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Chapter 32.2: Mutual Probing

When he returned after a satisfying meal, Yang Qiu was surprised to see that the supermarket delivery driver, who usually only brought expired goods in the late evening, had come in broad daylight. The small delivery truck was parked at the entrance of the yard, and the driver was fanning himself with his hat while looking around.

"Brother Zhang!" the driver actively greeted upon seeing Yang Qiu.

Zhang was the surname of the ID that Yang Qiu had purchased online. He also cast an illusion spell on himself whenever he went out, which was a slight alteration to his original appearance.

"Why are you so early today?" Yang Qiu gave the driver a casual smile and nodded as he took out the keys to unlock his gate.

"Um… I have some things to attend to in the afternoon, so I thought I\'d deliver it to you earlier." The driver forced a smile, then motioned to his colleague. "Xiao Wang, help with unloading the goods."

"On it," the young man who came with the driver responded readily and quickly opened the back doors of the truck.

"You\'ve got someone to help out this time, huh?" Yang Qiu remarked with a smile while glancing at the young man doing the unloading.

"Well, um, yeah. I have something to do later in the afternoon, so I asked a colleague to come and help," the driver smiled awkwardly. It seemed as if he was afraid that Yang Qiu would ask more questions, so he went to help with the unloading while asking, "Brother Zhang, should the stuff be put in the usual place?"

"Put them in the storeroom on the first floor, separate from the previous batch that hasn\'t been used up," Yang Qiu instructed casually, seemingly oblivious to the driver\'s nervousness.

After unloading a truckload of expired or discontinued products, the driver handed an invoice for Yang Qiu to sign. While Yang Qiu did a quick scan of the goods, he noticed that there were ten motorcycle helmets mixed in among the towels, toothpaste, and mosquito repellent.

"Are these helmets also discontinued?" Yang Qiu casually remarked.

"Y-yeah," replied the driver while wiping off his sweat. "They\'re from a small manufacturer and have been sitting on the shelves for half a year without being sold, so the manager decided to throw them in for free."

There was nothing wrong with this explanation. Domestic retailers didn\'t have that same grandeur as foreign supermarkets. A domestic retailer wasn\'t that much different from ordinary grocery stores where the cashier might throw in a few extra candies when returning the change.

For someone like Yang Qiu, who didn\'t mind taking the unwanted goods and paid promptly, ten motorcycle helmets as a complementary bonus for purchasing a truckload of expired goods wasn\'t at all excessive.

However, Yang Qiu announced the release of up to ten closed beta accounts just 40 minutes ago. In the time it took to have a bowl of braised noodles, ten ready-made motorcycle helmets had come into his possession. That issue was rather tricky…

Yang Qiu kept his cool and signed the invoice as per usual. After he sent the driver off and closed the gate behind him, Yang Qiu muttered to himself, "Isn\'t this being too impatient? Couldn\'t they have waited a couple of days… Aren\'t they afraid of scaring me off by being that obvious?"

Given the mobilization capability of China\'s grassroots, Yang Qiu had never believed that his disguise would be seamless enough that he would forever be undiscovered. In any case, his identity and the "assets" he possessed could be discarded at any time. If necessary, he could simply walk away without a trace.

Being unable to see his family would be the only regret he would have. While his mother and sister couldn\'t recognize him, Yang Qiu would still take a bus for a couple of stops to his old estate and watch them.

Now, at least, it seemed like things wouldn\'t reach that point. The ones who could find a suitable reason to deliver the helmets so promptly were relatively friendly, or at least not hostile. Otherwise, they would have found an excuse to detain him for questioning before anything else.

"While we can\'t cooperate, since there isn\'t any hostility, perhaps we can still have a tacit understanding," muttered Yang Qiu.

Yang Qiu entered the storeroom and first carried out the box containing the motorcycle helmets.

Adding a large number of nodes to the imprint matrix would be overwhelming, but dealing with ten units was still within his capacity.

He was just a mere game developer, and no matter how curious the scientists were, he could only provide them with a window into the game. This was Yang Qiu\'s bottom line.

What the scientists would discover by entering the game was no longer his concern.

While Yang Qiu began the process of transforming the ten helmets into "login devices," in another location in G Province, a "task force" composed of elite members from various "relevant departments" and led by the NeuroTech Center had arrived specifically to carry out their work. They were meticulously reviewing the first on-site contact video footage transmitted by the field operatives.

As for why personnel from the National Security Bureau and Public Security University were around and how they had the authority to access synchronized video footage from field operatives, it wouldn\'t be elaborated on here.

"…He really does look like Zhang Mou," a scholarly senior in uniform commented wryly after watching the video. "If it hadn\'t been confirmed that Zhang Mou is still serving his sentence, I would think that someone had unlawfully released him."

"There are still differences," another middle-aged man, also in uniform but with a more imposing demeanor, spoke up. "Zhang Mou is from X Province and has never been to G Province. The man in the video speaks Mandarin with a distinct G-province accent."

"Everyone, please." Lu Yiyun was unconcerned about the identity of the person in the video. She only cared about whether they could seize the opportunity to establish communication with this mysterious individual possessing advanced technology. And thus, she couldn\'t help but cut them off impatiently, "The target accepted the helmets without resistance, indicating a willingness to cooperate. Shouldn\'t we—"

"Don\'t be hasty, Xiao Lu," Professor Yin Zhengliang, from the Public Security University\'s Criminal Psychology Department, intervened to soothe Lu Yiyun\'s impatience. "Whether the target has the intention to cooperate with us depends on their subsequent actions. So far, the target hasn\'t given us any communication signals, which suggests he still has reservations. We need to be patient."

Lu Yiyun hesitated, but didn\'t say anything more.

Among the scientific researchers, Lu Yiyun was undoubtedly one with high emotional intelligence and was proficient in organizing work. The fact that she was chosen to lead this group of experts demonstrated the level of trust placed in her. However, not all researchers were equally "reasonable" in their approach. Academician Ke Jingguo of the Chinese Scientific Institute of Neuroscience, for example, would have brought all his students over to G Province already if it hadn\'t been for Lu Yiyun\'s daily phone calls providing updates.

All scientists and researchers in the field of neuroscience had to face a difficult question—does the brain of a patient in a vegetative state possess consciousness? And are they still aware?

Countless experts in the field had tirelessly pursued various methods to explore the mysteries of the brain, centering around this issue. However, to this day, there were still no significant results.

Nearly 100,000 patients fell into a comatose state in China each year due to traumatic brain injuries, strokes, hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy, and other conditions, leading to long-term consciousness disorder, commonly known as being in a vegetative state. The efforts made by the NeuroTech Center in recent years could only combine relevant neural representations with machine learning methods, providing new reference points for clinical diagnosis and treatment of patients\' consciousness states.

The emergence of the "helmet" that could transport one\'s consciousness to an "alternate server" in the game "OtherWorld" came like a roaring thunderclap to experts in the fields of neuroscience.

After the initial shock, experts from all relevant fields inevitably connected this incomprehensible black technology to the long-standing issue that had troubled scientists in this field: If it were possible to make one\'s consciousness "active" in the so-called "alternate server" through brain wave activity, did it mean that patients with consciousness disorders could regain wakefulness by using this "game login device"?

This speculation (whether these users that possessed these "game login devices" were truly playing a game or if their consciousness had indeed traveled to another existing alternate world) that drove countless experts and researchers crazy had to be temporarily set aside in their quest for validation of this experiment.

Professor Yin Zhengliang understood Lu Yiyun\'s dilemma and reassured her, "After reading your email, the target immediately released ten beta accounts and willingly accepted the helmets we arranged for. I believe we should quickly establish contact with this \'development team\' to confirm where they intend to deploy these ten helmets. That way, we can determine the target\'s attitude toward us and whether they are strictly defensive or open to further cooperation."

Lu Yiyun nodded and immediately sat down to compose an email.

After calming the "scientific faction" within the group of experts, Professor Yin Zhengliang began discussing more in-depth topics with his colleagues.

So far, they had mobilized a considerable number of grassroots police forces to conduct various investigations around the target. Bafflingly, even with the full cooperation of the police department in G Province, they were still unable to trace the origins of their mysterious target.

Was the target truly a Chinese national?

And if he were one, why was there no trace of his existence?

The household registration police and internet police had searched through the records of missing men between the ages of 30-40 in the country, but they couldn\'t find any fingerprints or DNA matches with the target.

And if the target wasn\'t a Chinese national, then how had he entered the country?

It also had to be noted that G Province was not a border province, so there was no possibility for a foreigner to simply sneak in through a remote border.

Of course, the task force leaned more toward considering the target as a Chinese national. This was because during the investigation into the target\'s activities, they discovered unmistakable habits and behaviors that were typical of Chinese nationals: taking public transportation, renting residential houses, contacting local terminal retailers to purchase discounted products near expiration, visiting flea markets to make purchases, even buying handmade crafts from prisons, and so on. If a foreigner wanted to seamlessly integrate into the domestic environment, it would take more than a decade to learn and adopt these behaviors.

It was precisely because the target seemed to have appeared in G Province out of thin air, making it impossible to trace his origin, that this task force didn\'t consider direct contact. If they startled the person and the target disappeared silently, just like when they first appeared, the scientists who were already aware of the target\'s existence would undoubtedly cause a major uproar.

After Yang Qiu had finished with the ten new helmets, he opened up the forum\'s backend and wasn\'t at all surprised to see an earnest email from a certain Director Lu, requesting user accounts.

In the email, Director Lu, who seemed to be an academic, candidly expressed that they were a legitimate research institution in the field of neuroscience and hoped to utilize the game login helmets for an experiment regarding the brain wave activity of patients in vegetative states.

They wanted to investigate whether the connection to the game server could stimulate the brains of these patients and help them regain consciousness.

Yang Qiu\'s knowledge of Earth was limited to his time up till being a high school student, and he truly didn\'t understand the intricacies of this matter. Therefore, without hesitation, he called the courier station and promptly sent the ten helmets to the scientists as originally intended.