Translator-Rhapsodite
Editor-Yui, Proofreader-Woojoo
In an instant, the sound of the tides quickly faded away, and the sunlight came together.
The three returned to the corridor of the brain marrow.
Behind them was a door that could never be opened again.
The numbness disappeared from their bodies, and every remaining trace of water on Jiang Fang’s silver hair dried up.
Under the radiant sunlight it appeared as if the entire ocean, along with all its history and memories, had transformed into frothy foam, vanishing into thin air.
The sound of chewing no longer echoed through the corridor.
All that remained for them was a pulsating void.
The cerebral carpet’s undulating and writhing speed was beyond ordinary, suggesting that the brain was in an abnormally active state.
Everything was pointing to the destination they were heading towards.
The sixth door that couldn’t be opened before was now silently open. The heavy door welcomed the three of them.
At the lock area, the gap between the 5 notches and ravines was now filled with a reddish hue,resembling a bloodshot eye,staring at them from afar.
After being used continuously for two days, Li Yinhang’s phone finally ran out of battery. The screen went dark and couldn’t be turned on again.
The corridor had only one source of light, which was the dim light coming from behind that door.
It resembled a tiny lantern held by an anglerfish, attracting prey in the seemingly distressing depths of the high-pressure ocean.
Li Yinhang, who had just escaped death, looked at the ominous light and unconsciously swallowed her saliva.
She looked at Nan Zhou, asking with her eyes, “Are we going in?”
Nan Zhou touched his lips as if he was seriously thinking about something.
Li Yinhang looked at him expectantly, waiting for his reply.
After careful consideration, Nan Zhou said,“You just kissed me.”
Nan Zhou looked at Jiang Fang, “The nature of this is not quite the same as that kiss in the forest.”
Li Yinhang, “……”
Jiang Fang, “……”
Li Yinhang immediately took a step back and distanced herself from the two, pretending not to have heard anything.
Nan Zhou asked cautiously, “In the forest, you kissed me because you were hungry. Just now, it was for the mission. But my body always has a strange reaction every time, and I’m thinking why–”
Jiang Fang pressed Nan Zhou’s head down slightly, so he couldn’t discover the faint blush on his face.
“Let’s talk about it later,” Jiang Fang said firmly.
Nan Zhou was caught off guard.
He thought for a moment and agreed with Jiang Fang’s reasoning. “Hmm,” he nodded.
Jiang Fang said, “Yinhang, you go ahead.”
While Li Yinhang was eavesdropping on the conversation, Jiang Fang unexpectedly called out to her. Thinking she had been discovered, she hastily sprinted forward.
After she had walked a distance away, Jiang Fang lowered his voice and said to Nan Zhou, “Don’t say everything out loud.”
Nan Zhou asked curiously, “Why?”
Jiang Fang used his index and middle finger joints to clamp his earlobe, gently pulling it, and said. “Just listen to me,”
Nan Zhou muttered, “Oh,” stroked his heated ears caused by Jiang Fang’s movements, and followed the other two to the end of the journey.
Finally, they could reach their final “quest”.
Last time, when Nan Zhou came here, there was an eye in the lock that blocked his line of sight and prevented him from looking inside.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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Even the Big Bad Wolf’s happy house gave them an illusory dream world.
However, behind this door lay another door. The surroundings were engulfed in darkness, except for a small lamp placed beside the door and a display screen on the door emitting a flickering blue light, illuminating the narrow space between the two doors spanning only a few square meters.
…………Suddenly, things became technological.
For a moment, everyone was a bit lost.
It felt as though descending from a utopian realm filled with warm hues into a chilling reality.
After detecting the presence of the three people, the screen flickered with a burst of electricity.
Soon, a line of words appeared on the screen.
“Please select the room for the inspection worker to enter.”
….Inspection worker?
Before Nan Zhou could figure out what this meant, a cross-sectional diagram of the human brain appeared in front of them.
It was obvious that he was being asked to choose.
Nan Zhou attempted to touch the screen and discovered that the cross-sectional diagram of the brain was meticulously divided into 52 functional blocks, each with a white background color.
Nan Zhou’s fingertips slowly moved across the screen.
Wherever his fingertips touched, the touched blocks would turn blue, which was different from the other white blocks.
Instead of a fairytale game, the sixth door led to a comprehensive examination of their knowledge across all levels.
If someone in the player team possessed exceptional spatial awareness, even without understanding the brain’s structure, they could navigate the twisting corridors and deduce which functional area of the brain each level they had entered belonged to.
And Nan Zhou’s computer memory saved them the time and effort of this step.
Nan Zhou faced the cold screen and clicked on the location of the first room they entered.
The prefrontal cortex is responsible for learning and movement.
Ever since they stepped into this deep, lightless corridor of brain marrow, Nan Zhou started sketching a picture in his head.
He wondered what kind of person the owner of the brain was.
At the beginning of the library level, Nan Zhou felt that the owner was a person who loved to read.
But as he immersed himself in the maze-like bookshelves, Nan Zhou could be sure that such a vast number of books surpassed what an ordinary person would typically read.
Even if one lives for a hundred years and reads one book a day, not excluding the age when one cannot understand complex texts, and not excluding the time spent on eating and sleeping, one person can only read a maximum of slightly over 30,000 books throughout their lifetime.
The bookshelves in front of them could form a large maze, and the vast amount of books inside was more than 100,000.
In addition to being able to see that the owner of this brain has a special preference for chess books, the reading range of this brain was incredibly wide.
After completing the double game with the one-legged tin soldier and the chess player behind the door, they walked out of the library.
The owner of the brain was still eating continuously as if he wasn’t worried about overeating at all.
It seemed that this person had four stomachs, allowing them to eat recklessly. .
At that moment, Nan Zhou felt a strange feeling, but he just silently took note of it and didn’t speak out.
Walking out of the frontal lobe, they went to the amygdala.
……
Facing the screen, Nan Zhou clicked on th small, almond-shaped pituitary gland.
……
The fairy tale of “The Wild Swans” was a test of “fear”.
Nan Zhou and Li Yinhang were left as goose hostages with their stepmother who was disguised as Elisa.
Nan Zhou, who turned into a swan, pecked at the door ring while secretly pondering the weirdness of the level.
In [Xiao Ming’s Daily Life], they experienced a similar situation.
In [Xiao Ming’s Daily Life], Xiao Ming turned his fear into the whole house and the ghosts within it.
Therefore, if it was a level related to “fear”, they should be experiencing the fear of the owner of the brain they are in, rather than their own fear.
However, when choosing, “Elisa” told them that anyone could go.
Jiang Fang’s experience after returning also proved that Nan Zhou’s conjecture was correct.
“The Wild Swans” level used the player’s own fear.
Jiang Fang is afraid of heights.
Therefore, he faced a series of high mountains that he had to climb.
This made Nan Zhou even more confused.
—— Does the owner of this brain not have their own fear?
Could it be that their amygdala only secretes the substance associated with the emotion of “fear” when stimulated by outsiders like them?
After a good rest and exposing their stepmother’s true face, they left the amygdala.
By then, more than ten hours had passed since they entered the amygdala.
However, the relentless chewing sound in the brain marrow long corridor had not ceased, persistently accompanied by constant chomping, slurping, and munching.
The owner of the brain was endlessly enjoying delicious food.
Such endless gluttony itself had an inexplicable sense of horror.
After the amygdala, they entered the pineal gland, which was full of hormonal scent.
In that enclosed room, Nan Zhou had a dream.
However, after waking up, only large blanks were left in his mind.
He didn’t even know how he cleared the level.
He could only judge from the content of Li Yinhang and Jiang Fang’s dreams that they were almost kidnapped by their once intimate objects and lured into a deep dream, unable to wake up again.
This level is as strange as [The Wild Swans].
——The brain can only replicate the process of love based on the player’s experience.
After the adventure in the pineal gland, the three of them re-entered the corridor.
As a result, the sound of chewing that had been echoing in the corridor suddenly disappeared, leaving only the strange sound of gurgling water.
Next, they entered the nucleus of the brain stem, which was filled with the vagus nerve.
In this game, they experienced an unprecedented hunger.
… They also experienced an unprecedented nesting doll-style game.
In this level, there were two fairy tales with hunger themes, “Candy House” and “The Girl Who Trod on the Loaf.”
Nan Zhou couldn’t help but associate the disappearance of the chewing sound in the corridor with this level.
——When the brain stops eating, the host immediately enters a state of extreme hunger.
This was very different from their experiences in the amygdala and pineal gland.
In the previous levels, the game used their memories to influence them.
This time, the game’s inherent hunger became the obstacle that trapped and influenced them.
By this point, Nan Zhou had probably pieced together the strange image of this “brain master.”
The level of [The Sea of Memory] further confirmed Nan Zhou’s conjecture.
The brain’s master has no memories at all.
He can’t even understand what “memory” is.
The so-called [Sea of Memories] can only judge whether the player’s memory is true or false based on mechanical data standards, constantly collecting and taking possession of the player’s memories.
……
After a brief review of their journey, Nan Zhou lowered his hand.
In front of him, the five rooms they had walked through had condensed into five blue blocks on the display screen.
The prefrontal lobe was filled with too much knowledge.
The amygdala couldn’t generate fear on its own.
The pineal gland couldn’t produce sexual hormones on its own.
The vagus nerve transmitted hunger signals without restraint.
The hippocampus couldn’t understand what “memory” is.
… And the indirect chewing sound that continued in the corridor.
After lighting up the last hippocampal block, Nan Zhou’s display screen turned gray.
A circle spun in the center of the screen.
After a moment, the gray words, “Verification Successful” popped up.
The silent, oppressive, mechanical text made the atmosphere heavy and suffocating.
Nan Zhou deeply exhaled a breath.
The closed door in front of him slowly opened.
Nan Zhou and his team gradually explored the last layer of [Brain Invasion].
And here was the truth of the “brain invasion”.
They entered the last room, the visual center.
A transparent glass room where you could see a 360-degree panoramic view.
The sudden bright lights all around made Li Yinhang unable to help but shield her eyes.
When she regained her ability to see again, she heard Nan Zhou let out a soft sigh, “It’s really like this.”
She narrowed her eyes and looked carefully.
They appeared to be submerged in a shallow blue sea, resembling three divers who had been placed inside a diving cage and descended to the ocean floor for exploration.
However, when she looked closely, she was horrified to discover that they were in a cubic petri dish filled with a light blue nutrient solution.
In the petri dish, there was nothing else but the brain.
Only white, intact, and huge walnut-like brain.
Li Yinhang trembled as she looked around.
Outside the transparent glass, there were rows of such brains.
In the distance, a group of monsters with elongated limbs standing two and a half meters tall walked around these petri dishes, carefully selecting and screening them.
Their gaze felt eerily familiar to Li Yinhang, akin to the eyes of customers carefully selecting plump,thick fish and shrimp at a market.
What made her even more creeped out was the label attached to the outside of the petri dish they were in.
Even though the label was reversed, she could read the font on it:
——“Name: Feeding Box No. 1921.”
——“Specifications: 90cm x 90cm x 90cm standard feeding box.”
——“Level: Premium.”
——”Food maturity: 80%.”
Oh wow. So they are in a cultivated brain? Are they the food or is it?? I can’t wait to see where this goes next. Thank you Rhapsodite!! ╰(´︶`)╯♡
i love this arc, thank you for the chapter 🥰
Wow, I expected something like android or like main character from “Ghost in the shell”
Thank you for your translation 💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛💛
Now that Nan Zhou explained it, I finally understood the whole arc. New questions arise now, WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN NEXT?!?