Electronic Resonance

"What's happening to me...?"

Cheng Qi's gaze traveled down along his arm.

He saw that his shoulders, chest, and legs were all gleaming with a dazzling, rainbow-colored radiance, like colored crystal-gorgeous and stunning.

He moved his hand slightly. Everything worked as usual.

Yet his arm gave him a strange impression of weight and hardness.

At the same time, he heard the faint sound of crystals rubbing together inside his joints.

Cheng Qi's eyes widened a little.

"Our skin is a translucent silicon membrane that can filter and refract light..."

"We don't move by contracting and relaxing muscles the way carbon-based life does..."

The words of the "Legacy" echoed in Cheng Qi's mind, leaving him increasingly unnerved.

At that moment.

Cheng Qi abruptly clenched his fist.

A layer of crystalline armor rapidly formed over it, and sharp crystal spikes grew from the gaps between his joints.

Perhaps because he had not mastered it yet, the phenomenon triggered a chain reaction.

In an instant, crystal spikes sprouted from Cheng Qi's elbows, shoulders, knees, and other joints.

His entire body resembled a magnificent flower of thorns.

"!!!"

Cheng Qi was alarmed. "My armor!"

As if sensing something, he whipped his head around.

He discovered that the XXX-01 Extreme Warrior Armor had disengaged before he woke up.

It now stood silently behind Cheng Qi, like a silver, headless robot.

The armor must have detected some "incompatible factors" and automatically detached from his body.

After confirming that the Extreme Warrior Armor was undamaged.

Cheng Qi breathed a sigh of relief.

But barely a second later, excitement flared in his heart again.

All of this pointed to one result.

A 67.7% success rate...!

He had succeeded.

I should now be one of those legendary Dual Gene Sequence bearers!

This was probably no ordinary Higher-Grade Gene Bearer, but an unprecedented form of existence.

Cheng Qi's chest rose and fell slightly.

The way the serum had taken effect was simply astonishing.

It was as though, while the final drop of serum fell, he had experienced a fantastical dream spanning time and space.

Cheng Qi's diamond-bright eyes suddenly noticed something strange.

Translucent blue "ribbons" floated silently in the air, ethereal and mysterious.

All these ribbons originated from the same place: Cheng Qi's body.

Their endpoints, however, were all different.

One connected to Iron Mom, parked quietly in the distance.

Another connected to the Earth Dragon King Expansion Dock, and yet another connected to Foolish Boy inside the dock, who was playing Fight the Landlord with Xiao Qiong and secretly cheating.

"What are these...?"

Cheng Qi was bewildered. The "Legacy" did not seem to have explained this phenomenon.

As he looked at Iron Mom in the distance.

A peculiar sensation suddenly emerged deep within Cheng Qi's consciousness, almost like a sense of... communication.

Cheng Qi willed it.

Iron Mom stirred in the distance. Blue indicator lights lit up across the massive chassis, and with a faint hum, the hover system activated, moving it slowly forward by ten centimeters.

Cheng Qi's eyes flew wide open.

He had merely pictured that scene in his mind, yet Iron Mom had actually carried it out.

"Are those blue ribbons some kind of connection?"

An initial guess formed in Cheng Qi's mind, and he issued another command.

The indicator lights flickered faintly. In the distance, Iron Mom raised a mechanical arm into the air, then lowered it along the same path.

A shock swept through Cheng Qi.

It really works...!

Cheng Qi turned to the Earth Dragon King Expansion Dock and issued it a command.

He wanted the floating lights it had deployed to rise another meter and increase their brightness by twenty percent.

The next instant.

The underground shelter became much brighter. With the floating lights closer to the dome, its intricate metallic patterns looked even more brilliant and beautiful.

Cheng Qi tilted his head back in surprise.

Though his expression was blank, his diamond-like body and the dome shone in harmony.

"Why is this happening?"

Disbelief filled Cheng Qi's face.

Have my thoughts connected to the machines' control centers?

But consciousness and electronic signals are two completely unrelated things!

He looked at his diamond-like hands.

Cheng Qi's eyes flickered.

"Wait... I think I've been trapped by my preconceptions!"

"I'm no longer carbon-based. I'm a silicon-based lifeform now!"

"I need to look at this from a different angle."

"The brains of computers and artificial intelligence are chips."

"And the primary material in a chip is silicon."

"Once purified, silicon is made into silicon wafers."

"Then processes like photolithography and etching form the main components of the chip, such as transistors and circuits."

"Those are the equivalent of neurons, nerves, and blood vessels in the brain."

"A robot's 'self-awareness,' 'thoughts,' 'judgment,' 'execution,' and so on all originate in that tiny silicon chip."

"And machines like Iron Mom and the Earth Dragon King Expansion Dock are genuine basic artificial intelligences."

"They..."

"Are also a form of silicon-based life!"

"Or rather, a primitive form of silicon-based life!"

"Their lives are founded on silicon, and they can think and possess independent awareness!"

Understanding dawned on Cheng Qi.

In the old era, people had always thought silicon-based life was far removed from them, when the exact opposite was true.

Viewed from another angle, their laptops were silicon-based life, and so were their phones!

If those devices seemed to lack human traits.

Then the concept could be given a more tangible form: Siri, Xiao Ai, or Xiaodu, for instance.

They were, in fact, silicon-based beings living among humans.

They were simply relatively primitive and artificially created.

"Once I become a silicon-based lifeform."

"I can resonate with other silicon-based life."

"That's the unique means of communication belonging to silicon-based life that the 'Legacy' mentioned."

"No wonder I can control them remotely."

Cheng Qi's eyes widened. "Then doesn't that mean I'll be able to remotely control every technological creation I synthesize from now on, as long as it has a silicon-based chip? That's ridiculously convenient. Almost uncannily so."

Just then.

Cheng Qi looked toward Foolish Boy in the distance.

"Xiao Qiong, I'm telling ya!"

"Play an A and a six together, and that's an old-time Audi A6 official car! Your bomb ain't got nothing on me! Haha!"

Cheng Qi narrowed his eyes. "This fellow really knows how to put what he learns to use."

He willed it.

Foolish Boy suddenly sprang to his feet, put one hand on his waist, pointed the other at the sky, and began to dance.

"Kong long kang lang, kong long kang!"

"Kong long kang lang, kong long kang!"

"Huh? Why am I dancing?!"