Dr. Chen stared at the latest deep scan data displayed on the screen, his face grim and serious. "Mr. Gu... the situation is more complicated than expected. The neural stabilizer can only temporarily suppress the symptoms. The forced activation of power just now, coupled with the previous overdraft of the 'data torrent', has caused structural damage to the 'spiritual bridge' in her brain, which connects consciousness and AI! The nerve bundles show signs of microscopic tears and energy burns! It's like... like a wire repeatedly overloaded and ablated, ready to melt completely at any moment!" He pointed at several glaring red warning areas on the screen, his tone filled with fear. "Even more troublesome... the forced access of the abnormal neural signal just now has left an indescribable 'contamination' mark, like an inhuman, cold 'stigma' that lingers near the damaged area! It's continuously interfering with the normal transmission of neural signals, and... seems to be trying to establish some deeper, passive connection channel!"

Dr. Chen took a deep breath and looked at Gu Chengxiao with an unprecedented seriousness and warning in his eyes: "Mr. Gu, this is not just an injury! This is a continuous, unknown erosion! If left unchecked, or if she forcibly uses that power again... there are only two results: either the 'Spirit Bridge' completely collapses, and she becomes a vegetable; or..." He paused, his voice hard, "...the 'brand' is completely connected, and her consciousness... may be completely overwritten and replaced by that mysterious 'Dawn of the Omnics', or the existence within her body!"

Vegetative state... or be replaced...

Dr. Chen's words, like a final death knell, rang heavily in the cold machine room. Inside the emergency room, Su Wan's body trembled uncontrollably, not from the cold, but from the fear deep within her soul. She finally saw clearly the sword of Damocles hanging over her head—not death, but something far more terrifying than death: the utter annihilation of her self. She bit her lower lip hard, tasting the stronger taste of blood, her eyes fixed on the flashing red emergency light above.

Gu Chengxiao remained silent. A crack seemed to crack in the frozen expression on his face, but it vanished in an instant, replaced by a deeper solemnity, like the eve of a storm. Dr. Chen's warning had confirmed his deepest fears. He slowly walked to the edge of the emergency room, looking down at the fragile Su Wan inside. Her face was transparently pale, her long eyelashes casting fragile shadows under her eyes. The blood at the corner of her mouth was glaring, like a butterfly battered by the storm, on the verge of death.

"Is it worth it?" He suddenly spoke, his voice low and emotionless, but it hit Su Wan's heart like a hammer. "To intercept a clue that might be worthless, you push yourself to the brink of collapse?" He leaned forward slightly, his cold gaze as if it were real, penetrating the depths of her unfocused pupils. "Su Wan, is this the 'choice' you want? To gamble your soul and future on a slim answer?"

His questioning was cold and sharp, like a handful of salt sprinkled on Su Wan's bloody wounds. Ajie's cold body was not far away, and yet this man was questioning the value of her desperate efforts to intercept the clues? Questioning the choice she had risked her life for?

A suppressed flame, a mixture of grief, indignation, grievance, and unwillingness, suddenly erupted from the depths of Su Wan's dying heart! The flame was so fierce that it instantly burned through the sedation of the drug, the weakness and excruciating pain in her body! On Dr. Chen's monitoring screen, the curve representing her brain activity suddenly soared, sounding a piercing alarm!

“Shut up!” Su Wan suddenly half-stood up from the emergency cabin, and her violent movements ripped off a sensor on her arm, bringing up a string of blood beads! Her bloodshot eyes stared at Gu Chengxiao intently, and there was no longer any fear in her eyes, only a kind of desperate madness and burning hatred! “Gu Chengxiao! Put away your high-handed calculations! Ajie’s blood is not cold yet! This damn thing wants to kill you! And it wants to control me! If we don’t catch it, are we waiting for it to blow us all up next time? Waiting for the thing behind it to turn me into their puppet?!”

She gasped violently, each word coming out like a coughed-up lungful, tinged with blood. "My life? My soul? Ha!" She let out a shrill laugh. "From the day you treated me as an experiment, a weapon, a high-risk item requiring surveillance, did I have any choice?! My life is no longer mine! Now, it will either be destroyed in your hands, or in the hands of those cold machines! In that case..."

Her voice suddenly rose, filled with a resolute determination to destroy everything. Her gaze was like a sharp, tempered blade, piercing Gu Chengxiao fiercely: "...Why not use it to expose the true colors of these rats hiding in the gutter! See what they are up to! See how many dark secrets you, Gu Chengxiao, are hiding! See how much trouble this chess piece of mine can stir up!"

"Su Wan! Calm down! Your nerves..." Dr. Chen tried to hold her down in horror, but she waved him away!

"Activate... neural link... deep scan mode..." Su Wan ignored Dr. Chen's warning. She stared at Gu Chengxiao intently, like a wounded, thoroughly enraged lioness. With all her might, she barked a desperate command at the entity within her! Her target was the still-smoking remains of the mechanical flying insect in the analysis box on the ground!

“Buzz!”

An invisible force, far more powerful and violent than the one used to bind the flying insects, burst forth from her body, carrying Su Wan's raging rage and destructive will. This time, it was no longer a binding net, but a utterly destructive data storm! A faint blue light burned in her eyes like a substance! All the monitoring equipment in the emergency room instantly erupted with a piercing red light and shrill alarms! Dr. Chen cried out in shock!

Gu Chengxiao's face suddenly changed! He saw that Su Wan was using her broken body and collapsing consciousness as fuel, forcibly igniting her last bit of strength to attack the deeper secrets that might be hidden in the wreckage! This was tantamount to suicide!

"Su Wan! Stop!" He shouted, his body tensed instantly, and he reached out his hand like lightning to grab her shoulder, trying to forcibly interrupt this crazy self-destructive behavior!

But, it's too late!

The violent data storm was like a world-destroying torrent that broke through a dam, carrying Su Wan's burning soul and will to do anything, and slammed into the mechanical wreckage in the analysis box!

In Su Wan's perception, the world instantly turned into a destructive torrent of data driven purely by furious will!