Chapter 144 Shen Xing Must Die

How can you get a copycat to act quickly?

He couldn't let Wen Yan notice, nor could he arouse suspicion from the Ninth Detachment afterward, and he also had to maintain the "persona" he had always presented.

After thinking for a while, Shen Xing took out his phone and found Wen Yan's phone number.

He called Wen Yan, but Wen Yan did not answer.

That's normal; Wen Yan is probably having an unusual dream right now.

Could we take advantage of the unusual dream, drive straight to the hotel, storm in, and finish off Wen Yan? Or could we simply send [02-Puppet] to climb the outer wall to the top suite and carry out the "assassination"?

That kind of real killing intent would be detected by Wen Yan's precognitive dream.

Although abnormal dreams cannot accurately show the abnormality, they can "rationalize" a future where an ordinary person kills Wen Yan, which will alert Wen Yan and allow him to escape before Shen Xing arrives.

If Wen Yan starts to escape, Shen Xing, who has no ability to detect or predict, may never be able to find Wen Yan in his lifetime.

Do not harbor murderous intent until you are certain you can kill with a single blow.

It is indeed daunting for someone to be able to foresee the future... even if it's only a part of it.

Shen Xing didn't consider whether the other party knew he had faked his death, or whether they could foresee that he was going to kill them, because these things could also be foreseen by the other party.

This would lead to an infinite stacking of boxes...

I'm going to kill you. You know I'm going to kill you, so you react. I know you know I'm going to kill you, so I react to your reaction. It's never-ending.

Shen Xing opened the text message editing function, selected the contact person, and directly entered a text message.

[Professor Wen, please hand over the items to the state. I won't mention what you did to the Ninth Detachment... Please don't go down the wrong path.]

After editing the message, Shen Xing sent it directly to Wen Yan.

If nothing unexpected happens, after Wen Yan sees this message, he will realize that he can no longer turn Shen Xing against his cause. He will probably directly instigate the copycat to take action, causing Shen Xing to die a violent death and eliminating any future trouble.

Moreover, copycats must also die.

Considering Wen Yan's mention of his impending death, Shen Xing guessed that this text message was one of the conditions for achieving his "death." After sending the message, Shen Xing pondered a question.

Where is the best place to die?

The school clinic in Wu Xiaoting's dream was definitely not going to work. Although there were no surveillance cameras inside the clinic, if she "died" there, the police would inevitably come to take photos and collect evidence.

The risk of exposing the [01-wall] would be too high.

Two options.

An open area, as many witnesses as possible, and surveillance cameras... this way everyone will know that you've died—but the risk is that your "corpse" won't be easy to escape, and with surveillance cameras present, you can't have a doll fake your death.

A secluded location, no witnesses, no surveillance... ...that would make the death seem too fake, too deliberate.

Is there a compromise solution?

And it also has to conform to one's own behavioral logic...

The copycat has been located in the old city by the police. If I were to head there now, it would be too obvious. Several bridges, both old and new, connecting the old and new city areas are under police control. The only way for the copycat to cross the blockade and kill me is to cross the river.

Among these bridges, the main bridge, including the approach bridges and connecting lines, which connect the two banks with the shortest distance, has a total length of no more than 700 meters.

If the copycat can swim, it won't be difficult for him to swim across. Even if he can't swim, he can cross over with a swimming ring or driftwood.

If we rule out the possibility of him breaking through the checkpoint, the most likely scenario is that he crossed the river. He is a desperate criminal with two lives on his hands, so it's normal for him to do whatever he wants. He knows what he should do.

Shen Xing dialed Chen Liming's number directly, hung up after the phone rang once, and then dialed Lu Lingyun's number repeatedly, even though it was impossible for her to answer.

He is very "panicked" right now.

Longting International Hotel, penthouse suite.

Wen Yan sat in the leather armchair next to his desk, leaning back against the chair, his eyes closed, and fell into a deep sleep. In front of him was a heavy laptop, its screen completely black, seemingly out of power.

And in his unusual dream.

He was also sitting in this leather armchair, with a row of laptops in front of him, and even many screens floating in mid-air, seemingly unaffected by gravity.

All the screens were displaying different, clear images—images viewed from above, with a level of detail and clarity unlike any other display device of this era.

These displays show aerial views of the city, but the people on each screen, even those in the same place and the same person, are all doing slightly different things.

It's just a dream that lasts a few minutes, but Wen Yan can stay in his dreams for months or even a year.

With just a snap of the fingers, time in the dream will quickly reverse, returning to the very beginning when you first entered the dream.

Wen Yan has completely figured out the operating logic of dreams.

Rather than calling these prophetic dreams, they resemble Everett III's theory of a split universe.

The world in the abnormal dream is not about predicting the future, but rather about showing a series of split parallel universes.

Every choice he makes in these new worlds will cause the world of the abnormal dream to continue to unfold, showing a completely different outcome.

But soon, after repeatedly entering the dream, Wen Yan discovered something strange.

In these dream worlds, there may be some stitched-together monsters that resemble dream fusions. These monsters will all show one characteristic—they are monsters stitched together from illustrations or movies that you have seen.

These dream-fusion monsters seem to be just minor logical errors in the dream world... but what's more unusual is that these monsters are not unusual at all.

He couldn't see any real anomalies in his dreams.

It's very contradictory.

The Ninth Squad exists in the dream world, and there are even various research materials, but there is nothing unusual about it. Even when you ask the people in the Ninth Squad, they seem to have no memory of anything strange.

He could see the specific information in those documents, but he wasn't sure whether they were real or just a figment of his imagination.

They slapped the documents in the other person's face and pointed a gun at them, but they still couldn't get any information out of them.

It's like a "bug" in a program.

For example, the "riot" he had previously foreseen would take different forms each time he re-entered the area, but the nature of the "riot" itself would remain unchanged.

Determining the source of these "riots" is quite simple.

However, these anomalies are very easy to identify... These are events that inevitably occur in each cycle of dreams, making them easy to pinpoint.

If Wang Xinran is shot in the dream, the "riot" will disappear. This indirectly proves that the "riot" was caused by an anomaly, and the source was Wang Xinran.

Wen Yan gradually grasped some of the patterns.

Each cycle of abnormal dreams brings slightly different events, but as Wen Yan makes choices or observes in reality, certain "futures" become fixed.

For example, if he kills A in the dream, then no matter how he restarts the dream world, A will always be in a state of death, because the precognitive dream has moved from the α worldline where A is alive to the β worldline where A is dead.

The more people die, the more chaotic the dream world becomes, the more "bugs" there will be, the more chaotic the world's development will be, and the worse the predictive effect will be.

To solve this problem, one must wake up, start another abnormal dream, and re-observe the world.

This means that in each cycle of dreams, he can only intervene once, and then he can only follow this line all the way, see the future of this line, and then try to wake up and re-enter the dream.

To obtain more accurate results in the future, he needs to turn the first intervention in the dream into reality before he can make a second intervention in the dream.

Another factor is the influence of reality perception on abnormal dreams; reality perception can interfere with dream observation.

In his previous dreams, he had tried to kill Shen Xing. After Shen Xing died, in subsequent dreams, no matter how many times he was reincarnated, Shen Xing always ended up dying.

He tried hypnotizing himself to believe that Shen Xing was still alive... but it didn't work. The anomaly seemed to have locked onto Shen Xing's death, just like it had locked onto the anomaly that was bound to happen in the dream before.

His bizarre dream was "dead" from the very beginning.

Only when "Shen Xing's death" becomes a reality can the subsequent developments in the dream be accurate.

This can be considered a limitation, but it is completely irrelevant to Wen Yan.

Once Shen Xing's death becomes a fait accompli, then everything in the future will come true.

Another point.

He tried to simulate the world where Shen Xing was alive, but in that worldline, no matter what he did, everything seemed to go wrong... In the dream world where Shen Xing died, he could observe the subsequent development of countless options. He was like a god; a small action could affect the development of the entire world.

As long as Shen Xing dies, he will be the god of the new world, and he will be able to accurately know everything that will happen in the future.

Wen Yan raised his hand and gently tapped the table. The whole world began to rewind, returning to the original dream world.

At that moment, Wen Yan saw that his phone had lit up.

He reached out and picked up the phone in his dream, looking at the sender.

Shen Xing.

Upon seeing the text message, Wen Yan snorted coldly. He immediately stood up, walked to the door, and opened the door.

The dream world collapsed instantly, and Wen Yan in reality slowly opened his eyes.

He stared at his phone on the table, and after a short while, the phone vibrated slightly.

Wen Yan picked up his hand... Just like the message in the dream, Shen Xing had sent a text message.

It's him again...

Shen Xing... must die. Only if he dies will the foreseen future unfold as planned.

Wen Yan closed his eyes again.

This time, he plans to use precognitive dreams to pinpoint Shen Xing's route.