dkrc Chapter 158 The brain is a good thing, but unfortunately it's overloaded.
Chapter 158 The brain is a good thing, but unfortunately it's overloaded.
The air in the VIP ward on the second floor of Renxin Pharmacy smelled of burnt electrical wires, mixed with the aroma of Pierre's freshly cooked onion soup, making it smell just like a French restaurant that had just been in the fire.
Lin Xiaoya lay on the bed, and sparks occasionally flew from the electrode plates attached to her body.
This girl doesn't seem like a person anymore; she's more like an overheated mining machine.
"Temperature 39.5°C, heart rate 140, and it's still rising." Su Qing stared at the monitor, a sedative in her hand, her brows furrowed. "Boss, if we don't bring her temperature down soon, her brain won't be damaged, but her body will be cooked first. This isn't an illness, it's a DDoS attack."
Wang Minyu sat on a folding chair to the side, twirling two walnuts he had somehow found. They were Boss Liu's treasures, which he had been playing with for three years, and now he was using them as stress-relieving toys.
"Don't give her the injection." Wang Minyu stopped Su Qing. "She's the receiver. The current signal source is that big thing underground. Giving her a sedative is like forcibly unplugging the network cable, which can easily cause data packet loss, and in severe cases, brain death."
"What should we do then? Just watch her burn it?"
"Physical cooling," Wang Minyu pointed downstairs. "Have Guan Shan buy ice, the more the better. Also, call Pierre up."
Two minutes later, Pierre came in carrying the pot of onion soup, looking reluctant: "Boss, this is my 'French brain-boosting soup' for you, not for watering the plants."
"Who told you to water the flowers?" Wang Minyu pointed at Lin Xiaoya. "Go and bring me your ice knives for making sashimi. Also, bring over the equipment you usually use for making molecular gastronomy liquid nitrogen ice cream."
Pierre's eyes widened: "You're going to use the patient to make ice cream?"
"I'm going to make her a water-cooled chassis."
Half an hour later, Lin Xiaoya lay in a specially made "bathtub"—actually, it was a large acrylic tub that Lao Liu used to soak medicinal wine.
The surrounding area was filled with broken ice, and the liquid nitrogen tube hissed and emitted white steam along its edge, controlling the water temperature to maintain it at an extremely dangerously low temperature threshold.
Wang Minyu held three silver needles in his hand, but instead of inserting them into acupoints, he inserted them into Lin Xiaoya's scalp—Baihui and Sishencong.
These needles aren't for treating the illness; they're for acting as "lightning rods."
"Zero, how many did you intercept?" Wang Minyu asked.
The sound of the fan from the old computer downstairs carried up the stairs, and Zero's voice came through Wang Minyu's phone: "The amount of data is too large. This girl's brain doesn't contain tens of gigabytes of short movies; it contains the underlying code of an entire city defense system. I can only barely translate a few coordinates right now."
"Where are the coordinates?"
"Right in the old town, arranged like the Big Dipper. The brightest one is right beneath your feet."
The walnut in Wang Minyu's hand made a "click" sound.
Sure enough, this lousy pharmacy didn't even consider the Chinese calendar when choosing its location; it just sat right on the crater.
Just as I was busy working, a commotion came from downstairs.
"Doctor! Help! Doctor! My head is going to explode!"
A young man wearing a plaid shirt, with hair so greasy it could be used for frying, stumbled in, clutching two cell phones tightly in his hands, his thumbs unconsciously swiping up and down.
Boss Liu called from behind the counter, "Xiao Wang! Come down and serve this customer! This man looks like he has epilepsy!"
Wang Minyu removed the needle from Lin Xiaoya's head, and only after confirming that her temperature had gone down did he slowly stroll downstairs.
The young man slumped in his chair, his eyes bloodshot, muttering to himself, "Trending topics... because... is that melon guaranteed to be ripe... Bitcoin has dropped..."
Wang Minyu took a closer look and realized that he didn't even need to activate his Qi Observation Technique; the symptoms were too typical.
"Give me your phone." Wang Minyu reached out his hand.
"No! I can't give it to him!" The young man, like a dog guarding its food, shoved his phone into his pocket. "I have a meeting, I need to monitor the market, and he tagged me in the group chat..."
"Are you here for a medical checkup or to mooch off my Wi-Fi?" Wang Minyu didn't waste any words and gave Guan Shan a wink.
Guan Shan is currently in a weakened state of "Mighty Spinach" - although he hasn't transformed, his physique still resembles a mountain when he stands there.
Without saying a word, he grabbed the young man by the back of the neck with one hand, like lifting a chick, and with a gentle pull of his other hand, he got the two cell phones in his hand.
"Ah! My phone! My life!" the young man screamed, flailing his arms and legs wildly.
"Pour it down his throat." Wang Minyu pointed to a bowl of dark, medicinal soup on the counter.
That was leftover "bitter melon juice + coptis chinensis water" from last night, originally intended as punishment for Pierre's sneaky eating, but now it's a good opportunity to put it to good use.
Guan Shan pinched the young man's nose, and the bowl of liquid, which was more bitter than life itself, was forced down his throat.
"Cough cough cough—" The young man nearly coughed up his lungs, his face instantly contorting into a grimace. "What...what did you give me to drink? This is murder!"
"That's called 'decluttering'," Wang Minyu said, pulling up a chair to sit down. "Your condition is called 'information overload dementia.' Your brain is full of fragmented garbage, and your dopamine threshold is raised higher than Mount Everest. Now, do you feel that burning anger gone, and all you want to do is vomit?"
The young man was taken aback. Indeed, the bitter taste shot straight to the top of his head, and the anxiety he had felt earlier, which he felt he needed to brush off something to relieve, was replaced by a purely physiological nausea.
"It's simple to cure." Wang Minyu took out an A4 sheet of paper and wrote down a prescription.
"Go back and buy a basic phone, the kind that can only make calls. Lock your smartphone in a safe. Go to the park every day and watch ants carrying food for two hours, or go to the market and listen to the old ladies haggling over prices. Do this for a week, and if it doesn't work, I'll eat your phone."
The young man, holding the prescription, stared blankly at Wang Minyu: "That's...that's it?"
"What else? You want me to perform brain surgery on you?" Wang Minyu waved his hand. "The consultation fee is five hundred, and your phone is confiscated for three days. Come back in three days to pick it up. Guan Shan, see the guest out."
The young man was pushed out the door and stood under the blazing sun. Without his phone in his hand, the emptiness made him want to cry, but the bitter taste in his mouth prevented him from crying.
Wang Minyu looked out the door, his eyes darkening.
In this world, these days, everyone is a signal receiver; some receive junk information, while others receive destructive signals from underground.
Whether it's Lin Xiaoya or this phone addict, they are both essentially "overloaded".
"Boss," Su Qing poked her head out from upstairs, her face not looking too good, "Lin Xiaoya is awake, but I can't understand what she's saying."
Wang Minyu got up and went upstairs.
Lin Xiaoya's eyes were open, her pupils unfocused, her lips chapped, as she repeated a string of numbers in an extremely calm, emotionless tone:
"Depth 3002... Valve corrosion rate 78%... A creature called 'Taotie' is attacking area A3... Need... Need kidney tonics..."
Wang Minyu slipped and almost fell.
"What do you mean by 'supplement'?"
"Tonify the kidneys." Lin Xiaoya suddenly turned her head, her empty eyes fixed on Wang Minyu, and said clearly as if in a final burst of energy, "The key to opening the valve is in the hands of someone with severe kidney deficiency."