Chapter 234: Matrix Core

Xuanyuan Qing suddenly grabbed Qin Tianluo's wrist: "Blue blood is seeping from your neck."

The three froze simultaneously. The dripping sound in the depths of the drain became deafening, and the stain on the collar of Qin Tianluo's tactical suit was glowing with an eerie fluorescence. He tore open his collar abruptly, and the blue veins wriggling beneath his skin extended to his spine like circuit board patterns.

"Clearance program." He laughed instead. "They buried a time bomb in my spine."

Lin Yu's Void tentacles suddenly pierced Qin Tianluo's shoulder blades, the gold and black energy wandering along his meridians. The smiley face symbol on the display screen suddenly twisted into a screaming expression, exploding into a sky full of pixel rain.

"Got it." Lin Yu pulled out an earthworm-like data link. "Old Qin, you're carrying the reverse tracking protocol for the entire server in your head."

Xuanyuan Qing raised her foot and crushed the data fragment trying to escape: "So you're a human-shaped navigator now?"

"More accurately, a living bait." Qin Tianluo pinched the blue chip that exploded when he squeezed it. "They were searching for the real coordinates of the source code through me, but—" the chip suddenly exploded, "I wrote a recipe for donkey meat burgers into the reverse tracking program."

The roar of the database collapsing came from afar, and Lin Yu's tentacles rolled the two into the transmission vortex. In the sensation of weightlessness, Xuanyuan Qing suddenly smelled the aroma of sugar-fried chestnuts—the snack Xu Jianhua always kept in his pocket back then.

When they smashed into the trash pile in Xisi Hutong, the morning light was sweeping across the teeth of the fourth stone lion. Lin Yu pried open the iron box, which contained half a moldy donkey meat burger and a rusty USB drive.

"Old Xu's cold jokes are still as cold as ever." Qin Tianluo chewed on a bun he'd found somewhere, looking at the tooth marks on the USB interface. "Need a password?"

Xuanyuan Qing pressed the silver bell against the tooth marks, and a voice message from thirty years ago suddenly played: "Lin-kid, it's time to pay for the buns."

"Zzzzt!"

An electric arc flew past Qin Tianluo's earlobe, singeing his newly shaved crew cut with a burnt smell. Xuanyuan Qing threw the silver bell, which spun into a residual image in mid-air, barely blocking the second stun dart.

"This broken bell is running out of power!" She pressed her back against the peeling vermilion door panel, her palm numb from the vibration. In the distance, the researchers were changing magazines for their stun guns, blue light flowing between the metal components.

Qin Tianluo suddenly grabbed half a cold donkey meat burger and threw it. The bun stuck precisely to the lead researcher's goggles, mustard sauce dripping down the lenses. "Run!" He grabbed Xuanyuan Qing and rushed into the hanging flower gate, the sound of equipment short-circuiting crackling behind them.

Three elliptical instruments overloaded and exploded simultaneously, and the researcher with gold-rimmed glasses was flipped over by the air blast. Xuanyuan Qing caught a glimpse of the mechanical prosthetic eye exposed after his lens shattered, flashing with a 404 error code in his pupil.

The phone in his pocket vibrated frantically. Xuanyuan Qing swiped open the screen while running, the unread message filled with garbled characters: "Server crash—donkey meat burger shop—coordinates..." The sender ID was a string of Martian characters.

"Did Old Xu hide a mechanism in the kitchen?" Qin Tianluo stumbled over a step, the stones kicked up by his tactical boots startling a flock of sparrows. The sound of mechanical joints turning came from afar, and seven or eight researchers were climbing over the wall in non-human postures.

Xuanyuan Qing suddenly stopped, the holographic map appearing on the inner wall of the silver bell showing the red dot was less than twenty meters away. A faded "Fortune" character was pasted on the mottled anti-theft door, and the sugar melon Xu Jianhua gave her last Spring Festival was still stuck to the handle.

The moment she kicked the door open, the steam from the bun steamer hit her face. Xu Jianhua was stir-frying in a wok with his right hand, missing its ring finger, the roar of the range hood drowning out the sound of the pursuit. "Two donkey meat burgers." He threw the steamer lid without looking back, the metal lid spinning and slicing off half a mechanical arm from the pursuer.

Qin Tianluo grabbed the Erguotou from the stove and poured it into the USB interface; amidst the pungent wine aroma, the third floor tile suddenly popped up. Xu Jianhua picked up a colander and smashed the mechanical dog rushing toward him: "Time to pay for the buns." The flames rising from the stove suddenly condensed into an arrow, pointing straight toward Xisi Hutong.

Xuanyuan Qing took out the encryption dongle hidden in the flour bag, which was still covered in sugar frost from thirty years ago. The entire wall of cabinets suddenly flipped, revealing a dark compartment filled with weapons. Xu Jianhua stuffed the steaming bun into her backpack: "Tell Lin-kid, in the steamer layer..."

Before he could finish, the roof was blown open by a laser cannon. Amidst the falling tiles, Xu Jianhua swung a rolling pin at the main power switch, and the neon signs on the entire street exploded with electric sparks simultaneously. The mechanical limbs of the pursuers suddenly began to dance square dances, and the Bluetooth speaker played "The Most Dazzling Ethnic Trend."

The air conditioner unit at Xu Jianhua's house emitted an old buzzing sound, and the smell of leaking refrigerant was pungent. Xu Xiaochuan knelt in front of the coffee table, rummaging through scattered parts, a screwdriver moving back and forth on the circuit board: "My dad said he was going to upgrade the firewall three days ago, and it got eaten by this pile of scrap metal?"

Xuanyuan Qing stepped on a rubber duck that squeaked, and Xu Xiaochuan's mechanical dog toy suddenly played a nursery rhyme: "Find, find, find a friend—"

"Don't touch it!" Xu Xiaochuan lunged to stop the toy. The mechanical dog's eye sockets shot out red light, projecting a holographic letter onto the wall. Xu Jianhua's sloppy handwriting twisted with static noise: "Xiaochuan, under the steamer..."

Qin Tianluo had already lifted the steamer, three layers of buns steaming. He broke open the second meat bun, the metal USB drive hurting his teeth: "Old Xu's cold jokes can be used as weapons."

The USB drive was plugged into Xu Xiaochuan's game console, and the screen jumped to a pixel-style Whac-A-Mole game. When Xuanyuan Qing hit the gold-rimmed glasses mole for the 27th time, the background code suddenly poured down like a waterfall. The "Donkey Meat Burger Recipe. txt" document hid a hexadecimal key, and Xu Jianhua's self-portrait GIF was eating a bun: "It's a tradition for young people to hide Easter eggs in code."

"Si Jiu City coordinate parsing complete." Qin Tianluo splashed sweet and sour sauce on the projection map, the rust stains gathering into a red dot. "What Yan-uncle said was buried under the stone lion is..."

The buzzing of drones came from outside the window. Xu Xiaochuan threw the mechanical dog at the window, and the bulletproof glass reflected seven floating black shadows. The lead researcher was adjusting the mechanical arm voltage, and the Lin Yu ID photo on his chest badge revealed an eerie smile.

"Go through the sewer!" Xuanyuan Qing kicked open the bathroom floor drain cover. When the stench surged up, the rainbow candy in Xu Xiaochuan's school uniform pocket fell out, rolling into the sewage pipe with a clinking sound.

Qin Tianluo suddenly grabbed the collars of the two: "Old Xu's firewall is reverse-parsing the tracking signal." He pointed to the bun icon jumping on the projection screen. "This thing is sending recipes to the enemy server."

Xu Xiaochuan grabbed the keyboard and typed wildly: "Give me thirty seconds to rewrite the protocol!" The mechanical dog suddenly jumped to the rhythm of "The Most Dazzling Ethnic Trend," and the pursuers' drone swarm began to dance in the air.

When the three dived into the pipe, Xu Jianhua's holographic image was humming Peking opera. The pixel-composed bun rain smashed toward the researchers—leek-filled ones. ===== CHAPTER 235 =====