101: Variable Awakening and "Hand-crafted" Quantum Entanglement

When Excellence reached out those hands that seemed ordinary, yet at this moment appeared to carry the mysteries of the universe, the rules of time and space seemed to undergo a subtle yet fundamental distortion at his fingertips. In front of his palms, the air showed no visible ripples, and light did not refract, but a "fluctuation" far beyond what human senses could capture, acting upon the origin of information, spread silently yet irresistibly from him as the center, like Stardust spreading after a supernova explosion.

This "fluctuation" was not an energy impact; it did not produce any physical pressure or thermal effect. Nor was it a psychic power; it did not act directly on consciousness to create hallucinations or suggestions. It was more like a... local rewrite of the underlying code of reality, a temporary override and correction of physical constants and logical rules.

The first to come into contact with this fluctuation was the "Great Wall" energy barrier on the perimeter of the base, which had been teetering like a candle in the wind. The barrier interface, which had been flashing violently and emitting piercing overload alarms due to the devastating energy bombardment from space, underwent an incredible change the moment the fluctuation swept over it. Those violent energy beams, crashing against the barrier structure like wild horses, seemed suddenly endowed with a certain "reason" and "Order." They no longer struck chaotically; instead, guided by an invisible, masterfully skilled conductor, they began to flow, cancel out, and fuse along the inherent, most stable resonant modes of the barrier's energy field. The blinding overload light quickly dimmed, replaced by a uniform, stable glow that flowed softly like an aurora. The barrier's load reading was steadily pulled back from the dangerous red alert zone to the safe green zone, as if by an invisible hand. It was no longer a shield passively enduring attacks; it seemed to have transformed into an active structure capable of absorbing, converting, and even "pacifying" external energy.

The fluctuation continued to permeate inward, sweeping across the chaotic areas inside the base. For the computer terminals that had been flickering with static and throwing crazy error messages due to the electromagnetic pulse attack, the scrambled code on their screens instantly reorganized as if by magic the moment the fluctuation brushed past, restoring clear system interfaces, as if what they had just experienced was not hardware damage, but merely a brief system refresh. The various sirens, which had been deafening and fueling panic, collectively fell silent at the same instant—not with the silence of burnt-out circuits, but with a total stillness, as if the sound source had been precisely cut off. Even in some locations where short circuits had caused fires due to the explosion, the flames were eerily and suddenly extinguished, leaving only wisps of smoke, as if even the basic chemical process of oxidation had been temporarily "persuaded" to stop.

The fluctuation penetrated the thick alloy walls and layers of protection, gently brushing over the personnel who had been suffering from the mental interference waveforms. Soldiers who were clutching their heads and groaning in pain felt the noise in their brains, like the buzzing of a thousand bees, and the tearing sense of dizziness recede rapidly like a tide. Their consciousness became clear and stable again, leaving only a sense of exhaustion from surviving a disaster and deep confusion. Their nervous systems seemed to have undergone a precise "system restore," clearing away all external, malicious interference signals.

And the most shocking scene, the one that made Morpheus Li, far away in the Free Confederacy, feel fear and even despair, occurred on the invisible quantum level. The quantum capture field emitted by the "hecate" device, which was attempting to entangle, lock onto, and forcibly "fish out" the core of Excellence's consciousness like the most precise fishing net, was not resisted or shielded the moment it made contact with this fluctuation originating from Excellence; instead, it was... completely "deconstructed." The complex Quantum Entanglement states that made up the capture field seemed to have encountered their logical "absolute nemesis," dissolving and decohering on their own within a billionth of a second, collapsing from a highly ordered state with a clear purpose back into meaningless, random background quantum noise. It was like a meticulously woven piece of brocade that, upon encountering a specific unravelling point, instantly turned into scattered threads on the ground. The signal representing a successful lock on the hecate device, displayed on the monitoring screen at The Foundation headquarters, did not gradually fade; it vanished abruptly, as if completely erased from existence by an eraser, leaving no trace behind.

The Dead Silence of the Command Center and the Shock of Wang Jianguo

After the fluctuation swept through, the command center deep underground at the "Zhulong" base fell into an eerie silence. Replacing the previous explosions, roaring, screeching alarms, and human shouts was a stillness that was almost vacuum-like. The red alert icons on all the large tactical screens were seemingly cleared simultaneously; the jumping error codes disappeared, replaced by green readings with various parameters stable in the normal range. Only the low hum of the equipment cooling fans reminded people that this was not a dream.

The technicians stood frozen in front of their consoles, fingers hovering above the keyboards, mouths agape, their eyes filled with extreme confusion and disbelief. They were accustomed to handling all kinds of complex crises, but everything happening before their eyes completely exceeded their cognitive scope and ability to understand. The attack... stopped? No, not just stopped. It was more like... the attack itself had been "negated"? Declared "invalid" by some higher-level rule?

Wang Jianguo stood like a rock in front of the command console, but his hands, gripping the railing until the knuckles turned white, betrayed the turbulent waves inside him. His gaze was fixed on the schematic on the main screen that had returned to normal, representing the overall status of the base, and then he suddenly turned to a split screen beside it—that was the real-time monitoring feed of the corridor where Excellence was located. In the image, the boy stood quietly, his silhouette appearing somewhat thin under the light of the emergency lamps, yet it seemed to contain the weight of the entire galaxy.

"Is this... the power of the 'variable' that Evelyn spoke of...?" Wang Jianguo shouted silently in his heart, and a shiver mixed with immense relief, deeper worry, and a sense of awe crept up his spine to the top of his head. This was no longer a confrontation of power within the human realm; it was more like... mythology. Excellence was not "resisting" or "defending"; he was... "defining" reality. He redefined "attack" as "invalid" and "chaos" as "Order." This power, if controllable, would be a leap for civilization; if uncontrolled, it would be a total catastrophe.

In the corridor, Su Mu and Evelyn, who were closest to Excellence, experienced feelings that were even more profound and direct. They did not feel any physical impact, but as that fluctuation swept across their bodies, an indescribable experience occurred.

For Su Mu, it felt like being suddenly immersed in a pool of warm, pleasant, and life-vitalizing spring water in the depths of winter. The sharp fear and despair that had previously filled her heart, like ice picks, were instantly melted and washed away, replaced by a soul-deep tranquility and a strange... sense of security, of being understood and protected. She looked at Excellence's back; the boy she had always seen as a younger brother in need of careful nurturing now seemed to be shrouded in a hazy, sacred halo in her eyes. The familiarity was still there, but an unprecedented sense of awe-inspiring strangeness also arose. She still loved him and wanted to protect him, but mixed into this affection, unknowingly, was a hint of devotion, like a believer looking up at the starry sky.

Evelyn's feelings were more complex.

As someone who had received the most cutting-edge scientific training and understood the technical depth of the attack that had just occurred, she could appreciate the "impossibility" of what Excellence had just done.

When the ripple swept past, what she felt first was a kind of extreme rational beauty, as if she were witnessing an incredibly complex and conflict-ridden multivariate high-degree equation being instantly solved by a concise and elegant formula.

All technical dilemmas and logical deadlocks vanished into thin air.

What followed was a tremendous shock as a scientist, and as a daughter... utter despair regarding her father Morpheus's insane plan.

In the face of power on this level, all of The Foundation's technology seemed as ridiculous and fragile as a child's toy.

She looked at Excellence, her eyes filled with indescribable, complex emotions: relief at having survived, awe of the power, worry for Excellence's future, and even more so... a sense of wonder at witnessing history, or perhaps even transcending it.

The Price of Power and the Fleeting Miracle

This state, which resembled a miracle, lasted for less than ten seconds.

Excellence's body swayed slightly, and the clear, divine light in his eyes that had pierced the void receded rapidly like a tide, replaced by an unfathomable exhaustion and a blank void of bewilderment.

Like a ragdoll that had been drained of all its strength, he collapsed backward, only to be caught by Xiao Zhang, who had remained highly vigilant.

"Excellence!" Su Mu and Evelyn immediately snapped out of that strange shock and rushed forward.

"I... I'm so tired... so sleepy..." Excellence murmured weakly, his voice barely audible, before closing his eyes and falling into a deep slumber.

His face was pale and his breathing shallow, but his expression was exceptionally peaceful, as if he had just finished a long, exhausting, yet ultimately fulfilling task.

The medical team quickly stepped forward to perform an emergency check.

The results left all the experts looking at each other in bewilderment: although his vital signs were weak, all indicators were trending toward stability and normalcy at an astonishing speed.

Most baffling of all was his brainwave activity chart—it was no longer the chaotic pattern of before, which was sometimes disorderly and sometimes showed abnormal peaks, but instead presented a waveform that was extremely low-frequency yet highly synchronized, harmonious, and orderly, as if a massive parallel computer had entered a power-saving and stable deep sleep mode after completing an epic computational task, and was now integrating and consolidating data.

His brain seemed to have just performed an overload operation that defied imagination.

With Excellence's slumber, the base's crisis was resolved in an almost eerie manner.

Subsequent detailed analysis reports were presented to Wang Jianguo's desk, and every conclusion seemed to challenge the boundaries of existing science:

Space-based attack source: Confirmed to have originated from three "commercial satellites" in specific orbits, but after the attack failed, these three satellites not only lost all contact with the ground control center, but their orbital parameters also underwent small but precise changes, as if they had been gently "pushed" away from their original attack positions by an invisible force, turning into silent scrap metal in space.

The Foundation headquarters anomaly: Through special intelligence channels, it was learned that at the same time the signal from the "hecate" device vanished, a highly shielded experimental area at The Foundation headquarters experienced a violent, unexplained energy backlash and overload, causing severe damage and casualties, and plunging the interior into great chaos for a time.

Morpheus Li's authority suffered an unprecedented blow.

On-site traces: Inside and outside the base, apart from the physical destruction caused by the previous attack, no energy residues or traces of physical effects related to that later "ripple" could be found.

It came, changed everything, and then vanished without a trace, as if it had never existed.

"How... how on earth did he do it?" Xiao Zhang looked at the report, his voice dry, his face filled with the bewilderment of someone whose worldview had been overturned.

Wang Jianguo took a deep breath, casting his gaze toward the sky outside the window that was gradually returning to calm, attempting to understand it using the existing knowledge system: "Perhaps... he didn't directly oppose the energy of the attack.

He might have redefined the 'physical meaning' or 'logical premise' of those attacks on a level we cannot perceive.

It's like a programmer finding the core vulnerability in a piece of malicious code; instead of fixing the damage it caused, they directly modify its operating rules, turning it from a 'destructive command' into an 'invalid command,' or even... triggering its self-destruct mechanism.

This might involve the nature of information, causality, or even some plasticity of reality itself."

Even Wang Jianguo himself felt that this explanation sounded like describing a myth.

There was silence in the command center; everyone realized that what they had witnessed might not just be the resolution of a crisis, but a fleeting glimpse of a power far beyond the era.

After waking up, Excellence had no memory of everything that happened during those decisive ten seconds.

He only felt that he had had a very long, very exhausting dream, in which he seemed to be solving an extremely complex problem that he couldn't solve no matter what, until finally, a flash of inspiration struck... and then he was woken up by exhaustion.

His cognitive functions certainly showed signs of accelerated recovery; some memory fragments began to integrate more systematically, and his thinking seemed much clearer than before.

But that "divine" feeling of seemingly being able to control everything had vanished without a trace, as if it really were just a dream.

However, subtle changes did occur.

His enthusiasm for hand-crafted inventions grew even stronger, and... his research direction began to develop toward more whimsical, and even somewhat philosophical, paths.

He was no longer satisfied with tinkering with circuit boards and writing simple code.

One day, he stared at the complex duty roster on the nurses' station wall for a long time, then excitedly dragged Su Mu along, attempting to use probability theory, game theory, and optimization algorithms to "optimize" the nurses' shifts, claiming that this could "maximize rest satisfaction and minimize shift handover conflicts," only to be sternly stopped by the head nurse on the grounds that "human care is more important than cold, hard algorithms."

Even more absurdly, he somehow picked up two wilting pothos plants from somewhere, stared at them blankly for an entire afternoon, and then suddenly announced solemnly that he was going to research "Quantum Entanglement communication between plants."

Then, using collected aluminum foil, copper wire, and old batteries, he attempted to build a so-called "cross-planter consciousness bridge" between the two pots, but because of a faulty circuit design, it caused a short circuit; not only was the "bridge" not built, but the sensor used to monitor soil moisture in the pots was fried, making a total mess of things.

Su Mu watched him wrap the pothos plants like two mummies waiting to have their stitches removed, feeling both annoyed and amused, and couldn't help but retort: "Excellence! Plants don't use WeChat! They communicate through sunlight, water, and soil!"

Excellence, however, looked serious, his eyes clear and persistent: "Squad Leader, you don't understand! Their communication is more fundamental! It's the entanglement and exchange of photons, electrons, and chemical molecules! It's much more advanced than WeChat! I'm going to decode their 'whispers'; maybe I'll be able to understand them saying things like 'so thirsty' or 'the sunlight is too blinding'!"

After Wang Jianguo learned of these laughable "studies," he not only didn't stop him, but his eyes actually lit up.

He said to Xiao Zhang beside him: "Let him tinker! As long as it's safe, let him be.

This seemingly illogical nonsense might be exactly the way he is unconsciously organizing and adapting to the new cognitive dimension brought about by that 'miracle.'

He might be using his own unique, incomprehensible way to try to converse and interact with the deeper rules of this world."

Consequently, people in the base gradually got used to such scenes: Excellence would sometimes chase after passing technicians, earnestly discussing "whether Schrödinger's cat can achieve pre-observation at a macroscopic level by introducing a decoherence model," and other times, he would collect potatoes and lemons in the cafeteria, attempting to make "bio-batteries" to power his Emotion-Visualization Device (the result usually being a puddle of sticky, sour-smelling failed product).

His nonsense continued, but in the eyes of all those in the know, these behaviors seemed to be imbued with a layer of mysterious filter.

Every whimsical question, every seemingly absurd hands-on attempt, might hide behind it a clumsy yet sincere knock on the door leading to some unknown truth.

Excellence was still that Excellence, but he was already different.

The greatest variable had awakened, and although he himself had not yet realized it, his every move had already begun to quietly disturb the future of this world.