Chapter 173: Skinner’s Carrot

Chapter 173 -73: Skinner’s Carrot

Wen Xiao hesitated no longer. Her fingers flew across the keyboard, and as the final line of commands was entered, she gently hit the Enter key.

“Injecting points contract module, updating consensus algorithm, broadcasting version update via gossip protocol…”

Almost at the same time, Shi Zuozhou’s device received the new version from Wen Xiao’s. Eager and excited, he exclaimed, “It’s here! This is my first time being the ‘Banker’. I’m so nervous!”

After quickly updating as well, Yu Xian tapped the pixel-art rabbit icon on his phone.

Next to the “Resources” tab under the crude, green-on-black file list, a new “Profile” option had appeared.

In the top right corner, there was a new icon: an orange, pixelated carrot.

Beside the icon, the number that had initially read “0.0000” paused briefly before suddenly ticking up.

+0.0001.

Immediately after, it ticked again.

The carrot count in the corner turned to “0.0002.”

The ticking numbers resembled the pulse of a new lifeform.

Shi Zuozhou leaped to his feet in excitement. He hollered that as a veteran gamer, the urge to go “gold farming” ingrained in his DNA was instantly acting up, making him want to find ten computers to run idle bots and farm points right this second.

Yu Xian walked over to the window and looked out at the continuous curtain of rain.

Out there in the downpour, hidden in countless unseen corners behind lit phone screens…

An experiment on “greed” and “survival” had quietly begun.

Watching the constantly ticking numbers on the screen, Yu Xian’s mind drifted elsewhere.

With his hands stuffed in his pockets, he gripped a cold black USB flash drive.

It contained the audio data and research materials on the “Dream Net Project,” which Senior Sister Yang Yiyi had given him at the apartment yesterday.

Hijacked Spindle Wave, Phase Locking, shared dreams…

These discoveries were enough to shatter common sense. He had to tell Wen Xiao about them as soon as possible so she could try reverse-engineering the audio and figure out how this “Dream Net” actually worked.

However…

From the corner of his eye, he glanced at Shi Zuozhou, who was excitedly muttering to himself as he calculated numbers on his wristband, and Shao Yiyi, who was huddled together with Wen Xiao, chattering away.

Senior Sister Yang Yiyi’s situation was far too sensitive right now. The hidden danger of the login logs hadn’t been eliminated yet, and the forces backing Professor Mo Du were still unclear. Since this involved her privacy, he couldn’t just casually spread it around.

He needed to find an excuse to call Wen Xiao out alone.

“Wen Xiao,” Yu Xian cleared his throat. “My cousin asked me to pass a message to Sister Wen Yu. Come here for a second.”

The lively atmosphere in the lounge suddenly fell silent for a second.

Shi Zuozhou looked up from his wristband. His gaze darted back and forth between Yu Xian and Wen Xiao twice before a highly punchable smirk slowly spread across his face.

Shao Yiyi also put on an exaggerated look of realization. “Oh my, Senior Zhouzhou, did chat apps start charging fees recently? What era are we in? Why is someone still passing messages in person through their younger siblings instead of just texting?”

Wearing an “I know exactly what’s going on” expression, Shi Zuozhou waved his hand dramatically. “Go on, go on. We’re reasonable people. There’s definitely some top-secret stuff involved that’s not meant for our ears!”

Dark lines formed on Yu Xian’s forehead. Only now did he realize how terrible his excuse was; it was probably only marginally better than the “fixing a computer” excuse from last time.

He cast a helpless look at the two of them. Explaining would only dig him into a deeper hole, so he simply stood at the door and waited for Wen Xiao, bracing himself.

Wen Xiao’s ears were flushed red from the two of them feeding each other lines. She hastily shut her laptop, kept her head down, and followed Yu Xian out of the lounge.

***

At the end of the corridor on the 12th floor of North Campus was a semi-open balcony, sheltered only by a rain awning on top.

As soon as the door was pushed open, damp moisture and cold wind hit their faces, instantly blowing away the indoor warmth and the teasing atmosphere from earlier.

The sound of the rain was clear. Yu Xian walked over to the railing, made sure that their conversation couldn’t be heard from inside, and then turned around. He watched as Wen Xiao followed him with her arms wrapped around herself. Despite the biting cold wind, the blush on her face hadn’t completely faded.

“Um… what did Captain Yu want to pass on to my sister?” Wen Xiao asked nervously.

“Sorry, that was just a terrible excuse I came up with.” Yu Xian smiled apologetically. “I have something else to talk to you about, and it’s something those two can’t know.”

Wen Xiao paused. As if realizing something, she asked tentatively, “Is it… about Senior Sister Yang Yiyi?”

Yu Xian was a little surprised by her sharpness, but he nodded anyway. “We discovered something terrifying last night. Aside from their research on suppressing MCH neurons, her research group has actually been conducting a hidden experiment.”

“Last night? What experiment?” Wen Xiao looked at him.

“The experiment is called the ‘Dream Net Project.’ Simply put, they want to use an audio track with a specific frequency to induce a Hijacked Spindle Wave in the human brain, forcefully applying Phase Locking to the brainwaves’ phase and frequency.”

Using the most concise terms possible, Yu Xian recounted the discussion he had with Senior Sister Yang Yiyi regarding the “Rotating Door and the Sharpshooter.”

He described the chilling results of the experiment. “In their experiment logs, there’s a set of data showing that when the brainwave frequencies and phases of two test subjects were forcefully synchronized to perfectly match… they entered the same dream.”

“What? The same… dream?” Wen Xiao’s eyes widened sharply. She pulled her pajama jacket tighter around herself in the freezing wind. “Are you saying… they connected online? Like in a multiplayer video game?”

“Exactly,” Yu Xian said, his expression grave. “They met in the dream. They even interacted.”

Looking at Wen Xiao, he asked the question that had been haunting him all night, “From your perspective, why would matching spindle wave frequencies between two people allow them to connect like that?”

“L-let me think…” Wen Xiao seemingly still hadn’t recovered from her shock. She shook her head vigorously—her two loose hair buns swaying back and forth with the motion—and fell deep into thought.

After a long while, she suddenly spoke up. “Do you remember when we analyzed the TDI audio before? We compared the brain to a computer and the dream to a locally rendered program.”

Yu Xian nodded. That was the hypothesis they had discussed the first time he came to find Wen Xiao, right after he had escaped that white dream that lasted ten days and ten nights.

“Drawing a logical analogy, even if two computers have the same CPU frequency, it doesn’t mean they can transmit data to each other. Not unless… a communication protocol has been established between them.” She turned to look at Yu Xian. “Since they could see and talk to each other in the dream, it proves the data transmission was bidirectional. If we explain this phenomenon from the perspective of computer networking, there are only two technological pathways.”

She held up one finger. “The first is P2P, or Peer-to-Peer connection. It’s like Bluetooth or an AirDrop pairing.”

“Like our Rabbit Hole?” Yu Xian asked in surprise.

“Right. That specific brainwave frequency might not just be a ‘receiving channel’—it’s more like a ‘handshake protocol,'” Wen Xiao explained. “When two brains vibrate at the same frequency, they might trigger a physical mechanism we don’t yet understand, such as some kind of biomagnetic resonance. The two brains align their signals, directly establishing a data channel to exchange their dream data packets with one another.”

Yu Xian frowned. “But that doesn’t explain the distance issue, does it? Bluetooth has a range limit, and a biomagnetic field should have one too. In that experiment, the two subjects were placed in different rooms. What if those rooms were really far apart?”

“You’re right… If it’s a P2P connection, distance and signal strength are definitely fatal flaws. Unless the brain possesses an action-at-a-distance property, like quantum entanglement. Therefore, it might be the second possibility…”

Wen Xiao shook her head, then held up a second finger. The expression on her small face turned exceptionally grave. “The second architecture: the Client-Server model.”