I had never heard of anyone needing a mirror to search for something, but if Baiyang said so, he must have his own reasoning.

Although this item wasn’t easy to find, I still managed to find a small powder compact the next day. The powder compact looked quite avant-garde, even a brand I had never heard of.

This item was left behind in a small building and could still be used.

That meant this thing didn’t appear when the city appeared, but appeared along with a “Participant.”

This place recorded the state of this girl when she carried cosmetics with her, meaning she would have cosmetics every time she was reborn. I was even a bit envious of her.

When I found Baiyang with the powder compact containing a small mirror, he was sitting at the doorway reading a book.

It seemed that, as he said, he had actually obtained books directly from the Earth-level Snake.

Seeing me approach, he closed the book and looked up at me. “Did you find a mirror?”

I nodded and took out the small powder compact and handed it to him.

“This small…?” Baiyang doubtfully took the compact and opened it to look. “Is this cosmetics?”

“Yes, large mirrors are quite hard to find—basically all shattered. But this one will work well enough.”

Baiyang picked up the mirror and examined it carefully, then murmured to himself, “Unfortunately… I can only see my eyes.”

“What?” I asked. “Is this mirror too small?”

“No, it’s because I’m wearing a mask,” Baiyang answered. “Unfortunately… it seems I need to find a way to advance soon.”

After hearing this, I was truly too confused.

After pondering for a while, Baiyang said to me, “The reason is complicated. I believe that if I truly want to ‘forget that I’m human,’ then I must make myself into a real, flesh-and-blood person with attachments, use these things to build the strongest psychological defense in my heart, and then use the most terrifying method to destroy it all in one fell swoop. If I still haven’t had a mental breakdown after that, then I will have transcended humanity.”

Alright, I admit this method was so abstract I couldn’t imagine it at all.

“What about the mirror?” I asked again.

“The mirror…” Baiyang lowered his head and looked at the small mirror in his hand, saying, “I… have something to say to myself, so I need a mirror.”

“Have something to say to yourself…” I blinked, feeling somewhat uneasy. “So you want to advance to ‘Earth-level’ as soon as possible… because you want to…”

“I want to see my expression,” Baiyang turned his head and looked at me with that withered sheep-face mask. “My current appearance means I can only see my own eyes. The success rate is too low. I need to capture every micro-expression of mine.”

“But what’s the purpose of capturing micro-expressions?” I asked again.

“I need to understand myself,” Baiyang answered. “Do you know about ‘hypnosis’?”

“I… have heard of it,” I answered. “But ‘hypnosis’ is at most a type of ‘suggestion’… Its practicality is far less powerful than what’s portrayed in movies.”

“Yes, but it does have a potential influence on a person. However, I’ve now protected myself,” Baiyang reached up and tugged at his mask. “The most important prerequisite for conducting ‘hypnosis’ is to completely trust the hypnotist, but no one would trust a hypnotist wearing a mask.”

I seemed to finally know what Baiyang was going to do… He was going to hypnotize himself?

“So I need to advance to ‘Earth-level’ as soon as possible,” Baiyang continued. “That way I can have expressions, and I can also give myself powerful psychological suggestions by observing each of my micro-expressions.”

Hearing this, I was about to nod when I suddenly felt a chill run down my spine.

Something seemed… not quite right.

After becoming ‘Earth-level’… then observe his own micro-expressions?

“Wait… wait a moment… Yang Ge,” my voice became hoarse. “After you become ‘Earth-level’… you’ll no longer have human expressions. Your face will turn into a cold sheep.”

“Even if it’s a sheep’s face, there must still be micro-expressions,” Baiyang said. “When the time comes, I’ll look at that sheep face and strengthen my psychological suggestions.”

I felt this was a bit too terrifying… No matter what psychological suggestions Baiyang wanted to give himself… but if he was facing a sheep’s face… and had to constantly observe that sheep’s expressions…

Then the biggest psychological suggestion he could receive would be “I am a sheep.”

“Wait…”

I was stunned again.

Isn’t this… just perfect…?

This was the goal Baiyang wanted to achieve from the very beginning… Could it be that the psychological suggestion he was giving himself with the mirror was “I am not human”?

I racked my brains trying to predict what Baiyang was going to do, but I always felt something was still missing.

From then on, basically every time I came here, Baiyang would be holding that mirror and talking to himself.

I was even afraid he would go mad first before receiving the psychological suggestion.

According to him, his life was now completely filled with three things: talking to himself, conducting games, and reading books.

He had already achieved the first step of breaking free from humanity—abandoning sleep.

Now he would read through the night, feeling his available time was fully twice that of others.

And because we were all in a state of dead souls, when one began to believe they weren’t human, going without sleep for long periods genuinely didn’t produce a feeling of fatigue, though it was uncertain how long this could be sustained.

As for “eating,” that was a relatively difficult problem to solve. Baiyang said that every time he returned to the “Train,” almost all the “Zodiacs” were eating. The entire “Train” would be permeated with an atmosphere of “hunger” at that time, so it was indeed somewhat difficult to remain completely unaffected.

In this atmosphere, even though Baiyang had suggested to himself countless times that he was “not human,” he would still feel hungry, so he would still choose to continue eating—consuming that air.

Baiyang also told me that those seemingly incredibly sumptuous delicacies on the “Train” actually didn’t fill one’s stomach at all. Almost all of them were optical illusions from “Echo.”

Some food was transformed from sand and soil, while other food was a false image of nothingness. Every day, a large number of “Train Attendants” would deliver this food to the “Zodiacs'” rooms.

To put it bluntly, the greatest use of this food was to make you perform the action of “eating,” thereby believing you were “full.”

This was simply like raising livestock. It seemed that “Heavenly-Dragon” had from the very beginning regarded all the “Zodiacs” on the “Train” as actual animals to be raised. He also knew from the start about the influence of the “subconscious” on these people.