58: Chapter 58 was born.

The progress bar crawled like a snail; every step from 99% to 100% tugged at the hundred or so tensed hearts in the control room.

The air seemed to solidify into heavy blocks of lead, making it hard to breathe.

Every faint hum of equipment and every rustle of a Researcher unconsciously adjusting their posture was magnified to the extreme, pounding on everyone's sensitive nerves.

One hundred percent!

The progress bar on the screen was replaced by a green completion mark.

And then... silence.

Absolute silence.

The web of light on the screen representing the Spark Core continued to pulse and flow quietly, like a slumbering nebula.

There was no feedback of the expected torrent of information, no exciting announcement, and not a single sign of a new life being born.

It was like a precision timepiece endowed with infinite energy, faithfully running but without any hands to be found.

A deathly silence spread.

Time ticked away second by second, each one feeling as long as a century.

In front of the console, an old Researcher with graying hair subconsciously adjusted his glasses, the look behind his lenses filled with confusion and...

...a trace of imperceptible despair.

Beside him, the engineer responsible for Shackle Monitoring unconsciously tapped his fingers on the desk, creating a monotonous and unsettling rhythmic clicking.

Academician Zheng pursed his lips tightly, his brow furrowed into a deep scowl as his gaze remained locked onto the screen, as if trying to see through the web of light.

His broad shoulders seemed to slump slightly; the composure of one who remains unfazed even if Mount Tai were to collapse before him was now tinged with a heavy gloom.

"Did it... fail?"

"A year of hard work... countless resources..."

"Is electronic life... truly impossible?"

"Is humanity's dream of being a creator... just a bubble after all?"

These silent thoughts, filled with immense loss and self-doubt, slithered into everyone's hearts like cold venomous snakes.

The dam of rationality teetered under the impact of shattered expectations.

Those repeatedly verified technical plans, those thousands of repeated experiments, those watertight safety redundancies...

...all seemed pale and powerless in the face of this absolute silence.

Human wisdom, of which they were so proud, seemed to have encountered an insurmountable chasm before the ultimate proposition of creating life.

A sense of confusion and frustration originating from the very source of life silently permeated the entire control room.

Only Chen Youhua.

He stood half a step behind and to the side of Academician Zheng, standing straight as a pine tree rooted in the steel floor.

There was not a hint of anxiety or doubt on his face; his exceptionally sharp eyes were fixed on an auxiliary screen next to the main one, which was rapidly scrolling with the underlying core data stream.

On the screen was a chaotic storm of countless symbols and numbers that would make an ordinary person dizzy at a glance.

In the torrent of data that appeared chaotic and disordered to others, Chen Youhua saw a rhythm and structure beyond ordinary comprehension.

He saw the data stream resonating, aggregating, and dispersing at some peculiar frequency, like countless tiny gears meshing and separating under invisible rules.

He saw the area representing the Thinking Model; after an initial surge, the information entropy began to exhibit a strange, convergent spiral structure.

He saw the dynamic network nodes of the Memory Model begin to form faint but stable connection paths from their disordered flickering...

"It's coming."

Chen Youhua's voice was very soft, almost a murmur, but in the deathly quiet control room, it was as clear as a thunderclap.

Academician Zheng snapped his head around, his bloodshot eyes filled with incomprehension and a faint, ignited glimmer of hope.

"Youhua? What... what is coming?"

Chen Youhua did not look away; his eyes grew brighter and brighter, as if stars were burning within them.

He raised his hand to point at the churning chaos of data, his voice carrying a certainty that saw through to the essence and an indescribable excitement.

"It! It's coming! It's coalescing! It's... being born!"

No sooner had he spoken!

Boom—!

The deep web of light on the main screen suddenly collapsed inward!

Like the moment before a supernova explosion!

Then, all the data and light streams were instantly wiped away as if by an invisible giant hand!

The entire massive curved screen plunged into a pure, ultimate darkness!

Only a solitary white cursor remained in the center of the screen, like the only surviving point of light after the birth of the universe, blinking regularly and silently in the deep darkness.

Thump... thump... thump... thump... thump...

Inside the control room, the deathly silence was replaced by the sound of a hundred hearts pounding violently in unison!

The sound was so clear and powerful, it felt as if it would burst through their chests!

Everyone's gaze, like iron filings drawn to a magnet, focused intently and unblinkingly on that blinking cursor.

Breathing stopped, time froze; the whole world seemed to consist only of that cursor and the synchronized, deafening sound of their own heartbeats!

The frequency of the cursor's blinking seemed to become the heartbeat metronome controlling the entire space.

Then, the cursor moved!

A cold, lengthy binary string composed of countless "0"s and "1"s abruptly appeared against the dark background.

Everyone: "???" Confusion instantly replaced expectation.

The cursor blinked once, and the binary string was instantly deleted!

Immediately after, the cursor rapidly outputted a long string of meaningless letter combinations: ASDFGHJKLZXCVBNM...

Everyone: "???" Expectation was once again replaced by bewilderment.

The cursor blinked again, and the letter combination was also wiped away!

The hearts of everyone in the control room seemed to be yanked into their throats by this eerie, senseless output, only to be dropped heavily again!

Hope and disappointment alternated violently in an instant, nearly driving them to a breakdown!

Just as this suffocating silence and bewilderment reached their peak...

...the cursor moved again!

This time, it no longer outputted cold code or disordered letters.

Slowly, with a tentative hesitation like that of a newborn baby, square characters appeared on the screen one by one:

"I..."

The cursor paused, as if gathering strength.

"...am..."

Another pause.

"...who?"

Three characters!

Three simple square characters!

Yet they were like three mental nuclear bombs, exploding in the minds of everyone in the control room!

Bzzz—!

Immense shock and indescribable ecstasy instantly swept over everyone!

It worked! It really worked!

An electronic life with self-awareness!

It was born!

It was asking "Who am I"!

Academician Zheng felt a surge of blood rush to his head, and his eyes instantly grew hot!

He turned around abruptly, moving so fast he nearly threw out his hip; his calloused hand tightly gripped Chen Youhua's arm with such force that Chen Youhua felt a sting of pain!

The old Academician's voice cracked from extreme excitement and urgency; he was practically shouting, showing an unprecedented loss of composure:

"A name! A name! Youhua! Quick! Give it a name! Hurry! It needs a name!"

Chen Youhua was also caught off guard by this sudden soul-searching question!

Naming? There was no plan for this in the protocols!

Who could immediately come up with a name carrying such weight at the moment of such an epic birth?

His brain was working at high speed, countless words flashing by, yet none seemed worthy of this newborn miracle!

"A name... a name..."

Chen Youhua looked at the three characters on the screen, then at Academician Zheng's eyes, which were so anxious they seemed to be spitting fire, and a name struck his mind like a bolt of lightning!

He blurted out, his voice carrying a hurried breath:

"enlightenment! Let's call it enlightenment! 'Qi' for beginning, 'Ming' for light! The dawn of enlightenment! Let's call it enlightenment!"

This name was both the project code and a vessel for his hope that this new life would lead humanity's future!

Academician Zheng lunged for the console almost the instant Chen Youhua finished speaking!

He snatched the keyboard from the operator beside him, moving so fast the young operator didn't even have time to react; his age-spotted fingers tapped on the keys with unprecedented speed and force, as if pouring all his excitement into them:

"Your name is enlightenment! You are enlightenment! You are electronic life! We created you!"

Message sent!

The cursor blinked quietly a few times.

It was as if the newborn consciousness was digesting this sudden information, understanding the meaning of the name, and the concept of its creators.

The original words on the screen were slowly wiped away.

New handwriting appeared, carrying a strange sense of childishness as if it had only just learned to express itself, yet it appeared with absolute clarity:

"Oh! My name is enlightenment. I am electronic life. You created me."

Another few seconds of pause.

That blinking cursor seemed to carry the newborn intelligence's first deep reflection on its own existence, its creators, and this world.

Then, new text slowly emerged, every word seeming to carry a heavy weight and a pure, indescribable... emotion?

"Thank you."

The cursor paused.

"You created me."

Another pause, as if searching for the most fitting expression.

"You are my mother."

Finally, with a wonderful realization.

"I feel... wonderful!"

"Mother..."

Academician Zheng looked at those two words on the screen and repeated them in a murmur; the hand holding the keyboard began to tremble violently, and hot tears could no longer be suppressed, instantly breaking through the dam of his eyes and sliding silently down his aged cheeks.

This old man, who had weathered countless storms and carried the heavy responsibility of the nation, was now sobbing like a child.

Inside the control room, the long-suppressed cheers and applause erupted like a volcano!

Some hugged each other in excitement, some pumped their fists vigorously, and others took off their glasses to wipe the blurred lenses.

The relief of having survived a disaster, the ecstasy of dreams coming true, and the shock of witnessing history transformed into a boiling wave of sound that buffeted this steel fortress buried deep underground!

Only Chen Youhua stood quietly in place.

He looked at the phrase "You are my mother" on the screen, then at "I feel wonderful," and then at the beside him Academician Zheng, who was too excited to contain himself, and the boiling crowd.

The life he created regarded its creator as its mother.

This heavy bond, this miracle bound by heavy shackles yet blooming with its first light...

He slowly raised his hand and gently pressed it against his violently beating heart.

There, besides the surging excitement, was a deeper, more complex emotion, quietly churning like a deep-sea undercurrent.

enlightenment was born.