The moment they touched down, the ground under the three people’s feet trembled violently. Some stones of various size rolled down from the mountain. They could practically feel this place’s repulsion and vigilance towards them. 

The moment they touched down, Huang Jinchen dodged with abnormal keenness and agility. Kou Tong had somehow carried the space’s control interface inside. He was wearing those useless UV-protection lenses. Their black frames were rather large, blocking his gaze to a great extent, so in a moment of inattention, he very unfortunately got hit in the face with some grit and fled the area under attack practically covered in dirt. 

Huang Jinchen raised his head and looked up at the sky. He felt that if you often walked by the sea, you were sure to get your shoes wet; though Dr. Kou claimed to know how to act pretentious while avoiding getting struck by lightning, it would still be hard for him to avoid one day becoming a crater. 

Only Lao Yao was comparatively safe. Though he stood there very calmly, not moving a muscle, the rocks and grit seemed to avoid him. Though they were in free fall, when they came in range of where he was standing, they would still grandly turn away. 

Yao Shuo folded his arms in front of his chest—this was a very typical, not especially friendly defensive gesture; a person who performed this gesture regularly clearly wasn’t afraid of others perceiving his enmity—and stood some steps away, coldly watching Kou Tong pat dust off his white coat. 

But then, surprisingly, the space stabilized. The indications of a coming landslide vanished. 

Kou Tong took off the lousy glasses blocking his eyes and very sloppily wiped them with his fingers. 

He looked at Lao Yao’s expression and knew that this astute middle-aged man had likely already guessed something. At first, some provocation from this scene had led Yao Shuo’s consciousness projection to be as unstable as last time, but now he had evidently calmed down. 

So he smiled—Huang Jinchen kept thinking that this fellow Kou Tong’s smile was a professional specialty, containing a great deal of technique. According to the judgment of his discerning eyes, this definitely wasn’t natural; it must have gone through a great deal of theoretical and practical training, chatting and bullshitting in real life, as well as correcting himself nanometer by nanometer in front of a mirror. 

Kou Tong seemed like a person who easily made others relax and be unable to resist feeling well disposed towards him. Adding in his superb assimilation skills, within a few minutes of starting to converse, he could always make people view him as having interests in common with them. If he had used this to flirt, he would have been undefeatable. 

But Yao Shuo’s expression seemed even more savage. He seemed to have a deep-rooted wariness towards others. These was a teenage rebelliousness about him like a second youth; through the grinding of many years of experience, he had become increasingly intractable—it was as though he had a mirror in his heart that reflected people’s goodwill towards him with the greatest degree of malicious conjecture. 

In everyday terms, on seeing Yao Shuo, you knew that he definitely thought Kou Tong had ulterior motives, that his smile hid a knife. 

“I heard you met my wife?” Yao Shuo raised his chin slightly and looked at Kou Tong with thorns in his words. 

“I did.” Kou Tong closed the control box. “It’s like this. I’m very sorry. Because your friends and family are very concerned, they’ve concealed…” 

“Enough, it’s an investigation, isn’t it?” Yao Shuo lightly interrupted him. “Don’t pretend. I looked into it when I left. I know what this thing is. Simulated training field… You really can make things up.” 

He let out an unusually sharp jeering laugh and looked at Kou Tong with an unusually disdainful expression—as though this lie Kou Tong had made up was an insult to his intelligence. 

Kou Tong accordingly shut his mouth, decisively changing tactics. He restrained his smile. Looking strictly businesslike, he made a gesture. “Since you already know, sir, I won’t waste words. I hope that you can cooperate with our work, and we can all be spared trouble. Could I ask you to take us up the mountain to have a look now?” 

Lao Yao paused for a moment, snorted, then, without so much as a look at the two of them, strode up the mountain. 

It was a strange thing—though this mountain looked bizarre, Lao Yao seemed to know at the bottom of his heart where to go. They went in a half-circle around the foot of the mountain, then saw a little path up the mountain that seemed manmade. 

Lao Yao silently went on ahead, leading the way. Kou Tong didn’t try to communicate with him again. From the control box, he took out a keyboard that could float in midair and slowly follow along with his footsteps. He pressed a button, and a transparent screen appeared on it. Huang Jinchen noticed that in the corner of the screen was a small camera, flashing. It must have been filming. Kou Tong took some notes as he walked. 

When the two of them were about ten meters away from Lao Yao, Huang Jinchen drew close to nip Kou Tong’s ear and ask, “He knows. What’s going to happen?” 

Kou Tong was silent for a while. “In reality, the great majority of the time, I only enter people’s consciousness projections after obtaining their approval—well, what we did before isn’t forbidden, either. This thing was invented too recently. Though a few countries are already attempting to apply it practically, they still haven’t come up with regulations concerning it—the more cooperative the patient is, the more stable the space is. The whole process becomes smoother. But ordinarily, people instinctively hide their true problems. That’s what makes the consciousness spaces have distorted logic and sometimes even be full of danger.” 

Huang Jinchen thought about it and switched to an idea that was comparatively easy for him to understand. “You mean that he’s going to take us on a wild goose chase.” 

Kou Tong hesitated. “It’s not something he can control. For example, in our overlapping consciousness space before, you used some intense method of suggestion to convince yourself, making yourself believe that my leg was lame, so it became lame under your influence…” 

Huang Jinchen rubbed his nose. “That’s because you really were lame at the time.” 

Kou Tong smiled, showing that he hadn’t taken it to heart at all. “Apart from that, most people haven’t undergone the relevant training. It’s hard for them to perform at your level, so they can’t resist this space. Instinct is telling him where to go, but that ‘instinct’ itself contains resistance.” 

“I see.” Though Huang Jinchen said this, his expression still seemed perplexed. 

Just then, a wind suddenly rose in the projection space, like the howling of some beast. It came from the mountain. Huang Jinchen looked down and found that the enclosing wall was growing bit by bit. As they went up, the enclosing wall became taller and taller, making it seem that they would forever be encircled by it. 

Kou Tong suddenly shut the cover of the control box. The black box very conveniently became invisible. He stuck up a finger and quietly said, “And that intense resistance and self-protectiveness will sometimes be very aggressive.” 

“What does that…” 

Before Huang Jinchen could finish, there was a sudden huge sound behind him. His gaze sharpened. He threw himself forward practically out of instinct, dodging with a nimble forward roll. At the same time, he pulled the handgun out from under his pant leg and raised his hand, ready to…

But when he turned his head, he froze. 

Attacking him wasn’t a person. Rather, it wasn’t a living being at all—it was the enclosing wall that they couldn’t avoid no matter what. 

Near the summit of Yao Shuo’s house’s courtyard wall, probably for decoration, there was a row of patterned tiles. These were mottled with ivy, moss, and the corrosion of time. The pattern on the tiles was no longer very visible; out of the holes the tiles “grew” a row of close, scalp-numbing firing holes.

Yes—you couldn’t see the gun butts or who was shooting, but they simultaneously aimed at the surrounded people. 

Yao Shuo also heard movement now and looked back, frowning. As soon as he saw, he was also startled. Pointing to the enclosing wall, he asked Kou Tong, “What’s going on?” 

Huang Jinchen’s throat bobbed slightly. He turned his head to solicit the brilliant opinion of a professional. “Dr. Kou, ordinarily, what should one do when encountering circumstances like these?” 

Kou Tong looked blankly for a while at the gun barrels aimed at his whole body. After a moment, he rather uncertainly said, “Maybe…throw your hands over your head and get down… Do you think that would help?” 

Huang Jinchen was speechless for a moment. He was forced to acknowledge that this “brilliant opinion” was very original. 

There came the familiar sound of a bullet being loaded. Huang Jinchen grabbed Kou Tong by the collar and held his head down. Kou Tong felt a bullet nearly brush past his scalp. Then he was quickly pushed by Huang Jinchen. “No good. We’ll die if we’re hit, but they won’t. Run.” 

There was no need for him to say this. As though Kou Tong could read his mind, he nimbly leapt up. The three of them took to their heels and fled amid the hail of bullets. Luckily, Lao Yao, the oldest of them, was appropriately able-bodied, and he was quick. Following Lao Yao’s lead, they dove into a mountain forest, the thick trees blocking the gunfire behind them. 

But the unusual latticed wall, as though it had absorbed some powerful fertilizer, grew taller and taller, then taller still, nonstop, not leaving them alone. 

“Fuck, I’m not the type of man to die preserving my chastity, but I’m still afraid of being harassed like this!” Huang Jinchen roared, craning his neck. “Dr. Kou, please don’t just move your legs, think of something to do!” 

The peculiar quality that had caused Dr. Kou to break his leg riding a bike came out into the open. It seemed that his strength was pretty good. He could still catch his breath. He said, “Run for now, don’t worry, we won’t die if we get hit!” 

“We can’t die! According to your coordinate whatever theory, dying in the space should feel the same as a real death, right? It would be tantamount to opening your eyes and finding that you had reincarnated and gone outside!” Huang Jinchen gripped a big tree branch and swung himself up like a monkey, then grabbed another branch—he was too familiar with gun battles. He had already found that all these bullets basically traveled at an ordinary person’s height. If they climbed a tree, they could get a moment to catch their breaths. 

Kou Tong glanced out of the corner of his eye and reacted at once. He yelled to Yao Shuo, “Up the tree!” 

Yao Shuo understood. Following Huang Jinchen’s lead, he immediately climbed the tree. 

Kou Tong, looking excited, said, “So this is the rule of the enclosing wall—they’ll only follow where we step. If we’re all in the same tree above sea level, the wall will judge that we haven’t risen and maintain its original height of attack.” 

Huang Jinchen lay on a branch, panting as he looked at him with a smile. “Fine, Dr. Kou’s belated efforts are really good.” 

Yao Shuo said, “Hmph!” 

Kou Tong waved a hand. “How embarrassing. Let’s rest a while. I’ll think of what to do.” 

Huang Jinchen saw Kou Tong hang from a tree branch and take the little black box out again. He couldn’t resist sticking out his head. “Listen, Brother Gunner, you be careful. There’s only one of that thing. If it breaks, there’s nowhere we can buy a new one. We won’t be able to get out.” 

Kou Tong didn’t so much as look up. “There’s a backup in the space, but as a precaution against extraordinary circumstances, it isn’t in my hands. But the space recognizes me as the controller. If something happens to this one, it will lead me to find the other one.” 

Huang Jinchen thought about it and thought that it made sense—when they had been together in the consciousness space before and no one had held the control box, Kou Tong really had seemed to know where the thing was. 

Just then, Kou Tong found that the signal on the screen seemed to have been disrupted by something. The screen went white for a moment, then restored. 

He frowned and looked at Huang Jinchen with lingering fear, thinking, Did this big crow’s mouth get it right? Has something really gone wrong? 

“Here’s what I think. We’ll leave now. There are some things I want to discuss with the old chief.” For safety’s sake, Kou Tong decided to go out to examine and repair the big boiler. “I’ll…” 

Before he could finished speaking, a dialogue box suddenly appeared in a corner of the screen with a bright red Arabic numeral “2.” 

Kou Tong stared blankly. He knew what this meant. It meant that a second person had entered the projection space. In other words, it had inexplicably turned into two people’s overlapping space. 

But the control box was still in his hands. This was impossible!

But in just the time he was dazed, the number in the dialogue box suddenly went up again and again. In the blink of an eye, it had risen to seven. Before he could even see the last number clearly, the black box’s screen suddenly flashed, and a warning popped up: 

Insufficient privileges. 

Then, in front of the three of them, the black box in Kou Tong’s hands suddenly vanished. It dissolved into powder and was gone!

Kou Tong blinked and immediately came to an accurate conclusion: “Well, we’re screwed.” 

The hail of bullets had stopped at some point. The mountain began to collapse—