Fan Yuan sensed the ambush several seconds before the first shot.
The military convoy was passing through an abandoned industrial district. Empty factory buildings stretched away on the left, while the storage tanks of an old chemical plant towered on the right. The perfect place to block the road and conceal marksmen.
"No one on the roofs," the reconnaissance officer reported.
"Because they're beneath us," Fan Yuan replied.
The tarmac exploded. Venom Wasp fighters poured out of the service tunnels. Instead of conventional rounds, they fired inhibitor needles. The escorting women's mecha-forms began shutting down one after another.
Vierlia managed to cover the convoy with a wind shield, but two needles pierced her armour. Her reactor slowed.
"Fan Yuan, get back to the shuttle!" she ordered. "Take a message to headquarters."
"I don't know how to fly a shuttle."
"This is no time for jokes."
"I'm not joking."
The mercenaries closed in around the immobilised officers. Their commander was already deciding whom to sell on the black market and whom to keep. Fan Yuan stepped out of cover.
The system offered him a side task with the absurd title 'The Hero Appears'. Its reward was the removal of the inhibitor's effects from every fighter in the legion.
"At least you're good for something now," he muttered.
A golden field spread over the convoy.
The inhibitor in Vierlia's source dispersed as if it had never been there. The other mecha-maidens recovered next. Damaged armour knitted itself whole, and depleted reactors filled with energy once more.
The mercenary commander ordered his fighters to fire, but it was too late.
Fan Yuan linked to several officers at once. He did not take control of them; he merely joined their sensors. Now each woman could see targets through the others' eyes, and surprise no longer protected the attackers.
The Empress of Wind broke through the centre while two assault mecha-maidens sealed the flanks. Three minutes later the Venom Wasps lay on the ground. Their commander could not understand how fighters with dead sources had suddenly become a single unit.
"Remember the answer," Vierlia said, pressing her blade to his armour. "The Eternal War God."
After the battle, Fan Yuan did not return to the academy at once. He felt a faint pulse through his contract with Chi Yuyan, then the signal vanished. She was not in the dormitory.
Nalan Qingxin and Liu Ruyan were missing too.
The abduction had taken place with almost no resistance. Nangong Ci knew the academy timetable and used suppressors disguised as training bracelets. Chi Yuyan managed to activate one dragon plate, but stopped when she saw a weapon pressed to Liu Ruyan's head.
The kidnappers seated all three together in the cargo hold.
Liu Ruyan was the first to break the silence:
"Why do they want me? My family has no money."
"You're connected to Fan Yuan," Nalan Qingxin replied.
"I was."
"Criminals read old news reports, not your feelings."
Chi Yuyan examined the suppressor collar around her neck. Any attempt to transform could make her source explode.
"Fan Yuan will find us," she said.
Liu Ruyan looked at her with irritation and envy.
"What makes you so sure?"
"Because he's always looking for a way out."
"You talk as if you know him better than anyone."
"I know what he was like when no one thought he was strong."
Those words hurt more than any accusation. Liu Ruyan remembered Fan Yuan sharing his lunch with her, repairing her terminal and never once holding his help over her. She had not left because Fan Yuan had changed. The people around her had simply convinced her that the old Fan Yuan was not worthy of respect.
Nalan Qingxin noticed her expression.
"If you're going to feel sorry for yourself, do it quietly. We need to work out our route."
She counted the turns and timed the gaps between checkpoints. Chi Yuyan listened to the engine. Liu Ruyan knew the old districts of the Lower City well and recognised the smell of the treatment plant. Alone, each clue meant little, but together they pointed to the water tower.
Chi Yuyan managed to send one faint pulse through the contract.
The collar tightened afterwards, but the signal had already gone out.
An hour later, Nangong Ci delivered her demands. In exchange for the three hostages, she wanted the weapon called the Abyss. If the military refused, the women would be executed live on air.
Huangfu mobilised the garrison, sealed the exits and ordered everyone to wait for the search results. Fan Yuan had no intention of waiting.
"There are ten million people in the city," Vierlia warned him. "If you unleash your source at full power, there'll be panic. You could damage people's minds."
"And if I don't, they'll torture Chi Yuyan."
He climbed to the roof of headquarters and released his psychic power.
A blue veil spread across the city. Windows trembled and traffic stopped in the streets. Thousands of mecha-sources answered the call, but Fan Yuan made no attempt to subjugate their owners. He was searching for only three familiar rhythms.
The system warned him that the channel was about to fail. Blood ran from his nose. Vierlia demanded that he stop, but Fan Yuan extended the field by one more block.
And heard Chi Yuyan.
A faint golden pulse came from beneath the old water tower.
Nangong Ci had prepared for his arrival. Heavy artillery surrounded the tower, the air was saturated with an improved inhibitor, and supposedly dozens of tonnes of explosives lay beneath the foundations. At least, that was what the sensors showed.
"One stray shot will leave the district without water," Vierlia said. "We'll wait for the special forces."
"They'll detect the approach."
"And they won't detect you breaking through?"
"They will. That's why they'll be watching me."
Fan Yuan sent Vierlia round the back while he approached the tower along the open road.
Nangong Ci met him in an SSS-rank mecha-form. Since the abduction, she had installed new modules and strengthened her reactor with stolen sources. Automated inhibitor platforms moved around her.
"Little brother came after all," she said. "I knew you'd choose your girls over the country."
"Let them go, and we'll talk."
"Bring me the Abyss first."
"I don't have it."
"Then I'll have to take you instead."
Every inhibitor activated at once. Together, they carried enough power to stop even Vierlia. Fan Yuan's golden source shuddered but did not go out.
"Why can you still move?" Nangong Ci asked.
"Because your devices were built for commanders. And according to the state, I'm F-rank."
He stepped into the first volley.
Vierlia attacked from above. Her blades cut through the platforms, while Chi Yuyan tried to break the suppressor seal from inside. Nangong Ci raised her armour-piercing batteries, but Fan Yuan's shared network anticipated every command.
The fight ended when the Empress of Wind knocked Nangong Ci out of her mecha-form. Nangong Ci retreated to the hatch beneath the tower and clutched a detonator to her chest.
"The hostages are here," she said. "There are explosives beneath us. If my heart stops, the whole place goes up."
Fan Yuan entered the underground chamber alone.
Chi Yuyan, Nalan Qingxin and Liu Ruyan were tied to the supports. Chi Yuyan was barely conscious, but she still smiled at him.
"I knew you'd come."
"Always making my job harder."
"Sorry."
Nangong Ci ordered him to break his link with Vierlia. Fan Yuan obeyed. He could see that the wires from the detonator ended inside an empty casing: there were no explosives. But with the hostages so close, it was not worth the risk.
"We were born in the same city," Nangong Ci said. "Why are you defending their order?"
"I'm defending people."
"Fine words. I used to believe them too."
She opened the armour across her back. Beneath it, scars ran from the base of her neck to her waist.
Nangong Ci had awakened at SS-rank when she was eighteen. Representatives of the Upper City promised her training and service. Instead, they locked her in a laboratory. They dissected her source, tested her regeneration, cut out modules and put them back. By the time she escaped several years later, her parents were dead and their home had been demolished to make way for a new factory.
"To them, I was material," she said. "Like thousands of others. Do you think asking parasites to be kinder will be enough?"
"No. I intend to take away their power to decide for everyone else."
"With the help of the army that cut me open?"
Fan Yuan had no easy answer.
"If I have to, I'll turn against the army."
"And when they declare you a criminal?"
"Then I'll fight outside the law."
Nangong Ci laughed. There was no amusement left in it.
"Hopeless idiot."
She pressed the detonator. Nothing happened.
"There is no bomb," she said. "I wanted to see whom you'd choose. Kill me. I'm not going back to the laboratory anyway."
"You don't have the right to pass sentence on yourself."
Fan Yuan gave the signal. Vierlia burst inside, freed the hostages and locked suppressor bracelets around Nangong Ci's wrists.
The army was already waiting for them above ground.
No one had come to rescue them. They had come to make arrests.
The warrant was signed by representatives of the Murong clan, the Hente Corporation and several Upper City officials. Fan Yuan was charged with illegally scanning the population's minds, conducting an unauthorised operation and damaging city infrastructure.
The soldiers ordered him to kneel.
Vierlia stepped in front of him.
"I'm the senior officer. The operation was conducted under my authority."
"Step aside, or you'll be charged as an accomplice."
Chi Yuyan struggled to her feet.
"Then arrest me too."
Nalan Qingxin gave her full name and demanded that they contact her father. Liu Ruyan said nothing. For the first time, she saw how quickly a saviour became a criminal once he crossed powerful people.
Fan Yuan heard the system's voice.
"Options available: force an escape, join the resistance, await outside assistance."
He chose the third.
The roar of an engine swept over the square. Huangfu's command shuttle hovered between the tower and the soldiers. The old commander emerged without a guard.
"Who gave the order to fire on my special commissioner?"
Weapons lowered.
But Huangfu did not call off the arrest. In the vehicle on the way to headquarters, he explained why. Fan Yuan had become a symbol too quickly. To the old clans, his every step proved that someone from the Lower City could circumvent their rules. If the military openly took his side, it would trigger an internal coup.
"You're suggesting I hide?" Fan Yuan asked.
"I'm suggesting you go somewhere merit isn't measured by your family name. The Starfield."
For public consumption, Fan Yuan would be sentenced to four thousand years for all his crimes at once. That wording would allow them to send him to the front as commander of a penal unit. There he was to bring a squad under his command, build his strength and weaken the units tied to the Murong and Hente clans.
"And Chi Yuyan?"
"She'll stay at the academy. We'll protect her."
Fan Yuan looked at Huangfu.
"If you're lying, the front won't stop me."
"I know."
The show trial lasted twenty minutes. The prosecution dispensed with witnesses. The recording of the hostage rescue was cut short, but the moment Fan Yuan scanned the city was played several times. The defence lawyer's microphone was switched off whenever he tried to mention the Red Scorpions or the military assignment.
Fan Yuan stood inside a glass cage and watched the spectators. Representatives of the old families were already celebrating. Ordinary Upper City residents looked frightened: they had been told that an uncontrollable man from the Lower City could enter anyone's mind.
When the judge asked whether he pleaded guilty, Fan Yuan replied:
"I admit that I acted without the permission of the people who allowed the abduction. We'll discuss the rest at a real trial."
The four-thousand-year sentence drew applause from the closed section.
In the Lower City, people silently switched off the broadcast. The number did not seem absurd to them. They were used to punishments calculated not against the span of a human life, but to frighten everyone else.
That same day, the director of the First Academy announced that he did not accept the ruling as final. Zhao Ming and the other students hung the number 4000 on the gates. It ceased to be a sentence and became a symbol of protest.
The old nobility had the signs removed. The next morning, there were ten times as many.
In closed negotiations, the old nobility agreed to the deal but imposed one more condition: Chi Yuyan had to take part in trials of new modifications. The military refused. The clans then threatened to keep Fan Yuan in a real prison.
Chi Yuyan agreed of her own accord.
"Don't do this," Vierlia demanded. "Their components destroy sources."
"I can withstand it."
"For him?"
"For both of us. He's always the one who comes to save me. Now it's my turn to clear a path for him."
Fan Yuan was told nothing.
In the morning, he was led from his cell in suppressor shackles. Nangong Ci sat in the corridor awaiting transfer. She smirked:
"The hero who promised to change the world is walking in chains."
"They'll release me soon."
"I believe you. In four thousand years."
Fan Yuan stopped by her door.
"You said you wouldn't go back to the laboratory."
"And you promised you'd change everything."
Ten minutes later, the prison system suffered a malfunction. Nangong Ci's cell opened, and the convoy's route vanished from the screens for several seconds. Huangfu later maintained that he had noticed nothing.
Fan Yuan left no weapon on the bunk, only a copy of Heihu's report. It contained the Red Scorpions' accounts, the names of the dead and a list of medicines sold abroad.
Nangong Ci read the first few pages and caught up with him by the service corridor.
"Are you trying to make me feel guilty?"
"I want you to know whom you sheltered beneath your banner."
"I didn't order him to kill the examination candidates."
"You gave him weapons and decided not to ask questions."
"Because in a war, you can't investigate every ally."
"Then don't claim you're better than the Upper City. They say the same thing about the laboratories."
Nangong Ci slammed him against the wall. Her suppressor bracelet was still working, but even without her mecha-form she was stronger than an ordinary human.
"Don't you dare compare us."
"Why not? You also chose a goal that turned someone else's pain into a line in a report."
She could have broken his neck. Instead, she let him go.
"One day, someone will die because of your principles."
"Possibly. That's why I need people beside me who will stop me."
Nangong Ci took the report and disappeared into a maintenance tunnel. Later, that very copy drove her to open the resistance archives and, for the first time, count not only the enemy's victims but also those who had died because of her own people.
Vierlia was waiting for Fan Yuan on the landing pad.
"Why are you here?"
"Someone has to make sure you don't declare war on the entire front on your first day."
"I thought being associated with me would hurt your career."
"It already has."
She boarded the transport with him.
Before departure, Chi Yuyan secured a brief visit. Armoured glass stood between them, and the military recorded their conversation.
"I'm not allowed to tell you where they're sending you," she said.
"I've already worked it out."
"And I'm not allowed to promise we'll see each other soon."
"Then don't promise."
Chi Yuyan pressed her palm to the glass. Fan Yuan did the same.
"I don't want to be someone who only waits for you to come back again," she said.
"Then train, study and make your own decisions."
"Even if you won't like them?"
"Especially those."
He did not know that within hours she would agree to the clans' bargain. Chi Yuyan did not know that her decision would be hidden from him. Both spoke of freedom without yet understanding how hard it was to accept the choice of someone you loved when the price seemed intolerable.
The door closed. The transport rose towards the front.
The Starfield proved to be neither starry nor a field. It was an endless strip of grey earth between ruined cities. Ships blotted out the sky, and the silhouettes of monsters moved along the horizon. The air smelt of ozone and burnt metal.
Fan Yuan was given forty mecha-maidens from the Lower City. Officially, their unit was called a penal company; behind their backs, it was known as the Total Defeat Unit. Their previous commander had been shot for desertion. The women themselves were thrown wherever command was reluctant to lose combat-ready units.
C-rank on average. Damaged sources, expired armour plates and not one complete medical kit.
The soldiers met their new commander out of formation. They saw the suppressor shackles and decided he was another convict who would try to win favour by spending their lives.
"They say you're the Eternal War God," one of the women said. "Those bracelets have left you with a tenth of your power."
"Then that tenth will be enough for you for now."
The neighbouring elite unit, Total Victory, was led by Su Zhihu, an independent mecha-maiden with the Bloody Asura mecha-form. She came from the Upper City and despised the penal soldiers almost as openly as Vierlia once had.
"Huangfu sent a god of war to command rubbish," Su Zhihu said. "A fitting pair."
True Sight revealed what everyone else had missed: Su Zhihu's mecha-form could grow to SSS-rank. Pride and the fear of becoming dependent on a commander kept her from unlocking that power.
"I like the name of your unit," Fan Yuan replied. "Soon I'll poach every one of your fighters. You along with them."
Su Zhihu reached for her weapon. Fighting in camp was forbidden, so she merely promised to wait until the first battle.
For ten days, Fan Yuan staged no impressive training exercises. He repaired weapons, studied the soldiers' sources and changed their communication patterns. The penal soldiers decided he was lazy or too weak.
In fact, he spoke to five fighters every day. He did not ask why they had ended up in the penal company. First he found out what they could do.
One had worked as a welder and could sense weak points in armour. Another had driven freight trains before she was conscripted and calculated inertia better than the officers. A third was E-rank but could hold a shield longer than C-rank mecha-maidens. The school test had declared her source weak because it measured only the force of the first pulse.
Fan Yuan changed the formation to suit the fighters' real abilities, not the letters in their files.
"Why don't you explain it to them?" Vierlia asked.
"They've heard too many promises from commanders."
"Then they'll think you're an idler until the battle."
"Let them. I don't need them to believe fine speeches. First, let them see what they can do themselves."
He also found the true reason for the previous commander's death in the records. The man had not fled the field. He had refused to send the penal soldiers into a mined gorge without reconnaissance. An officer from the Hente clan altered the report and had him executed.
Fan Yuan saved a copy. If he returned from the front, the dead commander's name would also be heard at a real trial.
On the eleventh day, a convoy carrying medicine set out for the front line.
Fan Yuan ordered his company to take the eastern line and Su Zhihu's to take the west. She refused to obey a man without rank and did not even consider an explanation necessary.
A minute later, hordes rose on both sides.
Second-level monsters advanced from the east. The forty penal soldiers prepared to die, but a golden network linked their sensors. Each received exactly as much energy as she could withstand. Fan Yuan did not control their bodies: he only showed them targets, warned them of attacks and closed the gaps.
For the first time, they fought as something other than expendable material.
The eastern horde was destroyed without a single loss.
In the west, Su Zhihu's unit suffered heavy damage. A fifth-level monster burst out of the ground. She ordered Fan Yuan to take the medicine and retreat, then stayed behind to cover the road.
"Strange to hear that from someone who's spent ten days calling us cowards," he observed.
"Go, you idiot!"
Fan Yuan removed his shackles. The locks crumbled into golden dust.
He entered the psychic network of forty fighters, gathered their remaining energy and channelled it through the Bloody Asura. Su Zhihu felt the power she had spent her life afraid to entrust to another person.
"One strike," Fan Yuan said. "But you're the one who makes it."
The Asura's blade split the fifth-level monster from shoulder to core.
Silence fell across the battlefield.
"Do you still think they're the Total Defeat Unit?" Fan Yuan asked.
Su Zhihu looked at the forty mecha-maidens who had held the line.
"No."
"Then join the Eternal Brigade."
At that moment, an unofficial signal came from the camp. Nalan Qingxin had fled the Upper City and spent several days making her way to the front. Her clothes were covered in dust, and marks from handcuffs remained on her wrists.
"Chi Yuyan is in the Murong clan's laboratory," she said. "They've been testing new modules on her for more than a month. Her source is almost destroyed."
Fan Yuan did not answer at once.
Vierlia tried to explain that Huangfu and the director had been looking for a lawful solution. One look from him silenced her.
"While they were looking, Chi Yuyan was being cut to pieces."
The golden dragon above his source opened its eyes. The system offered full enhancement of the Eternal Brigade.
The forty soldiers formed ranks without an order.
"Where are we going?" Su Zhihu asked.
"To the Upper City."
"You'll turn a front-line company against the state for one mecha-maiden?"
"Not for one. For everyone they declared material."
Fan Yuan looked towards the distant lights of the capital.
"Today we raze the Upper City to the ground."
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