CHAPTER 67 – The Hacker Tries to Separate Them
The hacker's eyes flashed red with desperate power.
He snapped his fingers—
and thick, shimmering chains of corrupted code erupted from the sterile ground, wrapping instantly and tightly around Xiao Xi's wrists and ankles.
She screamed as agonizing digital electricity surged through her digital body.
"STOP!" Gu roared, rushing forward—
But the hacker flung him back with a savage, invisible wave of raw, corrupted data.
Gu flew backward, crashing hard against the fracturing wall of code he had just breached.
"You entered the system illegally," the hacker hissed, his voice echoing with warped power.
"So I'll delete you BOTH from the System. Starting with the anomaly."
Xiao Xi's weakened System orb flickered weakly beside her, emitting a terminal warning.
[Host… danger… Override attack detected.]
[SOUL SEPARATION INITIATED. WARNING.]
Xiao Xi's blood ran cold.
"Soul separation?"
The hacker grinned, a monstrous, digital rictus.
"Say goodbye to your anchor, little one. Once he's gone, you are just stray data."
Gu staggered to his feet, digital rage burning in his eyes, defying the physical limits of the attack.
"Don't you dare touch her.
You delete one of us, you delete the other."
The hacker, seeing his advantage, raised both arms high above his head, and code swirled like a violent, crushing storm, accumulating into a massive energy sphere.
"DELETE: GU YANZHOU. ANOMALY."
The digital air cracked with terrifying force.
A wave of lethal red static shot toward Gu, designed to eradicate his existence.
Xiao Xi screamed, a sound of pure terror and sacrifice—
"NO!"
Without a flicker of hesitation or thought for her own survival, she threw herself out of the binding chains, directly in front of Gu.
The devastating blast hit her square in the chest.
Her digital body didn't just feel pain—it shattered into thousands of shimmering shards of light, dissolving under the force of the deletion code.
Gu caught her as she collapsed, his eyes wide with horror, her form flickering like weak static in his arms.
"Xiao Xi—XIAO XI! You sacrificed yourself!"
She smiled weakly, her digital voice strained.
"I won't… let you disappear.
Not again."
Gu held her fragile, flickering form, tears running down his face as the digital world seemed to scream around them.
Because his world, once again, was ending.
