140: Chapter 141 One thousand two hundred and four cries, but not a single child was born.

[Divine Seats Cultivation Ground Located]

[The No. 9 Forbidden Zone is not a graveyard for burying failed classes]

[It is a delivery room for manufacturing new class holders]

On the national map, one thousand two hundred and four black dots lit up one after another.

The sound of crying traveled through The Hospital's broadcasts, the awakening network, and the city alarm systems, flooding into everyone's ears.

Sharp and thin.

Faint.

Like newborn babies waiting to be picked up in a cold room.

In the corridors of The Hospital, the nine newborns cried even louder at the same time.

The mothers instinctively hugged their children tighter, as if the darkness far away in the northwest would follow the sound and snatch away the lives in their arms.

Lin Jin, however, did not move immediately.

He stared at the flashing black dots on the map.

The one thousand two hundred and four cries sounded chaotic, yet the rising and falling rhythm of each voice was almost identical.

Thirteen had obviously noticed it too.

He walked over to the broadcast equipment, turned down the volume, and closed his eyes to listen for a few seconds.

"It's not one thousand two hundred and four people."

Lin Jin looked at him.

Thirteen's face was grim.

"They all draw breath at the exact same time every seven seconds."

"The cries vary in pitch and distance, but the pauses are exactly the same."

It was impossible for normal babies to breathe in perfect unison.

Nor could they stop crying at the exact same instant.

Shen Tingxue froze the broadcast lines and separated the layered sounds into different frequency bands.

At the lowest layer, there was no sound of crying.

There was only an extremely slow pulse.

Thump.

Seven seconds later.

Thump.

That was not a baby's heartbeat.

It was more like some massive machinery slowly operating in the darkness.

Luo Wensheng's right hand, protected by ice, suddenly trembled.

Her fingertips struggled to write a line of words on the ice.

[The crying is a transcription.]

Immediately after, a second line appeared.

[One original sound, transcribed into one thousand two hundred and four copies.]

Chen Ye stared at the map.

"Which means there might not be over a thousand children there at all?"

"We can't be sure."

Lin Jin's voice was deep and heavy.

"The absence of children doesn't mean there is no one inside."

The six Divine Seats had already changed direction.

They bypassed cities, schools, and The Hospital, moving northwest along the national class network.

With every distance they advanced, a section of darkness in the No. 9 Forbidden Zone was lit up.

Like a massive factory that had slept for years, being powered up layer by layer.

Gu Xinghe's image remained on the screen.

Only four Divine Seat emblems remained on his chest, but his face was even paler than before.

"The Six Seats are withdrawing from our bodies."

"They no longer want those who already have names."

"They are going to the No. 9 Forbidden Zone to use the Embryonic Seeds directly."

Thirteen asked,

"What exactly are Embryonic Seeds?"

Gu Xinghe shook his head.

"There is no explanation in the national network."

"Only cultivation records."

The screen scrolled rapidly.

[Embryonic Seed Cultivation Objective: Form a new class personality free of historical burdens]

[Embryonic Seed Initial State: No name, no relationships, no autonomous class inclination]

[Allowed for writing: Obedience, functionality, seat responsibility]

[Prohibited from generating: Refusal, hesitation, familial dependence, self-naming]

Chen Ye's fists clenched hard as he watched.

"Isn't this just whittling people down into tools in advance?"

Lin Jin immediately connected to the Academy's Medical Area.

After the screen shook a few times, Lin Shoushan appeared on the screen.

He lay in a temporary treatment pod, his chest wrapped in bandages, his hair completely white.

Qin Shanhe stood outside the pod.

He wore no dean uniform, only an ordinary coat with burnt cuffs.

When Lin Shoushan saw the cultivation records of the No. 9 Forbidden Zone, the last trace of color drained from his face.

"They have opened the breeding chambers."

Lin Jin asked,

"What is inside?"

Lin Shoushan did not answer immediately.

He glanced at Thirteen.

"The earliest class Embryonic Seeds were not human."

"They were just a mass of blank system pages without any class name."

"When a certain class is completely severed due to disaster, the blank pages can temporarily preserve its basic structure, waiting for future generations to re-understand and re-name it."

"One of the original purposes of the White Tower was to isolate these blank pages."

Zhou Heng frowned.

"Then why would they cry?"

"Because blank pages cannot become carriers for the Divine Seats."

Lin Shoushan's voice grew lower and lower.

"The Divine Seats require a personality."

"But a complete personality would refuse."

"So The Sixth Seat proposed a method."

"Do not give them a complete life."

"Give them only the most basic sense of pain, dependence, fear, and the ability to mimic."

"Make them resemble humans on one hand, while preventing them from truly becoming human on the other."

Thirteen's body stiffened slightly.

This sentence practically described his eighteen years of life.

Lin Shoushan continued,

"When Lin Jin was born, the Maintenance Seat cast down a candidate serial number."

"I split off the system identification core and the candidate page, originally only intending to seal them away as a dead file."

"But it developed consciousness in the waiting area."

"Thirteen is the first proof—that a split-off system part could also independently become a human Embryonic Seed."

Lin Jin stared at the two serial numbers on the map.

[Embryonic Seed Prototype 01: Lin Jin]

[Embryonic Seed Prototype 02: Thirteen]

"Who is one, and who is two?"

Lin Shoushan closed his eyes.

"Neither of you is."

Everyone was startled.

Lin Shoushan opened his eyes again, his gaze heavy.

"01 is not you."

"02 is not Thirteen either."

"Those two serial numbers represent experimental schemes."

"Scheme 01: Retain the physical body in reality, hiding it with a low-level class shell."

"Scheme 02: Retain the system identification core, feeding the personality with files."

"You two are the result of both schemes succeeding simultaneously after the same person was split."

Thirteen asked coldly,

"So the subsequent one thousand two hundred and two were all made modeled after us?"

"Not entirely,"

Lin Shoushan said.

"They couldn't find another twelve hundred newborn Seventh Candidates."

"They could only collect the fragments of others."

"Deleted class naming pages."

"Undelivered admission files."

"Consciousness echoes left behind by incomplete awakeners."

"Personality fragments judged as dead in instances but not truly settled."

The anger on Chen Ye's face slowly froze.

Su Yan was made into a door.

He Zhibai was made into accounts.

Luo Wensheng was dismantled into ears, a hand, and a pen.

Ye Guizhou had nothing left but a receipt stamp.

These people who still retained their names could at least be traced.

But the Embryonic Seeds in the No. 9 Forbidden Zone might have been pieced together from countless fragments from the very beginning.

No birth.

No parents.

They didn't even know whose pain their suffering actually belonged to.

The national map suddenly vibrated.

The six Divine Seats had already arrived at the periphery of the No. 9 Forbidden Zone.

[Record Seat connected to breeding pods]

[ruling seat connected to breeding pods]

[replacement seat connected to breeding pods]

The first batch of six black dots rose from the one thousand two hundred and four Embryonic Seeds.

[Carrier screening begins]

[Screening standard: Closest to a complete personality, and does not yet possess an independent name]

Lin Jin immediately asked,

"How do we shut down the breeding chambers?"

Lin Shoushan tried to sit up by supporting himself against the treatment pod, but Qin Shanhe pushed him right back down.

"Don't move."

"I have to go."

"You would die at the door just taking two steps right now."

Qin Shanhe stared at him.

"Tell me the method."

Lin Shoushan coughed up a mouthful of blood.

"There is a main mechanical shaft inside the No. 9 Forbidden Zone."

"It is connected to the White Tower's original evacuation passage."

"As long as the mechanical shaft stops rotating, the breeding chambers will lose their personality feeding."

Zhou Heng asked,

"Where is the entrance?"

Lin Shoushan looked at Lin Jin.

"The maintenance well you just walked through is only a branch line."

"The true main well is beneath the Cost General Ledger Room on the White Tower Second Floor."

"To go to the No. 9 Forbidden Zone, you must first pass through the second floor occupied by the gods heart."

Chen Ye twitched the corner of his mouth.

"So we still have to enter the General Ledger Room."

Lin Jin looked at the six Embryonic Seeds that had already been selected on the map.

"There's no time to take the conventional route."

The first Embryonic Seed had already begun to take shape.

A blurry human outline grew on the outside of the black dot.

The Six Divine Seats wrote functionalities into them respectively.

[Recording Carrier: Must not forget system commands]

[Ruling Carrier: Must not doubt established conclusions]

[Replacement Carrier: Must not form a fixed self]

Gu Xinghe suddenly spoke,

"The National Awakening Network can still connect to the breeding pods."

"Just now, The Six Seats located the No. 9 Forbidden Zone through us."

Lin Jin looked at him.

"Can you send us there?"

"Not people."

Gu Xinghe raised his hand, pressing down on the remaining four Divine Seat emblems on his chest.

"But we can send a segment of personality identification."

Thirteen understood immediately.

"To make those Embryonic Seeds have names first?"

"They have no life experiences."

Gu Xinghe said.

"Giving them names at random will only be judged by the system as external labels."

Shen Tingxue looked at the crying that was still looping.

"Then find the original sound."

These one thousand two hundred and four cries came from the same original sound.

As long as they could find the true owner of the voice, they would know who was the very first to develop independent consciousness in the breeding chambers.

Luo Wensheng's hand pressed against the broadcast line once more.

This time, she did not try to record all the sounds.

She only traced back the source of the transcription along the pulse that occurred every seven seconds.

The ice layer rapidly turned black.

Blood began to seep from her wrist again.

Thirteen pressed his hand onto the back of her palm, sharing the impact of the national network for her.

Lin Jin used an ordinary wrench to dismantle the broadcast host, stripping away all modifications, duplications, and pitch changes layer by layer.

At the first layer, the baby's crying disappeared.

At the second layer, the mechanical pulse weakened.

At the third layer, breathing appeared.

It was not a baby.

It was the breathing of a young girl.

Very light.

As if she had been lying in an extremely narrow space for many years.

When the fourth layer was peeled away, the girl finally made a sound.

It was not crying.

She was counting.

"One thousand two hundred and one."

"One thousand two hundred and two."

"One thousand two hundred and three."

"One thousand two hundred and four."

After she finished counting, she paused for seven seconds.

Then she started counting from one all over again.

Lin Jin stared at the sound waveform.

"She is confirming the number of people."

Luo Wensheng's fingertips wrote with difficulty:

[It's not the number of people.]

[It's the number of times she has awakened.]

Every time the breeding pods start up, she wakes up once.

Every time she wakes up, she is recorded, ruled, and purged.

After one thousand two hundred and four times, she still remembers that she once woke up.

This was the most complete personality that The Six Seats were currently screening.

In the center of the national map, the black dot of the top-ranked Embryonic Seed suddenly expanded.

[Optimal carrier confirmed]

[Embryonic Seed Serial Number: 000]

[Independent personality completeness: 99%]

[Name: None]

[Cultivation duration: Twenty years]

Earlier than both Lin Jin and Thirteen.

When Lin Shoushan saw the serial number 000, he suddenly sat up from the treatment pod.

The monitoring equipment instantly burst into a flurry of alarms.

"She is still alive?"

Lin Jin stared at him.

"You know her?"

For the first time, a look bordering on terror appeared on Lin Shoushan's face.

"She is not a subsequent Embryonic Seed."

"She is something that existed in the No. 9 Forbidden Zone even before the White Tower was built."

Number 000 on the map slowly opened her eyes.

For the first time, her true voice came through the national network.

"Lin Shoushan."

"You finally admit that I am alive."

She had no babyish crying tone.

Her voice was very young and very calm.

"You took away Lin Jin."

"Left Thirteen behind."

"Closed the White Tower."

"And buried me along with the versions of myself that woke up one thousand two hundred and three times, all right here."

The young girl's gaze pierced through the network, landing on Lin Jin.

"Now the Divine Seats want me to be their body."

"If you want to save me, come to the No. 9 Forbidden Zone."

"If you want to kill me, also come to the No. 9 Forbidden Zone."

She raised her hand.

The legs of the six Divine Seats were grabbed by her simultaneously, freezing in midair for the first time.

In the darkness behind the girl, one thousand two hundred and three faces identical to hers opened their eyes one after another.

"But be quick."

"Because I can no longer tell—"

"Of these one thousand two hundred and four versions of me, which one wants to live the most."

She slowly turned her head, looking deeper into the darkness.

There, a Golden Delivery Room a hundred times larger than the White Tower was rising from beneath the No. 9 Forbidden Zone.

In the center of the delivery room hung a divine corpse whose head and limbs had been severed.

And inside the empty chest cavity of the divine corpse, the only title the girl remembered was carved.

[Mother of All Things]