Drifting in a hallucinatory state between sleep and consciousness, Chu Bamboo's thoughts turned sluggishly.
'I think... I lost another life again?'
'Should I... keep resetting... or wake up? I've already reset four times in a row. If I reset again... This feels awful!'
...
It was six AM on an early spring morning.
In the quiet dorm room, Chu Bamboo's eyes snapped open. He took a couple of breaths and rubbed his forehead, finding it covered in sweat.
He could hear his roommates snoring. A glance around from the wide vantage point of his top bunk confirmed his roommates were still asleep.
'This time in the dream, I robbed a bank and explored a mystic realm... All in all, it was pretty spectacular. So satisfying!'
The look of satisfaction on Chu Bamboo's face suddenly froze as he realized something was wrong. 'Wait, how can I remember it so clearly?'
Previously, when Chu Bamboo woke up, he wouldn't completely forget the contents of the Dream World, but his memories would be hazy and unclear—just like a normal person's recollection of their dreams...
His memories of the Dream World would only become clear again once he re-entered it. This was one of the main reasons he believed the Dream World to be illusory... After all, he could remember the Real World while in the Dream World, but not the other way around.
But now, things were different.
'It's as if... I really did just rob a bank, I really did just jump... Wait, excessive gamma radiation?' Chu Bamboo froze for a second. For some reason, the term felt familiar. He instinctively grabbed his phone from the bedside, unplugged the charging cable, and expertly opened up DS to type in his query.
In the next moment, the AI began to process, summarize, and explain.
'Gamma rays... is that nuclear radiation?' After reading the explanation, a theory formed in Chu Bamboo's mind. He typed in another query, 'Most likely locations for gamma rays...'
Staring at the information summarized by the AI, Chu Bamboo took a deep breath.
'The Cosmos... rule that out first! Then, rule out other impossible things, like raw nuclear ore.'
'A nuclear power plant with a reactor, or a large particle collider? There's also a slight possibility of a hospital that handles radioactive materials... but the chances of that are minuscule.'
Chu Bamboo sat on his bed for a good while. Then, he quickly got dressed, climbed out of bed, and went to wash up.
...
Chu Bamboo had always thought he was mentally ill. In middle school, after learning about the "privileges" that came with a diagnosis, he even vehemently demanded his parents get him an evaluation, hoping to acquire what he called the "Law-Resistant Holy Body," an invincible status in this day and age.
Of course, he never got the law resistance. His physical resistance, however, got a major boost—he was nearly beaten to death!
It just goes to show how suffocating the oppression and discrimination against the mentally ill is in this society...
I'm shaking. I'm cold. I can't breathe. I feel so oppressed. I... ah, I forgot the rest of it.
As was his custom, Chu Bamboo began his morning run—a habit he'd formed in high school. Of course, plenty of people ran every morning for three years in high school only to suffer a relapse of laziness in college, preferring to just "lie flat" and sleep in...
But Chu Bamboo slept incredibly well. Barring an all-nighter, he could stay up until three AM and still wake up at six on the dot. So, to ensure he got enough rest, he was practically forced to be an early-to-bed, early-to-rise person.
Being wide awake in the mornings with nothing to do, he had simply developed the habit of going for a run.
But it wasn't the same as usual...
This time, on his morning run...
'...Something's wrong! How is this... so effortless?' Chu Bamboo felt as if he had shot forward like a Flying Sword. His body felt unprecedentedly light, his form had never been better, and the sheer joy and pleasure from the movement of his muscles flooded his brain.
He came to a stop in front of his dorm building again.
Chu Bamboo stretched his limbs. '...I haven't even broken a sweat? But I feel like I was just running at my old hundred-meter sprint speed! Maybe even a bit faster? This...'
Staring at his own palms, for some reason, Chu Bamboo was inexplicably reminded of the end of his dream: the scene where his muscles swelled uncontrollably, as if he had ascended to a planet of steroids.
'...I must be going crazy.' Chu Bamboo's mind reeled. He was actually suspecting the dream was influencing reality. But no, if a dream could truly influence the real world, would it still be just a dream?
Returning to his dorm room.
He sat at his desk with a heavy expression, pulling out a notebook and continuously scribbling and sketching. He wasn't taking notes, just organizing his thoughts. In fact, the scattered, fragmented words on the page would give an onlooker no clue as to what he was trying to record.
'The more I think about this seriously, the bigger the problem seems to get...'
'Before, when my memories of the dream were hazy, I didn't think much of it. But now that they're clear... the language in the dream wasn't even Chinese! And the writing wasn't Chinese characters. If this is all just a figment of my imagination, does that mean I invented an entire language in my sleep?!'
'No, and there are all the skills! I could do anything I wanted in the dream. I could use a gun, fire artillery, do parkour, fight, kill, pick locks... so, so many things. I even... studied math in my dream! And now it feels like I know it all.'
Brand new mathematical knowledge was now in Chu Bamboo's mind. Could it be...?
After a quick search, Chu Bamboo rolled his eyes. Okay, so the mathematical knowledge he'd learned in the dream already existed in the Real World. So much for writing a paper on it and becoming an overnight sensation...
'But I'd really never studied any of this. Mathematical knowledge just appearing out of thin air... Oh, 'The Dream,' you sly devil...'
'But... what if that wasn't a dream...'
Chu Bamboo clenched his fist, his thoughts returning to those unhealthy-looking muscles from the dream. Could it be possible? For a person's body to swell up and grow stronger uncontrollably after exposure to high levels of radiation?
Even though he knew it was impossible, Chu Bamboo subconsciously searched for it anyway. And then he saw a classic video from a certain "Death Knell"...
"Bad news for the bodybuilding community..."
Chu Bamboo: "..."
Right, he should have realized it sooner. If nuclear radiation could really make people evolve—no, *mutate*—like that, the bodybuilding circles in Europe and America would have been the first to use it. They were notorious for valuing muscles over their own lives!
'So, it must be a special case unique to the dream...'
An alarm rang.
Finally, his roommates began to stir, one by one. They were all grumbling and cursing... their crankiness from being woken up was intense.
"Holy crap, Bamboo... No wonder I couldn't sleep well. You've been up since the crack of dawn flipping through books and writing stuff?"
"No way, I heard him scrolling on TikTok just now! First thing in the morning!"
"Scrolling TikTok is no problem. The real problem is when he actually starts studying. The sound of Bamboo's TikTok feed lulls me into a sweet slumber, but the sound of him seriously studying and turning pages gives me insomnia."
"Haha." Chu Bamboo just smiled at them and closed his notebook. Suddenly, a bolt of lightning flashed through his mind.
'Something's wrong!'
'The Chinese part at the end!'