Chapter 15: Brain Death

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Jiang Hui finally realized how foolish she had been and nearly did something even more reckless. Otherwise, according to the binding time of the spatial node, she would have had to buy this set of hospital clothes to take with her or wait until the next day to be discharged.

“Did you bring any clothes with you?” Xu Jia asked again.

Jiang Hui nodded. The original owner’s memories were quite clear, as she had brought along a small amount of frequently used personal items from the inner territorial system. Most of the belongings that were inconvenient to move were left at the home her parents had left her in the inner territorial system, which she had already applied to have temporarily sealed with the local administrative district’s approval.

One of the two spatial nodes she had brought along was this very one. The original owner had used it since childhood, and Jiang Hui vaguely remembered it contained many daily necessities, definitely including clothes. She could just find some to wear later.

“That’s good. Then there’s no problem. You can handle your discharge procedures soon and go home. Remember to take your medication, and if anything else happens, report it to the hospital immediately,” Xu Jia patiently reminded her.

Seeing the conversation coming to a close, Jiang Hui intended to stand and see her off—after all, she wasn’t really so ill that she couldn’t leave.

“You… I was about to ask—” Xu Jia took a few steps but suddenly stopped. “What was it you wanted to ask earlier?”

Though it wasn’t very obvious, a person in a state of hesitation or wanting to say something yet holding back was still quite different, and Jiang Hui easily noticed. The girl seemed troubled by some question, even somewhat distressed.

Upon that question, Jiang Hui instinctively touched her face. Was it really that obvious? She had resisted asking despite much effort, only to be seen through.

“What’s bothering you? Are you feeling unwell anywhere? If so, you must tell me immediately. No concealment is allowed. The ingredients for the psychiatric stabilizer are special; the initial medicine is the foundation for taking the medication. If your body or nerves cannot adapt, subsequent absorption will cause serious problems,” Xu Jia said earnestly.

Of course, it wasn’t about that, Jiang Hui thought silently, or she would have said so already and wouldn’t have made things difficult. She hesitated whether to voice this doubt because, in the grand scheme of things, it seemed very out of place. She feared a repeat of that day when someone named Fry screamed “Help” in terror—such a scene was almost too perfect.

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“The day I fainted from excessive blood loss, I briefly felt a disconnect between my mind and body. It felt… as if my soul had left my body,” Jiang Hui struggled to describe the sensation.

“Now that I’m awake, I don’t have that feeling, but why do I always feel a sort of mismatch between my mind and body? It’s like something else is trapped inside, making me uncomfortable,” she said, half truthfully.

The throbbing in her head was real, but more than that, she wanted to probe certain deeper matters—those she most wanted to understand.

Xu Jia listened quietly without answering immediately, but her movements stopped, and she involuntarily faced the girl lying in bed.

“Soul? That’s quite an archaic term. Have you considered specializing in Classical Chinese language and literature in the future? But nowadays, we don’t say it that way. It’s fictional. What you’re probably referring to is brainwaves,” Xu Jia said. Oh, thank you for the guidance—if it’s that level of Classical Chinese, she thought she could manage.

“This is something I’m not quite sure how to answer either. Despite today’s ability to study every internal human organ down to the minutest detail, the brain domain remains an area humans have yet to fully comprehend.

“Take your injury as an example. You damaged two lobes of your brain, suspected to cause functional impairment. But brain injuries of this kind are relatively easier to treat through surgery combined with treatment pods. However, we cannot determine whether your brain domain was also affected solely from the condition of your brain organs, because a person’s brain domain refers not only to the brain organ itself but also to a constantly changing magnetic field formed by the brain tissues’ emitted brainwaves.

“And this magnetic field is what we understand as the source of psychic power.”

Up to now, Jiang Hui had not studied psychic power separately, so she was quite confused but tried hard to understand.

Xu Jia paused, knowing this might be difficult to grasp. After all, even the upper echelons of society have not fully analyzed the brain domain and psychic power, and the theories available are rather abstract and vague. So to avoid troubling the young girl, she quickly changed her approach.

“You suffered a brain injury that day. After we treated you and monitored your vital signs and brainwaves, we concluded your brain domain was unaffected. But then…”

No one had expected she was a transmigrant. She truly didn’t know where she was, what had happened, or even that she had transmigrated, Jiang Hui added inwardly.

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“... Later, during further treatment, we basically corrected your disordered brain domain functions.” From Xu Jia’s description, they had diagnosed her symptoms as a brain domain dysfunction, with chaotic brainwaves disturbing the brain domain’s magnetic field, temporarily causing memory loss.

“However, the effects of brainwave disorder cannot self-heal quickly, which is why you need to take psychiatric stabilizers. Otherwise, your brain domain and psychic power would both be affected.”

At some point, Xu Jia returned to Jiang Hui’s side, took a stack of what appeared to be her medical records from a storage compartment behind her, flipped through a few pages, frowned, and handed some to Jiang Hui. Unfortunately, many of the data and terms were too technical, mixed with a lot of interstellar jargon, making her eyes hurt and comprehension difficult, so she gave up.

“It is said that brainwave disorder is one of the hardest diseases to define precisely and can cause various complications. Your feeling that your psychic power separated probably means that the brainwave fluctuations were so severe at that time that your psychic power slightly detached from the brainwaves—in other words, what you described as the soul splitting.”

Jiang Hui was startled: “If psychic power detaches from the brainwaves and can’t return to the body, wouldn’t the person never wake up?” If so, then the original owner might have lost control because her psychic power detached and couldn’t return to her body, and somehow she drifted in. Could it really be a possession?

But the next moment, Xu Jia dismissed the idea.

“Theoretically, it’s not impossible. But you might be making a common misconception. Although psychic power depends on the brain domain, it’s not essential for survival. People without psychic power can live normally. As long as the brain functions properly and brainwaves persist, consciousness can be maintained even without psychic power.”

“Only those whose brainwaves have completely ceased can be considered brain dead.”

“...”