Part 1: The Algorithm of Misfortune
The rain in New Mirage City never really touches the ground. It evaporates halfway down, turned into steam by the heat radiating from the subterranean server farms, rising again to mix with the holographic smog.
Li Mo stood on the rooftop of a residential mega-block, holding a compass—not a magnetic one, but a digital Luo Pan customized with an AR interface.
"The Qi flow is turbulent tonight," Li Mo muttered, the cigarette in his mouth glowing like a dying pixel.
"Correction," a mechanical voice echoed in his earpiece. It was Lao Jun, his personal AI assistant. "The local network latency has spiked to 400ms, and the crime rate in this sector has increased by 15% in the last hour. In your terms: 'Great Omen of Blood'."
Li Mo adjusted his AR sunglasses. Through the lenses, the neon-drenched city stripped away its glamour. The towering skyscrapers became massive circuit boards, and the flow of people and traffic turned into streams of data.
He wasn't just a hacker, and he wasn't just a Feng Shui master. He was a Code Feng Shui Master. In this era, the laws of metaphysics had merged with the underlying logic of the internet. A server crash wasn't just a bug; it was a disturbance in the digital Qi.
"Target location confirmed," Lao Jun reported. "Wang Defa, CEO of Prosperity Tech. He claims his server room is haunted."
"Haunted?" Li Mo sneered, stepping off the ledge and activating his gravity-dampening boots. "It's probably just a trojan horse mining crypto in the background. Let's go earn our rent."
He plummeted through the neon mist, landing silently on the balcony of the Prosperity Tech building on the 88th floor.
The office was dark, illuminated only by the blinking red lights of the server racks. The air was freezing—the cooling systems were running at maximum overdrive.
"Mr. Wang?" Li Mo called out. No answer.
He walked towards the main server room. As he approached, his digital Luo Pan began to spin wildly. The needle didn't point North; it pointed straight at the central mainframe.
"Warning," Lao Jun's voice tightened. "Abnormal magnetic field detected. It's not electromagnetic interference... it's something else. The structure of the code here is... wrong."
Li Mo pushed open the heavy glass door.
The server room was laid out in a classic "Four Beasts" formation. But something was off. The "White Tiger" position (West) was stacked with high-heat processing units, while the "Azure Dragon" position (East) was empty.
"White Tiger raises its head, the owner winds up dead," Li Mo recited the old proverb. "Who designed this architecture? They didn't want cooling; they wanted a kill box."
Part 2: Binary Blood Sacrifice
Li Mo moved deeper into the room. The hum of the servers sounded like low, chanting whispers.
"Lao Jun, scan for thermal signatures."
"One signature detected. Central aisle. Temperature... dropping rapidly."
Li Mo rounded the corner and stopped.
Wang Defa was there. But he wasn't complaining about ghosts anymore.
The chubby CEO was suspended in mid-air, entangled in a mess of fiber-optic cables that looked disturbingly like spiderwebs. His eyes were wide open, staring at a screen that was flashing rapidly.
But what chilled Li Mo wasn't the body. It was the blood.
Blood had dripped from Wang's wrists onto the floor, but it didn't pool randomly. It had been drawn—or guided—into a complex pattern.
"Is that... a circuit diagram?" Li Mo crouched down, scanning the blood pattern.
"Negative," Lao Jun replied, processing the image. "It's a Talisman. A 'Spirit-Summoning Talisman' written in binary code."
Suddenly, the screens around them turned blood red. Text began to scroll across every monitor in the room, faster than a human could read.
01000100 01000101 01000001 01010100 01001000
"He didn't die from physical wounds," Li Mo realized, his hand reaching for the modified stun baton at his waist. "His consciousness was forcibly uploaded. Someone used his brain as a sacrificial processor to compile a program."
Click.
The sound of the electronic lock sealing the door behind him was deafening in the silence.
"Intruder detected," a synthetic voice announced from the walls. "Initiating 'Firewall' protocol. Purge organic matter."
The cooling vents suddenly shut, and the fire suppression system engaged—not with water, but by sucking the oxygen out of the room.
"A trap," Li Mo gritted his teeth. "Wang Defa was just the bait. They wanted someone who could read this code."
"Oxygen levels at 80%," Lao Jun warned. "Suggestion: Run."
"No," Li Mo stared at the bloody code on the floor. "Download that pattern. Now!"
"That code is cursed! It carries a viral payload!"
"Do it! It's our paycheck!"
As Lao Jun initiated the download, Li Mo drew a talisman from his pocket—a physical piece of yellow paper, but printed with conductive silver ink. He slapped it onto the electronic lock.
"Universal Unlock Algorithm, execute!"
The paper burned instantly, releasing a burst of electromagnetic pulse. The door sparked and slid open. Li Mo rolled out just as the room behind him plunged into a vacuum.
He sprinted down the hallway, the downloaded data burning a hole in his virtual drive. He didn't know what he had just stolen, but he knew one thing: The game had just begun.