180: Our Gift

"What did you say?" Chen Feng's voice instantly became sharp as he instinctively leaned forward.

The dead silence of the office was shattered. On the screen, Eve's eyes, frighteningly bright, stared fixedly at him.

"I said, I found that rat, and I found the 'gift' he left behind," Eve spoke extremely fast, yet every word was crystal clear. "A perfectly disguised Logic Bomb."

Wasting no time, she projected a 3D model into the air in front of Chen Feng. It was a complex, constantly shifting red data structure.

"This is a 'smart' bomb capable of self-adjusting based on the production line's load, hidden within the lowest levels of the hardware drivers. Its detonation method is receiving a specific high-frequency signal from the outside, timed for the Interstellar Industrial Expo in two weeks."

Eve's voice carried a hint of cold mockery. "They want us to die the most humiliating death at our moment of greatest glory."

"I need computing power," she requested concisely. "Massive computing power. I need to simulate all its possible variants, design countermeasures, and..."

She paused, the light in her eyes growing even more intense.

"...design a 'gift' of our own to send back to them."

"No!"

A sharp female voice came from behind Chen Feng.

Su Li had stood at the doorway at some unknown point. Her face was even paler than Eve's, and her eyes, bloodshot from long hours of financial simulations, were filled with shock and disbelief.

"Eve, have you lost your mind?" Su Li rushed to Chen Feng's desk, practically screaming. "Do you know what all our current server computing power is doing?"

"We are running the final round of financial model simulations!" Her voice trembled with agitation. "We are calculating the optimal plan for filing for bankruptcy protection, calculating how to preserve the company's last intangible assets! That is our only 'visible' way out!"

She pointed at the glaring countdown on the screen, which now read "11:03:45."

"Cutting off the computing power is financial suicide! We won't even know how we died!"

Eve looked at her coldly from the screen. "If we don't dismantle the bomb, in two weeks, we won't even have a grave."

"That's two weeks away! We only have eleven hours left right now!"

Just then, Lao Mo's emergency communication request cut in. His large face filled the screen against a background of noisy roars and the sound of metal clashing.

"Boss! This is bad! The servers... the servers are about to blow!" Lao Mo's voice was panting. "We've been running at full capacity for too long. A cooling module in Sector A-3 just burned out! The temperature has reached critical levels! I'm leading a team to pour coolant for physical cooling, but... but it won't hold for long!"

This news was like a bucket of ice water poured over everyone's heads.

The conflict over computing power instantly became incredibly sharp and real.

"Did you hear that?" Su Li's emotions finally boiled over. She turned to Chen Feng, eyes brimming with tears. "Chen Feng! Did you hear that? We have no choice! Are we going to give up the company's last 'certain' chance at survival for a 'possible' technical counterattack?"

Reno had been standing silently to the side. Now, he finally couldn't help but speak, his voice low and firm. "The Boss's decision is an order. I believe in Eve."

"Believe?" Su Li gave a tragic laugh, as if she had heard a giant joke. "Reno, Eve saved your life, so you can believe in her unconditionally! But what about the future of over a thousand people in this company? Does that depend on 'belief' too? This isn't a war; this is accounting!"

"This is more important than a war!" Reno refused to back down an inch.

In the command center, the suppressed sounds of arguing echoed. In their final moments before destruction, the team had split into the 'Rational Survivalists' and the 'Radical Counterattackers.'

Everyone's gaze eventually focused on the man who hadn't said a word from beginning to end.

Chen Feng didn't look at anyone.

He simply stood up and walked, step by step, to the main control console.

He turned and looked directly into Su Li's eyes, which were trembling with despair and anger.

He offered no explanation or comfort. Instead, in a tone so slow it was almost cruel, he said word by word:

"Su Li."

"From now on, we stop predicting how we will die."

"We start planning... how to be reborn."

The moment the words left his mouth, he raised his hand and, under the horrified gazes of the crowd, entered a high-level authorization command.

[Command Confirmed: All server computing power is hereby allocated to the 'Spark Project' laboratory, effective immediately.]

Su Li stared blankly at the light screen in front of her.

On it, all the familiar financial data streams she had fought for through countless days and nights—the balance sheets, the cash flow curves—all cut off in that instant.

The screen turned into a dull gray interface representing 'Access Denied.'

She felt as if her only weapon had been snatched away. The digital world that allowed her to stay calm in the storm had collapsed.

A massive, unprecedented sense of powerlessness nearly made her lose her footing.

Meanwhile, in the lab, on Eve's system interface, countless green data torrents representing massive computing power surged in like a hundred rivers returning to the sea.

"Computing power ready." Eve took a deep breath, the flames of revenge flickering in her eyes. "Commencing reverse engineering. Preparing for the first deep scan of the Logic Bomb."

[Executing command.]

However, the moment the scan command was issued, a latent alarm at the lowest level of her system was quietly triggered.

A 'heartbeat' signal, so faint it was almost undetectable, lit up deep within her vast ocean of data.

That signal represented an external probe.

The enemy hadn't just left a bomb.

They were also monitoring in real-time to see if this 'gift' had been discovered.

Eve's pupils constricted suddenly.

A silent war had begun ahead of schedule, before anyone was ready.