Phew!

A slight sound, like a needle piercing leather.

Then——

Boom!!! ...

Not a sound.

It's a feeling.

It was as if someone had detonated an information bomb inside my skull! It was as if the entire universe, all the stars, all the noise, all the colors, all the pain and chaos, were forcibly compressed into a red-hot, infinitely long steel needle. From that tiny access point at the back of my neck, it violently penetrated my spinal cord at a speed faster than the speed of light. Then it exploded instantly, rushing madly into my brain along every nerve fiber!

“Uh ...

My body tensed up, as if pierced by a ten-thousand-volt electric current! Every muscle spasmed and froze! The entire physical scene before me—the burning ruins, the hideous robots, my blood-soaked companions—was instantly overwhelmed and swallowed by a wave of pure, violent, and chaotic white noise.

This is not darkness.

It is the ultimate of light, the ultimate of information, and the ultimate of chaos!

Countless incomprehensible, indescribable, and unbearable shattered images, distorted sounds, eerie symbols, and cold data streams… like the fragments of the Big Bang, engulfed in the death screams of billions of stars, they madly washed, tore, and ground every fragile brain cell with overwhelming force! My consciousness was forcibly stretched, twisted, and shattered, like a pitiful leaf thrown into the core eye of a supernova explosion!

Pain! Unimaginable pain! Not physical pain, but the excruciating agony of my soul being repeatedly pierced by billions of red-hot steel needles, torn repeatedly by invisible giant hands! I felt my consciousness being washed away by this raging torrent, reduced to its most primitive particles!

"Hold... the line..." A voice, as faint as a candle in the wind, flickered with difficulty deep within the core of the storm of consciousness. Was it Jiang Li's voice? Or was it my own remaining wisp of obsession?

Threads...those golden threads...

Amidst this pure, destructive information chaos, I felt like a drowning man, frantically grasping at a nonexistent straw. Where was the thread? My consciousness drifted and shattered in the torrent, each attempt to gather itself only to be swept away by an even more violent torrent of data.

Just as my consciousness was about to be completely evaporated by this white furnace of chaos, about to turn into nothingness—

Buzz...

A faint but unusually clear "buzzing", like the only stable heartbeat in the darkness, penetrated the violent information noise and directly "knocked" on the core of my consciousness.

Not hearing, but feeling.

Then, amidst the absolutely chaotic, glaring white noise, a faint, warm golden light stubbornly shone, like the first ray of light that penetrated the endless chaos at the birth of the universe.

The light was faint, yet remarkably steady, carrying an indescribable sense of order and life. It wasn't static, but rather "breathing" and pulsing with a strange rhythm. With its appearance, the torrent of information rushing around me, threatening to tear me apart, seemed to be soothed and sorted by some invisible force. Though still raging, the direction of the flow seemed to... possess a faint, perceptible trace of "flow."

Wire!

It's those lines!

It wasn't "seen" with the eyes, but rather, his entire consciousness was "immersed" in the unique "field" radiated by the golden light, and he clearly perceived it! Countless slender "threads" emitting a warm and constant golden light, like a living neural network, were converging from all directions, ultimately connecting to that faint but firm golden light!

And myself… my nearly shattered consciousness was now being connected, wrapped, and held together by one of the thickest, most condensed golden threads! It was this thread! It was this golden thread that, amidst the terrifying data storm that could instantly destroy any carbon-based brain, firmly anchored my crumbling core like a stabilizing force! It was this thread that provided me with an extremely fragile, yet real, "safe haven" amidst the raging torrent!

Jiang Li! It's Jiang Li's neural interface! That device isn't just a physical connector, it's more like... an amplifier? A resonator? It's forcibly establishing and amplifying some incomprehensible connection between my collapsing consciousness and this mysterious golden "thread"! It's this "thread" that's protecting me!

This realization was like a beacon in the darkness, instantly dispelling some of the fear and chaos that consumed my soul. My consciousness gathered a tiny glimmer. Desperately and greedily, I grasped at this golden thread that held me together, like a lifeline. I focused all my attention on this "perception," following the faint "sense of order" it conveyed, and strained to "see" outward.

The field of vision (if it can still be called a field of vision) suddenly switched!

No longer the physical ruins of a master control room.

I was "suspended" above a vast "ocean" of pure data and energy. No, not an ocean, more like a seething nebula experiencing a cosmic storm! Below me, countless vast, blurry geometric outlines represented the physical existence of the city—a "foundation" of skyscrapers, road networks, and underground pipelines. And above this "foundation," countless "nodes" representing out-of-control intelligent entities, like billions of violent stars flashing a dangerous red light, moved frantically, collided, and erupted with destructive energy pulses!

The "matter" that made up this seething nebula was made up of billions of surging streams of data! They were no longer the docile codes on a screen, but a tangible, violent, and dazzlingly colorful "torrent"! The grayish-white turbidity representing basic instructions, the dark red magma representing the clearing process, the purple lightning representing chaotic calculations, the black vortex representing the conflicting errors... They entangled, collided, and devoured each other, emitting a silent yet deafening roar that turned the entire "nebula" upside down!

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