Thick fog, like billions of rotting shrouds, tightly wrapped around the vast, rusted forest of server racks in the "Forgotten Cemetery." The air was thick with the pungent smell of metal and a sickening sweetness, akin to the decay of overripe fruit. Xu Shuangyao's breath froze into a white frost beneath her filter mask as her slender, yet remarkably steady, fingers brushed against the outer shell of a server covered in dark purple bacterial plaques. Beneath her fingertips, veins of scarlet flesh cup fungi pulsed and expanded within the cold metal, like the veins of a sleeping giant, greedily absorbing the remaining data nutrients.
She inserted a specially crafted probe, its tip gleaming with a faint blue light, precisely into a data port where the mycelium was incredibly dense and undulating, like a living thing. The terminal screen on her wrist suddenly lit up with a dazzling white light, and a cascade of green data streamed across the screen. Suddenly, all the characters twisted and solidified, and the entire screen was completely covered by a blood-red warning line that continuously expanded and contracted, pulsing as if with life:
[High-risk intrusion! Deep access traces detected for the Crown of Thorns — Permission Level: Dependent (Native Level)]
The shrill buzzing sound penetrated the mask and pierced the eardrums.
"It's that again..." Xu Shuangyao's voice was low and tense, with a barely perceptible tremor. This was the third time. Ever since they ventured deep into this data graveyard, marked as an absolute forbidden zone by all major factions, that eerie totem composed of thorns and broken data links had been like a maggot on the tarsal bone, constantly flickering like a ghost at the most critical data nodes, then mysteriously dissolving into the torrent of data just as she was about to capture its core code. Each encounter was accompanied by a more intense mental contamination and physical disturbances of the fungal colony. The portable mycelium lighting stick in her hand emitted a crackling sound of electricity, and the previously stable fluorescent mycelium inside the stick now twisted violently as if frightened, the light flickering.
"Frost medicine!" Pei Du's low, rapid voice came from the encrypted communicator. In the background was the teeth-grinding sound of metal tearing and the sticky noise of some slippery object rubbing against the ground at high speed. The interference of the current made his voice intermittent. "The scavenger force of the 'Fungal Dome'! There are too many of them...! They have transformed into aberrations, and the energy readings are abnormal! They have broken through the outer defense field and are rushing towards Channel 3! I repeat, evacuate immediately! Location Gamma-7!"
The holographic map was instantly projected onto Xu Shuangyao's retina. The scarlet spots of light representing hostility were like a swarm of ants bursting through a dam, densely devouring the green lines representing the safe path, and rushing towards their coordinates at an astonishing speed.
"Give me two more minutes!" Xu Shuangyao's voice was firm, almost paranoid in its determination. She yanked open the port at the back of her protective suit, revealing the cold metal neural port beneath. "This data tail... it's connected to the core log fragments from before the 'Higanbana' crash! I must capture it!" She could feel the traces of the "Crown of Thorns" trying to escape upstream from the probe, like a cold, venomous snake, trying to penetrate her neural port.
"You are crazy! They will tear you to pieces!" Pei Du's roar was drowned out by a violent explosion. The communication signal was instantly covered by strong interference snow, leaving only hoarse noise.
Severe pain! Indescribable agony erupted the moment the nerve connection wire pierced the socket at the back of his neck, as if a red-hot iron had been thrust directly into his spine. Xu Shuangyao's consciousness was seized by this violent force, yanked from his body, and thrown into a bizarre and completely distorted torrent of reality!
No longer the familiar, cold, orderly matrix of zeros and ones, what lay before him was a wildly twisting, endlessly growing jungle of thorns. Each sharp, metallic-gleaming thorn was composed of a rapidly flowing, constantly disintegrating and reforming stream of binary data, emitting a dizzying hum. The air was filled with the odor of burnt ozone and the thick, indissoluble humus of high-speed data collisions. In the center of this strange jungle, a massive, heart-wrenching structure hovered—the totem incarnate! A crown of thorns woven from countless glowing data branches, sharp code fragments, and mycelial veins radiating a dark golden halo! It slowly spun, emanating an ancient, cold, and strangely attractive pressure, like the beating heart of the entire jungle, each beat driving the surrounding data thorns to grow and shrink madly.
"So that's how it is..." Xu Shuangyao's shattered consciousness grasped a glimmer of understanding amidst the ripping currents, like a piece of driftwood grasped by a drowning man. "The new order... the pattern of data flow... is alive! It's a plant-like root network! Plundering, symbiotic, expanding... like fungi, like vines!" This discovery shook her soul. She endured the pain of her consciousness being torn apart, summoning her remaining mental strength, gathering it into an illusory hand. Trembling, she reached towards the core of the suspended crown, attempting to touch the mycelial veins flowing with dark golden light—there, it seemed, lay the key to understanding everything.
Just when her fingertips were about to touch it!
“Sizzle!”
The real-life alarm erupted with an unprecedented shrill wail! The surveillance screen affixed to the server rack was instantly bathed in crimson, a dazzling red light flashing wildly. Xu Shuangyao was horrified to discover that at the base of the probe connected to the port, the previously inert mycelium of the scarlet flesh cup fungus seemed to be infused with a violent vitality, frantically climbing up along the icy nerve connection line! The scarlet mycelium, like living snakes, greedily wrapped itself around her protective arm suit, its sharp tips flashing with a cold light, attempting to penetrate the tough composite material!
The cold blade light tore through the scarlet mycelium network like lightning!
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