97: Exceptional "insights" and the risk of losing control

Although the crisis of the “mirror plunder” plan was successfully thwarted and the mole “Deep Shadow” was rooted out, the fierce offensive and defensive battle that took place in the digital shadows had profound repercussions. Like a giant stone cast into calm, deep water, the ripples continued to shake and ferment in the already fragile and unstable depths of Excellence's consciousness, eventually triggering a violent, internal transformation that no one could have predicted.

In the following days, Excellence's daily behavior seemed to return to "normal." He continued his routine rehabilitation training accompanied by Su Mu, tinkering with his imaginative "hand-crafted" devices, and occasionally discussing superficial technological concepts with Evelyn. On the surface, his emotions were stable, his cognitive functions were slowly recovering, and that disturbing sense of excessive, cold rationality seemed not to have reappeared. However, Su Mu and Evelyn, who spent time with him daily and observed him closely, vaguely sensed an unusual undercurrent stirring.

Excellence became more silent than usual, sometimes staring blankly out the window for long periods, his eyes vacant, as if his spirit had wandered away. When he focused on something, the intensity of that focus seemed to increase, even carrying a sense of near-obsessive dedication. His Emotion-Visualization Device occasionally flashed unprecedented halo patterns—extremely deep and complex in color, twisting and rotating like cosmic nebulae. He himself couldn't explain what emotion they represented, vaguely describing it as “like many, many stars spinning in my head, a little dizzy, but also... very expansive.” These subtle changes were cautiously documented but had not yet triggered the medical team's highest alert, being mostly attributed to stress reactions and neurological self-regulation following the virtual attack incident.

However, the real storm suddenly descended on a deep, silent night.

That night, the rehabilitation room was filled only with the low hum of running equipment and Excellence's steady breathing. As usual, Su Mu kept watch in the observation room next door, monitoring Excellence through the large one-way glass window. Moonlight filtered through the reinforced window frames, casting cool, pale spots inside the room. Everything seemed quiet and normal.

Suddenly, without any warning, Excellence, who had been breathing steadily in his sleep, jerked rigid. He then shot upright from the bed as if struck by an invisible current! His movements were abrupt and stiff, like a marionette. His eyes snapped open in the darkness, pupils instantly dilating to the maximum, and deep within them, countless tiny, cold-glowing stars seemed to spin, collide, and annihilate wildly! Fine beads of cold sweat immediately broke out on his forehead, reflecting the faint moonlight.

Su Mu, who was on watch, was startled speechless by the sudden change. She immediately rushed into the rehabilitation room, turned on the soft bedside lamp, urgently gripped Excellence's shoulders, and called out repeatedly: “Excellence! Excellence! What's wrong? Did you have a nightmare? Wake up!”

But Excellence was unresponsive to her calls and touch. His eyes were unfocused, staring straight ahead into the void, as if piercing the wall to see a scene from another dimension. His lips trembled slightly, emitting extremely rapid, nonsensical syllables, like the ravings of a complex equation or the heat dissipation noise of a high-speed processor.

Following this, an even more shocking scene unfolded. Excellence violently shook off Su Mu's hand, moving with an agility completely uncharacteristic of a recovering patient. He jumped barefoot off the bed and practically lunged toward his makeshift workbench piled high with miscellaneous items. He grabbed his usual drawing pencil and a stack of draft paper, bent over, and began performing calculations with an almost insane speed and precision!

Su Mu was completely stunned! She watched Excellence—the man who usually seemed clumsy even holding a pen, whose thoughts scattered like a headless fly—now appearing completely transformed. His fingers were steady and powerful, his grip on the pen as precise as an experienced engineer's. The pencil tip slid across the paper at lightning speed, the dense “shushing” sound making her heart pound. What flowed out were no longer the chaotic lines, childish doodles, or incomplete formulas of the past, but lines upon lines of incredibly complex, elegant, structurally rigorous, and logically self-consistent mathematical symbols and differential equations!

The mathematical tools and physical concepts involved in these equations far exceeded Su Mu's comprehension, and even surpassed the known knowledge system Excellence possessed before his injury. She could recognize terms like “Riemann curvature tensor,” “Anomalous terms in conformal field theory,” “holographic representation of quantum entanglement entropy,” and “Gauge theory description of spacetime topological defects”—all abstruse terminology typically found only in top physics journals or Ph.D. thesis defenses—fluidly woven into a massive chain of deduction. Although Excellence's handwriting was still somewhat messy, the undeniable confidence and rigorous internal logic embedded in the strokes were something Su Mu had never witnessed in him. This was absolutely not the accidental creation of a sudden inspiration; it was more like... a systematic, highly rational torrent of knowledge, seemingly originating from another intelligence, pouring out through his wrist!

“Oh God... what... what on earth is going on?” Su Mu covered her mouth to stifle a gasp. She immediately pressed the most urgent call button by the bedside, while incoherently notifying Evelyn and the on-duty medical team via the internal communicator.

Evelyn was jolted awake by the urgent call. When she understood Su Mu's tearful description, a chill instantly shot from her feet to her head. She rushed to the rehabilitation room at top speed, not even stopping to put on her coat properly. When she burst into the room and saw Excellence bent over his desk, writing furiously, and the draft papers scattered on the floor already covered with shocking content, her heart hammered violently against her chest!

She quickly stepped forward, trying to discern the content on the paper. With just one glance, her blood seemed to freeze instantly! Those equations... those deductions... their intricacy and cutting-edge nature shocked and terrified her, a person trained by The Foundation's most elite scientists! Especially several hypothetical frameworks concerning “the Behavior of information near a singularity” and “Consciousness as a perturbation of spacetime's underlying structure”—their audacity and profundity possessed an eerily similar logical core to the most critical and confidential unverified conjectures of the pandora project she remembered! This was absolutely not simple recovery or inspiration; this was clearly... the knowledge system contained within the pandora fragments, far surpassing the current era, undergoing deep, uncontrolled integration and eruption with Excellence's subconscious! It was the manifestation of deep activation!

“Excellence! Stop! Can you hear me? Excellence!” Evelyn tried to grab his arm to interrupt this state, which appeared to be incredibly taxing on his mind.

But Excellence seemed encased in an invisible soundproof barrier, ignoring all external interference. His entire being was immersed in the internal universe constructed of formulas and symbols. His eyes were sharp as an eagle's, the “stars” deep within his pupils spun even more violently, and his muttering was so fast it was almost inaudible. Only fragments could be caught: “...boundary conditions... requires renormalization... no, this manifold is wrong... introduce compactification schemes for extra dimensions... right! Topological charge conservation is the key! So... so information never disappears, it merely... changes carriers!”

His Emotion-Visualization Device was completely dark because it was in night hibernation mode, but his entire body seemed enveloped in an invisible, highly condensed Cognitive force field. Anyone who approached him, whether Su Mu or the doctors who arrived later, felt an inexplicable, heart-pounding sense of oppression, as if standing at the foot of an imminent volcano, sensing the destructive energy accumulating deep beneath the earth.

The medical team that arrived immediately performed emergency vital sign monitoring on Excellence. The results were confusing and disturbing: his heart rate was indeed fast, his blood pressure was elevated, and his brainwave activity showed an extremely hyperactive state, with the energy intensity of Gamma waves and high Beta waves reaching the upper limit of the instrument's range! However, unlike the chaos found in epileptic or delirious states, his brainwave pattern exhibited a highly ordered, synchronized oscillation. The functional connectivity between various brain regions reached astonishing levels. This pattern is typically only seen during the deepest state of concentration (the peak of flow state) when top scientists or mathematicians solve extremely complex problems, yet its intensity and scope far exceeded any known physiological record! His body seemed to have become an overclocked biological computer, with all resources mobilized to serve the transcendental calculation process raging in the depths of his consciousness.

This unbelievable state lasted for nearly an hour, like a long, silent cranial storm. Finally, Excellence's writing speed gradually slowed. The pencil tip drew a final, long, trembling symbol on the paper, as if exhausting his last ounce of strength. He violently threw down the pen, swayed, and let out a long, deep sigh, which carried the exhaustion of extreme fatigue. The knife-like sharpness in his eyes rapidly faded, his pupils returned to normal, but they were filled with blankness and confusion. He slowly raised his head, looking at Su Mu, Evelyn, and the doctors surrounding him with worried and astonished expressions. He blinked perplexedly and asked in a hoarse, weak voice: “Squad Leader... Sister Evelyn... Doctor... why... why are you all here? What... what happened to me just now? Did I... have another nightmare?”

Su Mu and Evelyn exchanged glances, their hearts filled with immense shock and unspeakable worry. Clearly, Excellence had absolutely no memory of his “supernormal performance” during the past hour! That experience, like a volcanic eruption of knowledge, seemed to have occurred in a parallel dimension isolated from his core consciousness.

Evelyn suppressed the turmoil in her heart, carefully picked up the scattered draft papers on the floor, and asked in the calmest tone she could manage: “Excellence, do you remember what you were writing on the paper just now?”

Excellence stared blankly at the symbols and formulas, which looked like celestial script to him. He tried hard to recall, eventually shaking his head in frustration, a childlike confusion on his face: “I don't remember... I have no impression at all. I just felt like... my mind was... especially, especially clear, very bright, as if... I had figured out many, many very important, very powerful things... but...” He frowned, trying to grasp the feeling, “...but as soon as I woke up, I couldn't hold onto anything, like... like water flowing through my fingers... only... very tired, very sleepy...” Saying this, he couldn't help but yawn widely, his eyelids drooping heavily.

Seeing this, the doctor immediately administered a mild sedative to help him relax and return to sleep.

Evelyn, holding the heavy draft papers filled with content capable of overturning existing physics knowledge, walked with heavy steps to find Wang Jianguo. Her face was pale, and her eyes were filled with unprecedented solemnity and... a trace of fear.

“Commander, the situation may be far more complex and dangerous than we imagined.” She spread the draft papers on Wang Jianguo's desk, her voice slightly trembling with tension. “This is absolutely not simple cognitive recovery or an accidental burst of inspiration. This is more like... an uncontrolled, explosive 'Subconscious Knowledge Awakening'! The transcendental information contained within the pandora Fragments, after deep integration with Excellence's nervous system, might have, by a twist of fate due to the 'stress test' of the previous virtual attack, broken through certain neural blockages or consciousness barriers, causing this suppressed knowledge and ability to erupt in such an extreme manner!”

She pointed to the dizzying equations on the paper and continued to explain: “Look at this content; its depth and cutting-edge nature have far exceeded the current boundaries of human cognition. The fact that Excellence can fluently use this knowledge for deduction in an unconscious state indicates that this information has been imprinted deep within his neural circuits in a way we cannot understand. But the problem is, his current conscious mental strength and cognitive integration ability are simply insufficient to handle such a massive information flow and such a high-level thought pattern! This outbreak was accidental and unconscious, but if it happens again, or lasts longer, it could lead to his neural network overloading and overheating, triggering large-scale neurological dysfunction, collapse of his consciousness structure, or even... brain death! It's like trying to transmit the energy of lightning through an ordinary wire—the result can only be instantaneous melting!”

Wang Jianguo looked at the “celestial script” on the paper, which he couldn't understand at all, and listened to Evelyn's terrifying analysis. His brows furrowed tightly into the shape of the character 'chuan,' and his expression was so grave it seemed water might drip from it. He clearly sensed the extreme seriousness of the situation. The target they were guarding internally contained such vast, uncontrolled energy—enough to destroy himself!

“Do we have any way now to control or guide this... 'outbreak'?” Wang Jianguo asked in a deep voice, a hint of undetectable powerlessness in his tone.

Evelyn shook her head bitterly, her eyes full of resignation: “Difficult, extremely difficult. This isn't like treating a disease with a clear pathogen and medicine. This is more like facing an imminent tsunami originating from consciousness itself. What we can do right now may be very limited. The priority is to maintain his absolute emotional stability at all costs, minimizing any external stimuli that might trigger deep thought or strong emotional fluctuations. It's like keeping a container filled with explosive gas calm—there can be no sparks. Simultaneously, we must strengthen the real-time monitoring of his physiological indicators, hoping to capture subtle signs before the next outbreak, allowing us to intervene medically in time, perhaps by using powerful sedatives to forcibly interrupt the process.”

She paused, her voice becoming even lower: “But in the long run, the most fundamental solution might only be to hope that Excellence's core consciousness, his 'Self,' can accelerate its growth and consolidation in this race against the internal 'deity' or 'demon,' quickly becoming strong enough to understand and control this power awakening within him—a power that could be an endless treasure or a destructive abyss. Otherwise...” She didn't finish the sentence, but the unspoken worry solidified the air in the room.

Excellence's unconscious “Enlightenment” that night was like a sharp double-edged sword: with its dazzling light, it illuminated the terrifying, world-changing potential contained within him, but with its uncontrolled ferocity, it also carved a deep, frightening wound. The nature of the challenge facing the watchers fundamentally shifted. They were no longer merely shields protecting a vulnerable victim from external threats; they had become the watchers standing at the foot of a volcano that could erupt at any moment. They must learn how to coexist with the volcano, and even... attempt to guide that destructive magma to cultivate a new future. The path ahead became more confusing and perilous.