The beacon pulsed again.
It wasn't just a light anymore. A faint, sickly heat radiated through the seams of the human-skin Ledger, warming the cold air of the SUV like a fever.
Jian swallowed hard, his hands gripping the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white.
"Ren… that's not normal. That book is breathing."
Ren Wu stared at the object in his lap with cold, clinical interest. He was busy wrapping a thick fashion magazine around his left forearm, securing it tightly with silver duct tape.
Rip. Wrap. Rip. Wrap.
"In my era, tracking spells were crude," Ren said, his voice calm against the backdrop of the rattling engine. "They were loud. Thunderclaps in the soul. You knew the hunter was coming."
He pressed two fingers against the burning cover of the Ledger. The runes etched into the skin flared green.
"This one is elegant. It doesn't roar; it whimpers. It screams for its mother."
Jian's laptop, perched precariously on the center console, chimed. A stream of code reflected in Jian's glasses.
"I traced the signal," Jian said quickly, his voice tight. "It's bouncing through three spiritual relay towers, trying to mask the endpoint. But the ping is getting stronger."
He turned the screen toward Ren.
[ SIGNAL ORIGIN LOCATED ]
[ DESTINATION: LAST STOP MEAT PACKING PLANT ]
[ SECTOR: 9 (THE RUST BELT) ]
Ren looked out the window.
They had left the neon lights of the city center miles behind. Here, in the Rust Belt, the streetlights were broken. The smog hung low and heavy, tasting of sulfur and old iron. The buildings were skeletons of concrete and steel, abandoned when the economy shifted.
"A slaughterhouse," Ren murmured, a cruel smile touching his lips. "How poetic. Necromancers always return to the rot."
Jian killed the headlights a block away. The SUV rolled to a silent stop behind a pile of discarded shipping crates. The air outside was freezing. The wind howled through the gaps in the rusted fences, sounding like distant weeping.
"Just so you know," Jian whispered, pulling his hood up. "Abandoned industrial zones are bad news. The Spirit Web is weak here. The cameras don't work. If we scream, no one hears us."
"Perfect," Ren said. He grabbed a rusted crowbar from the floorboard, weighing it in his hand. It was heavy, brutal, and simple. "That means when they scream, no one will save them either."
Jian looked at Ren. "You keep saying 'they.' Who is 'they'?"
Ren didn't answer. He just opened the door and stepped into the darkness.
They moved toward the facility. The Last Stop Meat Packing Plant was a monolith of windowless concrete. The loading dock gates hung open like broken jaws. Faded warning signs peeled off the walls—BIOHAZARD, CONDEMNED, DO NOT ENTER.
It was too quiet. There were no rats. No stray dogs. Even the wind seemed to die down as they reached the perimeter.
"The side entrance," Ren pointed with the crowbar. "There."
They crouched by a heavy steel service door. A keypad, caked in grime, glowed with a faint, dying red light.
"It's an older model," Jian whispered, kneeling in the dirt. He pulled a cable from his bag and plugged it into the service port. "Wait... this isn't standard encryption."
Jian's fingers flew across his keyboard.
"It's a hybrid lock. Part electronic, part... organic? The circuit is completed by a rune."
Ren watched Jian work. He activated Spirit Sight.
The world shifted into shades of grey and green. Ren saw it immediately. The lock wasn't just wired to the electricity; a thin vein of black necrotic energy pulsed from the keypad into the wall, like an IV drip.
"Hurry," Ren hissed. "The building knows we're touching it."
"I'm trying!" Jian sweated, despite the cold. "If I trip the rune, it melts the circuit. Okay... bypassing the logic gate... inverting the signal..."
CLICK.
The light on the keypad turned green. A heavy mechanical thud echoed from inside the door.
HISS.
The steel door slid open. A blast of freezing fog rolled out, engulfing them. It smelled of ammonia, old blood, and something sweet—like rotting flowers.
[ ENTERING ZONE: COLD STORAGE FLOOR 1 ]
[ TEMPERATURE: -10°C ]
"We're in," Jian breathed, packing his laptop.
"Stay close," Ren commanded. "And do not make a sound."
They stepped inside.
The facility was cavernous. The ceiling was lost in the gloom, obscured by complex networks of pipes and mechanized rails. It was a forest of hanging meat. Hundreds of hooks dangled from the conveyor system, each holding a frozen carcass wrapped in plastic. The air was thick with mist. The only sound was the hum of the industrial cooling units and the wet drip, drip, drip of thawing ice.
Ren walked silently, his sneakers making no sound on the concrete. He scanned the rows of meat.
Something was wrong. The shapes were too long. Too narrow.
Ren reached out and tore the plastic from the nearest hook.
Jian stifled a scream.
It wasn't a pig. It was a torso.
Human. Pale, blue-skinned, and frozen solid. But it wasn't just a corpse. The chest had been cut open and reinforced with iron plates. The arms were stitched on with glowing green thread. Runes were carved directly into the dead flesh.
"Soul Constructs," Ren whispered, his eyes glowing. "Jiangshi. But modernized."
"That's... that's a person," Jian gagged.
"It was a person," Ren corrected. "Now it's a chassis. Gui isn't just selling souls; he's building soldiers. Mass-producing bodies for spirits to inhabit."
Ren looked down the aisle. There were hundreds of them.
Suddenly, Jian slipped.
He stepped on a patch of frozen, bloody sludge. His sneaker squeaked—a sharp, high-pitched SCREEE that cut through the silence like a gunshot.
Ren froze.
Ten yards away, one of the hanging carcasses stopped swaying.
It twitched.
First the fingers. Then the neck.
The hook above it groaned. The carcass dropped. It landed on the concrete with a heavy, wet thud that shook the floor.
It stood up. It was nearly seven feet tall, a patchwork of muscle and stitched skin. It wore a butcher's rubber apron stained black. Its face was gone, replaced by a mask of stapled leather. In its right hand, grafted directly to the bone, was a rusted, jagged meat cleaver.
[ ENEMY DETECTED ]
[ TYPE: BUTCHER CONSTRUCT (LEVEL 4) ]
Jian scrambled backward, hyperventilating. "Ren... Ren, it's looking at me."
Ren stepped forward, placing himself between the hacker and the monster. He gripped the crowbar until his knuckles ached.
"In my world," Ren said calmly, though his heart was hammering against his ribs, "butchers feared warlords."
The Construct didn't roar. It didn't pause to intimidate. It just killed.
It sprinted.
For something made of dead meat, it was terrifyingly fast. It charged down the aisle, the cleaver scraping sparks against the metal racks.
Ren stood his ground. He analyzed the threat in milliseconds. Speed: High. Strength: Superhuman. Intelligence: Low.
He checked his own status.
[ MANA: 1050 / 1100 ]
He could blast it with a shockwave. But the noise would wake the entire warehouse. He had to do this quietly. He had to do this physically.
"Jian, move left!" Ren shouted.
But Jian didn't move.
The boy was paralyzed. His brain registered the monster, but his legs refused to fire. He just stared as the seven-foot nightmare raised the cleaver above his head.
"Damn it," Ren cursed.
He couldn't dodge. If he dodged, Jian died.
Ren lunged. He didn't attack the monster. He threw his own body into the path of the swing. He raised his left arm—the one wrapped in the magazine and duct tape—in a desperate block.
THWACK.
The sound was sickening. It wasn't the clang of metal; it was the dull thud of steel hitting bone.
The force of the blow drove Ren to his knees. The rusted cleaver sliced through the magazine, sheared through the layers of duct tape, and bit deep into Ren's forearm.
[ CRITICAL HIT! ]
[ HP: 85 / 100 ]
[ STATUS: BLEEDING ]
Pain exploded in Ren's nervous system. It was white-hot and blinding. For a second, his vision blurred.
This body is weak. It is so fragile.
But the block had worked. The cleaver was wedged in the improvised armor. The Construct tugged, trying to free its weapon.
That split second was all Ren needed. The pain sharpened his mind. The green fire in his eyes flared.
Ren looked at the Construct's leg. Specifically, the left knee, where the stitching was loose.
"BREAK."
He channeled a burst of Mana into his right arm—not a spell, but a physical reinforcement. He swung the crowbar with every ounce of strength he had.
CRUNCH.
The steel bar smashed into the kneecap. The bone shattered. The joint bent backward with a grotesque snap. The Construct collapsed, its weight shifting.
Ren didn't hesitate. He ripped his bleeding arm free from the cleaver, screaming internally as the blade tore his skin. He spun around, using the momentum to drive the pointed end of the crowbar into the creature's temple.
SPLAT.
The bar punched through the leather mask and into the skull.
The Construct convulsed once, then went limp. Black smoke poured from its ears as the binding magic dissolved. It dissolved into a pile of rotting meat.
Ren stumbled back, clutching his arm. Blood—warm, red, human blood—dripped steadily onto the frozen concrete.
"Ren!"
Jian scrambled up from the floor, his face pale as a ghost. He looked at the dead monster, then at Ren's arm.
"You... you're bleeding. You took that hit. You took that hit for me."
Ren leaned against a metal rack, breathing heavily. He ripped a strip of cloth from his hoodie and tied it tight above the wound. A tourniquet.
"Focus," Ren hissed through gritted teeth. "I told you, Jian. You are the eyes. I handle the violence."
Jian stared at him. The fear in the boy's eyes was changing. It was being replaced by something else. Awe. Loyalty.
"Okay," Jian whispered. "Okay. I'm focused."
But the universe wasn't done with them.
In Ren's pocket, the Ledger suddenly screamed.
It wasn't a metaphor. The book let out a piercing, high-pitched shriek that sounded like a dying child amplified through a megaphone.
WEEEEEEEEEEEE.
Ren cursed. "The impact... it triggered the proximity alarm."
The warehouse transformed.
Red emergency lights strobed on the walls. The mechanized rail system groaned to life, the hooks moving faster. All around them, the plastic coverings on the hanging carcasses began to tear.
Riiip. Riiip. Riiip.
One by one, the "meat" dropped to the floor.
Ten. Fifteen. Twenty.
Twenty Butcher Constructs stood up. Twenty pairs of dead, milky eyes locked onto Ren and Jian.
Jian's voice cracked. "Ren... we can't fight twenty of them. You have one arm!"
Ren looked at the waking army. He looked at his bleeding arm. The probability of victory in a direct fight was 0%.
But Ren Wu didn't need to be stronger. He just needed to be smarter.
He looked at the floor. Specifically, at the massive industrial meat grinders recessed into the concrete at the end of the conveyor belts.
Ren smiled. It was a jagged, bloody smile that matched the red light of the room.
"Jian," Ren said, pointing to the control panel on the far wall. "Can you hack the factory controls?"
"I... I think so. Why?"
Ren gripped his crowbar.
"Turn on the grinders," Ren commanded. "And turn up the volume. We aren't going to fight them. We are going to process them."