Chiyo Saori did not raise his head, and his slender fingers tapped on the holographic keyboard to create a series of afterimages, infinitely lengthening the 0.4-second audio, reducing noise, and stripping away the current sound in the background.
An extremely weak, yet eerily clear syllable swayed in the dead silence of the control room.
"... I... hurt..."
Like a pebble thrown into a calm lake, the originally smooth brain wave monitoring chart suddenly exploded into a mess of red lines.
"This is the fifth case."
Chiyo intercepts this waveform separately and superimposes it on the previous four abnormal data.
Completely coincident.
She pushed up her glasses on the bridge of her nose and pointed to a red area on the left side of the screen. "Every time a pronunciation contains the concept of 'I', the 44th division of their brain's Broca's area will produce abnormal high-frequency discharges. That is the physiological basis for humans to establish 'self-awareness'."
Uchiha Xuan leaned on the back of the chair and tapped the armrest with his fingertips.
It's this boring biological instinct again.
"With 'I', there will be 'my', and then 'my life' and 'my interests' will be derived." Xuan's voice was as calm as if he was talking about the weather, "This is a hotbed of betrayal."
"Language is the anchor of thinking." Chiyo called up a new correction plan, "Not only 'I', but also 'I', 'Wu', 'I'... all words that refer to the first person need to be physically deleted from their dictionaries."
Xuan didn't speak, but gave instructions to Myriad Phenomena Devouring System in the void.
The writing of new rules is completed.
Code name: Speechless Protocol.
This is not just a ban, but also a mine buried in the synapses.
Once the vibration frequency of the vocal cords matches the first-person vocabulary, the Cursed Seal embedded in the large acupoint of the cervical spine will instantly release the third-level Lightning Release chakra.
Not fatal, but enough to instantly overload the pain nerves.
Ten minutes later, the actual measurement began.
In the culture tank, a newborn individual numbered C-09 is undergoing a muscle strength test.
The electric current stimulated every muscle fiber in his body, and the severe pain made his whole body convulse.
"Help... save me!"
The survival instinct overwhelmed his reason, he opened his mouth wide, and blurted out the words asking for help.
Zhi--!
A burning smell suddenly filled the air.
C-09's voice stopped suddenly, as if it was cut by an invisible pair of scissors.
The base of his tongue quickly became necrotic under the burning of Lightning Release chakra, and his whole body fell to the ground like a dead tree, with only a hiss like a broken bellows coming out of his throat.
The other individuals around who were moaning in low voices fell into deathly silence for an instant.
They looked at the same kind twitching on the ground in horror. The smell of burning flesh was more convincing than any words.
Xuan stood behind the one-way glass and watched this scene coldly. "Continue."
As long as you are alive, the test cannot be stopped.
Under this high-pressure fear taming, the learning ability of this group of "new humans" is astonishingly fast.
After only half a day, the "human" screams and begging for mercy disappeared.
Instead, there is a weird and twisted mechanical language.
When an arm is accidentally broken, the recipient no longer cries "My hand is broken", but reports to the monitoring probe expressionlessly. "Unit 7, the left forelimb is structurally damaged, please repair it."
Removing the subject also removes the subjective attribute of pain.
It seemed that what was broken was not a long hand, but just a replaceable part.
But soon, Chiyo discovered a new problem.
The decibel level of noise throughout the base has dropped to an all-time low.
Except for necessary tactical exchanges, these hundreds of people began to maintain an absolute silence.
He doesn't talk when he eats, he doesn't talk when he acts, and he grits his teeth and fights even when he's injured.
Because "speaking" itself has become a high-risk thing.
If you talk too much, you will be wrong. Shutting up is the best way to survive.
"They are using silence to avoid risks." Chiyo looked at the gloomy eyes in the surveillance camera, "If this state of depression continues for a long time, it will accumulate uncontrollable psychological variables."
"Want to be mute?" Xuan sneered, which was the contempt of a hunter when he sees his prey trying to pretend to be dead, "Then force them to speak."
The new patch instructions cover all personnel instantly through the chakra network.
The language activity mandatory monitoring mechanism is activated.
The rule is simple: every hour, no matter what they are doing, all individuals must stop their actions and report their status to the central system.
The format is strictly locked. "No. XX, running normally."
There is no room for free play, and even the ups and downs of the intonation are strictly limited by the system.
If you don't speak, the Cursed Seal on the back of your neck will start to heat up; if you make a typo, Lightning Release will burn through your tongue.
As a result, the entire base turned into a strange clock tower.
Every hour on the hour, hundreds of voices will sound one after another.
"Executors No. 1, running normally."
"Unit 39 is operating normally."
"Machine D-12, operating normally."
These voices have no emotional color, just like a group of programmed repeaters.
In this repetitive mechanical repetition, they continue to brainwash themselves: I am not a person, I am a number, I am a part, I am a tool.
This is the effect of xuanyao.
Disassemble "people" into symbols, and then reorganize "symbols" into legions.
This high-pressure state continued until the tenth day.
Late that night, the Naka River underground laboratory was so quiet that only the hum of the instruments was left.
Chiyo was sorting out the latest batch of gene fusion data. Suddenly, the alarm light on the operating table turned red without warning.
Not a region, but the entire territory.
The originally stable brainwave monitoring picture seemed to have been violently grasped by an invisible giant hand. Hundreds of waveform lines representing different individuals completely overlapped at this moment, achieving a breathtaking synchronization rate.
Xuan opened his eyes suddenly, and Body Flicker Technique came to the main console.
The next second.
Sounds came from loudspeakers all over the base at the same time.
That was not the voice of a single person, but the voice of 327 new students, speaking the same sentence in the same millisecond with unprecedented uniformity.
"Who are we...?"
There are no ups and downs in these four words, there is no questioning tone, and they are stated in a straightforward manner as if they are stating a truth.
The sound was not loud, but it conveyed a chill that penetrated the sky.
It is not through the vibration of the vocal cords, nor is it transmitted through chakra.
Chiyo looked at the unresponsive voiceprint collector on the screen and turned pale.
"There is no sound signal... this is brain wave resonance! They bypassed the language center and completed the information exchange directly at the conscious level!"
The phrase "Who are we" echoed in the air for a full seven seconds, and then stopped abruptly.
The brain waves of all individuals instantly returned to a chaotic and independent state, as if the strange scene just now was just a malfunction of the instrument.
In the surveillance footage, the individuals who were sleeping, patrolling, and eating were still expressionless, and no one showed any sign of having just spoken.
They don't even know what they just "said".
But this wasn't just an accident.
Xuan suddenly turned his head and looked at the huge culture tank in the center of the laboratory.
Suspended there are Progenitor embryos extracted from the Otsutsuki Clan cells, which are the genetic source of all "new humans".
The embryo, which had kept its eyes tightly closed, opened its eyes at some unknown moment.
There was no white in those eyes, just endless darkness.
And in the depths of those dark pupils, hundreds of blurry faces were densely packed.
Those are the faces of all experimental subjects.
They are laughing.
Silently, in the unformed embryonic eyes, he stared at Uchiha Xuan outside the glass.