MC Creative Mode: Wholesale Perpetual Motion Machine

Chapter 299 The Boundaries of Cognition
"A ghost killing someone?" Upon hearing this, young Zhang Kun's eyes lit up. He grabbed Fang Zheng's arm and asked eagerly, "Quick, tell me what happened!"

"I haven't even really dealt with any 'dirty stuff' yet!" Zhang Kun rubbed his hands together excitedly.

Fang Zheng originally wanted to explain properly, but he stopped himself when he was about to speak, thinking of something else.

As an adult, Zhang Kun was able to drive away the "cat-faced old woman" who wasn't actually attached to a child through seemingly harmless "shamanic" rituals.

The same ritual can be used to make a physical mobile phone "disappear".

The "cat-faced old lady" could ignore Fang Zheng's fist, which could crush a skyscraper with a single punch.

All signs point to a bizarre conclusion: Zhang Kun, or rather everyone in this world, possesses a certain ability to "make their wishes come true." Their way of seeing the world and interacting with it depends entirely on their own values ​​and ways of thinking.

Generally speaking, due to the limitations of physical laws, it is difficult for humans to imagine things they have never seen before.

No matter how imaginative writers and artists are, no matter how terrifying the monsters or how bizarre the stories they create, careful analysis will reveal that these things can all find prototypes in reality. Just like the inventions of scientists, they are essentially discoveries; all imagination is nothing more than disassembling and recombining existing materials.

For example, an old farmer who has never seen a machine in his life might call a truck that roars by "a diesel-powered iron ox".

Similarly, Zhang Kun's worldview as an adult was already set, and everything he saw was put into his own cognitive framework.

Those seemingly illogical things were all caused by "evil spirits" in his eyes. He also used the methods for dealing with "evil spirits" to deal with the cat-faced old lady and the smartphone, and as a result, they actually happened according to his worldview.

A question popped into Fang Zheng's mind: If this phenomenon of "wish fulfillment" leads to irreconcilable conflict, will it result in some kind of confrontation and depletion?
If so, would different worldviews be considered superior or inferior?
For example, an old farmer who has never seen a technological product in his life and a scientist see the world completely differently.

When two people face the same thing and have a fierce conflict, whose worldview is more "powerful"?
Fang Zheng wanted to understand, so he paused for a moment and began to tell the young Zhang Kun everything he had observed, deliberately avoiding the adult Zhang Kun's views and adding his own various guesses about the "shadow" phenomenon.

For example, passengers who saw the dark figures would disappear after dawn, and the flight attendants could not find their names on the list no matter how hard they checked.

Does this mean that these passengers only briefly entered a parallel universe, were seen by the flight attendants, and then returned to their own timeline?
Or perhaps those strange shadows are actually a kind of "possibility void" for passengers in time and space, a possibility of death or an accident, which can only be revealed on a train where time and space intersect?
Or perhaps those shadowy figures are a strange creature that feeds on fear and reproduces through fear...

These ideas might be a little difficult for young Zhang Kun to understand, but Fang Zheng still blurted them all out.

He wanted to see if Zhang Kun, whose values ​​were still developing, could understand these things. If he did, he wondered if it would change Zhang Kun's worldview, thus influencing his actions against the shadow. If this changed, Fang Zheng could collect enough data to refine the model of the "wish fulfillment" phenomenon.

However, a few minutes later, Zhang Kun stood there with his mouth agape, looking dazed, and drool was unknowingly dripping from his mouth.

It wasn't until Fang Zheng patted him that he snapped out of his daze, looking completely bewildered. "I don't understand any of this! Aren't those dark shadows outside the train window just 'evil spirits' waiting to harm people at night? What's with all this talk about time travel and the extinction of possibilities? Can these 'evil spirits' really travel to the past and future to harm people? That would be incredible!"

"Never mind..." Fang Zheng glanced helplessly at the old clock in the carriage and shook his head.

Just now, that strange "silencing" phenomenon occurred again.

Fang Zheng had been talking for almost three hours straight, breaking down and explaining all the possible reasons for the strange black shadow, making sure everything was clear and understandable.

But alas! Zhang Kun simply couldn't understand it, completely and utterly unable to understand it.

Perhaps due to a difference in understanding, Zhang Kun couldn't even activate his "cognition" of those profound contents and simply ignored them.

Not only was the content ignored, but even the time Fang Zheng spent saying those words seemed to him to be nonexistent.

He only vaguely heard a small part of it, a few very simple and straightforward concepts, but he had no idea how much he actually understood.

However, although he didn't understand most of it, Zhang Kun was still quite impressed. He looked at Fang Zheng with admiration and said, "I didn't expect that you, who look so ordinary, are actually quite smart."

"I heard an old man from a town near our Tuanjie Village talk about things like time travel and possibilities when I was a child."

"However, it seems that knowing so much is not very useful. That old man always says that if you can't pass the college entrance exam, it's useless to know more."

"An old man who knows a lot of things?" Fang Zheng thought to himself, "That's quite interesting. Where exactly are the boundaries of this phenomenon of wishes coming true? And how are different people's worldviews formed?"

In fact, what Fang Zheng taught Zhang Kun was already at an extremely high level according to the theory of human education. The explanations were detailed and easy to understand, and almost no one could explain it better than him.

Even so, most of what Zhang Kun said was like water off a duck's back. The old man Zhang Kun mentioned, whose education level was certainly not as high as Fang Zheng's, was able to help young Zhang Kun understand concepts such as time travel.

Perhaps this is somewhat similar to the project undertaken by the "Incubator Civilization".

When Fangzheng first came into contact with them, he learned about their methods for deciphering and encompassing "unsolvable sets".

Just as a known set system must start from the boundary between the known and the unknown to solve an unknown set, it must expand the boundary step by step, turning the unknown into the known and the unsolvable into the solvable.

Young Zhang Kun's worldview is still undefined. If he wants to expand it, he can only do so within the scope he already knows, by gradually incorporating and adding to it at those boundary lines.

After a brief explanation, the two continued moving through different carriages, hoping to encounter passengers who had reported seeing the shadowy figure. Every now and then, they would peek through the curtains, hoping to catch a glimpse of the shadowy figure with their own eyes.

As they walked, Zhang Kun kept rambling to Fang Zheng, "You know what? I've never actually encountered any 'evil spirit' in my entire life."

“My grandfather is just too much of a worrywart. Even though he rarely encounters any strange things, he has forced me to practice with magic tools every day since I was born. I practiced in the sweltering summer and freezing winter and developed a muscular body, but I have never performed a proper exorcism ritual.”

“When I was only seven or eight years old, I kept pestering my grandfather to take me to a religious ceremony. Even if I couldn’t participate, I could at least watch. But he absolutely refused to take me and insisted that I stay at home.”

"Oh, really? Is this your first time going out today?" Fang Zheng said, "But you can't blame your grandfather. He's just worried about you and afraid you'll get into danger. He probably thinks you're capable of handling things on your own now and won't easily encounter danger when you go out, so he's willing to let you out."

"Tch," Zhang Kun scoffed, "I'm more than capable. The only reason Grandpa let me out this time is because he loves to drink too much, has a tumor on his liver, and doesn't know how much longer he has to live. That's why he finally let me out."

As he spoke, Zhang Kun's expression darkened: "That old geezer, if I had started performing rituals earlier and earned more money, maybe his tumor could have been treated."

"Sigh, it's all my dad's fault. If he hadn't gone out to perform a ritual when I was little and mysteriously disappeared, my grandpa wouldn't have kept such a close eye on me..."

The two continued to move around the carriage while complaining and chatting.

As he drew back the curtains once more, Zhang Kun excitedly shouted, "Hey! Fang Zheng, come quick! I see a dark shadow!"

Fang Zheng leaned closer and saw, through the gap in the curtains, in the distant wilderness, standing an extremely tall, yet indistinguishable, black shadow, no more than a hundred meters away from the train.

No matter how good your eyesight is, all you can see is pitch black, like a blurry black mosaic shadow, or a dark passage deeper than the night itself.

suddenly……

With a piercing metallic scraping sound, the green train slowly pulled into a station in the wilderness. Some people got off, others got on, and the once quiet carriage began to buzz with noise again.

But not long after, amidst the noise, a scream suddenly drowned out all the other sounds, and the commotion instantly turned into deathly silence.

Then came a sudden chaos—it seemed that many people were screaming and running away.

Just then, a strange, operatic voice began chanting a spell rapidly:

"Enduli, open your eyes! Blackwater is clearing the way!"

"A spirit of integrity roams the old forest, three hundred years of incense offerings—Old Blackie's dog spirit is descending the mountain..."

"A soul that cannot be frozen to death! A spirit that cannot be broken! Come! Come! Come..."

"Lend me this body of flesh as a raft—to ferry you out of the mountains..."

……

"Grandpa?" Zhang Kun was stunned for a moment when he heard the somewhat indistinct incantation, then his face immediately turned anxious: "He already has a late-stage tumor, and he still dares to let a spirit possess him? Does this old guy want to die sooner?!"

boom! boom! boom!
Zhang Kun, whose face was extremely pale, started running rapidly in the narrow carriage, each step making a loud thud on the floor.

At the same time, he shouted anxiously, "Make way! Make way! Don't block the way!"

"Hey! What's wrong with you...?"

"Oh my god, what happened?!"

The passengers, startled by the sudden loud noise, turned around and were immediately frightened back into their seats by Zhang Kun's wild boar-like figure charging around.

Zhang Kun rampaged through the carriage, creating chaos. He roughly pushed aside or simply stomped on the luggage that was blocking the aisle and crammed in tightly.

But after running through just two carriages, he heard a terrifying roar from some unknown wild beast in the distance, and the incantation became more and more urgent and panicked, making his face even more pale.

He knew very well that having a spirit possess him would put a tremendous strain on his body.

Many shamans are in poor health because the burden they bear is too great, making them prone to illness. Some even go insane in their later years due to the burdens they accumulated in their youth.

To reduce this burden, although the Zhang family has been shamans for generations, they live like ancient warriors, training in the sweltering summer and freezing winter to build up their strength like oxen before they can formally begin learning shamanic rituals.

Even if you are physically strong, it's best to prepare in advance before performing a shamanic ritual.

Preparing the venue and ritual implements, and starting the ceremony at the appropriate time, will allow you to achieve the greatest effect with the least amount of effort.

Of course, if you encounter a sudden situation where there is no time, place, or ritual implements, you can still perform the ritual barehanded, or even give it your all. But this is like suddenly sprinting 800 meters at full speed without any warm-up, which is too much of a strain on your body.

Even someone as strong as young Zhang Kun would be exhausted after such an attack, collapsing to the ground and feeling listless for days.

His grandfather already had late-stage liver cancer. Although he looked healthy, his body was already riddled with problems. If this happened, he would probably die on the spot!
Zhang Kun grew increasingly anxious, his eyes darting around as he stared at an open window ahead and began to mutter incantations.

As if possessed by a hunting dog, he crouched down and used all four limbs to leap out of the train window. Then, he ran wildly on all fours towards the carriage from which the sound came.

Behind him, Fang Zheng followed at a leisurely pace.

To avoid being limited by Zhang Kun's worldview, Fang Zheng did not use any special powers or show any supernatural abilities; he simply stayed on the edge of human limits.

only……

While running, Fang Zheng turned his head and glanced at a carriage next to him.

The curtains weren't drawn, and there was a crack in the window.

In the dim light, a burly old man who looked like a bandit was Zhang Kun's grandfather, dozing off by the window.

Immediately afterwards, the light and shadow began to shift. In the dim light, the train station in the wilderness and the endless wasteland in the distance were distorted once again, just like before.

The dark, dull colors seemed to have been washed away by water, turning into a chaotic mess.

Zhang Kun's grandfather melted like a wax figure, and then in an instant, he was reshaped into the appearance of a young girl who was chattering away about gossip.

Whether it's the passage of time or the changing world, it has happened again!

But the roars of wild beasts and the urgent chanting in the distance did not stop. Zhang Kun, a boy who did not change with time or the world, did not notice these changes at all, and just rushed towards the source of the sound with all his might.

In just ten seconds, the two had already reached the scene of screams and chanting.

This is a freight car at the rear of the train. The metal walls bear gruesome scratch marks, as if something had torn a large hole in them, and a strong smell of blood and decay wafts out.

"Grandpa!" Zhang Kun jumped in and shouted anxiously.

Unlike the other passenger carriages filled with passengers and cargo containers filled with goods, this carriage was empty except for a coffin in the corner that emitted a pungent, rotten smell and was tightly bound by heavy iron chains, almost like a rice dumpling.

At this moment, the coffin had been completely torn apart, many chains had broken, and the things trapped inside had escaped.

A tall, imposing figure lay on the cold floor, blood gushing from his mouth, a huge gash torn open in his chest, revealing pale ribs and writhing internal organs.

"Not Grandpa?" Zhang Kun was stunned when he saw the burly figure.

Although the figure and face are similar to the grandfather's, the thick black hair is definitely not the grandfather's.

"He is Zhang Biao, probably your father," Fang Zheng's voice rang out from the side.

As Fang Zheng entered the carriage, he picked up a blood-stained work ID card from the ground. The card clearly read "Zhang Biao," and the headshot next to it looked about six or seven parts similar to Zhang Kun as an adult.

(End of this chapter)