The Vanishing Subconscious

The rain intensified.

Raindrops beat incessantly on the plaster ceiling of the warehouse, producing a dense and chaotic chorus of noise.

Through a basin-sized hole at the edge of the roof, rainwater cascaded in without hindrance, turning the accumulated dust on the ground into thick, black mud.

Swish, swish—

The sound of dragging footsteps echoed within the warehouse.

Yang Chu, dragging his injured left leg, struggled to move beneath the leaking hole in the ceiling. He tilted his head back, opening his mouth.

Cold rainwater splashed onto his face, flowing down into his mouth.

For several minutes, the figure continued to drink the rainwater, then, like a robot, slowly turned his neck to survey his surroundings.

"I'm in an abandoned, cluttered warehouse."

Yang Chu turned his head back, gazing at the broken-jawed body lying on the filthy ground.

"This man was the one I killed in a counterattack when I suddenly sensed a mortal danger..."

His voice suddenly halted. With some difficulty, he lowered his head to look at his legs.

Beneath the dirty jeans was a pair of old, mud-soaked sneakers.

"My kick just now caused ligament tears and sprains, along with some soft tissue contusions on the instep and toes. I should be thankful I wore sneakers; otherwise, my foot bones would have definitely fractured in several places."

Yang Chu, feeling the pain signals relayed back from his nervous system, quickly drew a conclusion.

At that moment, his consciousness couldn't focus on coherent thought. He only remembered waking up inexplicably in this newly deceased body.

After a moment of recollection, he vaguely recalled the conversations he'd heard earlier.

"Three people—there were three voices I heard before. Judging from their conversation and the scene here, I must have gotten caught up in something and was brought to this warehouse. That means this body is likely in trouble, and someone might come back soon. For my own safety, I must leave here quickly... ugh..."

Yang Chu, considering his precarious situation, was formulating a plan when his body suddenly gave out, collapsing to the ground with a thud.

Moments later—

"Ahh—"

A cry echoed out.

Yang Chu's eyes snapped open, bloodshot and filled with a strange intensity. Suddenly, as if he were a balloon being inflated, he sprang up from the ground.

His face and skin turned a bizarre shade of red, his muscles swelling, making his entire body seem larger.

The frantic pounding of his heart, loud enough to drown out even the heavy rain.

"My heart's beating too fast."

Sensing his body's abnormal state, Yang Chu quickly began taking deep breaths, his chest and abdomen heaving wildly as he tried to regain control.

Then, he closed his eyes.

Gradually, the blood-red hue on his skin faded, his swollen muscles relaxed, and his breathing slowed down.

After a long while, Yang Chu opened his eyes again, exhaling a long breath.

"Restarting a body that has completely shut down is no easy task."

He had only inhabited this body for a few minutes, but those minutes felt like a life-or-death battle to Yang Chu.

Because this body had already died—its heart had stopped, and it wasn't breathing.

The exact cause of death was unclear; it could have been due to sudden fright or other unknown reasons for sudden death.

When Yang Chu's consciousness first awakened in this body, it immediately began to fade and blur.

Fortunately, he seized the final opportunity. With repeated attempts and sheer force of will, he managed to get the heart to beat again and the lungs to breathe, fully reviving the body from its state of sudden death.

However, even though he had revived, the ordeal was far from over.

He discovered that this body, after coming back to life, had lost the subconscious instincts naturally formed from birth.

Both the heartbeat and breathing required his conscious effort to control. If his attention wavered even slightly, the body would stop functioning like a machine.

"This body, to me now, is like a highly sophisticated machine, where every operational system needs me to take over. Luckily, it's just a loss of subconsciousness and not a failure of the organs or deeper biological and chemical processes. As long as I keep the major systems of the human body running, I should be fine."

Yang Chu was deeply troubled by his current situation, but amidst this overwhelming distress, he found a sliver of relief.

The loss of subconsciousness halted the body's automatic functions, but it hadn't yet penetrated deeper into the biological and chemical reactions of the organs and tissues.

For example, with the circulatory system, he only needed to control the heart, keep it beating, and maintain blood circulation throughout the body. He didn't need to think about how cells within the blood carried nutrients to function.

For now, Yang Chu's task was to operate and maintain the systems of the human body.

Yet, even just maintaining these systems taxed his conscious mind greatly.

The human body has eight major systems: digestive, respiratory, circulatory, endocrine, nervous, musculoskeletal, urinary, and reproductive.

These systems coordinate with one another to enable complex life activities.

Normally, from birth, these systems operate based on subconscious instincts.

At that stage, true self-awareness in humans has not yet formed.

When self-awareness develops, during daily activities, the conscious mind can control only one system—the musculoskeletal system.

Under the direction of the nervous system, some muscles contract while others cooperate, bones provide support, and joints move flexibly, enabling a person to stand, speak, walk, run, and perform various simple or complex movements.

But even under the control of the conscious mind, in certain situations, like being pricked by a needle or burned by fire, subconscious instincts still react faster than the brain to dodge.

Another system that can be consciously controlled, but is mostly governed by the subconscious, is the respiratory system.

Everyone breathes; in normal daily life, people don't consciously control their breathing—it's entirely a subconscious instinct.

However, when one focuses their conscious mind on their breathing, they can use the musculoskeletal and nervous systems to control the respiratory system.

For example, deep breathing, abdominal breathing, holding one's breath, etc.

The other systems within the body are generally not controlled by conscious thought; they operate through subconscious instincts.

Yang Chu, without his subconsciousness now, had to consciously and constantly breathe. If his conscious mind slipped, his breathing would stop, leading to oxygen deprivation in the body.

Similarly, there was the heartbeat.

The heart's rhythmic and relentless beating is due to a small node in the right atrium made of special cells, known in medicine as the sinoatrial node.

The sinoatrial node can autonomously generate rhythmic bioelectric currents, which, following a sequence of conductive tissues, reach all parts of the heart, causing the heart to contract and relax rhythmically.

With the loss of subconsciousness, the sinoatrial node no longer generated electrical currents autonomously and rhythmically, which now required Yang Chu's conscious effort to stimulate it.

Moments ago, Yang Chu had collapsed because, while pondering his current predicament, he had forgotten to stimulate the sinoatrial node to generate currents, causing his heart to stop.

This is why Yang Chu could "come back to life." The disappearance of subconsciousness in this body allowed his consciousness to take control of the internal systems.

By controlling the sinoatrial node and generating bioelectric currents, he reawakened the heart's beat.

Now, Yang Chu felt like a worker managing a complex multi-threaded task, constantly maintaining the normal operation of various systems to ensure the body stayed alive and could perform complex activities.

Among these, the respiratory system, circulatory system, and musculoskeletal system were the three he had to keep a close watch on at all times.

As for others, like the digestive and urinary systems, Yang Chu couldn't manage them all yet. But as long as the body didn't lack oxygen or nutrients and the blood circulation remained normal, the organs within these systems wouldn't fail and could still perform a degree of metabolism.

"Ugh—"

Realizing his current condition, Yang Chu suddenly felt his chest and abdomen tighten. During his brief contemplation, while maintaining a standing posture and controlling his heartbeat, he had forgotten to breathe.

Letting out a breath of stale air, Yang Chu consciously regulated his chest and abdomen to resume breathing and prepared to leave the warehouse.

With the limited information he had, the best option was to leave as soon as possible to avoid further entanglement in danger.

His gait remained uneven; this was due to his forceful counterattack upon awakening after suddenly being assaulted.

However, Yang Chu hadn't anticipated that the force of his kick, when unconstrained by subconscious limits, would be so immense that it shattered the opponent's jaw and neck bones.

But the price of that kick was not small—his left leg ligaments were torn, his foot bones slightly fractured, and many of his muscles were now sore from the overload.

This was due to the absence of subconscious protection over the body's various aspects. The power muscles and bones could exert far exceeded what most people understood about their bodies.

But the subconscious, this biological instinct, constantly informs you of which actions and their intensity could harm the body. So when muscles and bones reach their limit, the subconscious warns you through pain that the force you're exerting or the extent of your movements has reached the body's threshold.

When the subconscious is gone, and the conscious mind takes over, everything changes.

A full-force kick directed by the nervous system, employing all muscle groups, is the maximum possible output of strength without considering potential bodily damage.

Before leaving the warehouse, Yang Chu briefly searched for any belongings that might be associated with his current body.

Unfortunately, he found nothing.

All he found on the corpse he had kicked to death was a wallet and a pager.

Yang Chu ignored the pager,and only checked the wallet.

Inside, there was an ID card and several thousand Hong Kong dollars in various denominations. Yang Chu pocketed the money and stood up.

Throughout this process, Yang Chu felt no disgust or fear while confronting the corpse.

Outside, the rain continued to pour relentlessly. Dragging his injured left leg, Yang Chu staggered into the rain, taking uneven steps as he walked into the unknown darkness.