Chapter 72 - 30: "Ragtag Army

Chapter 72: Chapter 30: "Ragtag Army

He turned off the screen and closed his eyes. A chill crept up his spine.

’Somehow, it felt like this wasn’t just a change in the weather, but a change in the very hearts of people.’

’If TDI controlled and "infected" individuals through subconscious implantation in dreams, then wasn’t this force—the one manufacturing rumors and stoking emotions—also carrying out a grand "infection" of the masses through the massive neural network of the internet?’

Yu Xian could clearly sense something unnatural about the public’s emotions amidst this firestorm of public opinion. They seemed excessively intense and vicious.

But he found it hard to tell if this was just people venting their frustrations after their lives had been disrupted, or if...

’Someone was deliberately guiding it?’

’If it was the latter, what truth was it trying to hide with these lies and emotions?’

’Just how shocking and devastating must that truth be?’

A sense of powerlessness felt like a wet rag plastered over his face and pressing on his chest, suffocating him.

Yu Xian tossed his phone aside, unable to look at the suffocating comments and arguments any longer.

He sat back down on the sofa and turned his attention back to the stack of his parents’ papers on the desk, trying to block out the chaotic emotions.

...

He wasn’t sure how many hours had passed. Yu Xian’s eyes felt tired, his vision blurring. His gaze drifted unconsciously to a piece of scratch paper by his hand.

It was a fresh sheet of A4 paper he had just taken from a folder, completely blank.

Under the incandescent lamp, it was blindingly bright.

Pure white, without a single impurity, no trace of writing, no stains. It was an empty, endless expanse.

VMMMM—

It was as if a string in his brain had been violently plucked. Yu Xian jolted, his body recoiling instinctively.

In that instant, he felt as if he were back in that dream.

Above, below, left, and right—every direction was filled with the same despair-inducing, ghastly white. No borders, no end.

He was alone in that void, reciting that damn protocol over and over.

Yu Xian gasped for breath, a fine sheen of cold sweat breaking out on his forehead.

He grabbed a book and pinned the triggering sheet of white paper beneath it.

It was no use. He couldn’t read.

The discussions in the papers about "personality vectors" and "topological compression" were already making his brain feel overloaded, on the verge of crashing.

He needed a distraction.

He picked up his phone. There weren’t many apps on the screen. The icon for the radio station app sat there, isolated on the page.

After a second’s hesitation, he tapped on it.

’Will there be a new post about TDI? Will another victim like me speak out?’

He opened the forum. It wasn’t even 9 p.m. yet, so it wasn’t peak time for a station that primarily featured sleep-aid content.

The posts on the board were sparse. He scrolled back a few pages and saw that most had been posted late at night.

Some users seemed to have gotten emotional while listening to music late at night, posting sad lyrics along with the name of the person on their mind.

Others were looking for "sleep buddies" to voice chat with, posting samples of their voices—everything from sultry "older sister" voices and cutesy "young girl" voices to standard "young man" voices and even so-called "top-tier versatile" ones.

And then there were the straight-up ads: for overnight face masks, for "essential" vitamins for night owls, for low-calorie sweet potato noodles meant to tempt you with late-night food pics.

Treating it as a break, he scrolled down mindlessly, searching for that three-letter keyword.

Occasionally, a few related posts popped up, but their tone was completely different from his own experience. They were all filled with praise, gratitude, and enthusiastic recommendations for the "black tech" of TDI.

Yu Xian found it absurd. It felt like being a survivor who had just crawled out from a pile of bodies on a battlefield, only to hear others singing praises to the greatness and glory of war.

It was like that old saying: "You’ve been sold, and you’re still helping them count the money."

’Am I really the only exception?’

’Or... have the other "survivors" already been "fixed" like bugs in the system?’

After scrolling through more than ten pages, his finger started to ache, but he still had nothing.

The rain outside grew heavier. It was getting late, and he decided to go cook some dumplings.

He sighed, feeling his interest wane. His finger habitually swiped down on the screen to refresh one last time.

The small loading circle in the middle of the screen spun twice, and a new list of posts appeared. His finger, just about to exit the app, suddenly froze.

A very strange post had appeared right at the top, in the spot for posts published "just now."

The poster had a default avatar, and their ID was just "User" followed by a random string of numbers. It looked like a new account.

The post’s title had an even stranger vibe.

It reminded Yu Xian of how, years ago on those poorly moderated forums, people would use code words in the dead of night to find... unspeakable content.

"Selling audio, erotic dreams, if you know you know."

It was interspersed with all sorts of emojis meant to evade keyword filters, and it reeked of some shady, black-market operation.

Yu Xian’s heart clenched.

It wasn’t that he was interested in what the title was offering. It was that the two words, "audio" and "dream," struck him like an electric shock.

’Audio? Dreams?’

’Could someone be selling TDI audio files?’

’But isn’t TDI device-locked? I tried it before. Even if someone sold the audio file, other people shouldn’t be able to use it, right?’

Yu Xian’s fingers trembled. Almost subconsciously, he immediately tapped on the post.

The screen flickered. The white loading circle spun halfway, and then the page suddenly changed.

"Sorry, this post has been deleted by the system for containing inappropriate content."

A cold, gray exclamation mark and a line of system text lay on the screen.