek large-scale development of mining-machine brains! The best way forward is to gradually become the hidden mastermind of the 'Rational World,' lurking beneath the Surface World."

"Secondly, I will try as much as possible not to interfere with the actual course of Earth's history, merely aiming to 'seek mining machines' and 'enrich the species gene bank,' attempting to become a true immortal in reality, witnessing the long march of human civilization."

But as things stand now.

After all, only four hundred servers have been deployed, and they are clearly insufficient.

"I need a new method for 'Miner Recruitment.' Searching one by one is far too tedious and risky."

"I might even cause another 'Legend of the Fierce Man' incident. My next step is to let them spread it themselves—ideally develop a 'Mining Machine Installation Package' that they install for each other, eventually boarding the 'Mobile Internet.'"

Soon, a thought surfaced in his mind:

"This installation package will be called the game Mortal World."

"At the same time, if it's a game, those anomalies who remember fragments of memories will think it's just game memories, thus completely eliminating this Future Trouble."

Zhu Zhengwei knew that players were always the most qualified mining leeks.

But could they get moving and live inside it?

No way!

Miners should just mine obediently; there was no intention of handing out benefits to them.

"Lu Xun once said, a qualified businessman knows how to use a penny's worth of giving to pry open a hundred dollars' worth of profit."

Zhu Zhengwei sprang up like a carp, leaping swiftly from the bed. A bold idea suddenly struck him, and he quickly opened his computer to search for a plan, eventually finding the most convenient scheme:

A Shell Game.

Make a simple VR Real Scene Game.

The specific gameplay flow would be:

"What if I were a lonely leek, watching the scenery by the roadside?"

Simple!

Practical!

This incredibly simple game was like Minesweeper—once you installed and ran it, on the surface you were idly sweeping mines or watching scenery, but in reality, I was using your brain to occupy a large amount of CPU, secretly mining in the background.

Openly repair the plank road while secretly crossing at Chencang.

Very clever.

This preliminary plan was flawless.

"What are you doing? Writing programs again? Getting ready to farm Initial Accounts and fleece the system?"

Soon, Wang Jun noticed Zhu Zhengwei's little moves again. "As expected of you. Count me in, alright?"

Zhu Zhengwei thought for a moment, coughed twice, and said seriously, "By the way, there's a job in the group recently. A big shot said he has a new game for testing. Do you guys want to give it a try?"

"Is there good money?"

"Plenty."

"Then I'm in."

"What type is it? A VR game?"

The two of them immediately exclaimed, "Whoa, a big production?"

VR games, though now the mainstream trend in the gaming industry, were mostly made by major studios.

The realism and graphics were high, but the biggest problem was that playing for too long gave you a headache!

The 3D panoramic visuals were beautiful, but they made you dizzy too easily. How to avoid brain fatigue from visuals was a tough technical problem that remained unresolved.

And this type of game offered little profit for ordinary wool-gatherers, so the two roommates' main battlefield was still old-school console games and mobile games.

Zhu Zhengwei shook his head. "I heard it's not a big production. It's an Immersive Movie Game—you play as a plant and interact in the game."

The two were stunned, then understood.

So it was a story-driven game!

Just watching character plots, interacting, and choosing story branches.

"That works. We've got another job." The two were happy.

"Yeah, our slogan this time is: If we don't burn out, we'll keep grinding! You guys get some sleep first, recharge. I'll ask that big shot another day if he can bring you along." Zhu Zhengwei started coaxing them to sleep again.

Soon, the lights went out and they rested.

Two bubbles appeared before his eyes.

He hadn't touched them before, but now they had their use.

"The first and second batches of 100 servers were absorbed by Zhang Zhi and the others as they died of old age."

"The third batch of three hundred servers was directly slaughtered by the mobs in the chaotic era, seized by them to become the leaders of three major dynasties."

"The fourth batch of servers needs to be deployed now. Let me see how best to do it." Zhu Zhengwei began testing with great enthusiasm.