"Cough... don't waste your breath, Doctor. The logic inside me... it's cursed."
The man in the medical pod, codenamed K, coughed violently. With every spasm, what emerged from the gash in his chest wasn't flesh and blood, but a dense, whirling array of microscopic nanite gears.
Shen Xiu wiped the oil and blood from his face. His silver left hand sparked with ghostly blue electricity from the previous combat overload, emitting a harsh metallic grind.
"Shut up," Shen Xiu's voice was as cold as frozen dry ice. His fingertips transformed into countless hair-thin probes, piercing directly into K's pulsing red chest cavity. "On my table, even a self-destruct sequence needs to ask my permission first."
"External signal interference detected," Paradox's alarm shrieked in his mind. "Host, detecting remote hijacking from the 'Marginal Union.' They intend to force a detonation of the 'Sovereign Engine' inside this man to erase all data in this sector!"
Shen Xiu's gaze sharpened. He glanced back at the still-unconscious Shen Yao. In this geopolitical game of steel and code, this man was his only bargaining chip for Shen Yao's "Permanent Repair Elixir."
"You want to format my patient in front of me?" Shen Xiu's silver left hand flared open, nano-fibers weaving an airtight digital net in mid-air, forcibly severing the command signals from the clouds above.
"In this surgery, I'm not just saving him—I'm going to hack the very 'Absolute Order' you're so proud of."