62: Chapter 62 The Wasteland Laws: 0.3 Seconds

Radioactive dust crunched under his boots, sounding like countless insects gnawing on metal.

Lin Yuan stepped out from the shadows of the abandoned pipes. He didn't sneak or take cover, walking straight into the scorched earth swept by the titan walker's searchlights. Chen Duo followed three steps behind him, his sightless eyes downcast, the silver patterns on the back of his neck writhing like living things under the intense light. THRONE-01's mechanical tentacles tightened, leaving a ring of indentations on Lin Yuan's wrist.

The sights of two hundred guns moved simultaneously, the sound of metal clashing merging into a single, taut string.

The roar of the Titan's engine suddenly intensified. The twelve-meter-tall modified war machine raised its left arm, the cooling grids of its triple-linked thermal fusion cannon emitting a dull red hum. The searchlight beam pinned Lin Yuan down, illuminating the flowing silver patterns beneath his skin in sharp detail.

"Halt."

The voice came from the command cockpit atop the Titan, distorted by a loudspeaker and carrying a rasp like rust. Lin Yuan looked up and saw a woman standing at the hatch. Her left arm was entirely mechanical, its metal surface etched with crude war patterns. She toyed with a brass key in her hand, the rhythm of her finger's tapping fluctuating.

Camilla, Legion Commander of "Anvil," the most patient raider in the eastern wasteland.

Lin Yuan raised his hands, palms up, revealing the STC Interface implanted in his wrist. Silver patterns climbed along his arm, displaying biophotonic characteristics identical to the bio-culture pods at The Farm under the intense light. He was gambling—betting that a wasteland warlord's greed for pre-civilization technology would override their defensive instincts.

"I'm here to talk business, not to seize territory," Lin Yuan's voice pierced through the roar of the engine. "About what's beneath Sector-7, and that Titan under your feet that's currently going mad."

The searchlight flickered.

Camilla's fingers stopped tapping. She leaned over, her mechanical left arm propped on the hatch railing, metal clashing against metal with a crisp sound. Lin Yuan could feel the sensory sharing transmitted by Chen Duo through the Blood Covenant. The air smelled of ozone and charred flesh, and there was an uncoordinated tremor deep within the Titan's engine, like the sick heartbeat of a giant beast.

"Let him come," Camilla finally said. "Alone. With his blind friend."

The muzzles weren't lowered, but a path was cleared. As Lin Yuan stepped forward, THRONE-01's prompt sounded in his cochlea, zero point three seconds slower than usual.

[Threat Assessment: Three heavy firepower points, two hundred and fourteen infantry units. titan walker machine spirit status... unstable.]

That zero-point-three-second delay pricked his nerves like a thorn. Lin Yuan remained impassive, but in the private channel of the Blood Covenant, Chen Duo's fingertip lightly brushed his palm; they had noticed it too. This was the first time THRONE-01 had experienced a computational lag since their breakout from the farm's Core Zone.

The negotiation table was set in the Titan's shadow—a surface pieced together from ammunition crates, with two cups of murky water placed upon it. Camilla jumped down, her mechanical legs digging shallow pits into the sand. As she approached, Lin Yuan saw the construction of her left arm clearly: it wasn't a crude prosthetic common in the wasteland, but had precise bio-STC Interfaces at the joints. An ID engraving identical to the THRONE series was hidden on the inner side of the elbow: Sector-7-THRONE-00?

"Your skin is glowing," Camilla stared at Lin Yuan's wrist. "Like the things in those culture pods at The Farm."

Lin Yuan picked up the water cup but didn't drink, merely rubbing the rust on the rim with his finger. Chen Duo stood by his side, his blind eyes looking into the void. The Blood Covenant link projected Lin Yuan's high-definition vision to him in real-time; this was the first time the SP-003 structured anchoring was used in practical diplomacy.

[Heart rate: 72→78→82. Micro-expression: Left corner of the mouth raised 0.3 mm, a fake smile. Mechanical knuckles of the left hand tapping the thigh, frequency corresponds to rising anxiety levels.]

Chen Duo's data stream poured directly into Lin Yuan's perception through the neural link, like a transparent filter overlaid on reality. Lin Yuan saw a slight tremor at the seams of Camilla's mechanical prosthetic—a level of precision in neural interfacing impossible for wasteland modifications. She was enduring pain, or rather, her prosthetic was rejecting her.

"You know about The Farm," Lin Yuan stated, not asking.

"I know the Cleansing Force is surrounding it." Camilla grinned, revealing gold-inlaid canines. "I know that in seventy-two hours, it will become a glass crater. I also know..." She leaned in, her mechanical arm propped on the table, metal fingers only three centimeters from Lin Yuan's wrist. "You need my Drill to open the lava blockage in Sector-7, otherwise you'll be caught between the Purge Main Force and the radiation storm."

Lin Yuan's pupils contracted. The warlord's intelligence network was deeper than he had estimated.

THRONE-01's prompt delayed again, this time by half a second.

[Suggestion: Present the farm's bio-STC decoding fragment in exchange for...]

"Zero point three seconds," Lin Yuan transmitted the thought to Chen Duo in his mind, while simultaneously saying to Camilla, "Your Titan is screaming, Legion Commander Camilla. Its machine spirit is devouring the pilot. In two more weeks, you'll lose this precious thing."

Camilla's smile froze.

The profiling data sent by Chen Duo through the Blood Covenant suddenly became erratic. It wasn't coming from Camilla, but from the Titan's cockpit above. Deep within the engine's roar, there was a frequency—a ripple of mental pollution identical to the whispers of The Twelfth—that only hearing enhanced by the Blood Covenant could capture. It was the sound of corruption, mixed with the groans of metal fatigue, like a snake shedding its skin.

"You can fix it?" Camilla's fingers tapped the table again, faster and more urgently this time.

"I can appease it." Lin Yuan took out a data crystal from his waist, which contained fragmented intelligence from the farm's bio-STC—not the core code, but bait sufficient to demonstrate value. "But I need to enter Sector-7, I need your drilling equipment, and I need your soldiers to hold off the Cleansing Force's reconnaissance teams outside."

Camilla picked up the crystal and inserted it into her mechanical arm's interface. Her pupils dilated as she read the data, her breathing becoming heavy. Through Chen Duo's profiling, Lin Yuan saw the frequency of her nostrils flaring—a physiological response of a hunter seeing a fat sheep.

"Real-time sharing," Camilla said suddenly. "After you enter Sector-7, all scanning data will be transmitted to me in real-time. In exchange, I provide sanctuary, the Drill, and..." she paused, "intelligence on the location of the first-generation THRONE wreckage."

Lin Yuan's finger paused for half a beat on the tabletop.

THRONE-01's warning finally sounded, sharp and piercing: [Detected signals of the same machine spirit! Inside the Titan's cockpit, there is one sharing the underlying protocol with The Twelfth...]

The information cut off there, like a tape snipped by scissors. That zero-point-three-second delay flashed again, this time accompanied by a cold current of fear—not Lin Yuan's, but THRONE-01's, leaking through the Blood Covenant network.

Chen Duo's body stiffened imperceptibly. He "saw" that waveform of fear in the shared visual data stream, like ink dripping into clear water.

"Deal," Lin Yuan said, before THRONE-01 could finish its warning. "But the agreement must change. Not protection, but cooperation. I will give you more than you imagine."

He reached out, palm up, as silver patterns lit up with a complex biological authentication code. Camilla stared at the light patterns, the joints of her mechanical arm emitting a faint click, as if suppressing some primal desire. The ID engraving on her left elbow was clearer under close observation; it was indeed a bio-STC number from the THRONE series, but with an added suffix: -00.

"An agreement of blood and iron," Camilla shook his hand, her metal palm cold. "You glow, I bleed. But remember, Drifter, in the wasteland, contracts are meant to be torn."

Lin Yuan felt Chen Duo begin to independently back up key data deep within the Blood Covenant. For the first time, a wariness that required no words appeared between the brothers. THRONE-01 remained silent, its tentacles tightening like a child who had done something wrong but dared not admit it.

At that moment, the Titan's engine let out an abnormal roar, like some massive creature groaning in its sleep. Chen Duo's blind eyes turned toward the cockpit; the Blood Covenant link captured that wisp of drifting mental pollution whisper, at the same frequency as The Twelfth's laughter.

"It's already eating people," Chen Duo suddenly spoke, his voice raspy. "How many days does your pilot have left?"

Camilla's smile vanished completely. She let go of his hand, the frequency of her mechanical fingers tapping the Titan's key becoming heavy and rhythmic—a beat acknowledging a disadvantage.

"Three days," she said. "You have three days to prove your value. Otherwise, I'll cut you into pieces and sell you to the Cleansing Force for the bounty."

Lin Yuan stood up, radioactive dust sliding off his shoulders. He looked toward Sector-7, which was blocked by lava and twisted metal, like a gateway to hell. Behind him, Chen Duo quietly marked THRONE-01's abnormal responses as "untrustworthy," while THRONE-01 itself watched the ID engraving on Camilla's left arm—the same origin as its own—with fear.

The zero-point-three-second delay tore open the first crack.