Chapter 2: Brain Hole
Chapter 2: Brain Hole
On the street of Xiangfan City, Bai Ge was walking when he suddenly and inexplicably fainted.
When he was sent to the hospital, doctors found he wasn’t unconscious due to shock or similar causes but was merely asleep.
At that moment, Bai Ge felt a flood of Information rushing into his consciousness. It felt like his scalp was tingling and his brain cells were exploding.
His consciousness floated in a vast Universe. The dark starry sky held dazzling Star Clusters moving independently.
His vision was unprecedentedly vast. It was as if his insignificant, tiny self was observing an entire Universe.
That feeling was indescribably wonderful.
However, Bai Ge simply thought he was dreaming, as everything resembled a dream too closely. At a mere thought, he could alter the rotation of stars, erase an entire galaxy’s existence, and even make new matter materialize out of nowhere in empty space.
It was like a lucid dream. He was the Dominator of everything. The myriad things bent to his will, manipulated at will. He could conjure things from nothing or set arbitrary rules.
Simply put, in a dream, human thought was everything. Fantasy equaled Reality. No matter how irrational, no matter how absurd, no matter how ludicrous—imagination became Truth!
Everyone had absurd dreams before, but Bai Ge had never felt a dream so vividly real.
Instead of being frightened, he was delighted. After all, lucid dreams were rare treasures. Though he knew in his heart it was all fake, acting freely according to his heart was a wonderful dream!
In that instant, his Brain Hole exploded. Countless imaginative fantasies surged into his mind.
In this “dream,” he wasn’t just the master of the Universe; to be precise, he was the master of settings.
Bai Ge was the definition itself.
The Universe was the Universe only because he, Bai Ge, thought it was so…
If he didn’t think so, then the Universe could be anything—or perhaps there was no Universe at all. Everything could just be one rock, one animal. It was all down to someone’s deep fantasy, the play of imagination, the unrestrained voyage in the Brain Hole.
“Really interesting. I’ve heard about lucid dreams before, but didn’t know they felt this real. Quite awesome actually…”
Recklessly following his whims, Bai Ge drew inspiration from his fantasies, movies, TV shows, anime, and other fantasy works he’d seen, mixing them with a touch of Reality, to try and create a colorful Multiverse.
Countless bizarre worlds were constructed. Just “Earths” alone were innumerable.
There was ancient Earth, future Earth, supernatural Earth, and even inexplicably weird versions of Earth—countless kinds, incredibly strange.
He was like the Creator, playing an ultra-realistic, full-sensory sandbox creation game.
Functionality and freedom were MAX. Not only could he change the visible, but the invisible, too, could be altered.
For example, Natural Laws.
The default Natural Laws governing the entire Brain Hole Universe originally came from Bai Ge’s own worldview.
Now, with just a slight change—say, making the speed of light infinite—instantly, the entire Universe turned pure white, no longer the dark backdrop it had been.
With the speed of light being infinite, Darkness was utterly banished. Vast spatial scales were no longer obstacles.
“Like this, there are no starry skies anymore… the original version looked better…” Bai Ge reverted the randomly altered rule. It was done in the space of a thought.
Having such power, Bai Ge naturally designed fantastical worldviews impossible in Reality but achievable here. Instantly, all kinds of peculiar worlds were formed.
Immersed in this bizarre thrill of overlapping realism and unreality, Bai Ge never forgot this was a “dream.”
Gradually feeling this “dream” had gone on too long, he suddenly reminded himself: “Feels like a long time has passed. Should I wake up now?”
The thought barely formed when he faintly sensed someone calling him: “Bai Ge, can you hear me?”
The voice was very familiar. Bai Ge smiled, thinking he wanted to wake up. His vision changed almost immediately.
The cosmic stars, the celestial palaces, the monsters running rampant, the fierce battlefields—all vanished. What he saw was himself in a hospital room, with his childhood friend whom he’d grown up with sitting beside him.
Seeing his friend’s grave expression, Bai Ge’s earlier grin of carefree enjoyment instantly faded.
“What’s wrong? I’m in the hospital?” Bai Ge asked, scanning the room with his eyes, instantly grasping his situation. He then recalled he had left home on business, walking down the street when he suddenly collapsed.
The intense lucid dream later had just made him forget about that.
“You fainted on the street. People called an ambulance. You’re at Third Hospital now. The tests are just done when you woke up,” his friend said.
Bai Ge reached up and rubbed his earlobe. “Shao Yuan, you paid for me, didn’t you?”
He took out his phone. The first entry in the call log was “Veterinarian”—a nickname Shao Yuan had among their close circle.
Looking at the call time, it was clear the hospital staff had contacted the most recent number on his phone to notify family and get someone to pay the bills, thus calling Shao Yuan.
“Not much. Some tests. About two thousand yuan. But you need to stay for more tests, there will be further expenses…” Shao Yuan hadn’t finished speaking when Bai Ge suddenly leaped off the bed.
“Two thousand yuan? Heck! No need for that. I’m checking out,” Bai Ge said, a pained look on his face, starting to get dressed.
He wasn’t well-off. He rarely got seriously ill, usually just taking medicine if unwell. He genuinely couldn’t bear spending money on hospitalization.
Shao Yuan quickly grabbed him. “I know you’re tight-fisted, but these costs are necessary! And don’t worry about repaying me just yet, I have some savings…”
Hearing Shao Yuan speak so earnestly, Bai Ge wasn’t stupid—he sensed something wasn’t simple.
“Hold on! What exactly is wrong with me? Why did I faint suddenly?”
Seeing Shao Yuan’s eyes were red, Bai Ge figured he probably had some serious illness. Yet, he had always been healthy, and felt fine now. How could he have a serious disease?
Shao Yuan smiled bitterly. “Likely a tumor in your skull.”
Bai Ge froze, touching his head. “A tumor?”
“Yes… Among us brothers, no point hiding it. Most likely brain cancer… and it’s very aggressively widespread.”
Shao Yuan handed over several reports from the side. They were MRI scans showing the situation inside Bai Ge’s skull.
On the images was something like a “skull.” A vast shadow, terrifyingly clear, covered the area where his brain should be.
It looked like a shadowy, black hole located within the skull, overlapping with the brain tissue.
“That big? I have a terminal illness?” Bai Ge stared blankly at the image.
“Not officially diagnosed yet… After all, the doctors haven’t seen a tumor quite like yours. The MRI even shows it unclearly… Need a full tumor panel, check the indicators to confirm,” Shao Yuan said grimly. “But… I studied medicine too. Frankly… even a random person off the street could see how serious this image is. The shadow inside your skull is already pressing on eighty percent of your brain tissue. Even if it isn’t a tumor, you…”
“How long do I have?” Bai Ge’s face paled.
Knowing Bai Ge was decisive and very perceptive, Shao Yuan didn’t lie. He spoke honestly: “Optimistic estimate? A few months.”
Bai Ge’s face hardened. “And the pessimistic one?”
“One day…”
Bai Ge felt incredibly strange. Despite his usually strong nerves, he couldn’t stay calm now.
“One day? You… do you mean I might die today? I felt perfectly fine this morning! How can I suddenly be dying without any warning?”
Shao Yuan also felt baffled. “Maybe it’s not brain cancer. Having zero precursor symptoms and going straight to this severity is very odd. The best thing is more tests, stay in the hospital for observation, see the clinical response to get a diagnosis.”
Hearing about more hospital stays and tests again, Bai Ge instinctively recoiled.
“How long to stay? How to diagnose? How to treat?” Bai Ge pressed.
Shao Yuan, a medical school graduate himself, thought for a moment. “Hard to say. Brain cancer is tough to diagnose inherently. Yours seems atypical… They’ll run some other tests to see… As for treatment options, they’d need the diagnosis first…”
Bai Ge let out a dry chuckle, waving his hand dismissively. “Forget it. Skip the tests. Consider it terminal.”
It wasn’t that he valued money over life; it was that the MRI results were too terrifying. He might not be a doctor, but he could tell how scary the scan looked.
What normal person had such a huge “Black Hole” in their brain? Unlike CT, MRI doesn’t show shadows due to blockages; it captures intracranial structures clearly.
This enormous dark sphere meant they couldn’t even see the brain tissue… That he was alive was a miracle.
Even if it wasn’t a tumor, it was probably some bizarre disease. More tests might not even yield a diagnosis, and even if they did, treatment might be impossible, leading to endless trouble.
Since it looked terminal, and sensing his time was short, he didn’t want to waste his remaining days and money in a hospital.
“Shao Yuan, I want to be discharged,” Bai Ge said calmly.
Shao Yuan frowned. He knew he couldn’t dissuade Bai Ge once his mind was set. Still, he tried: “Don’t worry about the money just yet. Didn’t you have insurance? Plus I can…”
“One million! Do you have it?” Bai Ge interrupted bluntly.
Shao Yuan froze. Of course he didn’t.
“Where would it need a million?”
Bai Ge explained: “My little sister is studying in the United States. It costs over three hundred thousand a year. She has at least three years left… If I were well, I could still work hard to earn money. But if I’m dying… I need to leave at least a million for her, before…”
“You… I…” Shao Yuan was dumbfounded, momentarily speechless.
Recalling Bai Ge’s situation, he smiled bitterly. “Old Bai, why push yourself so hard?”
“Don’t say any more. I feel physically fine now. Enough…” Bai Ge shook his head.
“I have things to do…”
…