Chapter 259: Every Donkey Meat Burger Shop is a Puzzle Piece

An invisible pressure, like a landslide or a tsunami, struck from all directions, pinning the three of them in place, nearly crushing their bones.

His voice boomed like thunder, filled with the rage and unwillingness of being betrayed.

"You think Xu Jianhua really cares about you? Don't be naive!" The electronic voice echoed frantically in the collapsing space, making one's eardrums buzz.

"He's just using you! Using you through and through! You're nothing but a backup key he left for the Zero Machine!"

"That so-called receiver tattoo is essentially a biological authentication interface! It's a backdoor he left for himself!"

Xu Xiaochuan's mind was a mess, Zhou Weihong's words stabbing in like poison thorns.

He endured the excruciating pain that was about to tear his consciousness apart, his eyes bloodshot from overexertion.

A long-forgotten memory fragment suddenly surfaced in his mind with absolute clarity—

When he was six, his old man had secretly taken him to an abandoned experimental base in the suburbs of Beijing.

The place was eerie, filled with dust and dilapidated instruments.

Xu Jianhua had snuck in on tiptoe and carried him to an old, dusty console with a cracked screen.

Then, he grabbed his small hand and pressed it onto a sensor panel glowing with a faint blue light.

"Remember, Xiaochuan," Xu Jianhua's voice was very, very low, carrying an unprecedented seriousness. "This machine recognizes your bloodline. If one day, Dad isn't around anymore, and you encounter it, remember to tell it..."

"Tell it the taste of sugar-fried chestnuts."

The young Xu Xiaochuan had been clueless, not understanding what his old man was talking about at all, only feeling that the sensor panel was ice-cold.

He only remembered that after returning that day, his stingy old man had broken precedent and bought him a large bag of sugar-fried chestnuts.

Fresh out of the pan, piping hot, warm in his hands. When he peeled the shell, the chestnut meat inside was glutinous and sweet, carrying a particularly pleasant charred aroma.

"Sugar-fried chestnuts..."

Xu Xiaochuan raised his head abruptly, the chaos and pain in his eyes receding like a tide, replaced by a clarity that was nearly burning.

"This isn't just the virus activation password Dad hid in the Zero Machine..."

"This is also... a memory anchor he left for me!"

Xuanyuan Qing's pupils shrank!

The silver bell fragment in her palm, which was about to shatter into powder, vibrated violently, creating an unprecedentedly strong resonance with the glowing receiver on Xu Xiaochuan's back!

"That's it! If you can receive Zhou Weihong's emotional flow, you can conversely transmit your own memories and emotions!" Xuanyuan Qing's voice was so hurried she could barely breathe. "We need an emotional waveform strong enough to wake Xiao Ya!"

Lin Yu blocked another fierce wave of data fragments, the veins on his temples bulging like knotted tree roots.

The gold-black energy in his palm had become extremely unstable, flickering, and the tips of his white hair even took on an ominous gray, representing energy depletion.

"Theoretically, the only thing that can break Zhou Weihong's control is an emotional shock stronger than his." Lin Yu's voice was steady, but couldn't hide the exhaustion. "Xiao Ya is imprisoned in this data cage by her father's twisted emotions; only emotions of equal intensity, or... purer emotions, could possibly break through this restraint!"

The core of the data vortex churned more violently. In the chaos, a little girl's face appeared and disappeared, looking about seven years old. Pain had distorted her features, and only terrifying electronic blue light remained in the hollows where her eyes should have been.

Zhou Weihong's digital ghost also became clearer than ever, no longer in that withered old state, but restored to his middle-aged appearance, the very peak of his ambition and energy.

He looked down from above, his voice devoid of any warmth: "Don't waste your efforts."

"I dismantled Xiao Ya's consciousness fragments and fused them into the entire Beijing network. Every donkey meat burger shop hides a piece of her. Without the complete emotional key, you'll never piece her back together, let alone wake her!"

A wild wind from nowhere whistled through the entire space, the data fragments stinging their faces. Lin Yu and Xuanyuan Qing were forced back repeatedly by this power, nearly pressed against the wall, more cracks appearing on the surface of their energy shield, flickering.

Xu Xiaochuan stumbled, reaching out to grab the nearly shattered silver bell fragment in Xuanyuan Qing's hand, the scorching heat from her fingertips nearly making him drop it.

Excruciating pain pierced his nerves, yet in this pain, he caught a glimmer of clarity.

"Xiao Ya is scattered, it's true, but the key is also scattered!" Xu Xiaochuan's voice was hoarse but exceptionally clear. "My DNA is one part, yes, but that alone isn't enough! The key is the synchronization of emotional frequency!"

He straightened his back, letting the blinding blue light shine through the tear in his school uniform, meeting Zhou Weihong's projection without flinching.

"You miscalculated one thing. My dad, the backup plan he left isn't just on me." Xu Xiaochuan pulled the corners of his mouth into an arc, carrying blood foam and a ruthless determination to go all out.

He licked his cracked lips, the blood touching the receiver on his back, a strange burning numbness spreading across his skin.

"He hid a puzzle piece in every donkey meat burger shop, every steamer, and even, goddammit, every bun wrapper!"

Lin Yu paused. Xuanyuan Qing also looked at Xu Xiaochuan abruptly.

Zhou Weihong's projection seemed to flicker, and for the first time, some kind of elusive emotional fluctuation slid across that forever-frozen face.

"You think those shops were just nodes for collecting emotions?" Xu Xiaochuan's voice rose, carrying a near-cathartic pleasure. "They were also shelters! Safe houses my dad secretly built for Xiao Ya's consciousness fragments!"

The surrounding data storm intensified abruptly, the screeching sound making their eardrums ache, the entire space trembling violently, as if it would collapse completely in the next second.

Zhou Weihong's projection twisted, his voice low like muffled thunder from underground.

"Impossible! Xu Jianhua doesn't have the technical capability! He's just a—"

"Just a bun maker?" Xu Xiaochuan roared, interrupting him, his voice trembling with excitement. "Someone like you will never understand him! Because you don't understand at all what family is! What goddamn unadulterated love is!"

An unprecedented energy fluctuation erupted from the receiver on Xu Xiaochuan's back.

It was no longer the cold, forced signal flow from before, but a pulse carrying warmth. The blinding blue light turned soft, staining a warm halo that forcibly pushed the cold data storm back by an inch.

This light carried a strange texture, as if one could smell the scent of bedding dried in the sun, or perhaps, the warm aroma of freshly baked food. ===== CHAPTER 260 =====