As Tang Ren rushed towards the remains of Boss Lin's folding fan with the game gold coin exchange voucher, Qin Feng used a magnifying glass to observe the nano-coating at the joints of the fan bones. A holographic projection suddenly descended from the ceiling of the cold storage, and the customs warehouse in 1905 was reconstructed in blue light - each virtual blue brick was marked with the wholesale price of the building materials market.
"Boss Lin's great-grandfather was a contractor, right?" Su Chen used a scalpel to open the shell of the projection controller. "This is the Suzhou Garden VR Restoration Technology in 2022." His fingertips passed over the bronze tripod in the holographic image, and a QR code suddenly popped up on the ears of the tripod. The scanned code displayed the inventory number of a certain film and television prop rental company.
Kuntai's shoes got stuck in the hydraulic track, and he pulled out half of the renovation contract: "You are so good, Lin Feng! You used the government project funds to build your own escape room?!" The fingerprints on the last page of the contract glowed under the purple line, "How come this handprint is the same as the main culprit of the fraud case last month..."
Boss Lin's sneer suddenly turned into electronic noise, and the sound of glass breaking came from the direction of the museum. Twelve lasers shot straight into the night sky from the Han Dynasty display cabinet, forming a holographic projection of an emerald mouthpiece in the clouds. Tang Ren fumbled with a laser pen and waved it around: "Watch me perform the Maoshan Cloud Piercing Arrow!" However, the red light accidentally touched the fire sprinkler, and an artificial rainstorm began in the cold storage.
Qin Feng found a stamp on the back of the soaked renovation contract - it was the prototype of the wax seal behind the ear of the deceased. Su Chen's system suddenly automatically retrieved the government file: the seal pattern completely overlapped with the underground optical cable layout in Chinatown, and each intersection corresponded to the property under the name of Boss Lin.
"No...it's not smuggling." Qin Feng pressed the jade mouthpiece into the fire hydrant interface, "He...he is using the cultural relics exhibition as a signal relay station!" The mouthpiece unscrewed to reveal a micro server that was transmitting encrypted data to a cargo ship on the high seas.
Tang Ren rushed to the police station with a smoking server in his arms, but crashed into the salesperson's milk tea cart. The pearl milk tea splashed on the bronze tripod projection, triggering an AR special effect - the virtual image of Boss Lin raised a white flag of surrender, and a "Game Over" bullet screen floated over his head. Kun Tai stepped on the milk tea cup when he chased after him, and the police badge was hung on the Hello Kitty pendant on the sales box.
Su Chen stood under the neon-lit Chinatown archway, and the system screen displayed a new mission: "Solve a transnational data smuggling case." He looked at Qin Feng's back as he extracted DNA from the milk tea stains, and suddenly heard Tang Ren shouting at the alley entrance: "Celebration party for solving the case! Plenty of milk tea! Half price for the second cup!"
After the rain, lilies spread their petals in the neon lights, each with an anti-counterfeiting watermark - the logo of a live broadcast company is quietly fading.
---
When Tang Ren rushed into the morgue holding a bubble tea, Su Chen's scalpel was hanging above a metallic corpse. In the brain-computer interface slot at the temple of the deceased, the coagulated blood formed a strange Möbius ring.
"This... this is 'Cyber Li Bai'!" Tang Ren poked the corpse's gray face with a straw. "Last night, he was reciting a poem in the live broadcast room using holographic projection, saying 'I raise my cup to invite the bright moon, and my shadow and I become three people'. In the end, he really turned himself into three people - brain matter, crystals and corpse!"
Qin Feng used a tactical dagger to pry open the shirt of the dead man. On his chest was a phoenix pattern composed of binary code: "Live broadcast data traffic surges 300 times at the moment of death." The line graph on his mobile phone screen flashed and suddenly twisted into a DNA spiral. "The audience's reward virtual roses are all converted into neural electrical signals."
Su Chen's pupils shrank slightly, and the system reconstructed the death scene on his retina. When his tweezers touched the brain-computer interface, the LED lights in the refrigerator suddenly flashed, and a holographic projection burst out of the left eye of the deceased - it was the scene of Boss Lin being tried in the virtual court.
"Ding! Detecting quantum entanglement." The system's mechanical sound pierced my eardrums, "The chip residual data is the same as the laboratory explosion residue."
The moment the scalpel cut open the scalp, all the electronic devices in the morgue went black. Tang Ren's phone automatically played the last live video of the deceased: the virtual Li Bai raised his cup in the moonlight, and the wine in the cup suddenly moved like a bloody code, drilling into his temple along the brain-computer interface.
"At that time... there were 1.02 million people online." Qin Feng checked the police surveillance log, "but... but 1.03 million IP addresses sent reward data."
Su Chen put the brain tissue of the deceased into a centrifuge, separated the light blue liquid and formed a nanoscale circuit diagram in a test tube: "This is not an ordinary brain-computer interface, it is a neural network." He held up the test tube to the fluorescent light, "The liquid is mixed with graphene and plutonium-238 isotope."
When Kun Tai kicked the door open, Tang Ren used the dead man's fingerprint to unlock his phone: "Report to the commander! I found an important clue!" He clicked on the background of the live broadcast platform, and the balance showed that the dead man's account received a Bitcoin transfer from the "1905 Customs" before he died.
In the basement of the brain-computer equipment testing center, three hundred silver capsules were arranged like a honeycomb. The moment Su Chen put on the nerve-sensing helmet, the system alarm exploded: "Detecting consciousness flow control program!"
Before Qin Feng could load his pistol, the entire laboratory was suddenly covered by a holographic projection. Boss Lin's virtual image walked over on a torrent of data, with a folding fan in his hand acting as a quantum computer: "Officer Qin, this time even your brain synapses will become my encryption algorithm."
Tang Ren's AR glasses suddenly lost control, and a virtual auction of the twelve zodiac animal heads appeared in front of him. When he reached out to grab the dragon head, blood suddenly gushed out of his nose - the brain-computer interface was reading his memory.
"Don't... don't look at the projection!" Qin Feng closed his eyes and swung the tactical dagger, the blade smashing the laser emitter on the console. Su Chen took the opportunity to insert the scalpel into the server interface, and the electromagnetic pulse burst from the handle caused all the capsules to bounce the emergency switches.
The deceased's phone suddenly started playing "Song of the Wine", and the holographic image of Li Bai raised his cup in the data storm: "Have you not seen the water of the Yellow River coming from the sky..." With each line, the temperature control system in the laboratory dropped by ten degrees.
"He... He is using sound waves to control the liquid nitrogen pipeline!" Qin Feng rushed to the main console, but his gloves were frozen to the keyboard. Su Chen's system interface suddenly cracked, and the flames from the laboratory explosion ten years ago swept in along the data stream.
Tang Ren picked up the fire extinguisher and smashed it at the holographic projection: "Let me show you the Maoshan Taoist magic!" The flying dry powder actually condensed into a firewall code in mid-air, temporarily blocking the data intrusion.
When the last Li Bai poem dissipated, the screen in front of the three people lit up the countdown of the Deep Web auction - quantum state copies of the twelve zodiac animal heads were being bid, and the collateral was actually the neural maps of 100,000 living people's brains.
The raid to arrest Boss Lin was launched on a rainy night. When the SWAT team rushed into the underground server room, they saw 300 computer equipments forming a circular matrix. In each cabin, there were young people curled up in coma, and the barcodes on their necks showed the Jinyulou logo under the purple line.
"This... this is using the "Honor of Kings" skin redemption coupon to lure the test subject." Qin Feng scanned the barcode with a purple light, "All... all IP addresses point to that escape room venue."
Su Chen's scalpel cut across the server shell, and the cold light of the quantum crystal reflected on his solemn face: "They are using multiple brains to build distributed computing nodes. Each consciousness is a living hard drive."
Tang Ren suddenly pointed at the surveillance screen and screamed: "That anchor wearing bunny ears is dancing the Prophet!" In the screen, the internet celebrity was dancing the house dance, and the coordinates of Su Chen's laboratory flashed in the background. When she turned around, her lower back was exposed to the same wax tattoo as Boss Lin.
At the celebration banquet at the end of the operation, the forensic system suddenly popped up a red warning. Su Chen looked at the light on the glass window of the stall, but it was not his own reflection reflected there - the instructor who died in the explosion ten years ago raised the quantum scalpel, with a sneer on his face, just like Boss Lin.
(To be continued)