64: Wang Jianguo's surprise and his "playing along"

The tiny but heavy-as-a-mountain USB drive, like a secret envoy from the abyss, was escorted by strict security protocols through layers of checkpoints, finally placed silently in the center of Wang Jianguo's expansive desk. It lay there quietly, its matte black casing absorbing the light from the overhead lamps, like a solidified thunderclap waiting to be detonated.

The technical team was already on high alert. The dedicated decryption terminal connected to the base central ai "Fuxi" emitted a low hum, and data streams cascaded down the screen like a waterfall. The encryption method used on the USB drive was extremely devious, nested in layers, fusing asymmetric quantum keys with a dynamic entropy-variable algorithm. It was clearly the result of Evelyn using her highest level of authority and perhaps even combining it with her personal cryptographic expertise. It both proved her determination and served as a test—if the National Special Bureau couldn't even crack this, they weren't worthy of being the recipient of her defection.

Time passed in silence, with only the hum of cooling fans and the occasional light tapping of the operator's keyboard. Finally, after nearly an hour of intense computation, the last encryption barrier was breached. The data stream on the screen suddenly became orderly, and a top-secret file list, clearly structured and labeled "Prophet Foundation Asia-Pacific Deep-Net Nodes and Deep-Diver Personnel (Partial)," was presented!

When the detailed content of this intelligence was extracted, magnified, and presented on the main screen in front of Wang Jianguo, this veteran intelligence chief, who had seen it all and long since cultivated the composure to remain unmoved even if Mount Tai collapsed before him, couldn't help but stand up abruptly from his ergonomic commander's chair and gasp! His pupils contracted slightly, and then a sharp light erupted in his eyes—a mix of extreme shock and immense surprise, like a traveler trekking through an endless desert who had suddenly discovered an accurate map to an oasis!

"Good! What a good Evelyn Li! What a... heavy and hot 'pledge of allegiance'!" Wang Jianguo, rarely showing his emotions, slapped the smooth desktop hard, making a dull "bang" sound, and paced excitedly around the thick-carpeted office like a lion that had discovered a fatal flaw in its opponent. "Morpheus, oh Morpheus! You old fox, you've schemed your whole life and played the whole world in the palm of your hand, but I bet you never dreamed that your own precious daughter would stab you in the back like this, would you?! This is simply... heaven helping me! Haha!"

The value of this intelligence far exceeded a simple list. It was like an extremely detailed "medical report," clearly revealing the potential neural network that the Prophet Foundation had carefully constructed in the Asia-Pacific region, hidden beneath social activities and academic exchanges—the precise physical coordinates of dozens of key monitoring Nodes, the core vulnerabilities of security protocols, and the encryption frequencies and blind spots of daily communications; there were also the code names of over a dozen high-level deep-diver intelligence personnel, some verified public cover identities (art curators, Foundation representatives, university distinguished professors, environmental organization leaders...), as well as their emergency contact methods and known activity patterns. This wasn't just a map; it was a set of keys that opened the gates to the enemy's outer outposts!

More importantly, the timing of this "pledge of allegiance" and the intelligence itself provided a golden opportunity to turn the tables, perform reverse operations, and weave a "Truman Show" for Morpheus Li that he would absolutely believe!

"Immediately! Launch the highest-level 'Mirror' plan!" Wang Jianguo did not hesitate. The light of a shrewd and sharp old hunter flashed in his eyes as he quickly issued a series of precise and decisive orders, his voice steady but carrying unquestionable power. "Based on this list, mobilize all resources, one by one! Conduct technical countermeasures and physical reverse penetration on all identified Foundation monitoring Nodes to achieve all-weather monitoring and control, but maintain silence; do not alert the enemy! As for the deep-diver personnel on the list, don't touch a single one; instead, secretly 'feed' them! Through their habitual channels, 'inadvertently' leak some 'intelligence fragments' that we have carefully crafted and that they dream of! Turn them into our megaphones, our sources of misinformation, and the 'pillow talk' we whisper into Morpheus's ear!"

He walked to the massive electronic sand table, his gaze sweeping over the lit-up Asia-Pacific region, his tone full of the confidence of someone in control of everything: "We are going to build a perfect 'reality' stage that Morpheus Li will believe! Let him 'verify' through his trusted channels that Excellence is indeed ruined, having become a wreck with chaotic consciousness, broken logic, and someone who only babbles nonsense at parts all day, but occasionally leaks 'glimmers of truth'—shattered fragments that seem to contain astonishing cosmic truths from the 'pandora' fragments, like a geyser erupting! Let him think that we are overwhelmed by this, wanting to crack valuable information from these 'ravings' while fearing the danger contained within! Let him think... he still has a chance, still has hope, that he can 'recover' these fragments through more covert, more 'gentle,' and more clever means, or even... 'repair' and 'guide' this unique 'seed' he dreams of, and eventually take it for himself!"

This was an extremely bold, risky, yet tempting psychological tactic. By using the key sent by Evelyn to reverse-control the information flow, they would create a huge, tailor-made illusion trap for Morpheus Li, letting him jump in voluntarily, greedily chasing phantoms, and walking step by step toward the ending carefully prepared for him.

"Then... what about Miss Evelyn? How should we respond?" Xiao Zhang asked at the right moment, his tone calm and waveless.

Wang Jianguo pondered for a moment, his fingers tapping lightly on the desktop, making a rhythmic thud-thud sound: "Reply to her. Use the highest encryption level, through that ghost channel she provided earlier. As for the content..." He thought for a moment, a meaningful, almost cunning smile appearing at the corner of his mouth, "Just write: 'Gift received, very good, quite sincere. Looking forward to the next cooperation. Also, take care; there seem to be "restless rats" active within The Foundation recently. The top brass is furious and is fully investigating the source of the leak. The atmosphere is tense, so please take care of yourself.'"

This was both an affirmation and acceptance of her value and determination, as well as a further test and... a protective reminder. If Evelyn could use her own wisdom and luck to survive the inevitable, storm-like investigation and purge within The Foundation, then her value, credibility, and usability would be greatly enhanced.

"And what about Excellence..." Xiao Zhang asked again, his gaze glancing at the young man on the screen who was smiling foolishly at a pile of light-emitting diodes. This grand deception plan's core "prop" and one of the "actors" was Excellence himself, requiring his unconscious, "natural" "cooperation."

Wang Jianguo walked to the huge bulletproof glass window, looking at the eternal "dusk" scenery simulated by the underground city outside, and couldn't help but let out a rare, slightly teasing, and helpless smile: "That kid? Doesn't he love 'hand-crafted' stuff the most? Doesn't his brain short-circuit from time to time, and his logic move heaven and earth? Perfect! Let him keep 'short-circuiting' away! Let his 'illogical children's doodles' and 'meaningless babbling' occasionally 'happen' to be seen or heard by certain people... um... 'interesting' fragments that we have carefully screened and 'polished.' Remember, it must be 'natural,' 'accidental,' and fit his 'brain-damaged patient' persona, while leaving enough 'clues' that someone as sharp as Morpheus can catch and feel itching for! Turn his ward into our most natural, non-performative 'information warfare stage'!"

Thus, under Wang Jianguo's personal direction and instruction, Excellence's rehabilitation life, which was already full of "surprises" and "accidents," unknowingly added an extremely absurd hidden "mission" codenamed "Improvisational Performance." A secret group composed of behavioral analysis experts, intelligence psychology doctors, signal processing engineers, and master screenwriters was quietly established, specifically responsible for "collecting, editing," and "packaging" Excellence's daily life.

Some of the twisted geometric shapes and circles (which he called "Energy Flow Topology Maps") that he would scribble on paper while being guided by the Rehabilitation Therapist to exercise his fine motor skills, and which he himself couldn't understand, would be "inadvertently" left in a corner of the ward that might be covered by a specific angle of a surveillance camera. And in an inconspicuous corner of the paper, there might be an seemingly casual ink dot that just happened to form a blurry outline similar to a complex mathematical constant (such as Euler's identity e^(iπ) + 1 = 0) or a physical symbol (such as the Ψ wave function), enough to make analysis experts let their imaginations run wild.

His incoherent muttering to the Arduino starter kit (such as "This resistor... um... resistance... can it be used to... calculate the... 10086th decimal place... of pi's... tremor? Or... simulate the... decay period of the Higgs boson?") would be "accidentally" captured by mini-microphone arrays hidden in flower pot decorations, behind ventilation grilles, or even under the casing of medical equipment, which had their sensitivity specially tuned and directional. These words would be carefully edited, noise-reduced, and mixed with some electromagnetic background noise by the technical team, turning them into "unconscious speech fragments accompanied by abnormal brainwave activity," the spectrum analysis diagrams of which looked full of "non-random information features."

Even when he had a nightmare due to the side effects of new medication, and shouted some delirious words while his heart rate spiked abnormally on the monitor ("The black sun... is eating... the bugs that eat data... so many gears... rusted... stuck..."), these records were "truthfully" recorded by the medical staff, and then this record was "accidentally" mixed into a seemingly ordinary, anonymous discussion file about the clinical manifestations of rare neurological injury cases used for international medical exchange, waiting for the "interested party" to discover and analyze it.

Excellence himself was completely unaware of this, still immersed in his slow, sometimes clear, sometimes muddled rehabilitation and "hand-crafted" great cause. He would smile foolishly for a long time because he successfully made a few LEDs flash according to the code sequence he wrote randomly and without logic, feeling that he "still had it"; he would also stare blankly at a piece of paper he had scribbled on, wondering what on earth it was; and he would even explain his "latest invention" to the camera (which he thought was monitoring his safety)—a device made of IV tubing and paperclips that "could measure the 'information entropy flow rate' in the ward."

But he had no idea that these unconscious, behavior-art-like actions and ravings of his, after being carefully packaged, edited, polished, and released by the professional "screenwriting" and "post-production" team under Wang Jianguo, were being packaged into "bait" that tasted strange but could precisely whet Morpheus Li's appetite, radiating dangerous temptation, and were being silently fed into The Foundation's intelligence network through those "deep-diver personnel" channels that were being reverse-controlled.

An information deception war, centered on a seemingly "useless" genius, ignited by an angry and rebellious daughter, and carefully choreographed by a scheming director—a war that was extremely absurd yet hid murderous intent—quietly began. There was only one audience for this play—Morpheus Li far away in the Free Confederacy—while the lead actor, Excellence, remained completely unaware of his role, just blindly, clumsily, yet incomparably "authentically" performing himself.