Chapter Thirty-Nine: Core Revelation

Singularity Security Studio.

This place had become the National Security Bureau’s most impromptu, yet most crucial, “special-grade laboratory.”

The priceless Rembrandt masterpiece, “The Storm on the Sea of Galilee,” which had just undergone a harrowing ordeal, now lay carefully, flat atop a massive, sterile operations table bristling with wiring and precision instruments.

The heavy, timeworn gravity of classical art collided with the icy, razor-edged lines of futuristic technology, forging a bizarre yet inexplicably harmonious visual shock within the room.

Xiao Ran, Technical Team Lead “Old K,” and Wang Zhe—who still wore the “heartbeat handcuffs”—stepped for the first time into Lin Feng’s mysterious private kingdom.

Their eyes, unable to hide their astonishment and bafflement, took in the strange, autonomously working mechanical arms and the array of anime weapon models hanging from the walls.

They simply couldn’t reconcile this place, which looked more like a “shut-in’s haven,” with the legendary “Sanctuary” capable of standing toe-to-toe with the world’s top hacker organizations.

“Had enough gawking?” Lin Feng’s impatient voice came from behind the operations table. “If you’re done, get to work. Using my place isn’t cheap—it’s billed by the second.”

He was now clad in a professional white sterile suit, with goggles and anti-static gloves, exuding the focused and commanding presence of a chief surgeon about to attempt the most complex heart transplant.

Xiao Ran ignored his banter, her gaze locked tightly on the ancient picture frame.

“It’s inside?” she asked.

“Not for long,” Lin Feng replied, picking up a pen-shaped laser cutter of peculiar design and set about meticulously and non-destructively dismantling the centuries-old frame.

A narrow, blue laser beam shot silently from its tip, like the sharpest of scalpels, slicing open the wax seal and mortise joints on the back of the frame.

Everyone held their breath.

Minutes later, the back panel of the frame was removed intact.

Nestled in the oak frame’s thick inner layer, wrapped tightly in flexible, black lead foil, lay a matchbox-sized, square object—utterly motionless.

This was it.

The “thing.”

Instinctively, Old K reached out to grab it.

“Don’t touch it!” The urgent, terror-stricken shout erupted from Wang Zhe’s throat.

Everyone froze.

Wang Zhe’s face was ghastly pale, his forehead beaded with cold sweat. He pointed at the black lead box, his voice trembling.

“There’s a pressure-sensitive self-destruct device inside! It’s NSO Group’s top-secret safeguard! The internal-external pressure differential is set to an incredibly precise threshold. The moment it detects any unauthorized external pressure change—even as little as 0.01 Pascal—it instantly generates a three-thousand-degree inferno in 0.1 seconds, melting everything inside into an unrecognizable pool of silicon!”

At these words, cold sweat drenched Old K’s back. He had nearly destroyed the only clue they had all risked their lives to obtain.

Xiao Ran’s expression grew grave. She looked to Lin Feng.

Lin Feng glanced at the nearly faint Wang Zhe, a complicated look flickering in his eyes.

This “pledge of allegiance” carried real weight.

“Interesting,” Lin Feng said with a challenging smile tugging at his lips.

He made no move to use his hands.

“Mouse!” he ordered.

“Right here, boss!”

Beside him, an industrial robotic arm with six degrees of freedom and a needle-fine manipulator at its tip slowly powered up.

Under Wang Zhe’s expert, nerve-wracked guidance, Lin Feng maneuvered the cold mechanical arm, performing a fantastical, micron-precision, contactless disassembly of the lethal “Pandora’s box.”

Cutting the lead, bypassing the pressure sensor, severing the self-destruct power line…

Every step was a dance on a razor’s edge.

Five minutes later.

When the black lead sheath was finally peeled away—

The thing inside was revealed at last.

It was no complex device.

It was merely a crystal-like blue chip, no larger than a fingernail, its surface so deep and dark that it seemed to swallow all light.

“What… is that?” Old K murmured, transfixed by the beautiful, sinister chip.

“It’s the devil,” Lin Feng replied softly.

He gripped the chip with the robotic arm and carefully placed it into a transparent, bulletproof-glass “sandbox” test system—one physically and absolutely isolated from all external networks.

“Wang Zhe,” he called, not looking up, “how is it activated?”

“It… it doesn’t need activation,” Wang Zhe stammered, still shaking. “It’s… ‘alive.’ The moment it detects any identifiable, open wireless signal source nearby, it… it wakes up, like a shark scenting blood.”

A chill ran through everyone present.

“I need to test it,” Lin Feng declared, his eyes filled with grim resolve.

He glanced at Xiao Ran.

She understood, and solemnly nodded.

Drawing a deep breath, Lin Feng opened a virtual, simulated public Wi-Fi signal within the sandbox system.

Then, one by one, he tossed in dozens of test phones of every make and operating system, all prepped with their signal settings enabled, into the glass enclosure.

He was about to conduct the most terrifying live-fire drill imaginable.

He pressed the button to activate the Wi-Fi signal.

The instant the faint Wi-Fi signal flickered to life within the sandbox—

The deep blue crystal chip, which had lain dormant, suddenly blazed with an eerie, unnatural blue light—like a primordial beast awakened from eons of slumber.

A visible stream of pure, data-formed blue energy burst forth from the chip.

Then, like an alien virus with a mind of its own, it split into dozens of streams in an instant.

It bypassed every phone’s firewall.

It ignored every password lock.

It disregarded every security system.

In a manner utterly unreasonable—beyond anything humanity’s current technology could comprehend—it swept through every phone like a plague.

The entire process lasted less than a second.

Within the sandbox, every phone’s screen abruptly fizzled out in unison.

A deathly silence fell over the entire studio.

A second later—

All the screens slowly flickered back to life.

Gone were the varied home screens. Instead, a single, cold, mocking, and bizarre image appeared on each:

A blood-red serpent, devouring its own tail—writhing madly.

The Ouroboros.

Xiao Ran and Old K, summoned to an emergency internal meeting, left Lin Feng’s studio early, leaving only Wang Zhe and Lin Feng to continue analyzing this “ghost.”

Back at the National Security command center, the room was dead silent. Everyone stared dumbfounded at the main screen, transfixed by this miracle—or apocalypse—unfolding before them, not a word spoken.

Their backs were drenched in cold sweat.

On the main screen, “That’s… that’s not even its most terrifying aspect…” Wang Zhe looked at the scores of writhing Ouroboros, his voice shaking as if delivering a prophecy from hell.

“What’s truly terrifying is its ‘dormancy’ and ‘chain infection’…”

“It can lurk like a ghost in any infected device, waiting to be awakened by a single command at any time…”

“And it can propagate—via Bluetooth, NFC, even backdoors in our phones we ourselves don’t know about—spreading from phone to phone, like a real virus…”

“…infecting…”

Xiao Ran stared at the writhing serpents on the screen, then glanced reflexively at her own private phone lying on the table—the device containing all her secrets.

She felt as if her very blood was turning to ice.

Lin Feng, meanwhile, kept his gaze fixed on the deep-blue crystal chip in the sandbox, now once more lying calm.

Slowly, he removed his goggles and murmured, half to the room, half to himself:

“What we stole wasn’t just ‘that thing.’”

“This…”

“…is a devil’s arsenal—capable of plunging the entire world into war.”