359: Chapter 359 Collapse

The black liquid metal slithered along the motherboard's circuits like a venomous snake, forcibly cutting into the research vessel's data core.

Chen Mo's body froze in place, his eyes glowing with the blue light of data streams.

Using his own brain as a host for the system's Sin Resonance, he went head-to-head against a massive undersea digital lifeform.

The lights in the control room flickered wildly, and the nutrient solution in the tanks began to boil.

A bloodless yet brutal information war erupted violently at the intersection of the physical and digital worlds.

Chen Mo's brain felt as if tens of thousands of red-hot steel needles had been shoved into it.

The Asura-grade prosthetic body was not just a weapon; it was his bridge into cyberspace.

A vast, chaotic torrent of data surged like a tsunami, attempting to crush his carbon-based nerves.

It contained decades of dark archives from the Far East District, money laundering records, and live experimentation footage.

Every single frame was saturated with despair.

Chen Mo gritted his teeth, the veins on the side of his neck bulging prominently.

The liquid metal traveled down the console's motherboard, corroding and rewriting the defensive code.

[sin value continuous consumption: 20,000 points per second.]

[Breaching the underlying logic locks of the eye of the deep sea.]

The system's blue light screen clashed frantically against the Emperor's red code on his retina.

"Foolish flesh and blood, you think you can use brain capacity to rival a quantum array?"

The Emperor's voice broadcasted through the ship's intercom, sharp with humiliated rage.

Wisps of white smoke rose from the wiring on the control room walls as the temperature inside the cabin climbed sharply.

On the screen, the countdown for the twelve Dirty Bombs skipped from sixty seconds straight down to thirty.

"He accelerated the detonation sequence!" 404 knelt on the floor, his hands moving so fast on the terminal keyboard they left afterimages.

Blood seeped from his fingertips due to the excessive force.

"Brother Mo is fighting for physical control of the base layer, but his computing power alone isn't enough!"

Su Qingxue slung her rifle over her back and strode to Chen Mo's side.

Seeing his face contorted in pain, she reached out and held his trembling shoulders.

"What do you need?" she asked, leaning close to Chen Mo's ear, her voice piercing through the roar of the equipment.

Chen Mo's eyes were bloodshot, and raspy characters rolled from his throat: "Local... block. Cut... antenna."

Su Qingxue understood instantly.

The Emperor's main server was on the seabed; his ability to control the Dirty Bombs and cultivation tanks here relied entirely on the satellite communication antenna atop this research vessel acting as a relay station.

"Jiang Hong!" Su Qingxue pulled out her sidearm from her thigh holster. "Find the antenna on the roof! Blow it up!"

Jiang Hong shouldered her sniper rifle and, without a word, turned and charged out of the battered titanium alloy doors.

Nightingale followed close behind.

Only Chen Mo, Su Qingxue, and 404, who was still typing away, remained in the control room.

The nutrient solution in the tank churned violently.

The 'perfect body' submerged within convulsed violently, and the electrode probes connected to its synthetic skull erupted in blinding electrical sparks.

The Emperor was attempting to forcibly download his core consciousness into this physical body to cut off Chen Mo's intrusion physically.

"Stop him," Chen Mo squeezed out the words with difficulty. The liquid metal on his left arm had turned glowing red from the high-load computations.

Su Qingxue turned, aiming her gun at the body in the tank.

The bullets struck the bulletproof glass, leaving only a few white scuff marks.

The durability of this tank far exceeded standard explosion-proof ratings.

The body inside the tank opened its eyes.

They were eyes completely devoid of pupils, filled instead with electronic components.

He opened his mouth; nutrient solution poured into his lungs, yet he did not suffocate.

Cracks began to spiderweb across the explosion-proof glass encasing the body.

The Emperor was preparing to emerge from his cocoon.

"Use this." 404 grabbed a Thermal Cutting Torch looted from a dead assassin outside and tossed it to Su Qingxue.

Su Qingxue caught it steadily and pressed the trigger; a blue high-energy plasma beam spat forth.

Stepping onto the edge of a server rack, she pressed the high-heat beam against the center of the cracks in the glass.

The body inside the tank raised a hand and slammed it against the glass where Su Qingxue was positioned.

The heavy impact jolted Su Qingxue so hard her palm split open, blood flowing down her wrist and into her sleeve.

She gritted her teeth, refusing to retreat a single step, and pushed the cutting torch to its absolute maximum power.

The area of melting glass expanded.

Chen Mo's battle in cyberspace reached a fever pitch.

The system's sin value was nearly depleted, with less than twenty thousand remaining.

His surface memories began to peel away.

A muffled explosion echoed from the deck above.

The entire research vessel shook violently, the lights in the control room died, and only the red emergency lights remained flashing.

Jiang Hong had destroyed the satellite antenna relay on the mast.

The massive stream of data the Emperor was transmitting via satellite suffered a three-second disruption.

Chen Mo seized this fatal opening.

[Sin Resonance: Absolute Deprivation. Final 20,000 sin value points cleared.]

His liquid metal left arm transformed into a mass of black spikes, piercing through the motherboard all the way to the data cable interface at the bottom of the tank.

The physical network disconnection combined with the system's ultimate strike completely severed the Emperor's consciousness download.

On the large screen, the countdown for the twelve Dirty Bombs froze at exactly three seconds.

The red light dimmed.

A series of explosions erupted from the console.

Chen Mo was thrown back by a massive recoil, his back slamming heavily into the bulkhead as he spat out a mouthful of blood.

Simultaneously, the thermal torch in Su Qingxue's hand burned through the tank.

High-pressure nutrient solution poured out, sweeping Su Qingxue to the floor amidst shattered glass shards.

The shell of a body, which had only completed half of the consciousness download, tumbled onto the steel floor with the flood of liquid.

He looked like a fish out of water, gasping for oxygen, his limbs twisted in a grotesque manner.

The electronic eyes emitted a dim, fading light.

Chen Mo pushed himself up from the floor, using his shotgun for support.

His boots stepped into the viscous nutrient solution, making a sickening squelching sound.

He walked up to the broken shell.

The shell looked at Chen Mo, its Adam's apple bobbing as it emitted a glitchy electronic voice:

"Kill me... and you'll never find... the antidote data. Tartarus... will not let you go."

"I don't need the antidote anymore." Chen Mo shoved the barrel of the shotgun into the shell's open mouth, the muzzle puncturing the throat cartilage.

"This is just the interest. One day, I'll dredge up your undersea server rack and burn that too."

He pulled the trigger.

The buckshot unleashed devastating power at point-blank range, instantly blasting the probe-covered semi-electronic head into a mess of components.

The red warning lights overhead spun frantically.

The ship's self-destruct sequence had been physically triggered due to the paralysis of the core host.

"The ship is sinking! Let's go!" 404 threw on his bag and stumbled toward the exit.

Chen Mo turned and walked toward Su Qingxue, who was lying in the puddle.

Her right leg had been sliced open by a large shard of explosion-proof glass, the wound deep enough to see bone, and blood stained the surrounding nutrient solution red.

Chen Mo knelt down, his liquid metal left arm returning to its original finger-like form.

He scooped Su Qingxue up in his arms.

Su Qingxue leaned against his chest, which was soaked with sweat and river water, and could hear his strong, rhythmic heartbeat.

Her hand gripped Chen Mo's tactical vest.

"Your hand is broken, doesn't it hurt?" she asked softly.

"Right now, this hand can punch through steel plate."

Chen Mo carried her, striding over the debris on the floor and heading out through the hatch.

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