Chapter 12 The Relationship between the Body and the Spirit
Chapter 12: The Connection Between Body and Mind
The first mission left Zhou Ming with a huge psychological shadow. Although he didn't feel anything unusual during the day, the sensation of chopping people and the roar of the Experimental subject were like a brand, lingering in his mind.
That night, he had a nightmare, dreaming that he had become the person imprisoned by the Experimental subject.
He woke up several times in the middle of the night. When he finally fell asleep again, it was no longer a nightmare. Instead, he entered a strange corridor.
This corridor seemed like a hotel corridor, with doors embedded in the walls on both sides.
Above his head, glowing incandescent lamps hung down on soft electrical wires, extending forward along the corridor.
The light could only illuminate a small area in the center of the corridor. From Zhou Ming's position looking forward, there were circular light spots projected onto the ground, with fixed distances between them.
Walking in the corridor, a person's shadow moved continuously on the wall as the angle and direction changed. Multiple light sources created multiple shadows, some dark, some light.
As Zhou Ming moved, the dark shadows disappeared and reappeared on the wall at an extremely fast speed. In a corridor where there was only one person, it was as if many people had suddenly appeared.
At the end of the corridor was a blood-red door. The vibrant red, illuminated by the incandescent lights overhead, gave off a sense of flowing blood.
The wall behind the door was no longer a bare concrete surface, but had been painted a dark green. The Red Gate, set against it, was like a bleeding flower adorning a strange, deep green.
Zhou Ming stared at this door, and as if possessed, slowly leaned his head towards it.
Just as his ear was about to touch the door, a voice suddenly came from it: "You've come!"
At three in the morning, Zhou Ming suddenly woke up, the voice from his dream still echoing in his mind—"You've come!"
It was his own voice!
"Hoo—"
"Hoo—"
Zhou Ming gasped for air.
"Oh my god, what kind of hellish dream is this?"
Zhou Ming rubbed his forehead, taking a long time to calm down.
Coming back to his senses, he realized he was lying on the bed, feeling completely cold. The ambient air temperature seemed to have dropped below zero.
Zhou Ming quickly realized that the low temperature was not an illusion. He turned his head, and the moonlight streaming in from the window illuminated the white frost on the ceiling. Soft ice crystals clung to the four corners of the walls like pale mold spots; a thin layer of ice covered the entire bed, and icicles formed on the bed's edge hung down to the floor, adhering to the ice blanket on the ground.
He himself was like a body that had undergone cold treatment, lying on the frozen bed, his palms embedded in ice, and the cold sweat on his body frozen into ice beads.
Zhou Ming struggled to break the ice and free his hands.
Although the ice was cold, prolonged contact with it did not cause him any stinging or discomfort, as if he was already accustomed to such low temperatures.
Zhou Ming's gaze slowly swept over the frost, his expression gradually changing from surprise to calm.
This ice-forming ability should be Curse Power.
Curse Power is a product of Curse Power accumulation within the human body, and it is currently the only supernatural power that humans can master, the closest to the abnormal, similar to abilities and magic.
This power cannot be acquired through learning, nor is it an innate talent like in novels. Rather than a special ability, it is more like a symbol and a warning.
Once one masters Curse Power, it means the individual has crossed the boundary of normal people. Their body can no longer dissolve the Curse Power that has infiltrated their flesh, and Curse Power accumulation begins within them.
From then on, the individual's mental state will only gradually worsen over time, never able to return to normal.
"As expected," Zhou Ming sighed, not surprised at all. This was completely within his expectations.
He got out of bed, first taking the frozen bedsheet off the bed and moving it to the bathroom. After breaking the ice, he soaked it in water and then took a hot shower himself.
The bathroom was filled with steam. Zhou Ming lowered his head, feeling the hot water wash over him. He suddenly realized that he had been wrong all along; he had been overly optimistic about his current situation, completely unaware of how bad his predicament was.
The mess the original owner left him was not just the identity of a criminal suspect, but also this body, which had already undergone severe mutation.
He should have realized long ago that the body and mind influence each other. He should have realized it when he was in the air-raid shelter. Even if his psychological resilience in his previous life surpassed that of ordinary people, he was definitely not the kind of person who could unhesitatingly chop off a woman's foot.
The only explanation for his ability to carry out such cruel acts without hesitation was that this body had influenced his mind; the physical mutation led to a mental mutation.
Although Zhou Ming was still relatively clear-headed now, as time went on, he would gradually become like the original owner. As for when he would completely go mad, he had no idea.
"You really are a madman," Zhou Ming said with a bitter smile, rubbing his forehead.
After showering and returning to the bedroom, the ice on the floor had already begun to melt. Zhou Ming looked at the walls covered in red lines and photos, lost in thought.
When he first transmigrated, he noticed this strange wall.
Photos were pinned to a world map with thumbtacks. On the head of each thumbtack hung a note, which read—[Bermuda Triangle: Ghost Islands], [Sakura Country, Kyoto: Night Parade of One Hundred Demons], [Yan Country, Kunlun:???]…
The notes had place names, followed by the names of strange phenomena. The corner also indicated a serial number and a date.
These photos were scattered on the map, connected by red lines. Some red lines between photos were straight, while others were curved.
The red lines traced a winding path on the world map, like a circuitous route making a loop in the center of the ocean. Every certain length, it was fixed with a thumbtack, from which hung a note with a date, looking a bit like a traveler's itinerary.
Zhou Ming sat back down in front of the computer and turned it on.
He didn't turn on the light; the blue-white glow from the computer screen was the only light source in the room.
He stared blankly at the screen, his face illuminated a ghostly pale, like a wax figure fixed in front of the computer desk.
As soon as he opened the computer, an email popped up. The sender was Wang Siyan, asking him when he would return to school, saying that people from the Relevant Department would soon be coming to recruit at the school and told him to hurry back.
Wang Siyan was one of the few people Zhou Ming was very familiar with in this world, and also his childhood sweetheart.
Besides Wang Siyan, Zhou Ming also had a best friend named Zhang Wei. The three of them grew up together, and in their original world, they were in the same class from kindergarten to high school, only separating in college.
But for some reason, in this world, they all attended the same university.
Zhou Ming's fingers danced on the keyboard, typing a line: [I'll be back in a few days.]
Pressing Enter to send the email, Zhou Ming opened the documents left by the original owner and continued to browse.
Opening the document, an interesting title suddenly jumped into Zhou Ming's sight. The name of that document was "Masked Ball," and next to it was an asterisk indicating its importance.
Zhou Ming opened the document:
[My other self, what I am about to tell you is very important, but I apologize that I cannot elaborate, because I am not sure if you will truly come to this world. If you do not come, it would not be a good thing for this article to be seen by others.
What I want you to do now is extremely important. It concerns whether you can maintain your self in this world.
You must do this every day. The specific method is to try to stay awake during the process of falling asleep, maintaining a feeling of being half-asleep, while simultaneously imagining yourself in a bustling, luxurious hall where a Masked Ball is taking place.
You must keep imagining this. Although this imagination may not bring you anything, as long as you succeed once, you will know what I am saying now means, and then you will know even more important things.
Remember, keep imagining, keep trying! Absolutely do not give up! This is very important.
Your time is running out. If you cannot succeed soon, you will become like me.
Also, you must pay attention to the monk, a person dressed like a monk. He should be looking for me… This guy is very dangerous. If you encounter him, absolutely do not approach him.]
The article ended there, consisting of only three paragraphs, the shortest of the documents left by the original owner.
Zhou Ming stared at these lines, reading them over several times, his gaze falling on the last sentence—"If you cannot succeed soon, then you will become like me…"
Will become like him…
Zhou Ming's heart began to beat faster. He suddenly realized that the original owner had actually known all along that he would also go mad after transmigrating.
In the videos and tutorial materials left by the other party, apart from the first video where there was a mental anomaly, in all the remaining video materials, the other party's performance was very normal.
Those videos were professionally edited, with all unnecessary segments cut out.
So the first video was actually a deliberate display of madness by the other party for him, the purpose being to tell him that if he couldn't do what the original owner said, he would go mad just like the original owner!
In addition, there was the monk mentioned by the other party, which reminded Zhou Ming of the eminent monk in Shahe Village before. Could these two be related?
Zhou Ming pondered for a long time, then turned off the computer, climbed back onto the bed, and prepared to make his first attempt.
The madness of this world was the biggest problem that even global governments couldn't solve, but Zhou Ming felt from the information left by the original owner that the other party seemed to have a way to curb this madness, and the prerequisite for curbing it was to have a lucid dream.
Zhou Ming closed his eyes, recalling the method of falling asleep written by the original owner.
That method of sleep was very similar to what Zhou Ming knew as lucid dreaming. This kind of dream is a powerful manifestation of the brain's subconscious will. When the brain has an obsession with certain things, it will take over the dream from an unconscious chaotic state to a semi-conscious state.
In this state, a person possesses the ability to think and remember as if they were awake in the dream. Some people can even make the sensations in their dreams feel the same as in the real world.
Zhou Ming had tried it out of curiosity before and had succeeded a few times by chance, so he had some experience with this kind of attempt.
He hoped to succeed as soon as possible.
…
The morning sun crept to the edge of the curtains, mercilessly stinging Zhou Ming's face, like invisible hands pulling at his eyelids, but the strong light failed to wake him.
Finally, what woke him up was a phone call.
"Buzz buzz buzz—buzz buzz buzz—"
The vibrating phone was caught by Zhou Ming just before it fell from the nightstand. His first thought was that the dream had failed; he had slept soundly until morning.
He opened his groggy eyes and saw an unfamiliar number without a name displayed on his phone.
"Hello?"
Zhou Ming got out of bed and walked towards the bathroom, trying to make his voice sound more awake.
"Uh, yes, right… What? She went mad?"
"Okay, I'll be right there!"
After a brief phone call, Zhou Ming stared blankly into the mirror.
The organization told him that the woman he had rescued and sent over yesterday had not slept all night and went mad early this morning, attacking a staff member who brought her breakfast and tearing off half of their palm.