Su Huilan was the first to lie down in one of the boxes containing the books. Before closing the lid, she gave Qingmu an encouraging look and said, "See you in a bit."
When Qingmu lay down inside, he always felt like he was in a coffin.
The box's shape and curves are likely ergonomically designed, and it's padded with a soft cushion, making it very comfortable. The side walls have a metallic sheen, but they don't feel cold to the touch; I wonder what material they're made of.
The world fell silent the moment the lid slammed shut.
Qingmu was startled; the soundproofing was a bit too good. Fortunately, the lid was transparent, so he could see the people outside.
Mei Yiqiu, with a pipe dangling from his lips, looked at him with a grin. His voluminous white hair, now thick and swollen, seemed even more voluminous than before, Qingmu to wonder if his brain was being exposed to even more radiation.
Whether it was the glass dome distorting the light or just his imagination, Qingmu felt that Mei Yiqiu's smile was strange, looking exactly like an evil doctor from comics and movies, and that he himself was his experimental subject.
He lay in a coffin worth twenty million dollars, fully experiencing what it felt like to be a lab rat.
Mei Yiqiu him a thumbs up. Qingmu thought it was a compliment, but the professor simply reached out to press a switch. As the professor's hand touched a spot on the top of the coffin, the originally transparent glass lid began to darken. Slowly, it changed from transparent to light gray, then dark gray, until it turned black.
Qingmu felt like he was waiting to die. This kind of gaming experience wasn't very friendly, and he believed that players wouldn't like playing this game if it wasn't improved.
As darkness completely enveloped him, Qingmu sensed some fluctuations, as if someone was dreaming beside him. He clearly felt the existence of a space and instinctively entered it.
Then he saw the bright sunshine shining on the empty street, and the shadows of the willow trees swaying in the wind. There were many houses on both sides of the street, but they were not uniform in style. Some were modern, somewhat like medieval style, some were oriental wooden buildings, and some were Western-style stone houses.
But these things weren't so bad; what attracted Qingmu was the enormous mountain in the distance, right at the end of the straight street.
It's not really a mountain, because it has straight edges and smooth surfaces, making it more like a pyramid. The top of the pyramid soars into the clouds, and above the clouds is another inverted pyramid. The two pyramids are connected by only one apex. From a distance, it looks magnificent and awe-inspiring, but it also makes one worry that it might fall down.
Qingmu had recently obtained a Dream Corridor from the Old Madam Cuan and witnessed the magical pyramid hourglass; he never expected to see such a shape here.
While he was surprised, questions inevitably arose in his mind.
This must be the game world designed by the professors. Why would they design something like this? Although Professor Mei had discussed the Alliance symbol and the Mirror Pyramid with him before, what's the deeper meaning behind putting this in the game?
With these questions in mind, Qingmu walked towards the pyramid. As he walked, he wondered if it would also rotate upside down and reveal a dark passage.
When he got closer, he realized he had been overthinking it. It was just a huge, pyramid-shaped building with a door at the bottom.
Su Huilan stood at the gate and smiled at him.
"How are you feeling?" she asked.
"So realistic!"
This was Qingmu's immediate impression; no game world had ever been so realistic, yet he couldn't fathom how it had been created. If it was computer-generated, how did it manage to draw human consciousness in? Was that twenty million dollar coffin really that incredible, capable of directly transmitting computer-generated scenes to a person's central nervous system?
Su Huilan seemed to sense his question and smiled, "Transmitting a simulated scene to the human brain isn't difficult; the difficulty lies in what comes next—how to let the players create their own world."
Qingmu nodded and said, "So this coffin you made can extract human memories?"
"It's not a coffin, it's Space Box," Su Huilan corrected with a smile. "We're not forcibly extracting human memories, but rather helping people use their memories to create worlds. Without memories, human consciousness cannot create new worlds. But memories, in turn, restrict human creativity, so we hope that players can, to some extent, break free from the constraints of memories."
"We designed underlying rules for the game world, which, to put it simply, are the basic physical laws of the world. However, these rules are very basic and even contain many contradictions. This is to simulate human dreams as closely as possible without letting them slip out of our control. Wouldn't a world where even basic physics contains contradictions be more likely to stimulate people's creativity?"
Qingmu found it a bit complicated, so he ignored it and asked, "How exactly do we distinguish between Earthlings and invading consciousness?"
Su Huilan said, "The invading consciousness and Earth humans belong to two different species. Each species has its specific racial characteristics, which will manifest even in the early stages of life, before they have any memories. When a player enters the game, there will be a brief Black Box moment, during which the connection between their consciousness and brain is severed. Although this time is very short, so short that we can completely ignore it in the classical physical world, in the quantum world, this time is long enough."
"At the moment when consciousness is independent of matter, different races will certainly exhibit different characteristics. For example, an invading consciousness will exhibit aggression, seeking to attach itself to a living being, or disguising itself as the shadow of another consciousness, and so on."
Qingmu said, "These are all just your assumptions; you haven't actually captured any extraterrestrial consciousness to test them."
"Yes. But isn't science built on hypotheses?"
"But isn't the price we have to pay to verify this hypothesis a bit too high?"
Su Huilan chuckled, "Mr. Qingmu sounds just like an investor in this project!"
Qingmu scoffed, looking around and saying, "Where's the Black Box you mentioned? It looks sunny and bright here."
Su Huilan said, "This is Prehistoric Town."
" Prehistoric Town?"
"Yes, it means the place before Genesis. The game hasn't really started yet. You can think of this as a game lobby where players can read game guides and exchange game tips."
Su Huilan pointed to the gate at the base of the pyramid and said, "Every player needs to go inside for training."
Qingmu nodded. "I understand. It looks like I have a chance to become a veteran player of this game."
Su Huilan shook her head and said, "You're not a player, you're a god."
"God?" Qingmu laughed heartily. "I don't even know the rules of the game, what kind of god am I!"
"The three great gods of Genesis — Kronos, Situ, and Qingmu —you can't deny it even if you want to. If you want to impersonate an ordinary player, you'd better change your name, but the subconscious won't lie, and concealing it will consume your Mental Power."
Qingmu knew that this game was extremely similar to a dream, and that it allowed the use of Mental Power. In other words, a person with strong Mental Power could change the world to a certain extent. From this perspective, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to call him a god.
"Will anyone challenge God's position?"
"It will definitely happen."
Su Huilan giggled, secretly probing the strength of Qingmu's Mental Power, while Qingmu was also probing her. The two Mental Power cautiously intersected outside the pyramid-shaped house, each understanding the other without saying a word.