35: Chapter 35 Coordinate Completion and Whispering Concretization

The metal rungs of the vertical pipe groaned underfoot. Lin Yuan gave Chen Duo a boost, his fingertips sinking into the hollows of the man's ribs. The battery-based metabolism was devouring his muscle and fat; he was so light he didn't feel like a living person.

"Ninety meters to go," Rat Eye's voice drifted down from above. His mechanical prosthetic eye emitted a green glow in the darkness, its angle twitching frequently as it compensated for the missing peripheral vision of a single eye. Lin Yuan could see the cold sweat on the back of his neck.

THRONE-00 had been disassembled into its core components and strapped to Lin Yuan's back. The joints of the power claw pressed against his spine, as cold as a tombstone. Without the roar of an engine, the shadows in the pipe became suspicious.

"Did you hear something?" Rat Eye stopped suddenly, his single eye staring into the darkness below.

Lin Yuan's right hand twitched. Alloy filaments writhed beneath his skin, and neural signals carved words directly into his temporal cortex: Hunger. Feed. Grow.

"No," he lied. "Keep climbing."

Chen Duo let out a faint groan on his shoulder. The No. 07 Mark on the side of his neck emitted bio-luminescence, a blue-green halo shining through his collar and casting shadows on the pipe walls. His body temperature was alarmingly high, approaching forty degrees, but his heartbeat was fast and powerful, like a pump running on overclock. The bio-battery was outputting at full power, fueling the forcibly initiated Purification Protocol.

The entrance to the observation station was a rusted blast door. Lin Yuan rammed it open with his shoulder, and Chen Duo's forehead hit the doorframe with a dull thud. There was no blood; beneath the skin was a semi-transparent membrane rippling with wave-like patterns.

"Establish an isolation zone." Lin Yuan laid Chen Duo flat on the ground. The brightness of the No. 07 Mark surged, illuminating the cracked concrete floor.

Rat Eye didn't move. He stood at the door, his single eye shifting from Lin Yuan's right hand to his pupils. The alloy filaments had already spread halfway up his upper arm, forming a mesh structure at the elbow joint, and his skin took on a sickly pearlescent sheen.

"Find lead plates," Lin Yuan ordered, hiding his right hand behind his back. "Radiation shielding. Lay them out in the southeast corner."

"Your hand is talking," Rat Eye said softly. "It's talking to the air."

Lin Yuan looked down. The alloy filaments were weaving topological structures in the air, capturing invisible signals. He clenched his fist suddenly, nails digging into his palm, using pain to suppress the threads. There was no pain, only numbness.

"Go find the lead plates," he repeated, adopting the tone the Anvil King used when executing prisoners.

Rat Eye turned, moving as fast as if he were fleeing. Lin Yuan heard the clatter of metal as he searched the hallway, along with deliberately suppressed breathing. He was afraid—not of pursuers, but of Lin Yuan himself.

Chen Duo's chest heaved, his breathing carrying a non-human rhythm. Lin Yuan tore off his right glove, and the alloy filaments reared up like a nest of snakes. No data cable was needed; the neural interface had become biological. A hybrid technology of STC and ARK was conquering territory within his blood vessels.

Insert.

The agonizing pain came from his bone marrow. The alloy filaments bored into the terminal interface, forcibly rewriting circuit protocols, and his vision was overwhelmed by a flood of data. A 3D topographic map of New Canaan unfolded, revealing the structure of the underground sanctuary beneath the Great Cathedral; the location of THRONE-01's stasis pod was accurate to the centimeter. The coordinates were completed, but other signals followed: ARK-EXPERIMENT-08, ARK-EXPERIMENT-09. Two life signals were patrolling around THRONE-01—the Anvil King's Pure-Blood Guards. The rescue window was 72 hours, closing at a rate of 3% per hour.

"Found it?" Rat Eye's voice came from a distance.

Lin Yuan wanted to answer, but his throat was constricted. The alloy filaments found a resonant frequency, resonating with a distant, dormant neural node. THRONE-01's signal penetrated the earth, imaging directly onto his visual cortex.

Su Wanqing stood before him, wearing a white lab coat and holding a syringe. Her lips moved without sound, but Lin Yuan read the shape of her mouth: Run.

A hallucination. The manifestation of mental erosion. Reason screamed, but emotion trembled. In the neural signals transmitted by the alloy filaments, the smell of disinfectant was tangibly real.

"Lin Yuan?" Rat Eye's voice drew closer, laced with alertness. "Your pupils are contracting—they're like pinpoints."

Lin Yuan yanked his hand out, the alloy filaments tearing blue electrical sparks from the interface. The hallucination shattered, Su Wanqing's image dispersing like a sand painting, but the mouth shape remained in his memory. Run.

His right hand trembled as the alloy filaments spread another two centimeters up his arm, touching his shoulder. The whispers became complete sentences, carrying a religious fervor: Sacrament. Evolution. We are one.

"Found the lead plates," Rat Eye stood three meters away, clutching deformed metal sheets, not venturing closer. "Chen Duo is glowing."

Indeed, blue-green fluorescence emanated from all over Chen Duo's skin. The No. 07 Mark acted like a core, transforming his entire body into a luminous entity. His temperature was forty degrees, his breathing steady, and the corners of his mouth even held a peaceful curve.

Lin Yuan forced himself to move the lead plates, building a temporary isolation tent. Each plate was as heavy as a tombstone. His right hand twitched constantly as he moved them, the alloy filaments trying to grip the metal surface as if it were food. Rat Eye helped, but kept a subtle distance, his single eye no longer looking at Lin Yuan's face but staring at his right hand, like he was watching a beast that might snap and attack at any moment.

The THRONE-00 core was placed in a corner. Lin Yuan entered commands, putting it into a near-death charging mode maintained by 1% energy. The power claw opened slightly, then hung limply, like a weary guardian closing its eyes.

Chen Duo was moved into the isolation zone enclosed by the lead plates. The bio-luminescence dimmed under the lead shielding but did not go out. Lin Yuan sat outside the tent, back against the concrete wall, his right hand resting flat on his knee. The alloy filaments were still writhing, but their speed had slowed, like a sated parasite.

"He won't last three days," Rat Eye said suddenly, sitting in the shadows opposite him, fiddling with a dagger. "The battery process will fry his brains, turning him into a lump of meat that only generates electricity."

Lin Yuan didn't answer. He was calculating the rescue route for THRONE-01, calculating the firepower of the Pure-Blood Guards, and calculating how to cross the occupied zone within 72 hours. Every calculation pointed to the same conclusion: he needed to sever the neural connection, leave the mutated living battery at the observation station, and travel light.

If he severed the connection, Chen Duo would die. If he maintained it, the erosion of his right hand would accelerate, and the team's mobility would drop to zero.

"We can leave him here," Rat Eye continued, his tone as flat as if he were discussing discarding a broken tool. "The lead plates can mask the signal; the Anvil King won't find him. Once we get the energy supplies, we can come back..."

"No," Lin Yuan interrupted, his voice hoarse.

Rat Eye looked up, his single eye reflecting a faint light in the darkness. He saw the bulging alloy filaments on Lin Yuan's right hand, the lingering afterimages of hallucinations in his pupils—some sign of mutation even more terrifying than the Anvil King. He shut his mouth, swallowing back his calculation of the 'burden-to-asset ratio.'

Lin Yuan knew what he was thinking. The laws of the wasteland, the logic of pragmatism. But Rat Eye didn't say it, not out of mercy, but out of fear. He had seen Lin Yuan's inhuman focus when connected to the terminal; he had seen the eerie patterns woven by the alloy filaments in the air. The leader was turning into an unknown monster, and monsters were unpredictable; challenging one could lead to being 'purified,' just like those non-pure-blood lives cleared by the protocol.

"72 hours." Lin Yuan stared at his right hand. The alloy filaments beneath the skin formed a miniature map, strikingly similar to the structure of the New Canaan underground sanctuary. "THRONE-01 is beneath the New Canaan Great Cathedral, guarded by Pure-Blood Guards. We can't go—at least not now."

"Then what are we going to do?" Rat Eye asked, the dagger spinning between his fingers.

Lin Yuan looked up. There were cracks in the observation station's ceiling, and through them, he could see the murky sky of the wasteland. A sudden, sharp pain came from his right hand, born of a deep resonance. THRONE-01's signal crossed the distance, sounding an alarm on his neural interface. It wasn't a cry for help; it was a warning. Or a call of hunger.

"Wait," Lin Yuan said, but the word tasted like a lie. He knew it wouldn't just be waiting. The alloy filaments were growing, Chen Duo was transforming, and some existence in the distance was waking up. He looked down and saw a tiny crack open in the palm of his right hand. Inside was not blood, but a silver metallic liquid, writhing slowly as if writing a fragment of the next coordinate.

Rat Eye quietly reached into his coat and felt for his notebook. By the faint light of the No. 07 Mark seeping through the lead plates, he wrote down today's date, drew a question mark enclosed in a circle, and noted: 'Right hand whispering / Pupil abnormality / Leader status: Under observation.'

Trust had soured, shifting from worship to a wary obedience. Lin Yuan knew, and Rat Eye knew. In this isolation zone enclosed by lead plates, three lives were sliding into a non-human abyss at different speeds. And beneath the observation station, an existence older than the Anvil King was slowly opening its eyes within the resonance frequency of the alloy filaments.