104: Chapter 104 The Device Goes Berserk

In the cold vacuum of space, the remnants of Tear Star twisted and collapsed in a manner defying physical laws. The Lake of Memories, once hailed as the “Congealed Place of Sorrow,” had long lost the gentle luster of its liquid emotional crystals. The entire lake body was torn into countless fragments by an extremely violent dark force, swirling and gathering in the universe, ultimately forming a black vortex that continuously devoured light and energy—an emotion black hole.

The source of this black hole was the emotion stripping device that AKai had secretly developed behind everyone's backs and hastily activated during the Anti-Emotion Alliance's raid. Under the erosion of Tear Star's billions of years of accumulated sorrowful energy, this mechanical creation, which was still in its experimental phase, completely lost control, giving birth to a terrifying existence with independent self-awareness. Franklin immediately named it: elegy.

elegy had no fixed form; it was an aggregate of sorrow, a concretization of pain, a prison for all negative emotions. It used the device as its skeleton, the memories of Tear Star Civilization's demise as its flesh, and AKai's decades of buried regret as its soul. From its birth, it began to indiscriminately devour all surrounding emotional fluctuations. Whether it was the lingering obsessions of Tear Star's deceased, the anxiety in Lin Fan's team's hearts, or the cold rational fluctuations in the Anti-Emotion Alliance soldiers, all were mercilessly sucked into the black hole's core, becoming nourishment for its expansion.

The entire Tear Star system was enveloped by a suffocating layer of oppressive gray energy. Faint wails echoed through the universe—the final cries of countless souls whose emotions had been stripped away, sharp and fragmented, like countless fine needles piercing deep into the spirit of every living being.

Lin Fan immediately shielded Kate behind him, as a soft yet firm golden light sphere of energy rose from his palm, forming a thick defensive barrier around them. The pale golden light violently collided with the surging black emotional energy, emitting strange crackling sounds. Energy ripples spread outwards like water waves, shattering the surrounding floating emotional crystal fragments.

“Don't move, Kate.” Lin Fan's voice was steady and powerful, yet it couldn't hide the tension in his heart. He could clearly perceive elegy's power rapidly escalating, growing stronger every second. “The energy properties of this thing are extremely suppressive to you. It will directly devour your emotional resonance. Once touched, your cosmic state will completely lose control.”

Kate leaned against Lin Fan's back, her body trembling slightly. Her pupils had completely transformed into a deep starry sky color, a sign of accelerated cosmic evolution. At this moment, her gaze penetrated layers of dark energy, directly “seeing” the essence of elegy—it was not machinery, not energy, but an infinitely magnified human memory, a memory filled with despair, guilt, and pain.

“It... is not inanimate,” Kate's voice was as light as a feather, yet carried astonishing certainty. “Lin Fan, there's human warmth inside it, a sorrow heavier than all the deceased of Tear Star combined. That is... the sorrow of our companion.”

Lin Fan's heart sank, instantly understanding Kate's meaning.

Only AKai, the creator, could have caused the emotion stripping device to birth such a terrifying consciousness.

Just then, the communicator on his wrist suddenly blared a piercing alarm. Franklin Clinton's urgent voice instantly filled their ears. Simultaneously, a virtual projection unfolded in mid-air. In the image, Franklin Clinton hovered in the center of the spaceship's main control room, enveloped by dense streams of code. His fingers flew across the virtual keyboard at superhuman speed, and beads of data-sweat constantly dripped from his forehead.

“Lin Fan! Kate! The worst has happened!” Franklin Clinton's voice carried a rare hint of panic. “AKai's device has been completely corrupted by Tear Star's sorrowful energy. Its underlying logic has been completely restructured. Now it's no longer a machine, but a consciousness entity with painful memories at its core! I tried to invade, block, and destroy it with maximum authority, all to no avail—its operational basis isn't code, it's emotion!”

In the projection, all the spaceship's instrument panels glowed with dazzling red lights. The energy bar plummeted wildly, and the defense system was constantly being eroded by elegy's energy. The main control AI's automatically pop-up prompt boxes occupied half the screen. The familiar voice of elizabeth 2.0, with its earnest helplessness and sarcasm, abruptly broke the suffocating tension:

“This AI advises you to engage in fewer dangerous inventions. Last time, a spatial jump deviation caused the spaceship to crash into an asteroid belt, and repair costs overran the budget for three years. This time, you directly created an emotion black hole. If this continues, this AI will apply to activate its self-protection program—which means abandoning you and running away.”

Franklin Clinton was so choked by this sudden sarcasm that he almost interrupted his operation. He snapped back at the communicator, “Is this the time to calculate budgets? Immediately mobilize all backup energy from the spaceship and help me pinpoint elegy's core coordinates! A few more minutes, and the entire spaceship will be transformed into an emotion absorber!”

Lin Fan quickly assessed the situation and calmly issued instructions: “Franklin Clinton, you stay on the spaceship and do your best to block elegy's invasion of the ship, while monitoring the Dimensional Rift fluctuations towards Earth. I'll take Kate away from the emotion black hole's core to ensure her safety. Now, immediately locate AKai's position, I must find him!”

As his voice fell, Lin Fan's gaze swept across the chaotic battlefield, but he couldn't find the silent figure in the black combat suit. An ominous premonition, like a cold viper, instantly climbed his back.

At this moment, AKai stood at the very edge of the emotion black hole.

The black emotional energy, like countless viscous vipers, tightly coiled around his limbs, torso, and even burrowed into his seven orifices, invading his mental sea. His eyes had lost their former sharpness and rationality, becoming hollow and gray, yet a strange, satisfied smile hung on his lips. He had completely lost control of his body, becoming elegy's most loyal puppet.

No one knew that from the moment The Nihilist, representing the Anti-Emotion Alliance, stood before them and declared, “Emotion is the source of cosmic chaos, only absolute rationality can be eternal,” AKai's heart defenses, sealed for decades, had completely collapsed.

His entire life had been spent avoiding a memory—in his childhood, his most beloved younger sister, due to an innate emotional sensory overload, was unable to bear any trace of pain or sorrow in the world. Ultimately, one night, she chose to end her young life.

That was a scar he could never heal.

He had witnessed interstellar wars triggered by anger, advanced civilizations destroyed by greed, and life forms heading towards ruin due to obsession. His sister's death made him firmly believe that emotion was the source of all tragedy.

So he secretly developed the emotion stripping device, using the energy of the Dimensional Rift, without the team's knowledge. He wanted to create a world of absolute rationality, free from pain, sorrow, and loss of control. He wanted the people around him to live in eternal peace. He thought this was protection, salvation, but he forgot: happiness without pain is meaningless, and a life without emotion is merely a walking corpse.

At the critical moment when the Anti-Emotion Alliance raided Tear Star and artillery fire covered the Lake of Memories, AKai, in a moment of desperation, activated the unfinished device. He originally intended to absorb the enemy's emotional fluctuations to buy his team a chance at survival, but he never expected that the liquid emotional crystals on Tear Star's surface would act like a catalyst, causing the device to instantly go berserk.

And the core of elegy was not mechanical logic at all, but a projection of AKai's childhood memory of losing his sister. It was a monster formed by all his guilt, his regret, his fear of emotion, and his decades of self-torment.

“No emotion... no pain...” AKai murmured in a hoarse, dry voice, completely devoid of self-awareness. “Sister, I did it... I helped you escape pain... and I helped everyone, escape pain...”

elegy seemed to sense its host's surrender, and its rotation speed suddenly accelerated. The black emotion black hole expanded exponentially, drawing in more Tear Star remnants, and the wailing in the universe grew even more piercing. In the distant starry sky, the remaining warships of the Anti-Emotion Alliance did not retreat; instead, they slowly stopped in a safe zone. On the bridge, The Nihilist watched the scene through the observation window, and a barely perceptible smile appeared on its cold mechanical face.

“Emotion, as expected, is the most fragile and filthy existence in the universe.” The Nihilist's voice was devoid of any fluctuation. “AKai's experiment is even more perfect than we anticipated. Once elegy devours all emotions in this star system, Lin Fan's team will collapse without a fight, and the Light Sphere Fragment will ultimately belong to us.”

Crisis was not only present in the distant Tear Star system.

On Earth, in the virtual core control room of the Floating City, Little Kate stood before a giant 3D holographic projection, her brows tightly furrowed. On the projection, the expansion data of global Dimensional Rifts was marked with red alert lines, like a terrifying giant net, firmly enveloping the entire Earth. The energy of the emotion black hole erupting in the Tear Star system was spreading towards Earth at an alarming speed through the Dimensional Rift channels.

Suddenly, the 3D projection violently warped, and in the center of a giant rift above the Pacific Ocean, a blurry figure of a young girl inexplicably appeared.

That figure had the exact same face, physique, and even the same curve of hair as Kate, but her body was entwined with fragmented spatial turbulence, semi-transparent, as if she could completely dissipate in the rift at any moment. A faint consciousness fluctuation, spanning hundreds of millions of kilometers of cosmic distance, accurately entered Little Kate's mental sea:

“Sister... save me... it hurts so much...”

Little Kate trembled, stepping back abruptly, her pupils contracting sharply.

That was Kate from a parallel universe.

It was another version of herself, who had been swept into the spacetime turbulence when the Dimensional Rift first collapsed, and should have completely vanished.

She immediately mobilized all the computing power of the virtual world, frantically locking onto the figure's coordinates, only to find that the other party's existence was on the verge of collapse. The spatial turbulence was tearing apart her soul and body bit by bit. Little Kate's fingers trembled as she sent an emergency communication of the highest level to Lin Fan's team, muttering, “Why... why is there another me? How many secrets does the rift still hide...”

Lin Fan, far away on Tear Star, received this communication almost simultaneously. Little Kate's tearful voice instantly made his heart sink to rock bottom:

“Brother Lin Fan! Another Sister Kate appeared in Earth's Dimensional Rift! She's about to be torn apart by spatial turbulence! And elegy's energy has already affected Earth, many ordinary people's emotions are being stripped away, and a strange calm is appearing in cities; everyone is like soulless puppets!”

Dual crises, like two colossal mountains, heavily crashed onto Lin Fan's shoulders.

The emotion black hole continued to rage, AKai was completely controlled, the parallel universe's Kate was in mortal danger, Earth civilization faced the catastrophic threat of having its emotions drained, and the Kate beside him, whose cosmic state was already extremely unstable, if affected by elegy, could very likely directly transform into a soulless cosmic rule entity, forever losing her humanity as “Kate.”

Lin Fan looked down at the girl clutching his clothes. In Kate's starry sky-colored pupils, there was no fear, only determination and heartache. She could perceive Earth's crisis, perceive the pain of her other self, and even more clearly “hear” AKai's soul's cry, about to be completely swallowed, deep within elegy's core.

[part:gemini-3.0-flash]

"Lin Fan," Kate looked up, reaching out to gently stroke his tense cheek, her fingertips carrying the unique cool temperature of the Light Sphere Fragment. "The core of the elegy is AKai's memory, his pain. Only by awakening him can we stop all of this. I can resonate with his memories, and the Light Sphere Fragment can soothe the sorrow. I must go in."

"No." Lin Fan refused without hesitation, his tone so firm there was no room for negotiation. "It's too dangerous! The emotion-devouring power of the elegy is destructive. Once you enter its core, you're likely to be assimilated and completely lose your human consciousness. Your universalization will be completed directly, and by then, you won't be yourself anymore!"

"But this is the only way." Kate held his hand, pressing her palm against his, as tiny golden Light Sphere Fragments flowed between their fingertips. "AKai is our partner; I can't watch him be destroyed by his own pain. The purpose of the Light Sphere's existence is to carry emotions and balance the universe. This isn't danger; it's my mission."

As the two were arguing, Franklin's voice rang out again, carrying an unprecedented gravity: "Lin Fan! I can't hold on! The elegy has already broken through the ship's third layer of defense and is invading the core emotion module! If this continues, the ship will become its puppet, and we'll all be trapped and die here! I've locked onto the elegy's core coordinates—it's right on AKai! It has completely bonded with AKai's spirit! Just destroy or purify the core, and we can stop the rampage!"

Lin Fan looked up and saw a giant hand condensed from black emotional energy stretching out from the black hole. With an aura that could destroy heaven and earth, it slammed violently toward their ship. The ship's defensive barrier instantly rippled violently, its light flickering, threatening to shatter at any moment.

And AKai, entangled in energy, slowly raised his hand. His hollow eyes locked onto Kate as he issued the elegy's cold command:

"Devour... emotion carrier... Light Sphere Fragment... belongs to me..."

The elegy knew very well that Kate was the most perfect emotion carrier in the multiverse and the host of the Light Sphere Fragments. By devouring her, it could completely control the emotional rules of the entire universe and become an existence that transcended all civilizations.

Lin Fan's gaze suddenly sharpened. He pulled Kate tightly into his arms, and the Light Sphere energy in his palm instantly erupted to its limit. The golden light, like a blazing sun, illuminated the entire dark sector of space and collided fiercely with the giant black energy hand.

Boom—

An invisible shockwave of energy exploded in space, instantly grinding the surrounding debris into powder.

"Franklin, prepare for energy support!" Lin Fan's voice was as resolute as iron. "I'm taking Kate into the core of the black hole. No matter the cost, we must bring AKai back!"

Kate squeezed Lin Fan's hand. Their energies intertwined and fused, turning into a golden stream of light that pierced through the darkness, charging resolutely toward the deepest part of the emotion black hole, toward AKai, who was enveloped in pain and regret.

Inside the ship, Franklin gritted his teeth, concentrating all his computing power on the defense and traction systems. Streams of code flashed crazily before his eyes: "Don't you dare die... If you die, who's going to listen to me complain about this crappy universe..."

Inside the emotion black hole was a space of total chaos and inversion.

There was no up, down, left, or right, and no passage of time. Only endless negative emotions came rushing at them: sadness, despair, guilt, anger, fear... like a tide submerging their consciousness. Even with the protection of Lin Fan's Light Sphere energy, Kate still felt a bout of intense dizziness. Her starry eyes flickered slightly, nearly being assimilated by this power.

"Hold on." Lin Fan tightened his arm, holding her closer. The golden energy, like armor, completely enveloped them. "We're almost at the core."

Passing through layers of dark energy, the two finally saw the physical form of the elegy—it was a silver mechanical device covered in cracks, suspended in the very center of the black hole. The surface of the device was wrapped in black sorrowful energy, and in the very center of the device, a memory fragment was embedded.

In the fragment was a young boy, holding a pale little girl, kneeling on the cold ground and weeping bitterly.

That was AKai as a child, and his deceased younger sister.

This was the heart of the elegy, the root of all the rampages.

At that moment, Lin Fan's and Kate's consciousnesses were automatically pulled into AKai's mental sea.

Beneath their feet was cold, damp gray earth. From the sky, a cold rain fell incessantly; every drop of rain was one of AKai's tears. Countless shattered memory fragments floated around: the scene of his sister smiling as she took a small flower, the scene of her curling up in bed in pain, the scene of her closing her eyes forever... All the beauty ended in tragedy, and all the warmth turned into soul-piercing pain.

Little AKai curled up in a corner of his memories, his small body trembling uncontrollably. He held his sister, who had long since stopped breathing, his crying hoarse and desperate.

"Brother... it hurts... my heart hurts so much..."

The sister's illusory voice echoed in the mental sea. It was the endless torment brought by emotional overload, a weight of life that her young self could not bear.

"It's all my fault..." Little AKai murmured to himself, his tears hitting the ground and turning into pure sorrowful energy that nourished the elegy. "If only I could have helped you turn off your emotions... If you didn't feel pain... you wouldn't have left me..."

This was the inner demon of AKai's life, and the entire reason for the elegy's birth.

Just then, a cold and piercing roar exploded over the mental sea:

"Outsiders! Get out! Emotion is the original sin! Pain is a shackle! Only by stripping everything away can eternal peace be achieved!"

The consciousness of the elegy had fully awakened. Black energy turned into a wild wind, sweeping across the entire mental sea, attempting to completely obliterate Lin Fan and Kate.

Kate did not back down. She broke free from Lin Fan's hand and walked step by step toward Little AKai curled in the corner. The Light Sphere Fragment in her palm emitted a soft, warm glow. This light possessed no offensive capability, yet it could easily dispel sorrow and despair, like winter sunlight melting the continuous cold rain in the mental sea.

"AKai." Kate's voice was gentle yet full of power, slowly echoing through the mental sea. "Pain is not a sin, and sadness is not a burden. It is precisely because we have lost that we know how to cherish; it is because we have felt pain that we understand the meaning of joy. Your sister never blamed you. She had your love and the warmest times, and that is enough."

She knelt down and gently reached out, touching the top of Little AKai's head. The Light Sphere's energy flowed through her fingertips and into Little AKai's heart.

"Emotions have never been the source of chaos in the universe; they are its most precious treasure. It is love, concern, and sacrifice—the courage we have to face the entire universe for one another."

The warm light gradually enveloped Little AKai and the sister in his arms. The illusory little girl raised her hand, gently patting Little AKai's head with a tender smile, then turned into specks of light and dissipated into the glow.

That was not a disappearance, but a liberation.

Outside the mental sea, the adult AKai, controlled by the elegy, shuddered violently.

His hollow eyes slowly regained their luster. The black energy was stripped from his body bit by bit and dissipated. The elegy's roar became weak and pained, no longer a cold command but a sorrow that had finally been let go.

"Sister... I was wrong..."

Tears finally fell from the corners of AKai's eyes.

He finally understood that what he had wanted to strip away was never emotion, but his own guilt. What he had wanted to protect was never the world, but his past self who had failed to save his sister. Pain is the proof of being alive, and sadness is the price of love. A world without emotion, no matter how perfect, is just a dead, silent desert.

"elegy... stop..."

AKai raised his hand and pressed it gently against the rampaging emotion stripping device. As he let go of his inner turmoil, the cracks on the device's surface grew larger. The black sorrowful energy began to reverse, no longer devouring emotions but soothing them.

The rotation speed of the emotion black hole grew slower and slower, gradually shrinking and dissipating. The gray energy in the Tear Star sector receded bit by bit, restoring the universe's depth and tranquility.

The ship's alarms stopped abruptly, and the defensive barrier glowed with a steady light once more. Franklin slumped in the control room, letting out a long sigh of relief as he wiped a bead of data-stream sweat from his forehead. "It's finally... over..."

Lin Fan walked to Kate's side and gently hugged her, his heart finally at ease. Kate looked up at him, her starry eyes once again showing the gentle smile of a human.

However, the crisis had not completely ended.

Although AKai had awakened and the elegy was temporarily soothed, the emotion stripping device had not been destroyed. Instead, under the influence of the Light Sphere's energy, it had undergone an unknown mutation. From inside the device, a faint distress signal from the Mechanical Civilization could be heard:

"Eye of the Observer... awakening... requesting support..."

At the same time, within Earth's Dimensional Rift, the figure of the parallel universe Kate grew fainter, and her distress signal became increasingly weak.

The warships of the Anti-Emotion Alliance remained in space. The Nihilist looked at the now-peaceful Tear Star sector, the smile on his lips growing even more intense.

And at the edge of the Solar System, a colossally huge mechanical eye was slowly opening, its cold, rational gaze locking onto this blue planet filled with emotion.

The crisis of the device's rampage was temporarily resolved, but a greater storm was already quietly brewing in the depths of the universe. AKai's inner demon was resolved, but it left behind an unknown emotional stabilization anchor; Kate's universalization was temporarily suppressed, but it added a connection to a parallel universe; the Anti-Emotion Alliance's plot had yet to be exposed, and a higher-dimensional observer had already arrived.

Lin Fan held Kate's hand and looked out into the deep universe, his gaze firm.

He knew that the return journey from the Star Abyss had only just begun. What they would face was no longer just Dimensional Rifts and emotional monsters, but the collision of universal rules, the scrutiny of higher existences, and the ultimate redemption of partners, lovers, and civilizations all bound together.

The debris of the Tear Star floated quietly in the universe, and the emotional crystals of the Lake of Memories reconsolidated, reflecting the gentle starlight. AKai stood before the device and silently put it away, his eyes no longer filled with confusion and regret, but with determination and redemption.

Franklin's voice came through the communicator, carrying the relief of a survivor: "I'm telling you, if anyone dares to sneakily pull off a dangerous invention again, I'll delete all their experimental data! Also, who's going to reimburse the ship's repair budget? This AI is keeping tabs!"

Kate leaned against Lin Fan's shoulder and laughed softly.

The starry sky was vast and the journey home long, but as long as they had each other and partners to fight alongside, even if the road ahead was a ten-thousand-fathom Star Abyss, they could walk their own path step by step.

And those clues buried deep in the universe, those truths yet to be revealed, those impending enemies—all were waiting for them to face and conclude one by one.

The collision of emotion and rules, the fusion of humanity and the universe, had only just begun its most magnificent prologue.