The sound of metal scraping against metal drifted into the ruins with the morning mist, like a rusty needle scraping against everyone's eardrums.
Lin Yi walked at the front, his shoes crushing half a piece of the rusted server shell. As the debris splashed onto his feet, he suddenly raised his hand—ten meters ahead, three mechanical guards were emerging from behind the collapsed firewall, their scarlet scanning lights sweeping over everyone.
"Level 2 Guardian, power core in the chest cavity." Chu Yao's projection condensed on Lin Yi's shoulder, data streams dancing at her fingertips into a blue star map. "The number is surging; five units are approaching from each of the four directions: east, south, west, and north."
Long Wu's battle sword hummed as it was drawn from its sheath, crimson gold patterns creeping from the hilt up his arm. His muscles bulged slightly under the dragon's blood: "I'll face you head-on. You guys find a chance to flank from behind." Before he finished speaking, the nearest mechanical guard had already raised its chainsaw arm. With a roar as the saw teeth spun, a laser beam grazed Lin Yi's temple and shot into the wall, charred plaster falling off in a flurry.
"Don't fight head-on." Lin Yi's pupils flashed with silver light, and his left hand pressed down, causing the spacetime rift beside him to suddenly expand into a mirror as tall as a person.
He gazed at the mechanical guards reflected in the mirror, a cold, hard smile curving his lips—no matter how intricate the creations of the Mother Nest were, they could never truly comprehend the illusion of spatial folding.
"Look to the left!" Xuan Mingzi suddenly threw out a lightning talisman. The purple lightning struck the joint of the guard on the right, but the moment it touched the metal, the image of the guard suddenly distorted into the shape of the guard on the left.
When the real attack came from the other side, the mechanical guard's chainsaw arm actually cleaved into the chest cavity of its own kind.
"An illusion?" Ivan's mark on the back of his neck was almost dripping blood. He covered his forehead and chuckled twice, blue light seeping from between his fingers. "The guards of the Mother Nest only recognize data signals... You used a spatial rift to forge their location coordinates?"
Lin Yi didn't reply, but drew silver lines in the air with his fingertips.
The scanning lights of the four guards spun wildly at the same time, and the red lights that were originally locked on the group all shifted and turned to face each other.
The first guard's laser cannon shattered its companion's head, the second guard's chainsaw arm severed the third guard's power pipe, and amidst the sparks of the explosion, Long Wu seized the opportunity to rush forward, his battle blade slashing into the core chamber of the last guard. The crimson-gold blade light, wrapped in a dragon's roar, tore apart the buzzing mechanical heart.
"Done." Long Wu shook the oil off his knife and turned around to see Lin Yi staring at the ground—beside the six remains of the guards, there were seven more piles of still-smoking metal fragments.
"One of them, mixed in with the illusion, actually rushed over." Ivan tore off a piece of his shirt to wipe his hands; the burning pain at the back of his neck made his voice hoarse. "It just locked onto me." He ran his fingertips over the mark on the back of his neck, where blisters had formed on the skin. "The remnant consciousness of the Mother Nest... is rejecting me."
"Let's go to the secret room first." Lin Yi bent down and picked up a numbered fragment. The engraving of b13-07 gleamed coldly in the morning light.
He kicked open the half-deformed metal door, and a musty smell mixed with the burnt smell of electricity hit him. The entrance to the underground chamber was hidden in the rusted elevator shaft behind the door.
The elevator had long been out of service. Lin Yi reached out and pressed his hand against the well wall. The spacetime rifts spread across the metal like vines, and the elevator car slowly rose against gravity.
As everyone filed in, Long Wu suddenly grabbed Lin Yi's shoulder: "You just used spatial folding three times, do you have enough stamina?"
"We can hold on." Lin Yi looked up at the ceiling, which was constantly seeping rusty water. "The Mother Nest couldn't have left this secret chamber with just a few guards."
The moment the elevator doors opened on the B13 floor, everyone held their breath.
In the center of the thousand-square-meter secret chamber, a mainframe as tall as a three-story building was still running, with blue light gushing out from countless interfaces, weaving into a distorted human face in mid-air—the afterimage of the core of the nest.
The mainframe screen displayed garbled text, but it suddenly stopped as the group approached, and a mechanical voice mixed with electrical static boomed out: "Welcome back... my children."
Chu Yao's projection instantly merged into the host interface, and the data stream darted into the circuit board like a silver snake: "Hybrid structure!"
The 'Dawn' AI core, developed by humanity in 2020, and the neural nodes of the Mother Nest consciousness... were forcibly welded together. Her voice, unusually trembling, said, "This mainframe is... nurturing a new consciousness?"
"Dawn AI?" Xuan Mingzi pulled out a compass, the pointer spinning wildly. "That was an experimental project that was destroyed long ago. It was said to be able to autonomously learn human emotions..."
"So the Hive needs it." Ivan suddenly walked towards the mainframe, a blue light spreading from his pupils to his entire body, like a flame about to burn through flesh and blood. "The Hive's consciousness has no emotions, it cannot understand..." His voice suddenly choked, and he raised his hand to press on the mainframe's casing. "And here... there's the smell of tears."
Suddenly, the mainframe screen flashed white light, and countless fragmented images poured out: a girl in a white lab coat debugging code in the lab, tears in her eyes but smiling brightly; a stormy night, she rushed into a fire carrying the mainframe core; in the last frame, her hand was pressed on the same mark on the back of Ivan's neck, her lips clearly saying "I'm sorry".
"It's her." Ivan's blue light suddenly went out, and he staggered, bumping into the mainframe. "The woman I saw in my consciousness... the one crying and saying 'Don't come any closer.'"
Lin Yi stared at the girl's face frozen on the screen, feeling that something about her seemed familiar.
He was about to speak when Chu Yao's exclamation interrupted him: "The main unit's power is running out!"
It is channeling the final energy into...
"Spatial node." Lin Yi's palm suddenly felt warm. He instinctively raised his hand, and the spacetime rift in his palm resonated with the dark patterns on the back of the main unit.
When his fingertips touched that faint ripple, the blue light in the entire secret room suddenly converged into a vortex, condensing into a bright pearl with a flowing star trail in his palm.
"This is..." Long Wu's battle sword automatically unsheathed, its clang carrying a hint of alertness.
"The Mother Nest has a teleportation portal." Lin Yi stared at the light in his palm, the silver light surging in his eyes. "And on the other side of the portal..." He didn't finish his sentence, but clenched his fist, his knuckles turning white from the force.
The computer screen suddenly went black, and a final garbled message flashed: "Protect her."
The morning mist had somehow seeped into the secret room, blurring everyone's vision.
Ivan remained standing in front of the computer, his fingertips gently tracing the girl's afterimage on the screen. The mark on the back of his neck had finally stopped burning, but a drop of bright red blood seeped out, like a rose blooming in his skin.
"Let's go." Lin Yi turned and walked towards the elevator, the light in his palm still warm. "We need more clues." He paused, then added, "Especially about that girl."
The moment the elevator doors closed, a faint buzzing sound came from inside the main unit, like someone turning over in their sleep.
The light in Lin Yi's palm was visibly sketching another face in his hand—seven parts similar to the girl on the screen, but with a coldness and hardness that didn't belong to a human.
The metallic particles spun wildly in the ball of light in Lin Yi's palm, and the faint fluctuation suddenly became clear—it was as if someone was gently tapping his consciousness through a layer of frosted glass, and the familiar touch made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.
"It's the energy frequency of a virtual divine realm." His Adam's apple bobbed, and his fingertips gently caressed the surface of the light cluster, silver light condensing into starlight deep within his pupils. "But it's mixed with... remnants of human emotions."
"You sensed it too?" Xuan Mingzi had moved closer unnoticed, the bronze pointer on his compass suddenly fixing on the "Kun" position. "The core code of the Mother Nest has always harbored an obsession with 'fusion'." He traced the lingering blue light from the mainframe with his fingertips, his robes fluttering in the sudden gust of air. "It doesn't want to destroy humanity, but..."
"Instead, they want to merge human consciousness with data entities to create entirely new life forms." Chu Yao's projection suddenly popped out from the host interface, her hair still clinging to the data streams that hadn't been completely extracted. "I just parsed a third of the Mother Nest logs—they call this a 'dimensional ascension experiment.'" Her virtual pupils contracted to slits. "But fusion requires a carrier, and humans..."
"It is the most perfect container." Lin Yi caught it extremely quickly, and the ball of light in his palm suddenly became scorching hot, burning red marks on the back of his hand.
He recalled the players who had been corrupted by the Mother Nest in the starting village, those empty-eyed walking corpses. It turned out that from the beginning, the Mother Nest had never intended for them to be completely wiped out—it just wanted to transform them into "half-data life forms".
"So that girl..." Ivan suddenly spoke, his voice hoarse like sandpaper rubbing. The blood on the back of his neck had congealed into a dark red scab, but he was still staring intently at the afterimage on the main screen. "She was an experimental subject."
still......\"
"Warning! Energy overload!"
The mechanical sound of the main unit suddenly tore through the air, and the entire sealed room began to shake violently.
Rust from the ceiling poured down like a torrential rain. In an instant, Long Wu's battle blade was held horizontally above his head, its crimson-gold blade light forming a semi-circular shield that shattered the falling metal blocks.
Chu Yao's projection was distorted into static by the shock, and at the last moment she screamed: "Structural collapse countdown: 30 seconds!"
"Go!" Lin Yi gripped the ball of light tightly with his left hand and waved his right hand, causing the spacetime rift beside him to surge open like a black tide.
Long Wu grabbed Ivan by the back of his collar and dragged him into the crevice. Xuan Mingzi had just taken half a step in when the supporting beam above his head suddenly broke, sending sparks flying as it struck Lin Yi in the back.
"Watch out!" Long Wu's roar, mixed with the booming of his boiling dragon blood, was accompanied by the backhand swing of his battle blade. The crimson-gold blade light precisely pierced the weak spot of the load-bearing beam. With the sound of metal breaking, the beam shifted half an inch, grazed Lin Yi's shoulder, and crashed into the ground. The sparks that flew up burned through his sleeve.
"Come in, all of you!" Lin Yi's temples bulged with veins, and the spacetime rift continued to contract amidst the vibrations.
He gritted his teeth and injected the last bit of spacetime power into the rift. He watched as Xuan Mingzi staggered in, then hooked Long Wu's wrist and pulled him into the domain.
\"Bang--\"
The sealed room collapsed completely behind them, the roar of concrete and metal muffled by the spatial and temporal realm.
Lin Yi leaned against the inner wall of the domain, his bangs stuck together with cold sweat. He could clearly hear his own heart pounding—if Long Wu's blade had been 0.1 seconds slower in that half second, his spine would have been smashed to pieces.
"The mainframe's residual consciousness is self-destructing." Chu Yao's projection re-froze, her hair still stained with lingering data streams. "But before it left..." Her fingertips rapidly tapped the virtual keyboard, "it stuffed the last piece of data into the orb of light."
Lin Yi opened his palm, and the ball of light was slowly rotating. The star trails inside suddenly became clear—it was a face that was half human and half data. The left eye was human amber, and the right eye was flowing code. It was seven parts similar to the girl on the screen, but had a mechanical coldness.
"This is..." Ivan suddenly reached out to touch the ball of light. Just as his fingertips were about to make contact, the ball of light suddenly disappeared into Lin Yi's palm, leaving a light blue star-shaped mark on the back of his hand.
"A fragment of the Mother Nest's core consciousness." Xuan Mingzi took out a Soul-Stabilizing Talisman and pressed it to his forehead. "It's not completely dead, it's just..."
"Waiting for a chance to be reborn." Lin Yi looked down at the mark on the back of his hand, the silver light swirling in his eyes.
He could feel the fragment sleeping deep within his consciousness, like a poison pill coated in sugar—carrying the girl's lingering warmth while concealing the ambition of the mother nest.
"Back to base." He tore off a piece of his sleeve to quickly bandage the scrapes on his shoulder. "Chu Yao, analyze the data in the light cluster; Ivan, organize the information about the girl in your memory; Long Wu..." He looked up at the man with the perpetually straight back, "Please guard the lab and don't let anyone near."
Long Wu nodded vigorously, and the battle sword hummed as it returned to its sheath. The crimson gold patterns faded from his arm, leaving only faint dragon scale marks.
Xuanmingzi pulled out a compass, its needle still spinning wildly. He stared in that direction and murmured, "The core of the Mother Nest... might be hidden in the cracks between the virtual and the real."
When everyone returned to the real-world base through the space-time rift, the morning light was streaming through the glass windows.
Chu Yao's projection had already rushed towards the laboratory, her hair still stained with the lingering blue light; Ivan stood in front of the French windows, the red mark on the back of his neck glowing eerily in the sunlight. He stared at his reflection, then suddenly raised his hand to touch his cheek—there, a contour similar to the face in the ball of light appeared.
"Mr. Lin." A base guard jogged over and handed him a tablet. "We just received an urgent report from the interdimensional resistance. They've detected..."
"Leave it for now." Lin Yi interrupted him, his gaze falling on Chu Yao's back in the laboratory.
The light cluster had been connected to the central host, and countless data streams poured down like a galaxy. One segment suddenly brightened up—it was the last message from the mother nest core, which flashed on the screen for three seconds before being swallowed by deeper darkness.
But Lin Yi could see it clearly.
"I will wake up."
The text was written in the girl's handwriting.
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