茶杯狐 -CUPFOX

Throughout the day, Xiang Kun spent most of his time on the two wood carvings.

Initially, he thought that after establishing a “super sensory contact” with the material, it would be easier to establish another special contact with the finished product, but he was met with failure.

Could this be because “super sensory contact” is a connection based on rational observation, while this ability to perceive others’ emotions and dream images is a “sentimental” connection?

As always, Xiang Kun tried to make sense of the phenomena he observed, rationalizing them to his understanding.

By ten o’clock at night, he decided to temporarily set aside the woodcarving matter. He sensed the three objects with which he had established a unique connection. Two inscriptions remained still, but the eight-armed, eight-eyed wood carving had responded.

This excited Xiang Kun and he instantly sat upright, ready to sense it, as if he were eagerly checking his phone, elated to finally see a received message from the woman he had pursued!

However, the moment he obtained the clearly foreign emotions via his sensory contact and perceived the vague images, he was so scared that he nearly jumped off his chair.

Damn!

What the hell was that!

The images he saw in the past were different, but they were all of him lying in bed.

This time, in the fear he sensed, he saw himself immersed in a massive boiling cauldron through the subjective perspective, with several ugly monsters tearing at his flesh and consuming him.

The eight-armed, eight-eyed monster was present, but didn’t participate in the feeding. It tilted its head, looking down at the “Emotion Bearer.”

Through the gaps left by these monsters, Xiang Kun saw people in the distance, men and women, old and young, all dressed normally, clapping and cheering at the sight.

What the hell did this guy do? His fear and self-inflicted predicament looked akin to a scene from hell?

Having absorbed most of Guo Tian’s memories, Xiang Kun thought himself immune to most “nightmarish” scenes. But he admittedly had never seen anything as terrifying!

He even started to worry about the “Emotion Bearer.” He was aware that the emotions were not his own, and therefore would not trigger a physiological or psychological reaction. But the “Emotion Bearer” might not be so fortunate, and the severe fear, even in a dream, could have deep implications.

The wood carving was in the hands of Tang Baona’s grandfather, so it was likely affecting one of Tang Baona’s relatives. This was not good…

Xiang Kun reasoned that he would have to contact Tang Baona tomorrow to swap out the wood carving. It wouldn’t do if people were constantly having nightmares.

What puzzled him was why the dreams seemed to be coming from different people each time. Could the location of the wood carving have been changed?

After the sensing with the eight-armed, eight-eyed wood carving ended, around 11 0’clock, Xiang Kun felt a reaction from the “Memorial on the Subject of Stepping Down from Official Duty.”

The emotions he sensed this time were as he had anticipated—nostalgia and a trace of sadness. The dream image was set in a memorial service. From the black and white photo in the center, he recognized it as his father’s comrade from their military service days, who had died in a car accident over a decade ago.

His father’s comrade was close to him in the army, and though they were stationed in different places when they left the military, they still stayed in contact every now and then. Xiang Kun had met him a few times as a child.

He could confirm this was his father’s dream.

Among the mourners, he saw the old man who used to live next door in Tongshi Town and taught Xiang Kun calligraphy.

Xiang Kun knew the old man was the projection of the emotions evoked by that piece of writing.

Afterward, from the first-person perspective, Xiang Kun saw his father during the early days of military training and naturally, the old man next door constantly interrupted their routines.

Seeing the old man, kind and loving as always, just as he was that summer when Xiang Kun was in eighth grade, he felt a bit sentimental.

After the dream ended quickly, Xiang Kun tried to sense the lyric sheet he had given to Xia Libing, but it did not react at all. Considering the time was past 2 in the morning, could it be that Old Xia was still awake?

Or was the lyric sheet left in her office in the hospital, so it couldn’t affect her?

Or maybe she was on night duty at the hospital and hadn’t gone home to rest?

Setting that aside for now, Xiang Kun continued sensing the “Memorial on the Subject of Stepping Down from Official Duty.” As expected, not long after, he received a sensory feedback.

The dream he entered this time was clearly his mother’s.

This also proved that the items with special connections couldn’t affect multiple targets to generate dreams at the same time, but after a while, they could still act on other targets. There seemed to be a cooling-down period.

However, Xiang Kun was taken aback by his mother’s dream. It was of her watching TV in the living room, where a character just died in the show. His mother’s emotions followed the character’s into sadness and nostalgia.

Not too far away, the elderly neighbor was playing chess with his father on the couch…

After his mother’s dream ended, Xiang Kun began to organize his judgments about the new special associations that had appeared.

So far, a total of three items, the Eight-armed, Eight-eyed Woodcarving and two characters, have been connected and sensed five dream scenarios one after the other.

It could be seen that these items with special connections allow Xiang Kun to faintly perceive the emotions of their owners when they are in possession of them, but they can’t pinpoint their location or obtain any sensory information.

When people nearby fall asleep, the emotions “endowed” by Xiang Kun on the items assimilate with the people, causing them to have the same emotions in their dreams, and then a dream starts happening, and Xiang Kun can “see” the dream through his perception.

He speculated that when people are awake, these items with special connections are not strong enough to assimilate with the owner’s emotions, they can only feed the owner’s emotions back to Xiang Kun. Only when people are asleep can tney proauce enougn Innuence to allow people to aream ana receive feedback from the dream.

Compared to the previous “mental deterrence,” “Emotional Assimilation,” and “co-manifestation,” these items’ effect on emotions could only be considered weak.

These items are like routers, Xiang Kun can through them receive a small amount of data (emotion) feedback from the target “host” , he can give the target “host” specific instructions via a “program” setup on the router (emotion placed during the item creation).

But during the day when the target is awake, there is a strong “firewall”, preventing instructions from influencing the target “host”. Only at night, it can enter the “host” to have an impact, though the instruction remains the same, different “hosts” running the program (dream) have different outcomes.

The entire dream is like a form, whether the form is a gym membership registration form or a job-seeking CV, it is determined by the emotions that cause the dream. What specific content is filled in on the form is determined by each individual’s actual circumstances.

And the Eight-armed, Eight-eyed Woodcarving and the old man next door, they are like the texts and titles on the form.

Xiang Kun suddenly remembered the ability of Guo Tianxiang to “establish a self-fear projection” after eye contact. He had always been puzzled, why the “co-manifestation” that occurred after his own “Emotional Assimilation” through eye contact, which should have been far more complex, could easily be done, whereas “establishing a self-fear projection” was continually unfeasible.

It seemed that it wasn’t that he conveying insufficient data after eye contact, but too much.

Guo Tianxiang’s “establishment of self-fear projection” probably only gave the target a “fear” emotional command. The subsequent development was all left to the target’s imagination.

It was as if Guo Tianxiang merely set the topic for the composition, and then the students began to write according to their own knowledge and imagination, read it out loud on the podium afterward.

Xiang Kun’s “co-manifestation”, on the other hand, directly slapped a completed composition in front of the students: “No BS, this is what you wrote, read it!”

The emotional influence of Guo Tianxiang “establishing self-fear projection” was clearly not the same as Xiang Kun’s ‘Emotional Assimilation”. The former sets up the topic for the composition, whereas the latter shows everyone a model text, still limiting the overall writing style within the framework of the model text.

Apparently, even if Xiang Kun realized this, he couldn’t find a way to impose an emotional impact similar to Guo Tianxiang’s in an instant.

But now, the way these items with special relationships influence the dreams and emotions of others, is very similar to Guo Tianxiang’s “establishing self-fear projection”!

As long as he knew that the function and effect are similar, what he needs to consider next would be how to extract, refine, and apply this function.

Also, Xiang Kun has a further idea, is it possible to “collect” the emotions that are fed back through the items with special connections, and use it on other targets?

For example, Xiang Kun once considered using “Emotional Assimilation” to influence people around him, to make them have a strong desire for the same dish at the same time. But the issue is he can hardly feel such a strong craving for ordinary food now, and it’s also hard to grasp the timing of emotion onset, so he had to give up.

But if he could “collect” other people’s emotions, and “release” them in some other way, can control the type of effect and the time of action, wouldn’t he be able to do a lot of things that “Emotional Assimilation” can’t do?

After considering, Xiang Kun decided to temporarily call this ability to give special connections to items during the construction and creation process, based on brewing emotions, as “Emotional Infusion”.

He decided not to resonate with the “Memorial on the Subject of Stepping Down from Official Duty” that was at home tonight, but call his parents tomorrow to probe into whether they had dreams, in order to determine whether the dream was triggered by his resonance, or whether it would happen regardless of his resonance.

If they keep happening, although those “nostalgic” emotion dreams shouldn’t bring any negative impacts, dreaming all the time is not good. He would find an excuse to ask his mother to mail the “Memorial on the Subject of Stepping Down from Official Duty” to him.

Around ten o’clock, just as he was preparing to contact Tang Baona, wanted to set up a time to meet her grandfather, to replace the Eight-armed, Eight-eyed Woodcarving with the “Canary Wooden Carving” , and casually inquire about whose scary and tragic dream it was last night, Tang Baona sent him a picture on WeChat first. In the picture was his Eight-armed, Eight-eyed Woodcarving..