The Shadow Marsh Hall was as silent as a tomb. Lucas Blackthorn collapsed on the ground, his body still twitching slightly from the neurological agony brought on by the excessive Pandora extract.

Viola Sterling stood beside him, her blood-stained wedding dress like a victory flag, coldly looking down at this scene of destruction.


Suddenly——

At the back of Lucas's neck, the implant point that had completely dimmed burst forth with a blinding, ominous blood-red light without warning! The light flickered violently at an extremely high frequency, carrying a savage, destructive energy fluctuation.

"Ughaaaa——!" Lucas let out an entirely inhuman scream! His body violently arched backward, his limbs convulsing intensely.


This was no longer pain, but more like a horrifying reaction of a soul being forcibly torn apart and controlled.

Viola's pupils contracted sharply. Her wrist detector gave a piercing alarm—the screen showed Lucas's brain neural activity curve skyrocketing, the signal pattern identified as the "Neural Incineration" protocol, an extreme intelligence extraction method that would burn the subject's brain in exchange for a brief information burst.


Far away in the medical center, Selina Cole, who should have been near death, had a micro-relay implanted in her eyes that was flashing with a faint red light. With her remaining will, she sent a final command, through the special chip inside Lucas—crafted by her family's (Red Iris) ancient neural technology and deeply integrated with the Blackthorn system—remotely activating this final vicious program at all costs.

She wanted to squeeze the last bit of value from Lucas, using his collapsing brainwaves to impact Viola's consciousness.

Viola instantly understood this intention. She also knew that the chaotic brainwave storm produced by this neural incineration could cause irreversible damage or even assimilation to any unprotected consciousness nearby.

She absolutely could not passively endure this!

A desperate plan instantly formed in her mind. The core ingredient of the Pandora serum, derived from an extract of a rare deep-sea fungus, strongly inhibits neural activity. However, Blackthorn Laboratory's classified research report indicated that at super-critical, extremely high doses, it would instead temporarily "dissolve" the conventional boundaries of neural synapses, forcing the brain into a special, highly connected stress state—a theoretically existing, extremely unstable "shared consciousness interface" or "Neural Corridor." Viola once had access to this report, but never imagined verifying it personally.

This was the only path of counterattack, and also the ultimate gamble.

A flash of determination crossed her eyes. She abruptly raised her hand and took out two specially-made high-pressure syringes from the hidden pocket of her wedding dress—containing Pandora ultra-concentrated derivative of a concentration so high it was astonishing, glowing with a dangerous fluorescent blue.

She didn't hesitate. One syringe was fiercely jabbed into her own carotid artery in her neck! The other precisely pierced into the implantation point below Lucas's neck that was still frantically flashing with blood light!

"Puff! Puff!"

Two streams of ice-cold flood, powerful enough to incinerate conventional consciousness, instantly surged into both their blood vessels, rushing toward their brains!

The world suddenly twisted, dissolved, and reconstructed.

Viola felt herself thrown into a violent vortex composed of pure energy and data streams. All around her were galloping, roaring colored light bands and shattered memory fragments. Sharp electronic noise and distorted fragments of human voices continuously assaulted her perception. This was the "Neural Corridor"—a temporarily existing, extremely unstable plane of consciousness interaction—forcibly torn open and constructed by an overdose of Pandora.

She forced herself to steady her mind, struggling to maintain the outline of her self-consciousness.

Ahead, a massive, chaotic, blood-red energy mass full of pain and violence was charging recklessly. That was Lucas's Consciousness Fragment, completely torn apart and ignited by the incineration protocol and excessive dosage, transformed into a crazed beast with nothing left but primitive pain and destructive impulses. It roared, instinctively lunging toward Viola, this relatively intact patch of light and shadow.

And deep within that blood-red energy cluster, a strand of unusually cold, tenacious dark red light, like a puppet master's string, connected to somewhere distant. That was the control mark forcibly implanted by Selina.

What alarmed Viola even more was that within that violent bloody energy, occasionally flashed some extremely fragmented yet familiar code segments and encryption structures—clearly the characteristics of the Blackthorn Family's "Financial Nuclear Weapon" key system! Selina's incineration program was instinctively extracting every valuable piece of information from Lucas's brain, including this most lethal secret! Whether the key was being torn apart, dissipating, or being captured and transmitted by that red light, no one knew!

Viola concentrated her will, her consciousness condensing into a sharp silver light in the data storm, struggling to evade the frenzied attacks of the blood-red energy cluster.

Just then, another anomaly occurred!

Deep in the core of Viola's consciousness, in a corner she thought had been completely sealed off by drugs and willpower, came an extremely faint yet unusually clear tremor.

It was a tiny Consciousness Fragment, warm, soft, carrying a slight sense of attachment and sadness. Like a deeply buried seed, under the combined effect of external extreme energy impact and internal high-concentration drugs, the Pandora barrier that had long maintained its "dormancy" was accidentally "dissolved" temporarily, allowing it to awaken briefly.

A blurry, tiny figure in a little white dress appeared in Viola's raging consciousness storm, curiously and somewhat fearfully "looking" at the surrounding torrents of data and that mad crimson energy.

Daughter...?!

Viola's Consciousness Core violently shuddered! The immense shock and overwhelming grief nearly caused her newly condensed form to collapse!

She had always thought her daughter's departure was final. She never considered that at the moment of her daughter's death, the extreme emotional shock and some undocumented side effect of the early version of Pandora might have accidentally solidified and preserved this last faint Consciousness Fragment, burying it deep in her subconscious, symbiotically coexisting with drug metabolism in an incredible way.

That blood-red, frenzied consciousness of Lucas seemed to sense this suddenly appearing, pure and fragile consciousness wave. It became more agitated, letting out a roar mixed with pain, anger, and some twisted desire, then abruptly changed direction, pouncing toward that small, warm light and shadow!

"No!!!"

Viola's consciousness let out a silent scream! Maternal instinct and the urge to protect instantly overwhelmed all calculations and hatred! Her consciousness exploded with unprecedented intensity, rushing desperately toward that blood-red energy, attempting to block it from approaching that tiny figure!

On this battlefield composed purely of consciousness, an even more bizarre and brutal slaughter suddenly unfolded.

To protect the last trace of tenderness in her heart, Viola frantically collided and tore at the destructive energy representing Lucas's pain and madness.

Meanwhile, Selina's cold red string of manipulation remained entangled within, attempting to guide the chaos toward mutual destruction.

Could Viola maintain her sense of self while protecting that unexpectedly awakened fragment? What impact would this war within the mind have on their physical reality? With consciousness trapped, did it mean that in reality, they were approaching brain death?

Enormous unknowns and risks loomed ahead like an abyss.

And the whereabouts of the key to the global financial order had become increasingly elusive in this scorching wind of consciousness.