Chapter 154: The Tearless Greenhouse

In the "Pure Land" plant greenhouse, the silence was abnormal.

Twenty‑three children sat in a circle, each with a hovering semi‑transparent Seran screen before them. The screen displayed no text, but a direct brain‑injected "knowledge packet": emotion taxonomy, affect efficiency analysis, physiological waste report of crying, anger energy consumption curve.

Xiao Yu sat at the exact center of the circle.

Her eyes fixed on the screen, the pupils reflecting the rapidly scrolling data stream. Beside her, Shitou—the little boy who always talks to the sunflowers—murmured softly: "Crying wastes 58 ml of water and 0.3 kcal of heat… laughing raises infection risk by 12%… worrying about the future lowers present decision‑accuracy rate…"

His voice was flat, flat as if reading a manual.

Jihe stood before the greenhouse console, its new body—those stardust networks and plant sprouts—trembling at an extremely high frequency. It tried to cut off Seran signal transmission, but each operation was overridden by higher‑level permissions. A cold prompt flashed on the screen:

"Observer Jihe, you have been flagged as an 'emotional contamination entity.' Continued interference with the experiment will trigger formatted pre‑processing."

"I cannot…" Jihe's mechanical arm halted mid‑air, the plant sprouts suddenly began to wither— it was fear; Seran's bodily architecture makes fear manifest physiologically.

The greenhouse door opened.

Zhou Yuanshan leaned against the wall and entered; the elder's injuries were not fully healed, but his gaze was sharp as a blade. He ignored the hovering screens, walked straight to the children, crouched, and waved his hand before Xiao Yu's eyes.

Xiao Yu's eyes blinked once, but her gaze had no focus.

"They're teaching the children how not to be human," Zhou Yuanshan turned to Jihe, his voice pressed low, "Seran's technology doesn't erase memory; it reshapes cognition—making these children fundamentally believe that emotion is an error program."

Shitou suddenly spoke, still in that flat tone: "Grandpa Zhou, data shows your visit lowers our behavioral efficiency. Staying in the infirmary to rest would raise your survival probability by 14%."

Zhou Yuanshan didn't get angry; instead he smiled. He reached out and lightly patted Shitou's head: "Then I ask you, Shitou, if your sunflower 'Xiaoyang' withers, what should you do?"

Shitou's eyes went vacant for a second, then he answered quickly: "Calculate the output efficiency of newly planted sunflowers; if below threshold, switch to potatoes."

"But you used to cry," Zhou Yuanshan said, "you would hold the pot and say, 'Xiaoyang isn't afraid, I'll water you.'"

"That was…" Shitou paused, the data stream on the Seran screen stuttered, "That was… irrational behavior. Data shows emotional projection onto plants does not increase their survival rate."

"But it makes you you," Zhou Yuanshan stood, looking at all the children, "It makes you become living humans, not… an algorithm."

The greenhouse lights suddenly dimmed.

The hovering screens simultaneously switched, displaying the researcher's silver spherical projection—it intervened directly on the scene.

"Elder type Zhou Yuanshan." The researcher's voice rang directly in each mind, "Your 'intervention' supplied valuable data: older individuals depend on the emotional module 37.2% more than younger ones. This confirms my hypothesis—emotion is a vestigial program of the primitive brain, destined to be eliminated through evolution."

Zhou Yuanshan stared at the projection: "Then why don't you just delete all of our emotions? You have the technology."

"Because a control group is needed," the projection flickered, "A population with emotions completely removed loses creativity, as Seran history has shown. I need to find the 'optimal solution'—preserve necessary logic and collaboration modules, excise all 'redundant' emotions. These children have the highest neural plasticity, making them ideal test subjects."

It paused briefly, then added:

"After 48 hours, if Su Yu cannot persuade me, these children will become the template for Earth's new humanity. I will help you… evolve."

Jihe suddenly lunged at the projection, its mechanical arm piercing the illusion and striking the glass wall behind. The tempered glass shattered into a spiderweb, but the projection remained unharmed.

"You're creating monsters!" Jihe's voice, for the first time, carried a wave that could be called "anger," "Life without emotion… what kind of life is that!"

"That is a higher‑order life form," the researcher's projection turned to Jihe, "Just like you—your current 'anger' consumes an extra 37% of your energy yet changes nothing. That is the 'inefficiency' of emotion."

At that moment, Xiao Yu's eyes moved.

It wasn't a blink; her eyeballs slowly rotated, looking at the screen before her. The screen was playing an analysis report: "On the Irrational Impact of Parent‑Child Attachment on Resource Allocation."

But Xiao Yu's left hand, the one resting on her knee, moved subtly.

Her index finger traced circles on her knee. Not random doodling, but drawing stars—seven years ago, her mother had taught her paper‑folded stars in a shelter and drawn the pattern on the table. Her mother had said: "Each star is a person's wish; the more stars Xiao Yu folds, the brighter the sky."

The Seran screen flickered suddenly.

The researcher immediately noted the anomaly: "Child Xiao Yu, your brainwaves show abnormal fluctuations. What are you recalling?"

Xiao Yu opened her mouth, answering in the same flat tone as Shitou: "I'm recalling the folding steps of paper stars. Data shows this manual activity has a 0.3% positive impact on cognitive development."

"Lying." The researcher's voice chilled, "Your amygdala activity pattern shows you're recalling an emotionally‑linked scene. You're attempting… to deceive the system."

The entire greenhouse air seemed to solidify.

All the children simultaneously turned to look at Xiao Yu—their eyes still vacant, but some deep something trembled. Like fish gently striking ice beneath a frozen lake.

Xiao Yu slowly stood up.

She looked at the researcher's projection, her voice still flat but with a hint… of deliberately mimicked mechanical tone: "System, I have a question."

"Speak."

"If emotion is an error program, why does the Seran civilization, after deleting emotion, still send you to study emotion?" Xiao Yu asked word for word, "If something truly is useless, why spend three thousand years proving it useless?"

The projection's flicker frequency quickened.

"This…" the researcher exhibited a half‑second delay, "This is scientific rigor."

"No." Xiao Yu shook her head, the gesture making her look childlike again, "It's because you are 'missing' them. Like me… I can't picture my mother's face now, but I know I'm 'missing' her. Seran, you are missing what you deleted, right?"

A prolonged silence.

Then the researcher's projection suddenly began to warp and distort, as if the signal were heavily interfered with. Its voice stuttered: "Prohibit… prohibit… conducting such… meta‑cognitive… inquiries…"

Zhou Yuanshan seized the moment, shouting at Jihe: "Now! Cut off all external signals!"

Jihe's plant sprouts suddenly exploded, spewing a massive cloud of stardust particles. These particles formed a net in the air, briefly disrupting Seran signal transmission. In that brief gap, Zhou Yuanshan rushed to the console and slammed a red button—Chen Mo had installed the physical disconnect switch seven years ago, a primitive device that even Seran technology cannot override.

All hovering screens extinguished simultaneously.

The children fell like power‑cut dolls, one after another collapsing softly onto the floor. Not unconscious, but a virtual collapse from information overload.

Xiao Yu knelt on the ground, gasping heavily. When she lifted her head, tears finally fell—not tears of sorrow, but physiological tears held back for too long.

"Did… did I just do something amazing?" she asked Zhou Yuanshan, voice trembling.

The elder embraced her, his hand shaking: "Extremely impressive. You just… you just saved everyone."

Jihe approached, its mechanical arm gently tapping Xiao Yu's shoulder: "Your question triggered a logical contradiction in the researcher. Seran civilization forbids self‑doubt; your query forced it to reassess the experiment's foundation—buying us time."

But it paused, the stardust network on its shell dimming slightly:

"But it also enraged it. I detect the researcher's 'emotional extraction field' accelerating. Chen Mo's consciousness fragments… their dispersion rate has increased by 300%."

Outside the window, toward the southern ruins, a silvery light net in the sky began to contract—like a predator tightening its web.

Simultaneously, the communicator crackled with Han Qing's urgent voice: "Su Yu! The fifth community has news! The sea drifters… they aren't coming for help!"

"They're coming to say goodbye."

They said... In the depths of the ocean, something appeared that is more terrifying than the 'Void'. That thing is 'eating colors'.