All common sense does not hold true in dreams, because dreams are another dimensional space.

For example, common sense is that people can suffocate in water. But in dreams, one does not drown, because the conscious body does not need to breathe.

But when you take this kind of knowledge that goes against common sense, sometimes you make mistakes.

Aoki is making such a mistake now.

He thought he wouldn't drown, so he let the river of perception flood his nose.

However, while relaxing, he actually choked on a mouthful of water.

The cold water entered his nose and lungs, causing him to cough all at once.

He immediately raised his head, put his mouth and nose out of the water, coughed a few times, and coughed out the water in his lungs before he felt more comfortable.

Like the mad beggar, Aoki hangs himself on top of the cage and waits for the water level to recede.

It seems that this is no longer a dream!

But he was sure that when he entered the cave just now, he did enter a group dream. All the people in this cave are dreaming, and they have built a dream together, and this dream has lasted for a long time, and after the cooperation of many people, this dream space is very large, and its rules are also very constrained by power.

The question is, when did you quit the dream again?

Aoki carefully recalled what had happened when the cuckoo had withdrawn, and there seemed to be no suspicious indication that the space had changed.

It didn't feel good to be actually soaked in the cold groundwater, and the muscles of the arms that were bent and hung up began to feel a little sore.

Something stirred in the water in the distance and swam over, and in the darkness it was impossible to distinguish what it was, only the sound of rushing water.

The cage next to him suddenly heard Han Laizi's curse: "me...... Holy...... What's that? …… Phew...... I can't...... Bah...... Gollum...... Help me...... Burst...... Save...... Burst...... Help ......"

Han Raizi seemed to have been dragged into the water by something, and after a burst of blisters, she was silent.

Then, everything fell silent.

I don't know how long it took in the darkness, but the water level slowly receded again.

Aoki rubbed his arm, then touched each iron bar of the cage with his hands. The iron cage is welded to death, very strong, except for opening the lock on the cage door, it is impossible to escape with the strength of ordinary people.

Of course, Aoki is no ordinary person. So he tried to break the gap in the iron bar a little wider.

But he suddenly found that he couldn't use any strength at all, and there was a viscous force around him that enveloped his body, just like something that ordinary people were pressed by when they had nightmares.

Or in a dream?

It's weird.

Aoki took a deep breath, tried to calm himself down, and once again carefully recalled the details of entering the cave from beginning to end.

The first time he felt unwell was in the rotting leaf ravine behind the small wooden building, where there was an unpleasant stench. At that time, his consciousness had already been affected. The smell is the same as the scent of the cuckoo, and affects the subconscious by stimulating the olfactory center of the human brain.

It should be an extension of this group's dream, which is equivalent to giving people from the outside world a lead to enter here.

Next, Aoki was in a trance in the cave. At that time, I must have touched the edge of this dream. He had already realized at the time that he was about to enter into a very large dream, and thought that it was made by Dewar.

After entering the cave, he met the cuckoo, and later found that Han Laizi and the others were in a dream, and he was sure that it was a group dream.

Although Cuckoo didn't say it explicitly, she also admitted that this was not her and her master's dream, and that this place was activated by Situ for her, that is, this dream existed before Cuckoo.

Was it made by Situ? It's hard to say now.

After that, Aoki was put in a cage and the cuckoo left, and there was no problem. The question is, why do consciousness bodies choke on water?

If he is an ordinary person, it would be fine. Ordinary people's consciousness does not know that they are in a dream, so they believe that they will be drowned. After they are flooded in their dreams, their subconscious minds will directly retrieve perceptual memories such as chest pain and suffocation from their brains. Usually, that's when people wake up.

However, in group dreams, the dreams of individuals are connected to the dreams of other people, and the spaces are superimposed on each other, and it is difficult to collapse. Just like building a house, an ordinary dream is like a house in the countryside that is independent, and a group dream is like an apartment in the city, with dozens or hundreds of households in a building, unless the whole building is spanned, your home will not collapse alone.

The dream does not collapse, and it is difficult for the conscious body to leave the dream space and return to reality.

That's why Aoki thinks that he has left the dream realm, and the performance of Han Yoriko next to him also confirms his thoughts.

But when he tried to open the iron door of the cage, the sensations of his body clearly told him that he was still in a dream.

In other words, he is now in a state where it is both a dream and a reality.

In the dream, he was trapped in an iron cage by the underground river where the water level would change, and his body in the real world was in the same condition.

This is a kind of reality dream, that is, the dream and reality are synchronized, what you do in the dream, what you are doing in reality.

Ordinary people's sleepwalking is a kind of real-life dream.

But it is inconceivable to build a huge group dream, and it sounds even more incredible to turn a group dream into a real dream.

Most people's dreams imitate the real environment in terms of spatial rules, and only in this way can many things in their memories be calmly called up and put into them. Therefore, the general dream world has a gravitational force, and the people in the dream cannot fly.

It's not easy to break such rules, but it's not very difficult either, because the rules of the real world are also changing as we explore and perceive.

Sometimes, it is easier for a person who has no knowledge and does not understand science to achieve a dream breakthrough because he does not know the law of gravitation. Therefore, children are more likely to have strange dreams such as flying, diving, etc.

It's easiest to construct a dream that conforms to the rules of the real universe, you just need to follow common sense. Usually, we don't need to do anything deliberately, and at the beginning of the dream, the subconscious mind has already determined the rules in the dream.

But the "easy" here is only relative, and even the world's greatest scientists, whose knowledge of the world is very limited so far, how can they construct a world exactly like reality in a dream?

Just as 3D printing technology can be realistic in the similarity of shapes and materials, it cannot replicate something at the molecular level, let alone at the quantum level. So don't expect when 3D printing will be able to replicate a person coming out.

In the same way, it is almost impossible to replicate a dream that is exactly like the real world, and this requires the dreamer to understand all the rules of the universe and the details of its operation.

Therefore, most of the real-life dreams rely on the coincidence of physical perception.

Aoki remembered Mo Yu's sleepwalking state at that time. Those mirrors were laid by Situ, and he was very puzzled at that time, why did Situ do this?

Now it seems to be somewhat clear - Situ is most likely doing an experiment. He's trying to create a formation that would allow people to enter the group's real-life dreams, if that's what I call it.