Chapter 231: Her Voice

The air in the private library was thick with the scent of old paper, parchment, and dried wood.

Tall bookshelves stood like silent black giants, reaching from the floor to the carved dome, casting unsettling shadows.

This corner had no windows; the only light came from an old-fashioned desk lamp on an eighteenth-century desk, its shade made of dark green glass, the light dimmed so low that it illuminated only a few documents spread on the desk and a hand with prominent knuckles yet unnaturally pale skin.

The hand's owner—Ved—was leaning back casually in a large armchair.

The notebook before him was playing a live feed from the United Nations General Assembly Hall.

In the video, as Yang Yi finally closed her laptop and rose to leave amidst complex gazes, he chuckled with pleasure.

The laugh was soft, yet it made the several subordinates standing in the shadows involuntarily stiffen their spines.

The screen dimmed; Ved raised his hand and idly tapped the desk with his fingertips, producing a faint dull thud in the dead silence.

His gaunt face appeared unnaturally soft under the lamp's dim light, even carrying a kind of compassionate holiness, but those brown-black eyes were bottomless, reflecting cold, faint points of light.

"A brilliant data presentation, rigorous in logic, clear in direction, even carrying a touch of... scientific poetry."

His voice was gentle, bearing a strange rhythm as if reciting an ancient elegy, "She tried to use the light of reason to illuminate human folly. But humans, as a species, have always been accustomed to tearing each other apart in the dark, for profit, for some vague narratives..."

He shook his head slightly, that look of compassion deepening, mixed with a hint of unmasked, condescending mockery.

"Truly pitiful; she actually believed that when the fear of survival coiled around the spine like poisonous vines, humans could still straighten their backs, use their incompletely evolved brains to see the situation clearly, and focus on the future."

He paused, as if savoring the absurdity of the thought, "She overestimated the weight of reason and vastly underestimated how deeply blind, stupid, and shortsighted are rooted in the very marrow of this species. Fear only needs simple answers, a non-human other to hate and attack, not a complex chart filled with universal laws."

Colin Payne spoke cautiously, "My lord, the evidence she provided, especially regarding the Ark country, has indeed shaken many. The scientific community's attitude might..."

"Science?" Ved chuckled softly, cutting the other off, "Science before the waves of group emotion is nothing but an exquisite paper boat; without a single storm, it capsizes on its own. Moreover,"

He leaned forward, hands crossed on the desk, the lamp's light carving his facial contours even more sharply, "she made a fatal mistake—she admitted in her own voice that she had been polluted and alienated, and was in a state of... stable control."

A faint glint flashed through his brown-black pupils.

"From that moment on, the initiative was no longer entirely in her hands. Stable control? What a beautiful term; humans will imagine countless possibilities of losing control on their own. Once the seed of doubt is planted, it needs only a little fertilizer to grow into a towering tree. And she herself, handed over the most fertile nourishment."

Ved casually tapped the computer a few times, and Yang Yi's voice actually came from it:

"Do you know? I hate this world, I wish this broken world would explode immediately! I hate humans even more, ugly humans, selfish! Hypocritical! Vicious! Stupid! Short-sighted! I'd rather be a maggot, a maggot that burrows back and forth in shit all day, than be human!"

The library was terrifyingly silent, with only Yang Yi's voice echoing, shattering the congealed air.

These were Yang Yi's extreme words spoken in emotional agitation when she broke up with Chris. They were obtained by Ved as a side loot when he stole the "Artemis" project from the Ark country intelligence database.

Yang Yi's broken and desperate voice was unusually clear in the silent air: "Only in places where no one is can I find peace. Why do you come to bother me... Even if you all died out in the apocalypse, what does it matter to me? Even if the whole world is destroyed—I would be happy!!!"

"Since I understood things, I have wished for this disgusting world to end quickly. If the price is to use myself as a burial offering, I would happily jump into the grave pit and be buried alongside this damn world!"

Ved reached out and pressed the pause button, watching with enjoyment the barely concealed shock on his subordinates' faces.

The pure self-destructive hatred in those words made even them, who had personally sacrificed hundreds of thousands of civilians, feel a chill.

"See," Ved's voice returned to his characteristic, magnetic calm, yet even more chilling, "this is the language humans can understand. Not experimental records, not energy spectra, but bloody, unmasked hatred. Data may prove she is harmless, but these words prove she—internally, anti-human."

He gently pushed the computer toward the center of the table.

"The time has come to deliver our carefully prepared gift to the whole world. The editing must be clever, the background blurred, but ensure the voice is clear and distinct—that is her unique voiceprint. The accompanying text needs little rational analysis, just questions..."

He smiled slightly, yet the words he spat out were like a snake's tongue flickering:

"Would a person who hates humans so deeply and expects the world's destruction truly be willing to save humanity?"

"How long can her stable control suppress this desire for destruction?"

"Is the evil god threat she displayed merely a noble excuse for the burial she craves in her heart?"

"With such twisted hatred and already mutated biology, can we truly entrust the future of human civilization to her?"

"Activate all our tendrils, from the dark corners of the internet to the fringe channels of mainstream media, let these words spread like a virus. Do not make direct conclusions; guide them to discover it themselves, to be shocked, to fear..."

Ved stood up; the shadow lengthened with his movement, almost swallowing half the desk, "When the curtain of reason is torn down, revealing the true words she once spoke... I want to see how much of that rational light, which was just convinced by data, will remain."

He walked into the deep shadows of the bookshelves, his voice seeming to come from far away, carrying a finality of coldness:

"Let her taste what it is to be stabbed by the very people she protects, using her own most real pain as a weapon. This fits human... aesthetics better than any cosmic disaster."

The subordinates bowed deeply and departed with the order.

"The God will sooner or later return to His divine throne; this is the coldest law in the universe..."

Ved walked out of the dark corner of the library, strolled leisurely to the window, gazed at the dust floating and drifting in the light, and smiled softly.

In the air, the scent of old paper and wood seemed to have mixed with a hint of rust-like bloodiness.