The silence that followed was more unnerving than the battle. The Rust-Steel Mantis stood as a statue of living metal and chitin, its amber gaze locked on the stone in Lin Feng's hand. The only sounds were the whistle of the toxic wind through the canyon and the low, hydraulic sigh of the creature's internal systems.
Lin Feng's entire body trembled from adrenaline depletion and qi exhaustion. His Dantian felt like a hollow, aching gourd. The Azure Pupil had receded, leaving behind a dull throb behind his eyes, a phantom reminder of the impossible sight it had granted him. Yet, he dared not move. He held the stone, its familiar, smooth surface now feeling alien and potent.
It recognizes the stone.
The thought was both exhilarating and terrifying. For years, the grey pebble had been a comfort, a tangible link to a father he barely remembered. Now, it was a key—a key to what, he didn't know, but one that a half-mechanical killing machine seemed to instinctively respect.
Cautiously, slowly, he pushed himself to his feet. Every muscle protested. The Mantis tracked his movement, its head tilting with a soft whir of servos. It didn't advance, but its presence was a palpable force, a cage of tense potentiality around him.
"Can you understand me?" Lin Feng asked, his voice hoarse.
The Mantis chittered, a sound less aggressive and more contemplative than before. There was no words, no telepathic speech. Instead, a wave of sensation washed over Lin Feng—not through his ears, but through the tenuous, invisible thread connecting his consciousness to the creature's core. It was a composite impression: the sharp, localized pain in its shoulder joint, a baseline hunger for specific metals and ambient radiation, and a deep, resonant curiosity focused solely on the stone.
It wasn't language. It was a data packet of pure intent and need.
Pain. Fuel. Query?
Lin Feng exhaled slowly. This was the "taming." Not command and obedience, but a dialogue of needs. He had offered understanding; now, it was stating its terms.
His knowledge of machinery was rudimentary, forged in the crucible of keeping old generators and water purifiers running in his makeshift shelter. His knowledge of biology was that of a forager, knowing which fungi were edible and which beasts were to be avoided. This was a fusion of both, a discipline that didn't have a name in the Wastes.
His Azure Pupil was the only bridge.
Gathering the faintest trickle of his recovering qi, he willed the ability to activate once more. The world shifted again into the spectrum of energy. The fracture at the Mantis's shoulder was a glaring wound in the geometric web, a tangle of leaking blue energy and inflamed red biological qi. It was a messy, unstable fusion.
"I... I can see the problem," Lin Feng murmured, more to himself than the beast. "The graft is misaligned. The qi flow is corrupted there, feeding back into your systems."
He took a hesitant step forward. The Mantis stiffened, its functional scythe twitching. Lin Feng stopped, holding up his empty hand in what he hoped was a universal gesture of peace. He then pointed at the injured shoulder with his other hand, the one still holding the stone.
"Let me try to help."
He focused his will, not on forcing the energy, but on guiding it. He imagined the tangled lines of blue circuitry straightening, the flow of energy smoothing out. He pushed this intent along the mental thread, a blueprint for repair. He had no power to enact the repair himself; his qi was too weak. He could only show it the way.
The Mantis remained still for a long moment, processing. Then, it did something astonishing. It slowly, deliberately, turned its body, presenting its injured left side fully to Lin Feng. It was an act of immense vulnerability.
Trust.
The sensation that echoed back was clear.
Swallowing hard, Lin Feng approached. The smell of ozone, hot metal, and something strangely organic filled his nostrils. Up close, the Mantis was even more formidable. He could see the minute seams where living tissue met alloy, the pulsating glow of its core through a translucent section of chest-plating.
He raised his hand, ignoring the instinctual scream of every survival nerve in his body, and placed his palm near the fracture. He didn't touch it directly; his qi was too weak and unstable to interface safely. Instead, he continued to project the image of repair, of harmony between the biological and the mechanical.
The Mantis shuddered. A low hum emanated from its core. Lin Feng watched, through his Azure Pupil, as the creature's own internal systems—a combination of its bestial qi and its inherent technological programming—began to work. It was as if he had provided the schematic, and the Mantis was now executing the repair itself. The tangled energy lines began to slowly, painstakingly, untangle and realign. The leak of discordant energy diminished.
It was working.
The process was slow, taking the better part of an hour. Lin Feng stood there, a conduit of intent, his qi steadily draining. Swep beaded on his forehead. Just as he felt he could no longer maintain the connection, the last knot of energy smoothed out. The fracture was sealed. Not perfectly—the area still glowed with a faint stress-pattern—but the critical failure was averted.
The Mantis flexed its left scythe-limb. The monomolecular edge hummed back to life, gleaming with a steady, cool light. It turned back to face him, and the amber glow in its eyes seemed brighter, more focused. The sensation that washed over Lin Feng was one of clear, uncomplicated relief.
Gratitude.
Then, its focus returned to the stone. Query.
"What are you?" Lin Feng whispered, looking down at the dull grey rock. He poured the last dregs of his will and qi into his Azure Pupil and focused it entirely on the stone.
The world fell away.
He was no longer in the Rust-Fang Wastes. He was adrift in a sea of stars. Constellations he had never seen swirled around him, not as static patterns, but as dynamic, living entities—great dragons of nebular gas, soaring phoenixes of incandescent plasma. He felt the immense, cold vacuum, the birth and death of suns, the silent, patient dance of galaxies.
And through it all, he heard a whisper. It was not a voice, but a concept, a foundational truth imprinted on reality itself.
[CONCEPT: SYMBIOSIS. PARADIGM: UNITY OF FLESH AND SILICON. THE PATH OF THE STARFALL TAMER IS THE PATH OF THE COSMOS ITSELF.]
A flood of information, too vast and complex to fully grasp, seared itself into his mind. It was not a cultivation manual or a taming technique. It was a philosophy. A grand, cosmic principle that viewed the fusion of spirit and technology not as an abomination or an accident, but as an inevitable, glorious evolution.
He saw glimpses of techniques: [Qi-Weave Synchronization], [Neural-Link Resonance], [Spirit-Tech Fusion Forging]. He understood, in a flash of insight, that true taming was not about dominance, but about achieving a perfect, synergistic balance—a partnership where both tamer and beast, both cultivator and technology, were elevated as one.
The vision collapsed as his qi finally gave out. He stumbled, gasping, the mundane harshness of the Wastes crashing back in. But he was changed. The knowledge was there, buried deep, a seed waiting for the right conditions to sprout.
The stone felt warm in his hand, no longer dormant, but merely… patient.
The Rust-Steel Mantis was watching him intently. It now understood that the stone and Lin Feng were connected in a way it couldn't comprehend, but deeply respected. The simple curiosity had been replaced by a sense of purpose.
Partnership, the creature projected.
Lin Feng nodded, a weary but determined smile touching his lips. "Partnership."
He had a goal now, more profound than mere survival. He had to understand the stone. He had to walk this "Path of the Starfall Tamer." And for that, he needed resources, knowledge, and a safe haven. The Mantis couldn't follow him to the edge of the Wastes, to the ramshackle trader outposts. Its presence would cause panic, attract the wrong kind of attention from both scavenger gangs and potentially, real cultivators.
He needed to establish a base, here, in the deeper Wastes. And he needed to make his first real foray into the precarious economy of the borderlands.
He looked at the Mantis. "I need to go to the Iron Valley market. I will return. Can you… wait here? Guard this territory?"
He projected the concepts of location, waiting, and defense.
The Mantis chittered, a sound that now, strangely, felt like an affirmation. It then turned and with startling speed, vanished into a labyrinth of rusted container stacks, becoming one with the landscape it ruled.
Alone again, Lin Feng felt the emptiness not with loneliness, but with a newfound sense of purpose. He spent the next two days recovering in a hidden alcove he found, practicing drawing in the chaotic, toxic qi of the Wastes and filtering it through the nascent understanding granted by the stone. It was a painful, inefficient process, but he felt his Dantian slowly refilling, becoming slightly more resilient.
On the third day, with a pack full of Nest-Grinder cores he'd cautiously harvested from the now-leaderless hive—his original target, a lifetime ago—he began the long trek towards the Iron Valley.
The journey took a day and a night. Iron Valley was not a city, but a sprawling, chaotic bazaar nestled between two jagged mountain ranges, a neutral ground where the scum of the Wastes came to trade. The air was thick with the smells of roasting mutated lizard meat, ozone from spark-welders, and the distinct, coppery scent of blood-sand.
Lin Feng moved through the crowded, dusty paths with practiced anonymity. He passed stalls selling refurbished plasma rifles next to others hawking "ancient" cultivation jades of dubious authenticity. He saw hulking Brute-Modified enforcers, their flesh grafted with crude hydraulic pistons, standing guard next to sleek, robed disciples from the distant Sky-Spire Sect, their eyes glowing with pure spiritual light. It was a microcosm of their broken world.
He found his destination: a grimy stall tucked under a salvaged starship wing, marked with the symbol of a balanced gear and a lotus—the sigil of the Cogitation Lotus Guild. They were known as Spirit-Tech Artificers, one of the few groups who openly embraced the fusion of paths.
The shopkeeper was an old woman with a cybernetic right eye that whirred as it focused on him. Her left hand was a intricate masterpiece of articulated porcelain and wiring, currently polishing a small, glowing core.
"Granny Luo," Lin Feng greeted respectfully, placing his pack of Nest-Grinder cores on the counter.
"Lin Feng." Her voice was a dry rasp, like grinding stones. Her organic eye assessed him, while her mechanical one scanned the cores. "Your energy signature is… different. Disturbed. You've had an encounter."
He wasn't surprised. Granny Luo saw more than most. "The Wastes are full of encounters."
She hummed, noncommittal, sorting the cores by quality. "The usual trade? Spirit-stones? Rations?"
"Not this time," Lin Feng said, his voice firm. He leaned forward. "I need information. And specific components."
Her eyebrow raised. "Components are expensive. Information more so."
He pushed a particularly large, high-purity core towards her. "I need a low-yield plasma conduit, a gram of crystalline nano-filament, and a schematic for a basic wide-area qi-dampening field."
Granny Luo went completely still. These were not the requests of a simple forager. The plasma conduit could be used to channel energy in ways that mimicked high-level fire qi. The nano-filament was used for micro-repairs on spirit-tech interfaces. The qi-dampening field was often used by poachers or those who wished to hide their activities from prying spiritual senses.
She fixed him with both her real and mechanical gaze. "Boy, are you planning to get yourself killed? Or are you stepping onto a path that will lead you there anyway?"
Lin Feng met her gaze. "The path found me, Granny. I'm just trying to learn how to walk it."
He saw a flicker of something in her eyes—not suspicion, but a deep, weary recognition. She had seen many young, ambitious people walk into the Wastes and never return. But she also saw something in Lin Feng she hadn't seen in a long time: not blind ambition, but a core of solidified resolve.
She let out a long sigh. "The components I can get. The schematic…" She rummaged under the counter and produced a small, scratched data-slate. "This is a fragment. Incomplete. It'll create a weak field, enough to mask a small area from casual scanning. It will not hold up against a dedicated seeker." She named a price that cost him all of his cores and half the spirit-stones he had saved for months.
Lin Feng didn't hesitate. He paid.
As she wrapped his purchases in insulated cloth, she spoke again, her voice low. "There is a rumor, Lin Feng. The Sky-Spire Sect has sent a disciple to the Wastes. Not a junior one, either. They are searching for a 'disruption in the celestial alignment.' A dissonance in the local qi fields." She tapped her cybernetic eye. "My sensors have been picking up strange interference in the deep Wastes for the past week. A unique signature. Biological, yet… machined."
Lin Feng's blood ran cold. The Rust-Steel Mantis. His Azure Pupil. The activation of the stone. He had created a "disruption."
"The Sky-Spire sees fusion as a heresy," Granny Luo warned. "They purge what they cannot pureify. Be careful where you walk your new path, boy. The heavens themselves might be watching."
With his purchases secured and a new, grave warning etched into his mind, Lin Feng left Iron Valley. He didn't have a single spirit-stone to his name, but he carried in his pack the first tools of a Starfall Tamer, and in his mind, the first whispers of a cosmic truth.
He was no longer just surviving. He was building. And he was being hunted.
The race had begun.