1. The Gathering Storm


  

  Qi County, Henan. 05:00.

  The sky was blue like a computer's blue screen of death, distant mountains like cardboard cutouts. The air carried the loamy stench of the old Yellow River course mixed with the bitter scent of roots—this place felt off-kilter right from the smell.

  Lu Baoyi tightened his black jacket, standing on a gentle slope overlooking the ruins below.

  This was the site of the Temple of Primordial Heaven. It was light-years away from the imagined incense-filled Taoist temple; only crumbling walls and rampant weeds remained, a few charred beams thrusting from the earth like ribs the ground had failed to hide. At the center of the ruins, a half-collapsed octagonal bluestone foundation still stood, its surface thick with moss so deep green it could serve as a carpet.

  "This is the place." Old Chen squatted nearby, unfolding a yellowed military map illuminated by an infrared flashlight. "County records say it was built in the Tang, flourished in the Song, expanded by a master during the Jiayou era. Destroyed by war in the late Yuan. In the 70s, construction crews leveled it, left only this foundation."

  Xiao Zhao rubbed his hands, breathing into them for warmth, but his eyes scanned the area like searchlights. "Whoa, this place... feels a good two degrees colder, doesn't it? Lu Gong, are you sure the mirror point for that ninth array node is really under this stone platform? Doesn't look like there's even a decent ghost around."

  Lu Baoyi didn't reply immediately. He closed his eyes, trying to capture the lingering sense of wrongness from last night's palpitation—like faint, directional static bleeding into headphones late at night. It indeed pointed toward the center of these ruins beneath his feet.

  "Model projections and cross-verification with historical geographical data place the error margin right here." He opened his eyes, pointing at the octagonal foundation. "Lin Wan back-calculated using the pendant signal's correlation with cosmic background radiation. If a 'door' requires a specific spacetime structural fold, then this area's anomalous geomagnetic field, even its high incidence of local ghost stories... all the data lines up."

  "Science and metaphysics, double insurance." Old Chen folded the map and stood. "Then we proceed as planned. Set the probes. Quick, locals might come around at dawn."

  The three moved swiftly. Xiao Zhao retrieved several fist-sized, sensor-studded silver metal spheres from the equipment case, carefully burying them like mines around the foundation's perimeter.

  Lu Baoyi walked to the center of the foundation, brushing aside a patch of moss so dark it was almost black, revealing rough bluestone beneath. Faint carvings, nearly worn smooth by time, scarred the stone. He activated a palm-sized, high-precision handheld 3D scanner.

  The laser line swept slowly. Data streamed in real-time to the tablet on his wrist. On the screen, a 3D model of the stone surface took shape. Enhanced by algorithms, the blurred carvings revealed themselves—not text or talismans, but a twisted, geometric pattern resembling countless fine threads knotted into dead ends. Similar in spirit to the carvings on the stone casket from Bianjing's Secret Archives and the charcoal drawings on the mute servant Liu's wall.

  "Just as I thought..." Lu Baoyi murmured. "Shao Yong's watermark is everywhere."

  At that moment, the screen on his wrist tablet flickered violently, its edges streaked with a burst of snowy noise! Simultaneously, a piercingly sharp, brief electronic screech exploded in his left bone-conduction earpiece!

  "Skreee—!"

  The sound stabbed directly into his brain. Lu Baoyi grunted, caught off guard, and instinctively clapped a hand over his ear. The sound vanished as quickly as it came, like an auditory hallucination.

  But Xiao Zhao's voice, low and tinged with alarm, followed immediately in the earpiece: "Lu Gong! You okay? Over here... the initialization self-check signals for all probes just glitched simultaneously! Like they got zapped by a strong EMP! They're normalizing now!"

  Old Chen's voice came right after, graver: "No visual on the perimeter. But sensor three logged a brief, subtle anomalous tremor. Origin... unknown. Seems to have come from deep underground, not footsteps."

  Lu Baoyi shook his head to dispel the lingering tinnitus, but his heart raced uncontrollably. Not from fear, but from a strong intuition of being watched—or touched—by something.

  "I'm fine," he responded quickly. "Xiao Zhao, any anomalous patterns in the probe data stream? Old Chen, maintain alert."

  "Data stream... recovering. Wait, that's not right—" Xiao Zhao's voice was puzzled. "After the glitch, the background signals we're receiving now... their structural complexity is climbing! It's like a silent, blank channel suddenly started broadcasting encrypted symphonies!"

  Lu Baoyi immediately checked the tablet's real-time data interface. The curves representing environmental field chaos and information entropy were visibly spiking, soon exceeding normal ranges. More bizarrely, these complex signals seemed to be... self-organizing, forming a patterned pulse.

  The rhythm of the pulse...

  He focused, listening to the noise-reduced raw signal audio simulation in his earpiece. A deep, thudding sound, like the heartbeat of a colossal beast. Slow, measured.

  Thud... fixed interval of seconds... thud...

  This rhythm was completely different from what he'd felt during the heart-sync with Qian Yiyan, or from the shadow fragment's tapping in the wooden box in Bianjing. Those were faster, closer to human. This was slower, heavier, more like something... non-human and enormous, slowly turning over deep below.

  "This isn't an array node activation signal," Lu Baoyi judged rapidly, his voice tightening. "This is more like... a long-dormant background process being woken up by our series of probing pings."

  As if to confirm his words, the ground beneath his feet shuddered with an extremely faint but undeniably real tremor!

  Not an omnidirectional earthquake-like shake, but a very distinct sensation of something pushing upward from directly beneath the octagonal foundation's depths! As if something beneath thick layers of rock and soil had stretched, or... opened its eyes.

  "Lu Gong!" Xiao Zhao's voice held a note of panic. "Probes seven and eight are red-lining! Detected brief, localized negative gravity anomaly and spatial curvature perturbation below! Magnitude minimal, duration under 0.1 seconds, but the instruments caught it!"

  Negative gravity? Spatial curvature? Lu Baoyi's pupils constricted. This was direct evidence of an imminent door opening—or an existing unstable fissure!

  "All units, prepare to evacuate!" he ordered decisively. "Xiao Zhao, initiate probe data compression and uplink. Remote detonate self-destruct sequence upon completion! Old Chen, cover us!"

  "Understood!"

  "Copy!"

  Lu Baoyi used the last few seconds to aim the handheld scanner at the bluestone with the strange pattern for one final high-res scan. The data had just finished transmitting when he moved to stand—

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  "Swish—!"

  A sound so light it almost melted into the dawn breeze shot toward the back of his head!

  Every hair on Lu Baoyi's scalp stood up. Combat instinct made him dive forward into a low roll without looking back.

  "Thunk!"

  A dull impact. Embedded in the half-collapsed stone pillar behind where he'd just crouched was a black short-bolt, non-metallic, non-wooden, matte-finished, sunk nearly halfway into the stone!

  A crossbow bolt! High-precision, suppressed sniper crossbow!

  "Contact! Eleven o'clock, tree line!" Old Chen's low roar erupted almost simultaneously with the bolt's impact! Followed by two suppressed, muffled pops of gunfire!

  Lu Baoyi didn't stop after the roll, using the momentum to take cover behind another section of ruined wall. His heart pounded like a drum, but his mind was eerily clear. The attackers were no amateurs; they'd gone straight for a kill shot. And how had they silently penetrated Old Chen's outer perimeter?

  "Xiao Zhao!"

  "I'm okay! Behind cover! Probe data uplink complete, self-destruct sequence initiating, thirty seconds to detonation!"

  "Lu Gong, at least three hostiles, well-trained, you're clearly the primary target!" Old Chen's voice was laced with fury. "They... precisely avoided camera two's sweep and slipped through sensor three's detection gaps, like they were moving with our defense layout in hand!"

  Familiar with their protocols? The string in Lu Baoyi's mind concerning the internal mole snapped taut. Just last night he'd found traces of intrusion in the system, and today they faced a precision ambush during fieldwork?

  "Don't engage head-on. Execute second evacuation protocol, rally at designated Point B!"

  "Understood!"

  "Copy!"

  Lu Baoyi took a deep breath, peeked lightning-fast from the edge of the ruined wall—figures were moving swiftly, using trees for cover in the sparse woodland at eleven o'clock. Calculating the attacker's likely next firing position, he burst from the other side of his cover, sprinting down the slope in an erratic zigzag pattern!

  His form was like the wind, covering over a dozen meters in a few bounds between crumbling walls.

  The attackers, however, had clearly anticipated their retreat. Just as Lu Baoyi was about to clear a pile of rubble, a figure rose without warning from behind a waist-high earthen mound to his side!

  Camouflage uniform, face painted, eyes cold and merciless. He held a compact submachine gun fitted with a suppressor, muzzle already aimed at Lu Baoyi!

  Too close, too sudden. No time to dodge!

  Every muscle in Lu Baoyi's body locked. His pupils reflected the black hole of the gun barrel.

  At the critical moment—

  "CLANG!!!"

  A shriek of metal on metal, sharp enough to tear eardrums, erupted!

  A brilliant arc of light, like lightning materializing from thin air, flashed past Lu Baoyi's side and struck the submachine gun's barrel precisely as the gray-clad man squeezed the trigger!

  Sparks flew! The impact wrenched the barrel upward, sending a burst of bullets puff-puff-puffing harmlessly into the air above Lu Baoyi's head!

  Only then did Lu Baoyi see his savior—a young man in ordinary dark blue workman's jacket, looking barely twenty, with clean, almost scholarly features. But his eyes now burned with cold combat focus. In his hand, he held... a sword?

  No, not an ordinary sword. The blade was narrow, about three feet long, its entire body clear and deep blue like autumn waters in Xishuangbanna, flowing with a strange luster in the dawn light. That brilliant arc had come from this blade. The guard bore simple cloud patterns, elegantly antique.

  The gray-clad man, shocked, abandoned his gun without hesitation. His right hand flashed, producing an all-black short blade, and he lunged forward!

  Facing the fierce counterattack, the young man in work clothes didn't dodge. A faint, roguish smile touched his lips. A flick of his wrist, and the blue sword emitted a clear, resonant hum, its tip instantly tracing three illusory yet real blossoms of light!

  Fast! Precise! Ruthless!

  The swordplay held no superfluous motion, each strike streamlined and ruthless, aimed at vital points.

  The gray-clad man's short blade whirled into a black curtain of light. A rapid series of ding-ding-dang-dang clashes rang out—he blocked all three strikes! But with each parry, he was forced back half a step, his palm numbing, his eyes widening with greater alarm.

  Lu Baoyi used the moment to break clear of danger, taking cover behind another broken wall, watching this utterly surreal duel in shock. The work-clad youth's sword was unnaturally fast, his movements leaving afterimages. The blue sword's luster was no ordinary metal reflection—this was beyond martial arts.

  "Lu Gong! What's your status?" Old Chen's anxious voice came through the earpiece.

  "I'm fine! Third-party intervention!" Lu Baoyi responded urgently. "Your status?"

  "Hostiles are withdrawing! Movements crisp, not like a rout, more like disengaging after achieving an objective!"

  At that moment, the young man's sword light retracted. His form flickered like a phantom, seeming to vanish from the gray-clad man's sight! In the next instant, he appeared behind and to the side of his opponent, reversing his grip on the sword hilt and delivering a heavy blow to the back of the man's neck!

  The gray-clad man grunted and collapsed.

  The young man sheathed his sword with a fluid motion—the blue blade disappearing to who-knew-where. He clapped his hands lightly and walked over to Lu Baoyi's ruined wall, his expression reverting to its slightly nonchalant cast. "Hey there, boss. Not too shaken up, I hope? Your archaeology field team's practicals... are pretty hardcore."

  Lu Baoyi stepped out from cover, his gaze scanning the young man head to toe like a scanner. "Name. Unit. Purpose. What you just did isn't something a passerby pulls off."

  The young man shrugged, pulling a crumpled credential case from his pocket and tossing it over. "See for yourself."

  Lu Baoyi caught it. The paper felt unusual to the touch—an obsolete, anti-counterfeit stock with invisible fibers, long out of production. He opened it, and his pupils constricted slightly. The credential looked ordinary. But the embossed seal he recognized—Office for the Ecological Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage and Special Talent Cultivation. A department he'd only seen referenced a few times in top-secret cross-indexed files. Name field: Gu Qingya. Age 22. Position: Specially Appointed Field Researcher of Folk Customs & Ancient Martial Arts. Beside the position, a small, handwritten number in calligraphic script: 甲子柒 (Celestial Stem I, Branch 1, No. 7).

  "Gu Qingya?" Lu Baoyi looked up at this bright-smiling yet deeply, inhumanly composed young man. "Your office... has quite a broad portfolio."

  "That's me." Gu Qingya took back his credential and stuffed it carelessly into his pocket. His eyes swept over the unconscious gray-clad man, then looked into the distance. "You're Lu Gong, right? The hornet's nest you've poked isn't small. What's buried here has stirred more than just the old friends underground. Some colleagues living in the shadows have gotten restless too."

  He paused, his tone turning serious as he looked at Lu Baoyi. "This isn't the place to talk. If you want to understand what Project Chiyou really encountered back then, to figure out what Shao Yong hid behind the door..." He deliberately lowered his voice. "Both generations of your Lu family, and that young supervisor back in Bianjing... you're all tethered by the same fishing line. The end of that line is in Yanjin."

  Lu Baoyi's heart clenched violently. Fishing line... The word acted like a key, suddenly connecting all the clues—

  The Nine Palaces Array requiring a living key to channel energy, the mute servant Liu's 'vessel' state, the Bureau of Inner Affairs' unusual interest in Qian Yiyan's marriage, his father's frantic notes on two-way communication experiments... All fragments collided under this term, forming a cold, terrifying logical chain in his mind in an instant:

  They aren't looking for a key. They are cultivating a key—then using it at a specific moment.

  Qian Yiyan wasn't swept up in some palace intrigue. She was the core of the intrigue—the chosen living sacrifice.

  Lu Baoyi's voice was hoarse from tension: "Yanjin... is the site of Shao Yong's Stargazing Cottage."

  Gu Qingya nodded, his smile taking on an elusive quality. "The place Master Shao Yong never finished building. That's where the key is meant to go. It's also the shore where all the fishing lines converge."

  Just then, several muffled, earth-shaking booms came from the direction of the octagonal foundation—the probe self-destruct sequence had activated.

  Almost simultaneously, the distant sounds of gunfire from Old Chen's position ceased completely, replaced by the sound of footsteps rapidly retreating through the woods.

  Dawn light finally fully dispersed the darkness.

  Lu Baoyi looked at Gu Qingya, then at the final scan data of the strange bluestone on his tablet.

  At the data's core, those twisted, entwining lines, enhanced by algorithms, faintly outlined the contours of two ancient seal-script characters—

  【待钥】 (Awaiting the Key).

  The moment his eyes registered these characters, a brief but distinct sensation of searing heat flared against his chest—against the inner pocket where he kept his father Lu Yuan's green jade ring. At the same moment, a faint sound, lighter than the wind, seemed to brush past his ear—a woman's suppressed groan, laced with pain and restraint, gone in an instant.

  Immediately after, a shard of heartbeat not his own forced its way into his consciousness, cold and resolute:

  "If that's how it is... then let this feast turn from hunting ground to execution ground."

  Followed by the subtle sound of metal lightly scraping against wood, as if honing a blade.

  The key was on its way. And on the other side of the keyhole, the key-bearer had sharpened her edge.