Song Yang was stunned, turned his head following his gaze, and looked at the clock on the wall again carefully.
The appearance of the clock is very ordinary. Under the light, the base is pure white, and the slender black second, minute and hour hands are rotating regularly. Judging from the plastic shell, it even looks a bit cheap.
However, Xia Jing doesn't talk nonsense.
Since he mentioned the bell, he must have thought of something.
Song Yang narrowed his eyes.
When the others heard what Xia Jing said, they hurriedly looked at the bell again, but they still couldn't find anything unusual.
After a few seconds, Song Yang suddenly said thoughtfully: "Yes, I have seen it."
The others were stunned.
Xia Jing murmured to himself, "Against a black background."
Song Yang tried hard to recall and shook his head to deny the answer: "...It's not a black background."
He turned his head and looked at Xia Jing: "It's on a metal panel!"
"That's right," Xia Jing raised his eyebrows. He even laughed because of this bizarre development. "It seems that part of our memory has been erased."
Jia Qing and the others got goosebumps. "What do you mean? What are you talking about? Metal panel and memory erase?"
"Have you lost all your memories?" Xia Jing turned around and pointed at the bell. "I think those were the memories before we entered Huang Mo's dream world, that is, the memories of the real world in this copy. But these memories may have been erased by the monster during our first deep sleep."
Xia Jing felt that the bell looked familiar when he saw it for the first time.
At first, he wondered if it was because he had seen similar clocks in other copies, but Xia Jing always trusted his intuition. He believed that this "sense of familiarity" that came to his mind must be paid attention to and was full of deep meaning.
After escaping from the dream layer by layer, the scenes in his mind became clearer and clearer.
"We should have all seen it before." Xia Jing closed his eyes and whispered everything he saw in his unclear memory.
"It was in a confined, extremely small environment, only large enough for one person. After logging into the dungeon, I appeared there lying flat on my back. There was a metal panel right in front of me, directly above my field of vision... A scaled-down clock of the same design was embedded in this metal panel."
Xia Jing's voice was light but certain: "...It looks like a metal cabin."
Jia Qing and the others were dumbfounded.
The old lady held her chest, took a deep breath, and asked carefully, "Child, what you mean is that after we entered this game, we actually entered that metal warehouse first, and then appeared in this original dream world, but we forgot?"
"That's right," Song Yang paused and said, "That should be a sleeping cabin."
Perhaps a gap has been opened. At this moment, Song Yang can even clearly recall the series of events that happened after logging into the copy.
Just as Xia Jing said, he appeared in a small single sleeping cabin, lying flat in the cabin.
A small clock was embedded in the metal top panel just a few feet away. The second and minute hands of the clock began to spin frantically, quickly fast-forwarding time to zero o'clock, zero minutes, and zero seconds. He fell into a coma.
When he woke up again, it was the scene when they first met in the dormitory.
Song Yang speculated that although the nine players logged into the dungeon at different times, their experiences should be the same.
After the copy adjusted their time to 00:00, they began to wait for the rest of the players to arrive.
After all nine players are in place, the copy game officially begins.
Wang Yueran clapped his hands and said, "Oh right, when I first woke up in the game, my head felt really heavy, and it took me a while to recover! That feeling was completely different from the next few times I slept!"
Jia Qing came back to his senses and said, "It seems, it seems to be true! Could it be that because the first sleep was a real sleep, and our memories were erased...?"
I'm afraid that's the case.
But this also means that—
Jia Qing's expression changed. "Sleeping pods don't seem like something that would appear in the campus world, Brother Jing. Could it be that the real dungeon world is completely different from this campus world?!"
"Yes," Xia Jing laughed with interest, "This also means that this campus world was completely built from the first player's dream. It is a world completely different from the real copy world."
"After we logged into the dungeon, we probably only stayed in the sleeping cabin for about a second. In that second, apart from a clock, there was nothing else that could induce terrifying associations in the players. This also proves that the true first induction of terrifying associations may have started before we entered the dungeon—"
Xia Jing looked at Liu Yi.
Speaking of Huang Mo, Liu Yi was the one with the heaviest mood.
At this moment, he opened his mouth slightly, listening to everyone's discussion, a little stunned.
Xia Jing asked him, "Did Huang Mo say anything to you before logging into the dungeon?"
Liu Yi trembled, and couldn't help but recall everything that happened after he and Huang Mo walked into the login room in the game hall.
The two of them were good brothers who entered the Smiley City together by accident. After that, they agreed to go through every dungeon together in the future.
Before this game, they were just like usual, browsing the dungeon menu in the login room while communicating through the holographic screen.
When he saw the "Don't Think!" dungeon, he asked, "Five people have already logged into this dungeon. Why not choose this one?"
Huang Mo fell silent over there. I don't know if he was absent-minded and didn't hear what he said.
Liu Yi urged, "Lao Mo, what's the matter? This is the only two-star instance with enough people for the two of us, and the group is almost finished gathering. If we miss this instance, we might not be able to make it today."
Huang Mo seemed to hesitate for a moment and said, "Well, okay, then this one."
…
Thinking back on this moment, Liu Yi's face gradually turned pale.
In the center of the cover of the dungeon "Don't Think!" is a black shadow resembling an octopus monster, and in the background behind the shadow are various fragmented images.
There are big supermarkets, large office spaces, streets, homes, and schools...
These backgrounds are like materials for people's association. From school to home to office, almost all the places that ordinary people, whether children or adults, use in their daily lives are included.
Almost everyone who sees this cover will have certain associations.
——What kind of scene will this game take place in?
When this question arises in their minds, their eyes will naturally focus on the scene that they are most familiar with.
The first thing Liu Yi saw was his home.
But because he was nervous, he didn't dare to guess too much about the content of the copy, so he just glanced at it and shifted his attention.
At this moment, he still clearly recalled that he stared at the octopus monster for a while, and seemed to vaguely see a blurry human face in it, like an illusion.
He hadn't paid much attention at the time, nor had he thought of asking Liu Yi whose face he saw on the octopus monster...
Xia Jing said: "This dream has no landmarks, but it is different from the dreams of several other people in one respect. Huang Mo's phone was confiscated."
Outside the door, the NPC began to bang on it frantically.
The terrifying sound of the door panel shaking irritated everyone's nerves, and almost everyone was sweating.
"Before logging into the dungeon, he saw something on the cover, or perhaps the cover led him to think of something," Xia Jing gazed into Liu Yi's eyes, and through soothing descriptions, helped him recall the clues. "As soon as he entered the dungeon, he lay down in a single sleeping cabin like the rest of us. After falling asleep, he became the first player to be chosen by the dungeon's main monster, and we all entered his dream together."
"And in his dream, he was awakened in the middle of the night by his phone vibrating twice. He sat up in bed. It might have been a text message, a call. He might have read it, or he might not have. But he definitely knew what was on the phone. It was something inside the phone that kept him sitting up in bed in the middle of the night. He looked at his roommate, perhaps for help, or perhaps for some other reason."
Liu Yi had obviously thought of something, but hadn't figured it out yet. His face was filled with sadness and confusion.
Song Yang said calmly, "Dreams are bizarre. Everything in a dream might be the result of a distortion of real-world elements. So in this dream, Huang Mo is just like in reality. He's the student whose classmates often call him "parents" and who doesn't have close relationships with other students. That's why you found the school rules manual in the campus broadcasting room. But other than that, the school in this dream is completely different from Huang Mo's real-life school."
"But dreams are a reflection of a person's inner world. In Huang Mo's mind, this school must be a nightmare."
"'Don't think about it' is a deceptive phrase, designed to induce us to have horrific imaginations. It actually has nothing to do with 'studying hard'. But in the dream world, both the teacher and the campus broadcast repeatedly linked the two. This must be because Huang Mo had a certain association when he saw the cover and the title of the copy with the words 'Don't think about it'."
"This association is related to learning, teachers, students, and parents."
Liu Yi opened his eyes wide and suddenly sobbed.