In the eastern part of the foggy city, there stands a silent clock tower.
It doesn't chime the time, only emitting a dull, thunderous grinding sound of gears every rainy night. Locals call it the "Dumb Tower," warning their children that it's where the devil grinds his teeth.
But only a very few know that it's the holy site of the "Mechanical Evangelical Church"—the St. Gilles Gear Monastery.
Shen Qingqiu stood before the monastery's cast-iron gates. Raindrops slid down her black lace veil like beads from a broken string.
There was no smell of blood in the air, only a suffocatingly sweet, cloying aroma mixed with high-grade lubricant and incense.
"Seventeen." Shen Qingqiu lightly waved her folding fan, fanning away the nauseating sweetness. "Can you hear that?"
Seventeen, holding an umbrella, listened intently.
Even through the thick stone walls, his sensitive hearing system still picked up the sound inside.
It wasn't chanting.
It was countless tiny, dense **"click, click" sounds.
It was like thousands of termites gnawing at rotten wood.
"I heard it." Seventeen's voice was cold, the red light behind his monocle flickering slightly. "There are many… like him inside. But they're all lowly."
"Then let's go in and see what kind of 'gospel' this church priest is preaching."
…The monastery's hall was spacious and empty.
The dome wasn't painted with angels, but with enormous, interlocking golden gears and pistons. The altar didn't hold a cross, but a statue of a **"Mechanical Madonna"** pieced together from countless parts.
The Virgin Mary didn't hold the infant Jesus, but a beating steam heart.
"Welcome, lost lamb." A gentle, merciful voice came from behind the altar.
A middle-aged priest in a red robe emerged. He had a kind face, held a thick "Mechanical Bible" in his hand, and wore the badge of the "wrench and scepter" around his neck.
"I am the head priest here, Father Isaac." The priest smiled at the two uninvited guests, his gaze lingering for a moment on Seventeen's white-gloved right hand, a flash of fanatical infatuation in his eyes.
"What a perfect masterpiece…" he murmured to himself, "This is truly a body blessed by God." Shen Qingqiu closed her folding fan, looking at him coldly.
"Father, I'm not here to hear a sermon. I'm here to find a girl's…heart."
She casually tossed the brass heart she had brought from the morgue onto the ground.
Rumble.
The brass ball rolled to the priest's feet, striking his leather shoe with a crisp sound.
Father Isaac was not alarmed.
He bent down, lovingly picked up the heart, and wiped the dust off with his sleeve.
"Ah, this is Anna's heart. Poor child, her body was too fragile to withstand the eternal power bestowed by God." The priest sighed, his voice filled with sorrowful regret. "We couldn't save her."
"Save?" Shen Qingqiu thought he'd heard the biggest joke imaginable.
"To rip out a living person's heart and stuff it into a pile of scrap metal—that's saving?"
"That's redemption!" Father Isaac suddenly became agitated, his arms outstretched, his once gentle face contorted with fanaticism.
"Madam, look at this world! How fragile the flesh is! We get sick, we age, we rot from a tiny bacterium!"
"Pain is proof of the flesh's inferiority!"
"But machines don't! Gears turn eternally, steel is indestructible!"
He abruptly pulled a lever behind him.
Rumble— The curtain behind the altar slowly opened.
In that instant, even Shen Qingqiu, accustomed to the cruelty of the cultivation world, couldn't help but shrink his pupils.
Behind the curtain were rows of transparent glass display cases.
In each case stood a "person."
There were elderly people, children, and young girls.
They were all dressed in exquisite gowns, their faces perfectly made up, and an unchanging smile on their lips.
But their bodies…
The elderly people's legs had become tracks.
The children's arms had become multi-functional mechanical clamps.
The girls' chest cavities were transparent, containing a set of precisely wound golden springs.
They were not dead.
Their eyes still moved, still wept.
But their bodies had been completely stripped of control, forced to perform mechanical actions like puppets, driven by the springs: mopping, spinning, praying.
"This is the Church's mercy." Father Isaac gazed at the "exhibits" with rapt attention. "Just replace their parts with mechanical ones, and they will never feel hunger, cold, or pain again."
"They will become the most perfect worker bees in God's kingdom, serving our Lord for eternity."
"Madmen." Shen Qingqiu felt a wave of nausea wash over her.
This wasn't mercy.
This was turning people into perpetual motion machine batteries.
Stripped of dignity, stripped of the right to die, leaving only tireless shells to provide an endless supply of computing power and energy for the city's operation.
"Seventeen." Shen Qingqiu's voice was icy cold.
"Here." Seventeen stood before her, blocking the desperate gazes cast from the display cases.
His body trembled.
Not from fear, but from anger.
As a true "Mechanical Ascendant," he knew better than anyone how precious it was to possess a human heart.
He desperately wanted to mimic human warmth, to learn to love, to embrace her.
And these people were trampling on life, turning living beings into cold, lifeless parts.
This was simply… the greatest desecration of him, her, and of life itself.
"Don't look." Shen Qingqiu reached out and gently covered Seventeen's eyes (monocle).
"Too dirty."
"Father." Shen Qingqiu turned his head, his golden eyes burning with flames of destruction.
"You keep talking about the perfection of machinery, about the weakness of the flesh."
"Then what about yourself?"
"Why are you still wearing this skin? Why don't you become one of those monsters?" Father Isaac paused, then revealed a sinister smile.
"Me?"
"I already am." Before the words were finished,
*Rip—* The priest's red robe suddenly ripped apart.
Then, his skin, like an ill-fitting garment, tore open from the top of his head and slid off.
Standing in place was no longer a person.
But a gigantic mechanical spider forged from brass and silver.
His upper body remained humanoid, embedded in the spider's torso, but his lower body was comprised of eight sharp, gleaming metal spears. His abdomen was a transparent container containing a still-beating, crimson brain.
"To resurrect my beloved, I sacrificed myself to the great god of machinery!" Isaac (in his mechanical spider form) roared, his voice turning into a grating metallic scraping sound.
"Behold! This is my beloved! My Mary!"
He pointed to a crystal coffin at the highest point of the hall.
Lying within the coffin was an exceptionally beautiful woman.
She appeared to be asleep, her skin as white as snow. But upon closer inspection, one would discover that every strand of her hair was made of gold, and her eyelashes were tiny steel needles.
"She died of illness… I crafted her into the most exquisite music box!"
"If I collect ninety-nine more maiden hearts as a power source… she will awaken! She will be with me forever!"
"For this, you lowly mortals should all become her nourishment!"
Boom! The mechanical spider's eight long legs suddenly surged forward, like a silver lightning bolt, lunging towards Shen Qingqiu.
"Seventeen." Shen Qingqiu didn't move.
She merely adjusted the edge of her lace gloves, her tone indifferent.
"Tell him."
"What is true...mechanical ascension?"
"Yes, sir." Seventeen moved.
He didn't dodge the oncoming metal spear.
He simply raised his white-gloved right hand and slowly unbuttoned his cuff.
Bang—!
The white glove shattered.
The grotesque Xing Tian's Grip, flowing with dark gold magma patterns, expanded rapidly in the air.
He didn't use any fancy techniques.
In the instant the mechanical spider was about to pierce Shen Qingqiu, Seventeen's figure vanished.
When he reappeared, he was already standing on the back of the giant spider.
With one hand, he gripped the transparent container embedded in Isaac's abdomen, containing his brain.
"You...you're too noisy." Seventeen's voice was low, carrying the cold judgment of a higher-dimensional being.
"Besides, you don't understand love at all."
"Love isn't possession, it's not turning her into a doll."
"Love is..." Seventeen glanced at the still elegant and composed woman in red below.
"It's that even if she's mortal, will age, will die."
"I would use this divine body to protect her year after year."
Crack.
Seventeen's fingers tightened suddenly.
"No!!! My brain! My Mary!!" Isaac screamed in despair.
But Seventeen showed no mercy.
[Xingtian's Grip · Logic Collapse]
Pfft.
The container holding the brain, along with the brain itself, was crushed by Seventeen's single hand.
The red and white matter exploded, splattering onto the cold gear floor.
The giant mechanical spider collapsed with a crash, its eight long legs twitching a few times before turning into a pile of scrap metal.
On the altar, the crystal coffin also shattered.
The "Mary" tumbled out.
As the power source was cut off, her waxy layer, disguised as skin, began to peel away, revealing the rusty springs and keychain beneath.
She had never been "resurrected."
She was merely an empty, decaying shell forcibly kept in place.
Deathly silence filled the hall.
The keychains in the display cases, their eye springs stopped turning. They looked at their dead "creator," a final tear, like machine oil, streaming from their eyes.
Seventeen jumped down from the spider's corpse.
He shook the filth off his hands, looking with disdain at his soiled tuxedo.
"Master, your clothes are dirty."
He walked to Shen Qingqiu, his voice low like a child who had done something wrong.
Shen Qingqiu looked at him.
Looking at this man who, for her sake, had unhesitatingly plunged his hand into the filth, yet later apologized for soiling her clothes.
She reached out and took out a clean white handkerchief.
She wasn't wiping her own hands, but rather carefully and gently wiping the blood from his grotesque, mechanical giant hand.
"Change it when it gets dirty," Shen Qingqiu said softly. "Anyway, this church seems quite wealthy."
She turned around, looking at the room full of "mechanical beings."
Compassion and resolve flowed in her golden eyes.
"Seventeen."
"Yes."
"Burn this place down."
Shen Qingqiu tossed the bloodstained handkerchief onto Isaac's corpse.
"Give these poor souls a true... release."
Seventeen nodded.
He snapped his fingers.
A pale blue flame of flowing gold landed on the pile of scrap metal.
Fire rose.
Not the kind of malevolent fire that devours everything, but a warm, purifying fire that could strip souls from their steel cages.
In the firelight, those imprisoned seemed to smile.
Their mechanical limbs melted in the intense heat, their souls transforming into starlight, piercing through the monastery's dome and soaring into the starry sky above the mist.
Shen Qingqiu, arm in arm with Seventeen, walked out of the burning monastery.
The rain stopped.
The bells of the bell tower rang again.
Dong—dong—
This time, it wasn't a dull, muffled sound.
But a series of clear, crisp tones, like elegies bidding farewell to the dead.
"Listen." Shen Qingqiu stopped, looking up at the massive bell tower.
"The spring has broken."
"Compassion has shattered."
"But we..." She turned her head, looking at Seventeen beside her, her eyes reflecting the starlight.
"We are still alive."
"And we will live more like humans than gods." Seventeen tightened his grip on her hand.
In that cold, mechanical palm was a burning heart, beating only for her.