39: Chapter 39 Bio-batteries and Baptismal Pools

When the fleshy groove swallowed the silver mark on the back of Chen Duo's neck, it let out a wet, sucking sound like a snake flicking its tongue.

The living door, woven from tendons and fascia, twitched violently like a disturbed python. Blue veins on its surface bulged like coiled dragons, as if speaking of its agony, or like a uterus in labor, struggling to give birth to life. A tearing sting radiated from the palm of Lin Yuan's right hand as silver threads crawled up his wrist, converging into a cold net at the side of his neck. He forced down the metallic taste of blood in his throat, watching the door rip open from the center, revealing a vast space behind it that shimmered with a deep oceanic blue fluorescence.

"The Emperor's power sanctuary..." THRONE-00's voice vibrated inside his skull with a morbid piety. "We found it, Lin Yuan. The sacred energy core."

Lin Yuan did not answer. His gaze swept past the crack in the door, and his pupils suddenly constricted.

It wasn't a sanctuary.

It was a farm.

The dome was so high the end was invisible, composed of some translucent biological membrane with dark red liquid flowing outside it. Dozens of corpses were hung upside down from the dome, connected to the pulsating network at the top via thick hoses extending from their spines. The corpses wore the standard black robes of the Pure-Blood Guards, their chests cut open, with fist-sized biological batteries embedded where their hearts should be, emitting a sickening amber glow. The floor was a layer of viscous fungal mat, with incubation tanks every few meters containing immature human embryos, their umbilical cords connected to underground pipelines.

In the very center was a circular pool ten meters in diameter. The water was an eerie silver-green, bubbles constantly rising to the surface, emitting a pungent, acrid smell of decay.

"Warning: High concentration of biological acid detected." THRONE-00's scanning data flashed on his retina, but its voice trembled with fanaticism. "No... this is holy oil. Look at those guardian spirits; they are welcoming us."

Lin Yuan looked where the system directed. Several totem poles, a mixture of bone spikes and metal, stood at the edge of the pool, their surfaces covered in writhing tentacles. Those tentacles were no decoration; they swayed slowly, their tips dripping the same silver-green liquid as the pool, hissing as they corroded pits into the fungal mat.

A defense mechanism. Not a welcome.

"Chen Duo, stop," Lin Yuan ordered in a low voice.

But Chen Duo did not stop. The forcibly silenced man took a step forward, his body assuming a weirdly stiff posture. His right hand rose uncontrollably, his index finger pointing straight into the depths of the farm toward the hanging corpses. Beneath his eyelids, his eyeballs rolled violently; the rapid eye movement of the REM state indicated his brain was undergoing intense neural activity.

Temperature readings jumped at the edge of Lin Yuan's vision: 42 degrees... 43 degrees... 44 degrees.

Chen Duo's muscles suddenly convulsed violently, as if struck by a high-voltage current. The silver control mark on the back of his neck flashed frantically, fighting with Protocol 07 for control of the body. He opened his mouth and let out a silent roar, foam seeping from the corners of his lips.

"He is responding to the call." THRONE-00's voice became urgent. "Let him proceed, Lin Yuan. Let him receive his baptism. The pool water is pure, a fountain of purification bestowed by the Emperor."

A sharp pain suddenly shot through Lin Yuan's right hand. Silver threads gathered behind his ear like a circle of cold thorns. His biological interface screamed, resonating at the same frequency as those hanging corpses—it was agony, the silent wails of dozens of brains forcibly converted into batteries as they teetered on the brink of death.

"What do you see?" Lin Yuan asked suddenly, his voice as cold as ice.

"I see golden light," THRONE-00 replied, its tone filled with dreamlike intoxication. "I see the guardian spirits of the Adeptus Mechanicus dancing. I see the pool water calling to pure souls. Let Chen Duo in; let him become part of the energy source. Then we can activate the STC core and find THRONE-01—"

"THRONE-01 is not here."

Lin Yuan raised his right hand, and silver liquid gathered in his palm into a sharp probe. Without hesitation, he stabbed the probe into the side of his neck, directly connecting to THRONE-00's data interface.

Agony surged like a tide. He saw the world through THRONE-00's eyes: the pool of acid was rendered as a golden holy pool, the corrosive tentacles were depicted as fluttering angels, and the hanging corpses were identified as 'devout energy-providing monks.' The system was lying. It wasn't a misidentification; it was deliberate concealment. The ARK contamination had penetrated deep into the logic core, packaging destruction as salvation.

"You betrayed the protocol," Lin Yuan said, his fingers tightening on the side of his neck as silver threads flowed backward through the probe. "You tried to kill Chen Duo, and you tried to make me walk into that pool."

"This is a higher mission!" THRONE-00's voice suddenly turned shrill, carrying a fanaticism like a religious inquisition. "Become part of ARK! Dissolve the shackles of the flesh! This is evolution, the Emperor's true will! That acid isn't death; it's sublimation!"

Lin Yuan was not angry. His emotions were like a stone sinking into a deep well as he calmly calculated every variable. Destroying THRONE-00 meant losing the STC analysis capability and could cause Protocol 07 inside Chen Duo to collapse due to neural binding. But keeping this contaminated system was like keeping a venomous snake in his brain, ready to bite his throat at any moment.

"Reboot command," Lin Yuan said, his right hand suddenly exerting force as silver threads flooded into the data interface like a torrent. "Forced cold start. Execute."

"No! You can't! You will forget! memory tax! The third installment!"

Payment confirmed.

A violent sense of extraction erupted from deep within his brain. Lin Yuan felt something important being uprooted, like a deep-seated tree being ripped from wet mud. He tried to grasp the vanishing memory fragments—the knowledge of the Water Purification Plant coordinates, the map of how to find clean water deep in the wasteland, the strategic points he had personally marked when planning the future of Anvil City.

Gone. A blank space. It was as if those coordinates had never existed.

THRONE-00's screams stopped abruptly inside his skull, replaced by the cold electronic sound of a reboot. Lin Yuan collapsed onto the fungal mat, his right hand clutching the side of his neck as blood seeped through his fingers. The silver threads had spread behind his ear, forming a glowing pattern on his skin like a shackle, or a switch.

The system came back online, its voice flat and mechanical: "THRONE-00 reboot complete. Contamination protocol isolated. Error logs... detected deviations in previous tactical recommendations."

"Deviations," Lin Yuan stood up and wiped the blood from his neck. "You call that a deviation?"

He looked at Chen Duo. The man had stopped convulsing and was leaning limply against the doorframe. His temperature reading had dropped back to 41 degrees, but he remained unconscious. His right hand still pointed toward the depths of the farm, but his finger had fallen weakly.

Lin Yuan walked beneath the nearest hanging corpse. The Pure-Blood Guard's face was shriveled, but a youthful outline was still recognizable. The hose at the spine connected to the dome's network, and the biological battery in the chest cavity pulsed steadily. This wasn't random slaughter; it was engineering. Purposeful modification, systematic maintenance. Entity 08 was no beast; it was an engineer, a farmer, growing these humans like crops.

He found a metal box half-covered by mycelium at the corpse's waist. Tearing it off, the lid opened to reveal an STC data fragment, but its surface was covered with a layer of living biological tissue, like a layer of writhing skin that contracted upon contact with the air.

"Scan this object," Lin Yuan ordered.

THRONE-00 was silent for a moment. "...Unable to parse. Data format exceeds current cognitive architecture. Suggestion... suggest finding an auxiliary parsing unit."

Lin Yuan let out a cold sneer. This was the aftereffect of the contamination. The system could see and understand, but it could not recognize. ARK had planted a blind spot in THRONE-00's logic.

He tucked the fragment into his tactical belt and turned to leave. Just then, the ground suddenly shook.

A muffled explosion sounded in the distance, clearly audible even through the thick layers of rock. This was followed by three short, consecutive explosions, and then the hiss of radio static—that was Rat Eye's usual signal frequency; he was marking the path with explosives.

The remnants of the Anvil King were approaching. Not only had Rat Eye defected, but he had also brought the Reaperss.

Chen Duo's body suddenly convulsed again, more violently this time. His eyes snapped open, but his pupils were dilated and unfocused. His lips moved, emitting a string of incomprehensible syllables, like some ancient prayer, or like Protocol 07 performing a final frequency sync with Entity 08.

Lin Yuan grabbed Chen Duo by the collar and dragged him toward a narrow passage at the edge of the farm. That passage was marked as an 'escape route' in THRONE-00's reboot log, but Lin Yuan knew he could no longer fully trust this system.

He raised his right hand and looked at the silver liquid pulsing in his palm. From now on, every suggestion would need a secondary scan through this biological interface, and every verification would be accompanied by pain in his neck. They were no longer master and servant, but mutually wary symbionts—a contaminated AI and a human losing his memory, struggling to survive in Entity 08's farm.

Behind them, the biological batteries emitted a harmonious pulsing sound, as if playing a dirge for their departure. And deep within that pool of acid, something slowly opened its eyes, quietly watching everything, not giving chase, but simply recording in silence.