Chapter 1: The Awakening Protocol

Raindrops condensed into amber-hued beads between rusted steam pipes. Aiden counted their rhythm aloud for his sister Sophie, who lay curled inside a radiation-shielded vault. The reinforced door—secured with Diamond Sutra etchings and quantum locks—was one of many survival tricks taught by Old Zhou, the slum's rogue physician.

"The seventh droplet sounds like the medicine bottle you broke last year," Sophie coughed, her wheezing turning the air purifier's indicator crimson. "The eighth... like the buttons on Mom's cheongsam."

Aiden pried open a synthetic protein block, its rancid odor reminding him of the corpse-puppet prosthetics he'd repaired weeks prior. The city devoured its children: churches served 3D-printed relics of saints, black markets peddled steroids labeled Foundation Establishment Boosters, while half-blood orphans like them weren't even qualified to become spiritual energy batteries at factories.

When sirens wailed, Aiden lunged for the electromagnetic jammer. Three blocks away, Arcanum Parliament's cleaner mechs sprayed orange disinfectant fog—routine pest control. But Sophie's pupils were dilating, the necrotic veins on her neck mirroring those of a scavenger who'd died screaming last week.

"We need real medicine." Aiden gripped his mother's bronze mirror fragment, stained with his sister's gold-and-silver blood. "Lame Tom said an Eastern alchemist's come to the underground fights..."

projected holographic Fu Xi's Sixty-Four Hexagrams onto his skin—a temporary combat ID.

"Odds at 1:20!" The mechanical dealer's eyes whirred like divination compasses. "The Half-Blood versus our reigning champion—Steel Fist Maximilian!"

When the challenger rose from his cryo-pod, Aiden's Spiritual Interface Lens overheated. Maximilian's torso was a walking shrine: a prayer-wheel chainsaw arm, a thoracic cavity enshrining a Shiva idol powered by spirit stone reactors, and a neural interface along his spine... impaled with a peach wood sword.

"Begin!"

Maximilian's first strike tore reality itself. The chainsaw unleashed not metal teeth but screaming Sanskrit mantras. As Aiden dodged, betting chips swarmed like locusts, carving wounds that bled with Buddhist radiance.

"Warning! Meridian overload!" The lens flashed crimson. Aiden realized he'd unconsciously activated his Aetheric Crucible—the implant his father designed was converting faith energy into electricity. Maximilian's Shiva opened its third eye, spewing gamma rays mingled with Samadhi flames.

In that lethal instant, the mirror fragment erupted. Aiden saw fifteen seconds ahead: his charred corpse unless... He ripped off his jade Guanyin pendant—his mother's final gift—and jammed it into Maximilian's coolant valve.

The explosion folded space. As Aiden crawled from debris, Maximilian's body collapsed into a micro singularity, the Guanyin hovering at its event horizon. Carved on its surface was his mother's equation:

E=λ·φ²

(Spiritual Energy = Wavelength × Phi-Field Squared)

Fugitive alerts haunted Aiden's vision. The Parliament's version accused him of "illegal chaos equation manipulation," while Azure Peak Sect's messenger cranes declared "purge the Dao's pollutant."

Beneath the cross-sea bridge's shadow, he witnessed a clash of hunting aesthetics:

Westward, three Parliament agents deployed Necronomicon-shaped gliders, their wands firing entanglement equations as binding curses. Eastward, electromagnet-sword cultivators unfurled a replica Rivers and Mountains Scroll—its painted waterfalls cascading real heavy water.

Leaping into saline winds, Aiden's Crucible devoured tidal energy. As pursuers collided overhead, he glimpsed quantum-entangled ghost ships materializing, their decks crowded with Tang Dynasty alchemists chanting Maxwell's equations.

The mirror fragment vibrated, projecting Sophie's phantom—his sister solving a Möbius strip calculus problem in voidspace, her shadow... forming nascent soul hand seals.

Exhausted, Aiden breached an abandoned observatory. Pressing the mirror against a radio telescope receiver, he realized his mother's equation was the key to decoding cosmic background radiation.

"Verifying Protocol..." A mechanical voice intoned in Classical Chinese. "In the beginning was the Dao, and the Dao was with Machinery."

A holographic galaxy bloomed overhead, each star a cultivation realm. Aiden watched his DNA double helix float at the Milky Way's heart—the Eastern strand engraved with Yellow Court Scriptures, the Western helix twisting with topological formulae. As the strands entwined, the observatory's instruments overloaded, ripping a spacetime fissure—

Through the rift stood an adult Sophie. Her left eye swirled with kaleidoscopic tomoe, her right gleamed mechanical, cradling a baby-sized reactor... where a miniature Maximilian slept.

"Eighth thousand six-hundredth attempt, brother." Her voice crackled with quantum static. "To break the loop, you must first comprehend the Third Law..."

Before he could ask, the copper dome melted into liquid bronze, reforging the mirror's frame. New prophecy blazed:

"Seek the Weeping AI Bodhisattva in the Steam Temple."