Part 1: Cyber-Luck Patch V1.0
The sensation of being forcibly disconnected from the deep web felt like taking a sledgehammer to the back of the skull.
Li Mo ripped the AR goggles off his face, gasping for air. Sweat trickled down his temples, dripping onto a desk cluttered with cigarette butts and shattered circuit boards.
He was back in his "studio"—or rather, his kennel—located on the third basement level of New Mirage City.
It was a safe house converted from a discarded shipping container. The walls were lined with soundproofing foam and copper heat-sink pipes. The air smelled of stale machine oil and cheap instant coffee. In the corner, an obsolete 3D printer whirred, printing spare parts for some cybernetic implant.
"Heart rate 120. Adrenaline levels critical. Immediate sugar intake suggested," Lao Jun's voice crackled from a Bluetooth speaker on the desk. "That last jump nearly overloaded your mental threshold. Young man, even 'Cultivation' (Code Refactoring) requires following basic safety protocols. Don't drop dead inside a server."
"Shut up, old man." Li Mo rubbed his temples and fished out a tube of high-sugar nutrient paste labeled "Stamina Potion" from a drawer. He squeezed it into his mouth like toothpaste. The sickly sweet artificial strawberry flavor exploded in his mouth, finally bringing his brain back online.
He looked at the main screen. It displayed the fragment of code he had intercepted from Wang Defa's brain.
It was bizarre. Not standard C++ or Python, not even low-level assembly. Its structure spiraled like a double helix. It looked more like... a DNA sequence.
"This isn't a standard virus," Li Mo narrowed his eyes, fingers flying across the holographic keyboard, trying to deconstruct it. "It's 'Living Logic.' It mimics biological neural signals; no wonder the firewalls couldn't stop it. Who wrote this? The Dao Alliance? or some lunatic on the dark web?"
"Unable to parse," Lao Jun concluded. "No matches in the database. However, based on frequency analysis, this code carries strong 'suggestive' properties. It can induce hallucinations in the human brain, effectively rewriting the host's subconscious. In your Feng Shui terms, this is 'Ghost Covering the Eyes'."
Li Mo sneered. "Ghost covering the eyes? I call it a 'Visual Cortex Hijack Protocol'."
He irritably isolated the code into a sandbox. The priority right now wasn't solving the mystery; it was money.
Wang Defa was dead or missing, meaning the final payment was likely gone. The server rent, Lao Jun's computing fees, and the maintenance of his own cybernetics were all due.
"Need quick cash," Li Mo sighed.
His gaze fell on a "scrap talisman" on the desk, previously used to suppress the bad energy of a server.
"Lao Jun, initiate 'Cyber-Taoist' commercial mode."
"Received. Loading marketing module... Connected to 'Taobao: Black Market Edition' and 'Pinduoduo: Dark Web Node'."
Li Mo picked up a specialized digital stylus and pulled over a blank electronic drawing pad.
"People these days... stress is high, and the system-assigned luck values are universally low." Li Mo spoke as he began to draw on the pad. "They need a little spiritual comfort. Or rather, a little 'Algorithm Optimization'."
The tip of the pen danced across the screen, leaving trails of golden light.
He wasn't drawing traditional runes. He was drawing a precise QR Code Matrix.
The Head: Embedded with a micro "cleaning script" to kill background processes and free up RAM on the user's phone.The Body: A set of dynamic geometric patterns synchronized with human Alpha waves to induce visual comfort and psychological suggestion.The Feet: Linked to a cloud server to fetch the daily "Lucky Color" and "Lucky Number."
"Done." Li Mo looked at the talisman glowing with faint neon light on the screen and nodded with satisfaction.
He cleared his throat and started the livestream recording—this was his side hustle as "ID: Zero_One."
"Greetings, fellow Daoists. Good evening. I am your Code Feng Shui Master."
Li Mo's voice dropped an octave, becoming magnetic. Combined with the filters, he looked like a hermit sage hiding beneath the neon lights.
"Feeling unlucky lately? Blue screens of death? Stocks tanking as soon as you buy? Or do you feel like someone is watching you?"
"It's not your fault. It's a vulnerability in your 'Personal Firewall.' You've been invaded by surrounding 'Malicious Data'."
Li Mo pushed the newly drawn electronic talisman toward the camera lens.
"This is my latest R&D: 'Mercury Retrograde Repellent · System Optimization Talisman V2.0'. No malware, purely organic green code. Scan it, and it will perform a deep logic cleanse on your terminal and load a 24-hour 'Fortune Shield'."
"Not 998 credits, not 98. Just scan the code below for a free trial. Believe, and it works. If you don't... well, your GPU might burn out."
[READER INTERACTION MOMENT]
(Insert a beautifully designed Cyberpunk Talisman illustration here. The center features a real, scannable QR Code)
(If you scan this talisman now:)
System Prompt: Connecting to New Mirage City Computing Center...Fortune Analysis: Detected sufficient battery on your reading device. Today is suitable for: Binge-reading, Liking, Subscribing. Avoid: Rushing the author (May cause CPU overheating).Lucky Code: #FFD700 (Gold)
Recording finished. Uploaded.
In seconds, the download counter in the background spiked. Although it was a free trial, Li Mo had embedded a "Tip" function. Soon, the sound of micro-Bitcoin transactions began to chime like pleasant rain.
"Mosquito legs are still meat." Li Mo closed the stream, watching his account balance recover slightly. His eyes sharpened again. "Alright, gas money secured. Lao Jun, lock onto that coordinate in Zone 404."
"Coordinate locked," Lao Jun's tone turned serious. "That is the ruins of the 'Kowloon Walled City.' Now known as the 'Digital Graveyard.' The laws of physics there are unstable; my prediction algorithms may fail."
"Graveyard?" Li Mo stood up, grabbing a trench coat equipped with optical camouflage from the wall. "Perfect. I'm going there to perform a funeral rite."
He pushed open the heavy iron door of the container and stepped into the endless night of New Mirage City.
Part 2: The Gatekeeper of the Digital Graveyard
Zone 404 did not exist on the official maps of New Mirage City.
If you typed the coordinates into a navigation app, the system would only return a "Network Connection Error." It was the city's festering wound, a garbage collection heap abandoned by the Dao Alliance.
Li Mo stood before a massive chain-link fence. It was covered in warning signs: "Data Overflow Zone - No Unauthorized Entry," "Danger: Reality Rendering Errors."
The air here was thicker than in the city center, carrying the smell of burnt plastic and the prickly sensation of static electricity.
"Activate 'Yin-Yang Eye' mode," Li Mo commanded softly.
The filters on his sunglasses shifted. The scene before him transformed instantly.
To the naked eye, this was just a wasteland of unfinished buildings and mountains of e-waste. But in Li Mo's eyes, this was a grotesque "Glitch World."
The edges of buildings flickered and stretched like unstable game models. The clouds in the sky were mosaic-patterned blocks. Occasionally, a patch of sky would turn bright magenta—the sign of a missing texture.
On the ground, countless translucent shadows wandered. These were "Residual Data"—commonly known as "Ghosts."
"Watch your step," Lao Jun warned. "The spatial topology here is fractured. One wrong step and you might fall into an infinite loop."
Li Mo carefully stepped around a puddle that was flickering with garbled code. He gripped his compass tightly; the needle was spinning madly, unable to distinguish North from South.
"The coordinates point to that building." Li Mo looked up at a crooked skyscraper in the distance.
The tower looked like a haphazard stack of server racks, its top lost in the low-hanging electronic clouds. A broken neon sign hung on the exterior wall, barely legible: "Guanghan Palace" (Moon Palace).
"Guanghan Palace? Cold name for a hot hell," Li Mo quipped.
Just as he prepared to cross a clearing piled with scrapped robots, a strange bell rang out.
Ding-ling-ling— Ding-ling-ling—
It was the sound of an old-fashioned bicycle bell, piercingly loud in the silent ruins.
Li Mo quickly ducked behind a rusted truck, holding his breath.
Through the fog, a hunched figure slowly approached.
It was a sanitation worker wearing a yellow vest, pushing a battered tricycle. But he had no head.
To be precise, what sat on his neck wasn't a head, but a rotating red siren. The siren emitted a low woo-woo sound, its red light scanning the surroundings.
"It's a 'Scavenger' bot," Lao Jun whispered. "Early model. Responsible for cleaning up unregistered data packets. In other words... murder."
The "Scavenger" stopped. The red light on its neck swept over the truck where Li Mo was hiding.
"Detected... Unauthorized... Organism."
The robot emitted a stuttering electronic voice. Suddenly, the broom in its hand transformed, shifting into a high-speed chainsaw.
"Found... Bug... Executing... Deletion."
It surged forward, charging straight at Li Mo!
Li Mo cursed and sprang into action. He didn't retreat; he charged forward.
"Lao Jun, jam its visual sensors!"
"Broadcasting strobe signal!"
The LEDs on Li Mo's sunglasses erupted with high-frequency blinding light. The Scavenger's red siren head was washed out by the glare, causing it to lag for a fraction of a second.
In that split second, Li Mo was already in front of it.
He didn't use brute force. Instead, a data cable shot out from his cuff, plugging precisely into a USB port on the robot's chest.
"Freeze!"
Li Mo's fingers danced on his holographic keyboard.
"Input command: sudo shutdown -h now!"
However, a red dialogue box popped up on his screen: [ACCESS DENIED. UNIT PROTECTED BY 'KSITIGARBHA' PROTOCOL.]
"Ksitigarbha (Di Zang)?" Li Mo froze.
At that moment, the robot let out a piercing shriek, swinging the chainsaw horizontally.
Li Mo rolled backward clumsily, a large chunk of his trench coat sliced cleanly off.
"It has high-level admin protection! My standard code won't work!" Li Mo shouted.
"Use physical attacks! Physical damage always holds the highest administrative privilege!" Lao Jun yelled.
Li Mo gritted his teeth and drew a modified "Peach Wood Sword" from his waist.
The sword wasn't made of wood, of course. It was high-strength Graphene composite, with high-voltage circuits etched into the blade.
"By the Edict, Thunder Lord assist me!"
Li Mo hit the switch on the hilt.
Zzzzt!
A blue arc of high-voltage electricity instantly wrapped around the blade. This wasn't magic; this was 50,000 volts.
He leaped up and slashed down onto the robot's neck—right at the connection point of the siren.
Sparks flew.
The sound of tearing metal was excruciating. The red siren head was hacked off, rolling onto the ground, still flickering weakly.
The headless robot body twitched, emitted a puff of black smoke, and finally went still.
Li Mo landed, panting slightly. He looked at the wreckage, his brow furrowed.
"The 'Ksitigarbha' Protocol..." he muttered. "It seems there's a big deity hiding inside Zone 404."
He crouched down and picked up the still-flickering siren head.
"Lao Jun, read its logs. I want to know who sent it, and... its patrol route."
"Reading..."
Seconds later, Lao Jun's voice carried a hint of surprise. "Read successful. But this route map is strange."
"How so?"
"It wasn't patrolling." Lao Jun projected a 3D map in front of Li Mo. "It was 'drawing a formation.' The patrol trajectories of these robots connect to form a massive... Soul Locking Array."
Li Mo looked at the map, seeing the dense web of red lines tightly encircling the "Guanghan Palace" tower.
"Soul Locking Array..." Li Mo's eyes turned cold. "Is this meant to keep something inside, or keep everything outside out?"
"Both are possible," Lao Jun said. "But one thing is certain: the signal source that attacked Wang Defa is right in the eye of this formation."
Li Mo dropped the robot head and dusted off his hands.
He looked up at the tower hidden in the electronic mist. The rain started again, green this time, glowing with radiation and hissing as it hit the ground.
"Let's go." Li Mo tightened his tattered coat. "God or ghost, tonight I'm going to tell its fortune."
He stepped over the robot's wreckage, his figure disappearing into the shadows leading to the Guanghan Palace. Behind him, the severed siren head suddenly flickered and turned a grotesque green.