Chapter 160: Changes in the Dream World

Once the senior year of high school begins, the entire academic curriculum shifts into the review phase. Practically all the knowledge for the three years of high school is compressed and taught within just two years. Therefore, for anyone willing to study, catching up through a final year of determined effort is entirely feasible.

Instead of taking his usual nap during class, Qin Anyi sat attentively beside Wei Dong, listening carefully to the lecture. Although Wei Dong wore the tragic expression of someone walking to the execution block, it was clear that his comprehension skills were remarkably strong. The first two periods were mathematics, a subject demanding exceptionally high comprehension, yet Qin Anyi discovered that once Wei Dong calmed down and listened earnestly, those foundational math problems posed no real difficulty for him. As long as Wei Dong thoroughly reviewed the basics, completely mastered the fundamental concepts, and avoided major blunders during exams, he could easily secure a decent score. As for the advanced problems, Qin Anyi had absolute confidence in his ability to teach Wei Dong how to tackle them over the coming year.

After observing for an entire period, Qin Anyi was certain that Wei Dong had merely detested studying previously; once he applied himself, his potential was quite formidable. Consequently, during the next class, Qin Anyi no longer worried and drifted off to sleep.

The moment he sank into the dream realm, Qin Anyi abruptly noticed that the surrounding environment had completely changed. The weather, which should have been misty and foggy, was now cloudless and vast. Those massive dinosaurs seemed to have vanished entirely overnight, replaced by a landscape of frost and ice. Qin Anyi shuddered involuntarily.

He looked around and spotted a large number of bipedal creatures with dark, dense hair, their lower bodies wrapped in animal skins, using primitive tools to encircle a colossal beast.

A woolly mammoth?!

Qin Anyi's eyes widened in disbelief. Upon closer inspection, he realized that the creatures surrounding the mammoth were unmistakably upright apes!

Does this mean... the dream world has actually evolved into the Stone Age?!

Cautiously, Qin Anyi moved closer to where the apes were gathered. Although the surroundings were frozen and covered in ice, there were plenty of hiding spots. The Stone Age coincided with the Ice Age; forty percent of the entire Northern Hemisphere was covered by glaciers, and the temperature was extremely low. Qin Anyi could barely withstand the chill.

It must be at least minus ten degrees Celsius...

Qin Anyi shivered uncontrollably, speechless at the sight of his own single-layered clothing. In the dream, his attire always mirrored what he wore in reality. If not for his vastly enhanced physical conditioning, this temperature alone would have been fatal.

When he finally reached a snowdrift just a dozen meters away from the apes, Qin Anyi hid behind it to get a clear view of their full appearance. There were nearly a hundred apes, their entire bodies covered in thick black fur. Their facial structures still strongly resembled those of monkeys, with completely upturned nostrils and roaring sounds coming from their throats that Qin Anyi could not understand at all. In their hands, they held wooden clubs, the tips of which were bound with extremely sharply polished stones.

In the center of this encirclement of nearly a hundred apes was a massive woolly mammoth standing at least three meters tall and nearly five meters long!

Such close proximity instantly made Qin Anyi feel the immense pressure emanating from the woolly mammoth. At this moment, the giant beast was covered in scars; clearly, under the siege and hunt of nearly a hundred apes, it was nearing exhaustion. However, a cornered beast fights fiercely, and the more injured a wild animal is, the more ferocious it becomes, making the scene all the more heart-pounding.

What truly puzzled Qin Anyi was that above the heads of those apes, there seemed to be something grayish and almost completely transparent. If one didn't look closely, it was virtually imperceptible.

"Where have I seen this before?" Qin Anyi blinked. "Wait! Isn't this just like the oppressive atmosphere that pervaded the entire school sky this morning? Could it be... that the reason I can suddenly see other people's auras is because of the changes happening in the dream world?"

The more Qin Anyi thought about it, the more plausible this explanation seemed. Humans had finally begun to appear in the dream world, and as a result, he had started perceiving the auras of others in the real world.

If that was the case, there was undoubtedly a connection between the dream world and the real world!

Just what kind of person was that mysterious individual he met in prison? To be able to invent such a bizarre method of mental cultivation!

Moreover, through his experiences and trials in the dream world during this period, Qin Anyi discovered that this world was not only growing increasingly stable, but it was genuinely beginning to possess a life of its own!

That's right! The dream world he had constructed seemed to be... coming alive!

Qin Anyi didn't realize until he witnessed the appearance of these apes that a very important issue existed: even when he was not present in the dream world, the world was clearly continuing to evolve. The life forms within it still adhered to the law of the jungle, and every single living creature was completing its own long, short, glorious, or dim journey of life! Whether or not Qin Anyi was present in the dream world had zero impact on the development of this world!

"How can this be? What is the underlying principle?" Qin Anyi muttered to himself. "Since the foundation of a dream is one's own consciousness, when the mind is not actively constructing the dream, the dream world ought to remain stagnant! Any changes in a dream should be driven by subjective psychological influence. But right now, it seems completely contrary to that..."

Qin Anyi lay behind the snowdrift, lost in deep thought, temporarily putting the freezing temperature out of his mind. "Unless... my understanding of consciousness is wrong! Or perhaps humanity's current understanding of the human mind is entirely incorrect or incomplete! The power of the mind must conceal a profound secret! The higher intelligence that distinguishes humans from other life forms is probably not the result of natural evolution, as scientists claim..."

Thinking up to this point, Qin Anyi gave an involuntary start. For some inexplicable reason, a chilling, goosebump-inducing sensation crept all over his body.

Qin Anyi gritted his teeth. "No... I have to find a chance to visit that mysterious old man in prison again... Since that old man was able to create such a bizarre training method, he must know the secrets of the human mind!"