Ghost Student 1.3

Amidst the shrill whistling sound of the scalpel slicing through the air, Fan Jinci dodged the white-coated "himself" with a sideways movement, and then plunged the scalpel into the other's shoulder with a backhand motion.

No blood flowed out; only silver specks of light, like a stream of data, oozed from the wound.

"You can't bring yourself to do it." The "Fan Jinci" in Ryan's uniform leaned against the virtual wall, chuckling softly, twirling the blue syringe between his fingers. "We share all our memories—including the time you secretly added laxatives to Yu Yan's coffee."

The clone in the white coat suddenly grabbed Fan Jinci's wrist: "You could have become a perfect forensic specimen, why are you being dragged down by those ants?" The gray-blue pupils behind the lenses glowed with the fluorescence of data streams.

The real Fan Jinci suddenly laughed.

The blade flipped and plunged directly into the opponent's heart.

"Because," he whispered in the clone's ear, "they are the ants I chose."

The virtual space began to collapse.

The mirror in the library suddenly shattered, and "Lin Xiaoyu," dressed in a white dress, stepped out of the shards. What dripped from her fingertips was not blood—but fluorescent nerve conduction fluid.

"The third test subject." Li Weimian's scalpel necklace suddenly heated up. "Cheng Xue's consciousness, Yan Kang's technique, using Lin Xiaoyu's body as a container..."

Situ Jin's detection device emitted a piercing alarm: "She has a miniature reactor from Ryan Labs inside her!"

Wen Lin was about to pounce when Jiang Zhaoyan grabbed him by the back of his collar: "Idiot, that body is about to undergo nuclear fission."

As Yu Yan kicked open the control room door, he saw Fan Jinci rip the data cable from the back of his neck. The progress bar on the screen was stuck at 99.9%, and Ya Bin was slumped in the corner, laughing maniacally: "Too late... M-0 will finally awaken..."

"It's so noisy." Fan Jinci picked up the stun gun from the ground and pressed it directly against the other person's neck.

Jiang Zhaoyan strode in, his boots crushing several hard drives. "What a pity, I just hacked into the system and discovered..." He suddenly looked at Yu Yan, "A killing program has been written into Brother Fan's consciousness."

Yu Yan immediately turned his gun towards Fan Jinci.

"Not now." Fan Jinci calmly pressed the M-0 branding mark under his collarbone. The mechanical butterfly tattoo suddenly unfurled its wings, popping out a microchip. "The firewall that Situ Jin installed last week."

The collapse of the virtual world is like a shattered mirror, with countless fragments reflecting Fan Jinci's past memories—the cold light on the dissection table, the afterimage of Yan Kang's smile, and the warmth of Yu Yan's blood-stained fingers stroking the corner of his eye.

The two clones twisted and deformed in the data stream, yet they still clung tightly to his arm.

The voice of "Fan Jinci" in the white coat was icy: "You clearly have the potential to be the most perfect 'work of art,' so why are you resisting?"

Ryan's uniformed "Fan Jinci" chuckled: "Admit it... you've enjoyed the feeling of controlling life and death."

The real Fan Jinci closed his eyes and suddenly plunged his fingers into his temple—

"I don't need to be 'perfect'."

"All I need to do is be 'me'."

The virtual world exploded.

Inside the library, Lin Xiaoyu's body was disintegrating.

A fluorescent blue liquid seeped from beneath her skin, and her bones made a clicking sound as they operated mechanically.

Li Weimian's scalpel necklace burned her collarbone, but she laughed: "So that's how it is... You're neither Cheng Xue nor Yan Kang."

“You are Ryan’s ‘legacy’.”

Lin Xiaoyu's lips tore open to her ears, revealing her intricate metal skeleton: "I am the perfect vessel for the final form of the M series—'Fan Jinci'."

Before she could finish speaking, Situ Jin's anesthetic needle had already pierced the back of her neck.

“Wrong.” He pushed up his glasses. “Teacher Fan’s vessel can only be ‘himself’.”

As Yu Yan's bullet pierced Zhou Yu'an's knee, Jiang Zhaoyan was leisurely formatting all the experimental data.

"What a pity." Jiang Zhaoyan crushed the last hard drive. "You almost made history."

Yabin laughed maniacally, "You think this is the end? 'Ghost Students' are just the beginning! As long as the data has existed, it can never be completely destroyed—"

Fan Jinci suddenly pressed a chip into Ya Bin's neck.

"Then let you experience the 'mind cage' firsthand."

The "M-0" marking on the chip glowed faintly—it was the last gift Yan Kang left him.

At the celebration banquet after the case was closed, Wen Lin got completely drunk and clung to Yu Yan's back, yelling, "Brother Yan! Let me be the bait for the next kidnapping case!"

Yu Yan sneered: "You can't even dodge Li Weimian's electric pen."

Li Weimian swirled her wine glass, but her gaze was fixed on the distance—Jiang Zhaoyan was handing a USB drive to Situ Jin, and a strange stream of code was reflected on Situ Jin's glasses.

Fan Jinci leaned against the balcony railing, his fingertips tracing the mechanical butterfly beneath his collarbone. Yu Yan wrapped his arms around him from behind, biting his earlobe as he asked, "What are you thinking about?"

“I’m thinking…” Fan Jinci looked up at the night sky, “Who sent the message ‘The game continues’?”

Yu Yan's embrace suddenly tightened.

In an abandoned laboratory 30 meters underground at J University, the culture chamber suddenly started up automatically.

Floating inside the cabin was a "person" exactly like Fan Jinci, with the following branded on its chest:

"M-∞"

The real endgame has only just begun.

Bonus content:

Two weeks later, at the case closure report meeting:

Wen Lin tried to flirt with the new forensic assistant using the "ghost student" case, but was punished by Li Weimian with a stun pen.

Silently, Situ Jin stuffed the repaired Cheng Xue's experimental diary into Fan Jinci's drawer. The title page read, "The perfect M-series should be in the Jiang family."

Jiang Zhaoyan gave a peace sign to the monitor, and the chaebol elders on the other side of the screen collectively smashed their teacups.

Yu Yan pressed the case closing stamp against Fan Jinci's lips: "It's missing a signature here..."

Suddenly, everyone's phones went off with alarms simultaneously—

In J University's newly built brain science lab, a line of text flashed on the monitor screens of all the culture chambers: "Game Continues."