- Dungeon · Testing the Blade with Rust
Qian Yiyan's return to the capital was intercepted at the Bian River docks.
The three who stopped her were from the Imperial City Command. The eunuch leading them carried the musty smell of a dungeon—and that mobile rust-odor from the mines.
"By oral decree of the Empress Dowager, Astronomer Qian is requested to accompany us."
The entrance to the secret passage was hidden beneath the water surface of the dockyard. The stone steps were slick and cold, plunging ever downward. As Qian Yiyan descended, the rust-mark on her left shoulder suddenly burned—as if red-hot needles were repeatedly stabbing into the seams of her bones. She did not pause.
In the stone chamber, only a single candle burned. The Empress Dowager sat with her back to the entrance; the candlelight cast her shadow on the wall, huge and wavering.
"How went Xingzhou?"
"The rust-tide has receded. The fissure remains." Qian Yiyan placed the ore fragment given by Cao Yan on the table. "Someone is transfusing blood into that thing. On the Liao side, the transfusion is even more intense."
The Empress Dowager turned. Her gaze was like a blade, drawn from a well and quenched in ice, slowly scraping across Qian Yiyan's face.
"Remove your clothes."
Qian Yiyan unfastened her official robe, baring her left shoulder—the greyish rust-mark had already spread to the edge of her collarbone; dark-red patterns pulsed slowly beneath her skin, like living things.
The Empress Dowager picked up a silver hairpin and gently touched its tip to the very center of the rust-mark.
No blood. Only a fine layer of rust-colored powder rose from the spot.
"The tang of iron, the smell of earth, and the scent of incense." The Empress Dowager pushed a purple sandalwood box toward her.
Inside the box was a piece of shriveled flesh, riddled with honeycomb-like rust holes. Its edges were branded with a Liao shaman's blood-contract mark. Beneath the flesh, two characters were faintly incised, already blurred:
"...Wei...Yan..."
Qian Weiyan.
"A Liao spy we captured last night. This was cut from his left shoulder." The Empress Dowager's gaze was fixed on her, as if trying to nail her to the wall. "The seller was an old Han man, blind in one eye, with only three fingers left on his left hand."
When Qian Weiyan had protected the star charts, he had lost the middle and ring fingers of his left hand.
"Your father's body was never found. How did the star chart end up on a Liao agent?" The Empress Dowager stepped closer, lowering her voice further. "That thing on you, and the rust inside this piece of flesh… the smell is identical."
She tossed a bronze tally to her. It was ice-cold, biting into her palm.
"Ten days. Find out what your father truly saw inside that fissure. Fail—" The Empress Dowager paused, her tone flat as a sentencing. "Think about how you'll explain to your future husband in the Cao family. The wedding has been postponed another three months."
Qian Yiyan picked up the bronze tally. Its coldness bit into her palm until it ached.
As she walked out of the secret passage, the Empress Dowager's final words drifted after her like a wisp of silk:
"Remember, the one holding the blade, aiming for the heart… is not alone."
- Medical Center · Memory Gamble
Lu Baoyi woke up in a ward at the Xihe Medical Center.
His right arm, from shoulder to fingertips, had turned a matte metallic grey. Heavy, cold, as if a iron bar had been welded to his body.
His mind still had a hollow spot—staring at the ceiling, he simply couldn't recall the word 'recessed light'.
Zhou Keran entered with medication, her smile flawless: "Engineer Lu, your cognitive function shows signs of decline. I recommend you remain under observation for systematic treatment."
"Treatment or dissection?" The corner of Lu Baoyi's mouth twitched; the metalized fingers of his right hand moved with difficulty. "That fragment of Song dynasty memory in my head—how far along are you with decoding it? Is there a fee? Monthly or annual subscription?"
"According to Article 7 of the supplementary safety agreement between Xihe Technologies and the Chiyou Project," Zhou Keran's tone was as warm as a user manual, but the content was frigid, "when a project leader exhibits high cognitive risk due to rule contamination, our side has the right to take Compulsion measures. For example, general anesthesia craniotomy, hippocampus-targeted extraction. Success rate: sixty percent. Rate of permanent postoperative cognitive dysfunction… one hundred percent."
Lu Baoyi stared at her for three seconds, then suddenly laughed: "Fine, I'll cooperate. But I have one condition—the entire surgery must be recorded and live-streamed back to the Chiyou headquarters server. I've even thought of the title: 'Xihe Technologies' Vicious Assault on Chief Scientist to Seize Core Data—A True Record.' The viewership should break records."
Zhou Keran nodded, her expression utterly unruffled: "Agreed."
Surgery preparation took only three minutes. A neural blocker was attached to the side of his carotid artery. Qin Mu called up the interface of the encrypted memory fragment: "Mr. Lu, please decrypt."
Lu Baoyi pressed the silver-grey fluid oozing from his fingertip onto the Inductive area.
When the progress bar reached ninety percent, his mind exploded—
Images flashed wildly: his father Lu Yuan holding a glowing cube; a man in Song official robes gazing up at a Distortion starry sky; a massive rust-eaten space with a "Gate" suspended at its center; Qin Zhaoyang's young but fanatical face saying, "The Sowing Plan must continue…"
The fragments faded. The video was fully unlocked.
The background was a Song dynasty building. Two men sat facing each other. One, in a white lab coat, was Lu Yuan. The other, in deep blue official robes, turned—a gaunt face, a three-strand beard.
Lu Baoyi could lip-read.
The man said:
"Tiansheng 4, Mars at Antares. The star chart points to no final destination. Brother Lu, the Sower you and I seek… is in the palace."
Below the video, a line of small characters appeared:
"Coordinates: Northern Song · Bianjing · Astrological Bureau. Sower code name: Star Official. Harvest countdown: Seven hundred thirty days."
Lu Baoyi lifted his head, his voice dry: "The one in official robes is Qian Weiyan. He says the Sower is in the palace."
Qin Mu and Zhou Keran exchanged a glance.
"How much time is left on the countdown?" Lu Baoyi asked.
Qin Mu called up another interface:
【Current time: 2026-10-17 14:32:15】
【Harvest countdown: 409 days 7 hours 23 minutes 11 seconds】
"Calculated from the moment the rust-seed on Qian Yiyan was fully activated." Zhou Keran added softly. "After seven hundred thirty days, she will be harvested—body, consciousness, memories, all transformed into nourishment for the rule-seed's growth."
Lu Baoyi's metalized right hand clenched suddenly, emitting a faint metallic scrape: "How do we stop it?"
"It can't be stopped." Qin Mu shook his head. "The seed is parasitic in the deepest layer of her existential definition. Forcibly removing it would kill her. And moreover—"
He called up a long list:
Globally identified receptors: 372 individuals. China region: 41. The list includes: Qian Yiyan (Northern Song), Lin Wan, Su Yue, Cao Yan (Northern Song)… and yourself, Lu Baoyi.
Lu Baoyi lowered his gaze to his own inhuman right arm.
"What you carry, we call the Mirror-Seed." Qin Mu adjusted his glasses. "The Rust-Seed erodes material existence; the Mirror-Seed erodes cognition and thought. You and she are the twin receptors carefully selected by the Sowing Plan… Twin Entities."
On the screen, the countdown pulsed silently.
Lu Baoyi closed his eyes, took a deep breath. When he opened them again, only an icy sharpness remained in their depths: "Dr. Qin, I mentioned earlier that the memory fragment contained a recording of Qin Zhaoyang—your father. I heard it."
Qin Mu's eyes tightened.
Lu Baoyi repeated it, word for word:
"'Harvesting is not termination; it is purification. The will Eruption from a receptor under extreme fear and resistance—that is the Top-level nourishment most craved by the rule-seed.'"
The room fell dead silent.
"So you not only want our lives," Lu Baoyi smiled, a smile devoid of any warmth, "but you also want to savor the fear and struggle of our dying moments as appetizers on your table? Quite a unique menu. How many Michelin stars?"
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Qin Mu was silent for a long time. Finally, he spoke slowly: "Mr. Lu, you do indeed… know more than we anticipated."
"That's not all I know." Lu Baoyi leaned back against the headboard, his gaze sharp as a blade. "For instance, within your plan, the twin entities have another, more fitting name—Paradox Lock. Theoretically, if one side, before the countdown reaches zero, actively completes existential annihilation, the harvest procedure for the other side would be permanently frozen due to logical paradox, unable to activate."
He paused, his eyes locking onto the two of them:
"Does this piece of intelligence buy me a honest answer—between her and me, who was chosen first? Who is whose lock? "
Qin Mu and Zhou Keran exchanged another glance, their expressions unreadably Complex.
- Night Visit · Father's Phantom
Qian Yiyan left the city and climbed Laoya Ridge.
Cao Yan had told her that her father had once hidden "the true stars" here.
The cellar walls were carved with distorted star charts—the positions of the Big Dipper were all wrong. At the end of the earthen wall, there was a recess that fit the jade token in her bosom perfectly.
She pressed the token into the recess. The wall slid silently open, revealing a hidden compartment.
Inside, a silk document unfurled. The characters were as red as blood:
"Tiansheng 4, Your servant Qian Weiyan submits this secret memorial: Zhao Yunbi, Deputy Director of the Astrological Bureau, is in truth a Liao spy, code-named Star Official. Acting on secret orders from the Liao ruler, he seeks rust-seed receptors within Song territory, intending to graft national destinies…"
At the end, the Empress Dowager's vermilion endorsement, only four characters:
"If controllable, use barbarians to check barbarians."
From deep within the hidden compartment came a long, drawn-out sigh.
The phantom of Qian Weiyan materialized, translucent, the completely rusted jade pendant still hanging from his chest.
"Yan'er, you have seen it." His voice was ethereal, freighted with endless exhaustion. "The Empress Dowager wished to open the Passage between the two realms, to borrow the power of the rules. I was the chosen executor. But I could not bear it… once the rust-seed spirals out of control, it will travel along the earth's veins, Pollution the entire land, and bring calamity to all living things."
"So you…"
"I used my body as a vessel,引导 the rust-seed into the Xingzhou fissure, hoping to neutralize it with the force of colliding rules." The phantom smiled bitterly, his form fading further. "I failed. I became part of the monster; my existence was corroded, dispersed… This piece of flesh is proof."
He looked at his daughter, his gaze sorrowful and heavy:
"The Empress Dowager already knows you carry the rust-seed. The Liao are also frantically searching for receptors. And most致命 of all—Yan'er, the rust-seed's true purpose is not destruction, but to sow entirely new rules within the chaos. The so-called Sowers… are more than one. Even… you are one."
The phantom dissolved, vanishing like smoke.
Qian Yiyan stood alone in the dim lamplight, clutching the icy silk document.
The distorted, chaotic star charts on the walls, in her eyes, were slowly piecing themselves together into a clear shape—
A key.
And she was the hand that fate had forcibly shoved into the lock.
- Astrological Bureau · The Medicine Bowl Showdown
Qian Yiyan returned to the Astrological Bureau and ordered all files related to Zhao Yunbi to be brought out.
Dozens of crates of aged archives filled the hall, dust dancing in the light beams. She flipped through them rapidly—the timestamps of anomalous star sightings aligned perfectly with reported mine disasters across the regions; the excavation sites of certain strange ores quietly overlapped with already-discovered rust-seed埋设 points.
All the clues, overt or hidden, ultimately pointed to that ever-smiling Deputy Director—Zhao Yunbi.
Footsteps approached from outside the door.
Zhao Yunbi himself entered, carrying a bowl of medicinal broth. His smile was as warm as ever: "Astronomer Qian has returned? The Empress Dowager specially instructed that you be given a calming broth, to settle the spirit and replenish energy."
The broth was Traditional Chinese medicine decoction yet tinged with red. A fine layer of golden powder floated on its surface; beneath the cloying sweetness lurked a familiar metallic tang of rust.
Qian Yiyan did not move: "Since when does the Astrological Bureau pharmacy use cinnabar mixed with silver powder in its medicines?"
"A specially formulated calming drink from the Imperial Medical Bureau; the recipe is not available outside." Zhao Yunbi pushed the bowl another half inch toward her. "Astronomer Qian, drink it while it's warm, for best effect."
Qian Yiyan lifted the bowl and brought it to her lips.
Then, abruptly, she flipped her wrist—
The broth splashed onto the floor.
A strange sizzling sound erupted. The stone floor instantly bloomed with greyish rust-spots, spreading rapidly like living things.
The smile on Zhao Yunbi's face slowly faded.
"…You know."
"I know." Qian Yiyan rose; the hem of her official robe stirred without wind. "I am a receptor. This bowl is a ripening agent. Harvest in four hundred nine days—am I correct, Deputy Director Zhao? Or should I say, Star Official?"
Zhao Yunbi was silent for a long time. His always-straight back seemed to stoop a fraction.
"You are cleverer than your father." His voice was slightly hoarse. "He… finished the entire bowl before he realized something was wrong."
Qian Yiyan's heart stopped.
"He was… willing?"
"The Empress Dowager told him the rust-seed would grant the Song the power to Manage the rules, that the nation's strength would far surpass the Liao and Xia." Zhao Yunbi nodded, his eyes hollow. "He believed it. He drank. Then he volunteered to go to Xingzhou, to Guide the rust-seed into the fissure. But he didn't know that once activated, the rust-seed can never be stopped… It erodes the body, devours consciousness, and finally turns him into the monster you saw in the shaft."
"And you?" Qian Yiyan pressed. "Why do you serve the Liao?"
"Serve?" Zhao Yunbi smiled a desolate smile. "Do you think the Liao don't have their own Sowers? The rust-seed comes from The Other Side. All of us, Song or Liao, are merely picking up the scraps it inadvertently Leaking out, believing we can wield thunder, but in truth… we are all being used by it."
He tossed a rolled-up, aged silk document onto the table.
"Your father's final legacy—a map of the mineral veins. The rust-seed connects through the underground veins, like blood vessels. The rust-seed on you, the rust-tide in the Xingzhou mine, the rust-marks on the Liao shaman's blood-contract, and even… the mirror-seed on that young man across time who resonates with you—all are different parts of the same vast system."
Qian Yiyan's pupils contracted: "Lu Baoyi?"
"Yes. Liao shamans transmitted intelligence that in a future age, a young man carries the mirror-seed, capable of跨时空 resonance with a rust-seed receptor. You are… Twin Entities."
Twin Entities.
One erodes matter, the other erodes cognition.
One in the abyss of the Northern Song, the other in the prison of a future age.
A meticulously arranged controlled experiment.
Qian Yiyan's throat went dry. Her fingertip traced an annotation Zhao Yunbi had written years ago on a file. Suddenly, before her eyes, without warning, a sharp fragment exploded—
Lu Baoyi's metalized right hand, gripping a paper document bearing her Song dynasty portrait, veins bulging on the back of his hand, and in her ears, his roar, To the extreme before detonating across a thousand years: "That's bullshit!"
In an instant, the fragment vanished.
That was his anger. So real, so scorching hot, branding itself into her consciousness across the vastness of time and space.
"…And the resonance?" Her voice trembled, the question cutting to the heart. "Those perceptions, those voices, those… inexplicable feelings of familiarity—were they also concocted by you, using the rust-seed and mirror-seed?"
Zhao Yunbi was silent for a moment, then gave a Vague and cruel answer:
"Resonance at the rule level cannot be Completely fabricated… But can a meeting that was planned and guided from the outset, Pollution the pure color of the resonance itself? Astronomer Qian, this question, I fear, you must ask yourself… ask your own heart, and ask that person at the other end."
He turned and walked toward the door.
"I can stall the Empress Dowager for at most three more days. Three days from now, if she discovers you did not drink that calming broth… she will come for you herself. By then—"
He paused, not looking back.
"Take care of yourself."
The door closed softly.
Qian Yiyan stood alone amidst the mountains of files, gripping the vein map tightly. The rust-mark on her left shoulder burned like fire.
Beyond the window, the sky was overcast; thunder rumbled faintly across the horizon.
- Countdown · Price and Noise
A thousand years later · Xihe Medical Center
Lu Baoyi stared at the string of constantly ticking countdown numbers on the screen.
With each tick, the icy coldness of his metalized right arm seemed to Erosion further into his torso.
Zhou Keran entered with his evening meal. She set down the tray, her voice calm: "Dr. Qin asked me to tell you that in the data Remains by your father, an encrypted log was found. It mentions that dual-key resonance might trigger a rule-level self-referential paradox, thereby distorting or even Interrupt the preset harvest procedure."
Lu Baoyi's head snapped up.
"Meaning, if the resonance between you and Qian Yiyan is strong enough, strong enough to form a stable rule-level self-referential loop, then the moment the harvest procedure is activated, it might, due to logical conflict… self-destruct."
Lu Baoyi Quickly and accurately perceived her eyes flicker with a fleeting, utterly unprogrammed complex emotion—within it, even a trace of… pity?
"This theory," he pressed, staring at her, "did you leak it personally, or did Qin Mu instruct you to use it as new bait to test my reaction?"
Zhou Keran was silent for three seconds. This pause, on someone so trained, was unusually long.
"It was the original wording in the log." Her voice dropped, almost inaudible. "But speaking these words out loud… violates my底层行动 protocol."
The instant she finished speaking, a tiny biological marker beneath the skin behind her ear suddenly flashed with a刺眼 blue light. Then, at the edge of the marker, a single drop of bright red blood oozed out.
Immediate physiological punishment for protocol violation.
Lu Baoyi's pupils contracted. The weight of this information, because of that drop of blood, instantly multiplied tenfold.
"…Success rate?" he asked, his voice hoarse.
"Theoretically possible." Zhou Keran turned away, avoiding his gaze. "In practice, it's like trying to ignite the entire Pacific Ocean with a single match."
The door closed.
Lu Baoyi closed his eyes.
At that very moment, within the already faint resonance channel of the jade pendant in his bosom, a fluctuation came through, utterly sudden—
Like the faint sound of raindrops, filtered through a thousand years of dense rain.
In the monitoring room, Qin Mu, watching Lu Baoyi's status data on the screen, said quietly to Zhou Keran, who had just entered:
"'The Complete mechanism of the Paradox Lock must never be revealed to him—that the other side also possesses the same locking authority. Information asymmetry is our final safeguard for controlling the twin entities and preventing them from Collaborate creating uncontrollable variables."
The blade of information had been silently forged.
A double-edged sword, suspended over the heads of the twin entities, yet showing each only one of its edges.
A thousand years earlier · Bian River Bank
Qian Yiyan walked out of the Astrological Bureau. The rain was already heavy.
She did not seek shelter. She walked straight to the Bian River.
The rain quickly soaked through her official robe, plastering it to her skin. Beneath the wet fabric, the Frightening and terrifying rust-mark on her left shoulder was an increasingly Blindingly bright outline.
Four hundred nine days. Or less.
Deep within the rain curtain, toward the palace, a string of moving lanterns appeared—the Empress Dowager's people, arriving faster than she had anticipated.
Qian Yiyan thrust the vein map deep into her bosom, turned, and walked in the opposite direction.
Her steps were steady. Her back was straight.
Like a blade that had found its direction—even if what lay ahead was an unbreakable cliff, it would, before shattering itself, strike one final, brightest spark.
The rain intensified. Thunder rolled in the depths of the clouds.
Just as she stepped into the deluge—
Amidst the vast sound of rain, abruptly, with extreme faintness, a strange noise detonated in her ears:
"Crack."
Clear, short. Unlike a raindrop. Unlike thunder.
Like something ancient and hard, deep within… rusting through.
At the same moment, a thousand years later, Lu Baoyi, in his hospital room, his eyes closed, attempting to perceive that rain-soaked resonance, also captured, at the chaotic edge of his perception, with unmistakable clarity—
The same "Crack."
Not from the other side.
It was a third type of sound.
Unlike rust-corroding, unlike a sigh. More like the last, incomprehensible noise—the final residue of some ancient word from the abyss's bottom, ground down by the torrent of time.
Both of them, in different space-time, in the rain, froze simultaneously.
The rain continued to pour, torrential.
And within that resonance channel, so meticulously laid by the Sowing Plan, for the first time, there appeared…
Something that belonged to neither of them.