The mycelium network projected the front-line scene onto the retina: Mou Xuan was standing on the wreckage of the collapsed defense tower, the ice crystal armor on the left shoulder of his combat uniform shattered into a honeycomb shape, but the space-time vortex in the palm of his hand refracted the artillery fire into a strange state of stillness.
"Notify the underground cold storage..." She suddenly paused, as the mycelium sensed abnormal energy fluctuations at the bottom of a medical cabin.
Just as he was about to bend over to take a look, the entire base was suddenly penetrated by a blinding white light.
——It’s Expert Xing’s main gun that’s overloaded!
Chen Yao staggered and grabbed the operating table, and the mycelium network instantly captured thirty-two energy turbulences.
When she looked up at the holographic projection, she discovered strange ripples in Mou Xuan's space-time defense network. The artillery fire trajectories that should have been refracted were now gathering towards the southeast corner of the base like iron filings attracted by a magnet.
"No..." She suddenly tore off the mycelium connecting the wounded, and light blue liquid splashed from the broken end onto the metal wall, instantly condensing into an ice crystal warning symbol, "Engineer Yin!
Checking the quantum shielding on the seventh underground level..."
A deafening cracking sound interrupted her warning.
The reinforced glass of the medical cabin was suddenly covered with spider-web-like cracks, and some silver-gray liquid substance was seeping in from the gaps.
As soon as Chen Yao's hyphae touched those substances, she felt as if thousands of steel needles were piercing her brain along the neural network.
When the ice crystal prisms on the front-line command post exploded collectively, Mou Xuan was holding onto Expert Xing's mechanical arm to adjust the angle of the main gun.
The flying debris left bloody marks on his face, but the space-time data showed that the attack trajectory had an abnormal deviation of 0.37 seconds.
"Old Xing!" He crushed the melting energy core with his bare hands, "Cut it off immediately..."
The warning caught in his throat.
He saw that the electromagnetic pulse beam that should have been frozen suddenly split into hundreds of silver snakes. These energy bodies bypassed the ice crystal defense network as if they had life, and swam towards the underground cold storage along the surface of the permafrost.
Engineer Yin suddenly jumped up from in front of the control console. His icy right arm exploded into powder, and the flying particles formed a continuously collapsing mathematical model in the air.
"Someone is rewriting the underlying code!" The engineer screamed as he inserted the nerve bundle into his eye socket. Silver-blue colloid gushed out from his temple. "Liquid nitrogen in the cold storage..."
Mou Xuan's pupils split into twelve hexagonal modules, and contradictory items suddenly appeared in the defense data of the seven parallel time and space.
When he grabbed Chen Yao's mycelium and tried to establish a quantum link, he found that the light blue veins were fading at a speed visible to the naked eye.
"Yaoyao?"
The vortex of time and space vibrated violently in his chest, and the originally stable dark blue light began to be mixed with blood.
Mou Xuan suddenly raised his foot and stomped on the ice on the ground, and the flying ice fragments condensed into a honeycomb shield in front of him.
He saw his reflection split into twenty-seven afterimages on the ice, fifteen of which had silver-gray substance wrapped around their necks.
"Captain Mou!" Expert Xing suddenly pierced his chest with a mechanical arm and pulled out the energy core that was emitting electric sparks. "Those bastards are feeding the data virus!"
The entire base was filled with the sound of a glacier breaking.
When Chen Yao stumbled into the command desk, the mycelial network had faded into a translucent state, and the nebula totem on the back of her neck was oozing glowing lavender liquid.
Mou Xuan reached out to catch her falling body, and the temperature from his fingertips caused the space-time vortex to suddenly rotate counterclockwise.
"Southeast corner defense tower..." Chen Yao's mycelium pointed to the holographic sand table with difficulty, "Energy readings... are flowing backwards..."
Yin Gong suddenly let out a terrifying scream.
The rest of his human body was rapidly crystallizing, and the silver-blue colloid was flowing back into the main system along the control console lines.
When Mou Xuan's space-time defense network was reconstructed for the ninth time, everyone saw that the silver-gray matter condensed into a swarm, frantically gnawing at the edge of the quantum shielding layer.
"It's not artillery fire..." Expert Xing tore off the melted mechanical eye, and a stream of data flashed in the dark eye sockets, "These are fucking nano-insect swarms!"
Mou Xuan suddenly pushed Chen Yao to the safe area behind the control console.
He tore open the space-time vortex in his heart with his bare hands, and the gushing blue matter collided with the silver-grey insect swarm, producing dazzling sparks.
When the seventeenth layer of defense code began to collapse, he saw his shadow reflected on the ice wall with a strange smile - it was clearly the face of an enemy that he had wiped out in the time reversal seven days ago.
"Report the loss rate!" He shouted sternly with a metallic resonance.
Yin Gong's right arm, which had turned into an ice crystal sculpture, suddenly exploded, and the flying fragments formed a 62.8% red warning symbol in the air.
Expert Xing was tearing the mechanical ribs in his chest with his teeth, and dark red coolant sprayed all over the wall.
Chen Yao's mycelium suddenly wrapped around Mou Xuan's ankle.
When her fingertips stained with lavender liquid touched his forehead, the space and time between them suddenly stopped for 0.3 seconds.
In this brief gap, Mou Xuan saw clearly the movement trajectory of the nano-insect swarms - wherever they had gnawed, the defense code was actually replicating wrong parameters.
"It's not an attack..." Chen Yao vomited a mouthful of glowing blood, "They are transforming..."
When the earth-shattering explosion sounded from three hundred meters underground, the holographic sand table on the command desk suddenly went out.
Mou Xuan hugged Chen Yao and rolled into the blind spot behind the alloy pillar. He saw that the place where he had just stood was corroded by a two-meter-deep hole caused by the silver-gray insect swarm.
Expert Xing's curses were mixed with the crackling sound of melting metal, and the remaining half of Engineer Yin's face was rapidly crystallizing.
When Mou Xuan's space-time vortex reconstructed the defense matrix for the 13th time, the ice spikes behind his ears suddenly turned collectively to the northwest.
A tremor that transcends the laws of physics was transmitted through the permafrost, a sign of structural collapse in the defense system. The last image transmitted back by the mycelium network was of silver-grey honeycomb patterns emerging on the surface of the liquid nitrogen storage tank in the underground cold storage.
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