The marshlands of the Yangtze River Delta were a place of eerie silence, a territory humanity had long since ceded to the creeping influence of the Abyss. Under the cold, silver light of a full moon, the silence was broken by the quiet, disciplined movements of dozens of figures clad in dark combat gear.
These were the independent hunters, the stray dogs and lone wolves of the Awakened world. But tonight, they were not a scattered mob. They moved with a shared purpose, a cohesive discipline born from a single, trusted source of intelligence. They were the nascent army of Oracle, and they were gathering for their first proactive strike.
At a temporary command post set up on a small, dry hill overlooking the nesting grounds, Captain Lin Mei coordinated the operation. Her voice, crisp and clear over the secure Alliance channel, was the central nerve of the entire assault force.
"Team Stray Dog, confirm your position at sector Gamma. Have you deployed the RCMs?" A gruff voice replied, "This is Old Croc. We're in position, Captain. The 'music boxes' are planted. Damn things are heavier than they look. Waiting for your signal."
"Team Crimson Blade, status on sector Delta?" "All clear, Nomad-Lead. Mines are set. We have a clear line of sight on the largest egg cluster."
One by one, the teams reported in. They were a patchwork quilt of different backgrounds and abilities, but tonight they were a single weapon, aimed at the heart of an unborn threat. The tension was thick, but it was the focused, professional tension of soldiers executing a plan, not the desperate fear of cornered prey. They had a blueprint for victory. They believed.
The next day at Shanghai No. 1 High, the atmosphere was thick with a different, more personal kind of tension. For Su Liying, the world had been repainted in new colors. Every mundane action performed by the boy sitting behind her now seemed laden with cosmic significance.
The way he tapped his pen wasn't boredom; it was a complex rhythm, perhaps a form of calculation. The way he stared out the window wasn't daydreaming; it was cosmic observation. She knew she was projecting, but she couldn't help it. The secret she carried was so immense it colored her entire reality.
She had to know more. She had to test him again, to see another flicker of the vast intellect hiding behind that placid mask.
During the lunch break, she approached his desk. The few students nearby watched with curiosity. The school goddess was once again approaching the school's official trash.
"Qin Mo," she began, her voice steady despite her racing heart. She held out her physics textbook, open to a notoriously difficult bonus question at the end of the chapter. "I know you're... good at physics. I've been staring at this problem all morning. No one in my study group can even figure out where to begin. It's about quantum tunneling through multi-layered energy barriers."
She watched his face for any reaction. Any sign of surprise or recognition. There was none. He simply glanced down at the complex equations on the page.
The problem was, in essence, asking how a low-energy particle could bypass a series of powerful, overlapping energy shields. It was a theoretical question with immense practical implications for the war against the Abyss.
For any other student, it was impossible. For Qin Mo, it was Tuesday. He had watched an assassin avatar from the 'Void Walker' race do exactly this to infiltrate an Abyssal Dreadnought just last week.
He could have solved it in ten seconds. But that wasn't the point. The game he was playing with Su Liying was far more delicate.
He looked up from the book, his calm eyes meeting hers. He didn't take the pen she offered. Instead, he simply tapped a single line in the mess of failed calculations she had scribbled on the page.
"Your initial premise is flawed," he said, his voice a quiet monotone that carried an unshakable certainty. "You are treating the particle as a singular entity following a single path. That is a classical mechanics fallacy." He looked back into her eyes. "You should be calculating the probability wave of its potential states and identifying the path of least resistance through harmonic resonance. The barrier isn't a wall to be broken; it's a series of frequencies to be matched."
He had given her the key, but not the answer. He had confirmed his knowledge without admitting to anything.
Su Liying stared down at the equation he had pointed to. His words echoed in her mind. The barrier isn't a wall to be broken; it's a series of frequencies to be matched. Her mind, already brilliant, suddenly exploded with understanding. A dozen different solutions bloomed in her thoughts. It was so simple, so elegant. So impossibly advanced.
She looked up to thank him, a gasp of awe on her lips, but he had already turned away, his gaze once again directed out the window, as if their conversation had been a trivial distraction he had already forgotten.
She walked back to her desk, the heavy textbook feeling weightless in her hands. The proof was undeniable. The silent game continued, and she had just lost another round, but in doing so, had gained a more profound understanding of the player on the other side of the board.
That night, in the marshlands, the time had come.
Lin Mei watched the readings from Hephaestus's sensor, now networked to all the squad leaders. "Chroniton particle density is spiking," she announced over the comms. "Hatching is imminent. All teams, final check. Prepare for detonation on my mark."
Across the desolate landscape, dozens of hunters braced themselves. They saw the ground begin to tremble. The large, crystalline egg clusters, some as large as cars, began to glow with a sickly internal light and vibrate audibly.
"Detonate," Lin Mei commanded, her voice cold as steel.
The response was instantaneous. On her signal, dozens of hunters slammed the triggers on their remote detonators.
The result was not a fiery, concussive explosion. It was a symphony of silent, invisible power. A wave of multi-frequency sonic energy, perfectly calibrated, washed over the nesting grounds. The ground itself seemed to hum, the very air vibrating with a discordant power.
The effect on the eggs was immediate and catastrophic.
The glowing, crystalline shells, subjected to a dozen different resonance frequencies at once, began to develop micro-fractures. The fractures spread in a heartbeat, a beautiful and deadly spiderweb of light. Then, with a series of sharp, cracking sounds that echoed across the marsh, the eggs didn't just break; they disintegrated. They shattered into millions of glowing, harmless shards, the unhatched Razorcrab larvae inside instantly turned to vaporized goo.
It was a purge. A silent, efficient, and utterly devastating slaughter.
A few dozen eggs on the periphery of the blast zones survived and hatched. The newly emerged Chitin-Hardened Razorcrabs, confused and disoriented, were immediately dispatched by hunters firing their OSE-2 sonic cannons. The battle was over before it had truly begun.
The assembled hunters slowly emerged from their positions, staring at the field of glittering dust that had, moments before, been a threat capable of overrunning a small city. They had not just won. They had sterilized the threat at its source. A feeling of profound awe and power washed over them. This was the power of Oracle.
Qin Mo was walking home from school, the setting sun painting the sky in hues of orange and gold. His phone buzzed in his pocket with a secured notification. He pulled it out. It was a message from Nomad-Lead on the Alliance platform's direct messaging system.
> Mission 'Chimera's Cradle' successful. All primary targets neutralized pre-hatching. Resistance was minimal. The flock is asking for its shepherd's next command.
Qin Mo read the message, his expression unreadable. He looked up from his phone, his gaze directed not at the setting sun, but at the sky above, as if he could see the stars that were still hidden by the daylight.
'The flock has learned to hunt,' he thought, a sense of clinical satisfaction settling in his mind. 'They can now efficiently clear pests from their own pasture.'
A normal leader would feel pride. A normal hero would feel triumphant. Qin Mo simply processed the result and moved on to the next, grander calculation.
'But they are still just that. A flock. They fight what is in front of them.' His gaze became distant, piercing through the veil of his own reality. 'The true wolves are not in this pasture. They are in another forest entirely, a forest from which the Abyss itself is but a single, probing branch.'
The data from the Devourer's tissue sample, combined with the knowledge from his avatars, had revealed a new, terrifying variable in his grand equation. A new target. Not a monster, not a Rift, but something far, far older.
His next plan would not involve giving his followers another weapon. It would involve pointing them towards a truth they were not ready to see, a war they were not prepared to fight. It was time to show them what the real enemy looked like.