178: Perfect Flaw

Twenty-four hours.

This number hung over everyone at Hanhai Trade like a heavy coffin lid.

The cheers in the command center had long since vanished, replaced by a numbing, suffocating stillness even more oppressive than before. People returned silently to their posts, their eyes vacant, as if awaiting a final judgment.

But Eve knew nothing of this.

In her world, there was no twenty-four-hour countdown, only a single, humiliating number in blood-red.

Five percent.

In the laboratory, the pungent smell of nutrient solution mixed with the cloying sweetness of energy bar wrappers, thick enough to feel tangible. Eve had locked herself away here, her eyes bloodshot as she stared intently at the countless tangled curves of energy flow on the light screen.

"Run it again," her voice rasped like sandpaper. "Simulation Seven-Gamma. Filter criteria... quantum resonance decay. Now!"

Beside her, the auxiliary AI—a soft sphere of light—flickered.

[Simulation complete. No logical vulnerabilities leading to quantum resonance decay were found in the design model. Probability of design defect is less than 0.01 percent.]

"Impossible!" Eve slammed her hand onto the console like an infuriated lioness. "You're lying! The data is lying! Five percent! That number is right there! It's mocking me! Find it! Find it right now!"

[Repeating calculations...]

To Eve, whether the company went bankrupt no longer mattered. That five percent failure rate was a massive stain on the first work she had created under her own name using her own technology since leaving the Higher Academy.

It was the ultimate insult to her genius.

The laboratory door slid open silently.

Su Li walked in carrying a tray with a steaming plate of real food.

"I don't have time," Eve said without looking up, her fingers moving across the virtual keyboard so fast they left afterimages.

"This isn't a request." Su Li set the tray down heavily beside Eve with a dull thud. "The company has eighteen hours left. You have five minutes."

Eve's movements finally paused. She slowly looked up, her hollow eyes focusing on Su Li's face. "What's the point? It's all over. My design... it's flawed. I failed."

This was the first time Eve had admitted failure to another person.

Su Li looked at her, her eyes devoid of sympathy or blame, showing only a similarly bottomless exhaustion.

"My father was a logistics expert; he once managed a massive fleet," Su Li said suddenly, bringing up a topic completely unrelated to work. "He always said that even the most precise machine needs fuel."

Her voice was flat, as if she were reciting history.

"Later, his company went bankrupt. He was a good man, a very exceptional man." Su Li's gaze drifted into the distance. "He didn't go to his end on an empty stomach."

She withdrew her gaze and looked back at Eve.

"Eat. Even if it's the last meal."

With that, Su Li turned and left without another word.

Silence returned to the laboratory once more.

Eve stared blankly at the steaming food. Su Li's words echoed in her mind like a piece of code that couldn't be logically parsed.

*Even the most precise machine needs fuel...*

*He didn't go to his end on an empty stomach...*

She picked up the utensils and mechanically put the food into her mouth. Her taste buds were numb, and she couldn't taste anything, but the warm energy traveled down her esophagus, slowly dispelling the coldness that had settled in her stomach.

Perhaps... As she looked at the perfect simulation curves that led to the wrong results, a thought occurred to her for the first time.

Perhaps pure logic couldn't solve everything.

She set down her utensils and made a crazy decision.

"Archive all simulation data," she ordered the AI. "Retrieve the backup algorithm for 'Project Chimera'."

The sphere of light flickered more violently.

[Warning: 'Biological Chaos Algorithm' is an unstable prototype. Its core logic is based on simulating random mutations during biological evolution. It is uncertified and unsuitable for rigorous hardware logic analysis. Confirm loading?]

"All my rigor has failed," Eve muttered to herself. "Now, let's see what chaos can tell me."

"Loading confirmed. Use it to scan all blueprints for the first-generation energy blocks."

[Yes.]

All the remaining redundant computing power of the server was mobilized, causing the laboratory lights to dim momentarily.

This time, there were no arguments, no reports—only a suffocating silence.

One hour.

Two hours.

Five hours passed.

Just as Eve's eyelids were about to glue shut, a crisp notification sound jolted her awake.

[Analysis complete.]

Eve jerked upright.

[Conclusion: Based on 3.7 million chaos perturbation simulations, the blueprints for Hanhai Trade's first-generation energy blocks theoretically contain no logical errors that would cause critical failures. The theoretical yield should be 99.99 percent.]

"...What?"

Eve felt as if her brain had been struck by a star.

"Impossible! Re-diagnose the algorithm itself!"

[Diagnosis complete. The algorithm is operating within acceptable chaos parameters. The conclusion is valid.]

It wasn't a design flaw?

This conclusion confused and terrified Eve even more than finding a design defect would have. If her design was perfect, then where was the problem?

Her fingers danced rapidly across the keyboard.

"Now! Cross-reference all failure reports with production line serial numbers, operators, and production times! Generate a 3D heat map!"

A three-dimensional model of the factory appeared in the air, dotted with flickering red lights representing failures.

Eve's pupils suddenly constricted to pinpoints.

"They... aren't randomly distributed..."

The red dots were eerily clustered on production lines No. 3 and No. 7, and the occurrences were always between 3:00 AM and 4:00 AM.

This wasn't a malfunction.

This was a pattern.

This wasn't a technical issue, nor was it a production process problem... Eve's thoughts pierced through the final layer of fog like a bolt of lightning.

If everything was perfect yet the result was wrong, there was only one possibility left—

Someone had planted something that didn't belong into the bedrock of the perfect system.

It was external sabotage!

It was intentional!

An icy, extreme rage surged from the depths of her heart like lava, instantly washing away all exhaustion and self-doubt. It wasn't the frustration of a technician facing a difficult problem; it was the primal fury of a creator discovering that her sacred domain had been defiled by a lowly worm.

She didn't notify anyone.

She didn't contact Chen Feng, nor did she look for Su Li.

She walked directly to the main console and passed the dual verification of iris and gene sequence.

"System."

[I am here, Eve.]

"Using my highest authority, retrieve all encrypted and archived access logs from the deepest level of the production system. From the day the first production line was installed and debugged, I want every single one."

[Executing. The data volume is massive; estimated time needed...]

"I don't care," Eve's voice was as cold as the void at absolute zero. "I'm going to find the rat hiding in my kingdom."

Her face was reflected in the data stream cascading down like a waterfall. Those eyes, which used to shine only for code and formulas, were now flickering with a predator's calm yet excited light.