**Chapter 34: The Golden Nodes**
The elevator did not rattle. That was the first thing Su Yuan noticed.
In Sector 7, vertical movement was a violent affair. The lifts were cages of rusted mesh that groaned and shook as they clawed their way up the side of the hab-blocks, smelling of hydraulic fluid and urine. You held your breath. You prayed the cable didn't snap.
This elevator was a glass capsule, silent as aheld breath.
Su Yuan stood in the center of the pod. He wore the suit Lady Vermilion had sent with the courier drone. It was white, cut from a fabric that felt like cool water against his skin, tailored to hide the lean, predatory hunger of a man who had spent the last month eating rat-starch.
The floor number flickered on the holographic display. *Level 200.*
Below him, the grey smog layer of the Lower City was a receding ocean. The clouds were thick, impenetrable, hiding the millions of souls currently watching the countdown to their own extinction.
*18 hours, 42 minutes.*
The Purge Cycle.
Su Yuan touched the cuff of his white jacket. Underneath the fabric, on his finger, sat the prototype. The *Crimson Oath*. It was a band of dark, red metal, warm to the touch.
He wasn't going up there to beg. He wasn't going up there to negotiate.
He was going up there to plant a bomb.
The glass pod burst through the cloud layer.
The light hit him like a physical blow. The sun was real here. It wasn't filtered through sulfur and particulate matter; it was a blinding, golden eye staring down from a sky of impossible blue.
The Upper City didn't look like a city. It looked like a reef.
White towers curved organically, bridging gaps with ribbons of translucent steel. Gardens spilled over the edges of balconies—green, vibrant, wasteful. He saw water cascading down the side of a building, evaporating into mist before it could hit the smog below.
"Waste," Su Yuan whispered.
He checked his internal display.
**[ SOULNET STATUS: ACTIVE ]**
**[ LOWER CITY NODES: 11,204 (PANIC STATE) ]**
**[ UPPER CITY NODES: 1 (VERMILION_GATE) ]**
The numbers in the Lower City were screaming. The data coming through the link was a chaotic torrent of fear. Mothers hiding children. Gangs loading weapons that wouldn't scratch the Spire's paint. The noise was deafening, a migraine scratching at the back of his eyes.
The elevator slowed. The doors slid open with a soft chime.
The air smelled of jasmine and ozone.
A drone hovered at the threshold. It was sleek, shaped like a teardrop, its white casing flawless.
"Guest Identity: Architect," the drone chirped. Its voice was a melodic alto. "Lady Vermilion awaits you in the Solarium. Please, do not touch the art."
Su Yuan stepped out. The floor was marble, veined with gold.
"Lead the way," he said.
He walked through a corridor lined with statues. They weren't stone. They were holograms of people, frozen in moments of ecstasy or agony, cycling through expressions every few seconds.
He reached out with his mind. *Ping.*
Nothing. No data. The walls were shielded. The statues were offline. The Upper City was a dead zone for his sensors, a fortress of white noise.
Except for the node he had planted.
He pushed his consciousness toward *Vermilion_Gate*.
It was there. A lighthouse in the dark. A single, clean connection running through Lady Vermilion's private server.
The drone led him through high, arched doors into a room that was mostly glass.
The Solarium was crowded. Not with people, but with presence.
There were maybe thirty of them. The elite. The Celestials' favored pets. They stood in clusters, holding flutes of sparkling liquid, wearing clothes that shifted color with their mood.
The conversation died as Su Yuan entered.
Thirty pairs of eyes turned to him. Some were modified—solid gold, faceted like insect eyes, or glowing softly. Others were painfully, surgically human.
Lady Vermilion stood near a fountain that flowed with wine. She wore the same blood-red velvet as before, a violent stain against the white room.
"Everyone," she said, her voice carrying without effort. "The Architect has arrived."
She gestured for him to approach.
Su Yuan walked the gauntlet. He felt their gaze. It wasn't the hostile glare of a ganger sizing up a mark. It was the detached curiosity of a scientist looking at a bacteria culture.
*Does it bite? Is it contagious?*
"You're late," Vermilion said when he reached her. She didn't offer a hand.
"Traffic was bad," Su Yuan said. "Everyone is trying to leave Sector 7. The roads are clogged with the dying."
A man next to Vermilion chuckled. He was tall, his skin tinted a faint, metallic blue. "Dying? A bit dramatic. It's a reboot. System maintenance. The files will be corrupted, yes, but the hardware remains."
Su Yuan looked at him. "And the people are the files?"
"The people are the error code," the blue man said, smiling. He had filed his teeth into points. "I am Baron Kael. I hear you make knives that break the rules."
"I make tools," Su Yuan corrected.
He reached into his pocket. He didn't pull out a weapon. He pulled out a velvet roll.
He laid it on a floating table between them. He unrolled it.
Twelve rings.
They were simple bands of the red metal Su Yuan had forged from the Lady's own surplus soul energy. They didn't sparkle. They seemed to absorb the light in the room, drinking the sun and holding it.
"The Crimson Oath," Vermilion said. She picked one up. "A romantic name for a piece of hardware."
"It's a bio-feedback link," Su Yuan lied smoothly. "It syncs with your neural architecture. Optimizes serotonin levels. Filters out stress. And..."
He paused. He looked around the room.
"It connects you to the exclusive 'Ghost' network. An encrypted channel. No Spire oversight. No logs. Just... pure, unfiltered connection."
The room went quiet.
In a world of total surveillance, privacy was the ultimate luxury. The Spire saw everything. The Genesis Protocol logged every heartbeat.
But a network that didn't exist?
"Show us," Kael said.
Su Yuan picked up a ring. He held it out to the Baron.
"Put it on."
Kael hesitated, then shrugged. The boredom of immortality made men take stupid risks. He slid the ring onto his finger.
Su Yuan triggered the trap.
*Connect.*
He didn't use the messy, brute-force grapple he used on the gangs. He used the finesse he had learned from the Originium update.
He slid the SoulNet connection into Kael's mind like a needle into a vein.
Kael blinked. His blue skin flushed a darker shade.
"Oh," the Baron whispered. His pupils dilated.
"What is it?" Vermilion asked, stepping closer.
"It's... quiet," Kael said. He looked at his hand. "The background noise. The constant ping of the Spire ads, the update notifications... they're gone."
They weren't gone. Su Yuan was just filtering them. He was wrapping Kael's consciousness in a layer of white noise, dampening the system's interference.
But in exchange, Su Yuan opened the tap.
He expected resistance. The souls of the lower city fought back—they were jagged, defensive.
But Kael's soul was an open door. It was soft. Bloated on centuries of luxury, unchecked by trauma, unused to defense. It flowed into the SoulNet like water rushing downhill.
**[ NEW NODE CONNECTED: BARON KAEL (CLASS A) ]**
**[ SOUL DENSITY: 9.4 ]**
**[ PROCESSING POWER: EXTREME ]**
Su Yuan almost staggered.
One man. One bored aristocrat in a blue suit provided the computing power of nine hundred slum dwellers.
It wasn't just raw power. It was clean. There was no static. No screaming. Just pure, high-bandwidth processing capability.
*A Golden Node.*
Su Yuan kept his face impassive. "It optimizes your state of mind. It clears the cache."
"I want one," a woman with silver hair said, stepping forward.
"And me," said another.
They crowded the table. The rings disappeared.
Su Yuan watched the interface in his mind light up.
*Node 2 connected.*
*Node 5 connected.*
*Node 12 connected.*
The numbers on the left—the 11,000 slum nodes—were a dull roar of background radiation.
The twelve Golden Nodes on the right were nuclear reactors coming online.
Su Yuan felt his mind expand. The ceiling of his cognitive limit shattered. The world slowed down. He could see the dust motes dancing in the sunbeams. He could calculate the trajectory of every drop of wine in the fountain.
The *Genesis Protocol* stirred.
**[ WARNING: ABNORMAL PROCESSING SPIKE DETECTED. ]**
**[ SOURCE: LOCALIZED. ]**
**[ PERMISSION QUERY... ]**
Su Yuan clamped down on the warning. He used the sheer weight of the new processing power to smother the alert, rewriting the log in real-time.
*Nothing to see here. Just a glitch.*
Lady Vermilion was the last to take a ring. She looked at Su Yuan, her violet eyes narrowing.
"You're feeding on us," she whispered.
She was smarter than the others.
Su Yuan didn't flinch. "I'm providing a service. The server costs are... high."
"Symbiosis," she murmured. She slid the ring on.
*Boom.*
Her soul hit the network like a freight train. It was dense, ancient, and cold.
**[ NODE CONNECTED: LADY VERMILION (CLASS S) ]**
**[ TOTAL SYSTEM OUTPUT: TIER 3 THRESHOLD REACHED. ]**
The text hovered in Su Yuan's vision, burning gold.
**[ UNLOCKING ADMIN PRIVILEGE: REALITY WARPING (MINOR) ]**
**[ RANGE: 5 METERS. ]**
**[ TYPE: TELEKINETIC MANIPULATION. ]**
Su Yuan took a breath. The air tasted sweet.
He had telekinesis.
It wasn't the clumsy magnetic manipulation of the Spire gloves. It was direct interface with the atomic lattice of the world.
"Interesting," Vermilion said. She twisted the ring. "I feel... lighter."
"The network shares the load," Su Yuan said.
"And the price?" Kael asked. "You gave these away. You're a merchant. Where's the bill?"
"The bill comes later," Su Yuan said. "For now, I need a favor."
"A favor?" Kael laughed. "You're a mechanic from the mud, and you want a favor from House Azure?"
He snapped his fingers. A security drone detached from the ceiling and floated down. It aimed a kinetic pulse rifle at Su Yuan's chest.
"Dance for us, Architect," Kael said, his smile sharp. "Show us what that knife of yours can do. If you amuse me, I might let you leave with your legs."
The room went silent. They were waiting for the violence. They craved it.
Su Yuan looked at the drone. Then he looked at Kael.
"I don't dance," Su Yuan said.
"Then bleed," Kael commanded. "Fire."
The drone's capacitor whined. The trigger relay clicked.
Su Yuan didn't move. He didn't reach for the Whisper Blade. He didn't dodge.
He simply *looked* at the bullet.
In his mind, powered by the souls of the twelve people watching him, he grabbed the concept of the projectile's vector.
*Stop.*
The rifle fired. There was a crack of displaced air.
The bullet—a dense, tungsten slug—hung in the air three inches from Su Yuan's forehead.
It didn't fall. It spun, suspended in a grip of invisible iron, shedding kinetic energy as heat. The air around it shimmered.
Kael's smile froze. Vermilion took a step back.
Su Yuan tilted his head.
"This is rude," he said.
He flicked his eyes to the right.
The bullet obeyed. It shot sideways, faster than it had been fired, and smashed into the crystal flute in Kael's hand.
Glass exploded. Wine sprayed over Kael's blue suit like arterial spray.
The bullet buried itself in the marble wall behind him.
Silence.
Then, applause.
It started with Vermilion. A slow, rhythmic clap.
"Bravo," she said.
The others joined in. They weren't horrified. They were delighted. They had seen tech shields stop bullets. They had seen magnets stop bullets. But they had never seen a man stop a bullet with a glare.
"A telekinetic," someone whispered. "A natural?"
"No," another said. "Look at the ring. It's the network."
They looked at their hands. The fear vanished, replaced by a terrible, hungry greed. They thought the rings gave *them* the power. They thought Su Yuan was just the first user.
"Is that a feature?" Kael asked, wiping wine from his cheek. He wasn't angry. He was fascinated.
"Premium subscription," Su Yuan said.
He turned to the drone.
*Crush.*
He didn't gesture. He just applied pressure to the space the drone occupied.
Metal screamed. The white composite shell buckled. The internal battery ruptured. The drone crumpled inward like a soda can in a fist, sparking and dripping oil onto the pristine floor.
It clattered to the ground, a ball of scrap.
Su Yuan looked at Lady Vermilion.
"I need access to the Atmospheric Control Grid," he said.
Vermilion raised an eyebrow. "That's Celestial territory. Why?"
"Because in eighteen hours, you're going to scrub the sector," Su Yuan said. "And I have inventory down there."
"Inventory," she repeated. "You mean the rats?"
"I mean the workforce that builds your toys," Su Yuan said. "If they die, the supply chain breaks. No more knives. No more rings."
He stepped closer to her. The range of his new power was only five meters. She was well within it.
"I need you to delay the Purge."
Vermilion laughed. It was a cold, tinkling sound.
"Delay the Celestials? Architect, you overestimate my rank. I am a Lady of the First Tier, not a god."
"You don't have to stop it," Su Yuan said. "Just... glitch it. A system error. A routing loop. Give me 48 hours instead of 18."
"And if I refuse?"
Su Yuan looked at the ring on her finger.
"Then I cancel your subscription."
He mentally squeezed the connection. Just a fraction.
Vermilion gasped. She brought a hand to her temple. The smooth, endless clarity she had been enjoying vanished, replaced by a sudden, jagged spike of the Lower City's terror.
For a second, she felt what Su Yuan felt. The hunger. The smog. The fear of death.
It was a drop of poison in her perfect ocean.
She paled.
"Stop," she hissed.
Su Yuan eased off. The peace returned.
"48 hours," Su Yuan said.
Vermilion stared at him. The boredom was gone from her eyes. In its place was something she hadn't felt in decades.
Respect. Or maybe fear.
"I can introduce a logic error in the targeting array," she said quietly. "It will force a diagnostic cycle. It will buy you time. But not much."
"Enough," Su Yuan said.
He turned to leave.
"Architect," Kael called out. He was holding a fresh glass of wine. "What happens in 48 hours?"
Su Yuan stopped at the door. He looked back at the room of golden gods, sipping their wine, wearing his chains on their fingers.
"In 48 hours," Su Yuan said, "we renegotiate."
***
The descent was faster than the ascent.
Su Yuan leaned against the glass of the elevator pod as it plunged back toward the grey clouds.
His head was pounding. The *Reality Warping* had burned through his reserves. Even with the Golden Nodes, bending physics took a toll.
But he had them.
Twelve high-value targets. Twelve batteries plugged directly into his soul.
He checked the map.
The blips in the Upper City were steady, pulsing with a slow, rich rhythm.
Below him, the 11,000 dots of the Lower City were erratic, frantic.
He had bought them a day. One day to evacuate? No. There was nowhere to go.
One day to fight.
The elevator hit the smog layer. The sun vanished. The blue sky was swallowed by the familiar, suffocating grey.
Su Yuan closed his eyes.
"System," he subvocalized.
**[ YES, ADMINISTRATOR. ]**
"Open the schematic for the *Soul Cannon*."
**[ WARNING: PROJECT REQUIRES CLASS A POWER SOURCE. ]**
Su Yuan smirked in the dark.
"Power source acquired."
He touched the neural port behind his ear.
The elites thought the rings were a gift. They thought the connection was a luxury.
They didn't know that Su Yuan had just turned the Upper City into the battery for the weapon that would bring it down.
The elevator doors opened onto the grime of Sector 7. The smell of rot hit him like a welcome home.
Li Wei was waiting by the airlock, pacing.
"Boss," Li Wei said, rushing forward. "The broadcast... it changed. The countdown reset. It says 'System Diagnostic in Progress.' What did you do?"
Su Yuan stepped out, his white suit already turning grey in the dirty air.
"I filed a complaint with management," Su Yuan said.
He walked past Li Wei, heading for the shadows of the alley.
"Gather the engineers," Su Yuan ordered. "And get me all the copper wire you can steal."
"Why?"
Su Yuan looked up at the ceiling of clouds, where the Golden Nodes were unknowingly humming with power.
"Because we're going to build an extension cord," Su Yuan said.
He clenched his fist. In the Upper City, twelve people felt a sudden, inexplicable chill.
"And then we're going to pull the plug."