📖 Previous Chapter / 上一章： The Flesh Firewall and The Network Abyss

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The emergency beacons cast a sickly red wash over three rusted bronze figures dangling from the ceiling like butchered meat. Centuries of toxic green patina choked their armor, yet thick umbilical tubes jammed straight into their spines pulsed with fresh, arterial blood and raw, screaming voltage.

"Bronze Corps," Lu Yan hissed, her voice dropping into a razor-sharp register as she whipped out a rune-carved nail gun. "Zhao didn't just send mercs; he sent fully silicified executioners. Their human minds are long wiped—replaced clean with Pan-Asia military firmware."

Before her warning could even settle, the center figure twitched. A sickening shriek of tearing metal and stretching sinew split the corridor. With a deafening crash, the lead soldier dropped sheer, landing in a bone-jarring, three-point crouch dead in front of us.

The impact vibrated violently up through the black book fused directly into my sternum. Beneath my pale skin, the red optical fibers flared like live electrical wire, flooding my veins with a synthetic surge of adrenaline that tasted sickeningly of battery acid and raw copper.

"Subject locked. Initiating non-lethal extraction," a synthetic, multi-tonal grind rattled from the grille of the bronze helmet—sounding like three distinct voices trapped and suffocating inside a metal pipe.

It lunged. It moved with a terrifying, inhuman velocity, a blur of oxidized plating and high-pressure hydraulic shrieks.

"Get back!" Lu Yan roared, hammering the trigger of her nail gun.

A storm of silver, Daoist-inscribed iron spikes slammed into the soldier's breastplate. Sparks exploded in a blinding halo, the sheer kinetic force staggering the giant half a step back. But it didn't even flinch. The heavy carapace simply swallowed the energy, and with a sweeping arc of a massive, clawed gauntlet, it batted Lu Yan aside like a ragdoll. She slammed hard against the concrete, skidding down with a choked groan as her nail gun clattered across the deck.

"Lu Yan!" Old Chen shrieked, clutching my shoulder in blind panic. "Kid, do something with that thing in your chest! They’re going to rip your heart right out for the core!"

I had no choice. The second and third bronze figures dropped from the ceiling, choking off our only escape path. The corridor was too narrow to evade, and my physical frame was already buckling under the grinding weight of the background data overwrite.

As the lead executioner raised a jagged, blade-like forearm to pin me against the bulkhead, a searing, white-hot agony erupted behind my ribs. Grandpa’s warning from the digital purgatory flashed hard across my mind: “Do not trust Lu Yan.”

If I’m going to die in the dirt here, let’s see what this parasite inside me can actually break.

Instead of dodging, I threw myself forward, plunging my bare hand straight into the high-voltage fluid line protruding from the monster's spine.

BZZZZT!

Pain beyond comprehension tore up my arm, but the data conduit flipped. Instead of the system scrubbing my mind, my nervous system—supercharged by Hell's Eye—vomited a torrent of screaming, corrupted code straight back into its firmware.

The giant froze mid-strike. Its glowing red optical visor flickered violently, flared a blinding, toxic violet, and died into absolute blackness. The remaining two soldiers locked up instantly, caught mid-motion in a system-wide freeze frame.

I yanked my smoking hand free, sucking in ragged breaths. My chest burned like an open furnace as the sync rate crept upward: 1.45%... 1.50%...

Lu Yan staggered back to her feet, wiping a smear of dark blood from her temple, staring at me with a lethal mix of awe and naked terror. "You... you didn't just hack a terminal. You overrode military-grade hardware bare-handed."

"Move," I gasped, hauling Old Chen past the paralyzed statues. "The bulkhead's up ahead."

We slammed into the dead end of the corridor—a massive, rusted steel blast door stamped with a faded biohazard emblem. No keypads. No card slots. Just a deep, precision-carved circular socket right in the center of the metal, shaped to the exact, sickening geometry of Hell's Eye.

"It's a biometric gate," Lu Yan breathed, her fingertips tracing the rim. "It needs the core. It needs you to plug in."

I looked back down the suffocating dark of the corridor. Far in the distance, the heavy, rhythmic thud of fresh hydraulic boots began to hammer against the concrete. They were coming. Dozens of them.

Slowly, I raised a trembling hand to my chest, feeling the glowing red fibers writhing frantically beneath my skin, starving to feed.

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© 2026 @eagithao. All Rights Reserved.
Disclaimer: This is an original cyberpunk fiction created by the author. The cover image was generated using AI tools strictly based on the author's original story prompts.
原创声明：本文为作者原创赛博朋克科幻连载，未经授权请勿转载。封面配图为作者根据本人小说情节，使用 AI 工具生成的概念视觉图。