"Under what circumstances would they stop the experiment?" Xu Huo asked after hearing him out.
"Given your situation, it might be because your mental strength was too high," Dr. Deng said. "At first, you didn't notice anything wrong with those bugs. But after getting close to them, you'd realize that what your eyes saw and what you felt were different. The stronger someone's mental strength, the more clearly they'd sense the gap between the false and the real. So in your case, the experiment would count as a failure, because your data wouldn't be useful as a reference. Once you woke up, you'd definitely try to wake the others, too. Even if the experiment continued after that, it would be pointless."
"Everyone on the train projected their mental strength, and they influenced one another. Is that something an evolved species can do?" Xu Huo nudged the teacup in front of him. The tea swayed with it, sending out faint ripples.
Judging by the end result, everyone had stayed in their original seats. So even if they all shared the same illusion, each person's imagined reactions to the others couldn't have been exactly alike. How was that any different from what had happened in reality? And yet it wasn't real. The more he thought about it, the more absurd it seemed.
"That's the part ordinary people can't understand," Dr. Deng said. "Even though they're all in the same false environment, people think differently, and there are a lot of them. How could one person's imagination be accurately projected into everyone else's senses? But this is a game. How can you be sure that what you're seeing right now is real?"
Xu Huo's expression darkened. "Don't try to fob me off with vague talk. Anything false has to be grounded in something