74: Chapter 74 The War of Breathing

The moment the first chorus ended, 437 speakers fell silent simultaneously for three seconds.

In those three seconds, there was only the sound of the Nashville summer night wind and the bated breath of tens of thousands of people. Then, all the phone screens lit up simultaneously—not playing a video, but displaying a concise AR interface.

【Please point your camera at the wall in front of you】

People complied. Through their phone screens, they saw a massive 3D model emerge on the park's outer wall—it was the molecular structure of the NT-7 material, but it was marked with red defect points, each with a data label next to it: flexural strength decreased by 37%, fatigue life shortened to 23% of the design value, critical temperature threshold 42℃ lower than nominal...

"These data," Alex's voice came through the distributed speaker network, with slight delays in different locations due to equipment differences, creating a strange Echo effect, "come from the original internal test report of Northrop. Report number NT-7-2009-009, test date March 17, 2009, signed by engineer Robert K. Green—who 'resigned for personal reasons' three months later, and passed away in a mountaineering accident six months after that."

The image switched. A scanned document appeared on the AR interface, with the signature section, official seal, and test data clearly visible.

On the roof of a distant building, Northrop's observation team reported urgently: "He is showing the original document! We need to interfere immediately!"

"Wait." Montero stared at the live broadcast screen in the command center, "Let him show it. We have questioned the 'authenticity' of all these documents in court. Continue, Alex Su, continue showing your 'evidence'."

She switched channels: "Interference team, prepare for the second phase. When he gets to the most critical part, simultaneously cut the power to the three main speaker clusters in the southeast zone."

"Understood."

On-site.

Alex stood on the small platform, 【Omnimedia Director Vision】 running at high speed in his consciousness. He "saw" twelve abnormal heat sources in the crowd—those people had heart rates 30% faster than the surrounding audience, their attention was not on the performance, but frequently scanning the audio equipment and power interfaces.

【Spider-Sense】 marked three of them who had already moved within five meters of the critical power points.

"System, can you estimate their action time?" he asked in his consciousness.

【Analyzing behavioral patterns... The target checks the time every 3.7 minutes on average, 87% probability of synchronization with the scheduled interference timetable... Predicting the action will be initiated when Taylor sings the second chorus... Countdown: 4 minutes 22 seconds...】

Enough.

Alex switched the AR content. The projection on the wall and all the phone screens changed synchronously—no longer boring technical documents, but an animation: a test aircraft flying in the air, subtle cracks appearing on a part of the wing, the cracks spreading rapidly...

"This is a failure process simulated based on real data." Alex's voice was calm and penetrating, "Northrop claims these defects are 'within a controllable range,' but page 47 of their internal risk assessment report clearly states—"

The AR interface zoomed in on a line of highlighted text: "Under extreme maneuvering conditions, material defects may lead to structural failure, Risk Level: High."

A gasp went through the crowd.

Among those "spontaneous protesters" holding signs that read "Defense Workers Need to Eat," someone suddenly put down their sign. It was a middle-aged man wearing overalls, and he whispered to the person next to him: "My brother has worked in Northrop's workshop for fifteen years... He told me last year that when some batches of materials were tested, the 'data wasn't quite right,' but the higher-ups told them to pass it directly..."

The voice wasn't loud, but the few people around heard it.

The information began to disintegrate from within.

Northrop command center.

"He is showing the risk assessment report!" The technical director's voice tightened, "That report should have been destroyed three years ago!"

"But clearly it wasn't completely destroyed." Montero said coldly, "Notify the interference team to act early. Now."

The order was given.

On-site, three speaker clusters in the southeast zone suddenly went silent.

It wasn't a complete power cut—the redundant system designed by Alex had taken effect. The main power was cut, but every piece of audio equipment had a backup battery, only the power dropped, and the sound became weak and distorted.

At the same time, the projection cluster in the northeast corner suddenly showed image jitter, and two projectors overheated and shut down.

The crowd began to stir. Some looked toward the power supply, some checked if their phone's AR was still working.

The leader of the interference team—the man wearing a gray jacket—smiled. The first phase of interference was successful.

But he didn't notice that Hank had already brought three people and silently circled to a position ten meters behind him.

Alex on the platform was not flustered.

【Omnimedia Director Vision】 instantly recalculated the sound field distribution. The remaining audio equipment automatically adjusted its output power, and although the sound became quieter, through precise phase adjustment, it actually formed a "fill-in" of sound in the silent area.

"It seems some people don't want us to continue." Alex said into the microphone, his voice transmitted through the still-working speakers, terrifyingly calm, "But do you know what? When you want to make a voice disappear, the best method is not to suppress it, but to make it omnipresent."

He made a gesture.

Taylor's piano playing suddenly changed, shifting from the lyrical "Still Breathing" to an impassioned, never-before-released melody. At the same time, the band members behind her—those who should have been on tour—began to play simultaneously.

This was not rehearsed in advance.

But Alex saw the possibility in 【Omnimedia Director Vision】: Taylor's improvisational ability, the professionalism of the band members, and the emotional turn needed at this moment on-site.

He said to Taylor through an invisible earpiece: "Raise the key, add drum beats, I want everyone to stand up."

Taylor didn't look back, just slammed her fingers down on the keys for three heavy accents.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The drummer followed. The bassist followed. Several participants scattered in the crowd with their own instruments, as if having received a signal, also began to join in.

An impromptu musical ensemble rang out among hundreds of imperfect speakers.

More importantly, the AR content. Alex operated the tablet with one hand, quickly inputting commands. All phone screens still online changed simultaneously:

【Please point your camera at the sky】

People looked up and raised their phones.

In the night sky, the lights of drones formed a huge arrow, pointing toward the silent direction in the southeast zone. At the same time, text appeared on the phone screens:

"Someone cut the power here. But the truth does not need power."

The next second, all the audience in that area suddenly raised their phones simultaneously—not to look at the screen, but to turn on the flashlight function.

Hundreds of beams of light pierced the night sky, illuminating the interference team that was trying to sneak away.

The man in the gray jacket froze in place, having nowhere to hide in the light.

Hank and his team had already completed the control before he could react—it wasn't a violent arrest, but a "polite escort out." The three people were "escorted" toward the outside of the venue, the whole process quiet, fast, and almost without disturbing the surrounding audience.

"Look," Alex's voice sounded again, "When we look in the same direction together, nothing can be hidden in the darkness."

Applause rang out. Not rhythmic applause, but applause that started one after another from every corner, growing louder and louder.

【On-site emotional concentration threshold exceeded...】

【Real-time popularity gained: +68,000 points】

【Current popularity: 4,688,000 points】

But he knew, Northrop would not let him complete the concert peacefully.

In the command center, Montero's face was already livid.

"The second phase of interference failed. The target has a contingency plan, and the on-site audience is cooperating with him."

"Initiate the third phase." She gave a new order, "Have the group mixed in the crowd create a sudden incident. I want to see someone 'faint' within five minutes, causing a medical emergency, forcing the performance to be interrupted."

"What about the police?"

"They have already been notified; once a public safety incident occurs, they will immediately intervene to evacuate."

The order was given.

On-site, a young woman suddenly clutched her chest and collapsed to the ground. Her companions around her immediately exclaimed: "She's having a heart attack! Help!"

The nearby audience began to stir, some trying to step forward to help, some subconsciously retreating, and order began to descend into chaos.

The medical team quickly arrived—this was arranged by Alex in advance, including two doctors and four emergency responders. But after they checked, they found the woman's vital signs were completely normal.

"It might be a panic attack." The doctor judged, but with suspicion in his eyes.

Just then, Alex's voice sounded again:

"Sometimes, people suddenly 'get sick,' sometimes, the speakers suddenly 'malfunction,' sometimes, the truth suddenly 'disappears.' But do you know what all these 'sudden' things have in common?"

He paused, letting the question hang in the air for three seconds.

"It's that they are all too timely. Timely to the point of seeming like they were performed according to a script."

The AR interface switched. This time it was not a technical document, but a surveillance video—from a hidden camera on the perimeter of the Delta warehouse. In the footage, several people could be seen setting up surveillance around the warehouse, and the face of one of them was enlarged and clarified.

"This young lady, if you are on-site, or your family is watching the live broadcast—" Alex said, "I want to tell you, you were hired to interfere with tonight's event, the daily salary is 500 dollars, with 50% paid in advance. The employer is 'City Security Service Company,' and the controlling shareholder of this company is an offshore subsidiary of Northrop."

The image switched to the company's equity structure chart, with red lines clearly connecting.

That "sick" young woman suddenly stood up, her face pale. Her "companions" around her tried to pull her, but she shook off their hands and turned to run.

A complex emotion erupted in the crowd—anger, absurdity, sudden realization.

"This is their method." Alex's voice became heavy, "Not to refute evidence with evidence, but to cover up the truth with chaos. Not to convince you with reason, but to distract you with incidents."

He took a step forward, the light shining on him.

"But tonight, we are all here. We saw the power outage, we saw the 'sudden illness,' we saw all the little tricks trying to distract us. And most importantly—"

He pointed to the sky.

[part:gemini-3.0-flash]

All the drones turned on their projection lights simultaneously, spelling out a massive word in the night sky:

STILL HERE

We're still here.

Thunderous applause erupted. This time, it was genuine, spontaneous, and deafening.

[Emotional intensity has reached its peak...]

[Real-time Fame Gain: +112,000 points]

[Current Fame: 4,800,000 points]

---

The Northrop command center fell into a deathly silence.

All interference methods had failed; instead, they had been turned against them, becoming new evidence for the accusations.

"He prepared all the countermeasures in advance," Carlson muttered. "Including surveillance footage, shareholding structure diagrams, and even the personal information of the interference teams... This couldn't have been prepared in just a day or two."

Montero stared at the screen, finally realizing where the problem lay.

Alex Su wasn't just reacting passively.

He was actively leading them.

Every move Northrop made fell perfectly into his pre-written script. The power outage became a "light show in the dark," the fake patients became "evidence of hiring mercenaries," and even the speeches of the "spontaneous protesters" were debunked by the actual workers on-site.

This wasn't a confrontation.

This was a total crushing.

"Contact Mr. Howard," Montero said, her voice dry. "We need to... adjust our strategy."

"Adjust how?"

Montero didn't answer immediately. She watched the livestream as Alex began presenting the next piece of evidence—this time, the full document of the "Circuit Breaker Agreement," with every page highlighted.

Below the screen, the real-time viewer count showed: 870,000 on the YouTube channel, 630,000 on the Facebook stream, and an estimated audience of over 3 million across various television broadcasts.

And that didn't even include the thousands of people on-site.

And the numbers were still growing.

"He doesn't just want a concert," Montero finally understood. "He wants a turning point. After tonight, Northrop will no longer be the 'victim,' but the 'villain.' And he will become a symbol of resistance against oppression."

She looked at the countdown—the concert had only started 45 minutes ago, but the PR war was already lost.

"Initiate the final plan," she said.

"The final plan is..."

"Full evacuation," Montero closed her eyes. "Admit defeat and sever all ties to tonight's operations. Let the interference teams fend for themselves and let the mercenary companies take the fall. We need to get back on the track of legal warfare; we still have a chance there."

"But Mr. Howard won't agree—"

"He will agree," Montero opened her eyes, a sense of resigned calm in her gaze. "Because if we continue this confrontation, we'll lose even more disgracefully. At least for now, we can still preserve the company's 'surface innocence'."

The order was relayed.

On-site, all Northrop personnel began to quietly retreat.

But Alex's Spider-Sense suddenly flared with a sharp sting!

It wasn't coming from those who were retreating.

It was coming from a completely unexpected direction—the very center of the crowd, only thirty meters from the stage.

There, a young man in an ordinary T-shirt and jeans was taking a device out of his backpack. It wasn't a weapon; it looked like a professional signal jammer.

The sting of [Spider-Sense] reached its peak.

Alex understood instantly: this was the true killing blow.

The previous interference teams, the fake patients, and even the power cut—they were all smoke screens. Northrop's true goal was never to disrupt the concert, but to create a "technical disaster," cutting off all livestream signals, crashing the AR content, and turning the event into a joke of technical failures.

Once that signal jammer was activated, it would cover the entire park area, causing all wireless communications, cell signals, and drone controls to fail.

"Rex, ten o'clock, grey T-shirt, black backpack," Alex said rapidly into his earpiece. "The device in his hand is a military-grade full-spectrum jammer. He must be stopped within thirty seconds."

"Copy that."

But the crowd was too dense. Rex's team was fifty meters away; it would take at least a minute to push through the crowd.

A red light had already lit up on the jammer—it was warming up.

Alex glanced at the system interface.

[Current Fame: 4,800,000 points]

But what he needed now was instant reaction capability.

"System," he asked quickly in his mind, "Emergency! I need to instantly synchronize Dynamic Vision, Crisis Prediction, Tactical Terrain Prediction, and Parkour Mastery to achieve ultimate reaction speed. How much Fame will it cost?"

[System Response: Emergency threat detected...]

[Initiating "Ability Overclock Synchronization"...]

[Required Fame: 150,000 points (Emergency discount price)]

[Effect: Neural reaction speed increased by 200%, spatial perception accuracy increased by 150%, duration 8 minutes]

[Confirm?]

"Confirm!" Alex didn't hesitate.

[Exchange successful! 150,000 Fame points consumed.]

[Remaining Fame: 4,650,000 points]

[Acquired temporary status: "Extreme Synergy" - Reaction Speed +200%, Spatial Perception +150%, duration 8:00...]

Time seemed to slow down.

Alex jumped off the platform. Instead of taking the stairs, he leaped directly from the edge of the two-meter-high platform. Under the state of [Extreme Synergy], his body automatically adjusted its posture in mid-air, rolling to dissipate the force upon landing. The movement was as fluid as if he had rehearsed it a thousand times.

He moved through the crowd.

Not by pushing roughly, but by weaving through like a fish—[Parkour Mastery] showed incredible results in its overclocked state. He predicted everyone's movement trajectory, slipping through the gaps with his speed almost unaffected.

The jammer operator noticed the anomaly and jerked his head up. Their eyes met in the air.

A flash of panic crossed the man's eyes as his finger pressed toward the jammer's activation button.

There were still fifteen meters to go.

The crowd was dense; normally, it would take at least ten seconds.

But Alex didn't take a normal path.

He stepped onto a folding chair brought by an audience member, used it to leap up, and grabbed a crossbar of the temporary lighting rig above, swinging forward like a gymnast!

"What is that?" someone in the crowd exclaimed.

Alex let go in mid-air, flying five meters forward and landing precisely on another audio equipment case, leaping again from there.

Three seconds.

He landed two meters in front of the jammer operator.

The man finally pressed the activation button.

The red light turned green—the jammer began to operate.

But Alex was faster. He grabbed a water bottle from a nearby spectator—a half-full plastic bottle—and it traced an arc through the air.

Synchronized by [Dynamic Vision] and [Tactical Terrain Prediction], he calculated the bottle's weight, the throwing angle, air resistance... and the most critical point: the position of the jammer's cooling vent.

The water bottle spun through the air and slammed precisely into the jammer's cooling grille, jamming the high-speed fan.

There was a sharp "crack."

The fan blades broke, seizing the entire cooling system.

The jammer's green light flickered twice before turning a glaring red—an overheat warning.

"Damn it!" The man tried to pull the bottle out, but Alex was already in front of him.

Without any wasted movement, Alex grabbed the man's wrist on the jammer with his left hand and pressed lightly on the inside of the man's elbow with his right—the location of a nerve cluster.

The man's entire arm went numb instantly, and the jammer slipped from his grasp.

Alex caught the falling device, his fingers quickly finding the emergency shut-off button on the side, pressing and holding it for three seconds.

The red light went out.

The device shut down.

The entire process, from Alex jumping off the platform to shutting down the jammer, took six seconds.

The crowd hadn't even realized what had happened yet.

"Sorry, excuse me," Alex said to the stunned audience members around him, his voice as calm as if he had just picked up something dropped on the floor.

He held up the jammer in his hand, facing the lens of the nearest livestream camera:

"Military-grade full-spectrum jammer, model SRJ-2101, active-duty US Army equipment. Its transmission power is enough to paralyze all wireless communications within three blocks."

The camera zoomed in, and the military markings on the device were clearly visible.

"I want to ask Northrop a question," Alex said to the camera, his voice echoing through the speaker network across the entire venue. "Where did you get active-duty military equipment to interfere with a civic gathering?"

Silence.

Then, a massive wave of boos erupted—not at Alex, but at the invisible Northrop behind the lens.

Alex handed the jammer to the arriving Rex and turned to walk back to the platform.

He wasn't even out of breath.

The sting of his Spider-Sense had vanished. The last threat was neutralized.

Taylor's piano music started up again, this time the intro to one of her most famous songs, "Love Story," but the lyrics were completely changed:

"This isn't a love story, it's a survival story... They closed all the doors, but I found a window..."

The entire crowd began to sing along.

It wasn't rehearsed; it was a spontaneous, deafening chorus.

Thousands of voices echoed through hundreds of imperfect speakers in the Nashville night sky.

Alex stood under the lights, watching it all.

The system interface ticked steadily:

[Extreme Synergy status remaining: 4 minutes 12 seconds...]

[Real-time Fame Gain: +248,000 points (Event Peak)]

[Current Fame: 4,898,000 points]

And the concert still had forty minutes to go.

But Alex was in no hurry.

Because he had just "defeated" a military jammer with a bottle of mineral water in front of the whole world, and then calmly questioned Northrop.

This was the true crushing—neutralizing the most professional and malicious threat in the simplest, most mundane way.

Northrop thought they had used their ultimate trump card.

But they didn't know that for Alex Su, this was just another obstacle easily swatted aside on his Path to Transcendence.

He looked up at the night sky, the corners of his mouth turning up.

On the system interface, the number representing the ten-million threshold was shrinking at a visible rate.

The Path to Transcendence was right before his eyes.