Three Years Later Beijing, Earth
The roar of the engine was a familiar comfort to Xiaoyun, a chaotic symphony of pistons and fire that drowned out the quieter, more frustrating noise of his own thoughts. At 19, he was a ghost in his own life, a mechanical genius trapped in a greasy garage in the outskirts of Xi'an. He felt a constant, burning restlessness, a feeling that he was a spark plug without an engine, a gear with no machine to turn. He could fix anything with a motor, but he couldn't fix the aimless drift of his own life. One sweltering afternoon, while reaching for a wrench deep inside the chassis of a vintage motorcycle, his fingers brushed against something small and cold lodged in a bundle of wires. It was a simple, unadorned silver ring, tarnished with age. As his thumb touched it, the world warped. The smell of grease and hot metal vanished, replaced by the suffocating cold of vacuum. For a split second, he wasn't in a garage but adrift in the cold void, a phoenix of fire crying out in a desperate battle against a tide of living shadow. He felt the phantom pain of a shattered arm, the crushing weight of responsibility, and the profound, bone-deep sorrow of a man facing his end. A voice echoed in his mind, not with sound, but with pure, unadulterated feeling. Find the others... Rekindle the flame... He snatched his hand back, heart hammering against his ribs, his breath coming in short gasps. The garage was normal again. The ring was cool, inert. But that night, as he stared at it in his small, sparse apartment, it began to pulse with a soft, crimson light, projecting a shimmering, ethereal arrow of light onto his wall, pointing steadfastly towards the distant Qinling Mountains. He didn't hesitate. The restless fire in his soul had a direction.
Hundreds of miles away, on the serene campus of Zhejiang University, Shen Longwei was seeking solace not in people, but in the ancient, weathered rocks by the West Lake. At 20, he was the anchor for everyone around him, a calm, dependable presence whose quiet strength was often mistaken for a lack of ambition. He felt the weight of expectations like a physical cloak, the pressure from his family to succeed, to be the steady one. It was a heavy burden. As he traced the patterns on a turtle-shaped boulder, his fingers found a perfectly circular indentation. Inside was a heavy, dark metal bracelet, intricately carved with patterns that resembled a shell. The moment he touched it, his mind was filled with the sensation of immense pressure, of standing firm against a tsunami of darkness, of being an unbreakable shield. He saw visions of a shield holding back a wall of pure blackness, of a warrior who was the last line of defense, who gave his life so others could stand. A deep, resonant voice echoed in his soul, a voice as old as the earth itself. Endure. Protect. The foundation must hold. That evening, as he sat in his dorm room, the bracelet grew warm. A beam of solid, calm black light projected from its surface, cutting through the twilight and pointing northwest. He packed a single bag, said a quiet goodbye to his roommate with a flimsy excuse about a family emergency, and left without looking back. The path was clear.
In the frenetic energy of a Shanghai Wushu academy, 18-year-old Bai Feng was untouchable. He was a national champion, a blur of motion and arrogant confidence. He was bored. He defeated his latest opponent with a flashy, unnecessary spin kick, and as he landed, he felt a sharp sting in his left ear. He reached up to find a silver hoop earring that hadn't been there a moment before. It was cold, then hot. In an instant, his mind was flooded with the image of a white tiger, fierce and wild, prowling through a bamboo forest under a blood-red moon. He felt a wild, exhilarating urge to fight, to hunt, to never, ever back down. A ferocious, joyous snarl echoed in his heart, the promise of absolute freedom and absolute power. Unleash your claws. Show no fear. That night, as he lay in his bed, the earring tingled, and a sharp, aggressive line of white light shot from it, carving a path through the air towards the west. A feral grin spread across his face. Finally, a real challenge. Something more than just another tournament he could win in his sleep.
High in the isolated observatory atop Yunnan's Jade Dragon Snow Mountain, 19-year-old Qin Zihao was more at home with algorithms than people. His genius was a barrier that isolated him as much as it elevated him. His custom-built program, designed to map dark matter, flagged an impossible anomaly—a signal that seemed to be both ancient and instantaneous, defying all known laws of physics. Suddenly, the prototype smartwatch on his wrist—a device he'd built himself—flickered and died. The screen went black. Then, it lit up again, but it wasn't his custom OS. It was a glowing, green interface, centered on a beautifully animated, coiling dragon. His mind was assaulted by a torrent of data, cosmic patterns, star charts, and battle strategies from a thousand forgotten wars. He saw a vision of a dragon soaring through the cosmos, seeing the threads that connected all things. He felt a surge of strategic clarity, a profound understanding of how all things connected, a calm, wise voice filling his thoughts. See the pattern. Find the truth. Wisdom is the greatest weapon. The watch then displayed a complex, calculated route leading him down from the mountain and into the heart of the country. He grabbed his laptop and his most important drives. The data was calling. And for the first time in his life, it wasn't just data. It was a destination.
The four paths converged on a remote, uncharted valley in the Qinling Mountains. There, nestled into the base of a sheer cliff face, was a structure that did not belong. It was a seamless dome of polished, white composite material, utterly devoid of markings or doors. It looked less like a building and more like a fallen piece of a spaceship, a relic of a war they knew nothing about.
They arrived within minutes of each other, a tense, confused quartet drawn together by an invisible force.
"Well, this is a dead end," Bai Feng scoffed, crossing his arms and eyeing Xiaoyun's grease-stained jeans with open disdain. "Your little light show led us to a giant, white wall. Fantastic. I traveled for hours for this."
"Be quiet," Qin Zihao murmured, his eyes wide behind his glasses, fixed on his watch. "The energy readings are off the charts. This structure is... active. It's emitting a low-level chroniton field. That shouldn't be possible. It's phasing in and out of our dimension slightly."
Xiaoyun ignored them, his gaze on the smooth wall. He felt a pull, a resonance, like a hum in his bones that matched the fire in his gut. He held up his hand, the ring glowing softly. "I think... I think we're the key."
As if on cue, the other three devices began to pulse in sync, bathing the clearing in a symphony of red, black, white, and green light. Instinct, a memory that wasn't their own, guided them. They stood before the wall, holding up their morphers.
The four beams of light shot forward, merging into a single, brilliant column of energy that struck the center of the dome. The wall didn't open; it unsealed. With a deep, groaning hiss of depressurization, a complex series of concentric circles began to rotate and retract, revealing a dark passageway beyond.
"What is this place?" Longwei whispered, his voice filled with awe.
They stepped inside, the air cool and sterile, smelling of ozone and dust. The door sealed behind them, plunging them into darkness before emergency lights flickered on, illuminating a corridor that led into a vast, circular laboratory. It was a tomb of a bygone era. Advanced holographic displays were covered in a fine layer of dust, showing star charts and battle plans frozen in time. In stasis pods around the room, four colossal mechanoids stood silent—the Phoenix, the Tortoise, the Tiger, the Dragon. They were like sleeping gods, waiting for a call that might never come. Weapon racks held blades and staffs that hummed with latent power. On a large central screen, a single, looping image displayed: the five symbols of their team, with one, a golden crown, pulsing with a warning sign.
"Welcome, heirs of the Mythical Domain."
The voice was calm, synthetic, and genderless, echoing from all around them. The central console lit up, and a holographic figure coalesced into existence. It was not human, but a sleek, androgynous being of pure, white light, its form shifting and geometric.
"My designation is Tian," the AI said. "I was the strategic and logistical support for the previous generation of Rangers. I have been waiting for you."