91: Chapter 90 Informal Meeting

"What the f*ck... my brain feels like it's been turned into tofu!" Lin Yi steadied his head, which felt as if it were still spinning, and felt his entire consciousness buzzing.

That brutal method of transportation just now was like being shoved into a centrifuge and spun dry at high speed; even with his enhanced nerves and the buffering capabilities of "Bai Ze," he had almost "disconnected" right on the spot.

He barely managed to steady himself and began to survey his surroundings.

At this sight, he was stunned.

Before him was no longer the abyss of the network with its rushing data, nor the familiar streetscape of Night City filled with neon and steel.

He was standing on a seemingly boundless, mirror-smooth white surface, with a soft and uniform light source overhead; there were no lamps to be seen, as if the entire space itself were glowing.

In the distance stood an incredibly magnificent building with an indefinable style.

It fused Gothic spires, intricate Baroque decorations, and a certain highly futuristic streamlined structure, presenting a warm, pearlescent white luster throughout—at once magnificent and permeated with an inhuman, cold sense of perfection.

For a moment, Lin Yi almost thought he had been thrown back into some corner of the real world by that force, such as a secret estate of the Arasaka family or some ancient monument in Europe chartered by a megacorporation.

But he looked down at himself—he was still wearing the basic digital avatar he had used to enter Cyberspace, simple and practical, with no physical details that could match his real-world self.

Obviously, this was still within the realm of the network.

It was just a region he had never stepped into before, one he hadn't even been able to imagine.

If this were 'Shangri-La,' there were no traces of other digital personalities living here.

"This place... is a bit eerie." He muttered to himself, his gaze finally falling on the only visible entrance to the magnificent building—a pair of double doors, estimated to be over ten meters high, carved with complex and unfamiliar patterns.

For some reason, an inexplicable attraction came from within the doors, causing him to step forward as if possessed.

Without using force, just a gentle push, the seemingly heavy giant doors opened silently inward.

The scene behind the door was not the interior of a palace, but a... state of ultimate "nothingness."

Stepping inside, it felt as if he had crossed a certain boundary.

The door behind him disappeared, and everything around him vanished.

There was no up, down, left, or right, no sense of the passage of time, only a boundless, heart-stoppingly pure white.

There was nothing here, not even the concept of "space" remained clear; it was like an unrendered canvas, a void where no coordinate system had yet been defined.

"Welcome to the desert of the real."

A clear female voice, with a slight electronic reverb yet exceptionally familiar, rang in his "ears," giving Lin Yi quite a start.

He spun around abruptly—in this space without a sense of direction, the act of turning was more of a shift in consciousness—and looked toward the source of the voice.

He looked toward the overhead direction.

Standing there was a woman.

A woman who looked ninety percent like V.

The same neat, indigo short hair, the same delicate and three-dimensional facial features, even the height and build were almost identical.

But she was no longer wearing the utilitarian street clothes that V often wore, but a set of white "clothing" with an extremely minimalist design, smooth lines, and a pearlescent luster—if it could even be called clothing, it was more like a layer of light clinging to her digital avatar.

However, Lin Yi's attention was instantly caught by another detail.

It wasn't her appearance, but what she had just said.

"V?" He called out subconsciously, but immediately denied it himself. "No!" He stared fixedly at the other person, his tone full of shock and suspicion. "What you just said... isn't that Morpheus's line from *The Matrix*? Who the f*ck are you?"

The "woman" who looked so much like V seemed amused by his reaction, the corners of her mouth curling into a smile that V would never show—one with a hint of playfulness and a sense of knowing everything. "Hahaha, look at your reaction, it's just too interesting." Her laughter echoed in this void space, sounding exceptionally clear. "Haven't you been trying to find me all this time?"

"Why would I look for you? Who are you?" Lin Yi retorted subconsciously, but a name flashed through his mind like lightning—a name he had been muttering earlier, trying his luck with.

He widened his eyes and asked tentatively, in a tone of disbelief: "Holy crap! No... you... Europa?"

The woman who claimed to be Europa smiled even wider; she neither admitted nor denied it, but her expression had already defaulted to an affirmative.

Quietly, Europa's position had shifted to directly in front of Lin Yi, without any movement.

It was as if she had been cut and pasted directly there.

Alarm bells rang in Lin Yi's mind. Almost by instinct, his consciousness immediately communicated with "Bai Ze," intending to activate the highest-level query and analysis protocol to scan the underlying data of this entity and confirm her true identity and threat level.

However, before his command was fully issued, Europa waved her hand gently, as if she had foreseen it. Using V's face, but with a detached tone, she said: "Put away your [Insight] core query protocol. In your current state, if you try to forcefully pry into my essence, there will only be one result—before your poor biological brain can comprehend one ten-thousandth of a millisecond of the scan results, it will be 'fried' by the overwhelming torrent of information. Believe me, that is not a pleasant feeling."

Lin Yi's movements froze.

She could directly point out the core function of [Insight] in "Bai Ze" and even predict his actions!

This in itself spoke volumes.

But he still couldn't fully believe it; in this world filled with deception and disguise, maintaining vigilance was the first rule of survival.

"You say you are Europa," Lin Yi said in a low voice, remaining on guard, "How can you prove it?"

"Prove it?" Europa tilted her head, her movements and expression actually having a slight resemblance to V when she was thinking, but the light of wisdom flashing in her eyes was far beyond human comprehension. "I don't need to prove to anyone who I am." Her tone was flat but carried absolute confidence. "However, seeing this, you will naturally be able to prove who 'I' am."

As she spoke, she raised her hand casually, as if plucking something from the air, and then gave it a light flick. A condensed stream of data, radiating a unique frequency and encoding structure, flew straight toward Lin Yi.

The data stream had no aggression; it just floated quietly before him, like a file waiting to be read.

Lin Yi cautiously made contact with it using "Bai Ze."

Instantly, a crystal-clear protocol code, containing a special permission mark, imprinted itself into his consciousness—[Transcendent-86 - LONG].

It was precisely that mysterious bridging protocol that had saved him from the clutches of Alt at the edge of the Blackwall last time!

This protocol was like a unique digital signature; its complexity and the level of authority it contained could not possibly be forged by current human technology, or even by known Rogue AI.

"It really is you..." Lin Yi murmured, his suspicion largely gone, but more questions surged up. "But shouldn't you... according to the records of Bartmoss, don't you Transcendent AI lack observable fixed forms, and are you not closer to... conceptual existences?"

"Lack forms?" Europa seemed to have heard something funny and couldn't help but laugh. "Come on, how old is that *Netrunner's Guide*? What Bartmoss observed of us might just have been one facet of us at a certain stage. Although this is the network world, things are always developing and evolving; the objective laws of development still apply here, okay? Choosing an appropriate interactive interface helps with... communication efficiency."

This explanation sounded reasonable, but Lin Yi immediately pointed to the most critical issue: "But why are you using my girlfriend's appearance?!" This made him feel very uncomfortable, as if a facet of V had been "borrowed" by a supreme entity.

"Ah, you mean this?" Europa looked down at herself and even reached out to touch her cheek, her movements so natural that it made one's scalp tingle. "When I observed you a few times before, I found that using this avatar to communicate with you offered the least resistance and was the most 'convenient.' Your subconscious seems to have the highest acceptance for it."

Lin Yi watched her roll her eyes, clearly expressing [Do you think I'm that easy to fool?].

She raised her eyes, looking at Lin Yi with those familiar eyes of V, but they were filled with an inhuman depth. "Alright, stop asking about these trivial, irrelevant matters."

Her face once again wore that V-style playful smile with a hint of mischief, but deep in her eyes flickered a curiosity that could draw one into the abyss.

"Next, let's do something exciting."

Looking at the way this entity, whom he would tentatively call "Europa," was acting.

Lin Yi's eyebrows twitched: "I have a bad feeling about this."