The sky above Beiluo was painting a picture of the apocalypse. High in the exosphere, the Star Palace—the symbol of divine authority for ten thousand years—was being chewed apart.
Emperor Xia stood on the balcony of the Command Center, his Dragon Eyes piercing the vacuum. He watched Envoy Azure, a being of the Void Shattering Stage (the level above Spirit Severing), fighting for his life. Azure was a titan of energy, wielding laws of space and fire that could boil oceans. Yet, against the Cosmic Swarm, he looked like a man swatting a cloud of wasps.
"They bleed," Xia whispered, his world-view cracking further. "The Envoys... they are not divinity made manifest. They are just meat with more Qi."
"They are middle-management," Jiang Chen's synthesized voice came from behind him. Jiang Chen was looking at a data-stream cascading down his monitors. "The Envoys aren't gods, Xia. They are just the farmers sent by the Galactic Cultivation Alliance to harvest this planet. And now, a wolf has entered the sheep pen."
A scream echoed from the sky—a psychic shriek felt by every soul on the planet—as Envoy Azure was torn in half by a Bio-Leviathan. His body exploded into a nova of spiritual energy, which was instantly sucked up by the Swarm ships.
"He died..." Ye Bai gripped the railing, his face pale. "A Void Shattering expert. Gone in seconds."
"And his killers are coming down here," Jiang Chen pointed to the radar.
Debris from the battle was entering the atmosphere. But among the wreckage of the Star Palace were organic drop-pods. Pulsing, fleshy meteors.
"System," Jiang Chen commanded. "Where are you? I need analysis on the xenos biology. Now."
For the first time in months, the System did not respond with a cold, passive text box. The interface in Jiang Chen's vision expanded, taking over his entire field of view. The text was red, urgent, and strangely... emotional.
[SYSTEM ALERT: ANCIENT ENEMY DETECTED.][DESIGNATION: THE DEVOURER SWARM.][ARCHIVE UNLOCKED: "THE FALL OF TERRA-NOVA."]
Jiang Chen paused. "The Fall? You know them?"
[Affirmative, Administrator. This is why I was built. The Pre-Era Civilization did not die from a Qi leak. We died fighting Them.][The Spirit Leak was a desperate attempt to create a weapon strong enough to stop the Swarm. It failed. I am the Architect AI, dormant for 10,000 years, waiting for a Host capable of restarting the War Protocols.]
The realization hit Jiang Chen like a railgun slug. The System wasn't a game cheat. It was a war computer left behind by a dead race.
"Then give me the solution," Jiang Chen snapped. "My droids are metal. The Swarm eats metal. My tanks are slow. The Swarm is fast. What beats them?"
[Biology. The Swarm adapts. We must evolve faster.][Blueprint Unlocked: Project ASTARTES (Gene-Seed Implementation).]
The crash site in Sector 09 was a smoking crater. From the center of a fleshy, shattered pod, a Swarm Warrior pulled itself free.
It stood three meters tall, a nightmare of chitin and muscle. It had four arms—two ending in bone-swords, two holding a bio-cannon that dripped acid. Its carapace was thick enough to stop a heavy bolter round.
[Threat Level: Core Formation Peak (Physical).][Regeneration: High.]
A squad of Labor Droids rushed it, wielding plasma cutters. The Swarm Warrior moved with a blur of speed that defied its size. Slash. Slash. The droids were dismantled, their metal bodies sliced cleanly in half. The Warrior grabbed a torso, its mandibles opening to crunch through the steel, extracting the trace minerals.
"It eats the droids to build armor," Jiang Chen observed from the camera feed in his lab. "Robotics are a liability. If we send metal, we just feed them."
He turned to the operating table.
Lying there was General Han. The mortal man who had led the tanks at the Black River. He was stripped to the waist, his body scarred from the campaign against the Terracotta Army.
"You understand the risks, General?" Jiang Chen asked, holding a canister of glowing blue fluid—the synthesized Gene-Seed derived from the Swarm DNA and stabilized by the System.
"The Envoys are dead, Sir," Han said, looking at the screen where the monster was eating his droids. "The Emperor can't fight a million of those. The machines are food. That leaves us."
Han looked at his own fleshy, weak hands.
"Make me a weapon, Administrator. I don't care if it hurts."
"It will hurt," Jiang Chen said. "I am going to graft a second heart into your chest. I am going to fuse your ribcage into a solid plate of bone-ceramic. I am going to flood your blood with nanites that clot instantly."
"Do it."
Jiang Chen lowered the robotic surgical arms.
[Initiating Bio-Forge Protocol.][Subject: Han.][Procedure: Genetic Ascension.]
The screaming lasted for six hours. It was not the scream of torture, but the sound of a human body being forcibly evolved ten million years in a single afternoon. Bones broke and reformed. Muscles tore and knit back together, denser, darker, stronger.
When the screaming stopped, General Han stood up.
He was no longer five foot nine. He was seven feet tall. His muscles were like steel cables coiled under skin that had turned a faint, tough grey. He breathed, and the sound was like a bellows—his three lungs processing the air with terrifying efficiency.
Jiang Chen handed him a weapon. Not a rifle. A Chain-Sword—a massive blade with rotating diamond-tipped teeth, powered by a micro-fusion cell.
"How do you feel?" Jiang Chen asked.
Han gripped the weapon. The metal handle creaked.
"Hungry," Han growled.
The Swarm Warrior in Sector 09 had finished eating the droids. It screeched, looking for more biomass. It sensed fear. It sensed 15,000 mortals hiding in the city.
It charged toward the residential block.
THOOM.
Something heavy landed in its path.
The Swarm Warrior stopped, its multi-faceted eyes clicking.
Standing before it was a giant in matte-green power armor. The armor wasn't sleek like the Ronin suit; it was bulky, ugly, and covered in devotional scripts of the "Machine God."
General Han—the first Space Marine of Beiluo—revved his chain-sword.
VROOOOOOOM.
The Swarm Warrior hissed and lunged, its bone-swords aiming for the neck.
Han didn't dodge. He moved with a speed that shouldn't be possible for something that heavy. He caught the alien's wrist with his free hand.
CRUNCH.
Han's servo-assisted grip pulverized the alien's chitin. The Swarm Warrior shrieked in confusion. A prey species shouldn't be stronger than a predator.
"Get off my planet," Han roared.
He swung the chain-sword.
The rotating teeth met the alien's torso. Chitin, flesh, and acid sprayed across the asphalt. The chain-sword tore the monster in half, wet chunks flying into the air.
The top half of the alien thrashed, trying to regenerate, but Han stomped on its head with a magnetic boot.
SPLAT.
Silence returned to the street.
From the rooftops, the mortal Overseers watched in stunned silence. They had seen Jiang Chen fight. They had seen the Emperor fight. But this... this was Han. Their drinking buddy. The guy who liked spicy noodles.
"Han?" Overseer Zhao called out, his voice trembling.
Han turned. His helmet retracted. His face was blocky, scarred, and his eyes burned with a new, transhuman intensity.
"Go back inside, Zhao," Han said, his voice deep enough to rattle the windows. "There are more falling."
In the Command Bunker, Emperor Xia and Ye Bai watched the feed.
"You turned a mortal... into that?" Ye Bai whispered, terrified. "That soldier... his physical strength rivals a Golden Core. And he has no Qi."
"He has biology," Jiang Chen said, watching the vital signs of his creation. "And the System says we can make ten thousand of them."
[System Update: Gene-Seed Viability Confirmed.][Project: "The Iron Legion" approved.][Warning: Hive Fleet Approach in T-Minus 4 Hours.]
Jiang Chen looked at the Emperor.
"Your Majesty. You have the Dragon Veins. I need you to create a Planetary Shield. My Marines can hold the ground, but we can't let the Hive Ship land. We have to force them to board us."
"Board us?" Xia blinked.
"We are going to turn Terra-Nova into a fortress," Jiang Chen said. "They want to eat? Fine. Let's see if they can digest a planet made of guns."
He turned to the screen showing the wreckage of the Star Palace.
"And System? Locate the wreckage of Envoy Azure. If he's dead, his Spatial Storage is floating up there. I want his loot."