94: Morpheus's ultimate trump card – "Deep Shadow" activated.

At the top of the black monolith in the Free Confederacy, which seemed capable of devouring all light, Morpheus Li's patience was like a slowly leaking hourglass, nearly empty. He stood before a massive curved floor-to-ceiling window, his cold pupils reflecting the super-metropolis built of data streams and neon lights below, while his inner mind was a wasteland calculating risks and returns. His previously meticulously planned academic 'cultivation' strategy—insidiously planting 'knowledge bait' through high-end academic channels—was subtle and difficult to trace, yet its slow results and uncontrollable outcomes had become intolerable to this 'prophet' accustomed to total control. He was like a fisherman in the deep sea who had cast an enticing bait; he could feel the occasional touch and probe of the massive creature below the surface, but remained unable to hook it firmly and drag it out of the water.

Excellence's recovery speed had exceeded his most conservative estimates. According to scattered intelligence leaks, the 'seed' who should have had a shattered consciousness and been at his mercy had not only stabilized his base under the tight protection of the 'Torch Dragon' base, but his cognitive functions even showed signs of slow repair. What made Morpheus even more wary were the various signs indicating that the fusion between the depths of Excellence's consciousness and the pandora fragment seemed to be deepening quietly in an incomprehensible way. This deep fusion could either lead to a total collapse or give birth to some unpredictable, more powerful synergistic effect. The defense system of the 'Torch Dragon' base, after weathering several storms, had also become increasingly sophisticated and vigilant, like a constantly evolving clam with an ever-hardening shell, protecting the pearl that was Excellence without a single leak.

Time was no longer on his side. Morpheus knew well that if he continued to wait, the variables would only increase, and he might eventually lose the final opportunity to seize the pandora treasure. He had to employ more direct, effective, and decisive means to break the deadlock and seize the initiative. His gaze, like the most precise scanner, once again scrutinized the deepest, most dangerous, and most expensive chess piece The Foundation had buried within 'Torch Dragon'—codenamed 'Deep Shadow'.

'Deep Shadow' was by no means an ordinary sleeper agent or mole. This was a 'perfect infiltrator' that The Foundation had spent astronomical resources to create over several years, integrating cutting-edge bioengineering, neuromorphic technology, and consciousness encoding tech. Their background had been meticulously polished and reverse-verified countless times, making it nearly flawless. They had even successfully bypassed the 'Torch Dragon' base's notoriously rigorous multi-round, multi-dimensional screening mechanism, eventually penetrating the base's technical support department. Leveraging their 'solid' professional skills, they had risen to a mid-level position with access to certain non-core but extremely critical system permissions.

However, the most terrifying aspect of 'Deep Shadow' was that their essence was not entirely human. In a specific functional area of their brain, a micron-level special neural inhibitor and command receiving unit had been implanted. Most of the time, this device remained dormant, and 'Deep Shadow' behaved no differently from an ordinary person, possessing independent emotions and thoughts, capable of perfectly executing daily tasks and even building normal interpersonal relationships. Only upon receiving an activation command sent via a specific encryption protocol from the highest authority level of The Foundation would the neural inhibitor be deactivated. The preset 'absolute loyalty' and 'mission priority' core programs would then override their original consciousness, instantly transforming them into an absolutely obedient, calm, and efficient execution terminal—devoid of fear, hesitation, or moral burden.

Morpheus understood the risks of activating 'Deep Shadow' better than anyone. It was tantamount to detonating a time bomb in the heart of 'Torch Dragon'. Once exposed, it would not only mean the total loss of this exorbitantly expensive chess piece, but it could also trigger unpredictable diplomatic and military conflicts with the Chinese side, potentially forcing them to take extreme retaliatory measures that could completely destroy Excellence or the pandora fragment. It was a massive gamble.

But Morpheus believed the stakes were already on the table, and the timing allowed for no more hesitation. He assigned his new action plan a codename filled with technical coldness: 'mirror plunder'.

The ambition and goals of this plan far exceeded previous infiltration or induction efforts. Its core concept was audacious: rather than directly kidnapping or harming Excellence's physical body—which would be near-suicidal under the base's current protection levels—it would utilize 'Deep Shadow's' permissions within the base's internal network to quietly create a highly concealed virtual Mirror Sandbox, completely synchronized with all the rehabilitation training and physiological monitoring systems Excellence was currently using.

This 'Mirror Sandbox' would act as Excellence's digital twin, replicating in real-time all his physiological data, brainwave activity patterns, and even the subtle emotional and cognitive reactions captured by various sensors. Then, Morpheus would mobilize The Foundation's strongest computing clusters to remotely inject a series of meticulously designed virtual stimulus data packets into this sandbox, simulating extreme emotions and cognitive challenges.

These data packets were extremely complex and sinister 'cognitive viruses' constructed by The Foundation based on all previously collected data on Excellence—including Evelyn's early reports, biological signals recorded during several offensive and defensive battles, thought tendencies analyzed from public academic discussions, and even theoretical deductions regarding the pandora fragment itself. They contained virtual scenarios capable of triggering extreme states such as intense fear (simulating near-death experiences), euphoria (the moment of cracking the ultimate mysteries of the universe), cognitive overload (processing massive amounts of contradictory information simultaneously), and logical paradoxes (irreconcilable internal conflicts).

The objective was to conduct unprecedented high-intensity 'stress testing' and 'vulnerability scanning' on Excellence's 'consciousness model' within this controlled virtual environment. By observing and recording the collapse patterns, defense mechanisms, and deep potentials that might be triggered when this digital twin faced these extreme stimuli, Morpheus hoped to reverse-engineer the 'access protocols' to the pandora treasure within Excellence's brain and the 'defense mechanism vulnerabilities' of his consciousness itself.

Simply put, this was a digitized, remote, non-invasive 'brain slicing' study. It attempted to steal and dissect the secrets of his consciousness core in a virtual world without causing direct physical harm to Excellence himself.

The command was sent silently to the receiving unit of the dormant 'Deep Shadow,' disguised as an ordinary system maintenance data packet and utilizing a window period when the base performed necessary data exchanges with the outside world.

Inside the base, within an open office area of the technical support department, an unremarkable-looking middle-aged technician on duty ('Deep Shadow') paused almost imperceptibly the moment he received the data packet. His eyes instantly lost their daily focus and liveliness, becoming hollow and vacant for about two or three seconds before quickly returning to normal. Aside from a fleeting, nearly undetectable cold light deep within his pupils—like a machine initializing—there was no abnormality. He continued typing on his keyboard as usual, processing system logs and performance reports on his screen, and chatting with colleagues about the dinner menu in the cafeteria.

However, beneath this calm facade, the activation program had started. Driven by commands of absolute rationality and mission priority, 'Deep Shadow' began using his skilled professional expertise and deep understanding of the system architecture to find minuscule gaps at the boundaries of his permissions. Like a master micro-carver, he quietly embedded snippets of seemingly harmless code within the vast sea of system logs and daily maintenance tasks, calling upon usually ignored low-level interfaces to begin constructing that dangerous 'Mirror Sandbox.' The entire process was slow and fragmented, like water dripping through stone, perfectly blending into the tedious daily system maintenance routines without triggering any abnormal traffic alarms or permission conflicts.

Simultaneously, deep within the Free Confederacy, The Foundation's strongest computing cluster was fully activated. The massive server arrays emitted a low hum, and the cooling systems ran at full capacity. Countless algorithm engineers, neuroscientists, and cryptographers, under Morpheus's personal supervision, began constructing those extremely complex and malicious virtual stimulus models. The technical level of these models far surpassed any previous pandora fragment derivative technology; they were more like pure information weapons designed specifically for the weaknesses of consciousness itself.

Wang Jianguo and the 'Torch Dragon' base security team still focused their defense on preventing external network attacks, physical infiltration, and obvious abnormal behavior by internal personnel. For this highly technical, silent infiltration occurring at the data link layer and within the gray areas of system permissions, they lacked sufficiently targeted vigilance and specialized countermeasure tools, despite routine audits and monitoring. After all, who would expect an attack to come from one of their 'own' who had passed rigorous screening and performed well daily, and in such an artistic, fragmented manner under the cover of routine work?

A few days later, in an unnoticed corner, the 'Mirror Sandbox' was quietly completed. It was like a transparent ghost attached to Excellence's real system, synchronizing all his physiological and cognitive data in real-time through a one-way, highly concealed data channel. On his command terminal, Morpheus watched the simplified model representing Excellence's virtual consciousness—composed of countless flowing points of light—fluctuate with Excellence's real breathing, heartbeat, and even the slightest thought. A cold, satisfied smile finally curled at the corner of his mouth.

That smile was a mix of a hunter's excitement at finally having the prey in his sights and a scientist's pure curiosity toward a perfect experimental subject.

"seed," Morpheus whispered to himself, his voice echoing in the empty command room with a trace of subtle fanaticism, "are you ready to accept... the ultimate test tailored just for you? Let me see what kind of miracle... or monster... is hidden in the deepest reaches of your consciousness."

A silent war of plunder against the essence of human consciousness had quietly begun in the deepest digital shadows. Meanwhile, in the warm rehabilitation room of the 'Torch Dragon' base, Excellence was becoming interested in a new puzzle game Su Mu had discovered, and Evelyn was checking the latest data from his Emotion-Visualization Device, completely unaware of the storm about to descend upon Excellence's digital double.

The insidiousness of this 'mirror plunder' operation lay in its perfect concealment and indirect nature. It did not directly touch Excellence's physical body but attacked his digital projection, like opening a parallel digital laboratory next to the real world. In this laboratory, Morpheus could recklessly conduct all sorts of 'experiments' that would be considered taboo in reality.

The design of the virtual stimulus data packets was like a 'symphonic' attack on the weaknesses of human consciousness. For example, a packet simulating a 'logical singularity' would construct a self-referential paradox system, requiring the consciousness to find an exit in an infinite loop, easily leading to cognitive overload and the collapse of the logical core. Another packet simulating 'sensory deprivation and infinite falling' aimed to trigger primal survival fear to test the endurance limits of the nervous system. Yet another simulated the euphoria of 'instantly acquiring infinite knowledge,' attempting to lure the consciousness into lowering its guard and exposing its core information processing paths and underlying protocols.

'Deep Shadow's' work was not limited to building the sandbox. He also needed to ensure the precision and secrecy of the data synchronization and be ready to fine-tune the sandbox parameters according to Morpheus's commands. He might even, at a critical moment, inject extremely faint, undetectable feedback signals into Excellence's real system—for instance, a sandbox reaction simulating extreme anxiety might be converted into a negligible data jitter in the real system, which could then exert a subtle, untraceable influence on Excellence's already fragile emotional state. It was like performing hypnosis through a layer of frosted glass; the effect was weak, but it could produce miraculous results at a critical threshold.

The defenders of the 'Torch Dragon' base still had their sights focused on physical security, network firewalls, and the macro-behavior of personnel. Wang Jianguo worried about Morpheus sending a new action team or launching a large-scale cyberattack; Evelyn was wary of abnormal information that might trigger a resonance in Excellence's consciousness; Su Mu focused on Excellence's daily emotional fluctuations and physical health. They were like guards of a sturdy castle, watching for enemy armies outside and fires within, yet never noticed the enemy was in the castle's shadow, using the refraction of light to build an identical shadow castle for dangerous drills and spying.

Morpheus's plan was a classic case of asymmetric warfare in the cognitive domain. He bypassed the physical and conventional information dimensions where the 'Torch Dragon' base was heavily fortified, opening the battlefield in the digital mapping of consciousness itself—an area the opponent had not yet fully realized. The results of this plunder might not immediately manifest as a sudden crisis for Excellence, but rather as Morpheus's deep mastery of Excellence's thought patterns, defensive weaknesses, and the key conditions for activating the pandora fragment. Once he successfully mapped out this 'consciousness map,' his next move might be a precision strike for a one-hit kill.

Excellence and the guardians around him were still enjoying the brief peace in the eye of the storm. However, in the abyss of digital space, the start button for the war to plunder Excellence's consciousness had already been pressed. The shadows were quietly spreading.