The two of them recovered from waging war on the beach against an iron maiden, as well as the intense exercise of a high-difficulty two-person, three-legged threesome. They rested for a night, and the next day saw the spoken-of Lao Yao. 

Lao Yao was about the same age as General Zhong, and extremely thin. Huang Jinchen looked him over objectively and found that he looked a little like a big triangle-faced green mantis, but he didn’t say so—after all, he, like Kou Tong, was dressed in a dignified white coat and was aware of having a faint air of a beast in human clothes. 

He still couldn’t understand the mysteries inside that big boiler the day before. What was a Projector? Kou Tong had spoken a string of principles combined with practical application, and in truth it had made him dizzy. Science fiction novels regularly had things about “going into people’s brains” or “going into people’s dreams,” but Dr. Kou had said that wasn’t it. The space was real…but how could it be real? 

If it was real, why could he dictate the state of Kou Tong’s leg? 

If it was real, what if they had met with miserable failure last night and accidentally been used to pick that big-chested, long-legged young lady’s teeth? Would they then really have lived on only in their comrades’ hearts?

Also…if the space was made of overlapping consciousnesses, why would there be that bizarre tower in the middle? Why would there be a monster trapped in the tower? 

And then, what was the monster breaking through the tower a metaphor for? Why had Kou Tong hastily produced the controller and taken him out? 

Before his thoughts had stopped wandering, he heard Kou Tong being peculiarly admonished by Lao Yao. The reason was that Dr. Kou wasn’t meticulous. The top button of his white coat was undone; added to his crippled leg, his whole style right now was a great challenge to tradition. Therefore, Lao Yao took one look at him and was displeased. He turned and very directly asked General Zhong, “Is he from your department? Are your personnel so lax in discipline? They can’t maintain a standard appearance? Young people these days…ha!” 

When he laughed, Huang Jinchen saw his facial expression twitch and was worried that this was facial paralysis from a stroke. 

But Kou Tong was good-humored. After a moment’s blankness, he appropriately raised his hand and firmly did up all his buttons. Then, leaning on his crutch, he performed a high-difficulty salute.”Old…” 

He had probably wanted to say some appellation like “old chief,” but Yao Shuo laughed bitterly again and passed directly between Kou Tong and Huang Jinchen. He took off his gloves and disrespectfully tossed them aside. “Listen, Comrade Researcher, don’t give me that. Of the people at your base, who doesn’t outrank me? A useless old thing like me, I’m worried this unmerited respect will shorten my lifespan.” 

Huang Jinchen frowned. He was about to speak when, in the time it took to turn his head, Kou Tong, despite walking on three legs, somehow moved a bit faster than even he did. He had already turned and come up in front of him, still with his lucky cat’s expression like a spring breeze, his face as unmoved as a mountain, just as if he had been tempered by working customer service for transportation and communications. 

Before Huang Jinchen could gasp in admiration, Kou Tong turned his head and quietly said into his ear, “In our line of work, the first skill to practice is not fighting back when hit and not talking back when cursed.” 

Huang Jinchen didn’t answer, his face full of interest. Kou Tong saw and sighed inwardly, thinking that this Huang Jinchen really was a hopelessly idle lord who had come out for a personal taste of real life. 

Then Kou Tong glanced at General Zhong. General Zhong was trembling inwardly; he kept feeling that the look in Kou Tong’s eyes was very meaningful. 

A long time ago, a phrase had been in circulation at the base for a long time—if you weren’t worrying about Kou Tong acting indecently, you were worried about him pretending to be decent. General Zhong suddenly had an ominous premonition. He thought that Dr. Kou was beginning to pretend to be decent, and he instantly felt a bit of a headache coming on. 

The four of them went directly to the “big boiler.” Yao Shuo frowned and looked up at the most advanced instrument in the world with no intention of bowing down and worshipping. Instead, he was inclined to despise it. Though he had said that everyone in this base outranked him, he still treated Kou Tong with an elder’s overbearing air of command. “Tell me what the hell this thing does.” 

“It’s a simulated training field.” Kou Tong pushed up the plain glass spectacles he was wearing and smiled with a scholarly flavor. “It’s like this, old chief—as you know, sir, outside of urgent wartime conditions, the ST Base is normally a training camp, so we want…” 

Lao Yao interrupted Kou Tong once again. It seemed that he was deliberately not letting Kou Tong finish any of his sentences. Without so much as looking at General Zhong’s expression, he gave a thumbs up and said, “Of course I know that. Your secrecy level is high, like this. You won’t make an appearance until the critical moment, not like us cheap little soldiers who have to shed our blood and lay down our lives whenever there’s the slightest natural or man-made disaster anywhere.” 

Huang Jinchen stood in an observer’s position, watching the fun, thinking that this big mantis had come here looking for a beating today. 

This speech of Lao Yao’s was very off. Even General Zhong’s expression was unhappy. Explicitly and implicitly, he was saying that the base was privileged and aloof, not doing any work, not appearing until the final moment, a place specially for supporting lords—though no matter how you sliced it, even if the base really had been a place for supporting lords, when it came to the most dangerous times, these “lords” still had to put their lives on the line. Saying this in front of General Zhong, the head of the base, who had just come back from the hospital after narrowly escaping with his life, was truly too hurtful to public feeling. 

Kou Tong pretended not to have heard, adjusting the instrument with his back to them. He looked back and said to Lao Yao, “Old chief, please carry a weapon and prepare for battle. Jinchen, come here. General Zhong, please step back.” 

Yao Shuo hesitated. “I have to bring my own weapons?” 

He turned his head and saw that Huang Jinchen had taken off the white coat that had been binding him. Under it, he was wearing a form-fitting jacket, looking like an arms dealer with handguns hanging at his waist and a rifle on his back. 

Finding that he was at the center of attention, Huang Jinchen, imitating Kou Tong, squeezed out a refined smile. “Just like this will be good, sir.” 

For some reason, he thought that Yao Shuo’s cheeks twitched again. 

But when they entered the projection space, Huang Jinchen found that this time he had been worried over nothing. According to what Kou Tong said, this time their two consciousnesses had been completely blocked by the machinery. What they entered was entirely Yao Shuo’s consciousness’s projection space. 

The grass is always greener on the other side; Huang Jinchen looked at the tall buildings and neon streets in front of him and compared them to his experience yesterday, feeling that he finally understood the difference between a developed country and a developing one. 

There were actually people coming and going in this high street, and there was the sweet smell of a candy shop floating in the air. In front of them was a four-way intersection, behind was a huge billboard and a large swathe of villas with lots of luxury cars and beautiful people going in and out. All kinds of beautifully made-up women and elegant men brushed shoulders with them, just like a crowd of celebrities. 

Yao Shuo only came around then. He pointed to a streetlight that had just changed and snorted at Kou Tong. “This is the simulated training field you mentioned? Please tell me what the contents of the training are. Eating, drinking, and making merry?” 

Kou Tong unblushingly said, “This is exactly why our equipment needs a trial run. Sometimes it produces all kinds of disorder based on different qualities of the enterer—when Jinchen and I tested it yesterday, we accidentally fell into a big sea and got chased by an octopus. That’s why we put aside our embarrassment and asked General Zhong to go through his private contacts to invite you and some other friends of his to come help.” 

Yao Shuo waved a hand. “All right, all right, can we get out?” 

“Not immediately. For the sake of the stability of the equipment, there are certain maximum and minimum time controls.” Kou Tong brought out this lie without hesitation, Huang Jinchen thought admiringly, even better at pretense than Huang Jinchen himself, who had been a planted agent. 

Yao Shuo snorted, turned, and went into a street, heading directly towards a coffee shop. 

Huang Jinchen took the opportunity to hide the weapons he was carrying. He walked behind, pulling at Kou Tong, who was already walking on both legs. He consulted him on a professional question: “Didn’t you say that the two of us were blocked? Why is your leg better again?” 

“We’re blocked with certain parameters. We can make some simple definitions—for example, I thought it was very unlikely that we would walk right into a Second Iraq War battlefield, so I defined a box for that gun on your back.” 

“I still don’t particularly understand the Projector’s mechanism.” 

“The operation of the human brain is extremely complex. Many people may not only be unable to control their own ideas, they may not even notice what they’re really thinking—of course, I’m not talking about a person who has received special training like you.” Kou Tong maintained a certain distance from Yao Shuo, following behind. He lowered his voice and patiently explained to Huang Jinchen, “In a person’s brain, countless operations are going on at the same time. Because of this, it’s very hard to link two people’s consciousnesses. That would be extremely chaotic.” 

Huang Jinchen nodded quickly. 

Kou Tong continued: “So, adopting the technological means of the special space, when we use the Projector, it isn’t to let you enter a certain person’s thoughts, it’s to materialize those thoughts, to compose a complete space with certain special rules and adjust the frequency to superimpose it onto our real space. This way, the subject and our personnel can enter that space together.” 

Huang Jinchen quickly asked, “So who thought up that big monster we ran into yesterday? It sure wasn’t me.” 

Kou Tong patiently said, “It wasn’t me, either. It was the outcome of the combination of my subconscious and yours. Lacking parameters, it’s hard for me to say what it concretely represents. Without concrete analysis, relying solely on rough guesswork is definitely unscientific. Moreover, while the projection of a single person’s consciousness is comparatively clear and will have unified rules and logic in it, it’s much harder to speak about multiple people’s consciousnesses overlapping together. Sometimes it can be very unstable.” 

“So…what if in our future work, we run into another friendly guest performer like yesterday’s big girl? It’ll be glorious—will we be martyrs?” 

Kou Tong was amused. “Don’t worry, we won’t die. The Projector is in nonfatal mode.” 

Huang Jinchen frowned, his expression a little confused. 

“Let me draw an analogy.” Kou Tong drew a coordinate plane on his hand. “You understand that, right?” 

Huang Jinchen nodded, indicating that while he had entered the great classroom of society at a young age, he had still received a basic education. “My math teacher taught this when I was little. It’s an x-axis and a y-axis, right?” 

Kou Tong said, “Right, that’s about it. It doesn’t matter what you call the axes—let’s suppose that each point on the vertical axis can map onto the horizontal axis in some way. For example, let’s say two to one. So if the interval on the vertical axis is from one to two, then interval on the horizontal axis is from one half to one, right?” 

Huang Jinchen nodded. After a moment, suddenly seeing the light, he said, “Oh, so when it’s been projected, it’ll be missing a segment—for example, the wheel containing biting the dust will be removed and not projected?” 

“That’s right.” 

“So why were we running?” 

Kou Tong smiled. “Even if it’s not really getting hung up on the wall, that doesn’t mean you can avoid dying in the space. It’s just that the means of dying here have been forcefully broken off from the space by default. Anyway, to tell you the truth, the feeling of dying isn’t that pleasant.” 

Huang Jinchen was itching to have a go, planning on a spot of novelty seeking. 

Kou Tong pretended not to see, sped up a little, and surreptitiously said to Huang Jinchen, “Hurry up. I’ve duped the old thing. Let’s follow him. This is the projection of his own consciousness. Even though he doesn’t know that, he still instinctively knows where to go.”