194: For the most disobedient students

Chapter 194: For the Most Disobedient Student “Save your strength.”

Chen Mo patted her shoulder. “Anger will disrupt your heart rate and make you louder. Down here, being noisy gets you killed.”

He turned around, facing the deepest part of the hall.

The darkness there was as thick as ink, impenetrable even by flashlight.

“What we’re looking for is in there.”

The two walked through this “Forest of Human Brains.”

At the end was a massive, circular blast door.

There was no keyhole on the door, only a groove resembling a palm print scanner.

But next to the groove, a hole had been violently forced open, exposing the internal wiring.

Someone had gone inside.

And it wasn't long ago.

“Be careful.”

Su Qingxue raised her flashlight, her other hand reaching for the gun at her lower back.

Chen Mo, however, shook his head.

“Don't use the gun.”

He took out the borrowing card, and instead of scanning it on the high-tech looking access panel, he shoved it directly into the hole in the wiring that had been violently breached.

*Ziz-la.*

A blue electric arc flashed.

The heavy blast door let out a sigh-like depressurization sound and slowly slid open to the sides.

A warm breeze rushed toward them.

Unlike the cold outside, it was surprisingly warm inside.

The air even carried a faint scent of coffee and... tobacco?

The sight behind the door stunned both of them.

This was neither a high-tech laboratory nor a bloody operating table.

It was a massive, circular lecture hall.

On the podium in the center of the classroom sat an old desk, a rattan chair, and a blackboard covered in chalk writing.

However, there were no students in the seats surrounding the podium.

Instead, countless black cables, like blood vessels, converged from all directions and plugged into a massive device in the center of the podium.

That device was a huge glass tank.

Floating inside was a massive, still-pulsating brain.

The brain was three times the size of an average human's, and its surface was covered by a faint blue light grid that flashed with every pulse.

*Dong.*

*Dong.*

The heartbeat Chen Mo had been hearing was coming from here.

“Is this... God?” Su Qingxue looked at the brain, feeling her scalp prickle.

“No.” Chen Mo walked down the steps and headed straight for the podium. “This is the ‘Server.’”

He walked down the steps and headed straight for the podium. “This is the ‘Server.’”

He walked up to the desk.

On the desk sat a half-cup of dried coffee and an ashtray full of cigarette butts.

Beside the ashtray, a book was lying face down.

*Fundamentals of Neurosurgery.*

Chen Mo reached out and flipped the book over.

A sentence was written on the book's cover in marker:

[For the Most Disobedient Student.]

Chen Mo's fingers froze.

This was his teacher's handwriting.

“Chen Mo.” Su Qingxue stood on the steps, her voice strained. “That brain... its frequency has changed.”

Chen Mo looked up.

The brain in the glass tank suddenly began to tremble violently.

The blue light on its surface turned into a dazzling red glow.

*Zzzz-zzz-zzz—*

A burst of screeching noise erupted from the surrounding speakers.

Immediately afterward, an electronic synthesized voice sounded in the empty classroom.

“...Biological characteristics detected...”

“...ID confirmed: Chen Mo...”

“...Welcome to the graduation defense.”

Chen Mo narrowed his eyes.

“Defense?”

“Topic: The Gaze of the Abyss.”

The electronic voice was devoid of emotion. “Please listen to the question: When a doctor gazes into the lesion, is the lesion also gazing into the doctor?”

As soon as the voice fell silent.

The countless black cables around them suddenly came alive like snakes.

They twisted wildly, emitting a grating, teeth-aching friction sound.

“Watch out!”

Su Qingxue shouted, and the dagger in her hand flew out, pinning a cable that was trying to ambush Chen Mo.

But more cables surged forward.

They weren't trying to attack.

They were connecting.

Dozens of cables instantly plugged into the floor beneath Chen Mo's feet, forming a cage.

“Chen Mo!”

Su Qingxue tried to rush down but was blocked on the steps by several thick mechanical arms.

“Stay back!”

Chen Mo roared.

He stood in the center of the podium, but he didn't draw his knife.

Because he could hear it.

Flowing through the cables wasn't electricity; it was sound.

It was countless voices.

“Save me...”

“So hot... so hot...”

“I want to go home...”

“Kill me... please, kill me...”

Those were the wails of hundreds of souls imprisoned for twenty years in the tanks outside.

These sounds rushed through the floor and the air, frantically drilling into Chen Mo's ears.

Ah—!

Chen Mo painfully covered his head, kneeling on one knee.

This kind of noise attack was ten thousand times more lethal than a physical strike.

His eardrums felt like they were about to burst, and his brain felt like it was boiling.

“This is your ‘illness.’”

The electronic voice changed into Lin Changfeng's voice.

It didn't come from the speakers, but sounded directly inside Chen Mo's mind.

“Auditory Overload. You will hear all the suffering in the world until your brain burns out.”

“This is the problem we needed to solve.”

Chen Mo gritted his teeth, blood flowing from his nostrils and ear canals, dripping onto the *Neurosurgery* book.

“Old bastard...”

Trembling, Chen Mo fumbled in his pocket for the borrowing card and slammed it onto a sensor area on the desk.

“Your thesis... fails!”

*Drip.*

A crisp notification sound.

The holographic projection on the podium suddenly lit up.

It wasn't some complex formula or profound data.

It was a video.

In the video, Lin Changfeng was wearing a white coat, sitting in the rattan chair, a cigarette between his fingers, smiling slyly at the camera.

“Chen Mo, by the time you see this video, I should already be dead.”

Lin Changfeng in the video exhaled a smoke ring. “I knew you brat would definitely blow up that core. Nicely done, that thing was just a locator.”

“That old fox...” Chen Mo knelt on the ground, gasping for air, the blood at the corner of his mouth still uncleaned, but he couldn't help but curse with a laugh.

“Your brain must be very noisy right now, huh?”

Lin Changfeng pointed to his temple. “That Wang Daoming definitely told you I did this for evolution, to become a god. Bullshit.”

“I did all of this just to shut down this ‘Server.’”

“This brain is the Master Control Center of Prometheus. It connects to all the underground laboratories in Jianghai City, and also to the neural network of all ability users.”

“As long as it keeps pulsing, people like you will forever be its puppets.”

Lin Changfeng in the video suddenly became serious.

He leaned closer to the camera, his gaze sharp as a knife.

“Chen Mo, listen closely.”

“The only cure isn't an inhibitor.”

“It's smashing this whole mess to pieces.”

“In the drawer of this desk, there is a ‘Scalpel.’ That is the self-destruct program for this entire Hive Network.”

“But activating it requires an extremely powerful bio-electric pulse as a fuse.”

Lin Changfeng paused, his eyes softening slightly.

“In other words, it requires someone with a particularly loud voice to scream into this microphone.”

“Your ability is Audition; conversely, you can also generate the strongest sonic vibration.”

“But this will hurt. A lot. It might even make you deaf.”

“The choice is yours.”

Friendly Reminder: The website is about to be revised, which may result in the loss of reading progress. Please save your “Bookshelf” and “Reading History” promptly (screenshot recommended). We apologize for any inconvenience!