26: Chapter 26 The Hybrid Furnace Behind the Door

As the crack in the door widened to the width of a single person turning sideways, Chen Duo's mechanical prosthetic eye emitted a high-frequency hum. He raised his hand to press against his right eye socket, his knuckles turning white from the exertion.

"The biological signal is strengthening." Chen Duo's voice came through his respirator, carrying a rasp like metal grinding, "It's not an ARK standard waveform."

The Biological Armor on Lin Yuan's left arm deployed in response, the bone-white outer shell covering up to his elbow. A sharp pain flared at the back of his head, like a thin piece of ice melting slowly against his skin. Danger existed, but the lethal zone was still over three seconds away.

He turned sideways and squeezed through the door crack.

The space behind the door was completely different from the ARK standard blueprints. The walls were covered in scars from violent welding, and dark red biological conduits burst from within the walls, their ends crudely connected to pitch-black Warhammer-style power cables. The carbonized black insulation rubber revealed flickering blue electric arcs within, sizzling loudly. Two incompatible gods had been stitched together by brute force.

"ARK-07 Cultivation Pod interfaces." Chen Duo followed him in, his mechanical eye scanning rapidly with a faint sound of turning gears, "But they've been modified. The Gene Stabilizer Delivery Tubes were cut, and STC standard power transmission lines were connected?"

Lin Yuan's fingers brushed over a welding point. A viscous yellow fluid seeped from the junction of metal and biological tissue, a pungent, acidic rot filling his nostrils. LY-001's mechanical voice rang in his consciousness: "Non-standard technological fusion detected. Warning: Biological contamination index exceeds limits. Energy reserves at 1.8 percent."

"Does the Anvil King know about this?"

Chen Duo's right hand rested on the plasma pistol at his waist, while his left pulled out a crumpled Data Film: "The original ARK blueprints. They record the original layout of Station Zero." He tossed it to Lin Yuan, his movements hurried, "The current layout has at least forty percent modification. Sector C was originally supposed to be a sample cold storage."

Lin Yuan unfurled the film. On the yellowed drawing, Sector C was marked as a cryogenic storage unit, but in reality, the echo of dripping liquid and the sticky sound of something heavy dragging through fluid came from that direction.

Rat Eye let out a suppressed roar outside the door. The THRONE-02 signal receiver embedded in his right eye spun frantically, glowing with intense red light. Through the Master-Slave Contract, Lin Yuan felt Rat Eye's agony. It was a resonance at the genetic level, cells screaming with the urge to submit.

"Commander..." Rat Eye's voice trembled in his mind, carrying the vibrato of scorched nerves, "There's something inside... like me... but more... complete..."

Lin Yuan turned abruptly.

In the shadows at the end of the corridor, something stood up.

At first, it looked like skinned muscle tissue, dark red fibers writhing on its surface. But as it took a step, the clanging of metal on metal echoed through the corridor. Its entire right arm had been replaced with a Warhammer 40K-style power claw, the pitch-black alloy knuckles entwined with ARK biological conduit tentacles. The claw blades crackled with unstable psychic arcs, making a sound like a viper's hiss. Beneath the skin of the left arm bulged a Tyranid-like chitinous carapace, the joints bending backward, its surface congealed with yellow-white mucus.

The face was the most striking feature. Two red optical lenses were embedded where the eyes should be, the same model as Rat Eye's right eye but three times larger. Between the lenses, a human mouth stitched into a cross-shape was opening and closing mechanically: "Un... authorized... intruders... Purge..."

Hybrid Guardian.

War Premonition transformed into a sharp sting at that moment, piercing his cerebral cortex. Visual fragments flashed: in three seconds, the power claw would sweep across at an impossible angle, tearing open his chest and scattering his organs.

Without hesitation, Lin Yuan lunged toward the front left, his shoulder slamming into the wall as his bone-white armor scraped against metal with a piercing shriek.

Almost simultaneously, the power claw tore through the air where he had just been standing, the psychic arcs leaving charred scorch marks in the void.

"It predicted your movement!" Chen Duo's plasma pistol fired, a blue-white energy orb slamming into the Hybrid Guardian's left shoulder. The chitinous carapace melted and peeled away, revealing the writhing muscle fibers beneath. But the Guardian only swayed, its cross-shaped mouth stretching to an incredible width as it let out a howl—a mixture of electronic screaming and bestial roaring—that shook frost from the walls.

Lin Yuan drew a makeshift Power Sword mid-roll. The hum of the blade's activation was deafening, but the low-energy warning followed immediately: the hilt's indicator light turned orange-yellow, and LY-001's prompt was cold and urgent: "Warning: Energy at 1.8 percent. Power Sword output dropped to 40 percent. Immediate retreat suggested."

Retreating meant abandoning the twin keys verification results and the data inside the door. The Guardian blocked the center of the passage, its body swelling during the battle, more yellow fluid seeping from its seams and dripping onto the floor to corrode hissing pits that emitted pungent white smoke.

"Chen Duo!" Lin Yuan growled, his voice echoing inside his mask, "Where is the Sector C emergency brake valve on the blueprints?"

"What are you planning? That thing will release coolant!"

"Freeze it. Then take control of this place." Lin Yuan's gaze swept over the wall behind the Guardian. There, a terminal screen semi-covered by biological conduits flickered with green light, a Warhammer-style Mechanicus data slot welded next to the ARK standard data interface. Above the screen, a crude statue was nailed to the wall—an icon of the emperor cobbled together from scrap metal plates and biological bones, its base marked with charred burn marks.

Chen Duo's mechanical eye rapidly scanned the blueprints, then looked back at the unrecognizable corridor in reality. His expression twisted for a moment. Finally, he gritted his teeth: "Left wall, behind the third access panel! But you'll need someone to distract that monster for three seconds!"

Three seconds. War Premonition stung again. This time he saw himself being impaled through the abdomen by the power claw, and Chen Duo being torn in half, blood spraying across the cold walls.

A line of golden text floated at the edge of his vision. The Divine Intervention interface hovered silently; a single thought could summon the Emperor's wrath. With energy reserves at 1.8 percent, the system prompted that use would cause LY-001 to enter a seventy-two-hour forced hibernation.

Use it. THRONE-01's inducement echoed in his mind, like the whisper of grinding metal.

Lin Yuan's thumb pressed on the Power Sword's energy switch; he did not choose Divine Intervention.

"Rat Eye!" Through the Master-Slave Contract, he issued a command to the slave warrior's neural center, his tone brooks no refusal, "Right eye to maximum power, signal projection, target: the Hybrid Guardian's eye receiver!"

"Commander... that will... expose my core frequency..." Rat Eye's will to resist crumbled quickly under the contract's suppression, pain passing through the link like a tide.

"Execute!"

Outside the door crack, Rat Eye let out a scream that sounded inhuman, his vocal cords sounding as if they had been shredded by sandpaper. His right eye erupted with a blinding red light, and a thin but highly concentrated THRONE-02 signal pierced through the door crack, precisely hitting the Hybrid Guardian's optical lenses.

The Guardian froze. Its cross-shaped mouth opened and closed frantically as the electronic static turned into a piercing shriek: "Homologous... signal... conflict... Error... Error..."

Now. Lin Yuan charged out.

He didn't attack the Guardian; instead, he ducked and dove between its legs, his bone-white armor scraping a large shower of sparks off the floor. The Guardian's power claw instinctively swung downward, but Rat Eye's signal interference delayed the movement by half a second. That half-second was enough for Lin Yuan to reach the left wall and punch open the third access panel.

Inside was a red lever, ARK-style bioplastic fused with a Warhammer-style metal handle, yellow fluid seeping from the interface. Lin Yuan grabbed the lever and pulled it down with all his strength.

Click.

A dull mechanical roar came from deep within the walls. White freezing mist surged from the ceiling nozzles, instantly filling the corridor. The temperature plummeted to minus forty degrees in a fraction of a second; frost bloomed on his respirator's lenses, and his exposed skin felt a needle-like sting.

The Hybrid Guardian let out a roar of agony. Its ARK biological carapace hardened and became brittle rapidly in the extreme cold, its muscle fibers freezing into a pale ice sculpture. The power claw's psychic arcs jumped wildly in the low temperature, but its movements were visibly sluggish, its joints icing over with audible cracking sounds.

"The data terminal!" Chen Duo shouted through the freezing mist, his mechanical eye making a jamming clatter as frost congealed on the lens, "Plug in your STC Mark!"

Lin Yuan rushed toward the terminal. The icon of the emperor was blurred in the freezing mist, like a pale ghost. He pulled out the Data Knife at his waist and inserted the blade into the gap of the Mechanicus slot, violently prying open the protective cover, the sound of snapping metal ringing clearly in the mist.

The moment the STC Mark touched the interface, LY-001's voice became exceptionally clear, piercing the frozen silence: "Accessing local network. Large amount of stc fragment data detected. Downloading. Warning: THRONE-02 remote access traces detected. This terminal was once used to send biological weapon incubation logs to a relay station."

Lin Yuan's pupils constricted. The freezing mist began to dissipate, and cracks appeared in the ice layer on the Hybrid Guardian, but its movements were restricted to three meters from the terminal, its claw blades scraping a harsh noise against the floor.

"Gate control protocols!" Lin Yuan asked urgently in his mind, "Can we lock it in the open state?"

"Confirmed. twin keys continuous verification in progress. Gate lock executable. Maintaining fully open state. Energy consumption: 0.02 percent."

"Execute!"

Amidst a mechanical roar, the door crack stopped its tendency to close and instead slid open to both sides until it reached the standard passage width of two meters. Light from outside flooded in, illuminating the corridor inside the door covered in freezing mist, the mist rolling in the beams of light.

Lin Yuan did not retreat. He pulled out his Data Knife and turned to stand back-to-back with Chen Duo, the two of them forming crossfire coverage toward the Guardian. Heavy panting came from Chen Duo's respirator.

"Are you crazy?" Chen Duo panted, his voice trembling from the cold, "That thing is thawing!"

"It's thawing, and we're setting up defenses." Lin Yuan's voice was calm, the white breath he exhaled condensing inside his mask, "The left wall has the control panel for the original ARK defense system, and the right wall has a modified STC energy relay. Buy me thirty seconds."

Chen Duo was silent for half a second before suddenly turning his gun and firing continuously at the Guardian breaking out of the ice, plasma orbs exploding on the ice layer: "Twenty-five seconds!"

Lin Yuan lunged for the control panel. The bioplastic buttons had weathered and peeled away, but the STC interface beneath was intact. He inserted the Data Knife as an adapter, and LY-001 immediately permeated the system: "Gained temporary control. Activating area isolation gates. Energy consumption: 0.01 percent. Warning: 1.77 percent energy remaining."

Heavy blast-proof isolation gates descended on both sides of the corridor with a deafening grinding of metal, trapping the Hybrid Guardian in a ten-meter-long middle section. The Guardian broke through the ice, its power claw hacking frantically at the isolation gate, sparks flying everywhere as it left deep claw marks on the metal surface, but it could not break through in the short term.

"Preliminary control established." Lin Yuan slid to the floor with his back against the isolation gate, his mechanical limbs sluggish from the low temperature, making a creaking sound like congealing hydraulic oil. He looked at Chen Duo, "Download complete. Obtained stc fragments: Biological Armor Reinforcement Protocol, incomplete; Cryogenic Hibernation Technology, complete; ARK-STC Fusion Energy Management Optimization Plan, can improve LY-001 energy efficiency by five to seven percent, requires material preparation."

Chen Duo leaned against the wall, panting, the frost congealed on his mechanical eye melting, the dripping water leaving wet marks on his tactical harness: "Just now... you could have used that power to destroy it directly. That golden..."

"That's a trump card." Lin Yuan interrupted him, his voice raspy with a tired graininess, "A one-time trump card. Using it on an enemy that can be frozen is a waste."

He opened his palm; the Data Knife was stained with coolant and yellow fluid, the viscous liquid pulling into threads in his palm. LY-001 reported in his consciousness: "Temporary defensive outpost established in the Station Zero main entrance area. Gate locked open. Energy maintained at 1.77 percent, system entering power-saving mode."

Chen Duo was silent for a long time before suddenly reaching out: "The ARK blueprints, give them back. We're even."

Lin Yuan tossed the blueprints back. At the moment of release, their fingers made brief contact. Chen Duo's mechanical knuckles were icy, carrying the chill of metal. Lin Yuan's bone-white armor still carried the low temperature of the freezing mist, its surface congealed with white frost.

"The next time we face something like that," Chen Duo stood up, brushing the ice shards from his tactical vest with a faint sound, "I hope to know when your trump card is going to be played."

"When you are trustworthy." Lin Yuan turned and walked outside to check on Rat Eye's condition. Rat Eye's mechanical right eyeball had stopped spinning, but deep in the pupil, a trace of the same red light as the Guardian inside still flickered slightly, like an unextinguished ember.

Inside, the Hybrid Guardian was still hacking at the isolation gate, the dull impact sounds echoing rhythmically like some ancient drumbeat. But the main gate was fully open, and the entrance area inside was now under control. Lin Yuan stood inside the gate, looking at the isolated Guardian, then at the icon of the emperor flickering on the terminal screen. The crude statue cast a twisted shadow in the screen's light.

At the edge of his vision, the Divine Intervention interface hovered silently like an unsheathed sword, glinting with a cold golden light. And this time, they had a base, a way out, and the choice to continue deeper.

Behind him, Chen Duo adjusted his communicator and reported the establishment of the temporary outpost to the Anvil King, his voice kept very low. Lin Yuan did not stop him. The mutual trust of their temporary alliance had risen from twenty percent to forty-five percent; they stood back-to-back in defense, together locking open this door to the cradle. But the tracking beacons at their waists were still emitting faint signals, their indicator lights flashing in the dim corridor, reminding each other: this cooperation was built upon a tightrope that could snap at any moment.

Lin Yuan looked up at the fully opened gate. Energy at 1.77 percent, outpost newly established. Deep inside the door, the traces of the relay station terminal hinted at more truths waiting to be unearthed. He gripped the Data Knife, the patterns on the handle digging into his palm.