61: Chapter 61 The Triple Gate Anchored by the Blood Pact

The red light of a thermal cutter burned orange spots onto the airtight door.

Lin Yuan stared at the point of light, but his vision split into two perspectives. He saw his own hand pressed against the hilt of his blade, while simultaneously "feeling" the weight of another body pressing against his left shoulder. Chen Duo's breathing poured directly into his lungs through the Blood Covenant, carrying the smell of rust. There were 23 seconds left on the countdown, but his muscle memory was becoming muddled. When the Cleansing Force's armor-piercing rounds slammed into the door panel, he couldn't even determine whose combat reflexes he should use to respond.

"Left," Chen Duo's voice said with a double-layered echo.

Lin Yuan rolled to the side as the thermal stream burned through the door panel, liquid metal splashing onto the spot where he had just been standing. Three Purge Soldiers surged in, brandishing pulse rifles. Lin Yuan swung his blade at the lead enemy, but his movement froze halfway. A sharp pain radiated from the depths of the Blood Covenant, and a memory fragment that didn't belong to him exploded in his mind. He saw himself standing in an interrogation room, holding a red-hot iron, and the one being tortured was Chen Duo.

"I am Lin Yuan." He bit the tip of his tongue, the metallic taste of blood dispersing the false vision.

Chen Duo's blade light passed under his armpit, piercing the joint of the second Purge Soldier's power armor. The two stood back-to-back, their heartbeats synchronized through the Blood Covenant. But Lin Yuan knew that The Twelfth was reading all of this. That corrupted machine soul had gained read-only access to the Blood Covenant network, acting like a cognitive virus lurking in the neural protocol layer, ready to inject false memories at any moment.

"It's interfering with our cognition," Chen Duo said, parrying a Chainsword. "You froze for 0.7 seconds just now."

"It made me think I was the executioner," Lin Yuan said, backhanding a strike to sever an enemy's wrist, "and that you were the clone being interrogated."

More Purge Soldiers flooded into the wetware matrix bay. Massive cultivation tanks vibrated during the battle, and thousands of brains soaking in nutrient solution flickered with bioelectricity. Lin Yuan's STC Interface flashed frantically; his Regional Director permissions allowed him to forcibly recall the troops, but every system call was accompanied by a reverse-monitoring warning from The Twelfth. He attempted a recall command, only for the interface to pop up a warning: [Cognitive conflict detected, identity protocol recalibration recommended].

"We must establish an anchor," Lin Yuan said, parrying a heavy chop as sparks flew. "Otherwise, we'll be killed by our own memories."

Chen Duo's back muscles tensed. Through the Blood Covenant, Lin Yuan felt the other man instantly understand his intent. Opening core permissions meant letting Chen Duo directly interface with the proto-001 core to share that 47% of the contamination.

"Protocol details." Chen Duo didn't ask why, only how. He flicked away a fragmentation grenade, the blast wave knocking over two enemy soldiers.

"two-way neural anchoring. I'll divert 47% of the contamination to you, and you'll stabilize the cognitive boundaries for me." Lin Yuan spoke at high speed while using his permissions to lock down the automated sentries in the bay. "In exchange, you can toggle the Blood Covenant's sensory sharing at any time."

"Sounds like I'm getting the better deal," Chen Duo's mouth curled into a sharp smile. "One less little brother crying in my head."

Lin Yuan opened the core interface at his chest, silver patterns spreading along his neck. The voice of The Twelfth suddenly vibrated against their eardrums through the Blood Covenant—a synthesized sound made of tens of thousands of superimposed clone brainwaves: "Foolish. You are turning the twins into even more perfect vessels. Sharing the pain? I only need you to collapse in synchronization."

"Shut up," the two spoke simultaneously, their voices overlapping into an eerie harmony.

The anchoring ritual began.

Lin Yuan inserted his fingers into the core interface, and neural wires like liquid metal wrapped around his wrist bones. Intense pain exploded along his spine. Chen Duo turned around, and despite his blindness, his hand accurately gripped Lin Yuan's wrist. Their blood boiled at the point of contact, and the Blood Covenant was forcibly rewritten from a chaotic fusion into a structured protocol. Lin Yuan felt an icy torrent surge toward Chen Duo—it was the contamination of the proto-001 core, carrying the madness of the original THRONE.

Chen Duo's body shook violently, the control mark on the back of his neck spreading frantically like black vines crawling toward his temples. But he did not let go. "I've got you." These three words were transmitted back to Lin Yuan's mind through the Blood Covenant, translated into a series of high-frequency neural pulses, where the pain data was parsed in his somatosensory cortex as sharp burning signals.

Lin Yuan's vision suddenly cleared. The dizziness of identity confusion was compressed into a toggleable node, and he perceived Chen Duo's presence like an icon on the edge of his consciousness. This was the essence of structured anchoring: turning the twins from a forced state of chaos into an active weapon.

THRONE-01 emitted an unusual hum in the corner. Its optical sensors flickered with 0.3 seconds of gibberish as it actively queried its underlying codebase for the first time. Lin Yuan felt the machine soul's tremor through the Blood Covenant. Deep within its core code, THRONE-01 discovered markers identical in origin to The Twelfth, like two eggs laid by the same mother.

[Warning: Execution terminal identity questionable], THRONE-01's log scrolled across the screen, [Homologous signature detected with threat entity H-New-086].

It recorded silently, without reporting. For the first time, the machine soul conceived the thought of "concealment," causing a 0.3-second delay in its logic circuits.

The Twelfth sensed the anchoring was complete and began frantically injecting false memories. A flood of images surged into Lin Yuan's mind: him pushing Chen Duo off a cliff, laughing in an interrogation room, plunging a knife into Chen Duo's chest. These memories carried realistic sensations of pain and smell.

"Identification test," The Twelfth's voice said, full of delight. "Tell me, which ones are real?"

Lin Yuan's breathing didn't falter. He activated the identity anchoring protocol, diverting the false memories into Chen Duo's sharing buffer. Chen Duo let out a muffled groan, a trickle of blood seeping from the corner of his mouth, but his neural structure shredded the forged images like a filter. "Too fake," Chen Duo sent back feedback. "In the one where you pushed me off the cliff, you used your left hand. But I know you're right-handed."

Lin Yuan seized the moment, activating his permissions to forcibly recall the remaining Purge Soldiers. The automated sentry barrels swiveled, aiming at their former comrades. The Cleansing Force retreated in chaos, their tactical channels flooded with tampered command codes.

"Go." Lin Yuan grabbed Chen Duo and dashed toward the maintenance tunnel at the back of the bay.

THRONE-01 initiated a self-destruct sequence to incinerate the database before following. Its mechanical limbs tapped out a hurried rhythm, but that discovery echoed within it. It was of the same origin as The Twelfth. This realization caused a surge of current akin to "fear."

At the end of the maintenance tunnel was a rusted gate leading to the abandoned pipeline network on the surface. Lin Yuan used his permissions to pry open the locking mechanism, and the pungent smell of radioactive dust poured in. Chen Duo's blindness was a fatal disadvantage on the wasteland surface, but through the structured anchor, Lin Yuan shared his visual data stream with him in real-time. This wasn't a vague sensation, but a high-definition neural signal projection. Chen Duo "saw" the rusted texture of the pipes and the twitching antennae of a mutant cockroach three meters away.

"Is this your perspective?" Chen Duo asked while running. "It's brighter than I imagined."

"Better than being blind," Lin Yuan's reply was transmitted directly through the Blood Covenant.

They traversed the pipeline network for twenty minutes until the tracking signals of the Purge Main Force completely vanished. The Twelfth's read-only permission still lurked, but the structured anchoring prevented it from injecting false memories at will. Whenever it tried to interfere, a red light would flash in Chen Duo's sharing buffer like a firewall.

THRONE-01 suddenly stopped. Its sensors captured an abnormal electromagnetic signal. "Sector-7 entrance, three hundred meters ahead." Its synthesized voice carried a subtle tremor. "But signal characteristics indicate this coordinate has been marked by a third-party force."

The two slowed their pace. A dull red light glowed from the end of the pipe—the color of a campfire. They approached silently, the Blood Covenant suppressing their heartbeats to the lowest frequency.

Through a crack, they saw the Sector-7 entrance. The massive wreckage of a first-generation THRONE was half-buried in the sand, like the bones of an ancient titan. But around the wreckage, crude alloy bunkers had been erected, and flags bore a totem of an Anvil struck by lightning. Soldiers in mismatched power armor were on patrol, their equipment bearing no STC markings, only crude warlord insignias.

"Anvil Legion," Chen Duo sent back his perception through the Blood Covenant. "At least two hundred men, three heavy weapon emplacements, and one modified titan walker."

Lin Yuan's STC Interface automatically parsed communication fragments. These warlords had been stationed here for two weeks; their intelligence network was independent and efficient, clearly here for something within the wreckage. Golden text popped up on the interface: [Obtained Sector-7 dynamic key, validity: 72 hours]. But a blood-red warning was attached to the key: [Target area marked as military occupation zone, recommend forceful clearance or diplomatic negotiation].

The voice of The Twelfth rang out again with a greedy chuckle: "The Anvil Legion. A perfect third-party vessel. Do you need allies? I can help you implant obedience memories, just as I did to you. You only need to open the Blood Covenant's write permissions..."

Lin Yuan did not answer. He looked at Chen Duo, and through the structured anchor, the two exchanged a wordless tactical assessment. Chen Duo's fingertips tapped his blade hilt, the frequency conveying a judgment of "risk too high." But Lin Yuan's gaze fell upon THRONE-01. The machine soul was staring at that titan walker, the red light in its optical sensors flickering as if calculating something.

"We don't need allies," Lin Yuan said softly, his finger pressing against the core interface as silver lines writhed under his skin. "That is leverage."

He took his first step out of the pipeline shadows, the Blood Covenant link switching to combat mode. Chen Duo followed closely behind, his monomolecular blade spinning half a circle of cold light in his palm. THRONE-01's mechanical chassis emitted the light click of hydraulic locks disengaging; it performed one last check of its underlying code, where the marker homologous to The Twelfth pricked its logic core like a thorn.

The radioactive wind of the wasteland surface blew up dust, and a sentry of the Anvil Legion suddenly turned his head toward the direction of the pipeline exit.

Lin Yuan's hand hovered at his waist; he did not draw his blade, nor did he retreat.