……

……

Hiss!!

An unprecedented heatwave rushed towards him!

Lin Xian felt his face temperature rapidly rise, and tiny beads of sweat instantly appeared on his forehead!

"So hot!"

Lin Xian barely opened his eyes...

Loud cicada chirps pierced his eardrums, and the blazing sun shone directly down, making even the shadows shrink timidly into a ball at his feet.

He raised his head to look at the sky.

A sun, occupying half the sky, hung high in the air, so dazzling that it was impossible to look at directly. Fleeting black spots had already appeared on his retina.

Lin Xian lowered his head and rubbed his eyes.

"It's been a long time since I've dreamed during the day. I'm not used to this temperature."

He estimated that the current temperature might have exceeded 40 degrees Celsius, a stark contrast to the freezing winter in the real world... truly a world of ice and fire.

He quickly ran into the shade of a tree, finally feeling a little cooler.

Squinting, he looked at the electronic bulletin board next to him. The time displayed:

[August 28, 2624]

[13:33]

"One thirty. Still early."

Lin Xian wiped the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve, already feeling the urge to go to the library for some air conditioning.

Perhaps it was because the midday heat was too intense.

The usually bustling square was completely deserted.

He walked along the shade to the bus stop and boarded a bus to the library.

In these 23 years in the dream,

Lin Xian rarely came here.

He only had 3 or 4 hours each day to play in the dream. That time was so precious, wouldn't it be better to go play with something interesting? Or do something big? How could he waste precious machine time in the library?

The few times he did come, his purpose was to figure out the question: [Why has the level of technology in the dream not developed at all?]

Lin Xian realized this very unreasonable phenomenon in middle school. During that time, he thought of many methods and made many efforts to find the truth in the dream.

As a result, he found that a lot of information, almost all reports, history books, commentators, and news, all pointed the finger at social problems.

Saying things like:

"The distorted education system is destined not to be able to filter out true geniuses!"

"Students cannot learn useful knowledge in school, resulting in the burial of talent."

"There is a lack of successors in the scientific community. Young people are seriously pursuing profit and are unwilling to engage in low-paying research industries."

"There are also problems within the academic community itself! Academic bullies are rampant, academic circles are stagnant, and truly talented scholars will be squeezed out!"

……

Lin also asked many passers-by. Everyone repeated the same things over and over again, complaining about all kinds of injustices, believing that the reason why technology had not developed for hundreds of years, or even regressed, was entirely due to the defects of various systems.

Regarding this statement... Lin Xian didn't believe it much at the time.

He didn't think that the development of technology had to rely on these things. True geniuses would not be bound by the education system. Surely, a genius scientist couldn't have not appeared in these 600 years?

But even if he didn't agree, that's how the dream was set. Since he couldn't find any other supporting information, Lin Xian could only silently accept it.

After all... he considered the dream to be fake at the time, so there was no need to be so serious about such details.

"But now it seems that things are definitely not that simple."

Lin Xian shook his head.

After Professor Xu Yun and the verification of the dream were over... he would make a comeback and completely figure out the truth of this matter.

……

Arriving on the first floor of the library, there was an electronic reading room where readers could search for information and find the location of books.

Lin Xian opened the browser and typed [Has the hibernation pod been successfully developed now?] in the search bar.

Click.

He pressed the Enter key.

Squeak...

Squeak...

Squeak...

The host made a tired sound, and the display page slowly refreshed.

The computer was a bit laggy, a common problem with public computers.

Lin Xian glanced at the lower right corner. There were a full seven anti-virus software programs, fighting each other in a dark and shocking battle.

After more than ten seconds, the search was completed, and many results came out.

The first result highlighted a line of bold black text—

[To this day, the hibernation pod has still not been successfully developed.]

Mm.

As expected, the dream world hadn't successfully developed it either.

This result was not surprising at all.

With the same level of technological development in the dream as in 2022, it would be a miracle if they could invent a hibernation pod.

Lin Xian clicked on the first result—

This was a very long article. Although it looked like it was pieced together by a marketing account, it still contained some useful information:

[Due to the slow, or even regressive, development of human technology after the 21st century... countries around the world started research on hibernation technology relatively late.

If we were to talk about when hibernation technology truly entered people's field of vision and became a realistic subject from science fiction, it would have to be in the year 2477 AD, when American scientist Dr. Michaelson successfully developed a high-oxygen liquid that could maintain human body activity for a long time and prevent the formation of ice crystals in cells. This liquid was later proven to be usable as a filling liquid for hibernation pods.

Since then, humans have seen hope for overcoming the hibernation pod for the first time. Countries all over the world have invested a lot of manpower and material resources to establish specialized research institutes and fully research hibernation pod-related technologies.

But contrary to expectations, in the next hundred years, there were no breakthroughs in hibernation-related technologies. Humans still have a long way to go before they can achieve the time-space hibernation in their fantasies.

Therefore, Dr. Michaelson's research ignited the spark of hibernation technology, but it also became its swan song. In order to commemorate this great pioneer, later scholars honored Dr. Michaelson as—

Father of Hibernation.]

……

"There really is a Father of Hibernation."

Lin Xian felt that his jinxing abilities might actually have something to them.

But as he thought,

In 2624 AD, although hibernation pods were still out of reach, the hibernation pod filling liquid had indeed been developed.

"Dr. Michaelson, I thank you on behalf of Professor Xu Yun."

Lin Xian bowed to the computer screen, considering it as obtaining authorization from Dr. Michaelson.

"So next, I just need to find Dr. Michaelson's related papers, academic reports, and things like that."

Lin Xian closed the webpage and opened the library's book management system.

He searched for the two words "hibernation" inside.

Many book search results popped up, all with detailed information on the floor, area, and shelf number where they were located.

These books were varied.

There were science fiction novels, comics, academic journals, and news reports.

Lin Xian checked them one by one and quickly found his target—

《Brief Analysis and Prospects of Hibernation Technology》Author: Bill Michaelson

"It's you."

Lin Xian looked at the remarks information behind it:

Book location: 3rd floor, science works category, Zone C, shelf 67, 7th layer.

Lin Xian got up and went to the third floor.

Soon, he found Dr. Michaelson's work on the corresponding shelf.

"《Brief Analysis and Prospects of Hibernation Technology》"

Lin Xian looked at the title on the cover:

"Brief analysis... you better really write it simply, at least let me understand where the focus is..."

The book looked a bit old, but it was still very new inside, presumably because no one had ever read it.

Lin Xian found a seat by the window and began to read.

His memory was limited, and he couldn't take much out of the dream, so he could only try to focus on the important and avoid the trivial, and take some key information back to Professor Xu Yun.

Flipping through the first few pages.

He felt Dr. Michaelson's good intentions.

It could be seen that Dr. Michaelson really wanted everyone to understand the principles and application process of hibernation technology. He used a lot of easy-to-understand language to explain technical terms and chemical phenomena, which made it not so difficult for Lin Xian to understand.

The book said...

The principle of human hibernation is to reduce the efficiency of all physiological and cellular activities to the lowest level, infinitely close to a standstill, but it must never truly stop.

The best solution is cryogenic freezing.

To achieve a good frozen hibernation effect, the human body must be frozen to below minus 120 degrees Celsius.

However, the contradiction lies here.

Human cells contain a lot of water. Water freezes below 0 degrees Celsius, and the [ice crystals] (Note 1) formed during the freezing process have a devastating killing effect on the cell structure. They will directly pierce the cell membrane, kill the cells, and make them lose their activity.

Note 1: Ice crystals refer to the snowflake-shaped, pointed structure formed during the freezing process of water, which can easily pierce cells.

Although instantaneous flash freezing technology can prevent ice crystals from forming and directly condense into ice, protecting the cell structure from being destroyed.

But the second problem arises.

Flash freezing is possible when freezing the human body, but what about thawing it?

When thawing, there is no doubt that there will still be a process of slowly increasing the temperature and approaching zero degrees Celsius. In this process, [ice crystals] will still inevitably form, and the cell structure will inevitably be destroyed.

A body whose cells have been destroyed, whose brain cells, nerve cells, somatic cells, and hemoglobin cells have all ruptured and lost activity... this is no different from complete death, and there is absolutely no possibility of waking up.

"Mm-hmm..."

Lin Xian was engrossed in reading.

At least so far, this part of the principle was completely understandable.

"So, how to solve the problem of [ice crystals]?"

Flip.

Lin Xian turned the page.