The system is four years ahead of schedule, but Weird is still a cub.

San Puerto, a border city in South America.

At three in the morning, this should be the quietest time here, or the time when gang fights are most intense in the corners of the slums.

But tonight, the city of 100,000 people is unusually quiet.

There was no moon in the sky, because a thick, gray fog dotted with snowflakes, like an inverted giant bowl, completely enveloped the entire city.

The data stream transmitted back by China's "Tianyan-3" reconnaissance satellite, which is located in low Earth orbit, showed a strange break the moment it passed over this area.

The intelligence officer from the Special Operations Department, responsible for monitoring, stared at the black area on the screen, his fingers rapidly tapping on the keyboard, trying to switch between infrared, thermal imaging, and even the detection mode for strange energy fluctuations.

"No response...no response at all." The intelligence officer's voice was dry.

"The heat source disappeared, vital signs disappeared, and even the topographical data could not be read. That city... was as if it had been erased from the map by an eraser."

Deep within the gray mist, a massive black shadow could be vaguely seen moving slowly, like a giant whale patrolling the deep sea, silently devouring this marked "food".

……

Special Operations Department, Dajing Headquarters, General Command Room.

The air was thick with the smell of tobacco and a sense of unease.

Long Zhenguo had been working through the night for two whole nights, and his usually dignified eyes were now bloodshot.

"Snapped!"

An urgent document was slammed onto the metal tabletop.

"Less than two hours after San Puerto went missing, we just received news that a monitoring station on the east coast of the United States detected a deep-sea vortex with a level 7 phantom energy intensity; the situation in Europe is even more outrageous, with infrasound waves resembling the beating of a giant heart coming from beneath the North Sea oil fields, which have already collapsed three offshore drilling platforms!"

Long Zhenguo placed his hands on the table, looking at the alarming red dots on the big screen, his voice low and hoarse: "They are taking action... and they are taking action simultaneously on a global scale."

"This is just the beginning."

Shen Ge's image appeared on the communication screen.

He sat in the command chair of the Rongshi branch, his expression not as anxious as Long Zhenguo's, but rather exuding a calmness that was almost inhuman.

However, apart from a few people in the Rong City Special Operations Department, outsiders did not know that he was no longer considered human.

“Director Long, take a look at the locations where these so-called 'natural disasters' occurred.”

Shen Ge manipulated the screen, and a global map appeared on the large screen. In addition to the few huge red dots, countless small green dots lit up on the map.

“These green dots represent the active areas of the ‘Truth Mutual Aid Society,’ a grassroots organization that has suddenly sprung up around the world in the past month.”

"They use the guise of mutual aid, prayer, and welcoming a new era, but in reality, they are still doing the same old neotheistic stuff. They hold rituals at these specific locations, and even... sacrifices."

Long Zhenguo's pupils contracted: "You mean..."

"paving."

Shen Ge coldly uttered two words: "The escaped 'heart' needs energy to repair and evolve, and it is devouring peripheral cities like San Puerto. Meanwhile, the 'brain' that has never shown itself is using these believers as human beacons to perform coordinate calibration on a global scale."

"They are readjusting the dimensional frequency of the Earth, trying to forcibly drag our world into their distorted, multi-dimensional, bizarre space."

Or rather, a fragmented world!
There was dead silence in the conference room.

Just then, Li Xiang, who had been silent all along, suddenly shouted.

"Got it! Got the mouse by the tail!"

He held a newly modified high-frequency signal capture device in his hands, so excited that he almost shoved the instrument into Shen Ge's face: "Old Shen! Your previous judgment was correct! They are indeed performing data calibration. Because the amount of data is so large, there must be a central control hub processing these information streams!"

"Just one minute ago, our Deep Blue system detected an extremely high-frequency abnormal pulse signal!"

Li Xiang typed rapidly on the keyboard, and the map on the large screen instantly zoomed in and out, locking onto the very top of the Earth—

Arctic Circle.

Beneath that vast ice field, an exceptionally strong signal source was flashing rhythmically.

"The spectral characteristics of this signal match the residual data from the 'nest brain' we seized in the Amazon 'living laboratory' with a 98% accuracy rate!"

Li Xiang pushed up his glasses: "But this one is more sophisticated, more concealed, and... it's a two-way node."

"It is both receiving beacon data from the global 'Truth Mutual Aid Association' and sending instructions to a location in the deep sea."

"This is the remote command center of that 'brain'!"

Long Zhenguo suddenly stood up straight: "Can you pinpoint the exact location?"

"The coordinate error is no more than ten meters," Li Xiang said confidently.

"Very good." Long Zhenguo's eyes flashed with murderous intent: "No matter what they're trying to do, take down this command post first!"

"I'll lead the team."

Shen Ge's voice rang out at the right time. He stood up from his chair and picked up the new combat helmet that was emitting a bio-material glow, which was placed to the side.

“Director Long, sending regular troops to the Arctic is suicide. The concentration of ghost energy there is so high that ordinary people would be frozen into ice sculptures before they even land.”

"Besides, since they want to hide, I don't want to resort to any infiltration or sabotage tactics."

"Instead of sitting here guessing where that 'brain' is hiding, I'd rather go and kick down this relay station and see how it reacts."

"Beat the grass to scare the snake."

Indeed, for this kind of task of attacking the enemy headquarters, instead of assembling troops and slowly marching over, it would be better to directly use Shen Ge, this humanoid weapon, for a rapid strike.

After discussing it, Deng Yuqi and Long Zhenguo immediately finalized the attack plan.

Half an hour later.

On the tarmac of the Fuzhou branch, the "Night Fury" stealth fighter, the pinnacle of technology belonging to the Special Operations Department, had already completed engine warm-up.

Fully armed captains Fang Mingyue, Yun'er, Yu Tiexiong, Feng Chengxiu, Wang Han, and others had been waiting for a long time to demonstrate their skills against the enemy.

They wore the newly fitted "Sixth Generation Symbiotic Ghost Armor," its black and red fluid armor pulsating like breathing in the night, exuding a deadly aura.

Li Xiang, carrying a modified portable data-hacking backpack, was fastening his seatbelt with a pained expression: "Am I going too? I'm just a weak scientist, this kind of frontline assault..."

"You need to go to the site and extract the core data of that node." Shen Ge, dressed in a black trench coat, was toying with two high-level ghost energy crystals in his hands.

"Don't worry, as long as I'm alive, no one can touch a hair on your head."

Li Xiang watched Shen Ge's figure, sighed helplessly, and resignedly tightened his seatbelt. Oh well, he'd just consider it "overtime."

"Set off."

Shen Ge gave the order.

The fighter jet ascended vertically, its engine spewing out eerie blue flames, instantly tearing through the sky and transforming into a shooting star as it sped towards the frigid, icy world.

……

The Arctic, the polar night.

The dazzling aurora borealis danced silently against the dark sky.

With a whoosh, the stealth fighter "Night Fury" did not land on the ice, but hovered at a low altitude of ten meters above the ice.

The hatch opened, and several figures leaped down, landing on the ground covered by millennia-old ice.

The temperature here drops to minus fifty degrees Celsius, but that's not the most deadly part.

After landing, the anti-monster warriors, even with the latest anti-monster armor protecting them, still felt a bone-chilling cold.

Only Shen Ge can move normally.

"Old Li, how's the equipment?" Shen Ge's voice came through the noise-canceling communication channel.

"...Still being tested!" Li Xiang's voice trembled slightly. Even though he was wearing a specially made polar cold-weather suit, the mental pressure still made his jaw chatter.

"The magnetic field here is completely chaotic! But I detected it! Right below this ice layer... about three hundred meters deep! Good heavens, it's like the center of a giant spider web!"

Shen Ge nodded.

In his supernatural perception, the area beneath this desolate ice field was not empty. On the contrary, it was filled with a dense network of supernatural energy, like blood vessels.

Countless chaotic and sinister energies are converging here from all over the world through some unknown medium, and after being processed, they are being shot towards the deep sea.

This place is a huge field of supernatural power.

"The entrance is at three o'clock, in that ice crevice. Go and explore it." Shen Ge told the others to go down, while he continued to use his supernatural powers to sense and search for the "brain."

The group slid into the bottomless crevice and descended rapidly along the smooth ice wall.

As the depth increased, the surrounding ice began to change from pure white to an eerie deep blue, and further down, it even revealed a cold, metallic sheen.

Finally, my feet touched solid ground.

This is a wide tunnel that was carved out by man. There are no lights on the walls, but it is not completely dark.

“Something’s not right.” On the surface of Fang Mingyue’s “Sixth Generation Symbiotic Ghost Armor,” black and red fluid pulsed rapidly like breathing, a stress response when encountering danger.

"The radar shows a blank area ahead, no heat source, no signs of life," Yoona said after the scan.

“My intuition tells me that there’s something ahead…” Yu Tiexiong set up a heavy-duty anti-meta-machine gun and stood in front of Li Xiang to block his path.

The moment everyone stepped into the tunnel.

A faint sound of air being cut through at high speed!
"spread!"

Fang Mingyue gave a low shout.

"laugh--!"

Almost as soon as she spoke, several invisible blades slashed across the spot where everyone had just stood, leaving several half-meter-deep cuts on the hard, icy ground.

If Fang Mingyue hadn't given a timely warning, everyone else except her would probably have been cut in half.

Only then did the attackers slowly emerge from the "background color" of the surrounding ice walls.

Those were more than a dozen humanoid mechs.

They are made entirely of some kind of transparent polymer material, but their interiors are filled with complex mechanical transmission structures. They do not emit a single trace of heat, and even when they are still, they can perfectly simulate the colors and eerie energy fluctuations of their surroundings, like ghosts beneath an ice field.

"Ghost mechs? When did the Monster Organization's tech tree reach the level of optical camouflage and full stealth?" Li Xiang exclaimed in surprise.

But it's not just about invisibility.

Fang Mingyue snorted coldly, her body remaining still, but a gray arc of electricity shot out from the fingertip of the ghost mech.

"Snapped!"

The arc of electricity struck precisely in the chest of the mech directly in front of it, which was preparing for a second attack.

The mech was pierced through the part of it that was hit, and the powerless mech crashed to the ground. Its originally transparent shell twitched and then turned into a murky, deathly gray.

Through that large hole, neither the circuit board nor the driver could be seen.

Everyone's pupils shrank.

At the core of that sophisticated mechanical shell, instead of a CPU, there was a violently pulsating, fiber optic cable-covered... a monstrous heart!
"A biological wet-component main unit? They're using living, bizarre tissue to drive the machinery?" Li Xiang gasped.

"No." Fang Mingyue stomped on the tumor and crushed it.

"It's more like a slice of some kind of... 'brain tissue'."

The fusion-type machinery is bizarre.

The eccentric organization pushed this technology to its limits in the "digitalization" field.

The battle did not last long.

Once Yoona and Yu Tiexiong, who had already donned their sixth-generation armor, saw through their stealth mechanisms, these killing machines, relying solely on speed and sharpness, were not difficult to deal with.

After clearing out the "ghost" guards on the perimeter, the group escorted Li Xiang as he continued his pursuit.

After passing through several airtight doors that Yu Tiexiong had violently demolished, they entered the core area of ​​the base.

Yu Tiexiong, who had prepared himself to see a bloody altar or a monster's lair, was stunned when he saw the scene before him.

"What...what kind of place is this?"

Before me was a huge, pristine white circular hall, devoid of blood and corpses, so clean it resembled a dust-free operating room.

The hall was filled with thousands of transparent cylindrical glass jars.

Each jar was filled with a pale yellow nutrient solution.

And suspended in those liquids are none other than human brains, stripped of their bodies, their senses severed, leaving only the cerebral cortex...

It's not just humans.

It also contains many mutated creatures, and even bizarre brains.

Thousands of brains, connected by countless neural probes, can even be seen trembling in a chillingly synchronized manner under the enormous holographic projection at the top of the hall.

Each tremor was accompanied by a massive surge of eerie energy flowing through the surrounding server racks.

"This is the truth about that 'two-way node'..."

Li Xiang stared at the data panel in front of him, his fingers trembling: "They used tens of thousands of brains as 'biological computing units' to build a living supercomputer!"

"What are they calculating?" Yoona couldn't help but ask.

Li Xiang quickly connected the hacking device in his backpack, and the code on the screen scrolled wildly.

"Found it...they're calculating a formula."

Li Xiang raised his head, his face deathly pale.

"[Global Harmony Rate]".

"The current progress is... 78%." (End of Chapter)