At this moment, seeing Rookie still keeping him in suspense, Notch finally couldn't hold it in anymore.
"Just say it directly! Who did you learn this from? You've even started acting mysterious now?!"
Seeing that Notch still hadn't gotten it, Rookie decided not to drag it out any longer and said straight up, "You just watched ten short videos, and even flipped through another video site's homepage for a few minutes."
"And yet, you didn't find a single video related to Minecraft."
"This is the era of big data, if you say anything near your phone, you can find related content instantly, right?"
Hearing that, Notch froze completely. He finally understood what Rookie meant.
Rookie was clearly accusing him of negligence.
Just as Rookie said, this is the age of big data, everyone's interests are recorded by it.
You don't even need to search deliberately. As long as you've mentioned something a few times, big data will record it and start pushing related content to you.
As the creator of this game, Notch had spent quite some time scrolling through short videos on his phone, and still couldn't find even one related to the game, that alone said everything.
"I…"
Notch was just about to defend himself, but Rookie predicted his prediction and cut him off in advance.
"Oh… right, you don't really use your phone much."
"How about we pull out the data from your game pod and take a look?…"
Rookie turned around, ready to walk toward the game pod, but Notch grabbed him.
Notch wasn't planning to argue with him anyway, he just wanted to vent a little.
He thought Rookie would comfort him a bit, but instead, Rookie gave him another round of "scolding."
Seeing this, Notch felt utterly helpless.
Getting scolded by Xu Yuan inside the game was one thing, but now that he'd come out to complain a bit, even his own employee was scolding him?
At this point, Notch gave up the idea of venting altogether. He sighed deeply and looked at Rookie.
"My bad! I admit it! I admit it!"
"I'll start catching up right away!"
"And you, don't just sit there, gather all the information you think is important."
"Oh, and especially the Void stuff. Make a separate folder for it!"
While speaking, Notch finished the bread in his hand, downed his tea in one gulp, and before Rookie could respond, he went straight into the game pod.
Rookie stood there blankly for a while before finally coming back to his senses.
"Just now… the subconscious seemed to have… come back?…"
He frowned, and his memories gradually became clearer. Thinking back to his words and actions just now, a wave of confusion rose in his heart.
In fact, when he'd been talking with Notch just now, Rookie hadn't even thought about the issue of main consciousness or subconsciousness.
Everything he did was done instinctively, as if driven by some unseen force.
Rookie knew very well how important Notch was, and he didn't dare to say too much to him.
If it had been his main consciousness in control, he definitely wouldn't have talked back to Notch like that. Because he understood perfectly well, Notch just wanted to vent a little frustration.
If his main consciousness had been in charge, Rookie would have comforted him gently and tactfully reminded him that, yes, he really hadn't done well enough.
But that wasn't what happened. The moment he heard Notch speak, Rookie hadn't thought much, he'd just instinctively pulled out his phone and "taught" Notch a lesson.
That was clearly something only his subconscious self would do.
But although that behavior came from his subconscious, the whole "lecture" wasn't driven only by the subconscious.
When Rookie was in a subconscious state, his thoughts were always scattered. He could never stay focused for long, often going off-topic mid-sentence.
But just now, his thinking had stayed laser-focused the whole time. Every sentence had hit Notch right where it hurt.
So that meant his behavior had been a fusion of main consciousness and subconsciousness.
It was the subconscious that made him grab Notch's phone, the subconscious that made him have Notch scroll through videos, but while Notch was scrolling, his main consciousness kept him from losing focus.
And that's why, after Notch finished, Rookie was able to deliver such a clear and reasonable "lecture."
In fact, even after lecturing Notch, Rookie hadn't realized his state had changed.
It wasn't until Notch mentioned the Void that his main consciousness regained dominance, and only then did he notice something was off.
Thinking about it now, Rookie began to recall everything that had happened since Notch woke up.
He soon realized that this wasn't the first time his main and subconscious had merged.
Actually, at the very instant Notch opened his eyes and startled him, Rookie's subconscious had already been awakened.
Otherwise, he would never have blurted out, "How are you alive?"
He'd just been too flustered at the time to notice.
And then when Notch said he wanted to talk, Rookie had gotten nervous again, and that made the main consciousness take control once more.
Combining these two moments together, Rookie finally started to see a pattern.
He lowered his head, thought for a moment, and murmured to himself, "So it seems… the main and subconscious merge whenever I react instinctively, without overthinking…"
"In other words… when I respond instantly without too much thought…"
Ever since he talked with Entity 303, Rookie had been trying to regain his subconscious, but he could never find the right way.
Luckily, Steve had solved the survival problem for Xu Yuan's subordinates, and Pengpeng had immediately brought the news to him.
After hearing that, Rookie had felt a huge weight lifted off his shoulders and finally relaxed a little.
Still, in these past days, he hadn't interacted with anyone else, just quietly experimented on his own, without much real progress.
It wasn't until he met Notch that he realized he might have finally broken through his limits.
Although he'd found a breakthrough, completely mastering both main and subconscious control was still very difficult.
Because it only seemed to happen when he wasn't thinking at all.
Most of the time, Rookie couldn't stop his mind from thinking, especially whenever he encountered critical information, he would instinctively start analyzing it.
Thinking of this, Rookie fell silent for a while. In his memory, the only times his mind went completely blank were when he was watching horror movies.
Rookie was really afraid of ghosts. The first time he ever activated his subconscious mode was because of a horror movie.
Back then, he was in his teens, the age when people first start to feel romantic. All his close buddies were talking about which girl was the prettiest or who had started dating early.
At that age, boys and girls were all filled with a kind of fascination with love.
The trend back then for pursuing girls was to invite them to watch horror movies.
And if you were going to do that, you had to make sure you weren't scared first.
So Rookie's buddies, in order to "train" for dating, organized weekly horror movie sessions and dragged him along.
Rookie had wanted no part of it, he didn't really care about dating, but he didn't want to seem out of place either.
So he forced himself to take part in these "test of courage" sessions.
The first time he did, he was so terrified his soul nearly left his body.
His buddies weren't much better.
Rookie thought they'd give up after that, but no, they were all stubborn and too proud to admit they were scared.
By the second session, they'd already upped the difficulty, bringing out the peak of classic horror films at the time.
And it was because of those movies that Rookie first activated his subconscious mode.
Once it kicked in, he basically entered "invincible mode."
The visuals and sounds from the TV seemed to be automatically filtered out by his brain, they couldn't affect him at all.
In that state, Rookie finished watching the entire movie, not even realizing that halfway through, all his "buddies" had already run away.
That single night made him a legend among them, the perfect "test-of-courage" partner.
To his friends, Rookie was like a Buddha statue, untouchable, immune to fear.
But only Rookie knew the truth, he hadn't seen a single thing the entire time.
He had transcended fear itself and entered subconscious mode, that's how scared he'd really been.
Now, he was ready to go all in again. Since the fear method worked before, he'd just have to try it again.
With that thought, Rookie silently pulled out his phone, opened a video app, and typed "horror short video compilation" into the search bar.
Just looking at the thumbnails was enough to scare him, but he took a deep breath and saved all of them anyway.
"Looks like this'll have to be my emergency plan from now on…"
———
[In the Waiting Area of the Trial Grounds]
"Three thousand six hundred seven… three thousand six hundred eight… three thousand six hundred nine…"
Annoying Village HIM rubbed his eyes unconsciously, then continued staring down at the contestants in the waiting area, muttering under his breath as he seemed to be counting their numbers.
Before the Trial Grounds' pause period arrived, Annoying Village HIM had already captured a few Pillagers.
His "wait-and-trap" strategy had worked pretty well, though it took some time, the wait had been worth it.
The Pillagers were cautious, but in the end, they still fell into the traps he had set.
This time, Annoying Village HIM hadn't lost a single soldier and managed to capture over a hundred Pillagers.
That alone was enough to provide plenty of resources for his faction.
But despite the easy success, Annoying Village HIM didn't feel happy or satisfied at all.
Because while the operation succeeded, he hadn't managed to catch all the Pillagers.
After returning to the waiting room and doing a rough count, he found that over three hundred had escaped.
Most of those three hundred had fled toward the rainforest region.
And that was exactly what made things so troublesome.
After capturing the first group heading toward the barracks, Annoying Village HIM had sent some iron golems to climb to the treetops, approaching the forest's center from above.
Then he ordered another group to dig underground toward the central area.
It was a full-on pincer attack from above and below.
When the golems dug through to the central area, Annoying Village HIM soon discovered the Pillagers' hidden chamber.
Inside were lots of chests, filled with abundant supplies.
And the chamber itself had multiple escape tunnels.
At the very top, there was a straight vertical shaft with a ladder.
Once inside, Annoying Village HIM could clearly sense the Pillagers growing restless.
Judging by their reaction, the area above the chamber was clearly their base of operations.
He immediately climbed up the ladder into the vertical passage.
After climbing for a bit, he began to hear the Pillagers talking above him.
Their discussion could be summed up in four points.