At the edge of the iron wall pierced by the bone whip, molten gold dripped down, hissing as it hit the stagnant water. A thin wisp of sandalwood-scented steam curled upward.
Lin Yao had no time to breathe.
Gui's helmet slowly turned toward him. In that faceless mirrored visor, he saw the frantic red flicker of the sensor-ring on his left eye—and in the pupil of his right, the faint afterglow of dark-gold embers.
…He had dodged?
Impossible.
A Jurisdiction Warden of Ω-rank—its Nullpoint Thrust gave even Neuroth's seventh-gen dodge AIs less than 0.1 seconds of predictive window.
Unless it wasn't prediction.
It was synchronization.
He jerked his head down and stared at his own hands—left hand charred, right hand bleeding. Two bodies, in two worlds, suffering the exact same near-death tremor resonating through the same nerve endings.
"Anomalous individual," Gui said, voice utterly flat. The bone whip slid free from the metal wall, dragging threads of molten gold behind it. "Record. Capture priority: Alpha."
The battleship's underbelly cracked open again.
Three hive-shaped drones swarmed out, their compound eyes locking onto Lin Yao as pale violet scan-beams shot forth.
A beam swept across his injured right hand—
[Biological Match: Aethra Sample No.779 — "Mirrorkeeper"]
[Lingqi Residue: 0.3 units (decaying)]
[Fusion Indicators: Confirmed. Threat Level Upgraded: Ω+]
Lin Yao's stomach dropped.
They even had the name Aethra in their records.
He pushed off the ground, rolling backward and crashing into an abandoned cooling-pipe cluster. Rust-water splashed up, momentarily scattering the scans. He dove for the corner, seized an electromagnetic pistol, and fired at the nearest drone—
Bang!
The overheated barrel glowed red. The bullet skimmed the drone, leaving only a chalk-thin scratch. Its compound eyes flared scarlet. The three machines spread into a triangular assault formation, the undersides opening to reveal needle-fine entropy stingers.
—Aethra.
The Mirrorkeeping Monastery.
Gui withdrew his bone whip. The drop of Xihua re-rose to hover at its tip. He no longer even looked at Lin Yao, lifting his hand instead toward the dried spiritual spring at the temple's heart.
"Xihua leakage point. Coordinates locked."
"Activate: Eclipse Protocol."
At his command, the prows of all three silver warships ignited with cold blue halos. A ring-shaped force field descended from the sky like an inverted bowl, sealing the entire monastery inside.
The stone beneath Lin Yao's boots froze instantly, a biting cold flooding upward.
He looked down—several stubborn sprigs of spirit-grass still clinging to the cracks turned yellow, brittle, and collapsed into pale ash in seconds.
The spirit vein… had been silenced.
The lingqi within him receded like a dying tide. Even his breath tasted of rust. His master had warned him:
Before extracting Xihua, Wardens always mute the local spirit veins—to prevent spirit beasts from rampaging, and to prevent Mirrorkeepers from fighting back through geomantic resonance.
No escape.
Behind him, the fog of the Mirror Abyss churned like a silent maw.
Gritting his teeth, Lin Yao snatched the short blade from his belt—a non-metal weapon carved from lightning-struck wood, etched with suppression sigils. He drove the tip straight into the core sigil at the edge of the dry spring.
Hum—!
The ruins of the old array flared violently.
From the gray fog in the well, a skeletal claw—condensed from mist—shot upward and seized for his ankle.
A Mirror-Abyss wraith.
The lingering echo of a failed mirror-leap, feeding on living lingqi.
Lin Yao leapt back. The sword slipped free. The claw scraped his calf, carving three freezing wounds that bit straight to the soul. In the burst of pain, he saw it—on the wraith's wrist—
A ring of microscopic circuits.
Neuroth-style engraving.
—This ghost… was once a Twinborn?
At that same instant—
—Neuroth, Seventh Alley.
The drones fired their entropy needles!
Lin Yao rolled aside. A stinger grazed his shoulder—his combat suit split with a sizzle, the exposed skin graying at once as numbness surged toward his heart like a venomous serpent.
"Urgh—!"
His sensor-ring spewed corrupted code. Neural interface warnings lit up:
[Entropy Infection: +12%]
[Recommendation: Inject anti-entropy agent within 72 seconds to prevent limb necrosis]
He had no such agent.
The drones advanced, their scanners locking onto his right arm—where his bleeding wound had begun to glow faintly, warm with dark-gold light pulsing beneath the skin.
"Lingqi… repairing me?"
The thought flashed by.
No time.
He lunged toward a shattered holomirror, pressing both palms onto its scorching, fractured surface—
Not to escape.
To reach out.
"Help—me—!"
His mind slashed through the barrier like a blade.
—Aethra.
The wraith's claw clamped around his throat, gray fog surging into his nose and mouth. Consciousness blurred. At the edge of collapse, his palm—pressed to the stone floor—felt a sudden…
A high-frequency tremor.
Not lingqi.
Electronic pulses.
Weak, but with a deliberate rhythm:
Short-short-short.
Long-long-long.
Short-short-short.
…SOS?
His fading mind lurched.
This frequency—he knew it. It was the distress code from old Neuroth communicators!
Deep within the fog, the wraith's claw… hesitated.
Half a second.
Now!
With the last of his strength, Lin Yao slammed his left hand onto the fractured mirror's core—
Bang!
The mirror shards burst with light.
Not dark-gold—
But Neuroth's signature cold blue.
Needle-sharp blue light pierced straight into the wraith's eye socket. It recoiled in a silent scream, gray vapor writhing violently. The circuit engravings on its wrist erupted in sparks, glitching as though short-circuited.
Lin Yao tore free and staggered toward the monastery's side door—
Boom!
The door was smashed inward by brute force.
Not a warship.
Not a wraith.
A mechanical limb—silver-gray, five fingers hooked into the frame. The armor on its shoulder was torn open, exposing flickering blue cables beneath. Its owner knelt in the corrosive rain—Neuroth's acid droplets were eating into her right shoulder, yet she didn't seem to feel it.
She simply stared at Lin Yao, breath ragged.
"You… hear it too?"
She looked seventeen, maybe eighteen.
Wet black hair clung to her bloodless cheeks.
Her left eye was normal—
Her right eye was a rotating radar array, faint light sweeping behind the lens.
She tapped a finger to her temple.
Her voice cracked, but steady:
"The mirror-frequency… the static.
Like rusted gears trying to sing.
It's been there… for three days."
—Neuroth, Seventh Alley.
The moment Lin Yao touched the mirror, the three drones were hit by a violent electromagnetic surge. Their red eyes flickered, their bodies spiraling out of control.
He looked up—
In the alley's shadow, a girl knelt with one knee on the ground, raising her mechanical right arm high. The palm opened, revealing a bare coil. Rain ran down her blood-soaked shoulder.
She bared sharp little canine teeth in a grin.
"Hey, mirror-speaker.
Next time you call for help… give me at least 0.5 seconds' warning, yeah?"
The drones regained stability and aimed their stingers—
Her prosthetic arm shifted instantly.
Armor plates unfolded.
A six-barrel micro-rotor cannon snapped into place.
"Down!"
Lin Yao dove.
Ratatatatat—!
Specialized lead-core rounds rained out, striking the drones' compound-eye seams—not to destroy, but to disrupt. The rounds were packed with magnetic powder, short-circuiting their vision arrays.
The three drones collided mid-air, sparking wildly.
The girl grabbed Lin Yao's wrist and yanked him into the alley.
"Move! They'll call reinforcements!"
Her prosthetic joints overheated, venting blue smoke, but her grip held firm.
As they sprinted, rain flooding down their collars, Lin Yao glanced at her wounded right shoulder—within the torn flesh, dark-gold threads crawled slowly, attempting to stitch the wound.
Xihua… inside her?
"What's your name?" he gasped.
"Rhea," she said without looking back.
"R-H-E-A.
They call me the 'Static Receiver'."
She suddenly halted, shoving him behind a wall.
Silver light flashed at the far end.
Gui descended.
The bone whip hung low, the Xihua drop gleaming at the tip—reflecting the two of them in its cold curvature.
Rhea's prosthetic shifted again.
Her palm opened into a glowing, hand-sized holographic screen, streams of code cascading downward.
At the center, a red line blinked:
[Mirror-Frequency Sync: 67%]
[Recommendation: Cooperate. He can "see." I can "hear."]
She turned, giving him a lopsided grin—sharp canine tooth peeking out.
"Now… do you trust me?"
Lin Yao looked at her spinning radar eye, then at his own hands, still trembling with twin-world resonance.
Gui's whip began to rise.
Lin Yao drew a breath.
And nodded.
"I trust you."
—Deep within the mirror, a faint ember of dark gold pulsed, like the beat of a heart.
(End of Chapter · 3,248 Characters)
Author's Note · After Chapter Two (English Translation)
Hello, Mirrorkeeper.
Thank you for running with Lin Yao through acid rain and sandalwood smoke;
and thank you for hearing that faint sound inside Rhea's prosthetic—
the one that feels like rusted gears trying to sing.
Some readers asked:
Why mirror-frequency static?
Because worlds torn apart were never meant to be quiet.
That static is the echo of Xihua thrashing against collapsing entropy channels;
the residue of dragon-song trapped between spectral bands;
and the cries of countless "Lin Yaos," scattered through the depths of the Mirror Abyss, refusing to fade.
A real team is never formed by matching talents—
but when wounds resonate on the same frequency.
One bleeds Aethra's quiet gold.
One leaks Neuroth's machine-oil pulse.
When prosthetic circuitry and spiritual threads begin to weave together beneath the skin,
we understand:
Fusion is never about erasing difference—
but letting difference resonate.
I rewrote the chase sequence of this chapter five times—
so that every roll, every muzzle flash, every streak of Xihua felt weighted and real.
Because I wanted you to believe that when Rhea asks,
"Do you trust me?"
and Lin Yao answers,
"I do,"
—it isn't merely plot.
It is the most instinctive faith we have in connection.
Thank you for not leaving after Chapter One.
Ahead, more voices will join this rising mirror-frequency:
grass-whisperers, dragon-growlers, traitors, guardians…
And you—
you were the first soul who ever heard the static.
— KHChing
Written in the Fracture Era · On the Night of First Resonance