Chapter 223 - 90: Brain and External Hard Drive

Chapter 223: Chapter 90: Brain and External Hard Drive

’This book... Why does it still have a deep blue cover?’

A strange feeling crept over Yu Xian. He fixed his gaze on the text, and in an instant, he froze completely.

The book lay quietly on the wooden chair before him.

On its deep blue cover, large white characters spelled out the title: *High-Energy Astrophysics and Gravitational Waves*.

Beneath the title, a line of smaller text was clearly printed: Editor-in-Chief: Gao Jiguo.

Yu Xian’s pupils contracted slightly. He felt his breath catch in his throat.

’How is this possible?’

’There’s no way Wen Xiao could know Professor Gao Jiguo was the editor-in-chief of this book, right?’

He suddenly reached out, snatched the book, and quickly flipped through its pages.

The table of contents he remembered, the rigorous formulas, even the celestial body force-analysis diagrams that had cost him countless brain cells—everything was there, perfectly reproduced.

’But... this completely contradicts our logical conclusions from this afternoon!’

’If this shared dream is constructed with Wen Xiao as the "host," then where on earth was this perfectly replicated textbook pulled from?’

Yu Xian turned to look at Wen Xiao and asked urgently,

"Wen Xiao, have you ever seen this book before?"

"I’m sure I haven’t," Wen Xiao said, shaking her head decisively.

’If she’s never seen it, then our previous theories need to be re-examined.’

’Could it be that in this Dream Net, memory access and blueprint construction aren’t completely limited to the "host’s" brain?’

Yu Xian took a deep breath, closed the book, and gently placed it back on the wooden chair.

There wasn’t much time to think through the logic behind it now.

He glanced at the translucent alarm clock icon. The ten-minute mark was almost up.

If they didn’t wake up at the agreed-upon time, Senior Sister Yiyi, who was waiting for them in the real world, would surely worry. Yu Xian said softly,

"Our time is almost up. Let’s log out for now. We’ve observed the test phenomenon; at the very least, the remote connection was a success. As for how this book was generated, we can sort out the conclusions after we get out."

"Okay." Wen Xiao nodded, her expression also serious.

As they spoke, they both pressed the log-out button.

...

His sense of hearing was the first to return to reality. Yu Xian slowly opened his eyes.

He took off the headset, sat up, and calmed himself.

Yu Xian unlocked his phone and opened the three-person WeChat group named "Dream Net Testing Team."

Just as he was about to type a message to say he was okay, a new message popped up on the screen.

"I’m awake," said Uncertainty Robot.

Immediately after, a message from Yang Yiyi also popped up:

"Roger. Thanks for your hard work. How did the remote connection go?"

Yu Xian and Wen Xiao carefully cross-referenced what happened in the dream, down to the specific visual details, before replying to Yang Yiyi:

"Looks like the remote connection was a success. It was almost identical to when we were in the apartment."

Yang Yiyi replied instantly:

"Then it seems the ’server’ hypothesis has gained a bit more credibility."

Yu Xian added another message:

"Senior Sister, do you remember the question you raised during yesterday afternoon’s test? What would the dream do if a command asked it to generate something completely absent from the ’host’s’ memory?"

"I remember. What’s wrong? Did something happen?" Yang Yiyi replied.

"The test result we got today was..." Yu Xian took a deep breath and typed the line:

"It still generated the completely correct physics textbook, without a single error."

Yang Yiyi was silent for a moment before she tagged Wen Xiao and asked:

"Xiaoxiao, have you seen that book before? Could it be the one you saw Yu Xian generate last time in the dream?"

"She couldn’t have. Last time, the book was generated after she had already logged out," Yu Xian replied.

"I was just thinking, there are a few possibilities here. First, could it be because I already successfully constructed this book once before in a dream script on the same frequency? Something like a ’cache’?"

Uncertainty Robot replied:

"But... why was the mirror you smashed reset to its complete state when I re-entered after we all logged out last time? According to our previous theory, the dream’s storage should depend on the ’host’."

Yang Yiyi agreed:

"That’s true. If the Dream Net really has this kind of long-term save capability, then the dream reset mechanism we tested before wouldn’t make sense."

"Yeah, I can’t figure it out either. There’s no reason for the mirror to reset while the book retains its data." Yu Xian stared at the screen, his brow furrowed.

"Then, that only leaves the second possibility..."

He slowly typed into the chat box:

"In this Dream Net, memory access and blueprint construction aren’t completely limited to the ’host’s’ brain. The so-called ’server’ might also be reading the ’visitor’s’ memory bank."

"If it’s the second possibility... that’s actually very easy to verify." A message from Uncertainty Robot popped up.

"I’ll go back in right now, by myself, without changing any script parameters. This time, you won’t be there as a visitor providing memory data. I’ll go in, look at the book’s table of contents, memorize it, and then come out to check it with you. If the table of contents I see is wrong, that proves the correct book from before was indeed created from data pulled from your brain."

Yu Xian thought for a moment. It was indeed the most direct and effective method of verification. Besides, Wen Xiao hadn’t opened the book to see its contents earlier.

"Okay, be quick. We’ll wait for you," Yu Xian replied.

Wen Xiao sent a sticker of a cat saluting, then went quiet.

Yu Xian lay back on his bed, watching the time on his phone’s screen as he waited quietly.

Time ticked by, second by second. Suddenly, his phone vibrated.

"I’ve written out the table of contents for the first few Chapters from memory. Take a look." Uncertainty Robot sent a long block of text:

"Chapter One: The Origin of the Universe and the Big Bang Theory;

Chapter Two: Stellar Evolution and Life Cycles;

Chapter Three: The Formation of Black Holes and Singularity Observation;

Chapter Four: Detection Methods for Gravitational Waves;

Chapter Five: The Application of Relativity in Astrophysics..."

Yu Xian stared at the table of contents, momentarily stunned.

The effect was like hearing someone speak Dutch and thinking it was German—the sounds were familiar, but the meaning was all wrong.

This table of contents looked more like something a high school student with decent physics grades would cobble together, based on a literal interpretation of the name "High-Energy Astrophysics" and some general scientific knowledge.

The real *High-Energy Astrophysics and Gravitational Waves* textbook started with a first Chapter on extreme cosmic phenomena and multi-messenger astronomy, and a second Chapter on gravitational wave sources and compact binary systems, all filled with mathematical derivations that the average person couldn’t hope to understand.

"This is completely different from the real table of contents," Yu Xian replied in the group chat.

"It seems this is a product of your subconscious just filling in the blanks."

"So, you’re saying that for our previous ’Advanced Math in a Dream’ series, unless the complete information is written into the script, it won’t actually have any learning effect?" Wen Xiao asked.

"Correct. Thinking back, the physics textbook from the dream this afternoon, although based on my subconscious memory, still had some missing or incomplete parts. Those must have also been filled in based on my own understanding."

"So, this means the second hypothesis is probably the correct one," came a message from Yang Yiyi.

"The unknown ’server,’ when in a connected state, can not only read the host’s memory to construct the scene but can also acquire the memory information it needs from the brains of all visitors."

The group chat fell silent for a moment. None of the three sent any more messages.

A few minutes later, another message from Uncertainty Robot popped up:

"Don’t you guys think... that to this ’server,’ our brains are like a bunch of external hard drives plugged into it?"

"Hard drives?" Yu Xian asked.

"The server is like a process with super-high privileges. When it wants to generate something, it first searches the ’host,’ which is the main hard drive. If it doesn’t find data with a high enough match, it follows some unknown rule to jump to another hard drive—the ’visitor’s’ brain—and continues searching. It repeats this cycle until it finds data that’s precise enough."

Yu Xian stared at the screen. Wen Xiao’s analogy, as absurd as it was, did explain the bizarre phenomenon they had just experienced.

’If Wen Xiao’s guess is true, does that mean that in this Dream Net, the brain data of everyone connected is... "shared"?’

’Or rather, it’s being organized by that invisible server into an on-demand... ’

’Computing cluster?’