The monitor's refresh rate was sixty hertz. Su Yuan could see the flicker.
It was a byproduct of the neural overload—his brain was processing visual data faster than the ancient LCD screen could display it. The cursor blinked in the darkness of the room, a rhythmic, taunting metronome.
*Upload Complete.*
He leaned back in the chair. The plastic creaked, a sound like dry bones snapping. His head lolled against the headrest, and he stared up at the water stain on the ceiling. It had grown since yesterday. It looked less like a tumor now and more like a map of a coastline he didn't recognize.
Silence reclaimed the apartment. Not true silence—Sector 74 didn't allow for that—but the intimate, heavy quiet of a closed room. The refrigerator compressor kicked on with a death rattle. Outside, three floors down, a bottle shattered against pavement, followed by a string of curses in a dialect Su Yuan's translation implant couldn't parse.
He felt hollow. Scraped out.
The deduction of the **[Primary Shockwave Fighting Technique]** had taken ten soul-cycles. To the uninitiated, that meant nothing. To Su Yuan, it meant he had shoveled ten minutes of his own life expectancy into a furnace to forge a key.
He looked at his hands. They were trembling. Fine, spastic tremors that rattled the desk when he rested his wrists against the edge.
"Status," he croaked. His throat felt like he'd swallowed a handful of dry sand.
The grey fog of the SoulNet didn't billow this time. It seeped into his vision from the corners, overlaying the grim reality of the apartment with cold, hard data.
**[ Current State: Metabolic Exhaustion. ]**
**[ Soul Integrity: 89% (Fragile). ]**
**[ Administrator Energy: 0.04 Units. ]**
Empty. He was running on fumes.
He needed to eat. He reached for the last packet of nutrient paste, squeezed the foil tube, and flattened it against his tongue. Nothing came out but a puff of stale air and a drop of synthetic oil.
He tossed the wrapper at the overflowing waste bin. It missed.
"Pathetic," he whispered.
He stood up. The room spun. The floor tilted twenty degrees to the left, then righted itself. He grabbed the edge of the sink to stabilize. The mirror showed him a corpse in training. Pale skin, dark circles that looked like bruises, and that damning blue light pulsing weakly at his temple.
He needed to know if it was worth it.
He needed to test the merchandise.
Su Yuan moved to the center of the room. It was a space of maybe four square meters, bounded by the bed, the desk, and the kitchenette. The floor was cold steel grate, covered in a thin film of grime that no amount of scrubbing could lift.
He closed his eyes.
He didn't recall the technique from memory. He didn't have to. The SoulNet had burned the schematic directly into his motor cortex. It wasn't a memory; it was a reflex he hadn't used yet.
*Step one: The Circuit.*
He inhaled.
It wasn't a deep breath. It was a sharp, pressurized intake through the nose, timed to the beat of his own heart. *One. Two.* He held it.
In the standard Federation breathing techniques, *Qi* was visualized as a river—a flowing, gentle stream that nourished the body.
The **[Primary Shockwave]** was not a river. It was a piston.
Su Yuan felt the oxygen compress in his lungs. The modified breathing pattern forced his diaphragm to spasm in a controlled microscopic flutter. The bio-electricity in his nervous system—usually a chaotic storm of signals—snapped into alignment.
*Hum.*
He felt it in his teeth. A vibration. A resonance frequency building in the marrow of his radius and ulna.
**[ Skill Activation: Primary Shockwave. ]**
**[ Charge Level: 12%... 15%... ]**
It wasn't magic. It was physics. The human body was a bag of water and conductive salts. If you hit the right frequency, you could make the water dance. If you hit the *perfect* frequency, you could make it boil.
He opened his eyes. He looked at the mattress leaning against the wall—a slab of synthetic foam stained with the sweat of the previous tenant.
He stepped forward.
The movement was ugly. He had no martial arts background. His stance was too wide, his shoulders too tight. A master from the inner city clans would have laughed at him. They would have seen a malnourished rat flailing in the dark.
But the technique didn't care about grace. It cared about rhythm.
*Exhale.*
He punched.
It wasn't a haymaker. It was a short, straight jab, his fist rotating ninety degrees at the moment of impact.
His knuckles hit the foam.
*Pfft.*
The sound was underwhelming. Like slapping a wet towel. There was no thunderclap, no movie-style explosion. Su Yuan's wrist jarred painfully, shooting a line of fire up to his elbow. He stumbled back, clutching his arm, a curse hissing through his teeth.
"Garbage," he muttered, the disappointment bitter in his mouth. "Rank F- trash."
He glared at the mattress.
Then, he saw it.
On the surface of the foam, right where his fist had connected, nothing had happened. The fabric wasn't even torn.
But three inches *away* from the impact point, a cloud of dust puffed out from the *back* of the mattress.
Su Yuan froze.
He stepped closer. He grabbed the edge of the mattress and pulled it away from the wall.
The plaster behind the mattress had a circular crack, a spiderweb fracture about the size of a dinner plate.
He looked back at the mattress. He pressed his hand into the foam. It felt mushy, disintegrated. The force hadn't dispersed on the surface. It had traveled through the soft material, amplified by the water content in the foam, and detonated out the other side.
*Internal resonance.*
"Bypasses external defense," Su Yuan whispered. The realization chilled him.
In Neo-Jiangnan, people wore armor. They had dermal plating, carbon-fiber weaves, kevlar under-suits. They built themselves to be hard on the outside.
This technique didn't care how hard the shell was. It shook the meat inside the shell.
If he hit a man in the chest with this... it wouldn't bruise the skin. It would rupture the alveoli in the lungs. It would scramble the cardiac rhythm.
It was a shiv. A dirty, invisible shiv made of sound and breath.
**[ Assessment: Valid. ]**
**[ Rank: F- (Due to low raw damage output). ]**
**[ Special Property: Penetration. ]**
The System was arrogant. It classified the skill as "F-" because it didn't blow up buildings. It judged based on raw joules. It didn't account for lethality.
Su Yuan rubbed his sore wrist. A slow grin spread across his face. It wasn't a nice smile. It was the smile of a man who realized the gun he found in the trash was loaded.
He walked back to the computer. The screen saver had engaged—a bouncing logo of a smiling cat that stuttered every few seconds. He slapped the keyboard.
The forum page refreshed.
*Views: 42.*
*Downloads: 11.*
His heart hammered. Eleven people. Eleven rats in the maze had taken the cheese.
He scrolled down to the comments. The Gutter Boards were notorious for their toxicity. If you posted something weak, they ate you alive. If you posted something fake, they tracked your IP and bricked your rig.
*User: Chrome_Junkie:* "OP is a gonk. This ain't a cultivation manual. It's a suicide note. Breathing like this made me cough blood."
*User: RedLotus88:* "Trash. F-rank? More like Z-rank. My grandmother hits harder with her purse."
Su Yuan's eyes narrowed. He ignored the insults. He was looking for the data.
*User: Scavenger_Boy:* "Wait. Hold on. I tried it on a heavy bag. The bag didn't move, but the chain holding it snapped. The vibration traveled up the chain. This is... weird. Dangerous weird."
Su Yuan focused on the name. *Scavenger_Boy.*
Suddenly, a sensation prickled at the base of his skull.
It wasn't pain. It was a thread. A thin, gossamer line attaching itself to the back of his mind.
**[ Connection Established. ]**
**[ Node ID: Scavenger_Boy. ]**
**[ Status: Active Practice. ]**
Su Yuan gasped. The room seemed to tilt again.
He wasn't just seeing the text. He *felt* him.
Somewhere in the city, miles away, likely in a basement or a garage, a kid was breathing. Su Yuan could feel the rhythm of the kid's lungs. *Inhale. Hold. Compress.*
He could feel the mistake.
The kid was tensing his shoulders too much. The circuit was blocked at the trapezius. The energy was bleeding off as heat instead of kinetic potential.
"Relax your shoulders," Su Yuan whispered to the empty room.
The connection was one-way. He couldn't speak to them. Not yet.
But the data was flowing.
**[ Receiving Soul Tithing... ]**
**[ +0.0002 Energy. ]**
It was a microscopic amount. A dust mote of power. But as Su Yuan watched, the numbers on his retina flickered.
*0.0400* became *0.0402*.
Then another thread snapped into place.
**[ Connection Established. ]**
**[ Node ID: IronOx. ]**
This one was different. Heavier. Older.
Su Yuan felt a pulse of aggression. This user wasn't practicing on a bag. He was fighting.
*Impact.*
Su Yuan flinched. He felt the echo of a fist hitting bone. Not his fist, not his bone, but the sensation washed over him like a phantom limb. The user *IronOx* had just used the Shockwave to crack someone's ribcage.
The surge of energy that came back was sharper. Hotter.
**[ +0.0015 Energy. ]**
Su Yuan gripped the edge of the desk. He closed his eyes, savoring the influx. It was like drinking cold water after a week in the desert. The ache in his joints subsided. The mental fog receded by an inch.
He wasn't just recovering. He was feeding.
"More," he whispered.
He looked at the download counter. *14.*
It wasn't enough. He needed hundreds. Thousands.
He began to type again. He didn't respond to the comments. The "Root" account didn't argue. It only provided.
He opened a new thread.
**Subject: [Q&A] Troubleshooting the Shockwave Protocol.**
*If you are coughing blood, your diaphragm is weak. Reduce intake cycle by 0.5 seconds.*
*If your wrist hurts, your alignment is off. Rotate at the point of impact, not before.*
*This is not for the strong. This is for the hungry.*
He hit post.
Almost instantly, the notifications flared.
*User: Scavenger_Boy:* "OP is real? Holy hell. I adjusted the timing. It works. It actually works."
*User: NoName_99:* "Downloaded. Testing now."
The threads multiplied. Two became five. Five became ten.
Su Yuan sat in the dark, his eyes reflecting the blue light of the monitor. He felt like a spider sitting in the center of a web that was rapidly being spun by the prey themselves.
But as the connections grew, so did the noise.
It wasn't just power coming down the line. It was... residue. Fragments of emotion. Fear. Desperation. The metallic taste of cheap adrenaline. The stench of wet trash and burning plastic.
The SoulNet wasn't a clean filter. It was a sewer pipe. And he was the treatment plant.
A wave of nausea rolled over him. The sheer volume of sensory data from just ten people was disorienting. How would he handle a hundred? A million?
"System," he muttered, pressing his palms against his temples. "Filter the input. I only want the energy. Block the sensory feedback."
**[ Request Denied. ]**
Su Yuan froze.
"What?"
**[ Explanation: The Genesis Protocol requires the Administrator to understand the nature of the Source. Power cannot be separated from Intent. ]**
"I'm the Administrator," Su Yuan hissed. "I give the orders."
**[ Correction: You are the Root. Roots must grow in dirt. ]**
The text hung in the air, mocking him.
Su Yuan stared at it. The wording... it was getting more abstract. More sentient. When he first woke up, the System had been a cold calculator. Now, it was speaking in metaphors.
"Who are you?" he asked the empty room.
The text dissolved. A new window appeared.
**[ Alert: Anomaly Detected in Node 7 (IronOx). ]**
Su Yuan blinked, the philosophical dread replaced by immediate tactical concern. He focused on the connection with *IronOx*.
The signal was spiking.
*Flash.*
Su Yuan saw it. Not with his eyes, but with his mind. A grainy, low-fidelity image reconstructed from the sensory data of the user.
An alleyway. Rain slicking the cobblestones. *IronOx* was a large man, cybernetically enhanced with crude, rusting hydraulics on his legs. He was standing over a groaning figure.
But that wasn't the anomaly.
The anomaly was the man standing at the end of the alley.
He wore a white suit. Pristine. Unstained by the mud and the smog. A mask covered his face—a smooth, featureless oval of white porcelain. On his chest, a pin glinted. A blue triangle.
The Azure Dragon Corporation. Internal Security.
Su Yuan's breath hitched.
The Corporate Enforcer raised a hand. He didn't hold a gun. He held a scanner.
*IronOx* lunged. He used the Shockwave. He screamed, his breath syncing with the rhythm Su Yuan had designed.
The Enforcer didn't move. He didn't dodge.
*Impact.*
*IronOx's* fist slammed into the Enforcer's chest.
Su Yuan felt the resonance. He felt the vibration travel through the Enforcer's suit, bypassing the kinetic weave.
But then, it stopped.
It didn't echo. It didn't destroy. It was absorbed.
The Enforcer's chest plate glowed with a soft, dampening field.
*Harmonic cancellation.*
The Enforcer stepped forward and placed a palm on *IronOx's* forehead.
*Snap.*
The connection to Node 7 severed instantly.
**[ Node Lost. ]**
**[ Cause of Death: Cerebral Liquefaction. ]**
Su Yuan jerked back in his chair, gasping as if he'd been the one hit. His heart raced.
They were watching.
It had been less than an hour. The skill was barely out of the womb, and the Corporations were already sniffing around. *IronOx* had been a test subject, and he had failed.
But he had also succeeded.
The scanner. Su Yuan replayed the memory fragment of the Enforcer holding the scanner.
The device hadn't been scanning for weapons. It had been scanning for *signature*.
They weren't looking for a fighter. They were looking for the source of the code.
Su Yuan looked at the eviction notice still glowing dimly on his desk. He looked at the download counter.
*Views: 108.*
*Downloads: 43.*
Forty-three seeds planted. Forty-three potential liabilities.
Or forty-three soldiers.
If he stopped now, he was dead. The Corp would trace the upload eventually. They would find the apartment. They would find the broken student with the illegal port in his head.
His only safety lay in volume. If five people knew the technique, they were targets. If five *thousand* people knew the technique, it was a revolution. They couldn't kill everyone. They couldn't suppress an idea once it went viral.
He had to accelerate.
"System," Su Yuan said, his voice steadying. The fear was still there, cold and heavy in his gut, but he pushed it down. He used it as fuel. "Analyze the Enforcer's defense. The dampening field."
**[ Insufficient Data. ]**
"Extrapolate," Su Yuan commanded. "Based on the absorption rate. Why did the Shockwave fail?"
**[ Hypothesis: The Primary Shockwave utilizes a fixed frequency. The Enforcer's armor adapted to the oscillation. ]**
"Fixed frequency," Su Yuan muttered. "Predictable."
He looked at the code of his technique. It was static. Everyone practiced it the same way. Everyone punched at the same Hertz.
That was the flaw.
"I need to patch it," he said. "Version 1.1."
**[ Proposal: Introduce Variable Resonance. Instruct users to key the frequency to their own heartbeat. ]**
**[ Complexity: High. ]**
**[ Cost: 30 Soul-Cycles. ]**
He didn't have 30 cycles. He had 0.04 energy units and a fragile soul.
But he had the Network.
He looked at the remaining active connections. The threads pulsing in the dark.
*Scavenger_Boy* was still practicing. *AlleyCat* was asleep, but the connection remained dormant. Others were coming online.
He couldn't use his own soul. He was tapped out.
But what if he used theirs?
"Distributed processing," Su Yuan whispered.
It was a violation. It was theft. To use their minds not just as batteries, but as processors? To offload the burden of deduction onto their neural pathways?
It might fry them. It might give them migraines, nosebleeds, seizures.
He thought of the Enforcer in the white suit. The porcelain mask. The *snap* of IronOx's neck.
He thought of Sector 9.
"Initiate Genesis Protocol: Phase Two," Su Yuan said. "Distribute the calculation load across all active Nodes."
**[ Warning: This action causes mental strain to connected users. Probability of user rejection: 40%. ]**
"Do it."
The grey fog exploded outward.
In twenty different locations across Sector 74, twenty different slum-dwellers suddenly grabbed their heads. Some dropped their chopsticks. Some fell to their knees. A collective groan of pain that only Su Yuan could hear.
*What is this? My head!*
*Make it stop!*
Su Yuan gritted his teeth, feeling their pain wash back over him. He held the line. He forced the data through their minds, using their grey matter to crunch the numbers for the variable resonance algorithm.
It was chaotic. It was messy. It was the screams of twenty minds reacting to an alien invasion.
But the progress bar moved.
*10%... 40%... 80%...*
The lights in Su Yuan's apartment flickered and died. The computer monitor whined.
**[ Calculation Complete. ]**
**[ Patch Ready: Shockwave Ver 1.1 (Variable Frequency). ]**
The pain in the network vanished instantly as the load lifted.
Su Yuan slumped over the desk, sweat dripping from his nose onto the keyboard.
He had done it. He had forced them to forge their own upgrade.
He uploaded the patch.
*Update: IMPORTANT. Security Flaw Fixed. Adjust breathing rhythm to match pulse. Do not use static count. Download immediately.*
He watched the connections.
Would they leave? Would the pain drive them away?
For a long minute, the numbers hovered.
Then, *Scavenger_Boy* downloaded the patch.
The thread re-connected. Stronger this time. The hesitation was gone. The desperation for power outweighed the fear of pain.
Su Yuan let out a breath he didn't know he was holding.
He walked to the window. The rain was hammering against the glass, blurring the neon lights of the city into streaks of violent color.
He raised his hand and pressed it against the cold pane.
Somewhere out there, the Genesis Protocol was waking up. It wasn't just a system. It was an ecosystem. And he was the apex predator.
But as he looked at his reflection, at the hollow eyes and the blood-crusted lip, he realized the truth.
He wasn't the predator. Not yet.
He was the virus.
And the fever was just beginning.