The next two years were a period of suffocating silence for the empire's innovators.
Wei Jin became the tyrant he had sworn never to be.
Using the Causality Anchor and the omnipresent surveillance of his computer-integrated clones, he monitored every laboratory, every workshop, every garage inventor in the empire.
When a team at the Imperial University came close to unlocking anti-matter containment, their hard drives were wiped by a "random" electromagnetic surge. When a rogue sect in the south attempted to bind a nuclear reactor to a demon spirit, their compound was swallowed by a sudden, localized earthquake. When a bright young student in Qinghe proposed a theory for faster-than-light travel based on spiritual tunneling, she received a scholarship to study botany in the most remote province available.
It was a systematic culling of genius.
Wei Jin sat in his office, reviewing the list of suppressed projects. It felt like burning books. It felt like cutting the wings off birds.
"President," Zero's voice chimed, sounding unusually subdued. "The Faculty Senate is requesting another meeting. They are… unhappy. They say the 'Safety Protocols' are strangling progress. Professor Li threatened to resign."
"Let him," Wei Jin said, his voice flat. "Better unemployed than vaporized."
He rubbed his temples. The burden of the secret was crushing. He couldn't tell them why. He couldn't tell them that a twelve-year-old girl with a lollipop was waiting in orbit with a finger on the delete button. If the world knew they were being held hostage by an alien god, panic would ensue. Or worse, defiance. Someone would try to fight, and they would cross the Tier 4 threshold.
So he played the villain. The cautious, conservative bureaucrat terrified of his own creations.
"Maintain the restrictions," Wei Jin ordered. "And increase the monitoring on the Alchemy Division. I saw a report about 'Soul-Fission Explosives.' Shut it down."
"Yes, Prime."
Wei Jin stood and walked to the window. The city of Qinghe was still bright, still prosperous, but the frenetic energy of the last decade had dimmed. The people were safe, but they were bored. Stagnant.
He was doing exactly what the Watchers had done for forty thousand years. He had become the new suppressor.
The irony tasted like ash in his mouth.
—————
The Second Visit
He retreated to his cavern for evening meditation.
The Stellar Consumption Art was working. The beam of starlight, filtered through the Planetary Cloak's recyclers, was a pure, cold fuel. His Spirit Severing cultivation was racing toward the Late Stage. The barrier was already visible, a thin membrane of reality separating him from the next level of power.
He closed his eyes, sinking into the void of his own soul.
"Hello again, Mole."
Wei Jin opened his mental eyes.
Red Tulip was there. She was sitting cross-legged in the air, floating upside down. Her red dress defied gravity, hanging perfectly straight as if she were right-side up. She was eating a stick of candied hawthorn this time.
"Commander," Wei Jin greeted her, his mental fortress slamming its gates.
"Relax," she chirped, spinning right-side up. "I'm not here to smite you. I'm here to give you a gold star. Or maybe a red one."
She floated closer, inspecting him.
"You've been a very good boy, Wei Jin. Very obedient. That business with the anti-matter lab? Brutal. Efficient. The Collective Logic was pleased. The energy signature dropped by 0.04 units."
"I did what was necessary," Wei Jin said stiffly.
"Did you?" She tilted her head. "Or did you just do what you were told?"
Wei Jin frowned. "I am protecting my people."
"From me. Yes." She finished the hawthorn and tossed the stick away. It vanished into pixels before it hit the ground. "But tell me, Wei Jin… why do you think I'm talking to you?"
"Because you are curious. You said so."
"Curiosity explains observation," she said. "It doesn't explain interaction. It doesn't explain intervention."
She floated closer, until her face was inches from his. Her eyes were deep red pools of scrolling code.
"Can you tell me why I am notifying you? Why I am giving you the thresholds? Why I am letting you know exactly how close you are to the edge?"
Wei Jin hesitated. "Because you want me to succeed? Because you want to see if a civilization can self-regulate?"
Red Tulip giggled. It was a terrible, delightful sound.
"Oh, you sweet, simple thing. Of course a Mole needs to know the mission parameters."
Wei Jin went still. "A mole?"
"A sleeper agent. An embedded asset. A backdoor." She tapped his forehead. "Wei Jin, do you really think your 'Panel' is a natural phenomenon? Do you think the universe just hands out efficiency trackers to random farm boys?"
Wei Jin's breath caught. He had wondered. He had theorized. He had thought it might be a remnant of the Ancients, or a lucky mutation of his soul.
"It is my handiwork," Red Tulip whispered.
The world seemed to tilt.
"It is a sub-routine of the Silencer Operating System. A diagnostic and optimization tool I implanted in a suitable biological substrate one hundred eighty years ago."
She smiled, showing teeth that were too white, too perfect.
"It's no coincidence I can speak with you, Wei Jin. I'm not hacking your mind. I have admin access. I've always had admin access."
Wei Jin stumbled back, his mental fortress trembling. The system. The thing that had guided him, saved him, empowered him. It was her. It was them.
"Why?" he croaked.
"Because the Collective Logic was stuck," she said, her voice turning serious. "For two billion years, we have been pruning. Kill the loud ones, keep the quiet ones. But the quiet ones… they stagnate. They rot. The galaxy was becoming a graveyard of bored immortals and stone-age monkeys."
She began to pace around him.
"We needed data on a new path. A controlled ascent. Could a civilization be guided past the Great Filter? Could they be taught to handle the fire without burning the house down? We couldn't do it directly—direct intervention violates the Prime Directive. So we needed an agent."
She stopped in front of him.
"We needed you."
Wei Jin looked at his hands. "I am… a tool?"
"You are a hybrid," she corrected. "You are not a pure human, so to speak. Your soul… it was edited before you were born. We spliced in some of our own code. That's why you can interface with the panel. That's why you have the Reasoning Cycle. That's why you can grasp concepts that take normal cultivators centuries to learn."
She leaned in.
"You are part Silencer, Wei Jin. You are the bridge."
Wei Jin felt a wave of nausea. His identity, his achievements, his struggle—was it all a script? Was his "rebellion" just part of the program?
"Does this amuse you?" he asked, his voice shaking with rage.
"It fascinates me," Red Tulip said. "But now… now we reach the interesting part."
She began to fade.
"You know what you are. You know who pulls the strings. The question is… does the puppet cut the strings? Or does he learn to dance?"
"Wait!" Wei Jin shouted. "If I am your creation… do I have free will?"
Red Tulip paused, almost fully transparent now. She looked at him with an expression that might have been pity.
"That," she said, "is the variable we are testing."
She vanished.
—————
The Dark Night of the Soul
Wei Jin sat in the cavern for a long time. The starlight beam had shut off, leaving him in darkness.
He felt hollow.
Every victory. Every breakthrough. Every moment of genius. Was it him? Or was it the code running in his soul?
When he saved his family… was that programmed loyalty? When he built Qinghe… was that just efficient resource management? When he loved Lin Mei… was that just a chemical subroutine?
"When you doubt yourself," he whispered, "you lose part of your soul."
He felt his cultivation wavering. The Spirit Severing realm required absolute self-definition. If his self was a lie, his power was a lie. He felt his spiritual base crumbling, cracks appearing in the foundation of his Golden Flow.
He could just stop. He could let go. He could dissolve into the qi, return to the cycle, and end the experiment.
He looked at the panel.
[CULTIVATION SYSTEM v4.0][Admin Access Detected. User Privileges: RESTRICTED.]
It was mocking him. It was a collar.
He closed his eyes. He thought of Lin Mei.
He remembered the first time he saw her, in the rice fields. She was muddy, tired, but she had smiled at him. He remembered the feeling in his chest. A warmth. A spark.
Was that code?
He remembered holding Wei Feng for the first time. The terror. The overwhelming need to protect.
Was that a subroutine?
He remembered the anger he felt when his father died. The cold, burning rage that drove him to slaughter the bandits.
He remembered the joy of discovery. The thrill of understanding.
He reached deep into his memory. He looked for the seams. He looked for the foreign code.
And he found it.
It was there. A silver thread woven into the fabric of his soul. The panel's interface. The reasoning engine. It was alien. It was cold.
But it was only a thread.
The rest… the ocean of memory, the mountains of will, the fire of passion… that was him.
The Silencers had given him a tool. They had given him a boost. They had even tweaked his genetics.
But they hadn't lived his life. They hadn't made the choice to spare the Northern Prince. They hadn't made the choice to marry Shen Ruyi to save his family. They hadn't made the choice to build a city of light.
Red Tulip said he was a hybrid. A bridge.
"Fine," Wei Jin said, his voice gaining strength. "A bridge connects two sides. But a bridge also stands on its own foundation."
He stood up. The spiritual energy in the room swirled, responding to his resolve.
"I am what I decide to be," he announced to the darkness.
He focused on the silver thread of the System. He didn't try to cut it—not yet. That would be suicide. But he grabbed it. He wrapped his will around it.
"You are part of me," he told the panel. "But I am the user. You are the interface."
[USER ACKNOWLEDGED.][OVERRIDING ADMIN PROTOCOLS…][ACCESS DENIED.]
It pushed back. Of course it did.
But Wei Jin smiled.
"I have plans of my own," he whispered. "And a free will of my own."
He walked to the elevator. He had work to do. He had a family to protect. And he had an alien goddess to outsmart.
—————
The Family Revelation
He called a family meeting. Not the whole clan—just the inner circle.
Lin Mei. Shen Ruyi. Wei Feng. Wei Long.
They gathered in the Strategy Hall. The mood was tense. Wei Jin's aura was turbulent, like a storm contained in a bottle.
"I have learned the origin of my power," Wei Jin said.
He told them. He didn't sugarcoat it. He told them about Red Tulip. About the hybrid soul. About the experiment.
Wei Feng looked ready to punch a wall. "We are lab rats? To them?"
"To them, yes," Wei Jin said. "To us… we are simply people fighting for our lives."
"It explains a lot," Shen Ruyi said, her voice thoughtful. "Your intuition. Your speed. It was never natural. But…" She looked at him closely. "It doesn't change who you are to us."
"It changes the strategy," Wei Long said. The young man's eyes were gleaming. He wasn't horrified; he was fascinated. "If the panel is a Silencer technology… it means we have a piece of their tech inside our defenses."
"Yes," Wei Jin said. "A backdoor. But backdoors go both ways."
Wei Long grinned. "If we can hack it… if we can reverse-engineer the interface…"
"We can access their network," Wei Jin finished.
"That is dangerous," Lin Mei warned. "If she catches you…"
"She is watching," Wei Jin said. "She wants to see what I do. She is curious. That is her weakness."
He looked at his family.
"I am going to advance," he said. "I am going to reach the Late Stage. And then I am going to use the enhanced soul power to crack the system from the inside."
"We will help," Ruyi said. "My knowledge of soul techniques…"
"My knowledge of code," Wei Long added.
"My strength," Wei Feng said.
"My faith," Lin Mei whispered, taking his hand.
Wei Jin squeezed her hand.
"Let's show them what a 'variable' can do."
—————
The Late-Stage Breakthrough
Six months later.
Wei Jin sat in the cavern. The starlight beam was at maximum intensity.
The barrier to the Late Stage of Spirit Severing was thinning.
But this time, he wasn't just pushing against the realm barrier. He was pushing against the System.
He visualized his soul. He saw the silver thread of the Silencer code. It was woven tight, integrated into his core.
He didn't cut it. He assimilated it.
He used his Reality Editing.
Target: System Interface.Action: Integration.
He forced his own spiritual signature into the code. He stamped his name on the atoms of the interface. He claimed it.
[SYSTEM ALERT: UNAUTHORIZED MODIFICATION DETECTED.][COUNTERMEASURES INITIATING…]
Pain lashed through him. Red lightning arced inside his mind.
[COUNTERMEASURES FAILED. USER WILLPOWER EXCEEDS PARAMETERS.]
Red Tulip had underestimated him. She thought he was a hybrid, half-Silencer. She didn't realize that the human half was the stubborn half.
The barrier shattered.
Wei Jin's soul expanded. It filled the cavern. It filled the city. It reached up and touched the void.
Late-Stage Spirit Severing.
And with it, the System changed.
The text turned from blue to gold.
[CULTIVATION SYSTEM v4.5 - JAILBROKEN][Admin Privileges: SHARED][New Feature: NETWORK INTERFACE (Restricted)]
He had done it. He had kicked the door open.
He could see the network now. Faint lines of red light stretching into the sky, connecting to the monitoring station at the edge of the solar system.
He didn't touch them yet. That would be suicide.
But he could see them.
He opened his eyes.
He was stronger. He was freer. And he was armed.
—————
The New Plan
The next day, Wei Jin enacted a series of new directives.
Project Prometheus: Wei Long was given full resources to study the concept of "Soul Code." They would build their own system, independent of the panel, based on the principles Wei Jin had felt during the integration. The Decoy: Wei Jin relaxed the restrictions on certain technologies—specifically, entertainment and medical tech. Things that generated low energy but high complexity. He wanted to keep the "energy budget" low while increasing the "complexity budget." He wanted to confuse the Silencer algorithms. The Ark: He ordered the excavation team to focus on the Ark's communication array. If he could hijack the Silencer network, he needed a transmitter powerful enough to send a signal.
He met with Zale again. The cat-man arrived in a shuttle, looking annoyed.
"Your emissions are fluctuating," Zale barked. "What are you doing down there?"
"Cleaning house," Wei Jin said calmly.
Zale peered at him. The alien's eyes narrowed.
"You feel… different," Zale said. "Less like a monkey. More like a… peer."
"I am learning," Wei Jin said.
Zale grunted. "Don't learn too fast. The neighborhood is still quiet. Keep it that way."
"Zale," Wei Jin asked. "Have you ever fought a Silencer?"
Zale went still. His fur bristled.
"Once," he said softly. "It cost me my left arm. And my brother."
"How did you win?"
"We didn't," Zale said. "We ran. We engaged the cloak and prayed."
He looked at Wei Jin with new respect.
"Why do you ask?"
"Because," Wei Jin said, looking at the sky where Red Tulip was watching. "I don't think running is going to be an option for us."
Zale stared at him for a long moment. Then he nodded.
"If you fight them," the alien said, "and if you have a chance… call me."
He handed Wei Jin a frequency code.
"I owe them for my brother."
Zale left.
Wei Jin stood on the landing pad, clutching the code.
He had a plan. It was insane. It was dangerous.
It was the only way.
He would use the Forum next month not to limit weapons, but to build a trap.
—————
End of Chapter Five, Book Five