205: He has a grave in his mind.

Chapter 205: A Tomb in His Brain. "The situation isn't good."

Su Qingxue switched on an emergency flashlight, the beam of light hitting A-Qiang's pupils.

"Pupillary light reflex is sluggish. Body temperature is only 34 degrees. That pacemaker is running at overload; he has a fever, but his body is cold."

"Physical cooling."

Chen Mo dragged a dust-covered industrial fan from the corner and plugged it directly into the power. "As long as his brain doesn't burn out, it's fine."

"Boss, this isn't just a brain..."

Li Ke set his laptop on a grease-stained table, his fingers trembling. "This is a time bomb. Look at this."

He turned the screen toward Chen Mo.

On a black background, a mass of red garbled code was writhing frantically, Li Ke a nest of tangled venomous snakes.

"This is the 'Gemini' system's self-defense mechanism."

Li Ke wiped the cold sweat from his forehead. "It detected an external intrusion and is modifying its underlying logic. Every ten seconds, the encryption algorithm resets. I just finish calculating half of it when the password changes."

"It's a living lock."

Li Ke swallowed hard. "It's reading A-Qiang's subconscious. To unlock it, unless..."

"Unless what?" Chen Mo stared at the mass of garbled code.

"Unless we can input a signal that makes his subconscious 'calm down'."

Li Ke clutched his hair in despair. "But this is the subconscious! God knows what he experienced in that tank for three years? Maybe it's fear, maybe it's pain, or maybe..."

"Or maybe it's a sound."

Chen Mo suddenly interrupted him.

He walked to the iron table, leaned down, and pressed his ear against A-Qiang's temple.

Cold.

Hard.

Beneath that layer of synthetic scalp, Chen Mo heard a sound.

It wasn't the sound of an electric current, nor the reading and writing of a hard drive.

Hum... hum... hum... It was very faint, but in Chen Mo's augmented ears, the sound was as clear as someone whispering in his ear.

It was a frequency.

An extremely suppressed, yet extremely regular vibration.

"Turn off the speakers." Chen Mo closed his eyes. "Everyone, stay quiet."

The air-raid shelter instantly fell into a dead silence.

Only the sound of water dripping in the distant sewer remained.

"Li Ke, open the audio input port."

Chen Mo maintained his posture. "Turn the microphone sensitivity to the maximum and place it at the bone conduction position behind his ear."

"Done... it's done."

"Now, input this frequency."

Chen Mo's finger lightly tapped on the rust-covered tabletop.

Tap. Tap-tap. Tap.

A two-second pause.

Tap-tap. Tap.

"What is this?" Su Qingxue couldn't help but ask. "Morse code?"

"No."

Chen Mo's gaze became profound, as if he were lost in some memory. "This is a game we played back at the police academy. We weren't allowed to talk after lights out, so we would tap on the bed frames to chat."

"The meaning of this rhythm is..."

Chen Mo's finger continued to tap, the rhythm getting faster and faster.

"It's 'I want to go home'."

Screech—!

A piercing howl suddenly came from the laptop.

The mass of frantically writhing red garbled code on the screen miraculously froze the moment it heard this rhythm.

Li Ke a violent beast that had suddenly heard its master's call.

"There's a reaction!"

Li Ke was so excited he almost jumped up. "The defense mechanism has paused! The logic lock is opening! Thirty percent... fifty..."

"Don't stop."

Chen Mo looked at A-Qiang's unrecognizable face. "Keep inputting. He's listening."

So for these three years, you've been waiting for someone to knock on this door.

Chen Mo's heart felt as if it were being squeezed hard by something.

Those bastards Li Ke Wang Daoming, to prevent data leaks, had used A-Qiang's deepest obsession as the final firewall.

As long as this obsession of 'wanting to go home' remained, the data would be locked tightly within his subconscious.

And the only key was this sequence of taps that only the two of them understood.

"It's open!"

Li Ke shouted, his finger heavily pressing the enter key.

The screen instantly turned green.

A massive number of files scrolled across the screen Li Ke a waterfall.

The folder naming was very simple; there were no dates or names, only strings of seemingly random numbers.

"What is this?" Ninth Master leaned in, squinting his old eyes. "It doesn't look Li Ke an account book."

"They are coordinates."

Chen Mo glanced at them, his face instantly darkening. "And biological vital data."

He reached out and clicked open one of the largest folders.

What popped up wasn't a spreadsheet, but a video.

The background of the video was a sterile operating room.

The camera seemed to be mounted on the lead surgeon's headlamp; the image swayed with his line of sight.

Lying on the operating table was a little girl who was only six or seven years old.

She was awake.

But her eyes were hollow, as if her soul had been drained away.

"Record number 709."

A male voice, processed through a voice changer, came from the video—cold and without a trace of warmth. "Subject's brain domain development at twelve percent. Implanting 'Hive' third-generation crystal chip. Commencing frontal lobe stripping."

In the image, a cold, gleaming scalpel sliced open the girl's scalp.

"Beasts!" Su Qingxue abruptly turned her head away, unable to bear watching any longer.

Chen Mo stared fixedly at the screen.

What he noticed wasn't the cruel surgical process, but the lead surgeon's hands.

Those hands were very steady, wearing white latex gloves.

But at the edge of the glove, on the inner side of the wrist, a dark red birthmark was visible.

It was shaped Li Ke a maple leaf.

"This hand..."

Chen Mo's pupils constricted violently. "I've seen it."

It was on that rainy night three years ago.

While he was holding A-Qiang, a black sedan had stopped at the entrance of the alley.

The window had rolled down halfway, and a hand had reached out to flick away cigarette ash.

On that wrist, there was the same birthmark.

"Turn up the volume," Chen Mo ordered.

Li Ke immediately complied.

In the video, besides the clinking of surgical instruments, there were also extremely faint voices in the background.

It sounded Li Ke someone was observing from outside the operating room.

"...The quality of this batch of goods is good. President Wang, the big shots above are very satisfied. As long as we can solve the rejection reaction, this kind of 'biological computing power' is much more useful than supercomputers."

"Of course."

Another voice rang out, carrying a hint of sycophancy. "These were all carefully selected from the slums. No one investigates, and no one cares. Just Li Ke rats in a gutter—if a few go missing, who would know?"

That was Wang Daoming's voice.

Chen Mo's fists clenched until his knuckles cracked.

So that was it.

This was the so-called 'Black Rain' project.

It wasn't money laundering at all.

They were using living people as biological computers! They kidnapped children from the slums, cut open their heads, stuffed in crystal chips, and turned them into obedient, emotionless computing nodes.

And A-Qiang was the 'Server' in this network.

"No wonder..."

Li Ke looked at the data stream on the screen, his face deathly pale. "No wonder the encryption level of these files is so high. If this were exposed, the entire Jiang City... no, the entire Federation would experience an earthquake."

"This is just the tip of the iceberg."

Chen Mo pointed at the folder list. "There are hundreds of numbers here. Every number represents a human life."

"Then where are these coordinates?" Ninth Master asked.

"They are the 'Farms'."

Chen Mo's voice was as cold as a wind blowing from hell. "They are the places where they keep these children imprisoned."

He clicked open the latest coordinate file.

The map loaded.

The location where the red dot flashed was actually right in the center of Jiang City.

"This is..." Su Qingxue leaned in to look. "Cixin Orphanage?"

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