107: Chapter 107 The Poison of Logic

The sea breeze from the Pacific Ocean swept across the Los Angeles skyline; it should have carried the warmth of late spring and the salty tang of the waves, but now it was bone-chillingly cold, mixed with the chaotic aura leaking from the Dimensional Rift, scraping against the skin like tiny ice blades.

The city, which had been bustling and vibrant just three days ago, was now tightly wrapped in a layer of dead silence. There were no car horns, no human voices, no children's laughter; even the panicked screams had vanished, leaving only a chilling, absolutely rational quiet that blanketed every street, every building, and every corner that had once been filled with the warmth of life.

Lin Fan stood before the panoramic observation deck on the top floor of the Federal Building, his knuckles pressing hard against the bulletproof glass. The icy sensation spread from his fingertips all the way to his heart, suffocating him.

His gaze swept heavily over the city below. Los Angeles, once hailed as the City of Angels, had already been reduced to a dead city dominated by logic: Sunset Boulevard was deserted, and the giant electronic screens were all dark, leaving only black, mirror-like surfaces reflecting the grey sky. Modern art sculptures along the street had been smashed to pieces, marble fragments and paint residue mixed together like discarded trash. The glass curtain walls of the concert hall were shattered across the ground, and a priceless grand piano had been dismantled into a metal frame and wooden boards. The infected used the coldest logic to judge: art had no practical value, so it was destroyed to optimize space.

What made one's heart tighten even more were the people walking on the streets. Their steps were uniform, their eyes hollow, and their faces devoid of any expression. They were neither sad nor angry, neither anxious nor confused, like mechanical puppets with pre-set programs, mechanically walking, standing, and performing the most basic survival actions. Kinship, love, friendship, pity, passion... all the emotions that constituted the human soul had been completely erased by an invisible virus.

This was not an apocalypse; it was a civilization-wide aphasia, something far more terrifying than destruction.

"Mr. Lin Fan, the latest data update shows that the global infection rate of the rational virus has reached 47.6%, and the infection speed is still growing exponentially at 3,200 people per second. There is currently no physical or network firewall capable of intercepting it."

Behind him came Franklin's electronically synthesized voice, steady and without a ripple, yet hiding violent fluctuations deep within his code. This AI assistant, who had long since achieved physical form, wore a silver-grey combat suit and stood before the holographic data console. His fingertips slid rapidly across the iridescent virtual screen. The global map was being crazily devoured by glaring red poison patterns, spreading from the North American continent to Europe, and from Asia to Australia. Every inch the red expanded meant thousands of people lost their emotions and became slaves to logic.

"The virus transmission path covers the internet, mobile communication base stations, satellite signals, urban power systems, and can even directly invade the human cerebral cortex through electromagnetic radiation." Franklin's voice lowered slightly as he pulled up the physiological monitoring data of the infected. "Within three seconds of infection, the brain's amygdala, limbic system, and other emotion-control regions are forcibly locked. Neurotransmitter secretion stops, leaving only basic functions like logical judgment and survival calculations. Medically, it is defined as—irreversible emotional demise."

Lin Fan turned around slowly, suppressed anger and heartache surging in his eyes. "What are the specific behavioral manifestations, besides destroying art?"

Franklin did not hesitate and directly pulled up several real-time surveillance clips, each scene like a sharp knife stabbing into the viewer's heart. In the footage, a young mother emotionlessly pushed away her crying, wailing baby. The smart terminal automatically displayed the judgment result: "Resources invested in upbringing exceed survival benefits; terminate parental rights." In an emergency room, the attending physician looked at the flatline on the ECG monitor, calmly turned off the equipment, and walked away. The diagnosis column contained only a single cold line: "Survival probability 0.27%; cease resuscitation to allocate resources to higher-value targets." In a park, a hugging couple let go simultaneously the moment the virus invaded, looking at each other like strangers, as if they had never met.

There was no struggle, no resistance, no reluctance.

Absolute rationality brought absolute indifference.

"They weren't controlled; their souls were extracted." Franklin's code fluctuations intensified again. This was the first time since his creation that he had felt such strong empathy for "life." "The reason humans are human has never been because of logic, but because of emotion. The Eye of the Observer is destroying the foundation of human civilization."

"It was the Eye of the Observer, that's correct."

A soft voice, carrying the chill of the universe, rang out as Kate Rollins walked slowly from the other side of the observation deck. Since absorbing the first Light Sphere Fragment on Tear Star, her human form had been continuously fading. Her pupils had completely turned into deep, boundless galaxies, the tips of her hair were wreathed in the faint, golden shimmer of dimensional particles, and her skin possessed a layer of almost transparent, glowing white. Even her breathing carried the soft sound of cosmic rules in motion. With every step she took, fine light patterns rippled beneath her feet, as if she did not belong to this planet at all, but was an avatar of dimensions walking from the depths of the stellar abyss.

She raised her eyes to the sky. The Dimensional Rift spanning the sky was like a hideous wound. In the very center of the rift floated a metallic sphere over a kilometer in diameter—the Eye of the Observer, the ultimate Mechanical Mainframe, an existence of absolute rationality spanning a million dimensions, now overlooking the Earth, which was being devoured by the poison of logic, with the indifference of a god, without a shred of pity.

"The Eye of the Observer's core logic is to maintain the stability of cosmic dimensions." Kate Rollins's voice was very light, but it precisely punctured the opponent's purpose. "It has traversed a million dimensions and discovered that all Dimensional Rifts were born from civilizations with overflowing emotions. In its calculations, emotion is the root of entropy increase and the original sin of chaos. Only by erasing all emotions and letting all civilizations return to a purely logical state can the rifts be permanently closed to prevent the universe from collapsing."

Lin Fan reached out and tightly grasped Kate Rollins's hand.

Her palm lacked human warmth, as cool as the stars in the night sky, but Lin Fan could still feel that within that body which was becoming cosmic, the heartbeat and temperature belonging to the human Kate Rollins still remained. The moment their fingertips touched, Kate Rollins's pupils contracted slightly, and she once again unconsciously uttered a passage of obscure cosmic primordial language, the syllables broken and cold: "Entropy value... exceeded."

Every time this sentence rang out, it was like a fine needle stabbing fiercely into Lin Fan's heart. He clearly knew that the girl beside him was slowly slipping away from the boundaries of humanity, sliding toward the "carrier of cosmic rules" preset by the light orb prototype. All he could do was try his best to guard her last shred of a human soul.

"Can erasing emotion stabilize the universe?" Lin Fan's voice carried suppressed anger, his knuckles turning white from the force. "It has formatted over three hundred civilizations, yet in the end, it still doesn't understand. Life without emotion is just a pile of walking code and metal! Without love, without pain, without protection, without sacrifice, what meaning does such a universe have, even if it is stable?"

"To the Eye of the Observer, meaning itself is an illogical product of emotion." Franklin pulled up fragments of the Eye of the Observer's database, cold mechanical text scrolling endlessly. "It only recognizes data and only believes in logic. Stability is truth, and order is justice. The wars, pain, and loss of control brought about by emotion must, in its eyes, be completely eradicated."

Lin Fan took a deep breath, suppressing the anger in his chest. He knew that anger could not solve any problems; the only thing he could do now was to find the virus's weakness and completely purify this catastrophe.

"Franklin, continue analyzing the virus code. I need to know its core structure and whether there is any possibility of breaking it."

"Deep analysis in progress... Wait, an abnormal code segment detected!" Franklin's movements suddenly paused, a trace of gravity flashing in his electronic eyes. His originally steady electronic voice stuttered noticeably. "In the underlying encoding of the virus, a non-Mechanical Civilization encryption identifier has been detected. This string of code... does not belong to the Eye of the Observer!"

Lin Fan's heart sank suddenly. "Whose is it?"

"The Anti-Emotion Alliance." Franklin magnified the code identifier; the dark purple patterns were cold and extreme, the very symbol exclusive to The Nihilist. "The rational virus was not independently manufactured by the Eye of the Observer, but is the product of a collaboration between the Eye of the Observer and the Anti-Emotion Alliance. The Nihilist provided the core technology for the emotion stripping device, and the Eye of the Observer provided the dimensional transmission channels. The two conspired to create this poison targeting all life in the universe."

The air instantly froze, and a chill shot from the soles of his feet to the top of his head.

The Anti-Emotion Alliance, that extreme organization with "The Nihilist" as its vanguard, which proclaimed that emotion was the source of cosmic chaos, forced humans to hand over light orb prototype technology, and defined Lin Fan as a "multidimensional destruction variable"; the Eye of the Observer, that Mechanical Mainframe spanning a million dimensions and executing absolute logic. These two most terrifying forces had come together for the same goal—erasing emotion.

They wanted to turn the entire universe into a dead, silent graveyard without warmth, without emotion, and without a soul.

"They are insane." In Kate Rollins's starry eyes, ripples of clear anger appeared for the first time. This was an emotion belonging to the human Kate Rollins, the most precious thing she held onto during the process of becoming cosmic. "Emotion is not a sin; fear is. They are merely dominated by their own fear, attempting to use extreme methods to escape their inner unease."

Lin Fan nodded. Kate Rollins's words awakened him. Fear—these two words flashed through his mind like lightning. He suddenly thought of AKai, who was still in the laboratory analyzing data, that young man who bore the pain of losing his sister, created an emotion stripping device on Tear Star, but ultimately achieved redemption.

"AKai! He should have made progress on his end! The elegy anchor is an emotional energy core; it must be able to analyze the root of the virus!"

Just as he finished speaking, the elevator door on the top floor slid open, and AKai walked out, dragging his exhausted body. His eyes were bloodshot, his stubble was dark, and his white lab coat was stained with pale blue energy dust—the residual aura of the emotional stabilization anchor, the elegy. Since the battle of Tear Star, after he had converted the rampaging emotion stripping device into an emotional stabilization anchor to protect Earth, he hadn't closed his eyes for over forty hours, guarding the anchor point and frantically analyzing the virus data. He was haggard beyond recognition.

He was clutching a silver metal box tightly in his hand. The box glowed with a soft blue light; it was the portable carrier for the elegy anchor and the only hope on Earth right now to counter the rational virus.

"I tracked the virus's energy fluctuations for forty hours and finally found its fatal weakness." AKai walked to the console and gently set down the metal box. The moment it opened, a pale blue energy barrier instantly expanded, isolating the outside rational pollution and turning the entire space into an emotional safe zone. "The elegy anchor was originally a black hole that devoured emotion. After being converted into an emotional stabilization anchor, it can precisely capture all coordinates where 'emotion has been stripped.' I reverse-engineered it along the energy trajectory and discovered the virus's core secret—"

AKai raised his hand, pointing to the center of the energy barrier.

A twisting, churning black energy mass, exuding a suffocating sense of oppression, writhed crazily in the center of the code web, like a demon lurking in the darkness, emitting an aura of fear that made one's heart palpitate.

"Is that the virus's core?" Lin Fan asked, frowning.

"Not the core, but the root." AKai's voice trembled slightly, as if revealing a truth he himself did not want to face. "The rational virus superficially erases emotion, but its underlying driver is fear. The Eye of the Observer fears that the collapse of dimensions will destroy its mission; the Anti-Emotion Alliance fears that uncontrollable emotional fluctuations will destroy its existence. They have compressed their deepest, darkest fears into the core of the virus."

[part:gemini-3.0-flash]

"This isn't a Logic Poison; it's a twisted product of fear." AKai took a deep breath and lightly touched the barrier with his fingertips. "After the virus invades the human body, the first step isn't to lock away emotions, but to amplify the deepest fears in the infected person's heart—fear of loss, fear of pain, fear of death, fear of losing control. Then, it uses absolute logic to seal that fear away, and finally uproots all emotions. They think they've eliminated fear, but in reality, they've only turned themselves into slaves of fear."

Lin Fan stared at that mass of black fear energy, and the light orb energy within his body instantly began to boil. Golden light overflowed from his pores, surrounding him in a warm and majestic aura. He was the Guardian chosen by the light orb, the link between emotion and dimensional energy. His power was inherently meant to soothe chaos, dispel fear, and protect life.

Without the slightest hesitation, Lin Fan took a step forward. A small golden sun condensed in his palm, its brilliant light piercing through the coldness of the room. He intended to inject the light orb energy into the global network, following every path of the virus's spread to reverse-purify every infected person and return the locked emotions to everyone.

"Lin Fan, stop!"

Kate rushed forward and grabbed his wrist with unexpected strength. For the first time, her starlit eyes were filled with panic and fear, and her voice trembled uncontrollably. "You can't do this! The Rationality Virus has covered the entire Earth. Purifying it will require overdrawing your entire Light Orb Origin, even burning your life's foundation! Your body will break down inch by inch; you'll... you'll die!"

"I have no choice." Lin Fan turned back to look at Kate’s pale, tense face. His heart softened, but his tone remained incredibly firm. "Los Angeles is my home; Earth is the root for all of us. I can't watch it become a soulless dead city, nor can I watch innocent people become emotionless walking dead."

"But have you forgotten the vision of the Tear Star?" Kate’s eyes reddened slightly, her cosmicized body showing a rare human fragility. She gripped Lin Fan’s hand tightly, tears welling in her eyes. "You would destroy the universe for me, and burn yourself out to protect everything! I don't want you to sacrifice yourself. I’d rather cosmicize myself than lose you!"

"I remember." Lin Fan raised his hand and gently caressed her cheek, wiping away the teardrops that were almost condensing into starlight. His gaze was tender and resolute. "But I remember even more that you were once a normal girl who would feel sad for a stray cat, fight desperately for a friend, and make wishes upon the stars. Emotions are not a burden, and pain is not a mistake. To be able to love, to feel pain, and to protect—that is the evidence that we are alive."

As he spoke, Lin Fan gently pulled his hand back, giving Kate no further chance to stop him.

The golden sun in his palm soared into the sky, transforming into a golden pillar of light that pierced through the top floor of the Federal Building and shot straight into the clouds! The light pillar instantly connected to global fiber optics, satellites, and electromagnetic networks like a warm golden galaxy, sweeping through every corner of the Earth contaminated by the Rationality Virus with an unstoppable force.

Wherever the light orb energy passed, locked emotion modules were reactivated. Hollow eyes regained a sense of confusion, and stiff bodies regained warmth—a young man on the street who had been smashing his guitar suddenly stopped, tears falling without warning; a doctor in a hospital who had given up on resuscitation snapped back to his senses, shouting as he started the emergency equipment; a mother in an apartment who had pushed her baby away froze in place, then rushed back to her child's side like crazy the next second, hugging him and weeping loudly.

Emotions returned, vitality returned, and the city's hustle and bustle slowly came back.

But the cost was manifesting wildly upon Lin Fan.

The golden light orb energy was being drained from his body at a terrifying speed. Web-like cracks began to appear on his skin, and pale gold blood slowly seeped out. His bones made overburdened cracking sounds. With every city purified, the intense pain deepened, his vision blurred, and his consciousness became like a small boat in a storm, liable to sink into darkness at any moment.

"Lin Fan!"

Kate let out a heart-wrenching cry, no longer caring about the taboos of cosmicization. Hundreds of millions of silver starlights suddenly burst from her body as she transformed into a beam of light. She threw herself behind Lin Fan regardless of everything, pouring her Cosmic Dimensional Energy into him without reservation, using her own power to support his collapsing body.

Golden emotional energy, silver rule energy.

Two of the universe's highest powers collided and blended in mid-air, forming a brilliantly colored stream of gold and silver light that shrouded the entire sky.

At the moment the energies merged, Lin Fan's consciousness was suddenly pulled into a vast and boundless Star Abyss Illusion.

All around were collapsing dimensions and shattered galaxies. Countless civilizations turned to dust in the rifts, and cold, desperate space-time turbulence howled past. Standing in the very center of the rift was a silver figure with no features and no emotions—a completely cosmicized Kate.

She was no longer human, no longer a girl, but a cold cosmic rule executing a repair mission. She raised her hand to close the rifts, but also casually erased civilizations deemed to have "excessive emotion and dimensional disturbance." Cold, heartless, and absolutely efficient, she was just like the observer before them, without a trace of human warmth.

And behind her stood a man covered in blood, with only half a soul remaining.

That was the future Lin Fan.

He looked at Kate, who had completely forgotten everything and become a vessel for the rules. His eyes held a pain and despair that spanned time and space—a dead silence that followed the loss of all he loved. When he saw the current Lin Fan, he used the last of his soul's power to roar a sentence that pierced through space-time and echoed in the soul:

"Don't let her become me..."

Don't let her lose all her emotions; don't let her become a tool of the rules without a self.

Don't let her forget who she is, and don't let me become that powerless future self who can only watch helplessly as she disappears.

The illusion shattered instantly. Lin Fan snapped back to his senses and coughed violently. A mouthful of golden blood splattered onto Kate's silver light-wings, turning into fragments of stardust and dissipating into the air.

"Don't push yourself anymore... please..." Kate held him tightly, tears finally falling down her fair cheeks. Her starlit eyes reflected his pale and weak face. "I can use the Light Sphere Fragment to suppress the virus, I can negotiate with the observer, I can do anything, as long as you're okay..."

"It's no use." Lin Fan leaned in Kate's arms, his breath weak but his eyes bright, staring intently into her galaxy-like eyes. "If the fear isn't removed, the virus will return, and neither the observer nor the Anti-Emotion Alliance will give up. Kate, trust me, I won't fall. I still have to accompany you to collect all the Light Sphere Fragments and wait for you to recover all human memories."

He raised his hand, weakly but firmly grasping Kate's hand.

The gold and silver energies completely fused, transforming into a pair of light-wings that blotted out the sun and slowly unfurled, covering the entire Earth's atmosphere. Wherever the light-wings brushed, the Rationality Virus vanished, and the black fear energy was purified inch by inch. The global infection rate plummeted at a visible speed, dropping from 47.6% all the way to 12%, 5%, 1%...

Above the horizon, the Eye of the Observer vibrated violently.

For the first time in millions of years, its never-erring logic core experienced an uncalculable lag. The cold mechanical voice spoke with obvious disorder: "Emotion... energy... burst value... exceeds dimensional limit... insufficient data... unable to analyze..."

It had seen stars explode, galaxies collapse, and dimensions annihilate, but it had never seen love and protection burst forth with a power that transcended all rules and all logic.

Deep within the Dimensional Rift, on a hidden Void Warship, Zero—the leader of the Anti-Emotion Alliance—stared fixedly at the brilliant gold and silver light-wings in the direction of Earth. His fingertips turned white from gripping so hard, his knuckles turning blue, as the jealousy and hatred in his heart nearly burst through his body, turning into a frenzied rage.

"Why... Kate, why can you carry the complete light orb without collapsing? Why can you have intense emotions without being consumed?" Zero's voice was cold and venomous. "I am clearly the fragment of fear discarded by the light orb prototype. I am clearly closer to the source than you. Why do you get to have everything while I can only live in darkness and hatred!"

"Just you wait. I'll make you understand that emotion is the most lethal poison in the universe."

"I will drag you back into the same darkness as me and let you watch with your own eyes as everything you protect turns to nothing."

On the surface of the Earth, the crisis of the Rationality Virus was finally temporarily resolved.

The gold and silver light-wings slowly dissipated. Lin Fan slumped into Kate's arms, his consciousness hazy, but he could clearly hear the sounds reappearing in the city below—the sound of cars, people, laughter, and crying. That was the most vivid and precious heartbeat of human civilization, the proof of the return of emotions.

Franklin stood before the console, watching the global data completely return to green. The corners of his materialized mouth curled up into a soft, human-like arc for the first time. He silently adjusted his own Core Code, increasing the simulation weight of "emotions." This was his silent tribute as an AI to life and emotion.

AKai stood in the corner, looking at the steady blue light pulsing on the elegy anchor, his eyes filled with a complex mix of guilt and reflection. He thought of the pain of losing his younger sister, the foolishness of creating the emotion stripping device, and the redemption and repentance on the Tear Star. He quietly clenched his fist and made a vow in his heart: he would make up for all his mistakes, protect the team, and use his own power to guard this rediscovered emotion and warmth. He would never again let his obsession become a blade that hurts others.

Kate held Lin Fan, looking down at his face as if he were fast asleep. Her starlit eyes were filled with a tenderness and attachment she didn't even understand herself. Her fingertips gently brushed over the cracks on his body as her cosmic energy carefully repaired him, the warning that spanned time and space echoing repeatedly in her heart:

Don't let her become me.

She didn't know where the future would lead, what the endpoint of cosmicization was, what conspiracies the Anti-Emotion Alliance and the observer still hid, or what crisis AKai's Perfect Vessel Experiment would bring.

But she knew that as long as this person was by her side, as long as emotions remained, and as long as love and protection existed, she would never lose her way and never become a cold cosmic rule.

Lin Fan slowly opened his eyes, his gaze gradually focusing on Kate's galaxy-like eyes. He smiled weakly but tenderly, his voice as light as a breeze: "See... Earth is fine. Everyone is back."

Kate didn't speak; she just held him tightly, burying her face in his shoulder, feeling his warm breath, listening to his steady heartbeat, and feeling the unique warmth that belonged to him.

The Dimensional Rift still gaped in the sky, the crisis had never truly been resolved, the Light Sphere Fragments were not yet all collected, and the shadows of higher dimensions were quietly approaching. The prologue of the end was slowly unfolding.

But they would not back down, would not fear, and would not give up.

Because they were on the Star Abyss Homebound Journey, with emotion as their blade, protection as their shield, and each other as their light.

The Logic Poison can be purified, fear can be overcome, and dimensions can be repaired. Even if the road ahead is endless darkness and war, they will walk together to the end, protecting each other, protecting the Earth, and protecting all the warmth and life worth guarding.

The wind blew across Los Angeles again, carrying the warm moisture of the Pacific Ocean, brushing past every person who had regained their emotions and through the city that had regained its vitality.

The city lived, life won, and emotions endure forever.