novelhk Chapter 108 The 4 Seconds of Rational Collapse
Chapter 108 The 4 Seconds of Rational Collapse
Darkness has weight.
This is Lin Xiaoxiao's clearest, and also most desperate, realization right now.
Here, darkness felt like a viscous fluid, relentlessly squeezing every inch of her skin, pressing heavily on her eyelids, filling her ears, and even squeezing out oxygen bit by bit with each breath.
There was not a single ray of light.
Human beings' concept of complete black is often full of romantic biases.
In the real world, even in a bedroom with the curtains drawn late at night, a faint light will still seep in, illuminated by the small breathing light on the air conditioner panel.
But here there is only absolute nothingness.
Lin Xiaoxiao forced herself to calm down. As a screenwriter who had taken psychology as an elective in college and had gone through many scripts, her mental fortitude far exceeded that of ordinary people.
In the unknown dark forest, blind actions will only hasten death and reveal your coordinates.
"Calm down, Lin Xiaoxiao," she murmured to herself. "The first priority is to build a spatial model."
She carefully reached out her hand, her fingertips touching the ground.
A strange sensation traveled through my nerves—cold, smooth, and hard, yet it was more than just metal.
There were no seams, no dust, and you couldn't even feel the temperature.
Lin Xiaoxiao stopped waiting to die and began to crawl in the darkness, using her left hand to explore and her right hand to protect her head, while her knees scraped against the floor.
One step, two steps, three steps, my fingertips touched the obstacle, the wall, the same material, the same coldness.
She stood up, supporting herself against the wall, and began to move along the base of the wall, measuring the world with her steps.
If this is a prison, then it should at least have a door.
Even a small window, as long as there is a gap, means a connection to the outside world.
However, ten minutes later, Lin Xiaoxiao returned to the starting point.
She constructed a model of the space in her mind, and her heart sank little by little.
This is a perfectly standard cube, about four meters on each side. It has no doors, no windows, no vents, and you can't even feel a ripple of wind.
Enclosed space...
Lin Xiaoxiao sat cross-legged in the corner of the room, the place where she felt the most psychologically safe and the only place where she felt no threat to her back.
She took a deep breath and began to analyze her current situation in her mind.
A typical sensory deprivation experiment.
Cut off visual, auditory, and tactile input to force the brain to produce an endogenous response.
In the CIA interrogation manual of the 50s, this method was called "cleaning torture".
Without hitting or scolding, simply locking you in a completely enclosed, dark room will cause the subject to experience severe hallucinations due to the confusion of signals within the brain after a few hours, ultimately leading to a mental breakdown and the confession of everything.
She understands the principle.
Lin Xiaoxiao bit her tongue; the pain cleared her mind somewhat.
Once you understand the principle, you can control it.
This is a psychological game; the opponent isn't a ghost, it's your own brain...
She raised her left wrist and touched a mechanical women's watch with her other hand. The watch cover was cold and the glass was intact.
She pressed her ear to her wrist and held her breath.
"Da da da—"
The sound of fingertips dancing was faint and rhythmic.
Very good, there is sound and time.
Lin Xiaoxiao breathed a sigh of relief.
As long as you have time as an anchor point, you can treat this place as a deep meditation.
She began to adjust her breathing, adopting a professional diaphragmatic breathing method.
Inhale for 4 seconds, feeling your abdomen rise; hold your breath for 7 seconds to allow oxygen to be digested; exhale for 8 seconds to expel stale air.
1, 2, 3...
Everything seems to be under control.
I don't know how much time passed, but in this space without a frame of reference, the concept of time began to become blurred.
Maybe it will take an hour, maybe it will take two hours.
Lin Xiaoxiao remained in a meditative posture, but her brows began to furrow slightly, and fine beads of cold sweat appeared on her forehead.
It's too quiet.
"Thump! Thump! Thump!"
With each heartbeat, she felt a sharp pain in her eardrums.
The sound of blood flowing became like a rushing river, roaring inside the skull and washing over the auditory nerves.
She could even hear the rustling sound of her eyelashes rubbing together when she blinked, and the gurgling sound of her stomach moving.
The sound of cartilage rubbing together as the spine rotates is like a withered branch breaking in the silence.
The body itself becomes the biggest source of noise.
"call……"
She changed her posture, and her legs began to go numb from sitting cross-legged for so long.
It must have been a long time ago, right?
She reached for her watch again; based on her senses, at least three hours had passed, as her throat had begun to dry out.
Her fingertips touched the minute hand, and she carefully identified its position.
10 minutes?
How could it have only taken 10 minutes?
Lin Xiaoxiao's heart skipped a beat.
impossible.
She checked again; the minute hand had only moved two small increments, while the hour hand remained almost unchanged.
The watch must be broken.
She forced down her unease and tried to explain it using her professional knowledge.
This is probably a typical symptom of sensory deprivation, a distortion of time perception.
In the absence of external stimuli, the brain's processing speed slows down, making people feel that time is passing slowly; this is called psychological time dilation.
It's okay, Lin Xiaoxiao, this is all expected. It means your brain is very active.
To combat her anxiety about time, Lin Xiaoxiao began to try self-talk, forcing her brain to work.
Let's review the previous script...
She tried to fill the void with memories, to fight against the emptiness before her with images of the past.
But she soon discovered something terrible: her memories began to become viscous and fragmented, the images were no longer clear, the edges were blurred, and the colors were peeling off.
She thought of Lu Dan's face, but she couldn't piece together his features no matter how hard she tried.
She recalled how Bao Ping died in the real-life script, but all she remembered was a pile of mud; she couldn't recall his honest smile.
Lin Xiaoxiao panicked a little.
Are you too tired? Then take a nap. Once you're asleep, you won't be afraid anymore.
She lay on her side on the cold ground, curled up like a shrimp, covered her head with her hands, and forced herself to fall asleep.
But in absolute darkness, the brain becomes terrifyingly excited.
The visual snowflakes that appear on the retina due to the lack of light stimulation become the only dynamic phenomenon in this world.
They are rotating, combining, and peering.
I can't sleep, I just can't sleep.
The hearing began to show more significant abnormalities.
"Sizzle—"
It was extremely faint, like the scraping sound of insect wings rubbing together.
Lin Xiaoxiao opened her eyes meaninglessly, her whole body tense.
Who?
The sound disappeared; it was an auditory hallucination.
She quickly diagnosed that the auditory cortex was automatically generating signals to fill the gaps, which was false; it was the brain's self-compensation mechanism.
"Sizzle—"
Here it comes again, this time the sound is clearer, right above my head.
One stroke, two strokes, pause; one stroke, two strokes, pause.
Lin Xiaoxiao sat up; she was very thirsty.
She felt as if all the moisture in her body had been drained away by the room in an instant.
Something's not right. If it were sensory deprivation, the physiological reaction wouldn't be this intense, and dehydration wouldn't happen this quickly.
She reached for her watch again, this time placing her trembling fingers on the second hand to check the flow of time.
My fingertip touched the thin second hand.
"Da da da..."
One, two, three...
Lin Xiaoxiao flicked her fingers away, recoiled, and slammed her back heavily against the wall.
Too fast! The second hand is racing, has time been accelerated?
Lin Xiaoxiao's mind went blank for a moment.
She thought only a short while had passed, but in reality, her body had undergone several hours, or even days, of metabolism.
That's why she was so thirsty and why her legs were so numb.
If this continues, I'll die here...
The thought arose and spread rapidly like ink dropped into clear water, staining all thoughts black.
Will I grow old and die here?
Before Lu Dan and the others could react, just a few minutes later, I had already turned into a dried-up corpse...
Lin Xiaoxiao couldn't take it anymore. She shouted, "Is anyone there? Help! Is anyone there?"
The sound was absorbed by the wall, leaving not even a trace of echo.
The scraping sound overhead grew louder, closer, and more brazen.
"Sizzle—"
It moved from the ceiling to the wall, and then from the wall to my ear.
Lin Xiaoxiao frantically waved her arms, hitting nothing but empty air.
"Calm down, calm down, identify the trigger, and reconstruct your cognition."
She tried to salvage the situation using her professional knowledge, muttering broken technical terms under her breath.
As hearing crumbles, so does the visual defense. The darkness before our eyes is no longer pure; gray noise begins to combine, distort, and deform, and it seems as if a figure is crouching in the corner.
Lin Xiaoxiao slowly walked over, wanting to grab the person opposite her, wanting to touch that warmth.
But as she approached, the person slowly turned his face, revealing a face without features.
"Hehehe~ You're the second one!"
"A's already rotted inside, it's your turn!"
Lin Xiaoxiao stepped back: "It's fake, it's all fake!"
She closed her eyes, covered her ears tightly with her hands, and buried her head in her knees.
The sounds exploded directly in my head, overlapping each other like thousands of channels playing simultaneously.
There were students reading aloud, Bao Ping's dying roar, Ye Jianguo's sighs, and countless versions of myself crying: "Don't leave me, Mom, don't close the door!"
She felt like she had turned back into a 5-year-old girl, huddled in a dark closet, waiting for a door that would never open.
"Tick-tock".
A drop of water landed on the back of her hand; it was warm and sticky.
Lin Xiaoxiao brought the back of her hand to her nose and smelled it; it was blood.
She looked up, and although she couldn't see, her mind had already sketched out a picture of hell.
Physiological fear triggers a somatization reaction, and the limbs begin to twitch uncontrollably, first the fingers spasm, then the calf muscles.
Finally, all the muscles in his body trembled violently, broken groans came from his throat, his teeth chattered, his tongue was bitten and the taste of blood filled his mouth.
Hunger, thirst, fear, hallucinations, accelerated time.
Under multiple forms of torture, Lin Xiaoxiao's mental defenses completely collapsed, and she began banging her head against the wall.
"Bang! Bang!"
Only the pain is real.
A sharp pain shot through my forehead, and warm liquid flowed down, blurring my vision and mixing with my tears.
"Let me out, Mom, please!"
She collapsed in the corner, her hair disheveled, her face covered in blood, and she mumbled pleas for mercy.
No one responded.
The frantic ticking of the second hand exploded in my ears, "Tick-tock tick-tock tick-tock..."
Every sound reminded her that her life was slipping away at an alarming rate.
Just a second before she thought she was about to go completely insane.
"Click—"
The sound came from beneath my feet.
Lin Xiaoxiao trembled all over and used her hands and feet to shrink into the corner, squeezing herself into the corner of the wall.
The floorboards are cracked.
The floor in the very center slowly opened to both sides, revealing a square opening.
With the sound of a winch turning, a tray slowly rose and finally stopped at floor level.
A line of blood-red fluorescent words lit up above the tray; this was the only light source Lin Xiaoxiao had seen since entering the area.
[The second phase of the experiment has begun.]
[Subject B]
[Status: Extreme thirst, mental abnormality]
Please select.
Two items were placed on the tray, their eerie outlines revealed under the red light.
On the left is a transparent glass containing a green liquid.
On the right is a round object.
Option 1: Drink this liquid. You will gain 10 minutes of clarity and light, but afterwards you will fall into deeper darkness.
Option 2: Eat this "apple" to get the key to leave this place.
Lin Xiaoxiao crawled over tremblingly, her gaze sweeping over the tempting liquid before fixing on the "apple".
By the eerie red light, the strangely flickering red light, she could see clearly that it was a human head.
She had long black hair and skin as pale as paper. She was facing Lin Xiaoxiao, her eyes open, her grayish-white pupils staring intently at her.
And this face...
Lin Xiaoxiao's pupils contracted violently, her heart seemed to stop beating at that moment, and all the blood in her body froze into ice shards.
This face... looks exactly like her.
Is this a hallucination?
The ticking of the second hand grew faster and faster, urging her to make a choice...