Sibyl, You Can’t Cheat Me Like This…
The aroma of spicy noodle broth probing at his defenseless nose jolted Du Lang awake. He rubbed at his groggy eyes in confusion as a certain realization gradually settled in, and peered down the stairs leading to the kitchen. There, though he couldn't see the silhouette, the clanking of a steel pot and the hissing of boiling water filtered into his ears.
It took him a few minutes to remember that the house wasn't infiltrated by a thief, and several breaths to silently thank Du Yuexin in the depths of his heart. Du Lang silently traversed the stairs and peered into the kitchen opening, whereupon the bustling figure of a young girl entered his gaze.
Mu Wuying was dressed in a lilac shirt and sweatpants as she fought a massive pot seated atop the stove. The apron had been tossed to the side to hang listlessly from the arms of a desolate chair as the young girl cracked eggs with one hand and stirred the contents in the pot with the other. On the side, the rice cooker mustered its metallic lungs to release a pitched wail adjacent to a pan crackling with oil – the sight was light and suffused with vibrant energy, prompting Du Lang to rub at his eyes in wonder.
It was a heartwarming sight, but the amount of food being prepared… did she just crack the thirteenth egg? And what was with the large porcelain bowl that was overflowing with cooked noodle?
"Ahem!"
The light, raspy cough caused the young girl to jump in place in surprise, and almost dropped the ladle onto the floor. Mu Wuying jerked her head towards the source of the voice, and heaved a light sigh when she noticed Du Lang's jesting smile.
"Mr. Du, you can't scare me like this…"
"Just making sure, making sure – did you have a good night's sleep?" Du Lang coughed to hide his hiccup.
"It's kind of you to make breakfast so early, but aren't you… making too much?"
"I-I just wanted Mr. Du to eat a lot!"
Du Lang pressed his fingers against his forehead at the young girl's energetic response. He sighed and strode into the kitchen to stabilize the shaking pot, and assisted Mu Wuying in finishing the noodle broth. Having freed one hand, the young girl immediately turned to tap at the tablet precariously slammed against the countertop's edge, and the causal voice of the morning female announcer filtered into their ears…
"Yesterday afternoon, the central river in Hangzhou experienced a marine explosion of unimaginable proportions. Scientists and experts deployed to the area have confirmed the nature of detonation to belong to that of some type of plastic explosive buried just below the surface of the water. Three are confirmed dead from the blast; fifteen more are injured and administered medical aid at the local hospital. Several dozen more are unconfirmed, and the damage dealt to marine infrastructure of the city is being analyzed in depth –"
"Wuying, can you change the channel to a different one?"
Du Lang abruptly voiced over the remaining segments of the report. When Mu Wuying didn't respond, he reached over the deftly switched the stream to that of an esports podcast reveling in the successful tournament champion's recurring glory. It was more noisy and emotional compared to the carefully prepared and audited media announcement, but at the least, the uncomfortable sensation in his heart wasn't as present.
The champion seemed to be some female player from Jingdou's Third University of Social Sciences and Liberal Arts; it was a rare occurrence, and combined with her supposedly charming appearance, it was natural that the casters and commentators were salivating at the gold hen that had been tossed into their laps. The young girl blinked in confusion at the rapid pacing of the words and the bustling and crazed graphics presented on the display, and returned to pressing the egg into delicate cylinders.
It seemed that Mu Wuying realized that two people simply could not finish an entire two kilograms of noodle and thirteen eggs' worth of rolls accompanied with glutinous rice only by the time Du Lang had finished setting the table. The young girl's countenance filled with a near-permanent scarlet stain of embarrassment, and it required substantial coaxing from Du Lang to convince the former to not cook for the remainder of the day.
"Still, to think that the last-minute effort eventually killed three and injured dozens more…"
Du Lang sighed and slumped into the leather armchair of the first-floor study. He threw an acrimonious glare at the hidden passageway concealed behind an innocuous bookshelf, and the contents within that secluded chamber. Eventually, however, Du Lang probed Sibyl with a finger as he calmed his mind and reorganized his thoughts.
It had only been a single day since she was forcefully settled into Jingdou by Tang Jing and Du Yuexin's malicious hands; although she seemed to be rather comfortable in her current environment, Du Lang could discern her nervousness and anxiety from her behavior. It was skittish and reactive to the slightest touch or word, but didn't dare conceal the curiosity embedded within.
"No matter, no matter – these things require time, don't they?"
Du Lang rubbed at the desk's surface and chuckled at the words leaving his lips. He toyed with the pens slotted in the cup holder for a while as he savored the unusual and pleasant memory, but was soon swarmed with the thoughts of the delivery of the box.
Women's undergarments, and a plastic explosive packed at the base – it seemed too hastily prepared of an attempt to claim someone's life, and not that of a professional's work. From Du Lang's perspective, from the timid and cowardly behavior of the delivery man to the odd presentation of the explosive, the entire ordeal seemed to resemble the construction of a hot-tempered aristocratic youth who had lost their mind from jealousy…
"Jealousy? To be fair, Mu Wuying did mention about some Young Master at Huazhong that caused her to seek help from Tang Jing…"
Du Lang chanced upon the thought for a brief moment, but tossed it away with a dismissive snort. Wuhan was a long distance away from Jingdou, and Tang Jing wouldn't allow information regarding her clients to slip into several undesirable ears. It was highly unlikely that a certain, jealous and angered Young Master would take it upon himself to dig up information about a retired journalist in Jingdou and manage to find the mansion…
"How did they know that I was going to be at the mansion?"
The whisper blazed into an uncontrollable scorch, and Du Lang felt a bead of sweat trickling from his forehead. He stabbed the black fuzzy ball with his finger on accident, and fought to retain his breath.
The only real estate publicly registered with his name was the single-family home that he used to live just until yesterday. The mansion's ownership was listed under a deceased man's name who had no descendants, whilst the actual deed was in Du Yuexin's hands…
"Forget it," Du Lang eventually sighed in resignation, and stilled his hand.
"There are too many factors to consider, and no information. Damn!"
Du Lang cleared his thoughts with a growling cough, and proceeded at the primary task he had set for himself. He pulled over the textbooks and manuals on programming and software design that was brought over last night and relaxed his posture as much as possible.
"Sibyl, I want to create a curse model."
At the command, the black sphere escaped from his probing fingers and flung itself towards the ceiling. In exchange, the command line display manifested at the center of Du Lang's vision. The nagging thought of Sibyl's increasingly potent skill of plagiarizing visual schemes from published software was brushed aside, and Du Lang threw himself at work.
Each of Er Gouming's curse models were fantastic and awe-inspiring when they were put to use – although he had only used a total of three of the eight that Sibyl had granted him access. On the other hand, his sole curse model – Wraith – was absolutely useless and served no other purpose than eye candy.
It supposedly held an archive of hundreds and thousands of curse models automatically compiled on its own, utilizing the Internet's vast creativity as reference. Nonetheless, that was the extent of its capability – Sibyl had restricted the fuzzy sphere from being able to cast the curse models stored in its memory, and Du Lang had to serve as the conduit for the thousands of curse models to show their might. The small sprite with red eyes was no more than a library in its current stage – and if anything, it was nearly impossible for Du Lang to even access the archived records.
What, was he supposed to wave for the enemy to stop, then peruse through a bizarre combination of byte conversions whilst searching for a suitable curse model in the middle of a fight? Hey, brother, can you just wait for me to – hold on, did I want to throw a fireball or stuff you into an illusion – no, brother, just treat is as a bathroom break and give me five minutes –
No, no, no.
"To manipulate physical material, I would then require an appropriate sacrifice – was that it?"
Du Lang muttered and drummed his fingers on the table. His eyes flickered across the spread pages on fantasy-based video game design, and his mind silently slipped into a past memory of a once-terribly written web novel he had read during his university studies.
The protagonist had the completely lazy ability to control the minds of his foes. Utilizing such a boring gimmick, the boorish protagonist had ascended to the top of the world with a massive harem of ten thousand beauties within a mind-boggling ten thousand chapters. Everyone who was the slightest arrogant before the protagonist was automatically deemed the enemy…
"Mind control… I would have to define the composition of the human mind for this to work – not that! But… perhaps mental disturbance?"
Psychological distraction – the replication of tinnitus wasn't impossible. The loss of hair sensory cells in the ear was a fair cause of the perceived ringing sensation, and although he would require a sacrifice to cause a person's ear to lose hair cells – however stupid the idea may be – tricking their brain into the perception that they were experiencing tinnitus didn't require physical phenomena…
"Sibyl, I want the neurological framework of the human auditory system," Du Lang paused, and organized his thoughts.
"Replicate the topological connection between the cochlea and the temporal lobe of the brain, and simulate the stimulation of the affiliated nervous system. Write an alternating function and set the changing variables to point towards the right and left hemispheres…"
If he could write a process that overloaded the temporal with persistent stimulation despite no reaction from the actual nerves in the cochlea, then it should then be theoretically possible to replicate the sensation of tinnitus – as the principle worked similar to the phenomenon of blindsight. Alas, when Du Lang was about to order the finishing details and have Sibyl write up the compiler, the female voice abruptly blared in his ears.
[Initialization of
The surprise caused the drumming fingers to halt their movements, and Du Lang froze in place. When comprehension decided to rear its ugly head, the previously satisfied expression on his countenance immediately evaporated and was replaced with utter irritation.
"Don't tell me… Wraith! Damn… Sibyl, replace the definition segments and replace the temporal lobe with the occipital lobe, and simulate the phenomenon of blindsight… f*ck!"
Du Lang only had a single brain in his skull, and was a human being who was constrained by physical and mental exhaustion, motivation, and creativity. On the other hand, the sentient existence Wraith could simply throw a keyword into Baidu and receive thousands of answers in a span of just milliseconds, and was sustained purely by Sibyl's mysterious authority.
A curse model created by the latter would surely be recognized as Du Lang's creation, for the parent-child hierarchy between them enabled him to access Wraith's archives at will. However, Wraith's archives were fiercely encrypted, making that possibility nigh impossible until the former decrypted its archives…
[Initialization of
[Initialization of
[Initialization of
"F*ck you Wraith, you stop creating curse models for now – hurry up and decrypt them for me!"
How could a pitiful human mind outwit the sheer might and dominance of the ever-growing Internet?