The message from Scholar Yan arrived coded within a seemingly innocuous academic journal entry: a request for a discreet meeting at a different tea house, 'The Glimmering Stream,' known for its quiet alcoves and purportedly unreadable feng shui for karmic scrying. Yan claimed he had found a former Sutra Corps programmer willing to speak, someone who had worked on the Ledger's original architecture. This was a massive lead, a potential key to understanding the system's deepest secrets.
Elias arrived early, the bootleg Earth Core thrumming faintly beneath his robes, a subtle reassurance. He found Yan already seated, his usual nervous energy amplified. Across from him sat a thin, pale man with eyes that flitted nervously, a former government employee if Elias was any judge. Yan introduced him as Kaelen.
"Kaelen here... he confirms many of my suspicions, Analyst Thorne," Yan whispered, his voice trembling with excitement. "The Ledger was designed with 'backdoors,' not for manipulation, but for 'priority recalibration' during times of crisis. These points, he says, could be exploited."
Kaelen nodded, sweat beading on his forehead. "They called them 'emergency overrides.' Built-in checks, to ensure stability. But they grant deep access. And the Grand Council… they use them, but not how they claim."
Elias felt a surge of triumph. This was it. Hard evidence. A direct witness.
But then, a subtle tremor went through the floor. Not an earthquake, but something else, a distortion in the ambient spiritual energy. Elias's Karmic Lens, now instinctually held in his hand beneath the table, flared to life, showing a sudden, intense disruption in the karmic threads of the room. A trap.
Before Elias could react, Kaelen's nervous demeanor vanished, replaced by a cold, sharp glint in his eyes. He lunged, not for Elias, but for Yan, grabbing the old scholar in a surprisingly strong grip.
"Guild scum!" Kaelen snarled, revealing a small, glowing emblem of the Alchemists' Guild pinned inside his tunic. "You thought you could undermine the Ledger, old fool? The Guild sees all threats to its stability!"
It was a sting. The programmer wasn't a sympathetic whistleblower; he was a Guild informant, sent to entrap them. Elias cursed himself for his momentary lapse in paranoia.
Guild enforcers, burly cultivators with low-level Prana Amplifiers humming at their belts, burst into the tea house, their cultivation energies flaring. The room's karma sensors, Elias now realized, must have been jammed or overridden to allow the Guild to operate undetected.
Instinct took over. Elias didn't fight them directly. He knew he was outmatched in a straight brawl. Instead, he channeled spiritual energy into the bootleg Earth Core. The unstable artifact pulsed violently, its unique resonance slamming into the room's subtle karmic field. It wasn't an attack, but a blinding flash of karmic interference.
The room's karma sensors instantly jammed. The enforcers hesitated, momentarily disoriented as their own augmented senses screamed with conflicting data. It was enough.
Elias shoved his table over, creating a momentary barrier, and bolted for the back exit, the Earth Core still screaming its chaotic song. He glanced back just once. Scholar Yan, wide-eyed and terrified, was being dragged away by the Guild enforcers, his frail body protesting.
He reached the street, heart pounding, the chaotic hum of the Earth Core gradually settling back into a low thrum. He had escaped, but at a terrible cost.
The aftermath was swift and brutal. Within hours, news spread: "Scholar Yan arrested for sedition and attempting to corrupt the Karmic Ledger." Elias knew the Guild would twist the narrative, using Yan as an example.
Back at his terminal in the Bureau, his hands shaking slightly, Elias performed the most difficult act of all. He accessed the Ledger's deepest protocols. Using the Karma Lens to guide him, and the unstable Earth Core to mask his access, he meticulously erased their connection from the Ledger. He purged every data point, every communication, every shared anomaly. Yan's records, Elias's records, any link between them was severed. It was a digital ghost deletion, agonizingly precise. He had to save himself, even if it meant abandoning the only ally who truly understood his quest.
But he knew it was a futile gesture in the grand scheme. The Guild was watching him now. He had escaped their trap, but he had revealed a fraction of his capabilities, and they would not forget. The game had just become deadly personal.