Chapter 150 — Delving Deeper

“This sucks.” Yu Han scrunched his nose at the deformed shape-array.

As expected, it did not work.

Since the tendril was cylindrical, forming a perfectly smooth surface by coiling it into a plate-like shape proved impossible.

He could stamp the ink directly onto the paper where the tendril made contact. Along the curved edges, however, he had to let the ink to pool and bleed downwards, praying surface tension would complete the shape.

It didn’t.

The array hadn’t even activated.

“All that pain for nothing,” Yu Han grumbled. This was his sixty-ninth failure. He would say it was nice if he were in the mood, but his head throbbed with a dull, swollen pressure.

He had lost 72 lifeforce. Strangely enough, he didn’t lose lifeforce on every attempt, but most. Was the damage not significant enough? That assumption had given him enough courage to continue with the painful practice.

But he was not a person with high pain tolerance.

It freaking hurt every time he tried to stamp the array. He was sick and tired of it, and his focus drifted. Entering the zen state grew difficult even with Thousand Petals Synaptic Bloom, and the last time, he actually lost 2 lifeforce instead of one. So perhaps abusing whatever was getting damaged repeatedly wasn’t the best idea.

Is it my meridians?

His meridians just weren’t formed enough to channel that much essence all at once. Cultivators spent the entire body tempering realm practising their arts and refining true qi to hone their meridians into a great network that could ferry spiritual energy efficiently. Lifeforce factored into the equation too somehow, though the exact mechanics escaped him.

At level 2, Yu Han’s network was infantile.

Did refined talents start off with better meridians? What about profound and mystical talents like that brainless mouth Mo Ran?

What about Fang Zhao?

The Echoing Dreamscape and memorycasting combo was amazing. If he squinted, he could call it a cheat ability too! Totally. For accountants!

No, no. No self-deprecation. For data analysts. And investigators. And people sitting in big rooms looking at screens suggesting they should circle back on the issue later.

A normal Echoing Dreamscape only replicated what Yu Han sensed. During memorycasting, it was so much more.

Yu Han never memorised the grains and imperfections on the notebook paper. When he memorycast the object, he only visualised that specific notebook. After projection, however, the grains and imperfections of the memorycast version would be identical to reality.

If he echoed it normally, those imperfections would glitch and blur at first, constantly changing the minute details as if they were undecided. It would then settle into a random pattern that Yu Han’s brain thought was appropriate.

Maybe it was like how the human brain interpolated reality to fill in the gaps?

With memorycasting, there were no gaps to fill in. It was as if what was being echoed wasn’t Yu Han’s memories, but the world’s!

It was a super duper cool power, in no way inferior to whatever Fang Zhao and Huang Niuniu had.

He was a transmigrator!

He was important people!

He was not an average fatty!

Done cheering himself up, Yu Han put the matter of his underdeveloped meridian network aside.

He was running out of essence anyway, so it was better to cultivate now. Even though he could use Thousand Petals Synaptic Bloom for more than half an hour now, activating and deactivating it seemed to have a cost of its own.

After all those tests, he was just about dry.

He sat cross-legged and breathed in, then out, with the rhythms of the Calm Before the Storm Breathing Technique. Soon his awareness drifted, detaching from his limbs to anchor as a tight pinpoint of pressure an inch behind his forehead. The brain resided there, but the brain possessed no physical sensation.

What happened when you tried to feel with a part that did not? You fell asleep.

Yu Han opened his eyes in the waking world. Birds chirped outside, calling in that hurried, frantic rhythm that preceded rain.

He rose and stretched, his joints popping. After brushing his teeth with a twig and salt, he freshened up and relieved himself.

Huang Niuniu waved at him from the other side of the yard. She wore that frog-skin spandex suit beneath her standard robes.

“Fei Rui grew,” she said. “Maybe.”

Yu Han squinted at the pond. If the crab had grown, it wasn't by much.

“Take an umbrella,” Yu Han said.

Huang Niuniu patted her storage pouch. “I already did. What will you do today?”

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“I’ll sleep,” Yu Han said. “I want to wait until Fei Rui is back.”

Huang Niuniu pinched his cheek and pulled. “It’s cute how much you care about him.”

Yu Han pinched her cheek and pulled. “He ish mushch cuther thans te worm.”

She let go.

“How long will it take until you reach the sea?” Yu Han asked.

The outer sect centrum sat far inland. Even with the drizzle, reaching the ocean would take days. Huang Niuniu had been guiding the wispstream for four days now, their daily progress definitely slower than the magical boats. She couldn’t spend all her time to it either; she had her own arts to practise, crafts to hone, and, of course, the night soil to collect.

“Ten days!” Huang Niuniu said. “Senior Feral Spot knows shortcuts we can take. I’ll put more time into it from now too. Will you be sad if we don’t get to spend more time with each other? Come on! It was just a question, don’t run away---”

“As an apology, you have to make the vitality spite tonight!”

“I’ll make it even without that, you dummy.”

They said their goodbyes. Huang Niuniu took a donkey cart and headed out.

Wen Liujie stood by the crab pond. He glared at Yu Han, tapping two fingers to his eyes in a silent ‘I'm watching you’ before pointing them at Yu Han, then the crab. He walked away.

Yu Han headed back into the resting quarters. Most of his stuff was in the storage ring, and the rest was piled up like he had just moved houses.

Which he had.

Should I test in real life? He opened a blank notebook and extended the tendril, coiling it into a plate-like shape.

No.

He waved the tendril away. If the pain hit, he wasn’t sure it would go away as fast as it did in the dreamscape. He had made a promise with Fei Rui that he would wait in the dreamscape.

He lay back down, assessing his spiritual energy reserves.

Lifeforce hadn’t recovered much. But essence was nearly topped up.

Which mind sub-origin governed essence regeneration? None of them were obvious enough. Focus, clarity, and perception just didn’t make sense. Intelligence might, and memory did sort of denote space to store stuff. Memory, in this case.

Maybe it depends on the mind origin score itself?

He had more than 19. It was his highest. More than body and spirit combined, and more than double each. So maybe it made sense that his essence regen and reserves were so big?

Yes. I am important people. I too have my unfair advantages. I am not unimportant matters like that girl Wei Ning bullshitted---okay, Yu Han, you need to stop holding grudges. That’s Johan speaking. Not you!

He entered the dreamscape with Thousand Petals Synaptic Bloom. It felt more forced this time. The usual exhaustion was not there to aid the process.

He had to psychic-art himself harder to sleep.

How long can I stay here, in any case?

He hadn’t tested how long he could stay in the dreamscape in one go. When Gong Muhua had knocked him out, he appeared here, but he would inevitably fall into real sleep when the exhaustion hit him. He would reappear here even without waking up in reality, but he hadn’t been able to stay here throughout the whole continuous time he had been unconscious and then sedated at the medical hall.

Deep Sleep.

That was the name of his bloodline art. He’d always taken it for granted.

It was an ability that kept him lucid in the dreamscape. Merely common grade.

But this dreamscape, the clamscape, was it just a construct of his imagination, or was it something more?

The fireworm was able to damage it.

There was a portal that led to mirror earth.

Perhaps the clamscape and Deep Sleep were not so directly related after all. Maybe Deep Sleep just gave him access to this realm, and it could have other ... features.

What did Deep Sleep mean?

It was slow-wave sleep. The body and brain slowed down even more. Memory consolidated during deep sleep. Physical recovery happened at a heightened pace.

It’s called Stage N3, wasn’t it?

Johan was an avid listener of podcasts. What did that sleep expert say again?

It was the episode on the last day of---no, it was New Year's! Which year?

The memory struck him with the sharp clarity of a knife wound. He had been speeding back to Cadogan House. He wanted to spend New Year's with Dad. He arrived unannounced, finding all of his siblings gathered.

That had been awkward.

The fuse had blown because of a toaster prank.

He’d made a joke about electrocution. About how he could buy Dad another house if the switches didn’t work in this one. Oh, and a better toaster with an AI in it. For the perfect toast.

He waved his hand; an echo of a blurry figure within a square screen manifested, accompanied by a static buzz.

“... is defined by high-amplitude, low-frequency delta waves (ranging from 0.5 to 4 Hz). It is the period when the body is least responsive to external stimuli. During this phase, the brain's glymphatic system becomes highly active, essentially "pressure-washing" the brain by flushing out metabolic waste through the expansion of interstitial spaces ...”

Yu Han couldn’t recall the expert's name. It was there, at the tip of his tongue. Something Runner. Or was it Jogger?

He’d written a book. Books.

“... physically, it is the peak time for tissue repair and growth hormone release. The most critical aspect is declarative memory consolidation. It’s not strange in hindsight. Research shows that this, exactly this, is the window where the brain moves information from the temporary hippocampus to long-term storage in the neocortex. In this state, the brain stops interpolating or filling in gaps with random patterns. Instead, it hard-codes high-fidelity data ...”

Yu Han waved the echo away. The strain on essence was too high for Johan’s memories.

... stops filling in the gaps ... Memorycasting did that too. The replicas were perfect copies. While normal Echoing Dreamscape interpolated.

Was Deep Sleep effectively the write-to-disk phase of his operating system?

My sleep is probably more restful. Deeper than normal deep sleep. Even with me training in the dreamscape, I feel fully refreshed the next day. Either it can compensate for the mental fatigue, or my lucidity in the dreamscape has no effect on my physical brain at all.

Sleep. Rest. Dream. What were dreams? There were different scientific definitions. Like most biological features, it probably had multiple functions, and each was complex and interconnected in a way that a simple answer wouldn’t satisfy peer reviewers.

One definition came to his mind. With dreams, the brain selectively strengthened and integrated new memories into long-term storage while effectively unsubscribing from the irrelevant sensory clutter of the day.

Memories. Johan’s. Yu Han’s. The sub-origin and the real thing.

Wait a second! Yu Han hadn’t really tested his memory capabilities in the dreamscape compared to the waking realm. Not Echoing Dreamscape; he couldn’t echo anything in reality.

It was the recollection itself. Retrieving details, retaining details. Working memory versus long term. Were his abilities the same in reality compared to here? Was it easier or higher?

With higher memory sub-origin points, there was a noticeable rise in this cognitive ability. But was it the same inside the dreamscape and outside?

How would I even test this?

It was hard to be objective in these sorts of tests. He would need to design experiments, scope the research question narrow enough, then conduct trials in an unbiased way.

Not going to happen anytime soon.

Deep Sleep needed more focus, though. He had ignored it for far too long. It was the key to his power. Without it, he would lose Echoing Dreamscape, memorycasting, Fei Rui’s crabscape, the mirror earth, and the double time he got each day to train.

Yu Han glanced at the hole in the wall to the crabscape.

A little less than ten hours had gone by.

“You can do it,” Yu Han said. It was silly. The voice wouldn’t reach the crab all the way into the tunnel of doom. But that’s the thing about faith. It wasn’t logical.