65: Morpheus's confusion and "warmth" offensive

On the top floor of the Prophet Foundation headquarters, in the panoramic office overlooking the core area of the entire Free Confederacy, the air was as cold as interstellar vacuum.

Morpheus Li stood alone before the massive curved floor-to-ceiling window, his silhouette straight and tall like a pine tree, yet exuding an ineffable gravity.

In his hand, he held several intelligence reports that had just arrived on his desk, verified layer by layer through different channels.

His brow was tightly furrowed, and his deep eyes rarely revealed a complex expression mixed with confusion, vigilance, and a trace of... irrepressible greed.

The contents of the reports corroborated each other, pointing to one clear core conclusion: Excellence, that "seed" who once displayed astonishing potential, was indeed in a state of severe, almost irreversible neural functional impairment following the impact of the pandora fragment.

His cognitive abilities had severely degraded, his logical thinking was fragmented, his behavior was as childish as that of a toddler, and he was incapable of self-care, having become virtually a complete "waste" reliant on life support systems.

This highly matched the expected effect of the pandora information virus, which was overwhelmingly designed to format the host's consciousness.

Seeing this, a cold arc, suggesting everything was under control, even curved the corner of Morpheus Li's mouth.

This was precisely how he perceived the absolute crushing power that pandora should possess.

However, the subsequent appendices and analysis briefings were like several invisible, cold needles piercing the seams of this "perfect" conclusion, bringing about a disturbing tremor.

An attachment to a report from "Deep Eye," an operative embedded within the National Special Bureau's external medical assessment team, included several extremely blurry images, seemingly taken from a distance.

They depicted Excellence doodling on paper under the guidance of the Rehabilitation Therapist.

The lines were chaotic and without pattern, entirely consistent with the state of a brain-damaged patient.

Yet, The Foundation's top algorithm team, specializing in analyzing residual high-dimensional information, discovered by chance during a routine scan that the local structures of a few doodles faintly exhibited some... extremely perplexing, non-Euclidean geometric features?

It was as if a distorted segment of a higher-dimensional structure had been forcibly projected onto a two-dimensional plane; though shattered, it carried a heart-palpitating "anomalous" texture.

In another segment, obtained by monitoring an international remote medical conference (discussing rare neural injury cases), which had significant background noise, the technical department unexpectedly isolated an extremely faint audio clip labeled "Suspected Patient Delirium."

After applying state-of-the-art noise reduction, enhancement, and semantic residue analysis, the combination of vague, seemingly meaningless syllables surprisingly showed a high degree of similarity in certain peculiar harmonics of its sound wave pattern to a specific characteristic number of the inexplicable anomalous data stream recorded when the volunteer's consciousness completely dissipated during The Foundation's first failed live consciousness upload experiment for the pandora Project?!

That number was like a brand from the abyss, sealed in the deepest part of the top-secret archives.

Furthermore, a routine report on Excellence's recent "rehabilitation activities" mentioned that he seemed to be fiddling with the most basic electronic components (resistors, capacitors, LED lights), attempting simple connections.

The circuits he built were completely illogical, merely childish jumbles.

But a Chief Engineer at The Foundation, obsessed with circuit aesthetics, noticed during a review that one particular short-circuit connection, which should have burned out the components, possessed an accidental, deeply unsettling "aesthetic of simplicity" in its invalid loop structure?

A cold, ultimate elegance that discarded all redundancy, existing purely for some incomprehensible "form"?

These fragments themselves were sporadic, messy, and illogical, like the ravings of a madman, inherently worthless, perhaps even mere coincidence or over-analysis.

But the vague, ghostly "outline" they faintly pointed toward, seemingly from another dimension, caused even Morpheus Li—an old fox accustomed to worldly strangeness whose mind had long been tempered into solid ice—to feel a strange palpitation and... an irrepressible, almost pathological curiosity, as if he were being tightly grasped.

The feeling was akin to an archaeologist who, while sifting through a pile of worthless ancient refuse, accidentally discovers several metal shards of unknown material, processed with technology completely alien to that era, perhaps even to this planet.

Their very existence was an open provocation and mockery of all known knowledge.

Was it pure coincidence? Was it meaningless random information noise generated by the pandora virus while utterly destroying Excellence's brain?

Or... during the brutal fusion and destruction of his unique consciousness by that overwhelmingly dominant information virus from a higher dimension, were a few scraps of "Truth" from a higher plane accidentally stripped away or splashed out... some more primal "information substrate" that even pandora itself could not fully digest or comprehend?

Morpheus Li's intuition and ambition leaned toward believing the last possibility.

He firmly believed in the supreme nature of pandora's power and that the "ascension path" was the ultimate destination of civilization.

Excellence's collapse was inevitable, the necessary result of a low-order individual consciousness being unable to bear high-order information.

But within that complete collapse and destruction, perhaps, just perhaps, there was a possibility for some transcendent, unassimilated, truly precious sparks to erupt!

These sparks might be more valuable than a complete, controllable "seed" because they might touch upon more fundamental mysteries!

He could no longer use the harsh and direct probing methods from last time.

That meticulously packaged "condolence gift" seemed to have been noticed and forcefully rejected by the recipient (the reply was polite but cold, expressing "regret").

Moreover, Evelyn's recent emotional instability and the faint, growing chill within the internal investigation into the source of the information leak prevented him from making any major moves for the time being, lest he draw fire onto himself.

It seemed the strategy needed a complete overhaul.

A "gentler," "more sustained," and... "subtly pervasive" approach was required.

He pressed the communicator, summoning his most trusted confidant, his voice low and filled with unquestionable authority: "Activate the 'Gardener' plan. Target: Excellence. Strategy: Long-term, continuous, meticulous 'care' and 'guidance.'"

We need to mobilize experts who possess the utmost patience, meticulousness, and understanding of how to interact with... 'special populations' and 'genius patients.'

Start with everyone around him: the attending physician, the Rehabilitation Therapist, the nurses, the caregivers, even the daily cleaning staff...

We must silently integrate into his entire living environment like the finest spring rain seeping into the earth, offering him 'warmth,' 'sympathy,' and 'professional assistance' to gradually gain his trust and dependence, patiently... observing, waiting, and carefully collecting those precious 'pearls' that might leak from his unconsciousness.

Remember, absolute patience, absolute concealment, absolute professionalism.

What we are doing is nurturing a diseased plant that might bear strange fruit, not crudely picking it.

Thus, an extremely covert offensive against Excellence, cloaked in the guise of tender care, quietly commenced.

The Foundation deployed its deepest-embedded, most accomplished behavioral science experts and emotional mapping agents.

In Excellence's attending medical team, there "coincidentally" appeared a Chinese female expert, "Dr. Chen" (Chief Consultant of The Foundation's Behavioral Guidance Department, codename "Warm Sun"), whose smile was exceptionally warm and kind, whose tone was soft enough to melt ice, and who possessed credentials from multiple top medical schools, specializing particularly in cognitive reconstruction and emotional counseling after neural injury.

Among the nursing team responsible for his daily care, there was a young girl, "Xiao Lin" (Foundation Emotional Mapping Agent, codename "Honey"), who always "accidentally" brought him an extra small cake she had "personally baked" (the recipe precisely calculated to contain trace amounts of mood-soothing ingredients), who could patiently listen to his rambling nonsense for half an hour, and whose eyes were always filled with "sincere sympathy and encouragement."

Even the cleaning staff who came punctually every day to clean the ward and change the sheets were replaced by an enthusiastic auntie, "Aunt Zhang" (Foundation Information Collector, codename "Sharp Ears"), who had exceptionally keen hearing, a particularly cheerful disposition, loved chatting with patients, and always "happened" to find Excellence's crumpled, discarded doodles near the trash can or table edge, "curiously" unfolding them to take a look before "casually" taking them away...

These "Best Actor/Actress" level agents performed flawlessly, their care meticulous, their emotional handling precise.

They quickly infiltrated Excellence's psychological defenses, which had become simple, fragile, and desperately craving care and dependence due to his injury and illness, much like truly warm sunlight and fine rain seeping into the earth.

He began to gradually get used to and look forward to the weekly psychological assessment from "Dr. Chen," which carried a faint perfume and gentle tone.

He would show a childlike smile at the small cakes brought by Nurse "Xiao Lin," and would even chat with "Aunt Zhang" about trivialities like "The weather is nice today" or "The filling in the canteen's steamed buns seems less," topics devoid of substance but that gave him a slight sense of "human warmth."

On Wang Jianguo's side, observing The Foundation's meticulously staged "tender infiltration" drama through the reverse-controlled monitoring Nodes and feedback from the "Deep Dive Personnel," he watched with a mocking smile, as if watching a brilliant play.

"Tell our 'seed,'" Wang Jianguo instructed Xiao Zhang, his tone laced with playful teasing, "to fully enjoy this 'free, top-tier gentleness.'"

When they want to hear something or see something, as long as we don't expose ourselves, occasionally... he can 'sleepwalk' a bit more realistically, and 'act up' a bit more 'insightfully.'

After all, it's quite 'normal' for a patient in a difficult recovery period with severe brain damage to have unstable emotions and exhibit all sorts of strange words and actions, along with incomprehensible 'bursts of inspiration,' isn't it?

We must fully understand and actively cooperate with the 'treatment.'"

Although Excellence's mind was not completely clear and his thoughts often disconnected, he vaguely felt that the people around him were a bit... too unreal?

Especially that Nurse "Xiao Lin," the way she looked at him always made him feel a bit like... the stray cat that used to squat under the dormitory building in college, staring at the sausage he was holding—cute, but he always felt there was something else hidden deep in her gaze?

However, he lacked the energy to think deeply about it.

As long as he had food, drink, and someone to talk to, and could continue tinkering with his Arduino (even though nine out of ten times he would fail to flash the code or make the breadboard smoke), life seemed... quite comfortable?

It was much better than the previous cold days filled only with the buzzing of instruments.

He was unaware that he was caught between two massive, silent forces.

On one side, he enjoyed the "ultimate pampering" from the troupe of actors sent by his opponent; on the other, he was unknowingly cooperating with his own director, Wang Jianguo, in staging a grand piece of magical realism titled "The Temptation of the Good-for-Nothing."

His recovery life, amidst an extremely bizarre atmosphere, suddenly became somewhat... magical-realist.

It was like a meticulously choreographed absurd comedy whose script was known only to a few, while he himself was the only protagonist kept in the dark, yet playing the most "real" role.