"I can't... fall down..." Lin Mo squeezed out a hoarse voice from the depths of his throat, like the cry of a wild beast, fighting against the boundless cold and severe pain, "It's not... the end... yet..."
When he almost rolled and crawled, finally passed through the last twisted and deformed airtight gate that was half-sealed by ice and snow, and fell into the relatively "warm" (only around zero degrees) passage inside the base, the scene in front of him stunned him for a moment.
The passage was no longer filled with dead silence and hopeless waiting. Although still freezing cold, the atmosphere was filled with a strange, almost tragic, busyness.
The few soldiers and technicians who could still move were struggling to carry some things—not weapons and ammunition, nor food and medicine—but piles of old, damaged, and variously designed neural connection helmets, bracelets, and even bio-signal sensing patches removed from medical equipment! These things were piled together at the entrance to the hall of the Pillar of Creation.
"Hurry! Move faster! Supervisor Su said we want them all! We want the broken ones too!" A young technician with frostbite on his face shouted hoarsely. One of his arms was hung with a rag, but his movements were extremely fast.
"Lao Zhang! Share your antique Neuron-1 helmet! Stop hiding it!" another person shouted at an old man curled up in the corner.
The old man hesitated for a moment, but finally took out an old-fashioned helmet with scratches all over it and exposed connecting wires from his arms and handed it over.
"What are they...doing?" Lin Mo struggled to hold onto the cold wall and asked hoarsely a technician next to him who was dragging a broken leg and struggling to move a heavy, old medical scanner base.
The technician looked up, his face a complex mixture of numbness, exhaustion, and a touch of morbid fanaticism. "Commander? You're back? Director Su... Director Su said... she found a way! She can... she can relight the Ark! Let's move all usable neural connection units to the lobby! She said... she wants to... plant a tree... on the ruins!"
Plant a tree? A neural docking unit?
Lin Mo's heart skipped a beat! An extremely ominous premonition instantly gripped him! He pushed aside the person blocking his way, ignoring the ripping pain in his back, and stumbled towards the main control hall of the Pillar of Creation!
In the hall, the scene was even more shocking.
In the central area, a small clearing had been created from the ruins of the most severely damaged server array. In this clearing, the collected neural connection units, old and new, in varying degrees of damage, were crudely and haphazardly connected together like a spider web using whatever cables they could find (including the ones Lin Mo had brought back). Finally, all the cables converged at a single core point—
Su Mu was sitting cross-legged on the cold metal floor!
She wore only thin, greasy work clothes, her lips purple from the cold, and her body trembling slightly. Before her lay the crude personal terminal that had displayed her mother's final message. A thick, hastily welded cable, seemingly vulnerable to short circuiting, connected it to a complex neural signal amplification and conversion pedestal, clearly ripped from some large medical device. At the other end, a dozen biological neural conduits emanated, flickering with a faint, unstable light!
The ends of these catheters were now being pressed one by one by Su Mu herself with her red, frozen, and even ulcerated hands... on key nerve nodes such as her forehead, temples, and cervical spine!
She actually... wanted to use her own body as the primary node! Forcibly connect to this makeshift, fragile neural network! To connect to that secondary node of the "Tree of Life" buried deep underground, with a weak signal and fraught with unknown dangers?!
"Su Mu--!!! Stop--!!!" Lin Mo's eyes were bloodshot and he let out a heartbreaking roar! He suddenly pounced forward!
However, just when he was about to touch Su Mu——
Buzz——!!!
Su Mu's tightly closed eyes suddenly opened!
Those bloodshot eyes no longer held despair and exhaustion, but instead an almost inhuman, intensely focused calmness, burning with the final flame of life! At the same time, a powerful yet gentle, vibrant emerald green light suddenly erupted, centered on her hands pressing on the nerve nodes!
The light instantly flowed along the haphazardly connected cables like a surging current, rushing to every neural connection unit stacked around the hall! Those worn helmets, bracelets, patches...worn or not, the moment they came into contact with the emerald green light, they lit up with the same soft green glow! It was as if they had been injected with life!
Immediately afterwards, an even more incredible scene happened!
The neural connection units stacked next to the seriously injured soldiers emitted emerald green light as if they had life, automatically extending extremely fine, root-like energy threads, gently and precisely... connecting to the foreheads or exposed skin of the wounded!
"Well……"
"this……"
The bodies of the seriously injured, who had been groaning in pain or unconscious, suddenly shook! The pained expressions on their faces softened at a visible speed! Though still weak, the waning aura of near death had dissipated, replaced by a deep, peaceful sleep! Their basic physiological parameters miraculously stabilized the moment the connection was established! While their injuries couldn't be cured, at least... their lives were temporarily saved!
Success?! She actually... actually used this shabby, makeshift network, leveraging the power of that deeply buried "Tree of Life" node, to forcibly construct a temporary neural network covering the entire hall, stabilizing vital signs?!
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