Chapter 127: The Limits of Identifying Multiple Dreams

Upon hearing this, the expressions of the audience and the experts became exceptionally serious and solemn.

Teacher Jiang faced the camera and offered a reminder: "In every layer of the dream that follows, I truly believed I had woken up."

"The first layer of the dream after I fell asleep."

"First layer: I heard firecrackers outside in the night. They were very loud and made me irritable."

"I was woken up by this noise. After getting up, I hurriedly closed the window, and the sound did indeed diminish significantly. I looked at the world outside again; it was pitch black, seemingly the early hours of the morning."

"Then I got up, poured a glass of hot water, and went back to sleep comfortably in bed."

"Because the smoke was still permeating the scene, I ended up having another dream."

"Second layer: I dreamt it was still the first day of the New Year, but it wasn't the middle of the night outside; it was early morning. Firecrackers were going off house after house, and there was a great hubbub of voices."

"Hmm, I woke up again. After waking up, I went to the washroom to freshen up, and then I went out onto the street."

"And then, the strange thing happened—"

"Before the scene on the street could be shown for long, I woke up in bed in a cold sweat again."

"It's just like when everyone feels the urge to urinate in a dream, so you happily find a restroom, unzip your pants, and prepare to relieve yourself; but then the strange thing happens—the toilet has vanished."

Upon hearing this, the audience couldn't help but grin.

They could relate deeply to this kind of dream.

Even many adults... have wet the bed!

Soon, the audience shook their heads and continued to listen attentively.

"Actually, at this point, I still hadn't realized that I was dreaming."

His expression gradually grew serious, and the audience stopped sending barrage comments, listening intently to Jiang Zhe's personal experience from beginning to end.

"After I woke up, I quickly looked around and found that it was still pitch black outside, only the sound of firecrackers had disappeared."

"At that moment, I truly believed I had woken up."

"This time I didn't dare to sleep, so I sat on the bed and stared blankly for a long, long time. I've forgotten exactly how long, but it certainly wasn't short!"

"It wasn't until my eyelids grew heavy again that I finally fell asleep."

"Then I entered the third layer of the dream."

"When I entered the third layer, I once again believed I had truly woken up."

"As usual, I got up and spent the boring New Year. After the New Year passed, there were more cars on the road, and more private cars returning to Su."

"This kind of life went on for about 20 days; and in the dream, Prof. Wei Min was teaching different knowledge points every day."

"After that, it repeated over and over, back and forth, for 20 days."

"One evening, when I thought I had returned to my rented apartment, I suddenly and eerily woke up in bed again!"

As he recounted this, Jiang Zhe's expression was exceptionally serious. The audience could tell through observation that this wasn't a script, but a multi-layered dream that Jiang Zhe had truly experienced.

"It wasn't until the third layer of the dream ended that I realized I might be dreaming."

"After waking up, I glanced out the window again; it was still pitch black outside, the sky hadn't brightened yet, and it was still the early hours of the first day of the New Year."

"Then I continued to wait, until it was finally daytime, and the days passed by one after another."

"Just like in the real world, a monotonous, repetitive routine, very boring!"

"The subsequent dreams were all loops of this repetition: brushing my teeth and washing my face every day, walking to school, attending classes, going to the cafeteria, occasionally working part-time on holidays; writing papers, playing games to relax, not participating in social life, and so on."

"And every single time, the action of [suddenly waking up in bed] was telling me—[I might be dreaming, not living in reality]."

"But soon, when I entered a new dream, I would forget again that I was dreaming."

"As the saying goes: every time I [thought] I had woken up, I was actually just falling into a deeper layer of the dream."

Facing the camera, Jiang Zhe furrowed his brows, carefully recalling the events of that night.

"I remember, that night, I had seven dreams, maybe eight, but no more than eight."

"If converted into time."

"In the first layer of the dream, I spent about ten minutes. This is [self-perceived] time, not the time perceived by the physical body."

The audience naturally knew this. The time perceived by the physical body is different from the time perceived in a dream. As for how big the gap was, they didn't know.

"In the second layer, I spent about a few hours, around 2 hours."

"In the third layer, I spent about ten days or so, around 15 days."

"In the fourth layer, the time I perceived was about 4 months."

"In the fifth layer, I perceived about 2 years."

"In the sixth layer, the time I perceived was about 10 years."

"In the seventh layer, the time I perceived was about 40 years."

"My last dream was the time I died of old age in a hospital. I can't even distinguish how many years it was exactly; I had no children, no family, and was all alone."

"At that time, I truly believed I had died just like that."

"Until..."

"Until the action of [waking up in bed] occurred once more."

"Only then did I realize in hindsight—I had been dreaming the whole time. I had a terrifying multi-layered dream, and inside this multi-layered dream was the entire life of me, Jiang Zhe."

"I secretly rejoiced that I hadn't actually died alone in old age."

His tone suddenly shifted, and his expression became serious. Seeing this, the audience felt their hearts skip a beat, sensing something was wrong.

"Then, something even more terrifying happened!"

He raised his left wrist to show his watch, and the cameraman hurriedly aimed the lens at the black watch.

Jiang Zhe spoke with a serious face: "I lived through an entire lifetime in the multi-layered dream, while in reality—only 37 minutes had passed!!!!"

As soon as these words were spoken, all the audience members and experts were dumbfounded.

A lifetime in the dream world, 37 minutes in the real world? This exaggerated ratio of time flow made many people feel a chill run down their spines.

The gap between the first layer of the dream and reality wasn't too large. But as the layers of the dream increased, the ratio of the time flow gap between the dream and reality became unexpectedly larger and larger!

Soon, the live broadcast room was in an uproar.

"Holy crap!"

"Teacher Jiang actually had seven, maybe even eight layers of dreams. This... the deeper the dream, the slower the time, is that really possible?"

"To the person above, I'm a psychology student. I'm telling you, it's really possible."

"What? Really?"

"Really. There is no specific scientific data on the maximum number of dream layers humans can enter, but some theories suggest that the human brain can identify up to seven layers of dreams—meaning some people can realize how many layers of dreams they've had, just like how Teacher Jiang still remembers his multi-layered dreams after waking up, including me, I remember mine too."

"Actually, at first I thought Teacher Jiang was bragging or making up a story. It wasn't until he said his identification ability became fuzzy at the seventh dream layer and he didn't know if the subsequent ones were real dreams, that I suddenly realized he wasn't talking nonsense, but was truly recounting the truth—"

"Some psychological research points out that the human brain's identification ability in multi-layered dreams is limited, usually recognizing up to seven layers as the limit. Once this limit is exceeded, it becomes completely blurred, which is why Teacher Jiang didn't know if that eighth layer of death dream was real."

"Many professional psychologists we know believe that it is very difficult for the human brain to identify more than three layers of dreams, and the theoretical limit for multi-layered dreams is seven."

"That's why every time Teacher Jiang woke up in bed from a dream, he thought he had woken up; because as the layers of the dream increased, Teacher Jiang didn't know if each time he woke up was real."

"It wasn't until Teacher Jiang reached the final eighth layer—that he completely forgot he was dreaming, so he lived out an entire life in the dream."

With the explanation from a few psychology students, the audience was even more dumbfounded.