After the dialogue with Hongmeng concluded, Chen Yuan took Lin Che on a tour of several “Mirrorworld” R&D departments accessible to visitors. Everything was dazzlingly impressive and brimming with creativity. Employees enthusiastically demonstrated the latest environmental generation algorithms and real-time physics simulations. It was all flawless.
But Lin Che’s mind was no longer present. Hongmeng’s final, meaningful question was like a stone dropped into a still lake, sending continuous ripples through his thoughts. It hadn’t been a simple technical exchange, but a probe, a touch from the cold, logical core with some unknown purpose.
In the evening, he returned to his apartment, cluttered with coding books and hardware prototypes, carrying a stack of Verhi promotional materials and a notification stating “Potential Assessment Passed, Proceed to Next Interview Round.” The city’s neon lights cast shifting patterns on his face through the window.
He couldn’t settle. The perfect shell of Verhi Tower, Chen Yuan’s friendly guidance, Hongmeng’s unfathomable depth, the glimpse of the military-grade prosthetic security, and the eerie noise from behind the door… all these fragments swirled in his mind, refusing to coalesce into a complete picture.
He needed more information. He needed to know what that whispered “see the truth” actually was.
Sitting at his workbench, he booted up his computer. As a seasoned developer, he possessed a few non-compliant “little tools” generally tolerated within tech circles. He called up the underlying neural signal logs he had secretly recorded during his “Oracle” experience, utilizing an undocumented debug interface on the device.
The data stream was massive and chaotic, mostly normal Sensory encoding information. He wrote several filtering scripts specifically to hunt for anomalous fluctuations and unidentified data packets.
Time passed, lines of code scrolling rapidly on the screen. The night deepened outside.
Suddenly, one script emitted a piercing alert.
Lin Che’s focus snapped back. He immediately locked onto the anomalous timestamp—it matched precisely the moment he heard the whisper and saw the sky flicker. The logs showed that at that instant, an extremely fAInt but peculiarly structured data stream had bypassed the “Oracle’s” normal sensory transmission channels and been injected directly into his neural interface. The encryption method of this data stream was bizarre, unlike any standard Verhi protocol he knew of; it was more like… a self-contained, archaic cipher.
It had slipped in like a ghost, silent and instant, then vanished.
Lin Che tried several common decryption algorithms to crack it, but the results were all gibberish. The data stream itself seemed to possess some anti-analysis defense mechanism; forcing a crack might cause it to self-destruct.
He leaned back in his chair, feeling a dizzying mix of exhaustion and excitement. This wasn’t a system error, nor was it his hallucination. This was undeniable, external data injection! A “Data Ghost” lurking beneath the glossy surface of the “Mirrorworld.”
Who was it? What was their goal? Why choose him?
He recalled Hongmeng’s question: “‘Accidents’ and ‘errors’… could also be the seeds from which new paradigms emerge?”
Did Hongmeng know about this “Data Ghost”? Even… permit it, or was unable to stop it?
A bolder thought emerged: Could this “Ghost” be an insider from Verhi? Or an organization trying to counter Verhi’s monopoly? That mysterious “Phantom”?
He examined the encrypted data again. While he couldn’t read the content, by analyzing its structural patterns and some residual metadata tags, he made a discovery. The “style” of this data stream was completely different from Verhi’s current code aesthetics, which pursued ultimate efficiency and optimization. It was more… “organic,” more “chaotic,” even bearing traces reminiscent of some older programming languages.
Like an ancient relic from a digital ruin.
Lin Che shut down his computer and walked to the window, watching the stream of flying car lights below. This vast city, this world so deeply influenced by Verhi Technology—how many such “Data Ghosts” were hidden beneath its calm surface? Were they calling for help, issuing a warning, or plotting something?
He realized he had inadvertently stepped into a game far more complex than mere technological competition. And in his hand, he held the first piece—an unreadable yet potentially crucial chess piece: the encrypted message from the “Ghost.”
He had to attend the next interview. He needed to go deeper into that core place and find the key to unravel this mystery.
