In the boundless depths of the sea, arcs of electricity flashed.
The low rumble of wheels churned beneath the ocean. A Never-Ending Train threaded its way through layer upon layer of mist.
Inside the carriage, countless threads wrapped around a single person like a spiderweb.
They carried billions of pulses of information every second, now layered atop one another like a cocoon of light.
"The link... has been severed."
The woman enclosed within the great cocoon spoke softly.
Chu Ling opened her eyes. Countless threads snapped at once, and the carriage returned to its former immaculate state, free of even a speck of dust.
Her eyes held shock, incomprehension, confusion, and pain.
Yet none of those emotions were things an "AI" should possess.
At this very moment, Gu Shen's connection to her had been completely cut off. She had never experienced this before. When Gu Shen had previously entered a disaster zone that blocked mental connections, she had only been temporarily unable to contact him.
But this time, the display showed... that the other end of the connection had been completely lost.
That meant—
Gu Shen was dead?
After confirming that Gu Shen's connection signal had vanished, Source Code abandoned all interaction with the Outside World. Nothing else mattered anymore. Chu Ling began forcibly accessing the Sky Eyes above Sang Continent Grotto. Although those electronic surveillance devices, now controlled by the main server, had been buried beneath Tanyao Mountain's ash, she still forcefully retrieved every image within the surveillance range above Sang Continent Grotto.
Mountain fires erupted, and the sky was pitch-black.
The once densely scattered Sky Eyes had been battered by ash impacts, Tanyao's eruption, and a series of other blows. Fewer than one in ten remained... Most of the surviving devices were positioned around Sang Continent Grotto's outskirts,