Liang Shen returned to his dorm after the encounter, rain plastering his hair to his forehead, shoes dripping onto the cracked tiles. Yan Fei followed silently, her notebook pressed to her chest like a shield.
The city outside was quiet — but only in appearance. Every streetlight, every Wi-Fi signal, every camera feed pulsed with hidden activity. The Deep Circle was already reorganizing, adapting to his traps.
Liang opened his laptop. Glass Pulse 2.0 flickered with dozens of new intrusions. They had learned quickly, attacking through backdoors he didn't even know existed.
"They're fast," Yan Fei murmured, her eyes scanning the code on the screen. "Faster than anything I've ever seen in Yan Group."
Liang's fingers danced across the keyboard. "Speed isn't enough. They don't understand the rules yet."
A notification blinked:
Node Alert: Unauthorized access detected. System integrity compromised.
Liang leaned back, closing his eyes. The Lotus Engine hummed inside his mind, overlaying the city grid onto every street, every tunnel, every digital node. He could see the intruders as pale shadows moving in the lattice, but they weren't human — not completely.
"They're splitting," he said. "Trying to overwhelm me with multiple attacks simultaneously."
Yan Fei's voice wavered. "Can we stop them?"
Liang shook his head. "Not stop. Only redirect. Let them waste themselves chasing ghosts."
He pulled up a secondary grid: hidden decoy nodes, false streets, phantom servers. One by one, the Deep Circle's intrusions were lured into digital dead-ends. Every step they took, Liang's mirrors reflected back, confusing them, fragmenting their strategy.
"Think of it like a city breathing," Liang said quietly. "Every alley, every signal, every connection is alive. And right now, the city is mine."
A soft vibration from his laptop alerted him: a single message in a hidden channel.
Unknown: You're learning fast, Architect. But the city is older than you. It remembers those who came before.
Liang's lips curved into a small smile. "Then it's time I teach it some new tricks."