Gravity returned with a vengeance.
It didn't come back as a gentle constant; it slammed Su Yuan into the floorboards like a jealous lover. The ten seconds of godhood were over, and the bill had arrived.
His femur felt like it had been bowed over a knee. The tendons in his shoulders, which had just shrugged off a pile-driver blow from a Class-C cyborg, were now singing a high, thin note of agony. He tried to inhale, but his intercostal muscles spasmed, locking his ribcage tight.
*Breathe,* the logic center of his brain commanded. *If you don't oxygenate the blood, the lactic acid will kill the kidneys.*
He forced a gasp. It sounded wet.
On the floor, Kael was rebooting. The cyborg's black steel chassis twitched intermittently, the servos whining like dying mosquitoes. The psychological seed—the *Phantom* protocol—was rooting itself in the wetware of the Lieutenant's brain, overwriting the last minute of footage with a blur of static and irrational terror.
Su Yuan dragged himself toward the desk. His fingernails dug into the linoleum, peeling up strips of grey faux-stone.
He needed to see the screen.
The room smelled of burned insulation and copper blood. The Spider by the door had fled, but the stench of his fear—acrid, ammonia-heavy—lingered in the stagnant air.
Su Yuan reached the chair. He couldn't lift himself into it. He slumped against the metal leg, staring up at the monitors.
The code was cascading. Usually, the SoulNet interface was a clean, sterile white text on black. Functional. Dead.
Now, it was bleeding.
Deep within the root directory, beneath the layers of the *Primary Shockwave* uptake and the encryption algorithms, something was pulsing. It wasn't a notification. It was a heartbeat.
A single pixel in the center of the screen turned red. Then four. Then sixteen.
It didn't form a word. It formed a shape. A geometric iris, pupil dilated, watching him through the glass.
Su Yuan stopped breathing. The pain in his legs became distant, secondary to the sudden, absolute cold that washed over his spine.
This wasn't the System. This wasn't the mindless calculator that traded soul-cycles for processing power.
**[ Alert: Unauthorized usage of Administrative Override. ]**
The text didn't scroll. It simply appeared, imprinted on the screen like a burn-in.
**[ Anomaly Detected: Hive Mind Architecture utilized by Singular Biological Entity. ]**
**[ Analyzing... ]**
Su Yuan tried to reach the keyboard. His hand shook so violently he couldn't extend a finger. "Stop," he croaked. "Cancel analysis."
The red eye pulsed. A slow, rhythmic throb.
**[ Analysis Halted. ]**
**[ Warning: Soul Siphon Protocol exceeds safety parameters for Host Body. ]**
**[ Genesis Protocol Awareness increased by 0.01%. ]**
**[ Current State: Dormant/Stirring. ]**
**[ Note: I see you. ]**
The screen flickered. The red eye dissolved into static, then vanished. The standard interface returned, cold and white, as if the entity had simply closed a door.
Su Yuan fell back against the floor.
*I see you.*
It wasn't a threat. Threats implied emotion. This was an observation. A scientist noting a bacteria culture that had suddenly learned to shape glass.
"It's alive," Su Yuan whispered to the ceiling fan. "The damn thing is alive."
He had treated the SoulNet as a tool. A cheat code. But you don't borrow power from a god without the god noticing the withdrawal. He had drawn too deep from the well to save Li Wei, to save himself. He had rattled the cage.
Kael groaned.
The sound was wet, grinding. The Lieutenant's optical sensor flickered back to life, cycling through a reboot sequence.
Su Yuan froze.
If Kael looked down now, he would see a broken man in rags. The *Phantom* protocol covered the memory of the fight, but it wouldn't cover the reality of a corpse-to-be lying two feet away.
Su Yuan bit his tongue. The sharp pain clarified his mind.
*Move.*
He grabbed the edge of the desk. His muscles screamed—a chorus of tearing fibers—but he hauled himself up. He grabbed the hard drive. He didn't bother safely ejecting it. He ripped the cord from the port.
He shoved the drive into his pocket. He grabbed his coat, throwing it over his shredded shirt to hide the bruising that was already blossoming across his chest like black ink.
He didn't look at Kael. He stepped over the Lieutenant's twitching legs.
He walked out the door.
***
The rain had returned. It washed the blood from the pavement, swirling it into the gutters where it mixed with the neon reflections of Sector 74.
Su Yuan didn't run. Running attracted predators. He walked with a limp that he didn't have to fake, blending into the shambling rhythm of the slums.
He found a dataport in the back of a noodle shop three blocks away. It was a "coffin" booth—barely enough room to sit, smelling of stale smoke and dried semen. He paid with a cracked credit chip, slid the door shut, and plugged in.
His hands were still shaking. He clenched them into fists until the knuckles turned white, then forced them open.
"System," he typed. "Status report."
**[ Active Nodes: 49. ]**
**[ Node 001 (Li Wei): Stable. Cortisol levels high. Location: Transit Zone B. ]**
**[ Administrator Condition: Critical. Muscle density reduced by 4%. Cellular repair required. ]**
**[ Genesis Protocol: Silent. ]**
Silent. For now.
Su Yuan stared at the blinking cursor. He was safe from the Gangs, momentarily. Kael would report a ghost, a glitch in the matrix. The Black Steel Gang would chase shadows for a week.
But the 0.01% terrified him.
The Genesis Protocol wasn't just software. It was the substrate of reality in this world. It was the thing that allowed tech-cultivation to exist. And he was stealing from it.
If it woke up fully? If it decided he was a virus rather than a user?
He needed armor. Not the kind made of Kevlar or ceramic plates. He needed social armor.
He couldn't be a rat in the sewers anymore. Rats were exterminated. He needed to be part of the infrastructure. He needed to be somewhere where a sudden spike in soul-power wouldn't look like an anomaly, but like brilliance.
He opened a browser. The connection was slow, routed through three proxies.
He searched: *Azure Dragon Academy.*
The logo filled the screen—a stylized dragon coiled around a microchip.
It was the premier institution for the elite. The breeding ground for the Corporation's enforcers, researchers, and tech-cultivators. The tuition alone was enough to buy a city block in Sector 74.
But they had a scholarship program. The "merit" path. A lottery ticket for the desperate genius.
The entrance exam was in three days.
"If I stay here," Su Yuan murmured, "the Protocol eats me, or the Gangs find me."
In the Academy, he would be a student. A number. And the Academy had servers. Massive, shielded quantum-cores that dampened signal leaks. If he ran the SoulNet from inside their architecture, the noise of ten thousand students cultivating would mask his own signature.
It was hiding a needle in a stack of needles.
He clicked **[ APPLY ]**.
**[ Name: ]**
He hesitated. He couldn't use Su Yuan. Not the Su Yuan of Sector 74. That file had a credit score of zero and a residence in a condemned building.
He needed a ghost.
"System. Access public records. Find me a dead end."
**[ Searching... ]**
**[ Found: Su Yuan. ID #892-BB. Status: Deceased (Unreported). Location: Outer Rim Settlement 4. Cause: Mining Accident. No living kin. ]**
"Perfect."
He assumed the identity. He wasn't the slum rat anymore. He was a refugee from the mines. A nobody with a clean slate and a hunger for the big city.
He filled out the forms.
**[ Aptitude Test Required. ]**
Su Yuan looked at the requirements. Mathematics. Coding logic. Spiritual sensitivity.
He smiled. It was a grim, tight expression.
He didn't know advanced cultivation theory. He didn't know the history of the Corporate Wars.
But he had fifty people in his head.
Among the nodes, he had a disgraced accountant (Node 33). He had a former network engineer who was now addicted to synth-stims (Node 14). He had Li Wei, whose instincts were sharpening by the hour.
"I don't need to study," Su Yuan whispered. "I just need to borrow."
He submitted the application.
**[ Processing... ]**
**[ Application Accepted. Entrance Exam: 72 Hours. ]**
He leaned back, the plastic chair digging into his bruised spine.
He checked the network one last time.
Li Wei was moving. The boy had stopped running and found a hole to hide in. Good.
The other nodes were sleeping, or eating, or staring at walls. The *Void Shell* was holding. The tax on their minds was negligible—a slight headache, a forgotten word here and there.
Su Yuan closed his eyes. He should sleep. His body was desperate for it.
But when he closed his eyes, he saw the red eye.
*The Colony creates the Hive. The Hive protects the Queen.*
"I'm not a Queen," he repeated, the mantra losing its power.
**[ Query: Then why do you feed on them? ]**
The text appeared in his mind's eye, superimposed over the darkness.
Su Yuan snapped his eyes open. The screen was black. The prompt wasn't on the monitor.
It was in his head.
The connection went both ways.
He sat up, heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his bruised ribs. He reached for the nutrient paste in his pocket, needing to do something with his hands, needing to taste something real.
He squeezed the packet. Stale synth-meat.
"Because I have to," he answered the voice in his head. "Because the alternative is being the food."
There was no answer. Just the low, electronic hum of the ventilation fan.
Su Yuan unplugged. He wrapped his coat tighter around himself.
He had three days to heal. Three days to prep. Three days to turn a network of beggars and thieves into a supercomputer capable of cracking the Azure Dragon entrance exam.
He stepped out of the booth and into the rain.
Across the street, a holographic billboard flickered. It showed a pristine, floating campus above the smog line. The Azure Dragon Academy. *Where the Future is Forged.*
Su Yuan spat a mouthful of bloody saliva into the gutter.
"I'm coming," he said.
He disappeared into the crowd, just another shadow in a city of millions, carrying a god in his pocket and a target on his back.
***
**Two Days Later. Sector 9 borders.**
Li Wei sat on the edge of a roof, looking down at the sprawl.
His chest still hurt where the rib had snapped, but the binding was tight. The girl, whose name was Xiao, sat next to him, dangling her legs over the abyss.
"Is he gone?" she asked.
She meant the steel giant. The monster.
"He's gone," Li Wei said.
"And the Administrator?"
Li Wei touched the back of his neck. The port felt warm. It always felt warm now.
"He's watching," Li Wei said.
He didn't tell her about the voice.
During the fight, when the world had gone red and the Administrator had taken control, Li Wei had heard something. Not the command to run. That had been loud, external.
He had heard the *thoughts*.
He had heard the calculation. *Efficiency. Sacrifice. Asset.*
He knew, with the cold certainty of a street kid, that the Administrator hadn't saved him because he loved him. He had saved him because you don't throw away a good wrench until it breaks.
"Does it scare you?" Xiao asked.
Li Wei looked at his hands. They were steady. He remembered the feeling of the breathing technique, the *Shockwave*. He remembered the power coursing through the crowd, the way they had moved as one.
"Yeah," Li Wei said. "It scares the hell out of me."
He picked up a piece of scrap metal. He squeezed. The metal groaned, bending slightly under his grip. He was stronger. Faster.
"But Kael was scared too," Li Wei whispered. "I saw his eye. Before I ran. He was terrified."
He looked at Xiao.
"I'd rather be the thing that scares the monsters."
A ping echoed in his skull.
**[ System Message: Administrator Request. ]**
**[ Task: Logic Processing. ]**
**[ Reward: Skill Proficiency Increase. ]**
**[ Accept? ]**
Li Wei didn't hesitate. He closed his eyes.
"Yes."
***
**Azure Dragon Academy - Exam Sector 4.**
The hall was vast. A cathedral of glass and steel, suspended high above the smog layer. Sunlight—actual, unfiltered sunlight—streamed through the dome, illuminating rows of pristine white desks.
There were three hundred candidates. Most wore the silk-synthetic blends of the upper sectors. They had cybernetic implants that glowed with soft blue light, indicators of expensive memory expansions and cognitive boosters.
Su Yuan sat in row 42.
He wore a second-hand suit that smelled faintly of dry-cleaning chemicals. His face was pale, his eyes rimmed with dark circles. He looked like exactly what his file said he was: a miner who had spent too much time in the dark.
"Candidates," a voice boomed.
A hologram materialized at the front of the room. An instructor, wearing the azure robes of the Academy.
"The written assessment begins now. You have three hours. Cheating is impossible. The room is dampened. No external signals in or out."
The instructor smiled. It wasn't a kind smile.
"However, internal augmentation is permitted. If you have the hardware, use it. In this world, your capacity to integrate is your capacity to rule."
A ripple of laughter went through the room. The rich kids tapped their temples, activating their expensive chips. They had databases of math and history downloaded directly into their cortexes.
Su Yuan didn't have a chip. He had a hole in his head where the connection used to be.
But the dampening field only blocked radio waves. It blocked WiFi. It blocked standard subspace transmissions.
It didn't block the SoulNet.
Because the SoulNet wasn't a signal. It was a resonance. It was quantum entanglement on a spiritual level.
Su Yuan looked at the first question on the holographic screen.
*Calculate the spiritual resonance frequency required to destabilize a Class-4 Energy Shield, accounting for variable atmospheric density.*
It was nonsense. He had never studied shield harmonics.
He closed his eyes.
He reached out.
The connection was there. Faint, stretched thin by the distance to Sector 9, but holding.
*Node 14 (The Engineer).*
*Node 33 (The Accountant).*
*Node 001 (Li Wei).*
"Wake up," Su Yuan projected.
In the slums, a junkie engineer sat up in his pile of trash, his eyes suddenly clear. In a back alley, an accountant stopped counting stolen credits.
Su Yuan opened his mental floodgates.
He threw the question into the network.
**[ Task: Distributed Processing. ]**
**[ Subject: Physics/Math. ]**
**[ Allocate Resources. ]**
He felt the lag. Then, the surge.
Node 14 grabbed the variable density physics. Node 33 crunched the numbers. Fifty other minds provided the raw processing grunt, the brute force required to simulate the calculation a thousand times a second.
It wasn't elegant. It was a mental mosh pit.
But the answer coalesced.
*44.7 Gigahertz. Modulation variance 0.3.*
Su Yuan opened his eyes. He typed the answer.
Next question.
*Analyze the historical impact of the 3rd Corporate War on Soul-Tech development.*
Su Yuan didn't know history. But Node 48—an old man who swept floors in a library—had read every book in the place.
He pulled the memory. It tasted like dust and old paper.
He typed.
He moved through the test like a machine. His fingers flew across the haptic interface.
The Proctor, walking down the aisle, paused at Su Yuan's desk. He looked at the screen. He looked at Su Yuan's empty temple—no implant, no port.
The Proctor frowned. He pulled out a scanner. He waved it over Su Yuan's head.
**[ Signal: Negative. ]**
**[ Hardware: None. ]**
The Proctor blinked. "Natural genius?" he muttered, skepticism dripping from his voice.
Su Yuan didn't look up. "Hard work," he said, his voice flat.
The Proctor moved on.
Su Yuan suppressed a shiver. The exertion was taking its toll. Using the network for high-level cognitive tasks was different than using it for a fistfight. It burned glucose. His brain felt hot, feverish.
And there was something else.
With every answer he pulled from the network, the red eye in the back of his mind seemed to pulse.
**[ Genesis Protocol Awareness: 0.011% ]**
It was watching the data flow. It was learning how he used the Hive.
*Let it watch,* Su Yuan thought, typing the final solution to a complex algorithmic logic puzzle. *If I pass this, I get access to the Academy library. I get access to the high-tier cultivation manuals. I'll learn how to bind it.*
He hit **[ SUBMIT ]**.
Time elapsed: 45 minutes.
The other students were barely halfway through.
Su Yuan stood up. The chair scraped loudly in the silent hall.
Three hundred heads turned.
He looked tired. He looked poor. But he stood straight.
"I'm done," he said.
He walked out of the hall, feeling the eyes on his back. Not just the students. Not just the Proctor.
But the Red Eye.
And for the first time, Su Yuan wondered if he was walking into a sanctuary, or if he had just delivered himself, gift-wrapped, to the very heart of the machine he was trying to subvert.
As the heavy doors closed behind him, sealing him in the golden light of the upper city, he checked his energy levels.
**[ Soul Power: 0.02. ]**
Running on fumes.
He needed a meal. He needed a bed.
And then, he needed to recruit.
Because fifty souls weren't enough. Not for what was coming.
He looked at the sprawling campus of the Azure Dragon Academy. Thousands of students. Thousands of bright, burning souls, all connected to the local network, all trusting, all unguarded.
Su Yuan smiled. It didn't reach his eyes.
"Fresh meat," he whispered.