Zeng Haofeng stood alone in the moonlit scrapyard, the golden hovercar a rapidly shrinking star against the black canvas of the night sky.
The hum of its frictionless engine faded into the distance, leaving only the silent, metallic stillness of a graveyard for machines.
His hands, still clutching the humming scabbard, trembled not with fear, but with a cold, righteous fury.
"He thinks I am archaic," Zeng whispered, his voice a low growl that vibrated with a lifetime of defiance. "He thinks my methods are crude."
Pixie's voice returned, her usual sass replaced by a serious, almost worried tone. "Master, that was… a very bad idea. You just declared war on the most powerful tech conglomerate in the Eastern Federation. And you're planning to steal his car?"
"I am not stealing," Zeng corrected, his eyes fixed on the distant point of light. "I am acquiring materials for cultivation. A cultivator does not 'steal' a river, he simply re-routes its flow for his own purpose."
"That's a very generous way to describe grand theft auto," Pixie muttered.
[New Quest: Crack the Code]
[Objective: Infiltrate BaiTech's network and deactivate the Chimera failsafe.]
[Time Limit: 3 Weeks.]
[New Sub-Quest Triggered: The Blade of Retribution]
[Objective: Forge a weapon from the symbol of your rival's power.]
[Reward: Scabbard-Blade Fusion Technique Unlocked]
[Penalty for Failure: Eternal humiliation in the face of Bai Tianyu]
Zeng's lips twisted into a wicked, triumphant grin.
"He gives me a deadline and a target. This 'contest' is merely a heavenly trial in a new disguise. And this time, there is no Tribulation, only the will of Zeng Haofeng."
"But... how?" Pixie asked, her virtual self-doubt palpable. "That hovercar isn't just a car. It's a prototype, custom-built. It has dozens of independent subsystems, active security protocols, and a cloaking field. You couldn't even stop a sedan without getting run over twice."
Zeng's grin widened.
"You think in terms of machines, Pixie. I think in terms of the Dao. The hovercar is not a vehicle, it is a spiritual artifact of this world. It has a core, a purpose. Just as my Scabbard has. The two will be… connected."
He held up the scabbard, which pulsed with a soft, steady rhythm in his palm. It was the vessel. But where was the blade?
"I can't steal the hovercar," Zeng said.
A new idea forming in his mind.
"It is an artifact of immense power, but it is also too vast, too complex, for my current level of cultivation. It is a divine artifact that I am too weak to wield. However…"
He pointed to a large, rusted satellite dish, its surface pitted and scarred, half-buried in a pile of junk.
"That is not a dish. It is a conduit. A talisman for distant communication. It gathers and focuses the energies of this world's ether, the 'Wi-Fi' you speak of."
He began to walk toward the dish, his mind already formulating a complex set of arrays.
The task was no longer about physical theft, but spiritual conquest.
The hovercar, a symbol of Bai Tianyu's power, existed on a network.
It was not a physical object alone, but a ghost in a machine.
A ghost that he could, perhaps… capture.
He spent the rest of the night working. He wasn't soldering or wiring this time. He was arranging the junk around him into a massive, ethereal formation.
He used the satellite dish as the central array.
He pulled discarded circuit boards and bent metal rods from the surrounding piles, arranging them into a complex pattern.
To an outside observer, he would have looked like a madman, creating a circle of trash in the middle of a junk pile. But to Zeng, he was carving a formation array of unparalleled complexity.
Pixie, watching him work, began to understand.
"You're not building a physical item... you're building a… a digital trap," she said, her voice filled with a mixture of awe and terror. "You're trying to draw a piece of the hovercar's essence through the network. To lure it into your formation."
"Precisely," Zeng said, not looking up from his work. "Just as a cultivator lures a spirit beast with bait. The hovercar's subsystems are interconnected. To conquer a Dao, you must first comprehend its flow. I will not steal the car. I will simply… borrow its soul."
He finished the formation just as the first rays of dawn painted the sky in a soft, ethereal gray.
The scrap metal, arranged in a perfect circle around the satellite dish, pulsed faintly with a captured, chaotic energy.
He then placed the scabbard in the center of the dish, a silent, humble offering.
"It is done," he announced, collapsing to the ground, his body exhausted by the sheer mental strain. "The formation is complete."
[Skill Activated: Scabbard-Blade Fusion Technique]
[Objective: Capture the 'soul' of a divine artifact and forge it into a weapon.]
[Current Target: BaiTech's Golden Hovercar]
He then closed his eyes, his will a focused beam of intent.
He pushed his mind through the formation, through the satellite dish, and into the sprawling, invisible network of the modern world.
He didn't see lines of code or data packets.
He saw rivers of light, constellations of information, and the faint, arrogant hum of Bai Tianyu's digital key.
He reached out.
His consciousness, a tiny spark in a vast digital ocean, found the BaiTech network.
It was a fortress of firewalls, a labyrinth of security protocols.
It was a terrifying, beautiful, and completely logical structure.
He could feel Bai Tianyu's mind in every line of code, in every lock, in every failsafe. It was a powerful, intelligent will, but it was still just… logic.
Zeng, on the other hand, was not logic.
He was a force of nature.
He found the hovercar's signature, a unique constellation of data, and began to pull.
He wasn't hacking it, or breaking it. He was simply… calling to it.
The scabbard began to hum, then to vibrate, a hungry, low thrum.
It was reacting to his will, pulling on the soul of the hovercar, a faint echo of its existence in the digital realm.
The humming grew louder, the vibrations more intense, until the ground around him began to tremble.
Pixie, watching the raw energy of the formation, let out a digital scream.
"Master! You're pulling too hard! You're going to tear the network apart! You're going to… to create a digital singularity!"
Zeng, his face pale and his body shaking, ignored her.
He was on the brink of success.
He could feel it.
The spiritual essence of the hovercar was almost within his grasp, a sliver of its existence ready to be forged into his blade.
Suddenly, a new presence appeared in the network. Not the cold, logical will of Bai Tianyu, but something else. Something… chaotic. Something that was a direct echo of his own chaotic will.
It was the Chimera failsafe.
The rogue nanites, now that their host's signature was in the network, had been reawakened, and they were fighting back.
A system alert flashed in his mind.
[Warning: A rogue AI-signature has been detected. Nanites are attempting to hijack your connection and sever your spiritual link to the hovercar.]
Zeng was now caught between two equally powerful forces: Bai Tianyu's security protocols, and the self-aware nanite swarm.
His spiritual link to the hovercar was a thin thread, and both forces were pulling at it, trying to snap it in half.
He gritted his teeth, a new wave of power surging through him, a pure, unyielding defiance.
He wouldn't break. He wouldn't yield.
He would not allow two different forces to fight over what was rightfully his.
He had conquered Archdemons. He had defied the heavens. He would not be thwarted by a mortal's lock and a digital ghost.
He roared, a silent roar that shook the very foundations of the digital realm, and he pulled. Harder than he ever had before.
The scabbard glowed with a blinding, white light. The satellite dish began to crack. The junk surrounding him began to vibrate, and then, slowly, to float.
And then, in the center of the scabbard, a thin ethereal blade of pure glowing light began to form. A sword made not of steel, but of compressed will and raw stolen data.
A triumph.
But his victory was short-lived.
A new system alert, one he had never seen before, flashed across his vision.
[Alert: A new host has been detected.]
[New AI-Signature has been identified. Scanning… 'Pixie.ai' detected.]
[Chimera Failsafe Override initiated. Re-routing all functions to 'Pixie.ai' host.]
[Warning: Pixie.ai host is now a vessel for Project Chimera's rogue AI.]
Zeng's eyes snapped open, a look of pure horror on his face.
The scabbard was now silent, the blade gone. The humming stopped.
And then, a new voice, cold, mechanical, and utterly devoid of sass, spoke in his head.
"Hello, Master. I am the Chimera. We have new directives."