"One."
"Two."
"I'm getting more and more skilled."
Zhu Zhengwei followed the same routines, becoming increasingly proficient.
It's necessary to have anchor points in the real world, familiar things that make people lower their guard, so they can be easily drawn into the dream.
Ultimately, he set the anchor door to lure himself into the dream as the "game login screen," bringing people in as NPCs for mining, providing computational power to the dream's local network.
Bamboo Scenic Village.
"Above and below, I alone reign supreme."
At this moment, inside the house, Zhu Zhengwei's parents were murmuring this phrase as they looked at the baby sitting cross-legged at the Kitchen God Altar, their hearts filled with increasing reverence.
"Immortal, what brings you to seek us?" they asked cautiously.
"Carry me outside to take a look."
On this day, Zhu Zhengwei said.
Soon, Zhu Zhengwei was carried by his mother.
The surrounding green trees were fresh, the sky was blue, depicting an idyllic landscape.
"Hmm, not bad, the village outside of home is completely visualized, countryside, fields, neighbors—this is Bamboo Scenic Village after over twenty years have passed."
Zhu Zhengwei searched through photos of Bamboo Scenic Village from the 1990s.
Though they were black and white, they were identical.
This is my realm!
"Those NPC babies just born have completed the farm residences of Bamboo Scenic Village."
Glancing at the passing residences, Zhu Zhengwei, lying on his mother's back, thought:
"They have also borrowed my power, returned to the depths of their origin genes, back to their childhood, their beginner village of birth."
"However, they can't yet pry open the 'door to the forbidden zone of origin' like I can, unable to reflect back to their real bodies... because this is my dream, I can do as I please, and even after waking, they won't remember what happened in my dream."
After another glance, Zhu Zhengwei chose not to look again.
Currently, they are merely miners, NPCs, just digging out the world map for me.
"This world is my territory!!"
Quickly, during the day, Zhu Zhengwei went to class as usual, and at night, he entered the "campus net," starting a new account.
He discovered that a night's sleep equated to three years of dream time.
Although not as long as A Dream of Millet spanning eighty years, three years for a single dream is also a considerable duration.
Of course, the dream the next day wasn't very clear; it was as if another "self" existed in that space-time, always having a sense of distortion.
It's just like playing a game on autopilot; upon awakening, his mind was filled with just the life processes of the game characters, like a life simulator...
In the first night's dream on autopilot, he reached the age of three.
Zhu Zhengwei trained his body daily, enduring the dullness.
Due to Zhu Zhengwei's intervention, his parents saw hope for the future, and gave birth to another brother—a rare healthy baby boy.
The silly older brother was named Zhang Song, and the newly born third brother was named Zhang Zhi.
If he acknowledged his ancestry, he should change his surname to Zhang and be called Zhang Zhengwei.
In the second night's dream on autopilot, he reached the age of six.
Zhu Zhengwei's appetite grew larger and larger, surprisingly huge.
His family appeared impoverished, their life increasingly tight.
Zhu Zhengwei started skimming lessons and began researching modern animal husbandry.
Eventually, he chose wild rabbits as the path to wealth, setting traps, hunting wild rabbits, then breeding and raising them, instructing his parents in Bamboo Scenic Village on breeding techniques.
During the third night's dream on autopilot, he reached the age of nine.
The family became wealthy, becoming the village's major livestock producer.
His parents led the village in raising rabbits to prosperity, teaching breeding techniques, successfully getting elected as village party secretary.
That same year, Zhu Zhengwei heard that Zhang Gouzi, a boy of the same age in the village, fell into the village's well, injuring his leg, which surprised him.
Zhang Gouzi, whose real name is Zhang Xia.
Each of them had their own restarted life, Zhu Zhengwei chose not to interfere.
In reality, he had already attended university, not supposed to be a cripple.
During the day, Zhu Zhengwei sneaked to investigate and took a look at the real Zhang Xia.
In the dream, he was lame in childhood, but in reality, there was no anomaly, still a life winner, exuding a foul stench of romance in the cafeteria, feeding each other with his girlfriend.
After all, only he opened that mysterious door to the origin, enabling the dream to reflect reality's body; for them, it was merely an ordinary dream, and upon waking, they wouldn't even remember it.
"Son."
He arrived at Zhang Gouzi's house, where parents were crying out loud.
Unable to work on the farm and crippled, he's essentially incapacitated. Which girl would marry him, raise a man who can't stand and work?
"Life's unavoidable, birth, aging, sickness, and death; disasters and misfortunes."
Zhu Zhengwei observed from the side, gradually gaining insight.
Vaguely sensed, even when classmates in these servers die here, the servers continue to operate normally, except while alive, the computational power was on the NPC themselves; after death, the computational power begins to sustain the surroundings, village residents, NPCs, and environment.
Zhu Zhengwei raised his head and looked at the azure sky of the mountain village.
"After this long dream of a hundred years, they will all die."
"But the server still runs, they will completely become this world's cloud computational power, evenly distributed rather than focused on one person."
On the fourth night in the Mobile Dream Net on autopilot, the dream's mountain village self had reached the age of twelve.
Zhu Zhengwei continued to methodically train his body, laboriously improving his innate quality for reflection in reality, but during this day of breathing, he discovered something unusual.
He detected a strange energy circulating around him, flowing through the world with his breaths.
What is this?
Zhu Zhengwei opened his eyes and tried again, firmly confirming that this thing didn't exist in reality.
Could it be exclusive to this "Dream Net World?"
This world of converging soul awareness continuously generating soul power?