“Who’s Putin?”
“Which class is this Putin Sentinel in?”
“Why are you asking me about Putin’s spiritual body?”
After three consecutive questions, Lian Yu successfully changed the topic back to his original one: “Cen Zhen, may I see the kitty?”
“Is seeing your cat not enough?”
“Let~Me~See~The~Kitty”
Cen Zhen got up and opened the door, made a gesture of: Please get out this way, and Lian Yu sat down on his bed with a snort, refusing to leave, “I’ll stop talking, is it fine that I stay for a bit to smell your pheromones instead?”
“……” Only if I got the ability to beat him up. Cen Zhen closed the door in compromise and sat back at his desk. He gave the Sentinel a final warning look, turned around, and continued to organize his notes. Lian Yu fulfilled his promise, keeping quiet from the beginning to the end, even the sound of breathing was as light as nothing. Just when Cen Zhen thought he was asleep and turned around, he found that the person had already left.
A cat is not enough to describe his sneakiness. Cen Zhen believes that a ghost is a more suitable spiritual body for Lian Yu.
He pondered for a while, opened the terminal, and searched for a term: Mental Space Atrophy Syndrome.
The strange thing is that this is not an intractable disease, it is not even considered a serious disease, and the prevalence is not high, and only exists within Sentinel. As the name suggests, the mental space of the patient will continue to shrink over time, and completely disappear in the end. Then, the patient will also fall into a spiritual black hole. Cen Zhen understands it as PVS, Persistent Vegetative State; alive, but will never wake up.
There was once a Sentinels who fell into a spiritual black hole for a few seconds and then miraculously recovered, they explained it as somewhere that only has endless darkness. They have consciousness, but they can’t see, hear, or feel anything. They didn’t feel like they were alive at all, but also can’t die no matter how hard they try.
The Virtual Doctor explained the treatment method very casually: find a compatible Guide above the standard compatibility line, of course, the higher the compatibility the better the curative effect. Let them walk around your mental space every day for 5 to 10 minutes, depending on the severity of the condition, the time ranges from half a year to a year, and it will basically be cured. If it is not cured, keep going.
Cen Zhen: ……
Virtual Doctor: Why did you give me six dots? What a great reason to approach the Guide. Every time a Sentinel gets diagnosed with this disease, they’re so happy that they smile till their mouth is crooked.
Cen Zhen: Does this disease have any impact on the spiritual body?
Virtual Doctor: Spiritual body? Nope, at most, you feel anxious or ecstatic because of the illness, and your spiritual body also feels anxious or ecstatic.
Cen Zhen: ……
He now confirmed that Lian Yu was just looking for trouble.
Cen Zhen: Thank you, doctor
Virtual Doctor: But it will affect one’s mental strength. The stronger the mental power, the wider one’s mental space will be. You know this general knowledge from the First-year Sentinel and Guide textbook, right?
Cen Zhen, who just found out about it three months ago: Yes.
Virtual Doctor: The correct correlation is—the level of mental strength determines the size of one’s mental space. The mental power comes first, and the mental space comes after. For the patient, the mental space comes first. It first shrinks by itself, and then the mental power will be affected after that, which appears in the form of false reduction.
Virtual Doctor: The so-called false reduction means that it is the same as the original value, whether it is C or B, but the shrinking mental space makes him only able to use E or D-level power.
Virtual Doctor: For example, everyone’s mental power is a tank full of water. A normal person can have as much water as the size of the tank, but a person with Mental Space Atrophy has a big tank with only a little water in it. When others look at you, they see your tank, but when you look at others, you can only see small amounts of water.
Cen Zhen: ……
Virtual Doctor: Of course, when the disease is cured, the tank will be full; if the disease is not cured, the size of the tank will not change, it will still be the same tank, but the water in it will become less and less. By the way, all of our current mental strength measuring instruments only measure water content, and cannot measure the size of your tank
Cen Zhen: ……
Virtual Doctor: After explaining so much, my mouth is dry, why are you still giving me the six dots! ! !
Cen Zhen: I have a……
Cen Zhen: friend
Virtual Doctor: We all know that friend is just you
Cen Zhen: Yes, it’s me. My mental power may have been high before, but now it may be very low because of this disease. My spiritual domain is still very narrow. Can I still see other people’s spiritual bodies?
Virtual Doctor: ……
Virtual Doctor: Wait a minute, let me open a graph to draw it out, the mental power is very high, how high is it?
Cen Zhen: Just assume it’s S
Virtual Doctor: You’re really putting gold on your face. Okay, I understand it’s just an extreme value calculation. So, let’s say you’re originally an S, you can see other Sentinel’s spiritual bodies, but none of them can see yours; now it’s super low, like the lowest value E, then the current situation is that you can’t see any other Sentinel’s spiritual body and other Sentinels can’t see yours either; finally, the spiritual domain is very narrow, how narrow is it?
Cen Yan: ……
Virtual Doctor: Ok, Ok, extreme value calculation, let’s just say it’s 0. Then you can’t see the spiritual body of any Guide, and other Guide can’t see yours either.
Virtual Doctor: The answer is that if your mental strength was originally S but now E, and the spiritual domain is 0, then you can’t see any spiritual body except yourself. You can’t see anyone’s spiritual body, and no one can see yours. Your spiritual body is the same, which is even more miserable. After all, you can still see people, but your spiritual body can’t see anything. It is the most lonely spiritual body in the world.
Virtual Doctor: I now seriously suspect that you are a first-year student of the Tower, and are tricking me to answer your homework questions.
Virtual Doctor: Do your homework yourself, ok?
Cen Zhen gave the doctor a five-star review and closed the consultation interface.
—— The loneliest spiritual body in the world, the loneliest lion in the world.
*
For an entire week after that day, Lian Yu didn’t appear. As if he was eaten by some alien in Cen Zhen’s dormitory that day, disappearing without a trace.
This period is when the plot progresses to the 8th and 9th chapters of the novel. An easy-going school story. To sum it up, Yao Jin and Pan encounter each other on a road, and decide to go and eat something delicious together; basically a date. When they returned to the dormitory in the middle of the night, they encountered a meteor shower halfway and happily made a wish together.
Cen Zhen is not a lunatic who will go and disturb such a normal plot, so he attended classes normally. When he was free, he went on to the online library to make up for the lack of knowledge he has in history, trying his best to integrate into this world.
On this day, Cen Zhen saw Pan outside of his classroom, and Pan was waiting for him. When he saw him, his eyes lit up, and walked over quickly.
“Cen Zhen!” Pan handed over a gift box very happily. “Yesterday, I…I went to a great dessert shop with Y… I think this flower crispy tasted very good. Please accept it. “
“……” Compared to the flowers crispy, Cen Zhen was more interested in the icy-fire meat stick that he and Yao Jin had in the novel. “Thank you.” He accepted Pan’s kindness, “Do you need me for anything?”
“Uh …” Pan suddenly blushed and said, “That… is … it’s the outdoor midterm exam … It needs a team of four, I… I …”
“You’re not teaming up with Yao Jin“? “Cen Zhen remembers this outdoor exam, it’s the content of the 10th to 20th chapter of the novel. That is the comprehensive examination for every grade of the Tower and White Tower. Specifically, four people form a small team, and there are two sides, red and blue. The two sides simulate a battle, and each team first competes in ranking and the repechage happens later.
During the ranking phase, the rule is that the top half team of the winning side straight passes the exam, and the second half of the team on the defeated side automatically fails the exam. The rest of the teams participated in the repechage. Finally, half of these teams will pass and half will fail.
After two rounds, the unqualified teams will face the unparalleled hell of copying the entire textbook “Guide: The General Knowledge” and “Sentinel: The General Knowledge” by hand. Because the elimination rate of the midterm is 50%, so the week after the exam, both the Tower and White Tower would be full of sorrowful and miserable howls.
The members of the protagonist team are Yao Jin, Pan, Hong Xing, and a certain unimportant Guide. Naturally, they encounter challenges during the ranking phase and rank in the second half of the winning side. Then during the repechage, they successfully turned the table and passed the exam.
The challenge they encountered was also a foreshadowing of the true identity of Hong Xing. Later in the novel, it was mentioned that because Hong Xing was trying to hide his true identity, he deliberately gave the unimportant Guide poisonous food.
As for the cannon fodder “Cen Zhen”, he first invited Fan to form a team but got rejected. Then he took a step back and asked one of his ‘spare tire’ Sentinel. Although he ranked in the first half during the ranking phase, he was on the defeated side, so he had to participate in the repechage. During the repechage, ‘Cen Zhen’ was too focused on targeting the male leads, and eventually lost miserably and had to copy the textbook by hand.
As soon as Pan heard Yao Jin’s name, Pan blushed even more, and his words became even more scattered: “He, I…I asked him already, we…he, us, uh…still needs another G, Guide, and Sentinel…so…I, I thought of you……”
“……Sure.” Of course, even Cen Yan wants to be lazy and doesn’t work hard. Who doesn’t want to join a team that is for sure winning?
“Great.” Pan’s eyes were full of little stars, and he looked so cute that it made people want to pinch his face. “Which Sentinel would you like to choose? Hong Xing, a friend of Yao Jin, hasn’t joined a team yet, and Fan also seems like he’s interested in partnering up with you…… “
Shark’s den and snake’s lair…..Not sure why, but Cen Zhen suddenly thought of these words, “I’ll think about it.”
“Okay!”
Pan left with joy, and Cen Zhen was struggling with choosing a candidate for the team. The Sentinel Hong Xing can’t be, he didn’t want to be poisoned; Fan? When it comes to this Sentinel, Cen Zhen can only think of his nostrils’ attitude towards people, and he seems to have an interest in him all of a sudden for some unknown reason, to avoid unnecessary misunderstandings, Cen Zhen must not team up with him.
As for Lian Yu, he is a seventh-grade Sentinel, which doesn’t meet the grade requirement to form a team with him, so he is instantly eliminated.
After school, Cen Zhen returned to the dormitory and took a shower. When he came out of the bathroom while buckling pajama buttons, the Sentinel who has been gone for seven days straight is now sitting on the chair with his leg crossed while eating some flower crispy.
“What is this thing, it’s way too sweet, ew, disgusting.” Before Cen Zhen could say anything, the Sentinel who came without asking, Lian Yu spit everything out in the trash can, and then rushed to the water dispenser, and drank a large cup of warm water.
Cen Yan didn’t know what to say. This crispy was obviously something for the Guide to enjoy, and there is no way a Sentinel will think it was delicious.
After Lian Yu finished drinking the water and sat next to Cen Zhen’s side, he started talking nonsense, “Long time no see, do you miss me.”
Original Author’s Note:
Catfish: Do you miss me?
Cen Zhen: Sentinel friend, I miss you to death!
Catfish: ……
(Who wrote catfish by mistake in the comment section earlier, I can’t get it out of my mind these days)
Translator’s note:
Catfish’s PinYin is Lian Yu
Lian Yu (the Sentinel): ……
