The Silver Spire was not a single tower; it was the tip of a buried needle. The Sovereign Express parked beside the massive blast doors at the base of the structure. The metal was pitted by ten thousand years of sandstorms, but the alloy—a seamless dull grey—remained unbreached.
"Thermite charges set," Sergeant Zhou reported, his voice echoing in the dry desert air.
Jiang Chen stood by the tracks, wearing his Ronin Mark IV suit. Even without the helmet, the suit's life-support systems were humming, pumping cool air and hydration into his system. Beside him, Ye Bai leaned heavily on a walking stick. The Sword Saint's lips were cracked, his skin parched. The Null-Qi field was stripping the vitality right out of his cells.
"You should stay in the train," Jiang Chen said, checking the seals on his gauntlets.
"I must see it," Ye Bai rasped, his eyes burning with a stubborn, mortal fire. "I must see what killed the Old World."
"Fire in the hole!"
FZZZT-BOOM.
The thermite charges burned through the locking mechanism at 4,000 degrees. The heavy doors groaned, the ancient hydraulics failing, and then slammed inward with a cloud of stale dust that hadn't moved in millennia.
The team moved in. Fifty Ronin Guards, their helmet lights cutting through the gloom, rifles raised.
They expected traps. They expected more clockwork guardians.
Instead, they found a graveyard.
The entrance hall was a vast atrium of brushed steel and glass. And scattered across the floor were bodies.
They were mummified by the dry air, preserved in their final moments of agony. They wore the distinct, gear-embroidered robes of the Heavenly Craft Sect.
Ye Bai hobbled over to a corpse leaning against the wall. He recognized the jade pendant around its neck.
"Elder Mu," Ye Bai whispered, shock cutting through his exhaustion. "He vanished fifty years ago. The Sect said he ascended to a hidden realm."
He looked around. There were dozens of them. And around them lay their "weapons"—intricate wooden puppets, clockwork spiders, and floating gliders.
But here, in the Null-Qi zone, they were just toys.
"Look at them," Jiang Chen said, kneeling beside a wooden ox. The joints were seized. The spirit-stone battery was inert. "They brought magic to a physics fight."
"They didn't die from wounds," Ye Bai noted, looking at Elder Mu's hands, which were clawing at his own throat. "They died of thirst. Their spatial bags didn't work. Their water talismans failed. They dragged their heavy wooden puppets until they collapsed."
It was a grim tableau. The masters of the Heavenly Craft Sect, the greatest engineers of the current age, had died clawing at the blast doors of the true masters.
"This is why I trust steel," Jiang Chen said, standing up. "Steel doesn't need belief to hold water."
He signaled the squad. "Press on. The Control Center should be deeper."
They descended a spiral ramp into the heart of the silo. The air became cooler, smelling of ozone and old copper.
They reached the Command Deck. It was a circular room filled with banks of dark consoles and dead screens. In the center sat a skeletal remains in a strange, synthetic uniform—not robes, but a jumpsuit with patches.
Jiang Chen walked to the main console. He wiped away the dust.
[Terminal Inactive.]
"Old Wu, bring the Fusion Cell," Jiang Chen ordered. "Jump-start it."
Wu hooked up a portable generator to the panel.
HUMMM.
The lights in the room flickered. One by one, the ancient fluorescent strips buzzed to life. The screens flashed static, then settled into a blue interface.
Ye Bai stared at the screens. He saw text. It wasn't the flowery calligraphy of the Sects. It was blocky, precise, and utilitarian.
"What language is that?" Ye Bai asked.
"Binary," Jiang Chen said, his eyes scanning the scrolling data. "And... English? No, a derivative. Standard Terran."
He plugged his own Neural Link into the port.
[Access Granted. Administrator Clearance Recognized.]
"Play the last log," Jiang Chen commanded.
A holographic projector in the center of the room flared to life. A man appeared. He looked tired, unshaven, wearing a lab coat stained with coffee. Behind him, on the recording, red alert lights were flashing.
"Day 0 of the Collapse," the hologram spoke. The language was strange, but the System translated it in real-time for Jiang Chen.
"The Project failed. The 'Spirit-Web' satellites... they didn't just broadcast energy. They pierced the membrane."
The man rubbed his face.
"We wanted infinite clean energy. We tapped into a dimensional plane of pure potentiality. We called it 'Zero-Point Energy'. The locals call it... what? Mana? Qi?"
Ye Bai froze. "Qi?"
"It's a contagion," the man continued, his voice breaking. "It's not energy. It's a mutagenic radiation from a higher dimension. It rewrites physics. It allows mind over matter. Sounds great, right? Until the animals start mutating. Until people start bending reality with their thoughts."
The hologram looked directly at the camera.
"The laws of thermodynamics are breaking down. Our tech stops working because 'belief' is overriding 'circuitry'. We are sealing the Silos. We are establishing Null-Zones to preserve the seed of logic. If anyone finds this... do not let the 'Cultivators' win. They are not gods. They are patients zero of a reality plague."
The recording ended.
Silence filled the room.
Ye Bai sat heavily in a swivel chair. He looked at his hands.
"A plague," Ye Bai whispered. "My cultivation... my Dao... is a sickness?"
"From a certain point of view," Jiang Chen said, disconnecting his link. "The Ancients built a network to harvest energy. It leaked. The radiation—Qi—changed the world. It allowed biological ascension, but it destroyed technological consistency."
Jiang Chen looked at the console. He saw the files labeled "STC - Standard Template Constructs."
These were the Manuals. Not spells. Blueprints.
Project: Sky-Net (Satellite Defense).
Project: Gungnir (Orbital Railgun).
Project: Gene-Forging (Space Marine Protocol).
"This is the history they forgot," Jiang Chen said, downloading the data to his chest drive. "The 'Gods' were just scientists who opened a door they couldn't close."
He turned to Ye Bai.
"Ye Bai. The Sword Saint. Do you feel less powerful now?"
Ye Bai looked at the hilt of his sword. He thought about the joy of flight. He thought about the horror of the Kraken.
"No," Ye Bai said slowly. "I feel... liberated."
He looked up, a new light in his eyes.
"If Qi is just a spilled resource, then it belongs to everyone. It is not holy. It is just... fuel."
"Exactly," Jiang Chen smiled. "And we are the janitors."
He patted the console.
"We have what we came for. We have the maps of the other Silos. And we have the codes for the Orbital Array."
"Orbital?" Ye Bai asked.
"There are guns in the sky, Ye Bai," Jiang Chen pointed upward. "Sleeping guns. And I just found the remote."
As they turned to leave, the floor shook.
BOOM.
"Administrator!" Sergeant Zhou shouted from the corridor. "Contact! The Heavenly Craft Sect is here! And they brought... something big!"
Jiang Chen checked the sensors. Outside the blast doors, a massive wooden construct—a Siege Tortoise powered by a captured Beast Soul—was ramming the Sovereign Express.
But they were in the Null-Qi zone.
"How is it moving?" Ye Bai asked. "Spirit stones shouldn't work here."
"They aren't using Spirit Stones," Jiang Chen narrowed his eyes, reading the thermal scan. "They are burning Blood. Human blood."
The Heavenly Craft Sect had found a workaround. If the ambient Qi was zero, they used the life-force of slaves as disposable batteries.
"Barbarians," Jiang Chen spat.
He grabbed a heavy Plasma Rifle from the rack on the wall—a relic left by the ancients, fully charged.
"Ye Bai. You wanted to see how the Old World fought?"
Jiang Chen tossed the rifle to the Sword Saint.
"Point and click. It's easier than a sword."