Viral flaws, resistance emerges

The lights in the medical pod stopped flickering, as steady as Sentry that never blinks. Ye Mo leaned against the control panel, his fingers still typing, but the pace slowed, like a motor running out of power. The Regeneration ability he'd just experienced had drained half his life; now even raising his hand felt like defying gravity. But the data stream on the screen couldn't stop; the virus model inside Pepper's body had only just started running, each frame pulsating with some kind of irrational madness.

"System," he whispered, "Give it a response."

There was no movement.

This damn system has always been aloof, never taking the initiative to speak; it all depends on him triggering it. After using its Regeneration in the last chapter, it went completely silent, not even giving a cooldown countdown, clearly leaving him to fend for himself.

Ye Mo gritted his teeth and pulled out the three sets of abnormal metabolic data he had just recorded. Heartbeat, nerve conduction, cell division rate—all in chaos, but in a pattern. He stared at a pulse signal that appeared every 17 seconds, zooming in and out until the pixels were blurred together.

"You have to have a weakness, right?" he muttered. "Even the best program has bugs. I don't believe you can run perfectly forever."

During the third loading of the cell mutation sequence, the screen suddenly froze, the progress bar stopped at 98%, and then a red warning popped up: [Simulation program crashed, termination recommended].

"Damn it." Ye Mo slammed his fist on the edge of the table. "Not again?"

He forced himself to stand up, shook his numb arms, and prepared to manually filter the next set of data. Just then, a thought popped into his head.

It's not an illusion.

A cold, mechanical voice announced, "High-risk biological signal detected. Passive Resonance Protocol activated."

Ye Mo was stunned. "Huh?"

Information is directly fed into consciousness—a structured analysis report with a title of just two words: Defect.

[The energy fluctuations of the Extremis Virus exhibit periodic collapses, with an average interval of 4 minutes and 33 seconds and a duration of 0.6 seconds. During this period, the host cell cannot maintain a stable energy supply, and mitochondrial activity drops below a critical value. If external interference is applied at this time, it may lead to a chain reaction of collapse.]

"So it's not invincible?" Ye Mo's eyes lit up. "It can short-circuit itself?"

He immediately pulled up the original data for comparison, and sure enough, after the fourth pulse cycle, there was a very brief energy trough, which the system almost judged as noise and filtered out. If the system hadn't suddenly activated, he wouldn't have noticed it at all.

"Not bad, system. You're reliable in crucial moments." He grinned. "Although you're better than anyone at playing dead most of the time."

As we were talking, the terminal suddenly beeped, the virus simulator automatically restarted, and the screen switched back to running mode. This time, loading went smoothly, and... the speed was faster.

Ye Mo didn't have time to think about it. He quickly marked all the collapse times and created an early warning system. Just after saving, he caught a glimpse of Tony walking over from the next passage. Tony hadn't taken off his armor yet, and his face was covered in dust, making him look like he had just returned from defusing a bomb.

"You're still standing?" Tony approached, his voice a little hoarse. "I thought you'd been lying down for a while."

"If I collapse, who will cause trouble for the virus?" Ye Mo didn't turn around, continuing to stare at the screen. "Besides, I've discovered something—this thing has a fatal flaw."

"A serious flaw?" Tony frowned. "Don't give me a primary school student answer like 'it's afraid of the cold or the heat.'"

"Even more ruthless than that." Ye Mo turned around and pointed to the collapsed curve. "It's strong as it is, but it can't hold on. It will collapse on its own every four and a half minutes. As long as we catch that opening, we can destroy it completely."

Tony leaned closer for a few seconds, his brow furrowing deeper and deeper. "You're saying this is... a structural defect?"

"Yes. It's like an overclocked CPU. If the performance is maxed out but the cooling can't keep up, it'll burn out the motherboard sooner or later." Ye Mo pressed Enter and brought up a set of comparison images. "You see, the host's body can't withstand long-term mutations. There's a decay after each energy peak, but nobody noticed it before."

Tony was silent for a moment, then suddenly reached out and pressed his hand against the edge of the terminal. "Where did you get this data? Didn't the program just crash?"

"The system gave it to me." Ye Mo shrugged. "It popped up on its own, calling it ' Passive Resonance,' which sounds like a case of teenage angst, but I tried it three times, and the result was the same."

Tony stared at him for two seconds. "Are you sure you're not hallucinating? You almost emptied yourself out just now."

"Even if I'm a fraud, I wouldn't go so far as to make up a bug to make you happy." Ye Mo rolled his eyes. "If you don't believe me, run the model yourself."

Tony didn't say anything, but logged into his authorized account and retrieved the original physiological signals to recalculate. Five minutes later, the same collapsed waveform finally appeared on the screen.

He took a breath. "There really is."

"I told you," Ye Mo leaned back in his chair and let out a long sigh, "We don't necessarily need to create a new virus to fight it. As long as we time it right and give it a precise strike, that will be enough."

Tony's eyes changed, that familiar look of a research geek smelling the scent of experiments. "If we could replicate this mechanism on the protection system... like adding a pulse jammer to my armor, specifically to counter it when it's weakened..."

"Good idea," Ye Mo nodded, "But I suggest we test it on a small scale first. Don't buff yourself right away; it'll be hard to handle if it backfires."

"You're really meddling," Tony scoffed, but had already opened the design sketch interface. "But you're right, let's do the energy suppression experiment first."

As the two were talking, the terminal suddenly emitted a strange noise, the simulation program entered deep running mode, and a virtual virus projection appeared in the air, flowing with red light, like a burning blood streak.

Ye Mo subconsciously reached out to adjust the parameters, and the moment his fingertips touched the edge of the projection, a scorching heat shot into his arm.

"Holy shit!"

He jerked his hand back, his entire right arm instantly burning hot, the muscles twitching uncontrollably, as if fire snakes were crawling under his skin. His head buzzed, his vision went black, and he almost knelt down.

"What's wrong?" Tony grabbed him and helped him up.

"I don't know... it seems like there's an electrical leak!" Ye Mo gritted his teeth, cold sweat pouring down his face. "How could this thing leak electricity?"

Tony quickly turned off the projector and cut off the power, but the heat was still spreading through his body, as if climbing up his nerves.

"Your temperature has spiked to 39 degrees!" Tony touched his forehead. "Don't move, I'm going to get a blood sample."

"Wait." Ye Mo raised his hand, gesturing for him to stop. "I... I feel the system is active."

Before the words were finished, deep within his consciousness, the 19th floor of the "Gene Spiral Tower" suddenly began to rotate, and a semi-transparent barrier automatically unfolded, blocking the invading energy. The two collided, but there was no explosion, only a very faint "hum," like a glass gently touching.

A few seconds later, the heat stopped spreading.

Ye Mo caught his breath and realized that his heartbeat had returned to normal and his arms were no longer trembling.

"Is it over?" Tony asked.

"It's gone." Ye Mo looked down at his hand. "Actually... it feels a little better?"

Just then, the notification sounded in my brain again:

[Successfully absorbed low-concentration fragments of the Extremis Virus, generating Basic Resistance Gene Chain. Current resistance level: Level 1. Capable of resisting trace amounts of similar viruses.]

Ye Mo was taken aback. "I... am immune?"

"What did you say about immunity?" Tony frowned.

"Literal meaning." Ye Mo flexed his wrist, finding no aftereffects whatsoever. "Some of that energy was absorbed by my system, which then used it to vaccinate me."

"Are you kidding me?" Tony asked, looking incredulous. "How could the human body evolve targeted immunity so quickly?"

"I also find it outrageous, but it just happened." Ye Mo walked to the terminal and pulled up his physiological monitoring data. "Look, heart rate is stable, white blood cell count hasn't surged, and there's no damage to the nervous system. This isn't a normal immune response; it's directly rewritten the response mechanism."

Tony stared at the screen for ten seconds, then suddenly turned and picked up the portable sampler. "Hold out your hand."

What are you going to do?

"I'll draw a vial of your blood," Tony sneered. "I want to see if you've been turned into a monster by the virus."

"You're the one who's sick." Ye Mo rolled his eyes, but still reached out his hand.

Sampling was complete. Tony imported the data into the analyzer, and three minutes later, the results appeared: [An unknown antibody sequence was found in the subject's body, specifically targeting the core protein structure of the Extremis Virus, with a match rate of 98.7%.]

The lab was silent for a few seconds.

"... You really resisted it." Tony stared at the screen, his tone complex. "Not tolerance, but true immunity."

"I told you so," Ye Mo withdrew his hand and stretched his shoulders. "It seems my system can not only steal abilities, but also do vaccine development on the side."

Tony didn't laugh; instead, his expression turned serious. "Do you know what this means?"

Does that mean I won't have to hide from the virus anymore?

"That means we can replicate this mechanism." Tony lowered his voice. "If your body can absorb and convert the virus's energy, then it means—we can find a physical way to counteract it."

Ye Mo understood what he meant. "You mean, use me as a template to create a countermeasure system?"

"It's not just the system." Tony's eyes gleamed with excitement. "If we can extract the principles of the Resistance Gene Chain within your body, we can develop targeted protective modules, and even... create weapons capable of dismantling viruses."

"Sounds impressive." Ye Mo frowned. "But don't forget, I risked my life for this. That last attack almost burned me to a crisp. If you want to replicate it, you'll have to make sure the test subject doesn't die on the spot."

"I understand," Tony nodded. "So the first step is to conduct a small-scale energy suppression test. Use a simulated environment, without using real people."

"That's more like it." Ye Mo breathed a sigh of relief. "Otherwise, I would have thought you were going to grab ten volunteers overnight to feed the virus."

"You think I'm Killian?" Tony glared at him. "I'm a scientist, not a madman."

"Sometimes there's not much difference," Ye Mo muttered to himself.

Tony ignored him and began adjusting the terminal parameters, preparing to set up a new test scenario. Ye Mo stood beside him, watching the data jumping on the screen, and suddenly felt less tired. His Regeneration ability was still cooling down, but he now had something else—a real sense of confidence.

Viruses are not invincible.

It will crash.

And he was already standing on its crack.

"Hey," Tony said without looking up, "Next time you experience this kind of ' Passive Resonance,' tell me beforehand. Don't try to tough it out on your own."

"Sure," Ye Mo smiled, "As long as you buy me Red Bull."

"Get lost." Tony threw a pen cap at him.

Ye Mo caught it and casually placed it on the control panel. The test program on the screen began to load, and the progress bar slowly advanced.

The laboratory lights remained stable, and the instruments hummed steadily.

He stood behind Tony, staring at the energy suppression curve that was about to take shape, his fingers unconsciously tapping the table.

The next second, the terminal suddenly emitted a notification tone:

[Trace amounts of residual viral energy detected; Resistance Gene Chain automatically activated, defense efficiency increased by 12%.]

Ye Mo looked down at his hands.

It's a little hot.

But this time, it was because he had a fever, not because he was burning up.