35: The leaked "treasure" and the upgraded game

Just as Excellence felt conflicted over Su Mu's concerns, the "sweetener" carefully prepared by Morpheus Li arrived right on schedule, like a precisely calibrated clock.

It was late on a weekend night, and Excellence was browsing a geek forum called "TechArchaeologist" alone in his dormitory.

This forum was extremely obscure, focusing on cracking and sharing old technical materials and experimental data forgotten by the times; it was an important place for him to find cheap alternatives and inspiration in the past.

The forum's interface was crude, post volume was sparse, and sometimes there was no new content for months, yet it hid quite a few treasures.

He was scrolling through the page aimlessly when his gaze was suddenly caught by a title buried among many old posts: "Exploration of Several Possibilities of Bio-Electric Field Induction and Environmental Interaction (Including Partial Experimental Data)."

The poster was anonymous, the posting time showed it was five years ago, the last reply was three years ago, and it had completely sunk into oblivion afterward.

At first, Excellence didn't pay much attention; posts with exaggerated titles and hollow content were not uncommon on the forum.

But when he clicked on it out of boredom and began reading those seemingly fragmented theoretical snippets and experimental data, his breathing gradually became rapid.

These fragmented contents—a few paragraphs on the methodology of bio-electric signal acquisition and amplification, some data records on environmental energy field perturbation detection, and even a few blurry circuit diagrams marked with strange symbols—looked disorganized at first glance, and even appeared rough and misguided in some places.

But as he read deeper, an indescribable shock surged in his heart.

These contents actually produced astonishing Resonance and complementarity with the neural interface and wireless energy transmission he was currently tackling, and even some obscure concepts in that commentary on the huainan wanbi shu!

"Wait... the design of this feedback loop..." Excellence sat up straight suddenly, his eyes fixed on a schematic on the screen. "Although the efficiency is low and the structure is complex, this approach... it cleverly avoids the harmonic interference problems of traditional methods!"

He quickly began to calculate on his notebook, cross-verifying the fragments from the forum with the knowledge provided by the system and the metaphors in the ancient books.

The more he studied, the more he felt an ecstasy like discovering a treasure.

"System! Analyze this signal modulation method quickly!" He called out eagerly in his mind, inputting a key piece of code into his consciousness.

[Analyzing... The efficiency of this modulation method is only 17% of the standard solution, but it exhibits unique anti-attenuation characteristics. Warning: This technical path has an 87.3% similarity to the abandoned project "Firefly" of the known Prophet Foundation. The source of the database is highly suspicious; it is suspected to be a technical trap. It is strongly recommended that the host treat it with caution and stop research immediately.] The system issued a sharp warning, and a red danger icon flashed in Excellence's consciousness.

"A trap?" Excellence was completely immersed in the excitement of a technical breakthrough at this moment and dismissed the system's warning. "Even if it is a trap, there is a lot of real stuff in here! Look at this feedback mechanism design based on bio-electrical induction; although it looks like a detour, it provides a brand new way to avoid the influence of quantum decoherence! And this... look here! It actually achieved field strength superposition with such a simple method!"

He was like a traveler who had trekked in the desert for a long time and suddenly discovered an oasis; he didn't care whether the water quality was safe and drank it greedily.

He was completely captivated by these new ideas, immediately downloaded all the materials to local encrypted storage, and then threw himself into research, forgetting to eat and sleep.

The system's new tasks were temporarily shelved, the optimization of the wireless energy transmission device was delayed, and he even forgot the regular reports requested by Xiao Zhang.

All his energy was poured into cracking, verifying, and integrating these "unexpectedly acquired" technologies.

He didn't know that every one of his download clicks, every long-duration reading pause on specific paragraphs, and every targeted calculation attempt was being clearly recorded by the distant observer through an extremely precise tracking program hidden in the forum's code.

He didn't even notice that when he downloaded those materials, a tiny, almost undetectable encrypted data packet was also simultaneously implanted into the underlying layer of his system.

In the brightly lit command center on the other side of the city, Morpheus Li was looking at Excellence's research status report on the screen with satisfaction.

Multiple windows displayed Excellence's real-time biological characteristic data (excitement, focus), research content focus, and the research progress direction calculated by the system.

"Look, Evelyn," he swirled his wine glass elegantly, the bright red liquid leaving enticing traces on the walls of the glass. "Humanity's greed for knowledge and desire to solve puzzles are the weaknesses best exploited. He really took the bait, biting even harder than we expected."

He enlarged a window, which showed a calculation model that Excellence had just completed: "Moreover, he seems to be able to extract some value from these 'wastes' that we hadn't noticed? Interesting, very interesting. This little brain is indeed quite something."

Evelyn stood quietly in the shadows, watching Excellence's focused, even slightly fanatical side profile on the screen (filmed by a hidden camera), her eyes complex.

She asked softly: "Father, do you need to guide him into the next stage? Or cast more 'bait'?"

"No, no rush." Morpheus Li shook his head, a composed look of having everything under control at the corners of his mouth. "Let him keep digging, let him keep integrating. We want to see what kind of unexpected fruit this accidentally discovered seed will grow into after colliding with that ancient book and his own strange ideas. I have a premonition that he might bring us some... surprises."

He paused, a cold light flashing in his eyes, and his tone turned icy: "At the same time... it's also time to create a little trouble for our official friends. Let their cybersecurity department chase a few 'hacker' leads from the Free Confederacy, or have customs detain several batches of scientific research equipment they urgently need. In short, let them not have so much energy to closely monitor our little friend for the time being."

"Yes, Father." Evelyn lowered her eyes, hiding the strange emotion that flashed in her eyes.

A game surrounding Excellence, because of this "accidentally" leaked "treasure," quietly escalated again.

The gears of the trap had already begun to turn, and the sweet poison was slowly releasing its potency.

Meanwhile, Excellence himself was still completely immersed in the ecstasy of a technical breakthrough, completely unaware of the bigger storm to come.

He stayed up all night fighting, his eyes bloodshot, but shining with excitement, constantly writing and drawing on his notebook, trying to integrate the mysteries of the ancient book, the advancement of the system, and the peculiar ideas of this "treasure" into one, yet he had no realization that he was standing on the edge of a cliff, and the ground beneath his feet had already begun to loosen.