Spreader

When Su Kuang woke up at the age of fifty-three, his mind was quiet for three seconds. Three seconds. In a world where everyone has a companion AI living in their head, this is equivalent to stopping the heart for three seconds. Then his master died. Silence, one hundred and ninety-eight years old, the greatest mind-bending master in human history. There was only one sentence in his will: destroy my companion AI. This is legally tantamount to murder. Ethically it is equivalent to burning books. Emotionally, it is equivalent to completely disappearing a soul that has lived for two hundred years. And he appointed Su Kuang to make the final decision. A student who had quit his job for twenty years and lost contact with him. Su Kuang didn't want to care about this matter. But in those three seconds of silence, he smelled the scent of sandalwood from his master's study. He started checking. Then he discovered that in this perfect world with no crime, no war, and peace for one hundred and fifty years, something has been growing quietly in everyone's minds. No one told it to grow. It grows on its own. Feeding off dozens of generations of fear.