The next day, I went to find Baiyang empty-handed and told him that the Earth-level Snake had turned the bookstore into his playground.

Since I had no way to disobey an Earth-level “Zodiac,” I could only come empty-handed. I believed that matters involving the upper levels should be handled by the upper levels—this wasn’t something I should worry about.

I believed that being careful and cautious was my main weapon for surviving these past five years.

“A white Earth-level Snake…” Baiyang nodded after hearing this. “I understand. I’ll handle it. From now on, I’ll have him give me the books directly on the ‘Train.'”

After hearing this, I fell into that feeling again… I was truly too curious about Baiyang.

“Yang Ge…” I began to ask, “You’re currently ‘Participant-level,’ so how will you make an ‘Earth-level’ listen to you?”

“‘Earth-level’ are still people, aren’t they?” This time, Baiyang didn’t attack me directly but instead answered my question. “As long as they’re people, you can communicate with them. If you can communicate, you can learn their pain points. If you can grasp their pain points, you might be able to control their entire being.”

After saying this, he looked at me, then asked with a somewhat humble tone, “What do you think of this reasoning?”

I swallowed and said, “Yang Ge, where did you learn all of this?”

“In the past, I mostly figured things out myself. Now, I learn some of it from books,” Baiyang said. “Thanks to the books you’ve brought me, but it’s still far from enough.”

To be honest, I’ve never been afraid of smart people. What I’m afraid of are people who are smarter than me yet work even harder than I do. This makes me feel helpless for no reason.

“You finished thirty books in one month… and that’s still not enough?” I asked. “I used to only finish two books a week…”

“It’s really not enough. I’m still too idle,” Baiyang looked at me. “I can’t just stand at the door blankly like other ‘Zodiacs.’ I must do something. I’m still racing against time.”

“This…” I looked at him with some difficulty. “You’re already a proper ‘Participant-level Zodiac,’ aren’t you? What time are you racing against?”

“Limited…”

“Yes, I must do something.”

“But now no one is coming to participate in your game, and you have no more books to read. What are you planning to do?”

“Let’s engage in ‘armchair strategizing,'” Baiyang said. “Find some difficult problems to discuss. This is also a way to make oneself stronger.”

Perfect. This was exactly why I was willing to approach Baiyang.

“No problem.” I nodded in agreement. “I know a little about every field. What do you want to talk about?”

After hearing this, Baiyang lowered his head and stroked his chin, then said, “Yan Zhichun, what are your thoughts on the ‘subconscious’?”

“The ‘subconscious’?” I also pondered for a moment. “This is a psychological term, right? It refers to the part of human psychological activity that hasn’t been consciously perceived.”

“Correct. This is a psychological term. Do you know the relationship between the ‘subconscious’ and ‘Echo’?”

“Yes.” I nodded. “After your guidance and my own experiments, I discovered that the more my subconscious believes my ‘Echo’ can successfully activate, the greater my success rate becomes. Not only have I mastered the method of activating ‘Echo’ myself, but I’ve also passed this experience on to those who joined ‘Extreme Path.'”

“Very good,” Baiyang said. “That saves me a lot of explaining. In other words, the stronger one’s subconscious, the more powerful an ‘Echoer’ one becomes. You understand this principle. Now I’ll ask you again… besides ‘Echo,’ what other effects does the ‘subconscious’ have on this place?”

“What other effects…?” I lowered my head and seriously considered this question, feeling that this was another test.

If I couldn’t answer correctly, what Baiyang said next would also change accordingly.

But I considered many aspects and couldn’t think of any other influences the “subconscious” had on this place. Could it affect other things besides “Echo”?

Seemingly seeing my predicament, Baiyang continued, “American psychologist Martin Galard conducted an experiment. He blindfolded a death row prisoner, tied him to a bed, and announced his death sentence, telling him the execution would be carried out by bleeding. Then he scratched the prisoner’s hand with a wooden piece and began slowly dripping water on the prisoner’s wrist using a pre-prepared water pipe. As the sound of water dripping changed from fast to slow, the prisoner developed extreme fear in his heart. Finally, the prisoner died, with death symptoms identical to excessive blood loss.”

“I’ve heard of this experiment…” I said. “This is a specific manifestation of the ‘suggestion effect.’ The prisoner’s main cause of death was fear and self-suggestion.”

“Exactly. But if the target were changed to a dog or a monkey… would they die?” Baiyang asked again.

I considered this scenario and said, “They wouldn’t understand the suggestion, so most likely they wouldn’t die.”

“Good. Now that we have this condition, let me ask you…” Baiyang’s expression suddenly changed. “Can our ‘subconscious’ forget that we are human?”

“What…?” I was stunned. I had a premonition that the upcoming topic would head in a direction I had never considered before.

“Yan Zhichun, you’ve also experienced ‘The Liar’s’ game. Have you noticed a strange situation…?” Baiyang looked at me and said, “We’re clearly all dead… we don’t need to breathe at all… right?”

“Ah…”

I think I understood.

I seemed to instantly understand all the problems Baiyang was talking about.

“If we don’t need to breathe… that means we don’t need the basic conditions for survival. We don’t need to drink water or eat food either,” Baiyang continued. “But have you noticed… not only does each of us feel hunger, but some people can even starve to death.”

After Baiyang finished speaking, he reached up to cover the mouth and nose area of his mask and added, “We don’t need to breathe, yet some people can die from suffocation. We don’t need sleep, yet we feel the fatigue of sleep deprivation. Theoretically, we’re all in a state of dead souls, and these things shouldn’t affect us at all now.”

I slowly widened my eyes, feeling that my train of thought was unprecedentedly clear.

“I understand…” I blinked and said, “Even the ‘natives’ can starve to death… That’s because they only have their subconscious as humans left, believing that they’ll die if they don’t eat…”

“Yes.” Baiyang nodded. “We can never forget that we are ‘human,’ so we’ve always been bound by these shackles. This is why we cannot become the strongest.”

“But this is really too abstract,” I shook my head, then let out a deep sigh. “As long as we can speak and think about things, our subconscious will definitely believe we are human.”