175: Chapter 176 The name can be pending, but the person cannot.

[Occupation Embryonic Seed-0001]

The moment the golden characters were written into the first infant's name field, all the lights in the neonatal area of First Hospital flickered.

It was not a power outage.

It was being taken over.

The birth registration terminal, wristband printer, bedside cards, electronic medical Records, and even the transparent labels on the outside of the incubators all lit up with golden light simultaneously.

Fang Ning rushed to the No. 1 incubator.

The child inside had been born only two hours ago; their face was still wrinkled, their eyes were closed, and their little fists were loosely clenched in front of their chest.

Their original bedside card read: [Son of Ms. Zhang] [Name: Pending]

But now, the two characters for "Pending" were being erased bit by bit by the golden light.

New characters grew out in their place.

[Occupation Embryonic Seed-0001]

The child suddenly stopped crying.

It wasn't because they were asleep.

It was because all the crying in the neonatal area was suppressed in the same second, turning into a uniform, weak, chirping sound as if squeezed from the same throat.

A chill ran down Fang Ning's back.

She had heard this sound before.

The one thousand two hundred and four cries in the No. 9 Forbidden Zone had been kneaded into a single sound just like this.

"Shut down the terminal!"

She shouted at the Nurse.

Two Nurses immediately unplugged the registration terminal.

The screen went black for half a second.

The next second, golden characters appeared directly on the powered-down screen.

[God Head-side Maintenance Work Order in progress]

[Human terminal disconnected, naming rights restoration unaffected]

The wristband printer spat out a white wristband on its own.

It was printed with golden characters:

[Occupation Embryonic Seed-0001]

The Nurse tried to grab it but recoiled, burned by the edge of the wristband.

The wristband flew toward the incubator like a slender snake, attempting to wrap around the infant's wrist.

Fang Ning grabbed a pair of scissors and rushed over, cutting the wristband in one stroke.

After the broken wristband hit the floor, it actually split into two pieces, each crawling toward a different child.

"Don't let it touch the children!"

The ward descended into chaos.

Mothers picked up their children and backed away.

Some children were still in the observation room, with tubes still attached to their bodies.

Nurses used gauze, trays, and their own hands to block those automatically printed wristbands.

But the God Head-side work order was not paper.

The golden names began to seep from the system into reality.

For a girl who hadn't been named yet, the temporary medical ID on her ankle was covered by golden light.

[Occupation Embryonic Seed-0002]

Her mother screamed and lunged forward, pressing her palm tightly over the string of characters.

"She is not a number!"

"She is my daughter!"

The golden light drilled out from between her fingers.

"Lin Jin!"

As soon as Fang Ning shouted the two characters, Qin Shanhe's voice immediately suppressed her over the broadcast.

"Do not shout his real name!"

Fang Ning bit her tongue and forced herself to change her words:

"Maintenance Core! The Hospital's naming interface has been taken over by the God Head!"

In the Mainframe control room, Lin Jin's palm was still bleeding.

Hearing the report, he couldn't steady himself and almost fell to the floor.

Shen Tingxue supported him.

"You cannot be marked by it again now."

"I know."

Lin Jin braced himself against the console and looked at the newly created Work Badge No. 001.

"Connect the work order to The Hospital."

Luo Wensheng immediately flipped the work ticket to the second page.

[Temporary Sub-Work Order: First Hospital Neonatal Naming Protection]

He Zhibai looked up:

"Don't write it as 'reclaiming naming rights'."

Lin Jin nodded.

"Correct."

"We are not the ones naming them."

He stared at the feed transmitted back from The Hospital.

Many children didn't have formal names yet.

Some parents were still discussing it.

Some premature babies hadn't even had time to register their births.

There was even one child, an abandoned infant temporarily sent from the ruins in the east of the city, whose guardian field was still blank.

If the answer was only "parents shouting out a name," those children without names, without parents, or who hadn't been called in time would still fall into the God Head's work order.

The God Head was precisely capitalizing on this gap.

[Unstable Name]

It changed "haven't decided yet" to "can be written by the God."

Lin Jin pressed the communicator, his voice as hoarse as sandpaper.

"Fang Ning, listen to me."

"Don't rush to have all the family members choose names."

"Don't let them just write any name for their child to oppose the God."

Fang Ning was stunned.

Lin Jin continued:

"A name can be pending."

"But a person cannot be pending."

Fang Ning suddenly understood.

She shouted to the ward:

"All family members, do not be forced to name them immediately!"

"For those who already have names, protect them as normal!"

"For those who haven't decided, just tell the system—the child's name is pending, but the naming rights do not belong to the God!"

A father holding his child had red eyes.

"But I don't know how to say it!"

Lin Jin's voice came over the broadcast.

"State the facts."

"Say whose child he is, say when he was born, say that you haven't decided on a name yet."

"Saying you haven't decided does not equal handing it over to the God to decide."

The father looked down at the tiny infant in his arms, his voice trembling:

"He is the son of me and Chen Jia."

"Born at 3:42 this morning."

"He was premature, only four jin and six liang."

"We haven't decided on a name yet."

"But it is not for you to name!"

The golden characters on the child's wrist paused.

[Occupation Embryonic Seed-0003] did not continue writing.

On the other side of the ward, a woman who had just given birth was too weak to even sit up.

She looked at her daughter in the incubator, tears falling.

"I have always called her Xiao Man."

"A formal name hasn't been chosen yet."

"She can choose later."

"You can even blame me for picking an ugly name."

"But she is not an Embryonic Seed."

"Xiao Man, listen to Mommy."

The girl in the incubator suddenly let out a cry.

This cry was very small.

Yet, it was different from the uniform chirping from before.

She cried out with her own breath.

Fang Ning immediately placed a heat-sensitive sticker on the outside of the incubator, picked up a regular pen, and wrote on the bedside card:

[Fetal Name: Xiao Man]

[Formal Name: Pending]

[Naming Rights Protected]

Ye Guizhou stamped it on the Mainframe side.

[Received Pending Naming Protection Application]

[Pending does not equal blank]

Luo Wensheng recorded:

[Fetal name, address, birth facts, guardianship relationship, and medical Records can all serve as temporary protection anchors.]

He Zhibai added the entry:

[Pending naming status generates protection costs, which enter into public medical and Record costs and must not be transferred to the infant themselves.]

Su Yan softly added a sentence:

"Those without guardians cannot be counted as blank either."

Lin Jin immediately looked at the incubator for the abandoned infant on the screen.

That child was the most dangerous.

The name field was blank.

The guardian field was blank.

There was only one temporary medical Record.

[Unnamed Male Infant]

The God Head's golden light had almost covered the entire bedside card.

[Occupation Embryonic Seed-0007]

Fang Ning rushed over, but didn't know what to shout.

She couldn't name him for him.

Nor could she fabricate a parental relationship.

The ward became terrifyingly quiet for a moment.

The God Head seemed to have detected this loophole as well, and all the golden light pressed down toward that child.

[No guardianship naming relationship]

[No stable address]

[No capacity for personal confirmation]

[Meets conditions for God-unified naming]

Lin Jin stared intently at the screen.

"A medical ID cannot serve as a name."

"But it can prove that he has already been cared for."

Fang Ning immediately grabbed the medical Record.

"He was sent from the east of the city today."

"Admission time: 21:16."

"Body temperature: 36.7 degrees."

"Left footprint has been collected."

"Umbilical cord has been treated."

"I have fed him his first feed."

Her voice became increasingly steady.

"He does not have a formal name right now."

"And no guardian has been found."

"But he has already been cared for in reality."

"A name can wait."

"Care cannot wait."

The Head Nurse also walked up and pressed her hand against the outside of the incubator.

"First Hospital Neonatal Department has temporary guardianship."

"This is not to possess him."

"It is to protect him until a more suitable guardianship relationship can be found."

Qin Shanhe's broadcast immediately followed.

"Jiangcheng temporary public guardianship Record connected."

"Children without guardianship does not equal being available for the God to take over."

Luo Wensheng wrote rapidly:

[Public care does not grant ownership of naming rights.]

[Temporary guardianship does not replace future confirmation by the individual.]

[Unnamed status is protected.]

Ye Guizhou stamped it.

[Received temporary care proof]

[Must not be regarded as authorization for God-naming]

Work Badge No. 001 in the Mainframe lit up with a layer of rust-colored light.

That light rushed along The Hospital's circuits into the neonatal area, covering all the bedside cards.

A new temporary field was generated.

[Name Status: Pending Naming]

[Protection Anchor: Birth Facts / Physical Characteristics / Real-world Care / Continued Address / Future Confirmation]

[God-pre-naming prohibited]

The golden wristbands stopped one by one.

In the ward, the crying became chaotic again.

Some were loud.

Some were thin.

Some stopped after crying twice.

Some hummed like kittens.

It was no longer the same sound.

Fang Ning leaned against the wall, her back completely soaked.

But the God Head's work order had not yet disappeared.

It had simply changed its method of execution.

Next to the name field of every infant, a new line of golden characters emerged.

[Source of confusion in human naming rights: inconsistency between parents, guardians, and social address]

[Restoration Plan 2: Unified elimination of unqualified namers]

Fang Ning's face changed drastically.

In the ward, the parents who had just been desperately shouting their children's names simultaneously had golden judgments appear on their arms.

[Namer qualification under review]

[Emotionally unstable]

[Insufficient economic capacity]

[Hesitated over name]

[Does not possess perfect naming qualifications]

The children were not stripped of their names.

The God Head began to judge the people who named the children.

A mother who had just shouted "Xiao Man" had a golden lock ring appear on her wrist.

[Naming qualification temporarily revoked]

The child in her arms began to cry again.

Lin Jin watched the screen, his eyes sinking bit by bit.

The God Head's core counter-work order slowly turned to the next page.

[If humans cannot prove they are worthy of being namers]

[The God will choose parents for all children]