Alarms rang incessantly in the Command Center at NERV Headquarters Base.
At the highest level, Gendo Ikari picked up the red receiver. "Understood. Sorry for the trouble."
He returned the red receiver to its drawer, shut it, and ordered those below, "Turn off the alarm!"
Aoba Shigeru was about to say something, but held his tongue and hurried to comply. "Stopping the alarm!"
The alarms began to fall silent.
"This was merely a false alarm caused by a faulty detector. Report that to the Japanese government and the committee." Gendo Ikari interlaced his fingers, concealing the incident.
"Yes, sir!"
Hyuga began giving a detailed report on the contaminated area. "The contamination is spreading downward, expanding from the Pribnow Box-one of the DNA sequences, referring here to the Eva clone experiment tank area-throughout the entire Σ unit!"
Fuyutsuki approached Gendo Ikari, bent down, and whispered in his ear, "This location makes things rather tricky..."
"Yes... it's too close to Adam. Contain the contamination within the Σ unit. Sacrificing the Underground City is acceptable. What about the Evas?" Gendo Ikari glanced at his gloved hands without the slightest panic, then asked Hyuga about the Evas.
"They're standing by at the Seventh Launch Platform. We can launch once the pilots have been recovered!" Hyuga checked the hangar feed and reported to those above.
"No need to wait for the pilots. Launch them to the surface immediately!" Gendo Ikari replied without hesitation.
Hyuga and Aoba Shigeru both froze for a moment. Without pilots, the Evas could not move. Sending them up would only turn them into decorations.
"Unit-01 takes top priority. Abandoning the other three for its sake is acceptable!" Gendo Ikari knew perfectly well that Unit-01 possessed one of the most essential prerequisites for attaining godhood. Even the Special Unit, whose data matched it most closely, was not as good as Unit-01.
Unless Unit-01 was lost, the Special Unit would never get its turn.
"Unit-01 takes top priority?" Hyuga asked again.
"Without the Evas, we won't be able to destroy the Angel!" Aoba Shigeru tried to dissuade him.
"If the Evas are contaminated before we destroy the Angel, everything is over! Hurry!" Gendo Ikari could not be bothered to explain further, and a trace of anger entered his final words.
"Yes, sir!" Neither man argued any further. They hurriedly operated Unit-01 in the hangar below and launched it upward!
Kaji was absent during this part. In the original story, he had indeed been at headquarters, but he had already been dispatched to the United States, so he was not here this time.
"The deepest facilities have been seized by the intruder!"
Standing to one side with his hands behind his waist, Fuyutsuki calmly said, "Well, how are we supposed to fight the Angel without the Evas?"
In the Clone Experiment Tank, red spots on the clones flashed on and off while alarms sounded incessantly.
"Look, this is the heavy-water boundary! The place with the most oxygen..." Akagi explained, looking at the red area of the honeycomb pattern on the virtual screen.
Misato sounded utterly helpless. "It certainly makes its preferences obvious..."
Aoba Shigeru's fingers flew over the keyboard. "The areas where ozone is released to maintain sterile conditions haven't been contaminated."
Misato brightened, seemingly having found the Angel's weakness. "So oxygen is its weakness?!"
"It looks that way..." With a hand resting on Ibuki's chair, Akagi considered it and tentatively agreed.
Several concealed ports opened in the deep section of the laboratory tank, and bubbles multiplied continuously. Gas was clearly being pumped in.
"Injecting ozone! Concentration rising!" Hyuga worked the keyboard and reported to Misato and the others.
"It's working! It's working!" Aoba Shigeru cheered as the readings on his screen steadily dropped.
The two commanders at the top watched everything before them with cold detachment.
As for Gendo Ikari... he looked the same as always.
Gendo Ikari held his interlaced hands before his mouth, the reflection on his glasses making him inscrutable. "Will this work?"
"0a and 0b are predicted to return to normal."
"Readings around the pipes have returned to normal!"
"The central area is still highly active, as expected!"
After hearing the reports, Fuyutsuki felt the approach was promising and immediately ordered, "Good! Increase the ozone."
"Strange..." Akagi watched the projected image of the experiment tank, her gaze gradually growing grave. She sensed that something had become... puzzling. It was not that simple.
Her suspicions were soon confirmed.
"What?! It's increasing?!" Aoba Shigeru hurriedly typed as the readings on his screen kept climbing.
"An anomaly! Massive heat generation!" Hyuga discovered that the readings in the contaminated area were rising sharply.
"The contaminated area is expanding again!"
"No good! It seems to have stopped working entirely!"
"It's absorbing the ozone!"
The string of bad reports showed just how formidable this Angel was.
"Stop the ozone!" Akagi immediately cut off the continuous ozone supply.
"Incredible. It's evolving!!" Akagi watched the readings on the screen slowly stop, but scarcely had she finished speaking when another drastic change occurred!
The virtual screen blurred, blue bands of static flickering incessantly!
"What's happening?!" Sweat began to bead on Misato's forehead as fear crept over her. She had suffered far too many shocks today.
The Angels always appeared in different forms, but this one was even more outrageous.
"The auxiliary computer is being infiltrated! Intruder unknown!"
"At a time like this?! Damn it, switch to C-Mode!" Hyuga's hands flew over the keyboard as he began writing code to block the intrusion.
"Deploy defenses and open the Ritual Entry!" Aoba Shigeru hurried to coordinate with Hyuga.
"The decoy entry has been bypassed."
"Eighteen seconds until the reverse trace!!"
"Defenses deploying!"
"The firewall has been breached!"
"Open more decoy entries!"
"No human could do this!"
"Reverse trace successful. It's inside this facility."
"Under Building B-it's the Pribnow Box!" Aoba Shigeru had just breathed a sigh of relief when he immediately realized something was wrong.
The experimental clones beneath Building B were connected to the computer by cables and pathways!
Huang Zhetian stood beside Misato, watching quietly.
He activated his eyes' scanning mode and continuously swept his surroundings, his deep-blue eyes examining the structure of the MAGI supercomputer.
There were three enormous red compartments here.
The three enormous red compartments were divided into three personalities-the scientist, the woman, and the mother.
This MAGI supercomputer had come from NERV's predecessor, Gehirn.
MAGI was a seventh-generation biological supercomputer, developed in 2010 by Akagi's mother, Naoko Akagi.
More than eight thousand people had participated in its construction, at a total cost of 320 trillion yen.
After Gehirn was dissolved, this supercomputer was ultimately taken over by the newly established NERV.
Objectively speaking, Akagi's mother had not died. It could be called digital ascension.
Watching Misato and the others scramble, Huang Zhetian slipped his hands into his pockets and looked up at Gendo Ikari and Fuyutsuki at the highest level.
Both remained calm, a stark contrast to the panic below them.
Gendo Ikari looked down at Huang Zhetian, the corners of his mouth lifting slightly.
"Heh... I know you're plotting against me, but I'm plotting against you too, Sixth-Rate Gendo." Huang Zhetian fixed his deep-blue gaze on Gendo Ikari.
Huang Zhetian knew what he was thinking... he simply intended to push him into intervening at some point in the plot.
He was out in the open, while Gendo remained in the shadows. He felt powerless, stuck on the defensive.
That was also why Huang Zhetian had initially dared not tell NERV's China branch or the Chinese government, and could only ask Kaji to approach the United States ambassador to China.
Huang Zhetian did not want to dwell on it now. He turned to Akagi and the others. "Since this Angel uses evolution as its weapon, there's no way an Eva can defeat it in this form. We can only fight it as humans now! Have you ever heard this saying?"
"What saying?" Akagi was extremely agitated, and impatience had crept into her voice.
But after calming down slightly, she took a breath and coldly questioned Huang Zhetian.
"Evolution ends in extinction!"
Akagi's and Misato's eyes lit up! They seemed to have realized something.
Even Gendo Ikari and Fuyutsuki above were slightly surprised.
Of course! This Angel attacked through evolution and learning. What would happen if they accelerated its evolution? Destruction!
"That's our Huang Zhetian! You actually came up with such a great idea at a time like this!" Misato stepped forward and hugged him tightly.
Holy crap! Those things are huge. Stop pressing them against me! Even if you claim my body, you'll never claim my soul! Ah, my brain's overheating!
Huang Zhetian's face was being somewhat squashed out of shape by those enormous things...
He didn't know how lucky he was. (Author)
As the Angel prepared to seize the supercomputer, Akagi ordered Hyuga and the others to intercept it.
"Artificial Intelligence Melchior proposes self-destruction!" MAGI's cold voice rang out.
"Rejected!" The second personality vetoed it.
"Rejected!"
"Rejected!"
"Its processing speed is incredible! We can't keep up!" No matter how fast Aoba Shigeru and Hyuga typed, they could not match the Angel's evolution.
"Change the logic mode! Synchronize instructions in fifteen-second intervals!" Akagi switched modes, directly altering the logic governing its calculations.
"Understood!" Hyuga immediately rewrote the code, catching up at once.
Beep, beep... beep.
The intrusion into the second personality slowly halted.
"How long can it hold?" Fuyutsuki breathed a sigh of relief. Despite his calm exterior, he was panicking inside.
Gendo Ikari, however, showed no panic at all.
"Based on its previous speed, we can hold out for roughly two hours!"
"To think MAGI would become our enemy," Fuyutsuki said with deep emotion.
"But Huang Zhetian gave us the answer. Evolution ultimately ends in self-destruction!" Akagi looked at Huang Zhetian approvingly.
"You're too kind. I heard a saying before: technology ultimately ends in self-destruction..." Huang Zhetian hurriedly found an excuse.
In truth, technology ultimately ended in mysticism...
"Whether Casper or the Angel is faster will decide the outcome," Gendo Ikari said, identifying the crucial point.
"We'll start entering the program now! There's still time!" Akagi pushed up the glasses on the bridge of her nose.
Although Misato was relieved that they had found a solution, she still deeply disliked how Akagi took every responsibility upon herself.
She had always been like this, never trusting anyone.
She did not even trust Misato that much.
Huang Zhetian watched the enormous red compartment slowly rise.
It revealed enormous thick pipes, crossing and interlocking in an orderly arrangement. They resembled a brain, except this brain was rectangular.
"So this is where the personality resides? MAGI's Gasper..." Huang Zhetian activated his scanning mode and examined the infected reddish-purple steel pipes, their interior covered with sticky notes.
The sticky notes contained numerous programming codes and methods.
Ding! Task completed ahead of schedule! The Horror Angel's fate has already been decided! Reward issued-Infinity Gauntlet (all six stones included)! Note: Although the outcome has been fixed, the danger level remains at its highest.
Huang Zhetian: "???????!!!!!!"
What strange thing just barged in? Seriously?
The Infinity Gauntlet?!
Misato noticed his strange expression and asked, "What's wrong? Is something off?"
"It's nothing, Miss Misato..." Huang Zhetian shook his head.
What the fuck is all this?! Isn't the Infinity Gauntlet from the Marvel Universe? How did it end up here?
Huang Zhetian watched Akagi and Ibuki continuously typing nearby, with numerous tools, wires, and data cables already scattered around them.
"After the Horror Angel, there shouldn't be any Angels for a little while." Huang Zhetian recalled that in the TV version from his previous life, there should be no Angel attacks in the next two episodes.
This was his opportunity... and it would also determine the direction of the ending.
"Looks like... I'll have to leave Japan for a bit. Go back home... it's been ages since I last visited Guangdong." Huang Zhetian took out a can of orange juice, pulled the tab, and leisurely took a sip.
Before you continue