The sewers of Sector 4 were a labyrinth of forgotten history. They smelled of ozone, stagnant grey-water, and the copper tang of blood. Ren dragged his body through a narrow maintenance crawlspace, his fingernails clawing at the slick concrete. Every inch of movement felt like glass shards were being ground into his joints.
The Overclock had ended, but the debt was being collected.
"System... status..." Ren wheezed, his voice a dry rattle.
In the corner of his vision, a ghostly interface flickered. It wasn't the clean, blue-holographic HUD used by corporate cultivators. This was jagged, flickering in a sickly violet hue.
[HARDWARE ADVISORY]
Current Temperature: 104.2°F (Rising)
Meridian Integrity: 12% (Critical Degradation)
Venting Status: Incomplete. Residual "Dirty Qi" detected in thoracic cavity.
Estimated time to System Collapse: 14 Minutes.
"Great," Ren spat, a glob of dark, viscous phlegm hitting the floor. "I finally get a cheat code, and it's a suicide note."
He reached a heavy iron hatch marked with a faded spray-painted symbol: a stylized skull with a circuit board for a jaw. This was the entrance to The Black Box, an illegal clinic operated by the only person in the slums crazy enough to stitch a Null back together without reporting them to the authorities.
Ren hammered on the metal three short beats, one long.
A small slit slid open. A pair of neon-pink goggles peered out. "Ren? You're late with the scrap delivery. If you're here to beg for more spirit-tea, I'm " The goggles widened as the woman behind the door noticed the smoke curling off Ren's skin. "Holy Mother of Data. You're melting."
The hatch hissed open. A woman with a shock of spiked, electric-blue hair and a mechanical third arm protruding from her shoulder grabbed Ren by his collar, hauling him inside. This was Elara "Glitch" Vex.
The clinic was a chaotic mess of bubbling alchemical vats, disassembled drone parts, and flickering monitors displaying stolen medical data. Glitch threw Ren onto an operating table made from a repurposed server rack.
"Stay still, you idiot," she snapped, her mechanical arm already whirring as it swapped a wrench for a high-frequency surgical laser. "Your Qi-signature looks like a localized EMP. What did you do? Stick your tongue in a High-Zone transformer?"
"Found... a chip," Ren managed to say as Glitch ripped open his scorched jacket.
She stopped mid-motion. Her eyes locked onto the Primordial Source Code fused into the skin above his solar plexus. The blackened metal was pulsing, tiny threads of violet light branching out like roots into Ren's chest.
"Ren," Glitch said, her voice dropping the frantic edge. "Where did you get this?"
"Scrap-heap... near the old Sector 7 border."
"This isn't scrap. This is Pre-Digital architecture. This is 'Ancient Dao' hardware." She quickly began typing on a holographic keyboard, her fingers moving so fast they blurred. "It's not just sitting on your chest. It's rewriting your DNA to act as a conductive medium. It's trying to turn your Clogged Core into a high-speed processor, but your body is built for 56k dial-up, and this thing is trying to run the entire Sect-Corp Cloud through you."
"Can you... fix it?"
Glitch looked at her monitors, then back at his scorched chest. "Fix it? Ren, I'm an unlicensed back-alley soul-surgeon, not a miracle worker. To stabilize this, I need to install Heatsinks. If we don't vent the thermal buildup from your Overclock, your heart is going to turn into a charcoal briquette the next time you use it."
"Then do it. I have... I have the Siphon credits."
"You don't have enough for this," she muttered, but she was already reaching for a tray of shimmering, silver-blue needles. "But I've wanted to see what's inside one of these chips since I ran away from Azure Stream. Consider yourself a scholarship student. Now, bite on this. This is going to hurt more than being poor."
She shoved a rubber block into his mouth.
Ren barely had time to brace himself before the needles plunged into his ten major pressure points. It wasn't just physical pain; it was an invasion. He felt Glitch's "Medicinal Qi" entering his system, trying to channel the toxic, violet residue out of his veins.
His vision fractured.
Accessing Archive... the voice in his head droned. Tutorial Phase 1: Understanding the Bit-Stage.The Dao is not a river. The Dao is an Algorithm. To master the Bit, one must learn to compress the soul.
Images flashed through Ren's mind: Ancient monks sitting under digital waterfalls, their bodies dissolving into strings of 1s and 0s. He saw the structure of his own "Clogged Core." It wasn't a defect; it was a Compressed Archive. His ancestors hadn't been weak; they had been encrypted.
"Ren! Breathe!" Glitch's voice broke through the haze.
He gasped, his body arching off the table. A plume of violet steam erupted from the needles in his chest, hitting the ceiling with a hiss. The temperature in the room spiked.
"I'm installing the 'Venting Ports,'" Glitch shouted over the roar of the steam. "I'm using Vajra-grade alloy needles to act as permanent lightning rods for your meridians. It'll give you a way to discharge the excess heat, but it'll leave you drained. You'll be a god for sixty seconds, but a corpse for sixty minutes."
As the last of the steam cleared, Ren fell back, drenched in sweat. The violet glow had receded into the chip, leaving behind ten faint, metallic circular marks around his collarbone and ribs.
He felt... empty. But the crushing weight on his chest was gone.
"You're stabilized," Glitch said, wiping her brow with a grease-stained sleeve. "For now. But Ren, that stunt in the alley? You fried a Cinnabar Enforcer. They aren't going to send a bill; they're going to send a 'Delete' squad. You can't stay in the slums."
"I don't have anywhere else to go," Ren said, sitting up slowly. He looked at his hands. They were steady. For the first time in his life, his internal "static" felt like a coiled spring.
"Yes, you do," Glitch said, pointing to a flickering news-broadcast on the wall.
The screen showed a sleek, gold-and-white skyscraper. A scrolling ticker ran across the bottom: THE AETHER-GAMES: OPEN ENROLLMENT BEGINS. SECURE YOUR FUTURE. ASCEND TO THE HIGH-ZONES.
"The Aether-Games?" Ren scoffed. "That's for the Sect heirs. They use Scrappers like me for target practice in the first round."
"Exactly," Glitch grinned, a predatory look in her eyes. "Nobody expects a Null to win. But the games are held in a 'Neutral Zone' a High-Qi environment where the corporate laws are suspended for the spectacle. If you can survive the qualifiers, you get 'Immunity Status.' Even Cinnabar can't touch you while you're a contestant."
"You want me to go into a stadium full of Level 5 'Broadband' cultivators and hope I don't explode?"
"I want you to use that chip to rewrite the leaderboard," she said. "Besides, the prize for the top ten is a Spirit-Grade Neural Link. If you get that, we can finally interface your brain with the Source Code. You won't just be 'Overclocking' your body; you'll be hacking reality."
Ren looked at the screen. He saw the pampered, arrogant faces of the Sect disciples the people who had spent their lives stepping on people like him. He felt the Primordial Source Code pulse against his heart, a cold, calculating rhythm.
"Fine," Ren said. "How do I sign up?"
"First," Glitch said, "we need to test your new 'Hardware.' There's a 'Data-Well' underneath the old textile factory. The Iron-Rat Gang runs a low-level cultivation pit there. If you can take their leader without burning the building down, you might just have a chance."
Three hours later, Ren stood at the edge of the textile factory's basement. The air was thick with the smell of cheap incense and burning oil. Below, in a makeshift ring surrounded by jagged scrap-metal, two men were fighting. They weren't using high-level techniques just raw, Qi-enhanced brutality.
"Next!" a voice boomed.
A massive man stepped into the center of the ring. He was nearly seven feet tall, his skin reinforced with cheap, grey-market "Iron-Skin" grafts. This was Korg, a Level 3 "Kernel-Stage" brute who had killed more Scrappers than the Sector Police.
"Who's brave enough to give me a warm-up?" Korg laughed, slamming his fists together. The impact created a visible ripple of grey energy.
Ren stepped out of the shadows. His hooded jacket was pulled low, the metallic venting ports hidden beneath his clothes.
"A Null?" Korg's laugh turned into a roar of derision. The crowd of scavengers and criminals joined in. "You want to die that badly, little ghost?"
Ren didn't say a word. He stepped into the ring.
"Rules are simple," Korg grinned, his teeth filed to points. "Last man standing gets the pot. The loser gets carried out in a bucket."
Korg didn't wait. He lunged, his massive fist glowing with a dull, earthy light. [Crushing Mountain Strike].
Ren closed his eyes for a fraction of a second. He didn't reach for the Qi in the air there was none. Instead, he reached into the "Compressed Archive" of his own soul. He felt the Source Code wake up.
Overclock Initiated.Duration: 60 Seconds.
Ren's eyes snapped open, glowing with a violent, jagged violet light. He didn't dodge. He moved forward.
The crowd gasped as Ren caught Korg's massive fist with his open palm. The ground beneath Ren's feet cracked, but he didn't move an inch. The grey "Iron-Skin" energy of Korg's strike was instantly neutralized, swallowed by the violet static dancing around Ren's arm.
"My turn," Ren whispered.
He didn't use a fist. He touched Korg's chest with two fingers.
[Pulse-Fist: Binary Strike].
A double-wave of energy exploded outward. The first wave shattered Korg's Iron-Skin grafts like glass. The second wave sent the giant flying across the room, crashing through a brick pillar and half-burying him in the debris.
The basement went silent.
Ren stood in the center of the ring, the violet steam already beginning to hiss from the ports around his neck.
48 Seconds remaining.
"Anyone else?" Ren asked, his voice echoing with a strange, metallic resonance.
Before anyone could move, the heavy doors at the top of the stairs were kicked open. A squad of men in tactical gear not Cinnabar Enforcers, but something more professional, more lethal descended. They wore the emblem of Vajra Heavy Industries.
At their lead was a young man with silver hair and eyes as sharp as razors. Jun-Ho Vane.
"Impressive," Jun-Ho said, looking at the unconscious Korg and then at Ren. "I was told a 'glitch' had escaped Sector 4. I didn't expect it to have such... interesting teeth."
Ren felt his heart race. This wasn't a street thug. This was a true cultivator his Qi felt like a mountain pressing down on the room.
"I'm not looking for trouble," Ren said, his hand twitching toward the energy still coiled in his gut.
"Too late," Jun-Ho said, drawing a sleek, black Jian. The blade didn't reflect the light; it seemed to drink it. "You have something that belongs to my family's legacy. The chip, Scrapper. Give it back, and I might let you keep your hands."
Ren looked at the timer in his vision.
30 Seconds.
He could fight, or he could run. But as he looked at Jun-Ho, he realized the Vajra squad had already blocked every exit.
And then, his goggles flickered with a new, urgent notification.
[EXTERNAL NETWORK BREACH]Unknown Source attempting to hijack the Primordial Source Code.Warning: Remote "Format" command detected.
Ren's chest began to burn with an agonizing, white-hot heat. The chip wasn't just Overclocking anymore it was screaming.
"What is... what are you doing?" Ren gasped, clutching his chest.
Jun-Ho frowned, his sword wavering. "I'm not doing anything. My father wants you alive."
"Then someone else... doesn't," Ren choked out.
The lights in the factory flickered and died. In the darkness, the violet light from Ren's chest grew blindingly bright. A high-pitched whine, like a jet engine, filled the room.
Suddenly, a voice echoed through the entire building not through the air, but directly into the minds of everyone present.
"Format Initiated. Sector 4: Deletion in progress."
Outside, the sky over the slums didn't turn dark. It turned red. A massive, shimmering grid of light began to descend from the clouds, touching the tops of the buildings. Where the grid touched, the matter simply... vanished.
"The Great Format," Jun-Ho whispered, his face pale. "They're starting it early. Because of you."
Ren looked at his timer.
5... 4... 3...
The ground began to dissolve beneath them.