Chiyo Saori's expressionless face had a rare crack.
"This is not noise."
She stared at the scarlet curve that suddenly rose up, and her fingers made a series of rapid snaps on the keyboard, as if to catch some fleeting ghost, "The rapid eye movement period is extremely active, and the pons-geniculate-occipital waves are discharging crazily... He is creating things. Sir, No. A-044 is dreaming."
This word sounded like a ridiculous joke in this underground base filled with the rancid smell of nutrient solution and the sound of cold machinery.
Uchiha Xuan walked to the training cabin where the young boy was sleeping.
Through the light green glass, you can see the crazy rolling eyeballs under the young man's eyelids, which is a sign that the brain is weaving illusions.
The corners of the young man's mouth even raised slightly, a micro-expression full of admiration and enthusiasm.
"Export the screen." Xuan's voice contained no emotion or anger.
Chiyo operated quickly, and several hair-thin probes penetrated the back of the boy's neck. The waveform on the big screen instantly collapsed and reorganized, turning into a shaky first-person perspective picture.
It was an endless sea of red fire.
The flame has no temperature, but exudes a suffocating solemnity.
In the center of the sea of fire, a blurry figure stood.
The figure on the back is wearing Warring States Era armor, with long hair dancing wildly. Although the face cannot be seen clearly, no Uchiha Clan will recognize that kind of scornful aura.
"He beautified you in his dream." Chiyo looked at the deified figure and breathed a sigh of relief, even with a hint of approval, "He built a totem of faith in the subconscious. This shows that the brainwashing is very successful. Sir, maybe we can take advantage of this? If specific preset images are implanted in their REM stage, such as your heroic appearance of killing the enemy, or..."
"Idiot."
Xuan interrupted her coldly.
Chiyo froze and looked at Xuan in confusion.
"Only beings with the concept of 'self' will have this urge to 'complete' the unknown." Xuan pointed to a corner of the screen, "Look there."
In the picture, the dreaming boy is trying to run on the ashes plain. He reaches out his hand, trying to touch the back.
Just when his fingertips were about to touch the statue, the originally blurry stone statue suddenly turned its head.
That's not Xuan's face.
Half of that face is mottled cracks, and half is deep madness - that is Madara Uchiha.
Although it only flashed by, and then the entire dream shook violently and shattered as if it had been forcibly erased by some external force, Xuan could see it clearly.
That is the memory residue deep in the bloodline, the "dust of the old era" that has not been washed away in this body.
"He is thinking, he is curious, he is trying to figure out who I am, and he is even using his poor genetic memory to piece together my image." Xuan's fingers lightly scratched on the glass bulkhead, as if it were a blade scratching on the boy's carotid artery. "Once you start thinking, faith will become a 'choice'. And I don't need them to make a choice."
What I want is not believers, but hands and feet.
Who has seen a hammer and dreamed of a blacksmith?
"But..." Chiyo looked at the data, "If the ability to dream is forcibly taken away, their brains will collapse because they cannot process the memory fragments during the day."
"Then let them not dare to take a step beyond the bounds even in their sleep."
Xuan turned around and walked to the console, called up the underlying protocol of the "Fire Seal" collar, and added a new infinite loop instruction to the dense lines of code.
"Pain pulse, set to level three."
Xuan's fingers inputting the command did not pause at all, "Whenever the pons detects a premonition of dreaming, it immediately releases trace amounts of neurotoxins and pain currents, directly interrupting the rapid eye movement process. At the same time, the bone conduction headphones play audio track C-12 in a loop."
Chiyo looked at that cruel instruction, his throat went dry. "What is the content of the audio track?"
Xuan pressed the Enter key, and the red word "Execute" flashed crazily on the screen.
"You don't deserve to dream, you can only listen."
It was a long and terrifying night.
At first, there were only subtle sounds of electricity coming and going in the rest area of the fortress, followed immediately by muffled humming, violent twitching of the body, and rapid breathing after waking up.
But under the brainwashing of the audio track over and over again, even the gasping sound disappeared.
Three days later.
Late night, rest area.
There was no snoring, no turning over, and even the breathing frequency was assimilated to a uniform level.
Three hundred children lay on narrow cots.
They did not lie on their sides or curl up. All of them lay flat on their backs, with their hands folded and firmly pressed on their chests, their chins slightly drawn, showing a stiff posture as if they were waiting for trial in a coffin.
That's not sleep, that's standby.
In the monitoring room, Chiyo held the latest report, his fingers trembling slightly. "Dream behavior returns to zero. The activity of the prefrontal lobe drops to freezing point during sleep. Except for the auditory cortex, which remains alert, their brains... are like a dead sea."
"Cognitive attachment?" Xuan asked.
"99.8%." Chiyo's voice was dry, "The remaining 0.2% is the instinct to maintain basic physiological functions."
Xuan looked at the deathly gray sea of data on the screen, and finally a cold arc appeared at the corner of his mouth.
"Very good."
Since even the subconscious mind has been locked, then this knife can be truly held in the hand.
In this suffocating silence, an extremely subtle sound of liquid stirring suddenly came from the main culture tank located in the deepest part of the laboratory.
Gudu.
A huge bubble rose from the side of the dark red genetic embryo and slowly exploded.
As if sensing that the three hundred "sub-bodies" had completely cut off the support of self-consciousness, the skin of the lump of flesh that had been in a state of chaos suddenly cracked a gap.
There are no whites of the eyes and no pupils.
It was an eye that was completely condensed with high-density black chakra. It slowly opened in the turbid nutrient solution.