The plan progressed slowly, like water dripping, eroding stone. After my reckless meeting with Shen, a more dangerous reality slammed back into me. Yan wasn't just watching me; he now seemed fused with my every breath. Every spiritual fluctuation, every blink that lasted too long, was all noted by him with the obsession of a collector studying a rare specimen.
"Your concentration is wavering, Wa Lang," he said one afternoon, as I tried to map the energy flow in the northwestern underground sector based on the memory of an absorbed slave laborer. The needle on the measuring device in his hand vibrated erratically, reflecting the restlessness I was hiding. "Is something troubling you?"
"Fatigue, Master," I answered, bowing my head. "The burden of... these memories. Sometimes they scream." That wasn't a complete lie. The collective inside me was a never-calm ocean, and waves of their panic sometimes crashed against my consciousness.
Yan observed with narrowed eyes, then suddenly placed his hand on my head. I froze. A foreign energy, subtle and piercing like ice needles, infiltrated my mind. He was trying to touch my consciousness directly, to feel the chaos within.
Don't block it, warned Liang Jie's voice quickly. Let him feel the noise. But hide the rest. Hide Shen.
I forced myself to relax, letting the walls of my mental defense open a crack. I let Yan feel the rumble of fear from the ordinary souls, their despair, the background noise of thousands of memories. But I buried deep the secret knowledge of the Containment Formation, the memory of my meeting with Shen, and our plan in the deepest layer, wrapped in the dark, impenetrable consciousness of my "Seed."
Yan withdrew his hand, frowning. "Chaotic," he muttered, but there was satisfaction in his tone. He was pleased to see their suffering. He was pleased to see me burdened. It made me more predictable, easier to control. "You need rest. Tomorrow, we will try purification techniques. To... quiet the noise."
Purification techniques. Those words made the souls inside me scream in terror. "Purification" for Yan meant erasing individual consciousness, filtering them into raw energy. It would silence their voices, and perhaps a part of me as well.
This was a direct threat. We had to move faster.
That night, through Mei, a message came from Shen. An opportunity. In three days, there would be a massive guard rotation in the tunnels leading to the Stone Heart, as a number of elite overseers were called away for training. Shen, who was in charge of the schedule, had manipulated it so that the guards on duty were his trusted men—or at least, those who were indifferent. He had also arranged for Yan to receive an "official" request to bring me to the area for "field energy measurement calibration," a request that sounded plausible in the context of his research.
This was our window. Narrow and dangerous.
---
The next two days were torture. Yan put me through a series of agonizing "purification drills." He forced me to focus on one soul in the collective—an old miner with vague memories—and forcibly tried to "erase" his emotional memories, leaving only spatial data about the mine. The process felt like tearing off a piece of my own soul. I could feel the old man's silent scream as his identity was unraveled. My "Seed" was furious, resisting, absorbing the energy intended for "purification" and turning it into ammunition for us.
Yan, however, saw this resistance as progress. "Good! Your Seed is developing defense mechanisms! It's protecting its 'collection'!" He was even more fascinated. The admiration made me sick.
Finally, the appointed day arrived. My heart pounded like a war drum as Yan and I walked through the increasingly deep tunnels, escorted by two regular overseers—not elites. One of them, I realized from Shen's unspoken signal, was our man.
The environment here was different. The air was heavier, filled with ancient spiritual energy that pulsed like a sleeping giant's heart. The walls were no longer ordinary stone, but black metal carved with faintly glowing ancient script. The sounds of workers were absent here, only the low roar of humming formations.
We arrived in a vast circular chamber. In its center, anchored to the floor, was a giant crystal pillar emitting a faint light. This was the Stone Heart—the energy source of the mine, and the cage for the "Buried One." The intricate Containment Formation was carved into the floor around the pillar, glowing with complex patterns of blue light.
As planned, Yan began setting up his equipment, ordering me to "feel" the energy flow of the formation. The two overseers stood near the door. The one who was our man deliberately started chatting with the other, distracting him.
This was my chance.
I knelt, placing my palms on the cold floor. I closed my eyes, pretending to concentrate. Inside, I shouted to the collective: Now! Show me the weak point! The one that won't be detected!
Images flooded my mind—architectural diagrams, secret maintenance logs, memories of slaves forced to work here. They showed me a small point at the base of the pillar, where a secondary "stabilizing rune" had cracked due to ground shifts years ago. It wasn't a fatal flaw, but enough to cause a "minor functional failure" that would take weeks to diagnose and repair—precious time we desperately needed.
But to reach it, I had to touch the pillar directly. And the pillar was guarded by a layer of spiritual defense that would flare up if touched without authorization.
Seed, I thought, can you mimic the energy frequency of the Elders? The one recorded in their memories?
My "Seed" responded. It sifted through the archive of consciousness, finding the memory of an Elder performing routine maintenance. It analyzed that Elder's "spiritual fingerprint." Then, with astonishing precision, it wrapped my hand in a thin layer of energy that mimicked that fingerprint.
Holding my breath, I reached out and touched the base of the crystal pillar.
No alarm sounded. The defense layer only vibrated gently, mistaking me for an Elder.
With the tip of my nail, carefully, I scratched the surface of the already cracked rune. I didn't repair it. Instead, I used a tiny wisp of dark energy from the "Seed" to microscopically widen the crack, and injected a bit of "spiritual chaos"—a mixture of toxic energy from the Poison Tunnels and the sorrow from the souls I had absorbed. It would act like rust, slowly and invisibly disrupting the energy flow.
Then, I pulled my hand back. It all happened in less than ten seconds.
"Is something wrong?" asked Yan, busy with his instruments.
"No, Master," I answered, standing up. "It's just... the energy here is very strong. It's like... something big is breathing."
Yan smiled, satisfied. "That's it, Wa Lang. That is the breath of our future." He didn't even suspect what I had just done.
As we turned to leave, I caught the gaze of our overseer at the door. He nodded, almost imperceptibly.
We had done it.
My Seed pulsed with satisfaction, but also wariness. We had thrown a small stone into a massive machine. Now, we had to wait and see if that stone would cause the desired damage... or trigger a total failure that would destroy us all.
The journey back felt like a bittersweet, small victory. We had started our resistance. But in the shadows, I could feel the sleeping eyes of the "Buried One," and Yan's hot breath on the back of my neck. The battle had just begun.