Chapter 2

When he got home, it was already past seven in the evening. He had just put the key in the door lock when the door opened, and a middle-aged woman looked at him anxiously.

“Xiaobai! What have you been up to? You’re home so late! Did you go to the arcade?”

“No! I didn’t go to the arcade!”

The woman in front of him, who was about to pinch Qu Yun’s ear, was Liang Ru, the mother of “Mo Xiaobai,” the identity he was inhabiting in this world. She was a corporate accountant, and she was busy at the beginning and end of each month and year, so she might not have spent as much time at home as other parents, but she doted on Mo Xiaobai. You could tell by how fat Mo Xiaobai had become.

As for Mo Xiaobai’s father, he was a senior engineer, very well-known in the industry, but he often worked out of town.

Today was no exception, only Liang Ru and Mo Xiaobai had dinner together.

Look at the food on the table, a pot of braised pork, steamed fish, and some green vegetables. In this era, being able to eat such a meal almost every day, Qu Yun was really grateful to be Mo Xiaobai.

But before Qu Yun could swallow, Liang Ru grabbed his ear.

His mom, she’s great in every way, except for this habit of grabbing people’s ears, it needs to be improved!

“Where’s the five yuan I gave you this morning? That’s your breakfast money for two days, how much is left?”

Liang Ru still suspected he went to the arcade!

He wanted to go, but he gave all the money to Cheng Zhi, he couldn’t go!

“I had two yuan and fifty cents left… but I lost it on the way out of school…”

He couldn’t say that he gave his five yuan to Cheng Zhi to strike up a conversation with Ling Mo! Otherwise, Liang Ru would probably be holding a kitchen knife, not his ear, and go after Cheng Zhi!

“Lost it?”

“Yeah… I searched around the school for a long time… but I couldn’t find it…” Qu Yun said with a grievance.

He was really feeling wronged, after all, the five yuan didn’t buy him a pancake, nor did it buy him cold noodles, and he didn’t even go to the arcade, he gave it to Cheng Zhi! Even if Cheng Zhi bought cigarettes, he wouldn’t get to smoke them!

Liang Ru’s hand immediately loosened, and she held Qu Yun and rubbed him for a while, “You’re so silly! How can you find money that’s lost? Tell Mom, Mom will give you some more!”

“But I said I lost it, how can I prove it?”

“What proof do you need? Mom believes you!”

Hey? Didn’t you just say with certainty that I went to the arcade with money?

“Come on! Let’s have dinner! Don’t be sad!”

Qu Yun looked at the towering bowl of rice in front of him, and sighed inwardly: I walked so far with Ling Mo, I wasted all those calories.

After dinner, Qu Yun sat at his small desk, pretending to open his practice papers. Anyway, except for Chinese, everything else, like the Pythagorean theorem in math, light reflection in physics, and English cloze tests, he looked familiar… but he didn’t remember any of it.

This is going to be a disaster.

Back when he joined the army, he and his fellow scumbag classmates drank a few rounds of beer to celebrate that they would never have to take exams again!

But he never thought that if he had a second chance, this would still be a hurdle he couldn’t overcome.

In the past, teachers always told them that hard work pays off, and if you work hard, you will be rewarded. But the older he got, the more he realized that effort doesn’t always lead to results.

Just like him in the past, the harder he studied, the further he got from the correct answers.

And Ling Mo, he didn’t need to do exercises until dawn, memorize formulas until he was exhausted, he still became a world-class virologist decades later, an aircraft carrier among geniuses.

When the world Qu Yun was in was invaded by a virus called “Hel,” and the world was plunged into panic, and the research of elite scientists around the world hit a bottleneck, Ling Mo drank tea for half a month, stayed up for a few nights, and then led his team to find the virus antibody and develop a vaccine.

But less than an hour after he boarded the plane with his research results, the plane malfunctioned. Luckily, the pilot’s skills were good, and he managed to crash-land in a forest.

Ling Mo’s assistant died on the spot, and the other team members couldn’t reach Ling Mo’s level, so they couldn’t recover his research.

But Ling Mo’s head was injured, and he fell into a deep coma.

And the box he was carrying was set with a password. They say it would take a computer at least ten years to try all the possibilities to open the box. And the box was highly resistant to heat and impact, and it couldn’t be opened without the password, it was the masterpiece of Juren Group, the most advanced technology company in the world. And this masterpiece closed the door to human hope.

At the same time, the “Hel” virus, a contact-based hemorrhagic fever, had evolved to the point where it could be transmitted through the air, and the number of deaths was increasing exponentially every minute.

Modern medicine couldn’t wake Ling Mo up, so Juren Group, which funded Ling Mo’s lab, launched another project of theirs that was still in the experimental stage – Mind Deep Dive.

Although Ling Mo was in a deep coma, part of his brain was still active. Using the “Mind Deep Dive” neuron docking technology, it was possible for one person’s mind to enter another person’s mind.

Juren Group sent psychologists, neurologists, and members of Ling Mo’s team into his mind, but in the end, they neither woke him up nor found any clues about the antibody sample password in his mind.

One day, when Qu Yun was at home on vacation after finishing his mission, squinting his eyes, smoking, and shaking his legs while watching the news about the “Hel” virus on TV, his doorbell was pressed.

Jiang Cheng, the head of the “Mind Deep Dive” project, found him and, on behalf of Song Zhi, the chairman of Juren Group, invited Qu Yun to join the project and enter Ling Mo’s subconscious.

“Why did you choose me? I don’t know anything about viruses, I don’t understand the minds of geniuses, and I’m a scumbag – I won’t be able to get along with that virologist named Ling Mo!” Qu Yun was very confused.

“Because you have successfully completed six rescue missions during peacekeeping, and according to our investigation, you are optimistic by nature. I believe you will be able to win over Professor Ling.”

Jiang Cheng had a confidence that he didn’t know where it came from.

“Can I refuse? Maybe cigarettes and beer are more suitable for me.”

“Optimistic by nature” is what kind of reason!

Just as Qu Yun was about to sit back down on his sofa, Jiang Cheng handed him a photo on his phone.

“This is your partner, and also your observer, Chen Dayong. He was infected with the Hel virus on a bus going home to visit his family. You have seventy-two hours. After seventy-two hours, you’ll have to change observers.”

Qu Yun was stunned, Chen Dayong hadn’t finished teaching him all his flirting secrets, how could he die?

If Chen Dayong died, who would talk to him and relieve his boredom when he was on missions? Who would feed mosquitoes with him and suffer bad luck with him? Who would fix his mistakes?

“Seventy-two hours… that’s not enough, right?”

“In Professor Ling’s brain, time is different from the real world. You might feel like you’ve spent a year, two years, but for the real world, it might only be five minutes.”

All this was like a fantasy to Qu Yun, but he knew that Juren Group had always been at the forefront of human technology, and there were even rumors that they had developed space compression technology and achieved things like exploring other worlds.

So “Mind Deep Dive” was not at all science fiction for Juren Group.

“So, what should I pay attention to when I enter Ling Mo’s subconscious? What if he resists me and kills me?”

“Then remember three things. First, the so-called subconscious is a reflection of real life. Everyone you see, everything that happens, has happened or happened in reality, maybe it will be slightly different from reality because of you or other rescuers. But Professor Ling will guide everything towards the outcome it should have based on his real-life experiences.”

“What about the second point?”

“In Professor Ling’s subconscious, no matter what happens, you have to protect him, you absolutely cannot let him die in his own subconscious, if that happens… he will never wake up.” Jiang Cheng’s expression was very serious.

And Qu Yun also felt the seriousness of this principle.

“I got it. But what if I die?”

“You will exit his subconscious, and the Mind Deep Dive will end.”

“I won’t become an idiot or be unable to wake up, right?”

Although his captain had once collapsed and said, “Qu Yun, you’re an idiot,” Qu Yun still optimistically believed that his IQ was definitely in the middle of the pyramid.

“Absolutely not.”

“What about the last point?”

“Finally, Professor Ling is the host of his own consciousness, but no one can fully control their subconscious, and we will send you into his most superficial layer of consciousness, how deep you can go depends on how much he can accept you. We can’t guarantee what role you will become in his consciousness, but based on our previous experience, it shouldn’t be anyone important.”

So… Qu Yun entered Ling Mo’s subconscious for the first time, and he became his high school classmate, a scumbag, and also a fat guy.

… It really wasn’t anyone important.

The next morning, Qu Yun got up as soon as he heard the alarm clock, it was like instinct, he folded the blanket into a square tofu block, and then went to the bathroom to brush his teeth.

Liang Ru was wearing an apron, she had just knocked on her son’s door, and she was slightly stunned.

Since a month ago, her son had no longer needed her to shake pots and pans to wake him up in the morning, and even his blanket was folded neatly. Liang Ru studied it for a while, how did her son Mo Xiaobai fold the blanket like a tofu block?

Mo Xiaobai used to set his alarm for 6:30, but he would lie in bed until almost 7:00, but for Qu Yun now, getting up at 6:30 is so merciful!

Before, in the team, he would often just get the blanket warm and then receive instructions to go on a mission immediately. Now, as Mo Xiaobai, Qu Yun could sleep until dawn, how happy!

Ah, he found another benefit of being a fat guy, that is, sleeping well.

Although he didn’t know if there was any scientific basis, in Qu Yun’s impression, fat people always slept well.