“Multi…” Su Qing felt like he was tripping over his own tongue. “Multi what in the hell?” 

He thought, could this ignorance be because he was relatively uncultured? So he surreptitiously glanced at the supposedly most cultured Chang Dou and found that Chang Dou was also looking at Zhong Shiliang idiotically—OK, Su Qing thought silently, this Comrade Chang Dou is overeducated to the point of looking stupid. The expressions his face can display are approximately as follows: stupid smiling, stupid crying, stupid staring, stupid blankness…

Zhong Shiliang, beaming, explained: “You must all have had disturbing and very memorable experiences last night. As for how you ought to look upon this night…—of course, for some of you, the time that passed may have been longer than one night—my suggestion is, if you believe that it was real, then it was real, and if you believe that it was fake, then it was fake.” 

No sooner had he finished speaking than several murderous gazes locked onto Zhong Shiliang from various directions. Su Qing shut his mouth, vaguely thinking that there were two words written on this Comrade Lao Zhong’s face: “hit” on the left side, “me” on the right. 

Zhong Shiliang’s psychological quality was indeed above average. Remaining composed, he accepted everyone’s admiration, dipped his remaining mantou in broth, and ate it. “We can’t waste food.

“Simply put, this space doesn’t function through the operation of some hallucinogen. It wasn’t something that you all imagined out of nowhere, it was something that existed to begin with—it was the room you were staying in itself. The geographical position of that room is fairly special. Adding man-made technological arrangements, the space produces different dimensions. After it has been activated, the chronological and spatial coordinates can change at will. Meanwhile, the coordinates you end up in after activation depend on you.” 

“Depend on our what?” Fang Xiu asked. 

Zhong Shiliang pointed to his own head. “Brainwaves. To be a little more refined about it, your own heart will take you to a suitable space and coordinate point. And the consciousness of the enterer will superimpose itself on the space they have entered, each influencing the other, creating some scenes that you yourself can’t understand but secretly feel ought to be thus—oh, of course, some spaces aren’t very steady, because the dimension is too high. Some of you may have encountered circumstances such as closed loops and earthquakes.” 

Su Qing frowned, then asked, “Why would I have a very bad headache while entering this space of yours?” 

Zhong Shiliang glanced at him. “I suppose you weren’t asleep at the time, Xiao Su?” 

This was a slightly awkward question. Su Qing paused, then breezily said, “No, I’d been asleep and just been woken up then. One of the guys was grinding his teeth, and it gave me a bit of a pain in my teeth.” 

While everyone knew based on experience that the credibility of what he said wasn’t high, all the living beings present that could be termed “guys” couldn’t resist subconsciously touching their cheeks—some people are just born with the sort of face that makes others trust them. 

Zhong Shiliang no longer pursued the question of whether Su Qing had been asleep. He explained: “A person’s brainwave frequencies are different depending on whether he’s awake or asleep. You were forced into the space while awake, so there was some pain. But there won’t be any negative side effects afterwards, I can guarantee that.—If two, or more than two, people get drawn into the same space, then the composition of that space becomes more complex, because it becomes the outcome of the counteractive combination of the space’s installations and the consciousnesses of a few different people. You may experience some very unbelievable, perhaps even illogical things. Of course, this is also a good channel for understanding your teammates.” 

“And…if you ‘died’ in the space?” Su Qing asked. 

A secretive smile appeared on Zhong Shiliang’s face. “If you died, then take it as having come back to life. Isn’t that pretty good?” 

They all frowned and began to think about what things had to be weighing on their minds to make them experience the things they had experienced when pulled into that space. They heard Zhong Shiliang say, “There’s no need for you to worry. The Multi-Frequency Dimension-Changing Space and the enforced sleep device won’t be activated again tonight. I trust that everyone here is an elite and has a strong adaptive ability. You’ll be able to adjust considerably today, so there won’t be any more use for those things.” 

Xue Xiaolu couldn’t resist asking, “So what are the contents of our training today?” 

“Only some conventional training.” 

Zhong Shiliang hadn’t been lying. The contents of the day’s training were indeed conventional. In the morning, there was some common physical training, and the intensity level wasn’t very high. At any rate, even Lu Qingbai and Chang Dou, as nonmilitary personnel, could get accustomed to it. The contents of the afternoon were a very thin, very tall old soldier coming over to deliver an ideological lecture to everyone. It was about the same as attending a Party class, nothing but raising political consciousness, expounding on some glorious history, and discussing personal convictions. There were slightly higher requirements for sitting posture. 

No one was in any mood to listen. They were already used to General Xiong’s brainwashing and could recite the whole routine by heart. Most of their thoughts were still stuck in that special space. 

Su Qing sat bolt upright, but the look in his eyes was obviously vague. It was as if there was a film projector in his head, replaying the previous night’s experiences over and over. 

He found that the thing he feared most was in fact losing his strength. There was a line that went, “The socio-economic foundation determines the building above it.” Without the foundation of formidable strength as a support, he found that his heart couldn’t be strong. Su Qing thought perhaps it was that he himself wasn’t any kind of awesome badass; he had been born to the life of an ordinary commoner. But unexpectedly, he had been pushed beyond his limits; the more he had grown, the more he had had grown astray. 

The classroom was bright and clean. The afternoon sun fell on him snugly. Su Qing suddenly thought, it was because of that fear he couldn’t get rid of that, like Hu Bugui said, he subconsciously didn’t trust others. It was why he hid himself behind countless lies, as though he would be safe that way. 

A powerful person wouldn’t fear betrayal, wouldn’t fear injury, because he would know that as long as he still had a breath remaining, he could survive and smooth out the bumpy road; or if even that one breath no longer remained, he would still think it was worth it; anyway, he would be fine again in another twenty years. 

He inhaled deeply, then exhaled extremely softly, glancing at Hu Bugui sitting in front of him. Hu Bugui’s back muscles were very impressive, his shoulders straight and broad. Even sitting there unmoving, it was very hard to ignore his presence. 

Su Qing remembered in vexation the last words Hu Bugui had said into his ear in that strange space. He simply felt a little overwhelmed by flattery, beginning to feel at a loss—he absolutely didn’t think there was anything lovable about him, and he couldn’t think of anyone apart from his parents, who had treated him as a treasure under the influence of hormones and the instinct of living things to propagate, who had taken him into their heart. 

Hooking up with others to mutually resolve physiological problems was one thing, but when it came to emotion, that was another thing—when he had been fooling around with Guo Julin, he had still been a confused youth, wasting food and killing time. There was no comparison to that kiss gently falling on his lips in a life-or-death moment. 

So it must have been that from the start, Guo Julin had coveted his looks, so he had been good to him in every way, but later he had gotten tired of him? 

“What does he like about me?” Su Qing stared in confusion at Hu Bugui’s back and couldn’t understand no matter how he thought about it. He was like a child who had always tested last in his class, suddenly notified that he had been granted the only triple A student certificate of merit in the whole class. He was simply amazed, then suspicious. As he considered the problem without being able to resolve it, he also felt extremely apologetic, as though he had colossally taken advantage of someone. 

This apologetic feeling practically made him dread Hu Bugui. Even when it was necessary to speak to him, he couldn’t help being somewhat cautious, not daring to carelessly flirt with him or tease him anymore. Su Qing had always been the type to feign compliance while doing what he wanted in secret, but today, he nearly took Hu Bugui’s words as golden rules, orders to be obeyed to the letter. When Hu Bugui told him to sit, he sat. Hu Bugui had snatched away his cigarette, so he held back and didn’t smoke for half the day. When the nicotine craving was making him uncomfortable, he used the free activity time after lunch to stealthily hide in the bathroom and quickly smoked one cigarette, relieving the urgency. 

To his bad luck, he even ran into Lu Qingbai and spent ages being observed and studied by this wicked four-eyes, who was blindly astute just when he shouldn’t be. 

Su Qing was preoccupied all afternoon, to the point that after class, he only blankly raised his head when others called to him twice. Lu Qingbai patted him on the shoulder with an odd expression. “Listen, Comrade Xiao Su, I spent all last night killing zombies along with two girls. I nearly threw out my back. But now I’ve come back to life. Why are you still in a trance?” 

Entirely insincere, Su Qing said, “Must be that my psychological quality is too poor.” 

Lu Qingbai crossed his arms in front of his chest and looked him over for a while. “I sense something fishy.” 

Fang Xiu seemed to be feeling lively, so he chipped in to ask, “What’s fishy?” 

Lu Qingbai looked at Fang Xiu, then looked at Su Qing, comparing the two of them. Then he passed judgment: “Look, we all went through that last night, so today we all look sickly. But why does it seem to me that…only this young comrade is looking sultry?”

Su Qing calmly said, “Dr. Lu, your glasses prescription isn’t strong enough.” 

Lu Qingbai stared at him, not letting him off, still trying to use his X-ray eyes to pierce Su Qing’s face and witness his inner world to catch a glimpse of some illicit romance. 

Hu Bugui looked at Su Qing and wanted to say something. Just then, that plague god Zhong Shiliang walked in with the look of a suspicious stranger bearing gifts. He proclaimed a piece of news, the general idea of which was: everyone was tired after the day’s work, so they should relax in the evening. Everyone was asked to come out to the training course’s grounds and forage for their own food—they could pick some of the vegetables from the training course’s private plot or shoot some game, go up some trees to find birds’ eggs, or go down into the little pond to catch fish; they could hold a big barbecue. 

After saying this, Zhong Shiliang left. Chang Dou stared dumbfounded at his receding figure. “I…I finally understand why General Xiong said that the training course’s funds were tight. It turns out that the installations here are too advanced. Even headquarters can’t compare. They’ve used up all their funds, and now they even have to save on money for food!”