Chapter 260: Graveyard Game of Data Souls

"Xuanyuan Qing, help me!" Xu Xiaochuan reached out to her, his voice taut. "Use your bell! Amplify this frequency!"

Xuanyuan Qing did not hesitate in the slightest, pressing all the shattered bronze fragments in her hand onto Xu Xiaochuan's scorching back.

The moment the bronze touched the blue light, it erupted with dazzling radiance, two completely different energies colliding and merging violently, forming a peculiar, constantly pulsing ripple. Beads of sweat rolled down Xuanyuan Qing's temples, all her strength gathered at her fingertips, her knuckles protruding from the effort.

"I feel it!" she whispered, no longer trying to analyze or control, but immersing her perception completely in that warm wave of energy. "It's that kind of... cleanest familial love... a child's unreserved reliance and trust in their father... love without a single impurity!"

Lin Yu understood their plan instantly.

He dissipated the gold-black energy shield he was barely maintaining, his white hair surging and intertwining as if it had a life of its own, tightly protecting Xu Xiaochuan and Xuanyuan Qing, forming a physical barrier. At the same time, he mobilized the remaining Void energy within him, no longer for defense, but pushing that warm energy wave with all his might, slamming it toward the very center of the data vortex!

"Break for me—!"

Xu Xiaochuan let out a hoarse roar, the back of his school uniform exploding completely, revealing the receiver patterns underneath that had completely reorganized and deformed. It was no longer a simple geometric pattern, but a complex, precise, and soft-blue-glowing... totem resembling some kind of mark.

Zhou Weihong's digital ghost elongated abruptly, the twisted human face in mid-air struggling and deforming.

The withered old age faded, regressing to his middle-aged appearance, the light flickering between his brows a mix of madness and obsession.

"You will never destroy me!"

The voice was dry and piercing, boring into their ears and leaving a numb, itchy sensation of electrical burning.

"Observer-000 is already prepared!"

The data storm in the room intensified.

The originally stable walls began to peel and disintegrate piece by piece, revealing the rolling, surging torrent of code behind them.

Although the pulse from Xu Xiaochuan's receiver pierced the outer barrier of the data vortex, the core area was still firmly controlled by Zhou Weihong.

"Uncle Lin! I can feel his consciousness transmitting!" Cold sweat poured down Xu Xiaochuan's temples, his tattered school uniform barely hanging on, the patterns of the receiver on his back completely twisted, turning into a strange yet inexplicably familiar symbol.

"He's about to transfer somewhere else!"

The silver bell fragment in Xuanyuan Qing's hand was terrifyingly hot, the cracks on the bronze surface growing deeper and denser, the reflected light flickering, struggling.

She closed her eyes, her entire spirit sinking into the direction of the perceived data flow, her pupils shrinking abruptly.

"East-West direction! There's a hidden main data channel transmitting a massive amount of extremely complex information packets!"

Lin Yu's white hair exploded, wrapping around their waists and dragging them toward the corner of the room.

There was an inconspicuous maintenance terminal there, its screen flashing with dense, dizzying code.

His knuckles turned white, the remaining gold-black energy in his palm barely condensing into a thin energy needle, which he slammed into the interface!

"I'll try to hack in." Lin Yu's tactical boots ground over the data fragments scattered on the ground, making a teeth-grinding scraping sound.

Xu Xiaochuan went around to the side of the terminal and found a spare slot.

He didn't hesitate at all, pressing his scorching back hard against it.

The receiver resonated with the system instantly, the connection established.

A strange yet familiar torrent of data rushed into his mind.

Countless images exploded and flashed before his eyes: a bird's-eye map of Beijing, marked with donkey meat burger shops like stars in the sky; a system architecture diagram complex to the extreme, the central node clearly marked "Observer-000"; and a coordinate located in the south of the city, marked as a long-abandoned electronic waste processing plant.

"Backup shell management!" Xu Xiaochuan broke free abruptly, his eyes bloodshot from information overload.

"Zhou Weihong prepared a backup shell! It's not a person—it's some kind of biological computer core! He wants to use that thing to completely control the Zero Machine!"

The silver bell fragment tightly gripped in Xuanyuan Qing's fingertips vibrated violently, resonating with a frequency hidden in the data flow.

Almost by instinct, she found a fragment layered with encryption in the vast code.

The bronze liquid seeping from her fingertips dripped onto the cold metal casing of the terminal, activating the dormant code.

An encrypted document popped up on the screen.

The access permission used Xu Jianhua's DNA sequence as the key.

The document unfolded slowly, but it only contained a few lines of text:

"Observer Project prototype—the ultimate network fusing human emotion and mechanical efficiency. Zhou Weihong has gone mad; he wants to integrate his daughter's consciousness fragments into the system core. But that is not true life, only a cage for a digital ghost. I have buried a virus deep in the network, but it requires a trigger condition—sufficiently pure 'family' emotion. Xiaochuan, if you see this, please remember: the Zero Machine's weakness is in the south of the city..."

The lower half of the document was unreadable due to severe data corruption, with only the words "trap" and "disguise" vaguely distinguishable.

"Is that place in the south of the city where his backup shell is?" Lin Yu frowned, his energy probe digging deep into the bottom layer of the system, trying to unearth more information.

"The robot army outside will break through here soon; we don't have much time!"

The sound of impact outside grew louder and more urgent!

The metal door was visibly twisted and deformed, the blue light leaking through the gaps growing brighter, as if it would be torn apart completely in the next second.

"We have to make a choice." Lin Yu's voice was exceptionally calm. "Do we stay here and continue attacking Zhou Weihong's digital ghost, or rush to the south of the city immediately to stop his final plan."

Xuanyuan Qing looked down at the silver bell fragment in her hand that was nearly turning into powder, cracks already covering the entire surface.

"I have a little strength left," she gritted her teeth, a flash of determination crossing her face. "I can set a data bomb here, delayed trigger, to interfere with his upload progress. But this won't destroy him completely."

The receiver on Xu Xiaochuan's back suddenly flashed violently, creating an unprecedentedly strong resonance with the system.

He slammed his hand onto the terminal, forcibly pulling out a deeply hidden system log.

The log clearly recorded Zhou Weihong's insane plan over the past thirty years: using the network of donkey meat burger shops spread across the city to collect massive amounts of emotional data, filtering, purifying, and fusing it.

And his ultimate goal was actually—to create a digital paradise that could perfectly carry his daughter's consciousness, and at the same time, the ultimate place for him to achieve immortality.

"He turned the entire Beijing into a huge emotional battery," Lin Yu's voice was terrifyingly low, "and he himself is the master control system for this battery." ===== CHAPTER 261 =====