The moment Fan Yuan entered Vierlia's psychic circuit, an alarm began to howl.
Her defensive circuits identified him as an intruder and tried to expel him with a psychic pulse. He let the blow pass through him, found the reactor's rhythm and answered with a golden wave. The Empress of Wind's systems went dark for a fraction of a second, then came back to life under his command.
Vierlia felt her damaged actuators come alive one after another.
"Disconnect at once," she demanded. "You have no combat training."
"Outer sentry on the right."
"I see it."
"Then why is it still intact?"
Fan Yuan sent her mecha-form sideways. An armour-piercing shell passed through the space her head had occupied a moment before. The Empress of Wind turned with almost no loss of speed and answered with two shots. The first enemy machine lost its weapon; the second crashed into the ravine.
Vierlia fell silent.
She had fought since childhood and thought of her mecha-form as an extension of her own body. Yet now a novice was directing her more precisely than she could direct herself. He did not disrupt her movements, but anticipated her intent before she gave the command. He applied force only when her armour could withstand it, and used the wind on every turn instead of fighting it.
"What is your real rank?" she asked.
"Everyone assured me it was F today."
"Don't mock me."
"I didn't choose the result."
Three Red Scorpion machines emerged from behind the tower. Fan Yuan raised the field to ten per cent. Vierlia drew a sharp breath. Her weapon modules opened fully, though after the repairs they should have been limited to half power.
"Relax," he said. "I'll hold the strain."
"Don't you dare give me orders inside my own circuit."
"Then consider it a request."
She stopped resisting a second before the volley.
The Empress of Wind became a streak of silver. The enemy opened fire, but their shots struck afterimages. Fan Yuan passed between the bursts, cut the supports from the first machine, turned its body into a shield and sent it hurtling into the other two. An explosion lit the training ground.
"Five targets," he reported. "Only the main unit remains."
"You just used my emergency manoeuvre without compensation."
"I compensated."
Vierlia checked her source and found not so much as a hairline fracture. More than that, the integrity of her mecha-form was still recovering.
Meanwhile, Heihu appeared on every surviving terminal. The bound examination candidates stood behind him. Charges blinked around the perimeter.
The leader spoke of freedom for the Lower City, of the blood with which the nobility paid for its comfort, and of the need for sacrifice. He invited the people of the lower districts to die for a future uprising. He himself remained out of sight and controlled his people through disposable transmitters.
"He has no intention of blowing himself up with them," Fan Yuan said.
"How do you know?"
"A man ready to die doesn't transfer money to an Upper City account an hour before the attack."
Vierlia opened his service dossier. Fan Yuan was right. Heihu had not distributed most of the stolen medicine to the poor, but sold it on. Behind the grand speeches about revolution lay ordinary profiteering.
At Fan Yuan's command, Chi Yuyan circled the training ground but found no trace of the leader. That meant he was closer than they had assumed.
The hostages chose a representative for a duel. Han Qingting stepped forward, certain that his commander's rank and expensive mecha-form guaranteed victory. Heihu felled him with a single blow. Panic swept across the square.
At that moment, the Empress of Wind burst into the square.
The people thought Vierlia had saved them. They shouted her name as she destroyed the remote turrets and intercepted their control signals. Fan Yuan did not announce who was linked to her. Disarming the charges mattered more.
He traced every channel back to a single control device. The signal was coming not from the surrounding buildings, but from within the crowd.
"Heihu is among the hostages," Fan Yuan said.
"The recognition system checked every face."
"He didn't change his face. He changed the frequency of his psychic source."
Finding the impostor meant covering hundreds of people with his field. The system warned of possible brain damage. Fan Yuan opened his source anyway.
The world turned blue.
He heard other people's fears like the sound of rain. Someone was calling for his mother. Someone was cursing the Lower City. Han Qingting was thinking only of how he would explain his defeat to his family. Among hundreds of trembling currents, one remained cold and steady.
Fan Yuan pointed to an elderly technician.
Vierlia dragged him from the crowd. The disguise fell apart, leaving Heihu on the ground with a control device in his hand. He tried to press the button, but Chi Yuyan severed the transmitter first.
The charges were finished.
Heihu was still playing the people's avenger. When Vierlia locked suppression cuffs around his wrists, he shouted to the hostages that the Upper City was once again strangling the voice of resistance.
Fan Yuan held up the recovered control device.
"It contains a list of the charges," he said. "The first row was meant to kill the Upper City pupils. The second was for the Lower City residents. Why is the second more powerful?"
"A revolution needs sacrifices."
"You needed a distraction so you could escape with the money."
Vierlia displayed the bank transfers on the screen. The day before the attack, Heihu had bought papers in the name of an Upper City merchant and booked a place on a private shuttle. Not one Red Scorpion fighter appeared on the evacuation list.
Two of his supporters were among the hostages. They had believed the explosion would begin an uprising. When he saw the accounts, one turned away. The other went on insisting that the evidence had been fabricated.
"Why doesn't he believe it?" Chi Yuyan asked later.
"Because admitting he was deceived would mean admitting his own crimes as well," Fan Yuan replied. "Some people find it easier to defend their leader than to face what they did for him."
Fan Yuan remembered those words.
During interrogation, Heihu gave them Nangong Ci's name. He claimed the resistance had supplied his weapons, though it had never directly ordered the attack. Nangong Ci considered the Red Scorpions useful chaos and had not checked where the stolen medicine went.
The military entered the information in a classified report. Fan Yuan kept a copy. He had already seen how easily an inconvenient part of the truth could vanish from the official account.
Only then did Fan Yuan withdraw from the circuit. People saw him beside Vierlia and understood whose command had guided the Empress of Wind. Minutes earlier they had called him a coward. Now no one dared raise their eyes.
Han Qingting was the first to try to twist events to suit himself.
"The Empress of Wind allowed him to observe through her link," he declared. "Don't pass off an accident as heroism."
Vierlia walked up to him.
"Say that again."
"I merely said that an experienced officer…"
"My mecha-form was damaged. Fan Yuan restored it, took command, disarmed the charges and found Heihu. I argued with him throughout and was wrong more often than he was. Is that clear?"
The admission cost her more than the battle. But after it, no official report could credit the examiner alone with the victory.
"You saved us," said one of the Lower City pupils.
"We saved one another," Fan Yuan replied. "Next time, think first and look for someone to blame afterwards."
Vierlia quickly put a stop to the cheering. She formed the candidates into ranks, organised the evacuation and formally admitted that she had lost the wager.
"Will you ask for a place at the academy?" she asked.
"I've already earned it."
"Money?"
"No."
"Then what do you want?"
Fan Yuan did not answer. There were too many witnesses around them.
After the examination, General Huangfu summoned him to headquarters. Victory had brought a new threat: Heihu's recording had reached foreign networks, and criminal organisations now knew the name of the titled commander. The military could not assign Fan Yuan a conspicuous guard without confirming the rumours.
"That is why you won't be the one under protection," Huangfu said. "You will be doing the protecting."
A photograph of Nalan Qingxin appeared on the wall.
Intelligence had discovered that Nangong Ci was preparing to abduct the heiress. Her family controlled the access key to the Abyss, a weapon capable of destroying an entire fortified district. The criminals intended to exchange the girl for its activation code.
"You want to use her as bait," Fan Yuan concluded.
"And you with her."
"Honest."
"Lies cost too much here."
Huangfu appointed him special commissioner under the call sign 9527. Vierlia was to accompany the operation and formally remain the senior officer.
She objected before he had finished giving the order.
"A student cannot command a field officer."
"Then honour the terms of the wager," Fan Yuan reminded her.
"Ask for anything else."
"Form a contract with me and join the combat unit."
Vierlia refused. She cited her age, rank, regulations and their incompatible personalities. Fan Yuan patiently heard every reason.
"You don't know how to lose," he said.
"I do. But a contract between a commander and a mecha-maiden isn't a signature on a classroom exercise."
"That is why the decision must be voluntary. I won't hold you to the wager if you truly don't want this."
She had braced herself for pressure and had not expected him to back down. Vierlia was silent for several seconds.
"If I agree, will you stop acting without a plan?"
"No."
"Will you obey orders?"
"Only reasonable ones."
"Why does anyone link themselves to you at all?"
"Ask Chi Yuyan."
Vierlia snorted and held out her hand.
"One contract. And don't tell anyone I lost to a student."
A golden thread joined their sources. The Empress of Wind rose to SS-rank, her injuries vanished and the range of her sensors tripled. The system declared Vierlia the second official fighter of the Eternal Legion.
Fan Yuan corrected it aloud again:
"The second partner."
"Who are you talking to?" Vierlia asked.
"A very old and very ill-mannered programme."
The First Academy received them very differently from the Lower City school. The campus had no rusting staircases, water cuts or cracked simulators. The air was filtered around the clock. Real trees grew between the buildings, and the dining hall threw away more food than an entire lower district received.
Chi Yuyan stopped in front of a fountain. She had never seen clean water used as decoration.
The same thing happened at the dormitory. Upper City candidates were given private rooms, while Lower City residents were housed in the basement of an old building. The warden explained that this was due to the size of their entrance contributions, though the academy rules mentioned no such contributions.
Fan Yuan asked for the order in writing.
"Why?" the warden asked.
"To attach it to my complaint to the director and the Ministry of War."
"You haven't even been admitted yet."
"That is why I'm still asking politely."
Within ten minutes, ordinary rooms had been found for the Lower City residents. After the battle with Heihu, it seemed a very small victory. But Chi Yuyan noticed the other candidates straighten their shoulders for the first time. The system rested not only on laws, but on hundreds of petty humiliations everyone had learnt to accept.
In the dining hall, a boy named Zhao Ming joined them. His C-rank result had been sent for reassessment three times because his father worked in a mine. His family had sold their flat to pay for his journey to the examination. If Zhao Ming failed to get in, he would have nowhere to return to.
"The Upper City Alliance is offering protection," he said. "All I have to do is sign a pledge to serve their families after graduation."
"For how many years?"
"The contract doesn't say."
Fan Yuan read the small print. The obligation extended to every contract Zhao Ming formed in future and could be ended only at the patron's discretion. Slavery was called a talent support programme.
He tore up the contract.
"What if they eliminate me first?" Zhao Ming asked.
"Then you'll get up and try again without a chain around your neck."
"That's easy for you to say."
"No. I've simply been offered a good life in exchange for obedience before."
Fan Yuan did not promise to protect the boy from everything. He showed him the safe sectors, explained how the teleportation marker worked and introduced him to other Lower City candidates. They had no army. But by the beginning of the trial, each of them at least had a few familiar faces nearby.
Nalan Qingxin watched from a distance.
"You could have demanded the best room for yourself," she said that evening. "Instead you spent an hour dealing with other people's contracts."
"And you could have walked past."
"I'm studying my opponent."
"Of course."
She handed him a list of candidates connected to the Murong clan. It named the commanders of the future Upper City Alliance.
"Consider it payment for the training," Nalan Qingxin added.
"I consider it your first sensible decision all day."
"Insufferable."
But she did not take the list back.
Upper City students surrounded them at the gates. The weakest among them was C-rank. Two Lower City residents with worn bags immediately became convenient targets.
"The First Academy admits only those at the top of the regional rankings," a tall young man said. "Who sold you your results?"
Vierlia stepped out from behind Fan Yuan.
"I conducted their examination. Would you like to challenge the result?"
The young man muttered an apology and hurried away.
In the assembly hall, the academy director annulled the results of the regional trials. A thousand candidates would have to survive four days in a sealed zone. There were places for only a hundred. Killing was forbidden; everything else was permitted.
"This isn't an examination. It's a fight over rations," Chi Yuyan said.
"Exactly," Fan Yuan agreed. "They want to see what people will do when no one restrains them."
The Upper City candidates formed an alliance at once. There were more than nine hundred of them. They declared everyone from below their first target, intending to divide the places calmly between their families afterwards.
Fan Yuan did not engage them. He and Chi Yuyan hid beneath a ruined bridge in the very centre of the enemy camp. The alliance searched the distant sectors, accused one another of sabotage and by evening had begun fighting among themselves.
"How did you know?" Chi Yuyan whispered.
"They didn't come to win. They came to collect places they already consider theirs. An alliance like that holds only while there are enough places for everyone."
An alarm swept through the zone that night. A level-four earth dragon broke out of an underground hangar. Monsters like that were kept only at the front. The director called it a test, but True Sight detected someone else's control implant in the beast's neck.
The dragon was hunting Fan Yuan specifically.
Nangong Ci was behind the attack. She appeared on the cliff in black mecha-armour and introduced herself as the leader of the resistance. Her tone was mocking, but her voice betrayed how long ago she had tired of waiting for change.
"We were both born below, little brother," she said. "You could become the banner of a true uprising. Join us."
"You sell stolen medicine and hide behind hostages."
"Heihu was a rat. I'm offering something different."
"Kill everyone above?"
"Make room for those who have lived on their knees."
"Then there will simply be new masters above."
Nangong Ci smiled.
"Aren't you righteous. Let's see what tune you sing when the Upper City starts grinding you down."
She activated the implant. The earth dragon charged while resistance fighters attacked from both flanks. Fan Yuan pretended he was willing to negotiate, let Nangong Ci come closer and broke her transformation with a single psychic pulse. Chi Yuyan bound her with an energy whip.
But Nangong Ci managed to release a stimulant. The dragon went berserk.
After the day's pursuit, the Dragon Abyss had less than five per cent integrity left. The system offered Fan Yuan complete control. He refused.
"Chi Yuyan, can you see the plate beneath its left eye?"
"I see it."
"The implant is anchored behind it. I need one precise strike."
"I'll be in time."
The dragon opened its jaws. Chi Yuyan stepped towards it, slipped beneath its claws and drove her blade into the indicated gap. Fan Yuan delivered a brief pulse at the instant of contact. The implant exploded. The earth dragon collapsed two metres short of them.
Nangong Ci cut through her bonds and vanished into the smoke.
Members of the Upper City Alliance gathered at the noise. They had waited out the battle in hiding and now decided to finish off the exhausted Chi Yuyan. Han Qingting stepped forward first.
"That is reality," he said. "People are born superior or inferior."
"Then I'll give you a chance to prove you're superior," Fan Yuan replied. "Apologise to Chi Yuyan and leave."
Han Qingting gave the order to attack.
The golden field unfolded across the entire valley. Hundreds of mecha-maidens froze. Fan Yuan walked among them and damaged Han Qingting's artificially strengthened source with a single blow.
"When you hunted Lower City candidates in a mob, you called it order," he said. "When one Lower City resident fought back, you called him cruel. Your rules work in only one direction."
He could have stopped with Han Qingting. But Fan Yuan decided to break the rule itself, the one that let the strong hunt the weak in packs.
The next twenty-four hours became a hunt. The Upper City Alliance assembled units of a hundred, laid traps and tried to exhaust Chi Yuyan. Fan Yuan turned their numbers against them. He lured groups into narrow gorges, destroyed teleportation markers and eliminated candidates by the dozen.
Two hundred people left the zone after the first mass clash.
After the second, fewer than three hundred remained.
The director watched the markers disappear and demanded to know how one student was managing to expel candidates faster than a level-four monster. Vierlia suggested ending the examination while something remained of the training ground.
"He intends to eliminate every one of them," she realised.
By the morning of the fourth day, three people remained in the zone: Fan Yuan, Chi Yuyan and Nalan Qingxin. He made Nalan apologise aloud for insulting the people of the Lower City, but did not deprive her of her place.
The director came out to meet them in person.
"Name your terms," he said. "Otherwise the academy will have no intake this year."
Fan Yuan demanded admission for every Lower City candidate eliminated during the collective persecution. The examination rules had to be public and the same for everyone. He also wanted the right to overturn decisions by student organisations if they discriminated against people because of their origins.
"You are asking for absolute power," the director observed.
"No. The right to break a power that has already become absolute."
The director agreed. He too had spent his youth in the Lower City, though people now preferred to forget it.
"If you truly want to change the country, one academy won't be enough," he warned. "Go to the Starfield. Build a unit. Earn achievements the old nobility cannot erase."
Fan Yuan's terms saved not only Zhao Ming and those the alliance had eliminated directly. The academy commission was forced to review the teleportation records. It emerged that forty-seven Lower City candidates had received faulty markers, while the entrance test results of another twenty-two had vanished. In previous years this had been called a technical discrepancy. Now the director ordered an audit of the past decade's archives.
The commission found hundreds of similar cases.
Parents came to the campus. They brought old identity cards, rejection letters and medical reports. A queue formed outside the administrative building, made up of people who had been told for years that their children were not talented enough.
Fan Yuan walked along the queue and understood for the first time how little a single victory meant. Eliminating a thousand opponents was easier than restoring even one person's lost years.
Zhao Ming received a place, but did not come to thank him.
"Aren't you pleased?" Chi Yuyan asked.
"I am. I just don't want to spend my whole life saying I got in only because of Fan Yuan."
"Good," Fan Yuan himself replied. "Prove that you'll remain here because of your own ability."
The boy left for his first training session. Later, it was Zhao Ming who first opened the shelter doors to someone he had once considered an enemy.
A new trap awaited Fan Yuan at the induction ceremony. The Upper City student council barred him from the hall and assembled dozens of C-rank commanders. Its chairman, the second son of the Murong clan, demanded that the Lower City resident kneel.
Fan Yuan entered.
"You've forgotten one thing," he said. "You are in this academy only because I agreed to let the intake stand."
The commanders activated their mecha-maidens. A psychic storm filled the hall. Chi Yuyan prepared to summon the Dragon Abyss, but Fan Yuan stopped her.
He opened his field.
The students' mecha-forms shut down one after another. Some responded more strongly to his source than to their own partners' commands. Fan Yuan did not seize them. He merely showed that he could, then released the link.
By the time the director entered the hall, the council was already begging for mercy. Its chairman demanded that Fan Yuan be punished, but received an unexpected answer:
"As long as Student Fan does not violate the ban on killing, his decisions carry as much authority in this academy as mine."
Fan Yuan looked over the emblems of the old families on the walls.
"Then my first decision is this: the Upper City Alliance is dissolved. Any organisation that demands proof of ancestry will be dissolved with it."
"You can't abolish the Upper City!" Murong shouted.
"Today I'm only abolishing your club. I'll get to the city later."
Those words spread across the networks within minutes.
For the first time, people in the Lower City saw the heirs of great families escorted from the hall under guard. Some called Fan Yuan a hero. Others feared they would be made to pay for his defiance. To the old nobility, the recording sounded like a declaration of war.
And Nangong Ci, watching from a secret refuge, merely smirked.
"I warned you, little brother. Soon they'll force you to choose."
That same evening, Vierlia brought intelligence. The Venomous Wasps, an elite mercenary unit, had acquired the latest mecha inhibitors and were preparing an attack on a military convoy. Their employer was connected to Nangong Ci.
The operation was set for dawn. Vierlia once again declared herself in command.
Fan Yuan checked his weapons and replied:
"We'll see who spots the ambush first."
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