The road leading down from the Heaven-Severing Sword Sect was no longer a mountain path; it was a structural conveyor belt of pure defiance.
Behind Lin Wei and Xiao Liu marched twelve thousand former furnace-tenders and marrow-slaves. They wore torn grey linen uniforms patched with dark boiler-leather, their short iron shovels resting across their shoulders like matching halberds. Above them, the sky remained a calm, deep violet—the natural hue of a mountain whose ambient spiritual energy had been purged of corporate sulfur and alchemical mercury.
Every step Lin Wei took sent a tiny, rhythmic pulse of purple light through the cracked flagstones.
[Odyssey Matrix: World-Line 2.5 $\rightarrow$ World-Line 01 Link Established.]
[Status: Bi-Directional Conduit Open.]
[Real-World Origin Pod: Cellular Repair at 16.2%.]
[Sovereign Engine Point Balance: 623,000.]
Xiao Liu trotted up beside him, his boots kicking up clouds of light, glittering crystal dust. The boy's twelve newly opened meridians were humming so loudly they created a faint, harmonic whistle in the mountain air.
"Senior Brother Wei," Xiao Liu said, holding out a thick, bound calfskin notebook salvaged from the wreckage of the administrative pavilion. "I've indexed the sect's remaining logistics vouchers. There are four major regional waystations between here and the Western Capital. Every single one of them operates on a centralized Qi-meter owned directly by the Imperial Ministry of Revenue."
Lin Wei didn't break stride. His single volcanic left eye remained fixed on the horizon, where the mountain's edge fell away into a sprawling, smoke-choked valley. In the far distance, towering chimneys of riveted steel and polished black jade jutted into the clouds like the teeth of an open gear-trap.
"A waystation is just a junction box, Liu," Lin Wei said, his stone-milled voice rumbling with the weight of an unmovable pillar. "If they try to bill the road, we uncouple the transformers."
DING.
A bright violet window flashed across his peripheral vision, accompanied by the dry rattle of a virtual ticker-tape.
[Gossip Network: Intercepting Wide-Band Sector Traffic...]
[Source: Western Province Regional Relay Station 04.]
[Message: 'Grand Sect-Master Lu has defaulted on his quarterly marrow quota. Capital Enforcers deployed. Kill order authorized for rogue outer-disciple unit.']
[Truth-Index Verified: 68%.]
[System Reward: 10,000 Points Acquired. Balance: 633,000.]
Lin Wei let out a slow, cold breath. "They're already sending the collection squad."
[Real World — World-Line 01: Capital Medical Spire, Sub-Level 4]
Dr. Mei was panting, her mechanical wrist-jacks clicking furiously against the keyboard of her auxiliary diagnostic terminal.
The floor of the ICU ward was a disaster zone. The corporate enforcer who had tried to sever Lin Wei's life-support lay unconscious against the opposite wall, his heavy tactical armor frosted over with a two-inch layer of unmelting purple rime. His shattered plasma torch lay scattered across the linoleum like glittering teeth.
"Come on... sync, you piece of junk," Mei muttered under her breath, wiping a smear of dark condenser grease from her forehead.
She had tapped a high-frequency data cable directly into the spinal port of Lin Wei's titanium medical pod, bridging the hospital's encrypted corporate intranet with his bizarre, fluctuating bio-signatures.
On her central monitor, the hospital's official billing software—the cold, predatory algorithm that determined whether a patient lived or had their organs harvested—was completely crashing.
BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.
[ARASAKA-LIN MEDICAL CORP: AUTOMATED ASSET RECOVERY]
[PATIENT ID: 009-LIN WEI]
[STATUS: OUTSTANDING MEDICAL DEBT — 4,200,000 CREDITS]
[ATTEMPTING LIQUIDATION...]
Suddenly, the screen flickered violently. A burst of deep violet text tore through the corporate firewall, overwriting the hospital's balance sheet line by line with ancient, geometric cultivation sigils:
[OVERWRITE DETECTED: INCOMING TRANSACTION VIA 'SOVEREIGN ENGINE']
[DEPOSIT SOURCE: HEAVEN-SEVERING SWORD SECT DIVIDEND]
[ASSET TYPE: 50,000 UNITS PRIMORDIAL MARROW-QI]
[CONVERSION RATE: 1 QI UNIT = 100 CORPORATE CREDITS]
[RESULT: DEBT CLEARED. CURRENT ACCOUNT BALANCE: +800,000 CREDITS]
"He just... paid off his ICU bill?" Mei stared at the screen, her cybernetic eye whirring as it tried to process the impossible financial data. "From inside a brain-dead coma?"
HISS.
Inside the pod, the sterile saline fluid began to boil, turning into a dense, fragrant mist that smelled faintly of mountain peaches and raw ozone.
Underneath the glass, Lin Wei's original body was visibly transforming. The deep electrical burns across his chest were fading into smooth, pale scar tissue etched with the faint, geometric outline of interlocking gears. His right arm, crushed six months ago by an industrial press, let out a series of wet, mechanical pops as the shattered bones pulled themselves into perfect anatomical alignment.
His left eyelid twitched.
Then, a sudden red alert flared across the hospital's secondary monitors.
[WARNING: Sector Security Division 09 responding to unauthorized account override.]
[Heavy Mech-Unit 'Iron Golem' entering Sub-Level 4 in 60 seconds.]
"Lin Wei..." Mei whispered, slamming her hand against the pod's reinforced glass. "Whatever world you're tearing apart right now... you need to send back more than money. The heavy armor is at the door."
[Xianxia World — World-Line 2.5: Valley Approach to Waystation 04]
At the base of the mountain pass, the road widened into a massive, fortified checkpoint.
Three hundred Imperial Enforcers in crimson-enameled iron armor stood behind a barrier of interlocking steam-shields. Above them hovered a massive, four-legged siege-automaton—a Bronze War-Strider powered by six pressurized mercury cauldrons, its twin heavy ballistas aimed straight at the defile.
"Halt, rebel livestock!" the Imperial Commander shouted through an acoustic brass horn. "By order of the Western Province Revenue Office, your lives are forfeited to settle the sect's balance sheet!"
Lin Wei didn't stop. He didn't raise his shovel.
Through the deep, inter-dimensional link of the Sovereign Engine, he heard the distant, electronic warning sirens of World-Line 01 echoing right beside the hissing steam-valves of the War-Strider before him.
Two worlds. Two collection agencies. The exact same exploitative balance sheet.
"Xiao Liu," Lin Wei said, his volcanic eye flaring with a blinding, purple inferno.
"Yes, Senior Brother!"
"Hold the ledger," Lin Wei rumbled, raising his bare left palm toward both the Bronze War-Strider in front of him and the unseen security mechs threatening his origin pod across the void.
"I'm executing a double-entry liquidation."
[Technique: 'Dual-Realm Foreclosure' Initialized...]
[Allocating 100,000 Points to World-Line 2.5 (Kinetic Collapse).]
[Routing 100x Cashback Multiplier directly to World-Line 01 Origin Pod...]