Chapter 1 In the Defensive Thought-World

In the defensive thought-world created by the brain monster, the sky collapsed and the earth split, as if it were the end of the world.

Beneath Hao Ren's feet was a crimson land that seemed soaked in blood. The ground trembled violently, cracking everywhere, and poisonous vapor erupted from each fissure like a surging tide. Endless torrential rain poured from the sky, interspersed with enormous lightning bolts and showers of sulfuric fire. A terrifying howl, each wave stronger than the last, echoed through the heavens and earth, its sound alone enough to shatter the minds of ordinary people. After the fierce storm, the sulfuric fire turned into countless sharp blades and cannonballs falling from the sky, and as the earth cracked, magma gradually flooded the surface. And when the magma gradually spewed into giant wolves, Hao Ren found himself on a desolate planet being bombarded, with countless meteorites trailing long fiery tails falling beside him.

Various disaster scenarios played out around him, constantly changing and without rhyme or reason, almost directly extracting all the doomsday landscapes from human imagination and presenting them in one go. Each scene was realistic and terrifying, interspersed with bizarre and twisted landscapes: such as inverted earth and huge burning corpses. It was like those hellish scrolls in religious stories that test the human mind, except that the hellish scrolls were meant to intimidate sinners, while this place was meant to deter intruders.

Hao Ren stood in front of a volcano about to erupt, facing the scorching poisonous steam and sulfuric fire. To be honest, the scene was indeed frightening, but the mental barrier successfully protected his mind, and his well-trained thick nerves allowed him to say a few polite words in this situation. He raised his head to look at the hollow sky and shouted loudly at the will hiding deep within these illusions, "Don't you think this is boring?! If you really want me to stop entering your brain from now on, come out and explain it to me clearly!"

A mocking roar came from between heaven and earth, and the volcano erupted violently, the scorching volcanic ash turning into countless sharp blades, raining down like a downpour.

"You know very well that your mental power is weakened by the crystal, and the illusions you create here cannot cause any damage at all, and my mental barrier is stronger than yours," Hao Ren simply sat down on the spot in this crazy, upside-down world, letting the blades pierce him. "Now we've reversed, and it's my mental power that's invading your brain—these barriers you create in the surface consciousness can only make both of us feel bored. I have no intention of spying on your subconscious, but can you show your face and say a few words to me? Big Brain, I believe you can understand human language and thought."

A muffled thunder-like rumble came from deep within the earth, and a torrential downpour replaced the volcanic smoke, completely obscuring Hao Ren's vision.

In the previous two or three forced connections, Hao Ren's attempts to communicate with the giant brain had always ended here, all his efforts stopping at this torrential rain. After that, the brain monster would no longer respond in any way, and this world would no longer have any frightening disaster scenes or roars, replaced instead by this endless rain, falling and falling, until Hao Ren completely gave up.

But this time, Hao Ren still wanted to try again. He knew that the giant brain could not give up its hostility towards him, so from the beginning, he never really hoped to have a "good talk" with this brain monster. He just wanted the brain monster's real consciousness to show its face, even if it said a word to him, even if it scolded him, he could track the brain monster's deep-seated mental activity through the equipment—but the brain monster was quite vigilant about this and had not yet taken the bait.

He sat on the ground in the rain, as if talking to himself, "You know, I've seen very, very many races, even stranger than you, such as high-intelligence creatures like mimosa. You're nothing special, a bizarre style doesn't make you extraordinary, in my eyes you're no different from those species that eat, drink, shit, walk, sit, and lie down, just temporarily having some secrets..."

The rain continued to fall.

"Why are you so full of hatred for other species? Or why are you causing destruction everywhere? Your compatriots disrupted Holletta, you disrupted the Siren Kingdom, and you disrupted other alien species on Earth... what's your plan?"

The rain poured down, and the rainwater began to turn red, as if it was about to evolve into a sky full of bloody rain.

"What's your relationship with the 'First Born'? Oh, you may not call it the First Born, but you should understand what I'm talking about. I can now be sure that you brain monsters are not the same kind of creatures as the First Born, but I always feel that you are connected, you have a similar style... and hatred for all living beings. Are you some kind of distant relative?"

The rain finally evolved into a real sky full of bloody rain, and that muffled roar resounded again between heaven and earth.

Hao Ren was pleasantly surprised to find that he seemed to have once again aroused the emotional fluctuations of this brain monster.

"Oh oh, it looks like you're interested in this topic, then we can go deeper," Hao Ren raised his hand to catch the raindrops falling from the sky, they were as red as blood, and even had a suspicious stickiness, "... this reminds me of Origin Blood, the monks of the Radiant Church believe that Origin Blood is the blood of the goddess, the two have the same ingredients. Although they have never seen the real Creator Goddess, they are very eloquent when they say these things. Let's talk about the Creator Goddess, the creator of all life in this universe..."

Halfway through these words, an almost deafening roar suddenly resounded throughout the heavens and earth. Hao Ren felt an uncontrollable rage and hostility suddenly coming from all directions. The force of this rage might even have touched the suppression effect caused by the protective crystal, because in that instant, he felt that his spiritual world was also turbulent. And in the deafening roar, he seemed to vaguely "hear" an angry roar: "...Rebellious son... dares to speak of Mother?!"

In the next instant, the mountains collapsed and the earth cracked.

The earth suddenly split open into countless huge ravines, as if the entire ground was originally built on a thin layer of rock above an endless abyss, and now this layer of ground completely collapsed, and all things instantly fell into nothingness.

A strong sense of falling struck, and Hao Ren felt his consciousness rapidly leaving this place. In the instant before he was fully awake, he looked down and saw a glimmer of light in that endless abyss.

There was nothing in the light, but it was warm and peaceful.

Hao Ren suddenly opened his eyes. He was still standing in the laboratory, and the silent giant brain was suspended in the sealed container in front of him. The latter looked motionless, but an undisguised hostility still came from it.

"It kicked me out," Hao Ren breathed out, "Fourth time."

"This time, your connection lasted a few seconds longer than before," Nangong Wuyue looked curiously at Hao Ren's expression, "Any progress?"

Hao Ren rubbed his head, "Just one more sentence, and a piece of incomprehensible white light—when I mentioned the Creator Goddess, the brain monster's subconscious was completely enraged and directly destroyed the virtual world of the surface consciousness. It seemed to call the Creator Goddess 'Mother,' and called me a rebellious son... I suspect it mistook me for those 'Second Born' of the Dream Plane."

"'Rebellious son'? Does this statement mean that the Second Born are rebelling against the goddess?" Nangong Wuyue's tail stood up and wagged, "Hasn't this misunderstanding been resolved yet? The doomsday disaster in Holletta was first caused by the First Born, and has nothing to do with the magic emperor's research experiments."

Hao Ren frowned, and after thinking for a long time, a flash of inspiration suddenly appeared, "But the Second Born are not just those on Holletta!"

"Uh... then besides that?" Wuyue scratched her hair, "What's the white light you're talking about?"

"I don't know, that seems to be something in the brain monster's subconscious layer. The isolation of thinking methods makes them look very abstract. I can only feel a warm and peaceful atmosphere inside... perhaps some ancient memories, memories before the Creator Goddess had an accident... Ha, can't figure it out."

Hao Ren and Wuyue discussed the strange scenes they saw in the brain monster's mind, and then retrieved the fragmented images recorded by the equipment, hoping to find key information that they had accidentally overlooked from those fleeting scenes. However, all the pictures showed only the doomsday of mountains collapsing and the earth cracking, and no suggestive things appeared.

There were too few secrets that the surface consciousness could hide.

Hao Ren sighed as he looked at those messy pictures, "The brain monster's main body is much stronger than its clone. Its memories are highly encrypted, and it looks like it will take some effort to..."

Before he could finish his words, he suddenly heard the data terminal shout, "The last jump will begin in two minutes, about to arrive at Aioi!"

"Let's go back to the bridge first," Hao Ren shook his head, "We'll talk about the Big Brain later."