Chapter 213 - 86: The Three Major Hypotheses of Dreams

Chapter 213: Chapter 86: The Three Major Hypotheses of Dreams

Yu Xian understood what she meant.

"If I open that book in the dream, and the formulas and text inside are accurate and match my memory, that will prove that after you, the ’original host,’ have left, the dreamscape has seamlessly switched over and started generating objects based on the memory of me, the ’new host.’"

"Exactly." Wen Xiao nodded emphatically.

"Which book do you want to use for the test?"

Yu Xian pondered for a moment before naming one:

"*High-Energy Astrophysics and Gravitational Waves*."

That was the textbook Professor Gao Jiguo wrote before he passed away.

It was filled with complex tensor calculus and general relativity field equations. Even a glance would be like looking at hieroglyphics to a non-physicist, let alone trying to "conjure" it from subconscious memory.

"Got it." Wen Xiao repeated the title, typed it into the script, and continued,

"Then, step three. After you’ve confirmed the book’s contents, use the chair to smash the mirror in the dream. Around the ten-minute mark, which is when you’ll be smashing it, Senior Sister will put on her headphones and connect to this dreamscape."

She turned her gaze to Yang Yiyi, who was beside her.

"Senior Sister Yiyi, after you go in, you just need to confirm one thing: whether the mirror is intact or already smashed."

This was to verify the third question: the persistence of objective states.

"No problem." Yang Yiyi nodded as well.

"Final step," Wen Xiao noted it down on her laptop.

"You both log out and wake up. When there’s no one left in the dreamscape, I’ll try playing the audio again to see if I can return to that same dream and see the smashed mirror and the physics book."

"Wait." Yu Xian suddenly noticed a logical flaw.

"If we both leave, when you re-enter, how will you know you’re in the ’same room as before’ and haven’t entered the ’wrong room’?"

"Based on our current procedures and theoretical speculation, when we connect to a shared dream, it’s like tuning a radio. That specific audio frequency forces our spindle wave phases to lock," Yang Yiyi looked at Yu Xian and explained.

"As far as we can tell, this unique spindle wave oscillation frequency is essentially the ’room number’ for this dream space."

"So you’re saying..." Yu Xian processed Yang Yiyi’s words.

"Even if the two of us were sleeping in the same bed at the same time, as long as our spindle waves were tuned differently, we wouldn’t enter the same shared dream?"

Wen Xiao glanced at Yu Xian, then turned to Yang Yiyi.

"Senior Sister, in this unknown system, the same spindle wave frequency acts like a set of ’coordinates,’ right?"

"Yes, there are related records of this in Professor Mo’s initial experiment logs," Yang Yiyi nodded.

"As long as the input audio frequency doesn’t change, the shared dream it points to won’t change. So we shouldn’t have to worry about the ’wrong room’ problem."

"Right. Besides, there’s the smashed mirror and the physics book. That’s enough for me to tell the difference," Wen Xiao glanced at Yu Xian again.

Her sudden remark left Yu Xian speechless for a moment. He thought about it and realized she was right. Just as he was about to nod in agreement, he saw that Wen Xiao had already turned away.

He glanced at Yang Yiyi beside them. Senior Sister Yiyi was just holding her cup, her head slightly lowered, a faint, almost imperceptible smile playing on her lips.

"Then it’s settled." Yu Xian averted his gaze.

"It’s getting late. Let’s start the test."

...

When he opened his eyes again, he was back in the bottomless, black void.

A translucent notification panel popped up in the lower-right corner of his vision. Yu Xian raised his hand, scrolled the digital wheel to set a twenty-minute timer, and then pressed the cat-paw-shaped confirmation button.

Not far away, the enormous floor-to-ceiling mirror and the wooden chair stood silently in the darkness.

Wen Xiao was standing by the mirror, her head bowed, seemingly examining the wood grain on the frame.

She was wearing the same outfit as in the last dream: a white shirt, a blue bow tie, and a gray-blue pleated skirt with a fine checkered pattern.

Yu Xian walked over and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with her in front of the mirror.

The smooth surface of the mirror faithfully reflected the starry sky and the chair behind them, but their own reflections were conspicuously absent.

No matter how many times he saw it, the sense of dislocation from this violation of common-sense physics was unsettling.

"My countdown has three minutes left," Wen Xiao said, turning her head to look at Yu Xian.

"Mm," Yu Xian nodded. His gaze returned to the mirror, and he reached out his hand.

"I’ll move my finger along this wood grain. See if it matches up exactly with what you’re seeing."

He lightly traced a growth ring on the upper edge of the mirror frame. Wen Xiao quietly watched his fingertip. They compared the details before them, double-checking several other textures and dark spots. They confirmed that the image they were seeing was completely identical.

The mirror was indeed a single, independently existing "objective item."

After they finished their check, the space fell silent for a moment.

"You..."

Wen Xiao suddenly turned around, no longer looking at the mirror. She bit her lower lip, raised her head, and looked straight at Yu Xian with her big, clear eyes.

"Just now, why didn’t it occur to you... that this skirt I’m wearing is also something that doesn’t come from your mind?"

Yu Xian froze.

His gaze traveled down from Wen Xiao’s white shirt collar to the pleated skirt. The intersecting dark blue checkered pattern accentuated her slender waist.

He stared blankly at Wen Xiao, his brain feeling like it had suddenly stalled.

"Have you ever..." Wen Xiao said softly,

"seen anyone else wear a skirt with this pattern before?"

Only then did it click. ’That’s right,’ he thought. ’Logically, my brain shouldn’t have this "art asset" either.’

Xia Li rarely wore skirts, and Senior Sister Yiyi used to wear a windbreaker every day. He didn’t have any other female friends. As for the internet... he didn’t look at this kind of stuff online. ’Fine, even if I happened to see it, it wouldn’t be in such rich and vivid detail.’

"I haven’t," Yu Xian said, looking away.

"I was so focused on the mirror just now, I overlooked it."

After hearing this, Wen Xiao didn’t reply. She turned her head to the side, leaving Yu Xian with only her profile.

"Time’s up," she said softly, looking at the lower-right corner of her vision.

"I’m logging out."

The moment she finished speaking, the girl before him vanished into thin air without warning, like a TV screen that had been unplugged.

In the entire void, only Yu Xian remained.

He stood in place and surveyed his surroundings.

The stars still twinkled, the ground beneath his feet still felt solid, and the enormous mirror and wooden chair still stood there silently.

The dreamscape hadn’t collapsed.

First question, validated.

Yu Xian retracted his gaze, his eyes locked firmly on the wooden chair.

At the seven-minute mark set by Wen Xiao—two minutes after she left—the book *High-Energy Astrophysics and Gravitational Waves* was about to appear.

When Wen Xiao had logged out just now, he had been too preoccupied with the logic of her skirt to notice exactly how she had disappeared from the space.

This time, he wanted to see clearly.

He wanted to see just how an object was "birthed" from nothing in this world constructed by the subconscious.

He couldn’t help but chuckle as a line from an old sitcom inexplicably popped into his head.

It was from an episode of *The Legend of Martial Arts*, the one with the real and fake Thief Saint and Bai Sanniang.

Yan Xiaoliu says the official seal is missing, and Bai Zhantang asks with a straight face:

"Did it disappear with a ’poof,’ or with a ’zip’?"

Yan Xiaoliu looks completely baffled:

"What’s the difference between a ’poof’ and a ’zip’?"

The Thief Saint, Bai Zhantang, explains with great solemnity:

"A ’poof’ is when it disappears gradually. A ’zip’ is when it disappears suddenly."

’So,’ he wondered, ’will the book that’s about to appear do so with a ’poof’ or a ’zip’?’

The translucent clock in the lower-right corner of his vision ticked silently.

00:13:21

00:13:20

The seven-minute mark was almost here!