That subtle tremor did not trigger an alarm. Instead, it was like the breath of some deep-sea creature, reverberating dullly throughout the metal skeleton of the entire underground base.
Uchiha Xuan stared at the main control screen, tapping the edge of the console with his fingertips.
On the screen, the originally chaotic and disorderly newborn brain wave map now showed a strange mathematical beauty - it was resonance at the same frequency.
The ups and downs of each wave peak were perfectly aligned with the rhythm of the tiny movements of the huge embryonic eyeballs.
"It's not interference." Chiyo Saori's voice emerged from the data pile with a rare urgency.
She quickly called up a set of deep neural maps, and the red bands flooded the screen like a tide, "This is the roll call. That thing is confirming its ownership. It sends out a pulse, and these brains must send back an 'I am' signal. As long as one of them does not respond..."
She didn't finish speaking, but several vital signs that suddenly turned into straight lines in the corner of the screen already explained the consequences.
Those were a few failures with incomplete brain development. Because they could not keep up with this high-intensity mental handshake in time, their brain stems were directly burned into paste.
"Survival of the fittest, it's fair." Xuan didn't have any regrets. He turned around and looked at the embryo suspended in the huge culture tank. "Since it is so eager to establish its class, then help it. Notify it and suspend all 'Grace Meditation'."
Chiyo's fingers paused. "All? This will trigger a mass withdrawal reaction, and the probability of riots will exceed 70%."
"Riots are the prerogative of humans. Tools will only die." Xuan sneered and pulled down a red gate, "Turn on 'Detachment Test'. Cut off all their vestibular and proprioceptive inputs, and inject pure void parameters into that virtual space. I want to see who else can remember who they are after losing body perception."
The lights in the base suddenly flickered.
In the surveillance footage, countless "new humans" lying in the life-support cabin began to twitch violently.
Losing the perception of their bodies, their brains fell into a crazy logical loop. Like astronauts being thrown into deep space, the absolute sense of nothingness instantly defeated their fragile psychological defenses.
In just two minutes, more than 90% of the subjects foamed at the mouth and fell into shock.
But in the corner of row 14 in Area C, there was a thin male individual, as quiet as a stone.
His heart rate did not accelerate, and his brain waves were as steady as a straight line.
In the pure void, he did not panic, but slowly opened his mouth.
There was no sound, but through the lip recognition system, those words were clearly presented on the big screen.
"Father is here, but I am not."
Xuan's eyes sharpened suddenly. He strode to the surveillance screen of that individual and zoomed in.
The originally cloudy eyes turned white at this moment, but a dark chakra halo appeared in the depths of the pupils. It was not his own power, but some kind of implanted, high-density projection of will.
"Found it." The corners of Xuan's lips raised, "This is the 'container' it wants. Chiyo, take him in."
Chiyo No nonsense, quickly connect the individual Fire Seal authority numbered A-09 directly to the embryo culture cabin.
The moment the passage opened, A-09 suddenly sat up from the cabin.
He twisted his neck unnaturally, making a crisp sound, and then announced in a completely unfamiliar voice with a metallic texture:
"Container passed."
Before he finished speaking, a horrifying scene happened.
A-09's skin begins to melt like a candle.
There was no blood, no screams. His muscles, bones, and internal organs were reversely decomposed in just a few seconds, turning into a viscous stream of chakra that exuded faint blue fluorescence.
This energy flowed crazily into the huge genetic embryo along the conduit.
"He is sacrificing himself..." Chiyo stared at the energy reading, the dazzling light reflected on the spectacle lenses, "He is actively erasing the life form as an 'individual' and returning to the mother body. Is he... happy?"
At that moment, a wave invisible to the naked eye took the place where A-09 disappeared as the center of the circle and swept across the entire base in an instant.
"Cognitive resonance wave!" Chiyo warned loudly, "Intensity level three, this will contaminate the mental threshold of other individuals! It is recommended to set up a physical isolation area immediately and cut off..."
"Open the passage." Xuan interrupted her, with a cruel excitement in his voice, "Why do we need to isolate? This is the only way to evolve. Let them see and feel the 'glory' of sacrificing for God."
The wall didn't go up. The wave spread like a virus.
For the next seventy-two hours, the base fell into a kind of deathly frenzy.
Without any coercion, another seventeen sleeping individuals suddenly sat up, with the same saint-like serenity on their faces, chanting "Father is here, I am not", and then disintegrated on their own, turning into nutrients and filling the greedy embryo.
By the early morning of the third day, this resonance reached its peak.
On the actual combat training ground in Area D, a puppet master instructor responsible for recording data was horrified to find that the three hundred students who were originally undergoing combat training stopped their movements at the same second.
No orders, no signals.
They turned around in unison and faced the spherical fortress suspended at the top of the base - that was the control room where Xuan was, and where the embryo was.
Three hundred faces, whether male or female, old or young, all showed the same expression at this moment.
That's a smile.
A smile with the corners of the mouth raised at exactly the same angle without any emotional fluctuations.
Their pupils dilated, as if they were seeing the non-existent "god" through the thick metal walls.
The instructor tried to cut off the power, but to no avail.
Those people seemed to be nailed to the ground, until the technical department urgently manually reset the Fire Seal on their chests, and this group of people collapsed on the ground like puppets with their strings cut off.
The brain scan results afterwards made all researchers shudder: in that minute, the consciousness of these three hundred people did not disappear, but was forcibly dragged into a shared perception channel.
They don't know who they are, or even where they are, and their only thought is three words - to be watched.
As long as you are looked at by those eyes, you are happy.
Xuan stood in front of the huge floor-to-ceiling window, overlooking everything.
In the culture tank behind him, the sound of bubbles rolling became heavy and slow.
The huge one eye slowly closed.
At the moment when the eyelids are closed, the turbid film on the surface of the eyeball begins to squirm and reorganize, and finally a clear outline of a human face emerges.
High nose bridge, thin lips, cold eyebrows.
It is the reflection of Uchiha Xuan.
It no longer needs to be searched for, because it has become him.
At this time, Chiyo Saori walked quickly with a newly printed report. Her face was more solemn than ever before, and she walked directly into Xuan's safe distance without even knocking on the door.
"You have to take a look at this." She ignored the strange eye that had just sprouted a human face, but slapped the report directly on the console in front of Xuan, and pointed her fingertips on an abnormal data peak. "Although I don't want to pour cold water on it, we may have a huge trouble before we celebrate the arrival of the miracle."
"There's something wrong with the feedback from the optic nerve." Chiyo took a deep breath, "If you don't want to create a group of blind people who can only see but cannot move, you'd better explain this logical loophole."