Odd Containment Specialist.

Chapter 1039 Analysis of Dreams (4K)

This experience made Xia Shou realize that he might have a talent for fighting.

Although I often won fights when I was a kid, the feeling of that punch just now... was definitely different. It was like I had developed this habit long ago, and my brain didn't even have time to process it.

The next day, still on the beach, Xia Shou applied sunscreen to Shangguan Yan while admiring the distant sea and sky scenery.

Suddenly, a familiar figure walked past from the front.

For a moment, Xia Shou was stunned.

He knows this person!

No, I don't know him, but I must have seen him somewhere before.

Where is it?
Slowly, Xia Shou recalled some details, his heart pounding, thinking, "This can't be, can it?"

He remembered that in his first dream, he seemed to have visited an ancient dynasty inhabited entirely by vampires, where he engaged in a fierce battle with someone and nearly died there.

The person in my dream looks exactly like the foreigner who just walked by!
Xia Shou immediately got up and chased after him, patting the man on the shoulder. The man with the surfboard turned to look at him, giving him a friendly smile: "What's up?"

"Excuse me! Um, are you... called... called..." Xia Shou tried hard to recall the only dream he could remember the details of, the one with a relatively clear plot.

Then, he finally remembered.

"Are you called Glenn Doyle?"

"No, buddy, you've mistaken me for someone else."

After saying that, the other person turned to leave.

Seeing that the other person was about to leave, Xia Shou's mind raced, trying to figure out how to make friends with them and at least exchange contact information.

Then, Xia Shou noticed the surfboard under the other person's armpit.

……

Five minutes later, Xia Shou returned to the sun umbrella.

"Where did you go just now?" Shangguan Yan asked.

“I went to ask for someone’s contact information,” Xia Shou said. “It’s that guy surfing over there.”

"I could understand if it were a woman, but why would she hit on a man?" Shangguan Yan joked.

So, Xia Shou recounted in detail how he had seen the other person in his dream.

"Interesting." Shangguan Yan nodded silently. "So in your dream, you and he were enemies?"

"Hmm, but I've forgotten how I finally defeated him." Xia Shou tilted his head, lost in thought.

Whenever he thought about this, he thought of the teacher appreciation banquet in high school. He always felt... as if this wasn't their first meeting.

Back at the hotel, Xia Shou contacted Qiao Xin, the new psychologist Shangguan Yan had found for him.

Qiao Xin and Shangguan Yan were high school classmates. Xia Shou had met them when he was a child and also dreamed about them in his first dream. It seemed that Qiao Xin was also a doctor in the dream.

Xia Shou, holding his laptop, got dressed and sat down on the single sofa to connect with Qiao Xin.

Within seconds, the video call connected, and Qiao Xin, with dark circles under her eyes, appeared on the screen: "Hey, Xia, where's Shangguan?"

"I'm doing yoga." Xia Shou glanced at Shangguan, who was stretching not far away, and said softly.

"Hehe, even she pays attention to maintaining her figure. After all, there's an age difference. If she doesn't take good care of herself, you might dislike her in a few years," Qiao Xin said half-jokingly.

For a moment, Xia Shou could only smile awkwardly, unsure of what to say.

He felt quite awkward facing Qiao Xin. Although they had known each other for a long time, Xia Shou had always thought that his relationship with Shangguan Yan was well hidden from the outside world until his sophomore year.

But later, Shangguan Yan told her that Qiao Xin had actually noticed something unusual about their relationship a long time ago, and had even talked to her about it in private, but ultimately chose to pretend she hadn't noticed.

That's why Shangguan Yan said Qiao Xin was very suitable to be a psychologist, since not everyone has the talent to read people's expressions and pay attention to details.

"I regret not being able to attend your wedding, but I hope my gift was delivered by now?" Qiao Xin said, smoking a cigarette.

On the screen, the background behind Qiao Xin is a tent. The tent is very messy, with all kinds of instruments and a lot of paper and pens, and the conditions look very backward.

Qiao Xin is very talented. It is said that she was invited to go abroad shortly after starting university, and then she has been involved in some confidential work and training in the psychology industry.

It is said that he recently left his original field of work and became a freelance researcher, providing psychological counseling.

It was for this reason that Shangguan Yan was able to contact her and ask her to help observe Xia Shou's mental state.

Of course, Xia Shou heard that besides psychological counseling, Qiao Xin was still conducting some strange research. He heard that she was recently conducting psychological experiments on people in primitive tribes in Africa.

"I received your gift; it's very unique." Xia Shou smiled sheepishly. "Are you busy right now?"

"I'm not really busy, I could be busy anytime. Do you have any strange symptoms this time?"

Xia Shou recounted what had happened on the beach.

After listening, Qiao Xin nodded and fell into deep thought.

When she finished her cigarette and lit a second one, Xia Shou couldn't help but ask, "What's wrong? Has my condition gotten worse?"

"No, I'm thinking."

As she spoke, Qiao Xin picked up the eye drops next to her and put two drops into each of her eyes.

"Is it really necessary to think about this for so long?"

"Well, I'm trying to explain this to you using conventional materialism, or perhaps expand on the possibilities. However, the latter might create some mental inertia that could worsen your condition, so... I'm thinking about it."

Xia Shou frowned and immediately realized the other party's conspiracy.

What she just said is actually similar to my unspeakable secret. On the surface, it's an unspeakable secret, but in reality, I have a lot to say.

Knowing that Sister Qiao had always been mean-spirited, Xia Shou immediately rejected the second proposal: "Just tell me about the first one."

"Before we begin the analysis, let me tell you some good news: I just learned about a case that is very similar to yours."

"After I discussed your symptoms with a few friends in my former research group, they suddenly told me about this similar case."

Before Xia Shou could even frown, Qiao Xin proactively explained, "Don't worry, I didn't reveal the contents of your dream. That's a matter of patient privacy, and I still have professional ethics. I just briefly summarized the abnormal symptoms."

Then, after a while, my former colleague told me that someone else had similar symptoms.

He woke up one morning and for a while believed his dream to be real, which startled his family, who rushed him to the hospital.

You might not know this, but there are a lot of mentally ill patients who take their dreams seriously. It might seem unusual to the patients themselves, but to us doctors, patients like you are a dime a dozen in our medical records. If it weren't for you, I might have prescribed medication for anyone else, just like that patient from earlier.

His condition improved as soon as he was taken to the hospital.

The only difference between him and other patients with similar symptoms was that he wrote something and drew a portrait sketch immediately after regaining consciousness, which is why my colleague remembered him.

Qiao Xin squinted and began to recall this special case.

"He is a bank employee, a very ordinary one. According to himself and his wife's family, he has never studied painting or had any hobbies in this area since childhood."

However, after having that dream, he drew it, and it was incredibly realistic.

She raised her hand in a gesture, as if there were such a lifelike painting right in front of her.

"Do you know how realistic it is? Although it's a sketch, if you look at it from a little distance, it's almost like a black and white photograph taken by a camera."

My colleague sent the painting to a professional art teacher for evaluation, who said that the facial features and shapes were captured very accurately!
Aside from lacking a profound theme, the technique has reached a fairly high level. However, that's just how the realist school is; because it lacks inner expression, only the top masters receive attention.

But this does not mean that the patient's painting skills were only at this level after he woke up.

It is said that he drew those pictures incredibly fast, without any need for finding shapes or outlining. It was like 3D printing; he would use a pen to continuously draw lines from one corner of the picture, and then repeat this process several times to the left, right, up, and down, and the picture would be finished instantly.

I heard it only takes twenty minutes. The art teacher said it's impossible to finish a painting in twenty minutes. Without several hours of preparation, there's absolutely no 1% chance of it being completed.

So my colleague was quite excited at the time. Such a case is very rare, and it involves counterintuitive aspects. Anyone with even a little interest in my field would be interested.

Isn't that amazing?

"I feel like you're trying to lure me into giving you a second analytical approach. The first one is materialism, so the second one is non-materialism. That's why you fabricated this unscientific case, isn't it?"

“Sigh—” Qiao Xin’s nostrils spurted out two puffs of smoke as she shook her head and said, “I did want to tell you about the second one, but it’s too unfair of you to say I fabricated a case. I still have that much professional ethics.”

"Sister Yan said you often lie to patients."

"That's for treatment," Qiao Xin said seriously.

Shangguan Yan, who had just finished yoga, walked over and interjected, "Hurry up and tell us, we still have things to do later."

"Hmph, aren't you on your honeymoon? What urgent business do you have to do? It should be broad daylight where you are, right?"

“Of course we have to work during the day. Isn’t it normal to be engaged in production tasks?” Shangguan Yan smiled.

Xia Shou regarded himself as a silent stone, quietly rooted on the sofa, watching the two exchange witty remarks.

Although he was a little annoyed at being used as fodder for jokes, based on his childhood experience, Xia Shou decided it was best not to rashly participate in the two's sarcastic game.

After a while, the two finally finished the polite greetings and returned to the main topic.

Qiao Xin first presented her conclusion: "From the perspective of conventional medical thinking, your condition has not worsened, and there is nothing abnormal about you encountering the people who appeared in your dreams."

"Is this considered normal?" Xia Shou found this conclusion utterly baffling.

"That's right, let me analyze it for you."

Our brains have a memory cache. When we see something or encounter something, we first store the memory in the cache.

If the brain makes a mistake when storing memories and stores information seen by the eyes in historical memory, then when a person sees something in front of them, they can retrieve it from historical memory and feel as if it has happened before.

People are more likely to have this illusion when their brains are fatigued.

It's possible that the brain was simply experiencing extreme fatigue, leading to a malfunction.

In reality, the moment you see that stranger in your dream, your brain stores the visual information in the historical memory block related to the dream. Then, when you recall it, you suddenly realize that you have seen the other person in your dream.

In fact, you never saw it in your dream; you've distorted your memories of dreams.

Many people's precognitive dreams in reality come from this.

Why are all precognitive dreams false? Because almost everyone who has a precognitive dream only realizes they dreamed about something happening when it actually occurs, so there's no way they can change the future.

Many people who have precognitive dreams regret that they only suddenly remembered it when the time came, but in reality, they never had this ability to foresee things.

The truth is that the brain's storage is faulty.

Your situation is similar; it's not an illness, just very ordinary brain fatigue.

It's just that you've combined it with other symptoms, so it seems more serious at first glance.

"I see! That's very scientific!" Xia Shou was very satisfied with this explanation.

He thought that might actually be the case, since the other person's name didn't match the name in his dream.

"Thank you very much, Sister Qiao."

"Wait, don't hang up yet."

Qiao Xin stopped Xia Shou from ending the video.

"I only gave a more optimistic conclusion. Won't you want to hear another conclusion?"

Xia Shou chuckled: "It's better not to say anything that might affect my condition, lest it make my already minor condition worse."

"No, please listen to me. I'm just unsure of your thoughts. If you're optimistic, it might even help improve your symptoms... Plus, it can help me understand your symptoms more comprehensively."

Knowing he couldn't persuade the other party otherwise, Xia Shou took a deep breath and said, "Then you speak."

"That involves some supernatural topics. You've probably thought about it too, right? Maybe there really is another world."

"I have thought about it. Is that all you're going to say?"

"Of course, I mainly wanted to get your opinion."

The special patient I just mentioned was exceptionally talented at drawing, while you have remarkably consistent logic after waking up from your dream; these are both very unusual and special cases.

So I wanted to ask you if you could discuss the photos of those papers you sent me last time, along with the portrait you drew, with a few of my friends.

If it were someone else, I wouldn't need to ask for their opinion. After all, it's very common for doctors to discuss a patient's specific condition in private, even if it's not something that should be discussed openly. Everyone does it this way.

But for you, I'd still like to ask for your opinion... Is that okay?

Anyway, everything on that piece of paper of yours is fabricated.

"I thought it was something else. Just don't reveal my personal information." Xia Shou readily agreed.

(End of this chapter)