A young woman stood in front of the glass wall, her face filled with anxiety and reluctance.

Behind her lay a man lying in a cryogenic chamber, his face strikingly similar to Su Ting's, but younger, and more...

“That…that was Su Ting?” Annie’s pupils contracted, her voice trembling. “No, it’s impossible…he was not even twenty years old then!”

The woman on the screen gently raised her hand, pressed a button on the terminal, and whispered:

"If you can hear this voice message... it means you've arrived here. As for me... I might really have gone the wrong way."

"I am Isa."

“I’m not asking for forgiveness, I just hope… that someone can stop that version of me before things become completely irreparable.”

The scene stopped abruptly.

The system issued another warning sound:

**[Memory Recall Module Successfully Launched. Backup Personality Now Online.]**

**[Identity Recognition and Matching: Isa Alpha]**

There was dead silence in the cockpit.

No one spoke.

The group exchanged glances, each seeing shock, fear, and even a hint of awe in the other's eyes.

What stands before them is not a program or projection, but a clear memory personality, bearing all the regrets and struggles of the past.

Anne, trembling, asked the question that was on everyone's mind:

"So...who exactly is Su Ting?"

The screen lit up again.

This time, a line of extremely concise text popped up:

[The real objective is about to be unlocked]

[Seventh Level Truth Entrance Coordinates: N7238'E1549']

[Enablement Method: Use ISAA key for triple identity binding]

Then, the screen stopped, and all data froze.

The gray sparrow suddenly turned to look at Annie and asked eagerly, "Do you know what these coordinates mean?"

Chapter 953 is the true entrance.

Before Anne could answer, Leah suddenly spoke coldly:

"It sounds like a trap."

Before anyone could react, the metal door at the back of the carriage suddenly creaked.

Like some kind of mechanical lock being forcibly released, the heavy partition began to slowly open.

A chilling, bone-chilling aura slowly emanated from it.

The railcar is entering the seventh buffer zone, and beyond this door lies the real entrance.

Everyone stood up.

Su Ting gripped the energy blade in his hand and spoke in a low voice:

"Are you ready?"

“Not yet,” Gray Sparrow said through gritted teeth, “but we have to go in.”

Ron sighed and drew his pistol: "Fine, see you in hell."

Just before they took a step, Annie suddenly whispered something—

"If... what lies buried on the seventh floor is Isha's original ideals... are we now saving her, or destroying her last vestige of humanity?"

Leah snorted and stepped out the door first: "I don't know what you're trying to say, but I just want to get out of this hellhole alive. Now is not the time for philosophy, sweetheart."

As soon as he finished speaking, a low footstep sound came from the darkness in the distance, as if something was slowly approaching.

To the onlookers, those footsteps sounded like a person walking step by step toward their end.

The railcar has come to a complete stop.

The opening in the metal door was just wide enough for one person to pass through, but the outside was even darker than darkness itself, as if half the light had been swallowed up. Leah's footsteps stopped abruptly as soon as she stepped out of the passage, as if the echo had been swallowed by the darkness.

Gray Sparrow activated the scanning device on his wrist, and a faint blue light swept back and forth between the group of people.

“Oxygen…normal, temperature close to the surface, no signs of life detected,” she said softly. “But…there is energy disturbance.”

Su Ting narrowed his eyes: "A trap?"

“Uncertain,” Gray Sparrow shook his head. “Perhaps it’s… some kind of alert procedure.”

"Whatever the program is." Ron gripped the gun tighter and sneered. "As long as it's not a ghost."

Annie didn't speak, but just looked at her palm. A faint trace of data flow still lingered there, much like the way Su Ting had pressed his hand on her arm—cold, resolute, yet carrying a certain reluctance.

“You tell me,” she suddenly spoke, her voice a little hoarse, “if Su Ting really is that younger version of himself… in the lab footage we just saw, who put 'him' into the cryogenic chamber? Isha, or… another version of Isha?”

No one answered.

An indescribable anxiety and restlessness filled the air, suggesting that it wasn't just their emotions that were fluctuating.

This space, as if breathing, is slowly and oppressively expanding, tightening, and then expanding again...

"Let's go." Leah turned back and urged, her tone becoming more urgent. "I hate this feeling, like when I was a child and locked in the closet listening to my mother talking to strangers—you could hear them talking, but you just couldn't understand what they were saying."

Anne nodded and stepped into the darkness first.

As soon as she stepped into the entrance, the walls of the entire passage suddenly began to glow with a pale blue light, as if in response to her arrival.

"Welcome." A gentle yet emotionless female voice echoed throughout the space. "This is... the 'Initial Layer'."

The group stopped and moved closer to each other.

Chapter 954 Someone's Inside

Before me was a spacious, circular hall with walls covered in ancient interfaces and terminal screens. In the very center stood a suspended crystal ball, its surface shimmering with energy ripples that seemed to belong to a different era.

A human silhouette is faintly visible inside the crystal.

"What is this?" Ron asked warily. "Is someone inside?"

Before the words were even finished, all the lights on the ceiling of the hall suddenly turned on, illuminating a sign hanging high in the air—a sign that had long been obsolete, belonging to the artificial intelligence research project that Isha had originally founded, named:

【Project:Genesis】

Su Ting frowned as he looked at the logo and said in a low voice, "Isn't this the project that was later renamed Aegis?"

“Yes, that’s the prototype that caused that accident.” Gray Sparrow added with a grave expression, “But all we know is that it was a failed research attempt to create a ‘controllable consciousness carrier.’ How did it end up in the core of the seventh layer?”

Just then, the light and shadow inside the crystal ball moved.

A familiar yet distorted voice came from all directions:

Welcome back, friends.

Everyone froze.

That's not Isha's voice.

It was Su Ting's voice.

But this was not the calm and rational Su Ting they knew—this voice was softer, more pleading, and carried the pain of imprisonment.

"I am... the first soul trapped here." The voice continued slowly, "The answer you seek sleeps here. Do you wish to hear it, or choose to escape once more?"

Leah sneered, "You're talking nonsense. Who wants to hear your answer? We want to get out!"

The crystal emitted a slight tremor, as if something inside was trying to break free of its shackles.

“I am not Su Ting.” The voice paused, then slowly said, “I only once possessed his thoughts.”

Anne's heart skipped a beat.

"What do you mean?" she asked. "What do you remember? Who...who are you?"

After a few seconds of silence, a blurry image appeared inside the crystal.

It was a young man sitting in a simple laboratory, with an old neural access helmet in front of him.

The camera cuts to the man putting on a helmet.

In the last frame of the video, he left a short message in his notebook:

I will be the first to witness the future.

——K.01

Immediately afterwards, the screen shattered, leaving only a string of flashing data subtitles:

[Identity verification complete: Su Ting - Source code loaded]

[Confirm activation of the memory core? Y/N]

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