Chapter 57 - 24: The Survivor Who Escaped from a Dream

Chapter 57: Chapter 24: The Survivor Who Escaped from a Dream

After hanging up the phone, Yu Xian didn’t move.

He remained in the same position, clutching his phone, sitting rigidly in the dim living room.

The mechanical, repetitive voice from those ten long days still echoed in his mind like an auditory hallucination.

His body was relaxed. After all, only three hours had passed in reality, and his muscles had rested.

But his mind was utterly exhausted. A weariness, like he’d pulled several all-nighters, made his temples throb.

This jarring disconnect between his mind and body also made him nauseous.

Forcing himself to calm down, he tossed his phone aside and took out a pen and paper—a long-standing habit of his.

When faced with a chaotic problem with no clear solution, he listed the variables and analyzed them one by one.

The tip of his pen touched the paper, and he wrote:

Point One—

The true nature of TDI, and its connection to the smiling suicide cases.

On the paper, he wrote the two words "Reinforcement Learning" and circled them heavily.

TDI’s advertised claims of "personality change" and "habit formation," and even what that seller just called "feeling mentally fantastic," were all a sham.

They weren’t achieved through the psychological guidance or subconscious communication mentioned in the advertisements.

In essence, they were achieved through conditioned reflexes, established in a manner similar to Pavlovian dog training.

In that timeless white dreamscape, the TDI experiment treated its subjects like neural network models in need of training.

’Want to build the habit of waking up early? Fine, then we’ll make you "get up" ten thousand times in the dream.’

’Want to memorize the protocol? Fine, then we’ll make you "recite" it ten thousand times in the dream.’

So... what about the smiling suicide victims?

As he wrote this, Yu Xian’s hand trembled slightly.

From the looks of it, the drowsiness, the unnatural standard smile, the "change" in personality, the suicidal behavior—all of these could potentially be linked to the TDI experiment and explained by its methods.

Behavior 1: Drowsiness. This was because they needed to enter the dream state and remain immersed in the "training" for long periods.

Behavior 2: The standard smile. This was because they had practiced it countless times in the dream, to the point that it had become a muscular reaction that didn’t require conscious thought—a knee-jerk reflex that their conscious mind couldn’t even control.

They might have been screaming, crying, or terrified on the inside, but their faces could only produce that eerie smile.

Behavior 3: The "change." This was possibly because the deceased had developed other habits and behaviors in the dream, leading their families to believe they had become a different person, or had been replaced by a "doppelgänger."

And as for the suicidal behavior...

He had two theories about the suicides.

Theory 1: Suicide was "trained" as a "goal" by the TDI project.

This theory was a bit sensational, a bit of a conspiracy theory, without much evidence to back it up.

Although, based on his analysis so far, the project’s operational model and technical methods were clearly a sham—not as gentle, guiding, or communicative as they claimed.

But aside from that, on the whole, he couldn’t see any malice toward the subjects. The project’s purpose didn’t seem to be to torture them.

After all, other subjects didn’t remember what happened in the dreams. Though he didn’t know why he was an exception, if one forgot the dream events, the project’s experience for the subject would still be relatively positive.

’So, if this theory is correct, what would be the TDI project’s motive and goal?’

If suicide was "trained" as a goal, then the other party must have some ulterior motive.

’But it’s not like they’re training assassins, and the victims didn’t harm anyone else, so why would they do this?’

Theory 2: The suicides were the victims’ own will.

Previously, he had always felt that the suicides must have been caused by something controlling the victims’ will, like they were possessed. He thought the smile was some kind of bizarre death ritual, a symbol and byproduct of the suicide itself.

He’d had that idea, perhaps influenced by Wen Yu’s "doppelgänger" analysis, which was why he had never considered that the victims wanted to kill themselves.

But after his own TDI dream experience, he could truly believe that the victims might have wanted to commit suicide themselves.

Forget about others; even he himself, after those ten days of repetitive torment, having woken up without forgetting any of it—if his willpower wasn’t reasonably strong, he would have certainly wanted to kill himself too.

’Could it be due to some kind of experimental accident? For instance, after a few training sessions, the subjects suddenly remembered what happened in the dream, leading to an acute stress reaction and trauma?’

But there was a contradiction here. Why would the suicide victims train themselves to have the "smile" and "drowsiness" traits? This still implied a situation controlled by a "goal."

Regardless of whether it was a direct cause, overall, there was definitely a correlation between TDI and the suicide cases. This lead was too important.

He definitely had to tell his cousin about this, but first, he needed to think about how to explain it clearly. If he couldn’t, it would be counterproductive.

On one hand, his cousin’s work-instilled habits made him place a heavy emphasis on "evidence," just like with Xia Li’s disappearance.

The biggest problem with TDI right now was the lack of evidence... Whether it was his personal experience or investigating other subjects, there was no way to corroborate his story.

To anyone else, it would just sound like the ramblings of a madman.

He needed evidence, or at the very least, a self-consistent explanation, a complete chain of cause and effect.

On the other hand, ever since his parents’ accidental death, his cousin had always been overprotective of him.