147: Chapter 148 Ninety Seconds: Performing Brain Surgery on God

"Return my brain."

"Then I will return the names of the whole world to you all."

The golden face hung from the dome of the delivery room.

Its tone was gentle.

As if this were truly a fair trade.

Within the National Awakening Network, the number of folded names continued to increase.

The Hospital, schools, city defense, the Processing Bureau.

More and more people were left with only their career titles.

Some forgot their husband's name.

Some looked at their own children, but could only think of what career the other might awaken in the future.

Even the name Yu Xing had just removed began to fade on the surface of her body.

[Yu Xing]

[Yu—]

Thirteen grabbed her hand fiercely.

"Don't agree."

Yu Xing looked toward the National Awakening Network.

"If I go back, they can stop."

"You believe it when it says it can stop?"

Thirteen gripped her tightly.

"I sat in the White Tower for Lin Jin for eighteen years."

"At the very beginning, it also said that as long as I cooperated one more time, it would let me out the next time."

"The 'next time' in the system's words always has another next time."

Yu Xing's body became increasingly transparent.

Yet she did not struggle, only asking softly:

"But what about those names?"

"Names do not belong to it."

Lin Jin finally stood up from before the jammed mechanical spindle.

The rusty wrench had already been ground hot by the high-speed gears, and a corner of its jaw had chipped off.

He looked up at the golden face.

"You say you will return the names to us."

"But those names were given by parents, acknowledged by the individuals themselves, and called out by others over and over again."

"Since when did they become yours?"

The golden face showed no change.

[Name has entered the Career System.]

[The Career System belongs to me.]

[Therefore, names belong to me.]

"If an item enters your house, does it belong to you?"

Chen Ye stood up, carrying his charred shield.

"Then my shield has entered the White Tower several times."

"Why hasn't the White Tower changed its surname to Chen?"

The God Head ignored him.

[Shutdown remaining time: 71 seconds]

The rusty wrench jamming the spindle was bending bit by bit.

Once it snapped, Yu Xing would be immediately pulled back to the God Head.

Shen Qingshuang steadied herself against the cabin wall, staring at the golden eyes on the dome.

"It lied."

Everyone looked at her simultaneously.

"Before the Career System was established, people had names."

"The Department of Education just copied real names into career files to use as identity indexes."

Shen Qingshuang raised her hand, drawing a three-layer structure on the ground.

The top layer, name.

The middle layer, career.

The bottom layer, real identity.

"Twenty years ago, names and careers were just parallel information."

"Later, as the God Head gradually awakened, Lu Chengyuan changed names into the main index for career files."

"From then on, the system no longer searched for careers through names."

"Instead, it confirmed through careers whether a person was worthy of having a name."

Lin Jin understood instantly.

The God Head was not the creator of names.

It had simply seized the right to keep them.

To make the world's names return, Yu Xing did not need to return to her place.

They only needed to detach names from the Career System and reconnect them to reality.

"Can we get in?"

Lin Jin asked.

Shen Qingshuang looked at Yu Xing.

"The God Head lacks a brain."

"Yu Xing is of the same origin as it."

"Only by using Yu Xing's neural connection can one enter the interior of the God Head."

Thirteen immediately blocked Yu Xing.

"Using her as a road again?"

"I will decide for myself."

Yu Xing raised her hand, pressing it onto Thirteen's shoulder.

She looked at Lin Jin.

"I can open a connection."

"But I will not go back."

"My memories are not open to it."

"My body is not for it to call upon."

"After ninety seconds, whether you have come out or not, I will disconnect."

Lin Jin nodded.

"This is a borrowed road."

"Not a return."

The golden face suddenly lowered its gaze.

[The brain has no right to refuse the skull's call.]

Yu Xing looked up at the face similar to her own.

"But I have already grown my own body."

"What you lack is a brain."

"Not me."

She pressed both hands onto the transparent incubation pod.

The memory banks of 1,204 awakenings lit up simultaneously.

Not all of them opened.

Only an extremely narrow neural pathway pierced through the delivery room dome and stabbed deep into the Career System.

[Temporary connection established]

[Permission: Read-only]

[Duration: 90 seconds]

[Connection owner: Yu Xing]

The golden God Head revealed anger for the first time.

The entire delivery room tilted violently.

"Go!"

Lin Jin was the first to rush into the neural pathway.

His vision was instantly swallowed by golden light.

Shen Tingxue, Zhou Heng, Chen Ye, Thirteen, and Teacher Xu Wenzhou followed closely behind.

Shen Qingshuang remained outside to maintain the connection.

Lin Shoushan lay in the treatment pod, driving the blood-stained wrench into the mechanical spindle.

"I'll hold it for you for ninety seconds."

"If you go overtime, don't blame me for cutting the connection!"

The next instant, the six of them fell into the interior of a vast, boundless skull.

There was no flesh and blood here.

Only thousands of golden corridors.

On both sides of every corridor hung dense nameplates.

Behind the nameplates were connected career badges.

Lin Jin saw that after a warrior's name was extracted, the back of the plate was left with only:

[Replaceable combat unit]

After a Healer lost their name, it became:

[Life repair module]

A mother, on the other hand, became:

[Procreative relationship provider]

Everyone was being translated into functions the Career System could understand.

In the deepest part, a massive golden skull hung in the darkness.

The skull had no brain.

Inside the cranial cavity were only the Six Divine Seats, and an empty Seventh Seat.

The Six Divine Seats turned toward the group simultaneously.

[Illegal entry into God Head index area]

[Purging real personalities]

The First Seat raised its hand.

Countless nameplates fell from the walls, turning into sharp golden shards that shot toward them.

Chen Ye raised his shield instinctively.

Just as the shield's light shone, he remembered that the master copy had already been cut.

Blocking here this time was not because of a Protection Role prompt.

It was because there were people behind him.

"Everyone duck!"

The shield unfolded with a boom.

The golden shards crashed into the shield, causing it to dent violently.

Chen Ye slid backward several meters, but he did not retreat a single step.

Zhou Heng did not wait for the system to point out the route.

He closed one eye and thrust his Thunder Spear toward the darkest corridor on the left.

"This way!"

The spear tip smashed through three walls in succession.

The first two were dead ends.

Behind the third, a black main index that pierced through the entire skull was finally revealed.

[Name = Career file primary key]

[Detached from career, name invalid]

Found it.

Teacher Xu Wenzhou dragged 002 and charged up.

The Divine Seats simultaneously cast thousands of cuttable targets at him.

Name and memory.

Name and bloodline.

Name and body.

Each one was more eye-catching than the real primary key.

Teacher Xu Wenzhou closed his eyes.

"Strike!"

Lin Jin raised the rusty wrench and struck the black main index.

Clang!

The sound echoed.

The First Seat immediately created hundreds of identical echoes.

Clang!

Clang!

Clang!

The entire skull was filled with the sound of the wrench.

Cold sweat streamed down Teacher Xu Wenzhou's forehead.

"I can't tell!"

"Then don't listen to the tools."

Thirteen rushed in front of the main index and raised his hand to press it.

Black text immediately crawled all over his arm.

[Unregistered life, no valid name]

Thirteen gritted his teeth and roared loudly:

"My name is Thirteen!"

The black index vibrated violently.

Within the National Awakening Network, countless names that had once been called responded simultaneously.

Tang Xiaoman.

Gu Xinghe.

Yu Xing.

Chen Ye.

Shen Tingxue.

Zhou Heng.

Voice after voice passed through the neural connection, converging on the real main index.

The fake echoes were all suppressed.

Lin Jin struck again.

Clang!

"Teacher Xu!"

002 was raised with a boom.

"A name is used to confirm a person."

"Not to prove what career they belong to!"

The black iron wrench fell.

Crack!

[Name = Career file primary key]

The equals sign in the middle was smashed by a hammer.

The entire God Head index area instantly spiraled out of control.

All the folded nameplates flew out from behind the career badges.

They did not automatically return to the people.

Because the system had already forgotten where names should belong.

[Main index missing]

[Name data entered ownerless state]

[Requesting God Head to reallocate]

The golden skull opened its mouth.

It wanted to swallow all the names back up.

Shen Tingxue stepped onto the main index.

She no longer possessed the absolute calmness granted by the master copy, and the Ice Line in her hand was trembling slightly.

But she still accurately froze the golden skull's jaw.

"Lin Jin!"

"Find the way home for the names!"

[Remaining time: 31 seconds]

Lin Jin rushed toward the broken index.

The Hand of Rules had not yet recovered.

He could only search for the most ordinary real-world interface among the millions of lines.

Birth Records.

School roll calls.

Family relationships.

Teammate verification.

Self-identification.

These systems did not have the qualification to define a person.

But they had truly recorded who had called this name.

Lin Jin connected the first real-world line.

[Name return basis: Individual confirmation]

The second.

[Others' continuous address]

The third.

[Real-life Records]

Three lines were still not stable enough.

The God Head was fighting for them crazily.

"What is still missing?"

Zhou Heng nailed the equals sign that was attempting to restore itself with a spear.

Chen Ye's shield was about to be pierced through by the name-gold shards.

Thirteen looked at the countless floating names and suddenly said:

"People without evidence are still missing."

Some people had no birth Records.

No family.

No friends.

They didn't even have time to say their own names.

Yu Xing was once like this.

"A name cannot belong to the system just because no one can prove it."

Thirteen pressed his hand onto the fourth empty interface.

"When the individual is temporarily unable to answer—"

"Reserve it first."

Lin Jin twisted the wrench violently.

The fourth real-world line was connected.

[Unconfirmed names entered protected state, may not be named by career]

Boom!

The four real-world lines lit up simultaneously.

Billions of names turned into a tide of light that swept across the world.

In the Jiangcheng First Hospital, the Nurse stopped in her tracks.

She remembered her name was Fang Ning.

She remembered there was a patient in the ward waiting for her to deliver medicine.

On the academy square, students began to call out to each other again.

All over the country, behind career titles, real names reappeared one by one.

[Name return progress: 71%]

[89%]

[100%]

[God Head lost name custody rights]

Time hit zero.

Yu Xing violently cut the neural connection on the outside.

The group was blasted out of the skull and fell heavily back into the Golden Delivery Room.

Lin Jin had just braced his body when he heard a cracking sound coming from the dome.

The golden face did not disappear.

Instead, it revealed a hunger unlike any it had ever shown before.

After losing the right to custody of names, a project hidden for twenty years deep within the God Head's cranial cavity was finally exposed.

[God Name Generation Project]

[Material: All careerists' name folding]

[Current completion: 99.99%]

The smile on Chen Ye's face instantly vanished.

"It collects names, not just to control people?"

Shen Qingshuang looked at the final vacancy, her voice turning cold.

"After the God Corpse was dismembered, it lost its own name."

"It is using the names of the whole world to piece together a new God Name."

At the very bottom of the generation project, the missing material slowly emerged.

[Last required material: Rule Maintenance Seat Seventh Candidate's true name]

In the delivery room, all the golden eyes turned toward Lin Jin simultaneously.

The woman spoke again in that gentle voice.

[Since Yu Xing refuses to come back.]

[Then let's change the trade.]

[Lin Jin.]

[Give your name to Mother.]