Telepathic Assistance, Coordination Training
The night was low, as if someone had placed a whole sheet of lead over Brooklyn. There was no wind, the sparrows on the telephone poles had long since flown away, and the street lamp on the corner flickered twice before going out completely. Inside the safe house, Ye Mo sat against the wall, the aperture of his binoculars held in place by the blinds, the lens pointed directly at the rusty iron door in the alley behind the repair shop.
He still had a monitoring channel connected to his headphones, the static almost inaudible. The terminal screen was lit, and next to the green "Standby" button, the numbers 03:17:22 appeared—this was the time he had been squatting there since the afternoon. His fingers unconsciously tapped the outside of his thighs, the rhythm almost matching his heartbeat.
The iron gate creaked open.
Scott Lang poked his head out, looked around to make sure no one was watching, and then emerged completely. He was wearing his faded work jacket and carrying a black canvas bag. He walked much more briskly than during the day, but his left shoulder still felt a little tight, as if he were carrying something he shouldn't be carrying.
"They're here," Ye Mo said softly, without smiling or moving.
He knew what was in the bag. It was a prototype silver-gray suit given to him by Pym, unnamed and unnumbered, only bearing the internal code name P-07. This wasn't ordinary equipment; it was cutting-edge technology capable of shrinking a person to the size of an ant without killing them. The problem was, even the most advanced technology needed someone to know how to use it. Scott, just released from prison three months prior, a convict, had repaired radar but had never touched quantum-scale engineering. Asking him to wear this thing was like asking someone who had just passed their driving test to drive an F1 car into the Nürburgring —it would be a miracle if it even started.
Scott walked to the middle of the alley, glanced around again, and unzipped his backpack. He hesitated for a second, as if mentally preparing himself. Then, he pressed the suit controller.
The air buzzed.
It wasn't sound, but a vibration at the sensory level. Ye Mo felt a sudden heat on the skin behind his ear, as if a red-hot needle had been inserted and pulled out. He immediately activated his Telepathy module; the green button turned blue, and a message appeared on the screen. "Signal acquired, target neural wave synchronization in progress..."
The next second, Scott collapsed.
It wasn't a fall, it was shrinking. His 1.8-meter height instantly shrunk to 10 centimeters, his jacket bunched up like a tent, and one of his shoes, too big, flew off. He staggered a couple of steps, stepped on a half-smoked cigarette butt, slipped, and crashed into the wall with a thud.
"Damn it!" he muttered under his breath, the sound Echo through Ye Mo's earpiece via the microphone.
Ye Mo almost burst out laughing, but he managed to hold it in. A system notification sounded in his mind, "Telepathy connection successful, transmission mode: low-frequency command."
Without wasting any words, he immediately sent the first message: "Move your left foot forward three centimeters."
Scott looked up abruptly, his eyes darting around. "Who?"
No one answered.
He looked down at his feet again and saw that they were indeed twisted. He tried to move them and regained his balance.
Lower your center of gravity and slightly bend your knees.
This time he didn't ask, he did as instructed. His body adjusted automatically, and his balance returned somewhat.
"Synchronize your breathing: inhale for two seconds, hold, exhale for three seconds."
Scott took two deep breaths, keeping the rhythm, and his hands stopped shaking. He looked down at his miniaturized hands and murmured, "This feeling... it's like someone is teaching me?"
Ye Mo raised an eyebrow in the safe house. Speaking directly is likely to provoke resistance, especially from people who are new to supernatural things. They don't believe in gods or ghosts, but they believe in "sudden enlightenment." So he changed his approach. Instead of issuing written instructions, he packaged the standard movement process he had just simulated—how to step, how to turn, and how to deal with ground undulations—into a "movement blueprint" and pushed it through the resonance system.
It's not a command, it's an inspiration.
Scott blinked, then suddenly took a step forward, his movements much smoother. He dodged bottle caps on the ground, stepped over cracks, and even lightly hopped on the edge of a raised tile, landing without wobbling.
"Damn..." He stopped, looking down at his feet. "I didn't even think clearly about that jump; my body just moved."
Ye Mo's lips twitched, thinking: That's what I thought; you just borrowed my muscle memory.
He didn't stop, but continued to guide him. He had Scott try spinning in place, sprinting short distances, and sudden stops and changes of direction. At first, he still fell, but the number of times he fell decreased. By the tenth test, he was able to complete a set of basic evasive maneuvers in the narrow alley, clumsily, but without hitting the wall.
But just as he was about to tackle a sloping drainage ditch, his brainwaves suddenly went haywire.
A terminal alarm sounds softly. "Target neural network load is excessive; connection termination recommended."
Ye Mo immediately cut off the signal.
Scott suddenly stopped, leaning against the wall, panting, his face pale and sweat beading on his forehead. He took off his hat to fan himself, muttering to himself, "My head is spinning... like I've blacked out."
Ye Mo stared at the screen, replaying the data stream from just now. Connection duration: 87 seconds. Add another three seconds, and the person would probably be on their knees.
"It has a cooling system." He stroked his chin. "It breaks down when it's close to the critical point; it's quite intelligent."
He didn't rush to reconnect, but waited five minutes for Scott to recover. During that time, the man sat on the ground, munching on half an energy bar, rubbing his temples, and muttering, "Pym said this stuff takes time to get used to... but nobody said it'd empty your brain."
Once the heart rate returned to normal, Ye Mo restarted the module, but the strategy changed.
Instead of full-process guidance, a "critical node injection" system is used—a corrective message is pushed out only when Scott is about to make a mistake, such as "There is a metal beam on the right," "The ground height difference is 0.3 meters," or "The next step is to shift the center of gravity to the left."
Like setting up a low-spec version of the support lane in a game.
The first time, Scott jerked to the side, dodging a protruding steel bar, and was stunned. "How was I supposed to know there was something there?"
The second time, he automatically bent his knees to absorb the force upon landing, landing steadily, muttering, "This reaction... is faster than when I used to rob convenience store takeout."
The third time, he ran on the slippery ground, instinctively adjusting his stride, and didn't fall.
It became more and more natural each time.
Finally, standing in his shrunken state, panting, he stared at the obstacle array made of discarded parts in front of him and muttered, "Was that move... something I came up with myself?"
Ye Mo shut down the terminal in the distance and whispered, "Half of you, half of me."
He didn't let Scott hear him, but he meant it. Abilities can be copied, and experience can be shared, but true mastery depends on the other person transforming external information into bodily instinct. He had merely built a bridge; whether Scott could cross it or not was up to him.
The terminal screen went dark, and he jotted down a note:
[Successfully applied in the first real-world test, Telepathy lasts for 87 seconds with a cooldown period of approximately 5 minutes.]
The auxiliary mode has been optimized to "node-based correction," reducing the cognitive burden of the target and improving learning efficiency.
After finishing writing, he leaned back against the wall and rubbed his temples. He felt mentally exhausted, not from pain, but from the dullness that comes after staring at a screen for eight hours straight. But instead of closing his eyes, he reopened the monitor.
All four angles were lit: the alley entrance, the back door, the vent, and the rooftop antenna. Scott was still there, preparing to take off his suit. He pressed the controller, and his body slowly returned to normal, his jacket fitting him again, and the shoe that had been flung off was retrieved.
He brushed the dust off his pants, glanced back at the repair shop, muttered something under his breath, then picked up his bag and walked out of the alley.
Ye Mo didn't move, still wearing his headphones, until the footsteps completely disappeared around the street corner.
He took off his glasses, wiped the lenses, and put them back on, his gaze falling on a small window in the corner of the terminal. That was a feature he'd added on his own—"Motion Deviation Recorder." It contained screenshots of all of Scott's mistakes that night: the first step missing, the third turn causing him to lose his balance, the seventh jump being 0.2 seconds premature...
It's full of hidden dangers.
This is also a breakthrough point.
He knew that this kind of training couldn't be perfect forever. Next time, Scott might shrink back when he shouldn't, jump when he shouldn't, or even expose his identity and get into trouble because of a momentary lapse in judgment.
But he wasn't in a hurry.
Mistakes are inevitable; just don't die along the way.
He reopened the Telepathy module; the green button glowed silently, like a heart waiting for orders. Outside the window, a crack appeared in the clouds, and moonlight slanted in, illuminating the armrest of the old sofa on the floor—the one he had bought that day, still in its packaging.
He stared at the light for two seconds, then said softly, "Next time we meet, let's try walking through the Wall Phasing backwards."
As soon as he finished speaking, he pressed the save button, and all training data was encrypted and archived.