I'm trapped in a block

Chapter 487 Activation Mutation
buzzing...

The severe tinnitus came again, and the leader fell backwards uncontrollably.

The only thing he remembered before he collapsed was the empty sky and the numbness all over his body.

……

The film is still rolling, and the leader’s story is not over yet.

After an unknown amount of time, he suddenly opened his eyes and looked up at the sky.

A thin layer of clouds covered the blue sky, the breeze blew the green leaves, and the strong smell of rust in the air had disappeared for some reason.

"what happened?"

The team leader felt his mind in a mess and his whole body numb. He lay on the ground for a long time before everything that happened before came to his mind one by one.

He sat up from the ground with a jerk, and the blurry image was no longer in front of his eyes.

"where are they?"

The team leader struggled to stand up from the ground, looked in the direction they came from, and found that all the team members had disappeared. The forest was empty with only swaying trees.

He suddenly found himself very calm. Even though he guessed that his teammates might have met with an accident, he did not feel anxious at all.

The leader stood there, stiff for a long time.

"I don't feel suffocated and I'm not hungry anymore..." He calmly realized that something was wrong.

"I am not normal now, both physically and mentally."

The leader slowly placed his hand over his heart.

He still remembered that his heart had been beating very violently just now due to lack of oxygen, but now it was unusually calm.

It's like, it stopped.

I kept my hand on my chest for a long time, but I didn't feel the familiar heartbeat.

"Huh? No heartbeat?"

He quickly felt it again carefully.

Finally, a faint beating could be heard.

dong... dong... dong...

"There it is again... Was that just an illusion?"

He looked at his palm, which was still a little numb. Perhaps that was why he made the wrong judgment.

“And that rust smell, where did it go?”

The team leader discovered that there was something wrong with his sense of smell, and he subconsciously touched his nose.

Wait! Why can I touch my nose?
"Where's my gas mask?"

He quickly looked down and found that his gas mask had fallen to the ground when he fell. At this time, he was not wearing a gas mask.

However, he did not feel any suffocation now. The choking air seemed to be suddenly purified and had no smell.

My breathing...

He found that his breathing had become extremely weak. In this oxygen-deficient environment, his breathing should have become rapid. Why was it so weak?

Everything was getting really weird.

The team leader knew very well that either the environment had changed drastically or there was something seriously wrong with his body.

Not only that, he realized that his heart was too calm, even calm.

The disappearance of his teammates and the changes in his body should have made him anxious, but at this moment he was extremely calm, as if nothing could cheer him up.

Having survived the disaster, he should have continued to escape, but he had no sense of crisis at this moment.

"What's wrong with me?"

He looked at his hands, then at the gas mask on the ground, bent down and picked it up.

Just then, the notebook given to him by the researcher fell from his pocket to the ground.

This notebook seems to be more yellowed than before, and the handwriting on it has become a little blurred.

The leader picked it up.

Because the situation was critical, he had not carefully read the contents at the back. He used his numb fingertips to move the pages, and the contents that he had not yet finished reading appeared in front of him.

The researcher's handwriting was very neat. In addition to the reasons for accelerated oxidation, some conjectures were recorded sporadically at the end:
"Increased metabolism, energy exhaustion, insufficient oxygen supply..."

The leader's eyes swept over these fragmented words, and finally saw one word - enhanced consciousness.

"Increased awareness? What does that mean?"

The team leader couldn’t quite understand.

Fortunately, there are brief explanations next to these words:

"Consciousness comes from electrical signals between neurons, and increased electrical activity leads to increased consciousness..."

Seeing this sentence, the team leader immediately understood what it meant.

Consciousness is essentially a response of neurons in the brain to external stimuli.

When stimulated, neurons emit electrical signals, which reverberate between neural networks and become consciousness.

The more stimulation there is, the more intense the resonance will be, and the stronger the consciousness will be.

Newborns receive less stimulation, the reverberation of electrical signals is weak, and their consciousness is not perfect. As the stimulation increases and the reverberation becomes stronger, their consciousness will become clearer and clearer, and finally a balance will be reached.

Adults are prone to mental illness when exposed to strong stimulation because their balance is disrupted and their consciousness is impacted.

Psychosis is just an adjustment mechanism; the reverberating electrical signals take time to rebalance.

But even after adjusting to a new balance, consciousness is no longer the same as that of a normal person.

In short, consciousness comes from the reverberation of electrical signals.

"However, on this empty island, the electron activity will increase..."

This results in a situation where even a small stimulus can produce a violent electrical signal resonance, and the balance of consciousness will be instantly broken, leaping to a higher level.

"Doesn't this mean that as long as we stay on this empty island, everyone will become mentally ill?"

The team leader is not a specialized researcher and does not understand professional biological knowledge. He can only draw such a conclusion based on existing knowledge.

However, he always felt that the researcher meant more than just that, but now the researcher's life or death was unknown, and he could not dig deeper.

"I don't feel my consciousness has increased..."

Those active electrons should have filled his body long ago, but apart from feeling unusually calm, his thoughts did not change at all.

"What exactly does that mean?"

Suddenly, the team leader thought of a possibility:
"Could it be that my consciousness has been enhanced?"

Thinking about the changes in his body, he suddenly had a terrible guess.

He hurriedly found a branch on the ground, broke it with force, pulled out a thorn, and poked his numb fingertips with it.

"Sure enough, there is no bleeding."

Even though the wooden splinter was pulled out, no blood flowed out and he didn't feel any pain.

The leader looked at his fingertips, frowning.

He put his hand in front of his nose again, feeling the faint breath.

Then he held his breath.

One minute, two minutes, ten minutes...his hand was always in front of his nose.

He counted silently in his heart, and as time went on, the terrible guess was slowly being confirmed.

"I didn't feel suffocated. I didn't actually need to breathe. It was only because I thought I needed to breathe that my lungs started to move."

So, what about the heartbeat?
He placed his hand on his chest again, and this time he didn't need to count down for long.

Just say "I don't need a heartbeat" in your mind and count down to three seconds...

"three."

"two."

"one."

Just like that, the heartbeat stopped.

(End of this chapter)