Inside the Neural Corridor, the data storm continued to surge and howl. Viola Sterling's consciousness condensed into a sharp silver light, firmly blocking in front of that warm yet fragile small shadow, fiercely colliding with the blood-red energy mass representing Lucas's pain that lunged forward madly.

Each collision brought intense vibrations on the consciousness level. Viola felt her "existence" being continuously weakened and torn apart. The powerful instinct to protect her daughter's remaining consciousness was the only motivation for her to persist.


She could no longer remain on the defensive!

Viola's consciousness erupted with resolute brilliance. She had to completely control this space! She concentrated all her will, no longer merely resisting, but forcibly "linking" to that maddening blood-red energy mass—through the fragile channel established by the ultra-high dose of Pandora still raging wildly within both their bodies.

"Look at me, Lucas!" Her consciousness like an icy spike, pierced fiercely into that chaotic mass of energy, "Look at what you did back then! See it clearly!"


She poured every detail of the explosion from her memory—the towering flames, the flying debris, the children's final cries, and her own heart-wrenching despair and agony—completely unreservedly and forcibly into him!

"No! Stop!!" The blood-red energy mass emitted a distorted, inhuman mental shriek, trying to resist this terrible revisitation.


Those truths and guilt that Lucas had carefully tampered with and deeply buried were dug out again by Viola in the most brutal way, laid bare in this purgatory of consciousness.

"It was you who cut off the communication! It was you who delayed the rescue! It was you who sacrificed our child for that damn deal!" Viola's consciousness roared, each word like a mental lash, whipping the blood-red energy mass.

The frantic resistance of the blood-red energy mass gradually weakened, replaced by an enormous, collapse-like pain and despair.

Its glow became dim and chaotic, as if disintegrating from within. In the real world, Lucas's body convulsions grew weaker, his vital signs rapidly declining.

At the moment when Lucas's consciousness was about to completely collapse and dissipate, Viola captured an opportunity. She no longer merely infused pain, but transformed her consciousness into countless subtle tendrils, forcibly piercing into the disintegrating Consciousness Core of her opponent, executing a final plunder! She needed to know his most deeply hidden secret—the key to the ultimate weapon that could destroy the financial empire he had built with his own hands!

Countless shattered memories, encrypted data, and neural signal fragments rushed in like a flood. Most were meaningless noise and pain. But Viola filtered and searched with astonishing willpower. Suddenly, she locked onto a neural signal pattern that was protected by multiple encryptions, starkly incongruent with the surrounding emotional collapse, and extremely cold and orderly. It was rapidly dissipating!

This was it! The key to the Financial Nuclear Weapon! It had been deeply hidden in Lucas's last mental fortress, set to self-destruct with his collapse!

Viola concentrated all her mental power and lunged toward that group of signals like a falcon swooping on its prey. A silent struggle unfolded fiercely on the consciousness level. Finally, in the moment just before the signal was about to completely vanish, Viola successfully tore through its outer encryption and seized most of the main structure! Although the core activation command might still be incomplete, the main key to unlock and control that destructive weapon had been firmly captured by her and imprinted deep within her consciousness!

Without the key, Lucas's consciousness seemed to have lost its final pillar. That blood-red energy emitted a weak and reluctant hiss before completely dissipating into nothingness.

In the real world, Lucas Blackthorn, lying on the cold ground, experienced a violent but brief spasm before becoming completely rigid. The last faint light in his eyes extinguished, his pupils fully dilated, fixed in an expression of extreme agony and terror. All vital sign monitoring signals—if he had any working equipment on him—would have flatlined into a cold, straight line.

Brain death.

Having dealt with Lucas, Viola's cold gaze turned toward the dark red light from Selina, which still lingered where the energy had collapsed.

"Your turn, Selina," her consciousness was like the winter's bitter wind.

She traced back along that red line of control! Her consciousness, like a sharp sword, followed the data link, instantly crossing physical distances, forcibly breaking into the last surviving corner of Selina von Iris's (the orphan of Red Iris) consciousness—which was likely a chaotic state between life and death maintained by the life support system in the medical center.

Viola didn't simply destroy it. That would have been too merciful for her.

She utilized the system privileges she had just seized from Lucas's collapsed consciousness, combined with her profound understanding of Blackthorn neural programming technology, forcibly called upon resources, and constructed an exquisite, beautiful, yet eternally cycling virtual cage around Selina's remaining Consciousness Core—

A perfect garden blooming with never-wilting red iris flowers. The sunshine is eternally bright, the floral fragrance forever rich. Selina's consciousness will be trapped within it, eternally enjoying all the luxury and tranquility she once craved as the rightful heiress of the Red Iris Family. But Viola carved an eternal curse into the base code: Selina's consciousness will remain forever awake, consciously knowing why she is there, consciously remembering all her failures and pain, consciously understanding that all this perfection is a false prison from which she can never escape, never touch reality, forever immersed in false perfection and genuine despair. This is a mental torture more prolonged than neural incineration.

At the moment the virtual garden was completed, that thread of dark red light connecting to the original battlefield completely severed and disappeared.

The Neural Corridor began to violently fluctuate and collapse. The effects of the high-dose Pandora were rapidly fading. Viola felt a powerful repelling force, about to thrust her back into reality.

In the moment before her consciousness returned, she took one last "look" at that small, warm glow. Her daughter's Consciousness Fragment seemed to sense safety, transmitting a peaceful ripple, before slowly sinking into the deepest part of her consciousness, once again being gently wrapped and hidden by the restored Pandora barrier (which recovered as the drug effects diminished). It was temporarily safe.

Viola's consciousness was violently pulled back to reality!

"Poof——!"

She violently spat out a mouthful of fresh blood, which splattered onto her blood-stained wedding dress and front. Everything before her turned pitch black, and the sound of rushing blood roared in her ears! Her brain felt as if it had been thrown into a meat grinder, causing excruciating pain, with every nerve ending in her body screaming! The terrifying side effects of the high-dose drug swept over her like a tsunami. She felt her heart beating frantically, almost to the point of bursting, her lungs unable to breathe, and her organ functions seemingly rapidly failing.

She clenched her teeth, her nails digging deep into her palms, relying on her steel-like willpower forged by revenge to forcefully fight against her body's tendency to collapse. She could not fall down! Absolutely could not fall down here! She gasped violently, her body shaking intensely, and finally managed to prop herself up with one hand against the broken altar nearby, barely avoiding complete collapse. After a few seconds, her vision slowly began to recover, but the excruciating pain remained.

Her gaze immediately turned to Lucas lying on the ground. He was motionless, his eyes empty, showing no signs of life.

Next, she raised her trembling right hand, looking at the tiny biometric chip interface on the back of her hand that connected to Blackthorn's core system. She concentrated her remaining, almost dissipating will, and experimentally issued a highest-level authorization command—this was the access code she had forcibly seized and memorized from the edge of Lucas's collapsing consciousness during the chaos in the Neural Corridor.

Hum...

The chip interface emitted a faint green light, indicating that the authorization verification had passed.

Though weakened to the extreme, though nearly consumed by excruciating pain, Viola Sterling summoned her last strength and struggled to stand up straight.

She stood before the dead Lucas, in the midst of the devastated Shadow Marsh Castle, her blood-stained wedding dress serving as her coronation robe, her cold gaze as her scepter of power. She had successfully taken her revenge, she had seized the authorization and keys, she had protected the last trace of tenderness, she had punished her enemy.

She became the true Dark Queen, who controlled everything and lost everything.

Lucas Blackthorn, the monarch of the Blackthorn Empire, lay there silently, his body temperature fading. Medically speaking, brain death is irreversible. But in this era where technology blurs the boundaries between life and death, especially concerning the Blackthorn Family's unknown biotechnology, was there still an extremely small, unnatural possibility of reversal for his condition? This question, like a ghost, quietly grew.

Viola's gaze moved past his corpse to the pitch-black night sky outside the window. She knew the war was over, but the cleanup had just begun.

As for the complete key to the Financial Nuclear Weapon, though the main part had been obtained, final confirmation was still needed.

Her path to coronation remained filled with thorns.