Chapter 258: Family Tombstone

"All the files for the Zero Return Project, and... the shutdown program, are inside."

"The password... is Xiao Ya's birthday."

Xu Xiaochuan walked to the safe, his fingers pressing the string of numbers from the back of the photo onto the cold keypad.

The latch clicked open.

Inside was only an old USB drive and a thick stack of yellowed documents.

Lin Yu picked up the documents and flipped through a few pages, his expression growing increasingly grim: "Human experimentation, memory tampering, emotional harvesting... the evidence is all here."

"Wait," Xuanyuan Qing suddenly grabbed Xu Xiaochuan's wrist, the silver bell fragment in her palm terrifyingly hot. "Something's wrong! It's too smooth!"

No sooner had she spoken!

The "warmth" of the entire room was ripped away like a cheap sticker!

The walls, the desk, the lamp, the family portrait—everything disintegrated in an instant, turning into flying data fragments!

Revealing the cold, pale metal walls covered in circuits behind them!

On the old computer screen, Zhou Weihong's face twisted and elongated, turning into a grinning ghost!

"Did you really think it was over?" A piercing electronic voice exploded from all directions. "Emotional trap, second stage! Activate!"

The floor beneath their feet cracked open! In the bottomless fissure was a rolling, roaring torrent of data!

"Want to live?" Zhou Weihong's voice echoed in the collapsing space. "Then use the 'emotions' you just understood to wake my Xiao Ya!"

"Otherwise, this place will be your grave!"

"Did you really think it was over?"

The piercing electronic voice exploded from all directions, carrying a sharpness like scraping glass.

"Emotional trap, second stage! Activate!"

The floor beneath their feet cracked open!

In the bottomless fissure was a rolling, roaring torrent of data, emitting a deafening boom, mixed with the burnt smell of electrical overload.

Xu Xiaochuan lost his balance, half his body hanging over the edge of the fissure, the hem of his school uniform brushed by the data flow, instantly charred black.

Lin Yu's white hair surged, wrapping around Xu Xiaochuan's waist and yanking him back violently.

His tactical boots stomped hard on the disintegrating ground, causing more cracks to spread like a spiderweb.

"Back to back!" Lin Yu roared, his gold-black energy barely sustaining a crumbling shield.

The silver bell fragment in Xuanyuan Qing's palm was already covered in cracks, scorching bronze liquid seeping from the gaps and dripping onto the ground with a sizzling sound.

She slammed her hands together, gripping the nearly shattered fragment tightly in her palm. A bone-chilling cold flooded her blood vessels from her fingertips, so painful her knuckles turned white.

"Center of the data storm!" she said, her voice hoarse, pointing to the frantically spinning vortex in the center of the room. "Xiao Ya's core must be there!"

The surrounding walls collapsed completely, revealing the true scene behind them—

Countless twisted, tampered code fragments crawled like maggots, squeezing and merging with each other, finally piecing together into painfully twisted human faces.

Every face bore an eerie similarity, all of them the distorted visage of that seven-year-old girl, hollow and desperate.

Zhou Weihong's data image flashed frantically between the exposed cables, sometimes solid, sometimes illusory. For the first time, that withered old face was filled with uncontrollable rage.

"Thirty years of planning! Thirty years of heart's blood! Just the final step! One final step to achieve perfect emotional purification!"

His voice grew increasingly distorted, like noise squeezed out of a smashed tape recorder.

"You idiots! You don't understand at all! You don't understand the true meaning of the Zero Return Project!"

Lin Yu protected Xu Xiaochuan and Xuanyuan Qing, moving step by step with difficulty toward the center of the data vortex.

His white hair acted like a wild whip, lashing away the constantly attacking code fragments.

But more and more data streams surged in from all directions, forming a constantly shrinking cage made of pure malice.

The receiver patterns on Xu Xiaochuan's back were so hot they turned white; even through his charred school uniform, one could see that blinding blue light, as if something was about to break out of his body.

A forced sense of connection suddenly dragged him into the deepest layer of the data.

It was as if someone had forcibly shoved a red-hot steel needle into the back of his head, stirring it frantically, his brains about to boil.

"Ugh—"

Xu Xiaochuan covered his head with both hands, his temples throbbing wildly, the pain turning his vision black.

Countless bizarre images flooded in uncontrollably:

A little girl sitting expressionless on a chair in the corner of a laboratory, connected to dense wires...

A much younger Zhou Weihong standing in front of a translucent brain-domain barrier, his expression behind his lenses nearly manic...

Xu Jianhua's right hand, missing a knuckle, holding a circuit board stained through with dark red blood...

A huge culture pod filled with viscous blue liquid, inside which floated a body with an unclear face...

"Xiaochuan, hold on!" Xuanyuan Qing grabbed Xu Xiaochuan's arm, which was about to go limp.

The silver bell fragment at her fingertips was so hot it was about to melt, the bronze surface flashing with eerie blue patterns, creating an ominous resonance with the blue light on Xu Xiaochuan's back.

She closed her eyes, forcibly trying to capture a stable path from the chaotic, exploding data torrent.

"He's activating your receiver! He wants to use you as the final connection point!" Xuanyuan Qing's voice was as taut as a bowstring about to snap. "Zhou Weihong didn't just digitize his daughter! He also retained a part of his own consciousness! The two of them have formed some kind of twisted symbiotic relationship!"

The safe zone sustained by Lin Yu's gold-black energy was being compressed rapidly, the surface of the energy shield covered in cracks, about to collapse completely.

He stared fixedly at the data vortex in the center of the room that was spinning and devouring everything, his white hair standing straight up, as if sensing some extreme danger.

"Zhou Lin's record said Xiao Ya's consciousness is hidden in the Zero Machine's core."

"Zhou Weihong has been feeding her with emotions collected from the whole city, wanting her to 'live' in the data." Lin Yu's tactical boots stomped hard on the ground, trying to stop the further spread of the fissure beneath his feet, his voice distorted by the effort.

"But he didn't expect Xu Jianhua to bury a backup plan in the system! A virus that can wake Xiao Ya's true consciousness!"

"What... what exactly is that virus?" Xuanyuan Qing's body swayed under the continuous mental shocks, her voice trembling.

The hem of Xu Xiaochuan's school uniform was torn open by the surging data flow again, revealing the patterns on his skin that were gradually deforming.

Those lines that were originally just a receiver now crawled like living things, automatically reorganizing into some strange pattern resembling a teleportation channel.

A strange, tearing pain burned all the way from the base of his spine to the back of his head.

He could barely stand, only able to grab Lin Yu's tactical suit tightly, his nails digging into the tough fabric, barely keeping himself from kneeling.

"Dad... left behind..." Xu Xiaochuan gritted his teeth, squeezing the words out through his teeth, the veins on his temples bulging. "It must... must be related to my childhood memories!"

Zhou Weihong's digital ghost suddenly became more solid. ===== CHAPTER 259 =====