AnalogHorror: Rule Kaidan 4016
Chapter 165 - 76 Cognition has been overwritten

Chapter 165: Chapter 76 Cognition has been overwritten

"According to the student code of conduct, in such situations, anomalies that defy logic like distortions and stretches should appear within the campus... These phenomena should emerge alongside the fall of layers."

"Even, in my opinion, these phenomena should still be within the range that words can record."

Upon hearing this, Lin Yi’s pupils shrank slightly.

"Information that cannot be recorded with words..."

He thought of two pieces of information!

[Tomato is a heart] and [Tomato is plasma].

When he wrote these two pieces of information on the sticky note, he suffered an intense and suffocating backlash—he almost got killed by the very information he wrote down.

Tian Bufan glanced at him and continued:

"Within this campus, many pieces of information should be indescribable with words. Within those unrecordable pieces of information hide secrets that are maddening, transcending reality and cognition."

Lin Yi asked with a heavy voice, "But, if these pieces of information can’t even be recorded, why can we still pass them on verbally?"

"No, Old Lin, you are mistaken there," Tian Bufan countered. "When information that can’t be recorded is passed on verbally, it has already lost the attributes of ’driving one insane, being indescribable’."

"??" Lin Yi’s eyes filled with a hint of blank confusion.

Tian Bufan said, "Since you’re very confused, let me just say a few simple words to you."

"Take the phenomenon of the stretch and distortion of the campus, for example..."

"What was your first reaction when you read about it in the ’Student Code of Conduct’?"

"Was it ’I’m hallucinating,’ ’I saw it wrong,’ a sort of self-doubt and denial? Especially when the last article of the student code mentions dizziness, headache, and physical discomfort, isn’t it almost like our thoughts are being guided in that direction?"

"But what’s the reality? We are not hallucinating at all, the campus does distort and stretch—of course, the occurrence of these phenomena must have the precondition of ’abnormal weather’."

"However, even so, how did your thought change from ’I’m hallucinating’ to ’there’s indeed something wrong with the campus’... What do you think this process is like?"

Lin Yi, covered in cold sweat, grasped some inspiration under Tian Bufan’s guidance, but he couldn’t clearly articulate what it was.

He just felt a very vague presence drifting before his eyes; he could reach out and grab it with his hand if he wanted, but he didn’t have the strength to reach out.

He thought of what Tian Bufan had told him in the gymnasium—’There’s no ’why’, no ’how could this be’, only ’it is so’.’

"So..." he pondered, "Is this a process where cognition is overturned?"

"’Cognition overturned’?" Tian Bufan looked at him with interest, a faint smile curling at the corner of his mouth. "For someone at your current level of thought, it’s quite good that you thought of this already."

"But in reality, it’s far more terrifying than that."

Tian Bufan narrowed his eyes, his tone turning cold and chilling:

"Because cognition has never been overturned, it has been directly overwritten."

"Or should I say... overwritten."

"Cognition hasn’t been overturned, it has been overwritten."

In the moment Tian Bufan enlightened him, he saw the vague inspiration clearly, but it also caused him to break out in a sweat.

Could human cognition truly be overwritten...?!

"Humans... are simply carbon-based life forms with some level of intelligence,"

"In the vast universe and higher dimensions, we are no different than a speck of dust."

"If a frog in a well thinks it sees the whole sky, aren’t we just another frog in that sense?"

"We can quietly overwrite the programs of electronic devices, and in turn, our thoughts can quietly be overwritten by other entities... Even just a trivial symbol from a higher civilization can obliterate the fortified walls we’ve painstakingly built."

"Just like when you drop a bead of ice cream in the summer, that single drop is enough to destroy a colony of ants."

"I’ve digressed." Tian Bufan looked out the window, where dark clouds covered the moon and the mist was rising, making the gloomy sky feel as though its layer had been pushed down.

"The people who make the rules know this, but they can’t communicate it through conventional means, so they can only write the rules in this almost riddle-like way of expression."

"That’s the significance of the student code of conduct."

"But the student code of conduct only applies to those who know nothing."

Lin Yi asked curiously, "Like... Liangzi?"

"Heh." Tian Bufan laughed but didn’t speak, Nor did he delve deeper into the topic and instead continued, "The student code of conduct is aimed at the public, and what it can convey is very limited."

"Frankly speaking, every single word in the student code of conduct has been revised countless times before it’s finalized."

"It has to be written in a way that any person who reads it will accept the information and not produce an ’allergic’ reaction."

"You can see all that?" Lin Yi said in surprise.

"You can’t see all that?" Tian Bufan retorted.

"Err..." Lin Yi was at a loss for words, and a low female voice echoed in his mind: ’You have been slained!’

"However, for someone with high sensitivity like you, the ambiguous parts of the student code of conduct combined with the factors that induces thought in this campus create an effect where the sum is greater than the parts, which is fatal..."

Lin Yi thought of the harrowing night he had just survived and fell silent.