185: Dangerous frequency

“Cough... cough!”

The thick smell of scorching made tears stream down people's faces. Lao Mo waved the filthy rag in his hand, trying to disperse the mocking plume of black smoke in front of him.

“I told you it wouldn't work! Girl, you're trying to carve flowers onto sand with a sledgehammer!” Lao Mo threw the deformed soldering gun onto the table. His cloudy old eyes were bloodshot, and his voice was hoarse from inhaling the smoke and dust. “The crystal structure simply cannot withstand that kind of instantaneous high-frequency instruction. This is a law of physics, a rule set by the heavens! You can't change it!”

Eve didn't even cough. She stood like a statue in front of the still-smoking testing platform, her silver hair clinging messily to her pale cheeks. Deep within her pupils, a stream of spectral blue data was frantically flickering, breaking apart, and reassembling.

“It must be changed.” Her voice was as soft as a ghost's whisper, yet it held a chilling stubbornness. “If we don't change it, it won't be this stone that dies, it will be us.”

Chen Feng stood in the shadows, the lid of the lighter on his fingertip clicking open and shut. This crisp metallic sound was the only countdown in the dead silence of the workshop.

“Is there another way?” Chen Feng asked, his voice devoid of emotion.

“No.” Eve suddenly lifted her head, her eyes holding a kind of madness bordering on collapse. “Conventional etching cannot handle such complex Logic Bombs. The moment power is applied, the heat generated by the instruction conflict will instantly shatter the crystal lattice. Unless...”

“Unless what?” Lao Mo roared irritably. “Unless this stone grows flesh and can heal itself!”

“Grows flesh...”

Eve's gaze suddenly froze. She spun around abruptly, staring intently at the remaining jar of liquid in the corner that glowed with an eerie green light—the prototype “Biological Catalytic Gel” developed previously to treat Reno.

“What if you are right?” Eve muttered to herself, quickly rushing toward the jar of liquid.

Lao Mo was stunned, then looked at her as if she were crazy. “Girl, did the explosion fry your brain? That stuff almost killed Reno!”

“That was for living people; it caused rejection reactions.” Eve's fingers flew across the control panel, pulling up a brand new structural diagram. “But what if we make it part of a 'dead object'? Lao Mo, the crystal is too rigid, the logic too volatile. We need a buffer layer. A semi-biological, semi-mechanical buffer layer!”

She turned around, and a holographic projection cut a faint blue light through the air, illuminating her pale but excited face. “We are going to perform 'Biological Etching.' We will use this gel as a base plate, allowing it to 'grow' like skin onto the energy block's core circuit. When an overload command is issued, it will act like a muscle, sharing the pressure with the crystal until—”

“Until it completely necroses and then fuses.” Lao Mo stared at the blueprint, his mouth slowly dropping open. His initial anger turned into shock. “This... what kind of unorthodox method is this? You call this technology?”

“This is the path that will keep us alive for the next two days.” Chen Feng stepped forward, his gaze sweeping over the blueprint. “Can it be done?”

Lao Mo fell silent. His hands, rough like tree bark, rubbed hard against his pant leg. Staring at the extremely fine biological texture, his brows furrowed into the shape of the character 'Chuan'.

“The machines can't do it,” Lao Mo said hoarsely. “The current production line doesn't have enough precision, nor can it handle Biomass Raw Materials. The moment the machine presses down, the gel will be ruined.”

“Then use your hands.”

Lao Mo took a deep breath and pulled out a micro-engraving knife from his waist, polished until it shone brightly. He looked up at Eve. The world-weary look of an old craftsman suddenly vanished from his eyes, replaced by a nearly tragic determination.

“Girl, magnify the blueprint a hundred times. Since you want to defy the laws of physics, this old man will go crazy with you. It doesn't matter if these hands are ruined, as long as this little bit of 'flesh' can be attached.”

For the next six hours, the only sound in the workshop was the faint scraping of the engraving knife against the crystal.

Eve knelt beside the control panel, carefully using a dropper to deposit trace amounts of the biological gel into the grooves Lao Mo had just carved. Her movements were as gentle as stitching a wound.

Lao Mo didn't speak. Sweat ran down his deeply lined cheeks and into his eyes, stinging intensely, but he didn't even blink. His hands were terrifyingly steady; every cut was like snatching 0.01 micrometers of survival space from the Grim Reaper.

“That cut is too deep,” Eve suddenly whispered a warning.

“Shut up.” Lao Mo didn't lift his head. “The biological layer needs breathing room. That's experience, something your code can't calculate.”

Chen Feng stood by, watching the old man and the young woman. One represented the coldest high-dimensional algorithm, the other the most fundamental low-dimensional craft. At this moment, in this underground workshop filled with despair, they were stitching together a monstrosity.

“Done.”

Lao Mo dropped the engraving knife and collapsed onto the ground, utterly exhausted, panting heavily. On the control platform, a crystal glowing faintly green lay quietly, like a heart still faintly beating.

“Start the test.” Chen Feng's voice broke the stagnant air.

Eve connected the power with trembling hands.

“Buzz—”

A low hum sounded. The energy reading began to climb slowly.

“Normal output power 100%... stable.” Eve stared intensely at the screen. “Now, input the 'trojan' command.”

Chen Feng stepped forward, his finger hovering over the red Enter key.

“Boss, if this blows up, the three of us will really turn to ash.” Lao Mo leaned against the table leg, showing a few yellow teeth in a miserable laugh.

“Then we'll turn to ash together.”

Chen Feng pressed the key.

Instantly, a blinding red light engulfed the entire workshop.

“Warning! Core temperature soaring!”

“Output power 120%... 140%... 150%!” Eve's voice was distorted and sharp. “The biological layer is carbonizing! Lao Mo, it's holding! It's actually holding!”

The crystal trembled violently, as if letting out a painful roar, but the thin biological membrane acted like a tough defense line, firmly locking down the energy that was about to run wild.

One minute. Two minutes. Five minutes.

“Ten minutes are up.” Chen Feng looked at the stopwatch and said coldly.

“Snap.”

A slight crisp sound. The green light inside the crystal abruptly extinguished, and the entire energy block quickly dimmed, turning into a lifeless piece of scrap stone.

There was no explosion. Nothing was affected nearby.

It simply died quietly, exactly as it had been designed to.

A deathly silence fell over the workshop.

After a long time, Lao Mo climbed up from the ground, stumbled over to the control panel, and reached out to touch the piece of cooled scrap stone.

“That's truly goddamn miraculous...” Lao Mo muttered to himself, turning to look at Eve.

Eve was still frozen, as if she hadn't yet recovered from the breathtaking ten minutes that had just passed.

Lao Mo suddenly stretched out his large hand, covered in grease and wounds, and clapped it heavily onto Eve's slender shoulder.

“Girl,” Lao Mo's voice held a trembling sob, yet radiated immense pride, “your mind is worthy of these hands. We... we created a monster.”

Eve shuddered. She looked up at Lao Mo's dirty, smiling face, and her eyes suddenly reddened. In this cold, cruel world of nothing but calculation and betrayal, the warmth transmitted by that rough large hand made her feel a long-lost sense of reality, something called “comradeship.”

“Alright, stop being sentimental.”

Chen Feng looked at the scrap stone, his gaze still cold and hard as iron. “Are the molds ready? We need mass production. I want fifty thousand of these 'monsters' within two days.”

“I have the molds figured out.” Lao Mo straightened up and vigorously wiped his face. “As long as we have enough materials, I can modify that broken production line into a Fully Automatic 'Stitching Machine'!”

“Materials...”

Just as Eve was about to speak, the red alert light on the command console suddenly flashed frantically.

Su Li's holographic image popped up, her face paler than the lights in the workshop.

“Chen Feng, something has happened.”

Su Li's voice was urgent and cold. “The Iron Hook Merchant Guild just seized our last batch of Biomass Raw Materials. They are essential for manufacturing the gel. Without that shipment, mass production... forget about it.”

The temperature in the workshop instantly dropped to freezing point.

Chen Feng slowly turned around, looking at Su Li's anxious face on the screen, a cruel arc forming at the corner of his mouth.

“Seized?”

He let out a soft laugh, which carried a spine-chilling coldness.

“Then we'll make them spit it out. Spit it out along with their bile and blood.”