When Chu Hao had his memories, or rather, when he first possessed consciousness, what he saw was a distorted world.
In his field of vision, no, in his eyes, there was a transparent liquid. His entire body was soaked in this transparent liquid, but this liquid was not the amniotic fluid of a mother, and he was not in his mother's body. Of course, this was all knowledge he would learn in the future. At that time, he only had the curiosity of a newborn, using the pure eyes of a baby to look at this world … Through the glass, through the transparent liquid, he saw a slightly distorted world. When he was just born, he saw a distorted world.
"This is the first living body of the new model, codename Zero One …"
That was his first name. No, rather than calling it a name, it was more like a code name, Number One …
Zero One was smart just like his siblings. Around eighteen hours after gaining consciousness, he could already understand the logic of numbers. It did not need to be taught or knowledge, just like how a one-year-old child would pick the bigger ones and take the bigger ones even if it was instinctive. One, two, three — those numbers did not need to be taught, or at least that was the case for human heirs. As they grew older and their intelligence increased, understanding the most basic of numbers was instinctive.
Zero One and his siblings had developed such basic numerical logic within twenty-four to forty-eight hours, before discovering each other's existence and roughly knowing the number of siblings here …
Seventeen thousand, six hundred and forty-one …
Those were the exact numbers Chu Hao would only learn in the future. But at the time, he only knew that he was not alone, and that he had many siblings, many, many …
Even so, the number of siblings kept decreasing, and the reason for the decrease was their lifespan …
Many siblings would die of old age in a few days after gaining consciousness, as if time flowed differently for each person born here. Some matured at an astonishing rate visible to the naked eye, from one or two years old to ten years old in a few hours, to thirty or forty in a day, before aging and dying … There were also those who remained as infants even after Zero One and a few others escaped, and had to endure in the incubation tank …
The earliest to disappear were the siblings whose time flowed too quickly, and they were quickly cleared out by the white-clothed workers. Still, it was unusual that no matter how fast they aged, no one would interfere as long as they did not die. It was as if … watching them die was one of the objectives of grooming them, was it not?
Apart from the difference in the flow of time, even their bodies — or perhaps race — were different.
Within a year after Chu Hao regained consciousness, a small portion of his siblings who were born in the form of human babies began to undergo different changes. For example, they had more organs on their bodies. Some had pointy ears, some had tentacles on their heads, some had two or even three heads, some had wings, some had fins, some had scales, and some even had disgusting and indescribable organs …
This time, the workers in the lab did not wait for those siblings with strange organs to die, but simply took them away … and Chu Hao never saw them again …
Although it had only been a few months or a year or so, they were all very good brothers and sisters. Everyone laughed foolishly together, everyone learned the knowledge taught by the staff together, everyone dreamed of becoming a staff member and going outside the metal wall together, everyone …
Although they looked different from everyone else, they had the same heart as everyone else. They were cheerful, kind, and liked to laugh foolishly. They were not monsters, and none of their siblings thought of them as monsters. They … were humans just like them!
When they realized that they were being taken away by the workers, the siblings had a general idea of their fates. Every one of them was weeping, unwilling to part with them but unable to struggle. Despair began to set in, and when the last mutated girl was taken away, she only had bunny ears that did not look frightening at all. Instead, she gave off a cute feeling. Even so, she was still taken away. Even if she cried and begged, even if her siblings protected her … the workers did not seem to care about their lives at all. They simply used a strange gun to shoot anyone who dared to stand in their way, turning them into ash at once. Then, more than three hundred siblings died …
As mentioned before, Chu Hao — no, Unit-01 at that time — was very smart. Not only him, but his brothers and sisters were also very smart, and Unit-01 was one of the best among them. This large group of geniuses gathered together. After experiencing the pain of the first year and seeing the true colors of those workers, everyone appeared to be quiet, smooth, and obedient to all the workers' requests. There was not even the slightest sign of resistance. But in private, these geniuses began to conspire together.
In the next three to four years, they learned all the knowledge brought to them by the staff like a sponge. They also gradually created a language system that combined lip, hand, and facial expressions. Although the meaning was still not accurate and the language system was still very naive, it was the best they could come up with. In such an indescribably tightly monitored place, it was the only way for them to communicate safely.
Even so, despair remained …
In the fifth year after they were born, all sorts of experiments were carried out on them — physiologically, physically, spiritually, and even more frighteningly spiritually …
Some of their companions turned into complete monsters. It was not the transformation of certain organs in their bodies, but true monsters — even their consciousness became monsters …
Some of their companions lost their minds and went insane, hurting themselves and their companions. They no longer recognized anyone, became idiots, or murderers …
Some of their companions were even more miserable. Their souls had mutated into monsters, indescribable souls, monsters that devoured life, and so on …
All sorts of inhumane experiments. Almost none of them survived, and because of the results of the experiments, the siblings who relied on each other for survival killed each other. Their most precious kin killed themselves, or killed their loved ones …
Zero-One also went through many experiments, but he was one of the lucky few. The experiments did not have any effect on him, and he was still himself whether it was spiritually, physically, or spiritually. Such people were too few and far between. They were both fortunate and unfortunate, because they could only watch as their loved ones left them, unable to retaliate …
Comparatively speaking, Zero-One was the most normal of all the siblings. His time flow was the most normal, his body was 100% human from its genes to its appearance. His soul could not withstand many experiments, and yet it did not mutate in the slightest. Although his mental age was ravaged by excessive sorrow and pain, he still maintained the mental age of a child. No matter how one looked at it, he was the most normal of all the children. But it was precisely because of that that he was subjected to the most experiments and suffered the most. In those days of despair, the people closest to him were the two boys and one girl who shared a room with him — two older brothers and one older sister. Those three were the pillars of his life.
Such days of despair seemed to be endless. Their brothers and sisters dwindled, the atmosphere grew increasingly silent, and the despair thickening. Zero-One did not know when it would die, nor did it know when its kin would die. Such despair persisted until that day came …
Chu Hao came to his senses. In the instant he rushed into the Path of Backtracking, his entire being fell into a half-awake state. It was almost the same feeling as when he was teleported by the Overgod, but it was not completely senseless. On the contrary, in that half-awake state, memories buried in the depths of his heart began to awaken — those painful, warm, and earliest memories.
And when he came to his senses and the half-awake state dissipated, he abruptly found himself standing in a laboratory. Yes, it was the laboratory he lived in as a child. Everything was as usual — silver-white metallic walls, huge passageways, white-clothed workers, as well as those unknown instruments and various monsters that were turned into specimens …
Chu Hao looked at it all in shock. He did not know if everything before him was an illusion or what, or did the Path of Backtracking directly materialize his memories?
Chu Hao looked around strangely. He realized that a few researchers who were passing by had also seen him. Then, those people shouted and ran away. He didn't chase after them because if this was an illusion or a manifestation of his memory, then all his actions might be meaningless. His first reaction was to look at his watch. This was similar to his subconscious behavior after entering the World of Reincarnation. Then, he saw the time now. It was 3: 18 in the afternoon …
3.18 pm …
3.18 pm …
Could it be … like this?!
That distant memory began to awaken. Once upon a time, he had been filled with despair in that laboratory, unable to see even the slightest bit of hope. That day, at around three o 'clock in the afternoon, there had been a drastic change in the laboratory, and he and his family had seized that opportunity …
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