The Abyss Star Domain, Sector Nine. The abandoned space station hung motionless at the edge of the silent vacuum, a colossal carcass gnawed by time itself.
Dark red oxidation layers coated the metal bulkheads, a scab formed by the fermentation of centuries and radiation. Broken cables hung suspended in the air like dying snakes, occasionally sparking with faint blue electricity that carved pale, ghostly trails in the dim light. The air carried a viscous texture—a solidified mixture of aged machine oil, the acrid scent of ozone, and the cloying, sweet-rotten odor of decomposing proteins. Every breath felt like swallowing a handful of rusted iron filings.
Su Xinghe adjusted the data glasses perched on his nose. On the inner surface of the lenses, streams of green code cascaded like waterfalls, dyeing his retina into a desolate digital wasteland of emerald hues. These were energy fluctuations captured by the "All-Seeing Eye," pulsating in real-time as waveform graphs. Every pixel corresponded to a probability deviation within the spatial structure.
"Frequency 7.83 Hertz, amplitude 0.3 standard units..." His voice was flat and devoid of inflection, as if reading from an experimental report. "Resonance frequency matches the third layer of the Nine-Turn Profound Yellow Art with 99.9% accuracy."
His fingers tapped on the virtual keyboard, the subtle friction of the keys echoing sharply in the silence. His movements were as precise as a mechanical arm, each click corresponding to data confirmation and archiving.
Heavy footsteps approached from behind. Metal boots crunched against the rusted floor, emitting a grating, tooth-grinding squeak. Mo Wen stepped forward, gripping an alloy blade. Strands of dark green slime still clung to the blade, remnants left after severing mutated vines. Under the influence of gravity, the viscous fluid writhed slowly, emitting a pungent, fishy stench.
Inside his helmet's visor, Mo Wen's heavy breathing condensed into white mist, only to vanish instantly within the cold circulation system. "Brother Su," his voice rasped, laced with suppressed low-frequency tremors, "are you sure this wreck is safe? The detectors just screamed. We're being stalked by a Soul-Eating Beast. Distance... less than fifty meters."
Su Xinghe did not turn. His gaze remained locked on the flowing data streams, as if the abyss lay directly behind him and he cared not. "Relax," he uttered with calm detachment, his fingers tracing an arc across the virtual screen. "According to my calculations, it is in a deep state of dormancy. Its metabolic frequency has dropped to 12% of normal. The awakening window is merely 0.03 seconds—unless it receives external stimulation exceeding the threshold."
"0.03 seconds? You call that a window?" Mo Wen's brow knotted into a permanent knot. His knuckles gripped the hilt of his blade so tightly that his finger bones creaked, the sound of metal fighting bone. "I'd rather trust my intuition. This damn place makes my spine crawl with chills, as if countless eyes are staring at my vertebrae."
"Intuition is a probabilistic summary of accumulated experience, riddled with errors. Data, however, is a precise absolute value." Su Xinghe finally turned his head. Behind his lenses, his black eyes were as calm as two withered wells, reflecting not a single ripple of emotion. "You are sweating. Your heart rate is 92, 27% higher than your resting baseline. Adrenaline secretion has surged, and your pupils have constricted slightly. This indicates your body has sensed danger, but the source of that threat does not come from that Soul-Eating Beast."
Before he could finish, a sharp, metallic screech erupted from the depths of the space station. It sounded like giant claws being dragged forcibly across rough steel, a sound so piercing it threatened to rupture eardrums.
Mo Wen spun around instantly, his blade tip pointing toward the thick darkness. His muscles tensed like a drawn bowstring. "What the hell is that?"
On Su Xinghe's data glasses, the waveform graph, previously as smooth as a mirror, suddenly shuddered violently. Red warning boxes flashed frantically at the edges of his vision. His pupils contracted to the size of needles—a biological instinctive response to mortal danger—even though his expression remained ice-cold.
"Energy field disturbance detected... frequency is skyrocketing, already breaking 8 Hertz..." Su Xinghe's voice carried a microscopic hesitation. "No, this isn't natural fluctuation! Someone is tampering with the underlying protocols!"
The overhead lighting tube suddenly emitted a dull, explosive crack. The entire space station was instantly swallowed by absolute darkness. Only the faint, eerie glow of Su Xinghe's glasses remained, outlining his taut jawline and his fingertips, which trembled slightly from hypoxia.
"Brother Su!" Mo Wen's voice carried panic for the first time, a primal scream born of humanity facing the unknown.
"Don't move." Su Xinghe's voice remained calm, but his fingers hovered over the virtual keyboard, tripling in speed. "Reconstructing sonar imagery... something is moving, extremely fast... It's a Soul-Eating Beast! It has awakened!"
A low, guttural roar echoed from the darkness, sounding as if it originated from the depths of the earth, resonating within the chest cavity. A pungent stench of rotting flesh and sulfur rushed forward, carrying a nauseating warmth. Mo Wen's pupils contracted sharply. He could feel the creature mere meters away, yet he saw no silhouette, only the faint tremors of compressed air.
"Data model deviation!" Su Xinghe typed furiously, beads of sweat forming on his temple, sliding down his temples to soak his collar. "Its awakening time was 2.7 seconds earlier than predicted—someone interfered with the energy field here! This is a man-made trap!"
The Soul-Eating Beast's roar made the bulkheads hum, as if threatening to tear through the fragile metal shell. In the darkness, two emerald-green eyes suddenly flared to life, the size of fists, flickering like ghost fires in the black void. Its massive body nearly filled the entire corridor. Its mouth gaped open, revealing three rows of inward-curving fangs. Viscous fluid dripped from the tips of the teeth, sizzling and turning into white smoke on the metal floor—a strong acid capable of corroding bone.
Mo Wen's legs felt as if filled with lead, nailed firmly to the ground. Yet, he gritted his teeth, the veins in his hand gripping the blade swelling like worms beneath his skin. "Brother Su, what now? Run or fight?"
"There's no escaping. Its sprint speed reaches 37 meters per second." Su Xinghe took a deep breath. The data streams on his glasses suddenly accelerated into a ribbon of light. "Give me three seconds—I am decoding its genetic weaknesses."
"Three seconds? It will tear me into shreds!" Mo Wen roared, his voice trembling with the edge of tears, yet his body instinctively stepped in front of Su Xinghe, like a enraged beast protecting its cub.
The Soul-Eating Beast's hind legs kicked off with explosive force, its massive body hurtling through the air like a cannonball. Roaring, Mo Wen swung his blade upward, the edge striking the beast's forelimb. Sparks flew in all directions, numbing his palm so severely that his entire body was knocked backward, slamming hard against the bulkhead with a dull thud. A mouthful of blood spurted out, staining the armor on his chest red.
"Mo Wen!" Su Xinghe's voice cracked for the first time, the last tremor of panic before the data stream severed. But his fingers did not stop. On the screen of his glasses, streams of genetic code flashed by in a blur—A-T-G-C. The arrangement of base pairs appeared to him like an unlocked cipher; every character held the key to life and death.
"Found it!" His voice instantly regained its composure, as if the previous lapse had never occurred. "Three millimeters behind the left eye, at the junction of the nerve ganglion and muscle fibers—that is its energy hub! Probability: 98.7%!"
The Soul-Eating Beast lunged again, the wind pressure from its charge whipping Mo Wen's robe violently. Mo Wen forced himself to stand, his legs feeling as soft as cotton, yet he raised his blade once more, his eyes burning with despair and determination. Just as the beast was about to bite down, a golden beam of light shot from Su Xinghe's fingertips, piercing precisely into the spot behind the monster's left eye.
The moment the beam penetrated, the Soul-Eating Beast froze rigid. Its roar cut off abruptly. Its pupils scattered rapidly, and its massive body crashed to the ground with a thunderous boom, shaking the entire space station three times. Dust fell from the ceiling like snow.
Mo Wen slumped weakly to the floor, gasping for air, his lungs wheezing like a bellows. He looked at Su Xinghe, who was wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. Dust had settled on the lenses of his data glasses, obscuring part of his vision.
"Evolution has never been a matter of luck; it is a matter of calculation." Su Xinghe whispered, a faint smile touching his lips before quickly fading into a frown. "No... why was its awakening time interfered with?"
He crouched down, his fingers lightly touching the corpse of the Soul-Eating Beast. The touch was cold and rough. Dense genetic sequences appeared on his glasses. Suddenly, a string of abnormal code jumped into his view—interspersed within the normal genetic chain was a segment of regular, encrypted information, like lines of deliberately written garbage code.
"This is..." Su Xinghe's pupils contracted. It was a feature he had never seen in his database. "Artificially implanted trigger code! Someone is using this to monitor this sector!"
Mo Wen struggled to his feet, wiping the blood from the corner of his mouth. The metallic taste of blood spread across his tongue. "Are you saying it was controlled by someone?"
"Not just controlled." Su Xinghe stood up, his gaze piercing into the darkness deeper within the space station, darker than ink, as if he could see through the walls to an invisible presence. "Someone is using it to collect data. Our entire battle has been recorded."
In the distance, a warning light that had long been extinguished suddenly flashed three times before falling silent again. That faint light carved a weak trajectory in the darkness, like an eye blinking, before vanishing completely.
Silence returned to the space, broken only by the hissing of gas leaking from pipes and the electrical noise of the overhead emergency lights. Together, they formed a unique requiem for this ruin. Su Xinghe stood still, his fingers tapping lightly against the outer side of his thigh—a habitual action he performed when archiving data.
"Log new variable," he silently registered in his mind. "Mo Wen: Executor. Emotional parameter: Fear transformed into anger. Trigger condition: Survival crisis."
He lifted his head, gazing into the bottomless darkness, a faint, imperceptible cold light flashing in his eyes.
"The game has begun."