[Line A: Olympus – Aria]
The Sky City of Olympus was a blinding diamond hanging above the perpetually choked cloud layer, but down here, in the industrial belly of the floating metropolis, the only light was the sickening flicker of emergency neon and the greasy reflection off wet chrome.
Here, in the shadows, Aria moved like a phantom. Her heart hammered against her ribs, clocking an insane five hundred beats per minute, yet her movements were surgically precise. She was a ghost in the machine, and she was running for her life.
Her augmented left eye whirred, its infrared filter slicing through the gloom. The world dissolved into pure, navigable data streams: the imposing alloy wall became a mere Firewall, the crisscrossing laser traps turned into trivial Defense Functions, and the heavy-set mechanical sentries clanking down the corridor were nothing more than chunks of long, bloated Execution Code.
Too slow, she thought, a thin, almost invisible smirk touching the corner of her lips.
She skidded to a stop, the hydraulics in her legs groaning a brief, mechanical complaint. As the lead guard—a towering figure of dull, reinforced steel—charged toward her, Aria's fingers flickered in the air, a movement too quick for the naked eye. She wasn't touching metal; she was touching the machine's mind.
The guard's operating parameter was a simple line of instruction: IF (GUARD_UNIT_04: TARGET LOCK) THEN (MOVE: FORWARD 10M).
In a nanosecond, Aria edited the $10M$ to $100M$.
The drive program overloaded. Instead of slamming into her, the mechanical sentry surged forward with ten times its intended speed, tearing through the alloy wall behind Aria with a screech of tortured metal, and tumbling headlong into the echoing darkness of the wastewater conduits below.
"The Senate's defense logic is always linear," Aria muttered, the contempt in her voice sharper than any blade.
But she couldn't waste a breath. She had completed her mission—the theft of an archive marked [TOP SECRET: DAO SOURCE] from the core database. This file was infinitely more valuable than all of Olympus's immense energy reserves combined.
She leaped into a vent shaft, ready to breach the secure perimeter when, without warning, her augmented eye shrieked in protest, its alarm piercing her skull.
"Warning! Unknown Quantum Entanglement! Data Source is Non-Local! Warning!"
Aria's vision was abruptly overwritten by a torrent of blood-red—a terrifying, chaotic stream of data that tasted of scorched earth and burnt herbs. The humming of the vent fans vanished, replaced by a desperate, agonizing scream that echoed a thousand miles away.
[Line B: The Wasteland – Li Yunzhou]
Below the clouds, the Ground lay shrouded in the perpetual, corrosive mist of the Wasteland. There were no neons here, only the grim light filtering through the toxic haze.
Li Yunzhou was on his knees, his tattered robe scorched black, dark red blood pooling at the corner of his mouth. He knelt amidst a colossal heap of discarded microchips and rusty rebars—the final, ignoble trash pile of the Sky City.
"Nine-Reversal Golden Elixir? Trash! All you forged was a Junk Pellet!"
Towering over him was the traitor, Wang Hu, his blade crackling with high-voltage arcs, flanked by a dozen grinning, ragged scavengers.
"Younger Brother, your True Qi is depleted, yet you still dream of distilling Spiritual Essence from the Senate's scrap! Surrender! Hand over the 'Mo School Furnace Art'!" Wang Hu roared, drunk on his own triumph.
Li Yunzhou's insides felt like they were on fire. His unique All-Material Furnace Constitution allowed him to absorb discarded technology to cultivate, but the Grade-A Energy Block he had just tried to ingest—a defunct power core from Olympus—was too potent, too massive for his current level to refine.
"Heaven's fire descended upon us because of traitors like you!" Li Yunzhou coughed up a mouthful of black blood, but his eyes were filled with the defiant light of the truly desperate.
"My destiny is mine alone! Refine!"
He forced the Furnace Constitution, cramming the still faintly pulsing Energy Block into his ruined robes.
The surge of power was an internal explosion, accompanied by the acrid smell of burnt circuitry. The force of the energy was so immense it ripped through his Sea of Consciousness!
In the agonizing pain, a sequence of symbols—an Aetheric Rune unlike any in his ancient texts—appeared in his mind.
$$IF \quad (LI\_YUNZHOU: \quad ENERGY \quad OVERLOAD) \quad THEN \quad (INITIALIZE \quad PROTOCOL: \quad LIFE \quad SUPPORT)$$
A cold, unnervingly rational voice spoke in his mind: "Protocol established. Now rewriting the chaotic circulation paths of the host's True Qi."
[Dual Convergence: The First Pact]
Up in Olympus, Aria gripped her head. The blood-red overload warning faded, but in its place, a clear line of text remained in her vision.
[Warning: Host detected at critical status. Attempting to execute Life Support Protocol.]
Host? Aria realized the code wasn't a virus or an alarm; it was a Life Support Protocol—and it was linked to the dying man on the ground!
She stared at the stolen [DAO SOURCE ARCHIVE] in her hand. The encrypted codes were flashing, their structure matching the logic of the "Life Support Protocol" in her mind perfectly!
It wasn't an archive; it was a quantum-level "Stardust Pact."
On the Wasteland, the True Qi storm within Li Yunzhou settled. He found himself not only alive but with a purified, concentrated energy flow. The lethal Energy Block was fully refined, hardening into a shimmering, blue Crystal Core in his chest.
But the cold voice in his mind persisted, now carrying an air of command: "Protocol is active. Host, your survival consumed all available compute power. Immediately supply new processing power, or the connection will be severed."
Li Yunzhou clutched the Crystal Core, then looked up at the impenetrable clouds above. He knew his life had just been claimed by the 'voice'—the owner of the Aetheric Rune.
He took a deep, steadying breath.
"Processing power? Name your price, and I'll provide it."
"But first, tell me: Who are you?!"
[Next Chapter Preview:] Aria is locked down in a secure bunker. How will she use cybernetic communication to transmit cultivation techniques to Li Yunzhou? On the ground, Li Yunzhou faces Wang Hu's remaining thugs. How will he use the Crystal Core and the secrets of Code Cultivation for his first counterattack?
The cross-realm transaction between the two protagonists is about to begin. Tune in for Chapter 2: Code for Cultivation, Scrap for Treasure!