Chapter Sixty: Virtual Battle!

Boom!

A silent collision erupted within the virtual world.

The quasi-electronic state—formed by Yu Fei’s psychokinetic consciousness—broke into the territory of the Red Queen, instantly triggering the most intense battle between the two sides.

As an artificial intelligence, the Red Queen had no intention of testing the waters. Bound by its underlying defense directives, it launched a full-power output right from the start.

Faced with this situation, even if Yu Fei had entertained other ideas previously, he had no choice but to cast them aside and unleash his full strength as well.

"Bring it on!"

Yu Fei chose to accompany it to the very end.

Inside the virtual world, the Red Queen manifested as a crimson torrent of data, while Yu Fei turned into a pale golden torrent of data.

Like two grand armies, they crashed fiercely into one another.

Countless data collisions bloomed with the splendor and beauty of fireworks.

Yet the cruelty within was in no way inferior to a brutal clash of armies—extremely harrowing and frantic.

Once the underlying architecture of the quasi-electronic state was upgraded to incorporate an artificial intelligence version, the quasi-electronic entity that Yu Fei transformed into grew overwhelmingly powerful.

Even when facing the Red Queen's core body, he did not fall behind in the slightest. The two fought back and forth evenly.

Such a drastic change left the Red Queen utterly baffled.

Why had Yu Fei suddenly grown so overwhelmingly powerful?

What on earth had happened in the span of just these few short minutes?

Nurturing strength through combat?

This phrase flashed through the Red Queen's data streams.

The general meaning of this concept was that humans could continuously elevate themselves through the process of "combat."

Moments ago, Yu Fei had engaged in an offense and defense exchange with it, which could indeed be considered a form of "combat."

Viewed from this perspective, it might seem reasonable that Yu Fei had improved.

However!

Wasn't this improvement just a bit too exaggerated?!

Everyone else who nurtured strength through combat improved bit by bit, but you suddenly skyrocketed by over ten times in the blink of an eye—isn't that entirely absurd?!

Searching through its entire database, the Red Queen could find no corresponding explanation whatsoever.

No.

There was still one term that could explain this phenomenon.

——Cheating!

This was a gaming vocabulary term; expressed in professional terminology, it meant directly modifying the underlying data.

Yet this was reality, not a video game!

***

No matter how hard it tried, the Red Queen could not find a logical explanation.

On the other side.

Initially, Yu Fei and the Red Queen had fought to a standstill, but gradually, he began to realize something was amiss.

"This all-out combat mode consumes far too much energy for me!"

Compared to an artificial intelligence like the Red Queen, Yu Fei's quasi-electronic state was indeed far more liberated, allowing him to travel wherever he pleased without being tethered to a mainframe or a power source.

At the same time, however, maintaining his quasi-electronic state relied entirely on himself.

Or, to be more precise, it relied on his mental attribute.

The higher Yu Fei's mental attribute, the longer he could sustain his quasi-electronic state.

By now, Yu Fei's mental attribute had reached 2.5.

Judging purely by the numerical value, 2.5 might seem to equal only 1.5 times that of a normal, healthy human.

In reality, however, that was far from the case.

Just as a normal adult male with a physique of 1.0 possessed fifty kilograms of strength, while Yu Fei with a physique of 2.5 possessed three tons of titanic might—

A mental attribute of 2.5 was at least fifty times stronger than a mental attribute of 1.0!

Such a mental attribute was already terrifying in the extreme, having completely stepped into the transcendent realm beyond the comparison of ordinary people.

Yet even in this state, if Yu Fei maintained the full-blown explosion of his quasi-electronic state, he could not hold out for long.

Merely a few minutes in, Yu Fei already sensed the faint signs of decline.

This shift was subtle, but the Red Queen detected it instantly and immediately launched a relentless pursuit.

"This won't do!"

Realizing that continuing like this would lead to his defeat, Yu Fei—in order to prevent his psychokinetic consciousness from suffering another backlash—made a prompt and decisive decision to withdraw from the Red Queen's territory.

The Red Queen did not pursue him—nor was it capable of doing so.

While Yu Fei could freely convert between mental energy and the quasi-electronic state, the Red Queen had no way to transform from a virtual electronic state into a mental state.

It could only manifest as a projection, fixing its cold, murder-intent glare upon Yu Fei.

"Illegal intrusion detected!"

"Classified as an enemy! Elimination required!"

......

Ignoring the mechanical voice ringing in his ears, Yu Fei sank back into deep contemplation.

"An artificial intelligence is bound by its mainframe and struggles to move freely, but at the same time, as long as its energy supply remains uninterrupted, it can maintain its absolute peak state indefinitely."

This was something he, as a human, could never achieve—unless he acquired some divine skill that allowed him to constantly maintain a peak mental state.

"Then the question is—how much energy does the Red Queen have to back it up?"

Yu Fei glanced down at his feet, as if his gaze pierced straight through the thick metal platform to view the Hive hundreds of meters underground.

***

"According to the hints in the original storyline, the energy reserves down here are enough to sustain normal operations for over a hundred years."

Even if the Red Queen's consumption under full-power defense mode was a hundred times that of normal times, it could still sustain itself for at least nearly a year.

He couldn't outlast it; he truly couldn't outlast it!

"To solve this problem, there are two methods."

"First: Upgrade the artificial intelligence to Level 2, and forcefully conquer the Red Queen's defenses with overwhelming superiority!"

"Second: Cut off the Red Queen's energy supply, leaving it unable to sustain its peak state."

The former hardly needed elaboration.

For the artificial intelligence to break through to Level 2 required ten wisps of merit value. Even if Yu Fei settled accounts immediately right now, he only had a total of two wisps.

As for the latter......

Yu Fei exerted his psychokinetic power to the limit, probing deep into the ground.

"It's no good!"

"It's too deep down there; my psychokinetic power can't reach it!"

Those fellows from the Umbrella Corporation were far too terrified of death, "burying" themselves far too deep.

Since Yu Fei's psychokinesis was currently only at Level 1, he was equally powerless to resolve this dilemma.

"Can I really only give up?"

Yu Fei was deeply unwilling.

Having already consumed so much merit value to upgrade the artificial intelligence, was he really going to return empty-handed in the end?

"Perhaps there are other ways to solve this problem......"

Yu Fei's brain spun at high speed, recalling every single detail related to the Red Queen.

Suddenly.

One minor detail caught his attention.

This very detail was what had led him to draw out the Red Queen's core body in the first place—

"Seventy percent of the underlying code!"

Earlier, Yu Fei had actually managed to control the Red Queen's sub-entity, demanding it to reveal all of its underlying code.

Everything had been going smoothly at first, but just as the first seventy percent of the underlying code had been exposed and the final thirty percent was about to be revealed, the sub-entity had jammed......

And right after that, the Red Queen's core body had come online, directly taking over everything.

It had not only modified Yu Fei's permissions, but had also struck Yu Fei a heavy blow!

Why did the Red Queen care so much about that remaining thirty percent of the code?

Yu Fei felt as though he had finally found the true path to a solution.