After the societal transformation, Hive City was suffused with a pervasive ’scent of blood’.

This scent of blood isn’t literal, like the smell of fresh blood.

Rather, it’s a mix of residual pheromones, neural signals, serotonin, and other elements forming a biological domain.

Stimulating, frenzied, hysterical.

In the final moments of every modified person’s ’life’, a frenzied chemical reaction occurs within their bodies.

These chemical reactions combine to form a biological domain.

Black Python, this muscular hulk, mumbled, his expression even a bit fearful; but upon seeing this scene, Scorpion fell into deep thought.

The signal was too strong!

The sensory signal surged around like a vast ocean.

This gave her a strong ’drowning feeling’, a sensation of being in cyberspace, drowning in a sea of data.

Scorpion shivered instinctively.

Her little finger trembled, and a phantom little scorpion formed, quietly crawling onto Gao Gong’s thigh, with the scorpion tail piercing into it.

Gao Gong’s vision immediately split in two, one part real and the other a virtual illusion, in which a woman with a blurry face appeared.

Gao Gong was not startled but curiously gazed at the other:

"You modified the sensory dream by interfering with the body’s chemical substances?"

"That’s not important, boss. I need to tell you that this place is extremely dangerous!" the blurred-faced woman said solemnly.

"After all, meeting the opponent’s boss, of course, the security power needs strengthening."

"No, not that, I meant that the sensory signal here is so strong, it’s indistinguishable from ordinary cyberspace."

"This means the opponent can easily distort neural signals, dragging you into virtual space and easily killing the three of us." The other paused, and continued: "And in the virtual space created by the opponent, physical force in the real world is useless; we would be easily killed by them."

"That’s why I brought you here, the 11th ranked super hacker on the most wanted list, to guarantee our network security."

"You overestimate me, boss, I’m not the Scorpion you speak of."

"No need to be modest; as hackers would say, every hacker’s signature skill won’t be hidden in their mind, that’s a basic error. So, although you’ve lost the memory of the previous persona, your real hacking skills haven’t been lost."

"My safety will be under your protection."

"You have too much faith in me, boss."

Though she said these words, Scorpion still acted; on the access chamber display, a massive amount of crack codes generated, refreshing even faster than her peak memory stage speed.

"Such fast internet speed!" she couldn’t help but exclaim.

"How about it, once the ’Electronic Brain Plan’ is complete, reality and cyberspace will merge, and by then, your good days will come." In Scorpion’s heart, Gao Gong’s teasing voice echoed.

Scorpion did not answer, she needed to quickly crack this place’s corporate firewall to ensure they could escape alive in the worst-case scenario.

...

Not all Mechanical Main Brains are hidden underground.

The Mechanical Main Brain of Hive City is the largest building in this city, overall it looks like a gigantic white beehive, each cell is a kind of biological information exchange center; and now, these cells show signs of extensive mechanical transformations, with diverse models of hardware processors, digital chips, neural reception devices on the surface...

When Gao Gong stepped into this Mechanical Main Brain, he couldn’t help shivering, only to see a thin white mist swirling around his ankles.

What’s more miraculous, when the white mist passed through his skin, Gao Gong’s flesh visibly vanished, replaced by a silvery-white metal ankle.

Similarly for Black Python behind, only his entire ankle disappeared, causing him to yell out in shock.

"Wife, wife, my leg is gone! It’s gone!"

"Fool, be quiet, this is the most basic human signal transformation."

When a person logs into cyberspace, all neural signals convert into sensory signals, and sensory signals then reshape code personas under the influence of data tides.

What’s being shown now is just the first stage state.

The state when connecting to the ’Network Access Chamber’.

"A clumsy demonstration."

The deeper they went, the thicker the mist became, sometimes enveloping the entire corridor, making a person walking through seem to disappear entirely.

Consciousness remained.

The body transformed into sensory signals.

Reality is the network.

The network is reality.

After this corporate war ends, regardless of who wins, the entire planet will become like this.

And this, undoubtedly, will further hasten the maturity of the ’Memory Mother’.

Soon, in the computer center of the Main Brain, in an enormous machine room, Gao Gong met the boss of the Neuro Editing Group and his chief scientist.

A youth whose brain seemed to be filled with ’maggots’, and a brain that had turned into a mainframe’s genius.

The style of this scene is somewhat avant-garde.

"Hahaha, President Dou, and Doctor, in reality, this is our first meeting, right?"

Unexpectedly, ’President Dou’ didn’t show much welcome, rather suspiciously scrutinizing Gao Gong.

"Who are you to President Du? Why can’t I reach President Du?"

"She’s a bit busy at the moment."

"Busy with what?"

"Uh, busy with necessary things."

"What things?"

"Well, you know, all kinds of business....."

For this corporate war, Du Gao Technology undertook various preliminary simulations.

Cooperation with the Holy Brain Group forced them to divert significant resources to the Northern Hemisphere to support Ms. Ye, also known as the Dark Girl.

This left limited combat power for the Southern Hemisphere.

Thus, collaborating with various emerging companies to unite the weak against the strong became the initial strategy.

Director Du had made verbal agreements with almost all emerging company leaders, naturally including this President Dou before them.

However, Director Du has now entered a phase of secluded upgrades, making Gao Gong the current spokesperson.

Therefore, he decided to quietly alter the strategy slightly.

Seeing this domineering young president already displaying quite an impatient expression, Gao Gong immediately put on a serious face and got down to business.

"I believe you have received news from the ’Vinos Life Safety Group’, right?"

"What news did you receive?" the Doctor couldn’t help but interject.

"The biochemical brain-machine, a genius concept, isn’t it?"

It is said that the ones who understand you the most are often your enemies, the four biological giants, Holy Brain, Balance Scale, Vinos Life, Johnson Group, have the most inserted business spies among them.

Through channels of the Holy Brain Group, Gao Gong learned of ’Vinos’ plans almost immediately, using artificial viruses to spread and transform the human body, it has to be said, a stroke of genius.

"According to our big data simulations, at the current rate, it will take only one day and one night for the ’biochemical brain-machine virus’ to infect a Mechanical City."

"And it takes less than 100 hours to infect an entire area."

"This terrifying speed is due to the fact that this virus not only spreads through breathing and saliva, but most importantly, it spreads via the biological magnetic field."

"The ordinary human biological magnetic field is limited, not exceeding a hundred meters, but what’s strange about this ’brain-machine virus’ is that under its effect, the biological magnetic fields can stack."

"When the biological magnetic fields of two people stack, it can double the ’viral domain’."

"Three people’s stacking results in ’fivefold’, four people’s stacking results in ’tenfold’, and so on. That is to say,

as long as the other side completes the brain-machine transformation of three Mechanical Cities, the radiation range can cover the entire drug zone."

"How can it be so exaggerated!"

Upon hearing this, even Dou, the genius scientist, young domineering president, couldn’t help but change his expression.

There’s no other reason, this infection effect is too bug-like.

In fact, when Gao Gong first heard about this brain-machine solution from Vinos, he was also taken aback for a moment.

Not only is the effect of this thing too exaggerated, more importantly, isn’t this the ’Beast Tide’?

The virus version of the Beast Tide.

"So," Gao Gong stepped forward with a sincere attitude, "I have a plan, and I’d like to discuss it with your group."