57: Chapter 57 Farm Certification of the Radial Artery

The metallic resonance of the Purge Main Force halted thirty meters away. The clicking of hydraulic joints sounded like insects gnawing on bone.

Lin Yuan leaned against the biological lock of the Sowing Pod's main gate. The residual heat from the laser cutter lingered on his fingertips; the groove on the panel was in the shape of a double helix, with a blade embedded in the center.

"Arterial blood has high oxygen content; authentication is forty seconds faster," THRONE-01's voice carried the static of gears grinding into glass shards. "But you will go into shock. Venous blood is safer, but Chen Duo would need to bleed an extra three hundred milliliters."

Lin Yuan flipped open his tactical log, his fingertips trembling. He hadn't eaten for seventeen consecutive hours, as all energy had been diverted to stormclaw.

He wrote: "Day 057, 0921 hours. Selecting radial artery. Chen Duo has 28 hours left before solidification; his blood loss tolerance is lower than mine. A 30% shock risk is acceptable."

"What are you writing?" Chen Duo leaned against the opposite wall, his pupils dilated, the golden liquid seeping from the corners of his eyes having dried into scabs.

"Calculations." Lin Yuan pulled out the laser cutter. "I'll cut the artery. You cut the vein. High-pressure blood flow will force open the biological membrane."

"No."

Chen Duo raised his hand, accurately finding the edge of the biological lock, his fingertips stopping above the groove. The faint light of runes was reflected in his blind eyes.

"Equal. Fifty percent each."

"You only have 28 hours left. Three hundred milliliters will cause you to collapse six hours early."

"Then I won't be the key," Chen Duo gripped the edge of the groove, his knuckles turning white. "I won't be the soil. I want to be the one who opens the door."

Lin Yuan looked at Chen Duo's left arm. A silver network had already spread to the elbow joint, those patterns flickering in sync with the door's runes, like living things breathing beneath the skin.

"THRONE-01, calculate the probability of shock for equal blood transfusion."

"Dual survival rate is 61%. Chen Duo's solidification time will be compressed to 22 hours." The system static intensified. "Warning: Machine spirit radiation leakage has reached a lethal dose. stormclaw is dying."

A groan of metal fatigue came from behind. Pale blue plasma seeped from stormclaw's engine bay, and the machine spirit's voice broke through the neural interface: "The Twelfth... corrupted... Warning... Throne..."

Dead silence. The engine stalled, and pungent ozone rose from the broken treads.

"It's dead." A mechanical fear surfaced in THRONE-01's voice, the electronic tone trembling unusually. "Machine spirit death releases memory fragments. I heard... gold..."

Thirty meters away, the Purge Main Force formed a perimeter, and thermal cutters began to charge. The smell of scorched electrical charges filled the air.

"Then we go equal." Lin Yuan grabbed Chen Duo's right hand and pressed it onto the other side of the biological lock. "Me on the left, you on the right. On the count of three."

The corner of Chen Duo's mouth twitched. "You've finally stopped treating me like an invalid."

"I've always treated you like an invalid. I just happen to need an invalid's right hand right now."

"Fuck you."

"One."

Lin Yuan flipped the laser cutter and aimed it at the radial artery of his right wrist. The icy cold of metal touching skin reminded him of the operating table. Once the artery ruptured, blood would spout at 15 milliliters per second, and blood pressure would drop to critical levels within ninety seconds.

"Two."

Chen Duo's left hand drew a tactical dagger, his movements slow but steady and precise. Blindness had caused his sense of space to be reconstructed by echoes and temperature; the tip of the blade hovered over the vein like a blind hunter scenting prey.

"Three."

Two blades fell.

A jet of blood sprayed from Lin Yuan's right wrist. High-pressure blood surged into the groove in a spray, kicking up a crimson mist and hitting the metal walls with a crisp sound like a rapid drumbeat. Intense pain surged up his arm like an electric current; he gritted his teeth, hearing them grind together.

Chen Duo's venous blood flowed slower and was dark black. The two streams of blood met in the center of the groove, making a hissing sound like corroding metal and sending up steam that smelled of rust.

The biological lock came to life.

Metal teeth suddenly snapped shut, biting into both their wrists. It wasn't the physical pain of mechanical clamping, but something deeper. The metal teeth pierced the wounds and expanded within the blood vessels, sucking like straws driven deep into flesh.

"Authentication initiated." THRONE-01's voice became distant. "Twin gene sequence detected. Match rate 99.7%. Warning: External monitoring signal connected. THRONE-00 is observing."

Lin Yuan's vision blurred. In the dizziness caused by rapid blood loss, he saw Chen Duo's face turn deathly pale, golden liquid gushing from his nostrils and the corners of his eyes. The air between the two of them distorted visibly as their bio-electromagnetic fields resonated, making every hair stand on end.

"It's watching," Chen Duo squeezed the words through his teeth, his eyeballs rolling wildly. "I can feel it. Those eyes... are in my head..."

"Resist it." Lin Yuan grabbed Chen Duo's shoulder with his left hand, his nails sinking into the muscle. "Think of the sand at the ARK Observation Post. Think of the temperature of the vitrified ground."

"It's too late... It has seen us..."

The biological lock emitted a sharp whine. The door's runes all lit up a sickly crimson. Lin Yuan felt his blood conceptually flowing backward; his memories, genes, and stc system were all being sucked toward the inside of the door.

"Something's wrong!" THRONE-01's electronic voice shrieked, breaking. "This isn't authentication... it's harvesting! Behind the door isn't a laboratory... it's a farm! It's a slaughterhouse!"

Countless images flashed across Lin Yuan's retina. Golden memory fragments leaked out, mixed with THRONE-01's fear and the machine spirit's deathbed warnings. He saw massive incubation pods arranged in a matrix, with humanoid forms floating inside each one. The same faces—his face, Chen Duo's face—thousands of them, like pigs hanging on a slaughter rack.

"Seventh Gene Farm..." Lin Yuan murmured.

The door slowly slid open amidst the blood mist.

There was no laboratory whiteness, no precision instruments. Behind the door was a long corridor with rusted incubation pod racks on both sides. The pods were ruptured, and dried mucus had formed black scabs on the floor, emitting a sickly sweet scent of decay. The nameplate on the wall was covered in red rust: "Ark Protocol - Farm No. 7 - First Batch STC Prototype Maintenance Area."

At the end of the corridor, the wreckage of the first STC stood in the darkness. Composed of massive gears and crystals, its surface was covered in thick rust like a mechanical corpse nailed to a cross, with black engine oil seeping from the crystal crevices.

Both their wrists were still gripped by the biological lock, and blood continued to be drawn. The moment the door opened, an eerie link was established. It wasn't the data sharing of a neural bridge, but a primal resonance on a physiological level.

Lin Yuan felt the intense pain in Chen Duo's right arm, the rigid solidification of his lungs, and the absolute darkness of his blindness. Chen Duo also felt the stinging pain of Lin Yuan's ruptured wrist artery, his hypoglycemic dizziness, and the suppressed longing for family deep within him.

Blood Covenant. A neural link established through the fusion of blood.

"Genetic monitoring network activated." THRONE-01's voice was weak but clear. "Biological signals are being uploaded. Coordinates unknown. Highly encrypted. But Lin Yuan, there is something in your blood."

Lin Yuan looked down at his blood. Under the blue light of the biological lock, silver glimmers sparkled in the blood; it wasn't the reflection of hemoglobin, but nano-scale mechanical particles, like tiny STCs swimming in the plasma.

"Nano-seeds," THRONE-01 said. "You are not a natural mutation. You are a product of the farm. You were designed."

Lin Yuan stared at the silver particles, feeling a chill colder than blood loss. He thought of the smoothness with which he had awakened the stc system, his innate affinity for machinery, and the childhood memories he never had.

"Now is not the time for an existential crisis." Chen Duo's voice trembled, but his hand was steady. He pulled hard, and the metal teeth of the biological lock tore loose, leaving a mangled wound. "They're coming."

Behind them, the thermal cutter shrieked through the air. An orange-red beam began to cut through stormclaw's wreckage, and molten metal dripped, sizzling. The Purge Main Force was using heavy equipment to force the door.

"Get in!" Lin Yuan dragged Chen Duo and rushed inside.

The moment they crossed the threshold, stormclaw's wreckage exploded violently. The energy released upon the machine spirit's death sent a high-concentration radiation pulse spreading in a ring, instantly turning the corridor outside the door into a silent radiation dead zone.

stormclaw used its death to buy them one last barrier.

Lin Yuan and Chen Duo collapsed onto the floor inside the door. Behind them, the door slowly closed, and through the gap, the red light of the thermal cutter could be seen approaching. In ten minutes, the door would be cut open.

Lin Yuan tried to crawl up, but his body wouldn't obey. Pre-shock symptoms. Chen Duo also lay on the ground, his chest heaving violently, golden liquid seeping from his wounds and the corners of his eyes.

Their hands touched in the pool of blood. Instantly, the Blood Covenant link became incredibly clear. Lin Yuan felt Chen Duo's fear, and Chen Duo felt Lin Yuan's shock. The two emotions exchanged and mixed in the blood, settling into a cold resolve.

Lin Yuan struggled to turn his head toward the depths of the corridor. Beside the wreckage of the first STC, there was a functioning terminal, its screen flashing a red countdown: "Final Sowing Countdown: 11 hours 32 minutes."

Below the terminal, amidst the fragments of incubation pods, an ID card lay quietly. The man in the photo wore a white lab coat, his features seventy percent similar to Lin Yuan's, and the name field read: "Chief Breeder: Lin Yuan - Prototype - No. 00."

Lin Yuan stared at the photo, his pupils contracting. Chen Duo felt the sudden shift in his emotions and turned his head, facing that direction with his blind eyes.

"What is it?" Chen Duo asked.

Lin Yuan didn't answer. He reached out, his fingertips still a meter away from the ID card, as if he had already touched a terrible truth.

Outside the door, the thermal cutter emitted an even more piercing scream, and dark red melt marks appeared on the metal door panel. The countdown ticked, radiation leaked, and the Blood Covenant pulsed.

Lin Yuan's finger finally touched the edge of the ID card.