Lu Qingyi suddenly opened her eyes.
The cold, shadowless light of the isolation room pierced her pupils, bringing no warmth, only an inorganic, chilling feeling of being scrutinized. Deep within her body, the burning and tearing pain she had just forcibly suppressed hadn't completely subsided. Instead, it lingered at her nerve endings, becoming a more subtle, sharper noise that continually gnawed at the edges of her consciousness.
"Qingyi? Are you awake?" Xiaolin's voice, tinged with surprise, came from the control console, followed by the sound of approaching footsteps. Her face still bore traces of tears, but now, a sense of immense relief at having survived a catastrophe replaced them. She moved closer to the bedside, leaning over to examine Lu Qingyi's face carefully. She reached out and gently brushed away the few strands of hair that had clung to her forehead, damp with cold sweat. "How are you feeling? Are you feeling particularly uncomfortable? You really scared us just now..."
The moment her fingertips were about to touch her skin, Lu Qingyi's pupils suddenly constricted. It wasn't a moment of focused awareness, but more like the cold light scanning of some sophisticated instrument, instantly activated. An extremely faint, almost imperceptible dark purple glow, like a poisonous fire quietly spreading beneath the ice, suddenly lit up in the depths of her pupils before sinking back into a deeper darkness.
Xiaolin's fingers froze in mid-air. An inexplicable chill shot up her spine and instantly reached the top of her head, making her scalp tingle. She opened her mouth, but the words "Don't be afraid" were stuck in her throat, unable to come out. Lu Qingyi's eyes were terrifyingly empty, as if they were staring through her body into some distant, cold void filled with a torrent of data.
"Qingyi?" Xiaolin's voice trembled slightly.
Lu Qingyi didn't react. Her gaze swept slowly and emotionlessly over everything in the isolation room—the cold metal walls, the flashing monitoring equipment, the hanging IV bag, Xiaolin's terrified face... as if scanning, or perhaps locating. Her body remained flat, except for the microchip interface at the back of her neck, where a faint light seemed to flicker beneath her skin for a fleeting moment, so fast it seemed like an illusion.
At the control console, a technician responsible for real-time brainwave monitoring suddenly looked up and said in disbelief, "Sister Lin! Look! The brainwaves... the brainwave pattern is changing dramatically! This... this isn't normal! The frequency is skyrocketing, and the pattern... the pattern is completely unfamiliar! I've never seen it before!"
Xiao Lin whipped her head around to look at the console's main screen. The brainwave curve, which had been flat, representing Lu Qingyi's relatively stable state after a deep sleep, was now undergoing a terrifying transformation! The colored lines representing different brain regions no longer followed any known physiological or pathological patterns. They twisted, jumped, and tangled with each other like forcibly broken up garbled code, or as if some cold program was violently overwriting and rewriting the original neural signals! A cascade of data frantically flashed across the monitoring pane, and red warning signs exploded one after another, emitting a shrill buzzing sound!
"Forced activation protocol initiated." A voice, flat and cold like the friction of metal, suddenly rang out in the dead silence of the isolation room.
The source of the sound was the hospital bed.
Lu Qingyi's lips barely moved. The sound seemed to be squeezed directly from the depths of her throat, or even from the chip interface at the back of her neck. Every syllable carried an inhuman, absolutely mechanical feeling.
Xiaolin and all the medical staff's hearts were instantly gripped by an invisible hand, and the frozen blood seemed to have stopped flowing.
"Begin execution..." Lu Qingyi's hollow eyes, still tinged with a strange purple light, slowly turned, accurately locking onto the technician closest to her who was frozen in place. "Clear command."
"No--!" Xiaolin's scream tore through the frozen air, filled with extreme fear and despair.
It's too late.
Lu Qingyi's body launched from the bed with an explosive force beyond human limits! The restraints ripped under the strain of her suddenly tensed muscles! Her movements were unpredictable, swift, precise, and deadly, like a puppet manipulated by invisible strings, brimming with inhuman power.
Her target was not Xiaolin, but the technician who had just sounded the alarm and was closest to the control console.
The technician was still immersed in the shock of the data change. Lu Qingyi's ghostly figure was reflected in his pupils. He only had time to let out a short cry of surprise. He couldn't even make any effective evasive moves.
Lu Qingyi's hand, slender but filled with terrifying strength, was like a cold iron clamp, instantly strangling the technician's throat! The joints turned white due to the tremendous force.
"Ah--!" The technician's face instantly turned purple-red due to lack of oxygen, his eyeballs bulged out painfully, and he struggled in vain, trying desperately with his hands to pry open Lu Qingyi's motionless fingers.
"Let him go!" Another male medical staff member who reacted a little faster roared, picked up a stainless steel infusion pole from the metal tray rack next to him, rushed towards Lu Qingyi, and tried to hit her arm to save his companion.
Lu Qingyi didn't even turn her head. At the moment the IV pole was about to fall with a whistling sound, her free left hand shot back like lightning, and her five fingers precisely grasped the heavy metal pole!
“Crack!”
There was a teeth-grinding sound of metal twisting! The sturdy stainless steel IV pole was actually dented and deformed by her slender fingers!
The medical worker holding the pole felt an irresistible force traveling along the shaft, his knuckles instantly cracking, blood gushing out, and he staggered forward. Lu Qingyi took advantage of the situation and yanked him out, sending him flying like a rag bag!
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