Chapter 244: Thirty-Seven Steamer Firewalls

The mechanical dogs of the rotting corpses suddenly turned their heads in unison, and Xiao Chengzhou's virtual image began to flicker with Chaos Code. Xu Xiaochuan suddenly understood something, and with fingers stained with mucus, he jabbed at the holographic screen: "The Barrier is absorbing their energy in reverse!"

As the blue light of the Circular Device swallowed the entire laboratory, Qin Tianluo's Electronic Eye projected the final scene amidst the intense glare—the moment Xu Jianhua fell from the building, his missing-fingered right hand was clutching half a Donkey Meat Burger, with a micro signal transmitter hidden inside the meat filling.

The entire tunnel suddenly flipped, and the accumulated water floated up to become the ceiling. Xuanyuan Qing grabbed a leaking power cable and swung across, her boot soles brushing against the hair tips of the upside-down rotting corpses. Xu Xiaochuan's canvas shoes got stuck in the deformed turnstile, and he watched helplessly as the metal box slid toward the bottomless shaft.

"Catch!" Qin Tianluo suddenly snapped off his own mechanical forearm and threw it over; the parts automatically assembled into a grappling hook in mid-air. The moment Xu Xiaochuan lunged out to grab it, tentacles formed from Data Stream reached out from the shaft and wrapped around his ankle.

The metal box suddenly began to play "The Most Dazzling Folk Style" automatically, and Xiao Chengzhou's synthesized voice came from the speaker: "Little friend, when your dad was modifying this thing..." Xu Xiaochuan suddenly wiped the grease off the box surface with his school uniform, and the nano-circuits in the chive juice instantly activated an electromagnetic overload.

Twenty mechanical bodies began to tap dance in the blue light, and the spinal bone spurs of the rotting corpses suddenly turned to pierce their own eye sockets. Xu Xiaochuan slammed into the water-seeping wall bricks and felt the Shiliu Jinzhi Daima carved by his father's fingernails—it was exactly the same as the doodle he had drawn in math class three days ago.

"The Cold Storage coordinates are in the Zhenglong Cengshu!" Qin Tianluo suddenly convulsed and fell to his knees, his Electronic Eye projecting the image of Xu Jianhua being swallowed by the Data Stream, "The three thousand six hundredth tier... each tier corresponds to..."

The tunnel suddenly split open, and the metal frame of the Zero Machine pierced through the strata. Xiao Chengzhou's holographic image stood on the circular console, and three hundred Xu Jianhua clones were soaking in the Culture Pods beneath his feet. The group of rotting corpses suddenly turned in unison and knelt toward the Zero Machine.

Xu Xiaochuan's school uniform pocket suddenly became scorching hot, and the Donkey Meat Burger he had swiped three days ago began to emit a burnt smell. The Chip inside the meat filling was absorbing the blue light of the Zero Machine, and the grease stains converged into an escape route on the metal floor. Xuanyuan Qing suddenly plunged the Silver Bell Fragment into her own wound, splashing Bronze Solution mixed with blood onto the holographic projection.

"You don't understand at all!" Xiao Chengzhou's image began to distort, "The Zero Machine is a gluttonous feast for all of humanity..." Before he could finish speaking, his throat was entangled by the Data Stream of the Xu Jianhua clones, and three hundred voices roared simultaneously: "The Donkey Meat Burger is going to get cold!"

Qin Tianluo's mechanical skeleton suddenly burst open, revealing an old-fashioned pager hidden in his chest cavity. When Xu Xiaochuan's fingers, stained with blue blood, pressed the call button, the entire Zero Machine suddenly began to play Xu Jianhua's Wedding March. The Explosion-proof Door automatically disintegrated amidst the music, revealing the array of steaming steamers behind it.

When the Silver Bell Fragment pierced her palm, Xuanyuan Qing saw the bloodstains from when her father fell from the building flowing backward along the Data Stream. Neon signs fell from the sky, shattering into thirty-seven of Xiao Chengzhou's virtual smiling faces. She sprinted, stepping on the constantly reassembling glass shards; the moment her ankle was entangled by Data Tentacles, her twelve-year-old self was running past the shop opposite—clutching a blue-glowing steamer in her arms.

"Don't look back!" The Silver Bell suddenly vibrated with Xu Jianhua's voice, and the back of Xuanyuan Qing's head brushed against flying chunks of asphalt. Her father's incomplete image was collapsing into pixels, his missing-fingered right hand clutching tightly onto a crack in the virtual boundary.

Xu Xiaochuan's spectacle lenses cracked into a spiderweb, and the floor of the code labyrinth was devouring his canvas shoes. Thirty-seven bun-shaped Firewalls popped up as chaotic code windows, and the chive-filling grease dripped down through the gaps in the keyboard. "Old Xu, you're screwing over your son!" He tore open his school uniform and wiped the projection area; the hidden code activated by his sweat suddenly projected his father's handwritten notes onto the wall—at the end of every line of formulas, a stick-figure drawing of a Donkey Meat Burger was sketched.

Qin Tianluo's mechanical knees crushed the two-hundredth Mechanical Soldier, and hydraulic oil mixed with blue blood pooled in the trenches. Memory Fragments exploded in his brain like cannonballs: a rainy night twenty years ago, Xiao Chengzhou's gold-rimmed glasses reflecting the shadowless lamp of the operating room, the electrode patches branding the "Zeroing Project" onto his spine.

"Energy Core overload warning." The moment the Mechanical Arm popped up a red window, three hundred clones crawled up from the scorched earth. Qin Tianluo tore off the sparking circuit board and discovered that the address of Xu Jianhua's bun shop was carved onto the control Chip.

Xuanyuan Qing suddenly collided with her twelve-year-old self, and the two figures overlapped in the Data Torrent. The green light erupted from the Silver Bell Fragment swallowed the entire nightmare cycle; she saw Xu Jianhua stuffing a USB drive into the interlayer of a steamer before falling from the building, his final action with his missing-fingered hand being to make an "OK" gesture.

"The three thousand six hundredth tier!" Xu Xiaochuan's school uniform caught the rain of code falling from the ceiling, and the chive juice etched a hexadecimal key onto the Virtual Keyboard. The labyrinth's Firewall suddenly reversed direction, and the thirty-seven Steamer Firewalls began to play "The Most Dazzling Folk Style."

Qin Tianluo's mechanical eye suddenly scanned the Barcode on the chest of a clone—the production date was actually three days before he was modified. From deep within the trenches came Xu Jianhua's roar: "They are using your Memory to feed the AI!"

The virtual sky split open, and Xiao Chengzhou's digitized avatar descended, stepping on a steamer emitting blue fire. His gold-rimmed glasses cracked in two, revealing three hundred rotating compound eyes behind them: "The Zero Machine is a perpetual motion machine, and you are all firewood!"

Xuanyuan Qing suddenly threw the Silver Bell Fragment toward the data vortex; the bronze debris, adhering to the key code cracked by Xu Xiaochuan, pieced together a holographic map of the Donkey Meat Burger Shop in the Void. Qin Tianluo's mechanical skeleton suddenly operated in reverse, and the exploding parts formed an electromagnetic pulse net that covered the entire battlefield.

"You miscalculated Old Xu's backup plan." Xu Xiaochuan tore open his school uniform to reveal a tattoo on his chest—the maze route map made of grease stains was absorbing the blue light of the Zero Machine. The Steamer Firewalls suddenly exploded in unison, and a reversal program planted by Xu Jianhua ten years ago burst out from the chive filling.

Xiao Chengzhou's virtual body began to collapse into pixels, and his thirty-seven compound eyes burst one after another: "You don't understand at all... the Zeroing Project is the salvation..." Data Tentacles suddenly reached out from deep within the ruins, wrapped around Xuanyuan Qing's ankle, and dragged her toward the collapsing virtual black hole.

Xu Xiaochuan's canvas shoes suddenly melted into a Data Stream, and the rainbow candy wrapper in his school uniform pocket automatically folded into a parachute. He grabbed Qin Tianluo's mechanical limb and swung across; as his fingernails dug into Xuanyuan Qing's wrist, he saw the Core Code of the Zero Machine flickering in the depths of the black hole—Xu Jianhua from thirty years ago was debugging equipment in the core cabin, his missing-fingered right hand pinching half a piece of Laba Garlic.

Xuanyuan Qing's lower back hit the smoking Server cabinet, and the Silver Bell fragments melted into viscous bronze juice in her palm. Three hundred screens were simultaneously playing the scene of her father falling from the building, his missing-fingered hand repeatedly gesturing "OK."