Chapter 116 - 48: Rotating Door and Sharpshooter

Chapter 116: Chapter 48: Rotating Door and Sharpshooter

The moment the words left his mouth, Yu Xian regretted asking. A strong sense of awkwardness washed over him.

He felt a bit traumatized, like the boy who cried wolf.

He couldn’t be blamed for thinking so. The atmosphere tonight was just too warm, too pleasant, even a little too "normal."

A gentle night rain pattered against the window while the room was bathed in a warm, yellow light. They had just finished a steaming, home-cooked meal, and the senior sister beside him was gentle and kind.

No matter how you looked at it, this was the picture of a heartwarming scene, not the prelude to a depressing one.

After Wen Xiao’s false alarm that afternoon, coupled with the current tranquil atmosphere, he couldn’t help but think that maybe the "major discovery" was just an excuse for his senior sister to invite him over for dinner.

’After all, if there really were something earth-shattering, shouldn’t she, by all logic, have pulled out a laptop and gotten straight to business the moment I arrived?’

Hearing Yu Xian’s question, Yang Yiyi, who was clearing the table, froze. She turned around, a look of utter bewilderment on her face.

"What do you mean... there’s actually no discovery?"

She blinked, seemingly unable to follow his train of thought.

"Ahem... It’s nothing."

Seeing the "how-could-you-ask-such-a-thing" look on his senior sister’s face, Yu Xian awkwardly rubbed his nose.

"I mean, what is this major discovery?"

Yang Yiyi gave him a resigned look, set down the plate in her hands, and wiped them.

"I was actually planning to let you finish your meal in peace before we talked about it. I didn’t realize you were in such a hurry."

She took off her apron, hung it on the back of a chair, and picked up her laptop, motioning for Yu Xian to come closer.

"Over the past few days, I’ve done a complete analysis of the data on that USB drive—the emails, lab journals, and draft papers."

Her slender fingers swiped across the screen, pulling up a set of complex data charts.

"I discovered that within our advisor’s research group, besides the official primary project on ’MCH Neuron Inhibition,’ there was another, very strange, hidden research project. Our advisor poured a huge amount of time and energy into it—even more than the MCH project."

"What kind of project?" Yu Xian leaned in closer.

"Brainwave Phase-Locking Induction," Senior Sister Yiyi said, uttering a highly obscure technical term.

Seeing the blank look on Yu Xian’s face, she clicked open a diagram.

It was an EEG scan of the cerebral cortex. On it, a red wave and a blue wave were shown overlapping at a specific frequency.

"Simply put, they’re researching how to use a specific audio stimulus to ’hijack’ a person’s spindle waves."

"Hijacking spindle waves?"

Yu Xian frowned. He remembered Senior Sister Yiyi explaining the function of spindle waves last time they were by the water cooler.

Spindle waves are an ingenious self-protection mechanism in the brain, like a "firewall" that’s responsible for blocking out external interference during sleep.

"That’s right. Normally, spindle waves are like security guards for our brain. As soon as they detect interference from external noise, they immediately fire off high-frequency pulses to cut off sensory input. This keeps the cerebral cortex from being disturbed and allows you to sleep more soundly."

Yang Yiyi pointed to the waveform on the screen.

"But Professor Mo Du’s research found that this ’security guard’ isn’t on duty all the time. The occurrence of spindle waves has a frequency and a phase. It’s like... breathing. There’s an exhale, and an inhale."

"Frequency and phase..."

As a physics student, Yu Xian was familiar with those two terms.

In physics, they are basic properties used to describe waves. Light waves, sound waves, electromagnetic waves—none of them can be described without these two parameters.

But...

What did it mean to apply those two terms to the brain’s spindle waves? When it came to neuroscience, he wasn’t quite sure.

"Let me give you an analogy," Yang Yiyi said after a moment’s thought.

"Actually, calling spindle waves a ’firewall’ isn’t quite right. It’s more like a ’Rotating Door’."

"A Rotating Door?"

"Right. This door spins incredibly fast, about 12 to 14 times per second. That’s its ’frequency’."

Yang Yiyi’s explanation was easy to follow.

"When the door rotates to its ’closed’ side, which corresponds to the peak of the wave, all external information is blocked. It can’t get in. That’s the spindle wave performing its protective function."

She gestured with her arm in mid-air.

"But when the door rotates to its ’open’ side, which is the trough of the wave, there’s an incredibly brief moment when the brain’s defenses are at their weakest. The door is wide open."

Realization dawned on Yu Xian.

"So, the phase is..."

"...the timing of your entry through the door," Yang Yiyi said, her expression grim.

"Normal sounds are like someone randomly throwing rocks. Most of them hit the closed part of the door and bounce off. That’s why we don’t hear most noises when we’re asleep."

"So, the technology Professor Mo Du’s team is researching... it’s like a Sharpshooter that can perfectly time the rhythm of the Rotating Door and fire a bullet straight through?" A cold sweat broke out on Yu Xian’s back.

"No, not a Sharpshooter. It’s not that passive," Yang Yiyi said, shaking her head gently, her gaze profound.

"If it were just about being a Sharpshooter, trying to find that fleeting moment the door is open, the success rate wouldn’t be stable enough." She paused before adding:

"More importantly, the brain’s neural activity is chaotic. This means everyone’s ’Rotating Door’ has a slightly different ’rotation speed.’ To precisely ’snipe’ each individual, the cost and computational power required would be astronomical. It would be impossible to apply to large groups of people."