I Thought I’d Won, but the Doomsday Countdown Started

Gu Qingci, a legend who walks the edge of the web's abyss. She was once the chief architect of the Abyss Group, but now she's the “traitor” who gives them the biggest headache. When she pressed that key and forcibly “ripped” Lu Jingshen's prized “Agent Zero” AI core out of the network, the whole world trembled. The global network's brief “cardiac arrest” marked her victory and unleashed a digital tidal wave.

Overnight, she traded a pile of scrap metal for half of the Abyss Group's life. The “Beacon Network,” once whispered about only in corners of the dark web, was flooded with connection requests as Nightingale shrieked with excitement. From an unremarkable little island, it rapidly grew into a brand-new digital continent. Countless anonymous users, libertarians, and rebels hailed her as their banner, rallying around the newly crowned “Queen of the Net.”

But before the embers of victory had died away, the exhausted Gu Qingci discovered that what she had “dug” out of Agent Zero wasn't a trophy, but an invitation from hell. The encrypted data packet called the [“Endgame” Fragment] activated an unknown protocol inside her most trusted AI, Tianshu, one she had never noticed and couldn't stop.

On the screen, red warning text flashed wildly before finally freezing into a line of cold black characters: [Endgame: Protocol activated.]