Su Wanqing stupidly held the cold, lifeless phone, brick-like in her hand. The chill from her fingertips seemed capable of freezing her blood. Xiao Lin's last panicked shout still seemed to echo in her ears, along with Ling Ye's three ice-cold words—"So damn noisy."
Her company had been hacked, its data stolen, and the warning image had been that ice cream scoop... The "Phantom" organization's revenge was like an invisible web, spreading from the real world into cyberspace and suffocating her. And now, her only means of communication had been casually turned into scrap metal right before her eyes by the big shot because it was "noisy."
What was she supposed to do?
What could she do now?!
A tremendous sense of helplessness and panic surged over her again like an icy tide, drowning her. She looked at Ling Ye, who seemed to have sunk back into sleep on the sofa, and opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Ask for help? Would this big shot care whether a mere mortal's company lived or died? His performance just now had already explained everything—it mattered less than his sleep.
A powerful sense of grievance and a trace of resentment surged uncontrollably within her, only to be suppressed by an even deeper fear. She did not dare complain, nor even reveal the slightest dissatisfaction.
Just as she sank into the mire of despair, utterly at a loss—
Her gaze once again uncontrollably... fell upon the Chaos Green Lotus Basin in the corner.
The chaotic mist within the basin seemed slightly more active than before, slowly swirling. That strange glimmer that had flashed when it devoured the corpse seemed to have been nothing more than an illusion, yet it also seemed as though something was quietly taking shape deep at the bottom of the basin.
An even more absurd, bolder, and practically insane thought, like a vine growing in the darkness, quietly wound itself around her heart.
This basin... could devour and decompose corpses, suppress earth veins, serve as a footbath, and act as a flower-fertilizer diluter... Then could it...
Su Wanqing's heart began to pound wildly. A word flashed frantically through her mind: signal! Network signal!
When the "Phantom" assassin's corpse had been devoured just now, she seemed to have glimpsed a streak of light in the basin resembling electronic interference! Could that mean... this basin could also devour and interfere with some kind of "information imprint" or "signal signature" carried by the intruder, or even projected through a network connection by the organization behind it, and perhaps... track it in reverse?!
The idea was utterly preposterous, practically challenging every foundation of modern science!
But... compared with the other things that happened around the big shot, this seemed... not quite so outrageous anymore?
A drowning man would clutch at a straw! In any case, there could be no worse outcome!
A trace of desperate determination flashed through Su Wanqing's eyes. Once again, she scrambled toward the corner, rolling and crawling as she grabbed the incomparably heavy Chaos Green Lotus Basin.
This time, her target was not a corpse, but... the phone Ling Ye had turned into a brick!
She dragged the basin beside the coffee table, looked at the cold "brick," then at the bottomless Chaos Green Lotus Basin. Gritting her teeth, she placed the phone into the basin with trembling hands... carefully and cautiously!
The phone sank into the hazy chaotic mist without making a sound, like a pebble tossed into a deep pool.
One second.
Two seconds.
Three seconds.
There was no reaction from the basin. The phone lay quietly at the bottom, gently wrapped in chaotic mist, without the slightest change.
Had she failed?
Su Wanqing's heart sank, and a huge wave of disappointment and self-mockery welled up inside her. Sure enough... had she just been fantasizing? How could a basin possibly interfere with something as intangible as a network signal?
She gave a bitter smile and prepared to reach in and fish out the phone.
However, just as her fingertips were about to touch the mist in the basin—
"Bzzzt—!"
An extremely faint yet unmistakably clear electric current suddenly sounded from the bottom of the basin!
Immediately afterward, the chaotic mist that had been slowly swirling suddenly boiled and churned violently, like cold water thrown onto red-hot iron!
Within the mist, countless tiny, strange points of light resembling fragments of code flashed with the light of zeros and ones. They frantically appeared and vanished, intertwined, and collided! It was as though an invisible torrent of data was fiercely clashing inside the basin!
The previously subdued chaotic radiance on the basin's surface abruptly brightened, becoming blinding! Countless even more profound and complex distorted runes appeared within the light and flowed across its surface, radiating a terrifying aura capable of suppressing, decomposing, and devouring all things!
The entire basin seemed to have transformed into a... chaotic furnace refining all the disorderly information and all the chaotic energy in heaven and earth!
The sudden phenomenon frightened Su Wanqing into jerking her hand back. She retreated repeatedly, staring in horror at the boiling "data furnace"!
She could see the phone's cold casing at the bottom of the basin turning transparent and insubstantial at a speed visible to the naked eye! It seemed to be assimilated and decomposed by the chaotic mist!
What left her even more dumbfounded was that amid the boiling mist and data fragments, several distorted, constantly changing virtual IP addresses and encrypted communication protocols flickered in and out of existence! There was even an extremely vague identifier for a shadowy server hidden in the deepest reaches of the network. It struggled like a frightened fish, then was completely swallowed and crushed by even more chaotic mist!
This basin... was really... processing information?! It was devouring and even retaliating against attacks on the network layer?!
This had completely exceeded the limits of Su Wanqing's understanding!
The process lasted roughly a dozen seconds.
In the end, all the phenomena receded like a tide.
The boiling mist returned to its calm, steady rotation, while the blinding radiance and runes faded away. At the bottom of the basin, the phone still lay quietly, but its casing was no longer transparent. Instead, it looked brand-new, as though it had just left the factory. Even the screen had become exceptionally clear and lustrous.
The golden "essence" droplets that had remained in the basin, along with the subtle aura left behind after devouring the corpse, had also vanished completely, purified away without a trace. The entire basin appeared even more ancient and restrained, as though it had undergone a deep cleaning.
Su Wanqing stared at everything in uncertainty, her heart still pounding wildly. After hesitating for a moment, she cautiously reached into the warm mist and fished out the phone.
The phone felt warm in her hand, with no water or stains on its body. She instinctively pressed the power button—
"Vrrr..."
The phone's screen lit up instantly! The familiar startup logo appeared, then quickly gave way to the home screen! The signal bars were full! Wi-Fi connected automatically! Its operating speed even seemed faster and smoother than before!
It was as if the phone's destruction just now and the subsequent "data refinement" had never happened. No! It had not merely been restored! Su Wanqing keenly sensed that the phone seemed... different somehow. There was an indescribable clarity to it, as though it had been "empowered."
With trembling fingers, she immediately called her assistant, Xiao Lin.
The call was answered almost instantly. From the other end came Xiao Lin's tearful, disbelieving, wildly ecstatic voice: "President Su?! Is that you?! Oh my god! The sudden disconnection just now scared me half to death! And... and a miracle happened! Just now! The cyberattack on the company... suddenly stopped! All illegal connections were severed! It was as if... as if the enemy's base had suddenly been blown up! The data leak stopped too! The firewall logs are completely blank, as though those attacks never existed! W-what exactly is going on?!"
Holding the phone, Su Wanqing listened to her assistant's incoherent report. She stood rooted to the spot as if struck by lightning, speechless for a long time.
It worked...
That basin... had actually...
After the tremendous shock and wild elation came a bone-deep, icy awe. She looked once again at the seemingly ordinary basin in the corner, and her gaze changed completely.
How could this be a basin? This was clearly... the hand of God on the internet?!
Just then, Ling Ye's nose suddenly twitched unconsciously on the sofa. He still had his eyes closed, as though he had smelled something in his dream.
His brows knitted slightly, tinged with displeasure at being disturbed, and he mumbled indistinctly in his sleep:
"...What smell... such a mess... signals... noisy..."
Before he had even finished speaking, the hand he had casually draped over the edge of the sofa naturally... swept casually... in the direction of the Chaos Green Lotus Basin in the corner.
It was like someone finding their pillow slightly uncomfortable in their sleep and casually pushing it aside.
There was no light and no surge of energy.
But at the instant he waved his hand—
"Vrrr..."
The Chaos Green Lotus Basin trembled almost imperceptibly. The mist calmly swirling inside seemed to have been smoothed by an invisible hand, and all the lingering, exceedingly faint fluctuations left behind by the "data refinement" were instantly erased completely, returning to absolute "stillness."
The basin was still the same basin.
It was as if the earth-shaking cyberwar just now had truly been nothing more than an illusion in Su Wanqing's mind.
Ling Ye smacked his lips, his brows relaxing as he sank into an even deeper sleep.
Su Wanqing: "..."
She looked at the phone in her hand, restored to its original state—or even better—then at the basin that had instantly begun "playing dead," and listened to Xiao Lin excitedly report the "miracle" of the crisis being resolved over the phone...
She suddenly felt that she might... never truly understand this big shot, or the operating logic of the "daily necessities" around him.
Her entire system of understanding had, today, officially and permanently... failed.
Before you continue