The desert wind howled as dawn broke across the scorched ruins of Guzhan. Smoke still curled from the collapsed entry shaft behind them, where the Ash Walker had fallen and the underground Arsenal chamber had sealed itself forever. Tianming stood in the sunrise's first light, holding Huoxue in one hand, the obsidian blade now faintly shimring red as if digesting the mory of what it had just destroyed.
“Every life it takes is rembered…” he murmured.
Fang Yao checked the periter. “No drones. No tail. If the Lotus Clan was tracking us, we bought ourselves a head start.”
Xiaoqing was seated on a rusted outcrop, her tablet projecting blueprints. “Bad news,” she said without looking up. “That Ash Walker wasn’t just so leftover. It was remotely reactivated. aning soone knew we were there.”
Tianming walked over. “You trace the signal?”
“I got part of it. It ca from under the ocean.”
Fang Yao raised a brow. “The ocean?”
She nodded, enlarging the coordinates. “Deep-sea base. There’s only one thing it could be.”
“The Black Spiral Outpost,” Tianming said.
The words tasted bitter in his mouth.
The Black Spiral wasn’t just a legend—it was the most classified facility ever established under the old Orchid Society. It had been abandoned after a submarine war a decade ago—or so the world believed. Rumors claid it housed prototypes that never saw light, forbidden research involving energy fields, and a vault of scroll fragnts too volatile to store on land.
Tianming knew this because his father had once drawn a diagram of it on the back of a napkin. And then burned it before the conversation ended.
“Looks like they’ve rebuilt it,” Fang Yao said. “Or never shut it down to begin with.”
Xiaoqing’s tone was dry. “Either way, they know we’re coming.”
Tianming nodded. “Then let’s not disappoint them.”
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They reached the nearest coastal port by nightfall. The harbor town was small, most of it run-down and barely patrolled, but the docks were operational. Through an old Orchid contact—an elderly fisherman nad Lao Ge—they secured a subrsible: an outdated transport pod once used for deep-sea maintenance, now retrofitted with crude armor plating and black market sonar jamrs.
As they boarded, Lao Ge gave Tianming a wrinkled photograph.
In it was a woman with a phoenix pendant.
“My daughter,” he said. “She went down there years ago. Part of the cleanup crew after the ‘accident.’ Never ca back. You see her… do what you have to.”
Tianming accepted the photo in silence. He didn’t offer hope.
The ocean was vast, rciless, and slow to forget.
The descent began at midnight. The pod creaked as they subrged, pressure slowly increasing. Outside, darkness thickened. Faint traces of light flickered in the abyss like dying stars—bioluminescent fish, or perhaps sothing worse.
Hours passed.
Then the sonar pinged.
A shadow erged from the black—a sprawling underwater structure half-buried in the ocean floor, shaped like a spiral shell. Dozens of chanical arms extended from its sides, collecting samples or perhaps fending off creatures.
Fang Yao activated the magnetic clamps. “We’ll breach from below—sector five looks like a utility chamber.”
“Internal pressure?” Tianming asked.
Xiaoqing replied, “Still stable. They’ve kept this place alive.”
Tianming looked at Huoxue, sheathed and dormant.
Ti to wake her up.
They entered through a decompression hatch, quickly taking out two automated sentries with silent darts. The air inside was stale, damp. Lights flickered red—ergency mode. And yet, deeper in the corridors, muffled footsteps echoed.
This place wasn’t dead.
The group moved through the curved halls, past water tanks and containnt pods. They reached a chamber labeled: Vault N-4: Scroll Shard Holding.
Inside were containers—each holding fragnts of ancient scrolls. So still glowed faintly, others cracked or unstable. Symbols danced across the surfaces like living calligraphy.
Fang Yao muttered, “These aren’t just fragnts. So are evolving.”
Tianming approached one pod. Inside, the glyphs swirled to form a face—his own. Then it shattered.
Alarms scread.
The vault door sealed. Gases hissed from the vents.
“Trap!” Xiaoqing yelled, hacking into the console. “They knew we’d co for the shards!”
A new voice rang out through the chamber speakers. Calm, asured, female.
“Tianming. Son of Lu Qingshan. We’ve been expecting you.”
He froze. “Who are you?”
The voice replied smoothly. “The one who holds your legacy in her palm. I am Mada Yurei.”
Fang Yao drew his weapon. “She’s behind the Black Falcon Circle. Behind the gene deal. Behind Lotus.”
The voice continued. “You are standing in your father’s sins, boy. Do you even know what he built down here?”
The gas thickened.
Tianming’s eyes burned. But his resolve didn’t.
“I’ll find you,” he said. “And I’ll end this.”
She laughed softly. “Then co to the center. Spiral Core. If you survive that long.”
They escaped the vault seconds before it collapsed inward. Ergency lights guided them downward, through increasingly unstable passages. Water began to drip from fractured pipes. The facility was beginning to break.
As they neared the Spiral Core, a new enemy erged—half-machine, half-human. The Lotus Clan had started human integration trials.
Bio-chs with fused glyphs in their spines.
One charged.
Tianming t it head-on.
Huoxue flared, its crystal igniting mid-swing. The blade cut not just through flesh and tal, but through the energy lines powering the creature’s nervous system.
It spasd violently, then crumbled.
But five more ca.
Fang Yao launched smoke bombs. Xiaoqing rigged an electrical trap, shocking two into stasis. Tianming danced between the others like fire itself—his blade feeding on mory, burning through bone and steel.
When the last fell, silence returned.
They reached the Spiral Core—an imnse room with a transparent ceiling revealing the ocean above. At the center stood a throne of black coral and circuit cables.
And upon it, not Mada Yurei, but a figure dressed in his father’s robes.
Wearing a dead man’s face.
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