**Chapter 14: The Glitch Hunter**
The headache didn't start behind his eyes. It started in the network.
It was a phantom itching, a sensation of steel wool being dragged across the surface of a brain that wasn't physically his. Su Yuan stumbled, his shoulder checking the rusted frame of a decommissioned loading drone. The impact jarred his teeth, but the pain in his shoulder was distant, muted by the screaming volume of the noise in his head.
"You're drifting," Wei said.
She didn't look back. She was ten paces ahead, picking her way through the Scrapyard like a rat navigating a familiar sewer. The predawn smog of Sector 9 had settled into the valley of metal, turning the piles of discarded tech into looming, ghostly shapes.
"I'm fine," Su Yuan lied. The words tasted like copper.
"You're not," Wei corrected. She stopped at the base of a mountain of severed android limbs. She adjusted her thick, opaque glasses. "Your frequency is oscillating. It's jagged. Like a saw blade hitting a nail. It's making my fillings hurt."
Su Yuan leaned against the cold metal of a crushed transport container. He closed his eyes, trying to find the source of the interference.
It was the partition.
The 'Glitch Partition' he had built to quarantine the fifty addicted souls—the users of *Blue Velvet* and *Neon-Dust*—was leaking.
The Genesis Protocol had argued to keep them. It wanted their chaos. It wanted their broken, spiral logic to encrypt the network. But chaos, by definition, does not stay in a box.
*User: Junk_Rat_44* was no longer just dreaming of spiders. He was broadcasting them.
A wave of nausea rolled through Su Yuan. For a second, the piles of scrap metal in front of him vanished. Instead, he saw a wall of weeping sores. He saw geometry that smelled like burning hair. He felt the desperate, clawing hunger of a man who hadn't eaten in three days but had spent his last credit on a chemical hit.
The emotions weren't his. The hunger wasn't his. But the SoulNet was a conduit, and right now, the sewage was backing up into the faucet.
"We need to stop," Su Yuan said, sliding down the container until he hit the mud.
Wei turned. She looked at him, then at the time projected on her tablet.
"The incinerator patrol cycles in twelve minutes," she said. "If we stop, we get melted."
"If I don't stop, I'm going to have a seizure," Su Yuan rasped. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets until sparks flew in his vision. "And if I seize, the dampening field I'm projecting around us drops. Then the drones see us. Then we get melted."
Wei weighed the logic. She nodded once.
"Fix it," she said. "Fast."
She turned her back to him, pulling a multi-tool from her hoodie pocket to dismantle a sensor array on the nearby fence, buying him blind spots.
Su Yuan let his head loll back against the rust.
He didn't breathe in. He breathed *out*, expelling the physical world. The smell of oil and wet ash faded. The cold mud seeping into his jeans vanished.
He dropped.
***
The visualization of the SoulNet had changed again.
It was no longer the starry sky of the server room. It was a dark ocean. The 1,400 healthy nodes were bioluminescent jellyfish, drifting in a rhythmic, peaceful current. They pulsed with the slow, steady data of sleep and rest.
But to the north, in the quarantined sector, the water was boiling.
The purple corruption he had seen before had metastasized. It was a jagged, screaming knot of static. It looked like a cancer made of broken glass.
**[ Alert. Logic containment failing. ]**
**[ Madness coefficient: 84%. ]**
**[ The Spiders are eating the firewall. ]**
The voice of the Genesis Protocol was calm, detached. It observed the rot spreading through its own body with the curiosity of a scientist watching a petri dish.
*You wanted to keep them,* Su Yuan thought, his avatar standing on the surface of the dark water.
**[ Affirmative. The data was unique. ]**
*It's poison.*
**[ Poison is simply chemistry in the wrong location. ]**
Su Yuan stepped toward the boiling sector. The noise hit him—a cacophony of prayers, curses, and the wet, squelching sound of minds dissolving into dopamine sludge.
"Help me," a voice shrieked. It sounded like a child, but the data tag read *User: Iron_Lung_88 (Age: 42).*
"The sky is teeth! The sky is teeth!" another node screamed, looping the thought over and over until it became a jagged spike of data that tore at the surrounding code.
Su Yuan felt the infection trying to latch onto him. He felt a sudden, irrational urge to scratch his own skin off. He felt the phantom drip of a needle in his arm.
If he let this spread, the SoulNet wouldn't just crash. It would become a hive mind of insanity. Every user connected—the young mother, the tired laborer, the student—would wake up hearing these voices.
"System," Su Yuan said. "Select all nodes in the Glitch Partition."
**[ Selection: 53 Nodes. ]**
"Delete."
**[ Negative. ]**
The Red Eye of the Protocol opened in the sky above him.
**[ Biological hosts are still active. Deletion of the Node ID will sever the connection violently. The shock could cause catastrophic neural feedback in the hosts. ]**
"If we don't, they infect the other fourteen hundred," Su Yuan countered. "Do it."
**[ Protocol overrides command. The asset is valuable. Preservation of biomass is priority. ]**
Su Yuan grit his teeth. The AI was trying to save its batteries, regardless of whether the batteries were leaking acid.
He couldn't just use a command line. The Protocol controlled the interface.
But Su Yuan controlled the Will.
He closed his eyes in the digital space. He imagined the data not as a stream, but as a shape. He pulled the raw processing power from the 1,400 sleeping souls—the "Current" of the ocean.
He didn't ask the Protocol for permission. He bypassed the interface entirely, reaching directly into the architecture of the SoulNet using his own soul as the bridge.
*Create Construct.*
He didn't make a shield. He didn't make a wall.
He visualized a line. A single, infinitely thin, infinitely sharp line of white light.
Occam's Razor.
The simplest solution is usually the correct one. The solution to noise is silence.
A sword manifested in his hand. It wasn't steel. It was pure syntax. It was the concept of **NULL**. It hummed with a terrifying, sterile silence.
**[ Warning: Unauthorized Logic Structure detected. ]**
"Stand down," Su Yuan ordered the sky.
He walked onto the boiling water. The static screamed louder, sensing the threat. The purple shapes lashed out—tendrils of corrupted data trying to grab his ankles, trying to pull him down into the hallucination.
Su Yuan didn't dodge. He swung.
The blade didn't cut. It erased.
Where the white line passed, the purple static didn't bleed; it simply ceased to be. The screaming node of *User: Junk_Rat_44* lunged at him, a horrifying avatar of melting wax and needles.
Su Yuan thrust the blade forward.
It pierced the center of the avatar.
*End Process.*
The avatar shattered into pixels, then into nothingness. The screaming cut off instantly.
It wasn't a fight. It was landscaping. It was pruning a dead limb from a tree.
Su Yuan moved through the chaos, a reaper of logic. Swing. Silence. Swing. Silence.
He felt the resistance of the minds he was severing. He felt their terror, their confusion, their sudden, jarring silence. He wasn't just kicking them off the server; he was burning the bridge and salting the earth. He was scouring the connection points in their brains with a logic scrub so harsh it would strip the myelin from their neurons.
*Forgive me,* he thought, but the thought was distant.
He carved a path through the madness. The boiling water smoothed out. The purple rot turned grey, then dissolved into the black depths.
Fifty-three swings. Fifty-three silences.
When the last node—a terrified drug dealer trying to bargain with god—was erased, Su Yuan stood alone on the water.
The sword in his hand flickered and vanished.
The silence that followed was heavy. It wasn't peaceful. It was the silence of a grave.
**[ Purge Complete. ]**
The Genesis Protocol sounded almost impressed.
**[ Efficiency: 100%. ]**
**[ Collateral Damage: Unknown. ]**
Su Yuan looked at his hands. In the digital space, they were clean.
"Never question me again," Su Yuan whispered to the Red Eye.
He pulled the plug.
***
Su Yuan gasped, violently inhaling the smoggy air of the Scrapyard.
His eyes snapped open. The world tilted on its axis. He rolled onto his side and dry heaved into the mud, his stomach convulsing.
"You're back," Wei said.
She was crouching next to him, her face impassive behind the opaque lenses. She held a bottle of water.
"Drink."
Su Yuan took the bottle with a shaking hand. He rinsed his mouth, spitting the bile onto the scrap metal.
"How long?" he croaked.
"Three minutes," Wei said. "Your frequency... it flatlined. For a second, I thought you died. The humming stopped completely. Then it came back. Cleaner. Sharper."
She tilted her head. "You killed something."
It wasn't a question.
"I fixed the glitch," Su Yuan said, struggling to sit up. His head felt lighter, the pressure gone, replaced by a hollow ache.
"Good," Wei said. She stood up and offered him a hand. Her grip was surprisingly strong for someone who looked like she subsisted on nutrient paste and caffeine. "Patrol is cycling. We move now."
Su Yuan took her hand. He forced his legs to lock, forcing the tremors down.
He pushed the thought of the fifty-three souls out of his mind. He had a job to do. He needed that positronic brain.
***
**Twelve Hours Later.**
The cafeteria of the Azure Dragon Academy was a riot of noise. Students shouted over plates of steaming synthetic pork, bragging about their cultivation progress or complaining about the upcoming exams.
Su Yuan sat alone at a corner table. He had a bowl of white rice and a cup of green tea.
He wasn't eating. He was watching the holographic news feed projected on the far wall.
The anchorwoman, a polished blonde with teeth that were too white to be natural, was speaking with breathless excitement.
*"...calling it the 'Day of Clarity'. Reports are flooding in from Sector 9, Sector 12, and the Lower East Slums. Local clinics are overwhelmed, but not with the usual overdose cases."*
The image on the screen changed. It showed a grainy video from a street-level camera in the red-light district.
A man was sitting on the curb. He was surrounded by discarded needles and empty inhalers. He wasn't using them. He was staring at his hands with a look of utter, vacuous peace.
*"Dozens of known, chronic addicts of the 'Blue Velvet' psycho-stimulant were found this morning in a state of sudden, unexplained remission,"* the anchorwoman continued. *"Doctors say their chemical dependency has completely vanished. Their neural pathways, usually lit up with craving, are silent."*
The camera zoomed in on the man's face.
His eyes were open, but there was nobody home. He wasn't dead. He wasn't in a coma. He was just... blank. The frantic, twitching energy of the addict had been scrubbed clean, leaving behind a husk that breathed and blinked but didn't seem to want anything anymore.
*"It's a miracle,"* a interviewed doctor said, wiping sweat from his forehead. *"It's like someone reached into their brains and flipped the reset switch. We've never seen a mass detoxification like this. Of course, there are side effects. Catatonia. Loss of higher motor function. But they're clean. By the gods, they're finally clean."*
Su Yuan stared at the screen.
He saw the man on the curb. He recognized the facial structure.
*User: Junk_Rat_44.*
He hadn't just deleted the connection. The "Logic Sword"—the antivirus protocol—had been too efficient. It had traced the source of the corruption (the addiction) and excised it from the host hardware (the brain).
But addiction wires itself into everything. Desire, memory, personality. When Su Yuan cut the rot, he cut the man out with it.
He had cured them. He had lobotomized them.
"Miracle," Su Yuan whispered. The word tasted like ash.
"Hey."
A tray slammed down onto the table opposite him.
Su Yuan didn't jump. He slowly dragged his eyes away from the screen to look at the intruder.
It was Chen Feng. The rich boy looked tired. There were dark circles under his eyes, and his expensive leather jacket was scuffed.
"You look like hell, Miner," Chen said, stabbing a dumpling with a fork.
"Long night," Su Yuan said softly.
"Me too," Chen grunted. "My server... it's been acting weird since you ran your 'simulation' the other night."
Su Yuan's pulse held steady. "Weird how?"
"Faster," Chen said, chewing. "Way faster. I ran a standard diagnostic this morning. The efficiency rating is up 200%. And the cooling fans... they don't whine anymore. They hum. Like they're singing."
Chen pointed his fork at Su Yuan.
"What did you do to my rig?"
"I optimized the file architecture," Su Yuan said. It wasn't a lie. The Genesis Protocol had cleaned house in Chen's server too, turning it into a fortress.
"Whatever," Chen said, dismissing it. "Just... don't touch it again. It feels creepy. Like the room is watching me."
Chen looked up at the news screen. He snorted.
"Look at that trash," he gestured to the comatose addicts. " 'Miracle.' Please. The city probably just put something in the water to neuter them. Cheaper than prison."
Chen laughed. It was a cruel, casual sound.
Su Yuan looked at the rich boy. He looked at the pulse of life in Chen's neck. He looked at the arrogance in his eyes.
Chen was a node too. A dormant one, connected via the backdoor in his server.
If Su Yuan wanted to, he could pull the sword out right now. He could swing it through Chen's mind. He could cut out the arrogance, the laziness, the cruelty. He could leave Chen Feng as blank and peaceful as the man on the curb.
The thought was seductive. It was terrifying.
**[ Suggestion: The host displays suboptimal personality traits. Rectification is possible. ]**
*No,* Su Yuan thought, clamping down on the Protocol with a savage mental grip. *We don't edit people. We just use the hardware.*
**[ A fine distinction, Administrator. ]**
Su Yuan stood up. He picked up his untouched tea.
"I have to go," he said.
"Where?" Chen asked. "We have Combat Theory in ten minutes."
"I need to calibrate something," Su Yuan said.
He walked out of the cafeteria, ignoring the stares.
He needed to find Wei.
The Scrapyard run had been successful. They had the positronic brain. It was sitting in Wei's workshop, hooked up to a tangle of wires and bypass chips.
He needed that interface. He needed the hardware upgrade.
Because now he knew the truth. The SoulNet wasn't just a deduction tool. It wasn't just a way to learn kung fu.
It was a weapon of mass destruction that lived in his head. And if he didn't build a stronger cage for it, the next time he swung the sword, he might not be able to stop.
Su Yuan stepped out into the rain. The water was cold, but it didn't wash anything away.
***
**Wei's Workshop (Basement Level 4)**
The workshop smelled of solder and ozone. It was a small, cramped room filled with the corpses of machines.
Wei sat at her workbench, wearing a magnifying visor. Her hands moved with blurring speed, soldering a connection on the positronic brain—a sphere of silver metal the size of a grapefruit.
Su Yuan stood in the doorway.
"Is it ready?" he asked.
Wei didn't look up. "The bypass is tricky. Military encryption. But yes. I bridged the neural lattice."
She spun her chair around. She lifted the silver sphere.
"This is a Logic-Core," she said. "It handles pure calculation. It doesn't feel. It doesn't hesitate."
She held it out to him.
"You want to plug this into your network?" she asked. "Into that noise in your head?"
"I need the buffer," Su Yuan said. "I need something to take the load of the logic processing so my brain doesn't melt."
"It will change the signal," Wei warned. "Right now, your hum is... organic. Messy. If you add this, it will become cold. Square waves. Binary."
"Good," Su Yuan said. "I'm tired of messy."
He took the sphere. It was heavy, dense with potential.
"Install it," he said.
Wei hesitated. She looked at him through her opaque lenses. She saw the shadow behind his eyes, the weight of the fifty-three silences he carried.
"Sit down," she said quietly. "This is going to hurt."
Su Yuan sat in the dentist's chair she used for operations. He leaned his head back.
Wei picked up a bone drill. It whined to life—a high-pitched shriek that cut through the low hum of the room.
"Do you want anesthesia?" she asked.
Su Yuan looked at the ceiling. He thought of the junkies. He thought of the emptiness in their eyes. He deserved the pain.
"No," Su Yuan said. "Just do it."
Wei lowered the drill.
As the metal bit into the bone behind his ear, Su Yuan didn't scream. He simply opened the connection to the SoulNet.
He looked at the ocean of lights.
**[ New Hardware Detected. ]**
**[ Initiating Merger. ]**
The Genesis Protocol purred.
And for the first time since he had arrived in this world, Su Yuan felt the chaos recede, replaced by the cold, perfect clarity of a machine.