Chi Yuyan entered the mind of the swarm through the black heart.
There were no words there. Billions of creatures passed hunger, direction and pain from one to another. Each was born with an order already in place: find a source, take its energy, return it to the Heart. They did not know an order could be disobeyed.
Chi Yuyan sent the first key.
"Stop."
The nearest monsters froze. A second later, the Heart corrected the deviation and forced them to move again.
She sent the second.
"Sever the link."
Several hundred creatures vanished from the shared perception, but without the network they lost coordination and crashed into the ground. That kind of freedom gave them nothing: without the network, they simply died.
The creatures' deaths struck Chi Yuyan as though she herself were falling. Their final sensations passed through the black heart unshielded. They did not understand height, did not know how to spread their wings on their own, and waited until the end for a command that never came.
"Stop the transmission," Nalan Qingxin said. "You cannot withstand so many deaths."
"If I disconnect, we will repeat the same mistake. Give them freedom and declare the dead its inevitable price."
"Then share the pain."
Chi Yuyan opened a yellow request. Vierlia, Su Zhihu and the assault group's formations took on part of the stream. For the first time, the network distributed neither energy nor tactical data, but the consequences of a decision.
They felt the terror of the falling creatures.
After that, no one spoke of simply disconnecting the swarm. The new key had to give the monsters navigation, the ability to exchange energy in small groups and time to learn how to live apart.
Nalan Qingxin added an emergency landing reflex. Su Zhihu gave the combat formations a way to hold formation without a centre. Vierlia created an open beacon that issued no orders and merely marked safe areas of ground.
Each contributed what they knew. The key no longer belonged to a single author.
"They do not need a command," Chi Yuyan said. "They need a choice and a way to exist after making it."
Nalan Qingxin studied the flow beside the black core. The swarm channelled energy in only one direction, upwards to the Heart. Individual creatures did not know how to share with one another. If a node rejected the central link, it was left alone.
"Give them our formation structure," she suggested. "Small groups that can connect without a master."
Chi Yuyan transmitted the pattern for five independent nodes.
The first monsters on the ground stopped, exchanged impulses and did not die. Then they passed the key to their neighbours of their own accord. Small independent networks began to appear within the swarm.
The Heart detected the threat.
The female figure in the central abyss raised her face. The millions of bodies that formed her shell opened their eyes. The white copies of dead mecha-maidens became soldiers and rushed towards the container.
Vierlia met the first wave.
Her blades cut through the ghosts, but they re-formed from the walls. Su Zhihu arranged the formations around Chi Yuyan and the core. Mei Lan kept the bound Murong inside the defensive circle.
The white soldiers repeated the techniques of those whose traces they carried. A copy of Captain Shen came out against Vierlia. She knew every one of her pupil's manoeuvres and stayed half a step ahead.
Once, Vierlia would have tried to prove she had surpassed her mentor. Now she opened her tactical data to Su Zhihu's formation.
"She can read my movements. We need someone else's rhythm."
One of the former penal soldiers struck from below with a crude miner's grapple no academy taught. Captain Shen blocked Vierlia's blade but missed the chain sweeping beneath her feet. Su Zhihu tore away the white armour, and Vierlia gently touched the copy's forehead.
"Your final order has been carried out, Captain. The unit survived."
The trace dissolved and did not form again.
Against Su Zhihu, the Heart created dozens of copies of her. Each was stronger than any single penal soldier and fought alone. Su Zhihu refused the challenge. She retreated into the circle of formations and let the others cover her weaknesses.
"The Bloody Asura never hides behind the weak," the copies said.
"That is why she remained alone for so many years."
Forty different techniques shattered the perfect reflections.
The Heart could copy skill. It could not copy trust, which changed with every decision.
"Release me," the head of the Council demanded. "I know the Heart's emergency code."
"If you knew it, you would have used it already," Nalan Qingxin replied.
"You will not get out without me."
"Possibly. But you are precisely how we got in."
Fan Yuan could not fight them on equal terms. Without psychic power, even basic armour would not respond to him. He took an ordinary rifle from beside a shattered container and covered those maintaining the network.
The white figures barely noticed him. They had been created to react to sources, and his source was empty. Fan Yuan moved among them like a blind spot.
He reached the base of the giant female figure and saw a chain running from her spine to the black heart. Every link bore the same emblem as the school's measuring crystals.
The Council's system had not merely used the swarm. It was still feeding it human orders.
"Nalan Qingxin!" he shouted. "What happens to Chi Yuyan's key if we remove the old protocol?"
"The Heart will stop blocking it. But the chain is shielded against every psychic attack."
"Good thing I have no psychic power, then."
Fan Yuan raised the rifle.
The first shot dented a link. The second cracked its casing. The white soldiers finally saw him and turned their heads.
They could not locate Fan Yuan's psychic source and fired at the sound. He threw the rifle aside, rolled to the next support and used a fragment of chain as a lever.
An ordinary human body was no match for any mecha-form. His hands trembled, his burns split open and his breathing lost its rhythm. But that was precisely why a system that had measured nothing but ranks for fifty years could not predict his actions.
Vierlia rushed to intercept them. One blade pierced her shoulder; another sliced through her wing. She kept the corridor open.
"Shoot!" she ordered.
Su Zhihu gave him the Bloody Asura's energy cell. Fan Yuan's weapon was not designed for that much power. The barrel began to melt before he even fired.
Chi Yuyan sensed what he was doing. She could sever the connection and help. But then the key would not reach the outer reaches of the swarm.
"I trust you," Fan Yuan said.
Before, those words had meant that he would take all the danger upon himself. Now it was the other way round: he was not taking her own task away from her.
Chi Yuyan opened the next seal.
In the laboratory, they had broken her by force. Now Chi Yuyan chose to tear away the seal herself. Her dragon armour did not fully regenerate, but the damaged channels became thousands of fine threads. Through them, she transmitted to the swarm's formations the ability to create new connections.
Fan Yuan fired.
The chain snapped.
For the first time in centuries, the Heart of the swarm was left without an order to obey.
The giant figure opened her mouth. Instead of a scream, silence passed across the entire planet.
The monsters stopped.
Some continued to exchange energy in small formations. Others lay down on the ground. Still others rose into the sky and headed away from the cities. No central consciousness chose for all of them any longer.
Some remained aggressive. Freedom did not make every creature peaceful. The beast above the western wall kept attacking because it wanted energy. Two neighbouring formations of the swarm, by contrast, shielded the people with their bodies.
The army faltered. The old orders required them to destroy every monster without distinction.
Huangfu halted fire against those that had stopped attacking.
"They have been killing our people for fifty years!" an officer protested.
"And one minute ago they were being controlled. Fire only on those that attack."
The fighting continued in several sectors. Elsewhere, humans and creatures of the swarm stood side by side for the first time, unsure what to do next. Not peace and not an alliance. A pause in which both sides could choose.
A small beast with a damaged wing fell beside the medical tent. A soldier raised his weapon. The nine-year-old girl from the laboratory stepped between them and held out an energy cell to the creature.
The beast took exactly half. It left the other half for her.
The distributed network gained a new node.
But freeing the swarm was destroying its shared body.
The corridors around the container began to disintegrate. The black tissue turned to dust, and the Heart's outer shell began to lose altitude. The giant was falling towards the capital.
Nine minutes remained until impact.
Su Zhihu activated the container's engines. They worked, but the living walls would not release the core.
The elder Murong laughed.
"You freed the monsters only to crush your own city."
Fan Yuan looked at the black heart. It was still connected to every part of the dying giant.
To change its trajectory, they would have to gather all the energy into a single node again for several minutes.
And someone would have to remain that node until the moment of impact.
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