Chapter 193: Dream’s Online Mode

Yu Xian smiled at the girl with her hair in a bun, who was too shocked to speak.

“That’s right. Multiplayer.” He nodded, his eyes blazing with intensity.

“Just imagine… what if our audio files didn’t create a lonely, single-player dream, but a multiplayer online world where you can ‘meet’ other people.”

He painted a picture for her:

“You’re no longer grinding monsters and leveling up alone in your dreams. You could meet your friends, your family, even a complete stranger from the internet—and team up, chat, and go on adventures all within the same dream.”

It was as if Wen Xiao could see the world Yu Xian was describing. She nodded vigorously.

“I get it! So that’s why you’re calling it version 2.0! It’s the leap from the single-player era to the online gaming era!”

“Exactly. It’s a higher-dimensional attack. Even if our scripts are simple and our scenes crude, it’ll be enough to instantly crush all the ‘single-player blockbusters’ on the market.” Yu Xian gazed at the shoppers coming and going in the mall. “Once people find out that you can go ‘online’ in their dreams, who would ever want to play the lonely, single-player version again?”

“That joy of social connection, that thrill of an unknown encounter—those are humanity’s most fundamental and irresistible desires! While everyone else is still talking to fictional NPCs in their dreams, we can tell them that they can *truly* meet their real-life friends and loved ones in a dream…”

He paused, then looked at Wen Xiao and asked,

“If it were you, which would you choose?”

For some reason, Wen Xiao’s face suddenly flushed red. She turned away, avoiding Yu Xian’s gaze, and mumbled,

“Well… I… I guess I’d choose the multiplayer version…”

“So, this is our trump card. We use this ‘multiplayer version’ audio as bait to draw everyone in. Inside that audio, we’ll embed the strictest Time Compression and Logical Anchor Points.” Yu Xian took a deep breath, laying out his full plan. “That way, we can claim their dream time and alleviate the source memory confusion.” Then, he frowned.

“The only problem is, we still haven’t figured out the principles behind the Dream Net technology. We need a specific audio frequency to create the Hijacked Spindle Wave, and I’m not sure if we can technically pull it off…”

Wen Xiao snapped out of her daze and nodded.

“This morning, I looked at the flash drive you gave me. It contains the audio source files for the Hijacked Spindle Wave. We still don’t understand the complex neurobiological principles behind it, or how they even achieved the hijacking effect, but that doesn’t mean we can’t use it.”

She bit her lip, thinking for a moment. Then her eyes lit up as she explained,

“Think of us as a canning factory. We don’t need to know how the canning machine works to use it to pack the food.”

Yu Xian paused, realizing what she meant.

“You’re saying… just like the TDI audio modules, we can treat this as an encapsulated ‘black box’ and just call it directly?”

“Exactly. It doesn’t matter what the underlying principle is—whether it’s the peer-to-peer, action-at-a-distance we theorized, or a server-client broadcast model. All that matters is that we know how to use it.” Wen Xiao giggled.

“It’s like programming. You don’t have to write everything from low-level assembly. You just call the packaged API from a library.”

Then, as if she’d just remembered something, Wen Xiao quickly added,

“But there’s one critical parameter that wasn’t specified in the lab notes, and it’s what I’m most worried about right now.”

“What parameter?” Yu Xian felt his stomach drop.

“Distance.” Wen Xiao turned, leaning with both hands on the glass railing of the mall’s atrium. She looked down at the crowd below, who looked like scurrying ants.

“I saw in the lab report that the test subjects were in adjacent rooms. We still don’t know the effective range of this ‘spindle wave synchronization.’ Is it like Bluetooth, just ten-odd meters? Or like Wi-Fi, able to cover a whole floor? Or could it be like a radio broadcast, blanketing an entire city? Or maybe…”

She turned back, her wide, clear eyes fixed on Yu Xian.

“Can it really act like quantum entanglement, completely ignoring distance?”

Yu Xian realized the gravity of the question.

If the range was only a few meters, the ‘multiplayer’ feature would be confined to a single dorm room. They could still market that, but its potential to spread would be drastically reduced.

But if it could cover the entire campus, its appeal would be significantly greater.

And if it could cover an entire city, or even further…

Then it would be an absolute bombshell.

Yu Xian shook his head, pushing the hypotheticals aside. He said to Wen Xiao,

“It’s a valid concern… but it’s alright. We’ll first create the dream script with the Logical Anchor Points. Then, we can just enter the dream together and test it out.”

“Wh-what? ‘We’?” Wen Xiao almost dropped her phone, her mouth agape.

Yu Xian was about to explain that this matter involved Senior Sister Yiyi and couldn’t be revealed to others, which was why only the two of them could run the test.

“Hey! You two!” Yu Zhengze’s voice carried over from a distance.

“What are you two whispering about? Get over here!”

“Coming!” Yu Xian shouted back. He quickly nudged Wen Xiao, who was staring at the floor lost in thought, and they hurried over.

The two of them jogged to the entrance just as the automated announcement called out:

“Calling number A26. Number A26, your table is ready.”

Yu Zhengze clutched the crumpled ticket in his hand, preparing to head inside with Wen Yu.