Chương 142: The True Face of the War

November 2029, Garrison Atlanta, Catacombs Leo sighed and tried not to think about the giant mess he had made. He stood on the roof of Warehouse Seven, the tallest building in Garrison Atlanta, in what everyone had started calling "Formation District." The vantage point let him see everything. All forty-two warehouses. All eight thousand and seventeen researchers. All nine thousand empty spiritual qi canisters stacked in neat pyramids behind the supply depot.

They had started with one warehouse and eighty frat bros from Yale. Within a week, researchers from twenty-seven universities had joined the team. The hexagram script was a goldmine. It was essentially ten thousand years of someone else's homework, ready to copy. For academics who'd spent careers eking out incremental advances, the tablets offered something transformative: finished solutions to problems that would have taken lifetimes to solve from scratch.

The last time anything like this happened was after the Catacombs invaded Earth, and researchers weren't about to let this second once-in-a-lifetime opportunity slip by. Leo had expected maybe he'd have two thousand people. By the second week, he had two hundred thousand applications. The problem was that researchers needed spiritual qi to run experiments. Testing formation hypotheses required powering prototype arrays. Verifying translations meant inscribing test runes and watching them activate.

Every breakthrough demanded more qi than the last. They burned through their initial allocation in the first week. Leo requisitioned more. Two days later the researchers ran out and demanded more. By the third week, requisition forms had become a reflex. Someone would hand him a stack of papers, he would sign them, and the qi would arrive. Leo watched a group of researchers wheel another empty qi canister toward the growing pile. The canister was the size of a refrigerator. It had been full an hour ago.

The grant was supposed to last four years. It had been three and a half weeks since they started. Now they were going to run out in two days. Leo started to worry that he would be held accountable for his reckless spending. Professor Whitmore, Vivian's former teacher, had assured Leo that everything was fine. They had published over twenty thousand original research papers. They had decoded forty-three percent of the hexagram script vocabulary. They had developed military applications.

"Stand tall," Whitmore had said.

"Keep a straight face. The results speak for themselves." Leo appreciated the sentiment. The problem was that Sergeant Delgado had a lot of questions about why Leo's "small research team" used more spiritual qi than Garrison Atlanta's entire motor pool. A familiar voice drifted up from ground level.

"Leo Chen! I know you're up there!" Vivian. She sounded annoyed. Leo took three steps back from the roof's edge. He crouched behind an air conditioning unit.

"The sergeant wants to talk to you about the requisition forms!" Vivian's voice got closer.

"All nine hundred of them! That you signed! Without reading!" Leo stayed very still.

"I can see your sword, Leo. It's literally glowing red." He looked down. The Sunshifter hovered beside him.

"Traitor," he whispered to it.

The Everlasting Empire Ruins, Azure Profound Continent The next day, Leo and Kevin stood in front of the Fortress in the center of the subterranean ruins of the Everlasting Empire. It was time to put all the weeks of research to work. Time to see if millions of dollars worth of spiritual qi had been wasted, or if they would find something valuable inside. The heavy doors loomed fifteen feet tall, covered in hexagram scripts that pulsed with deep red light.

Beyond them, somewhere inside the building, four Deity Transformation constructs waited in dormant silence.

"You're sure about this?" Kevin asked.

"We checked the formations six times." Leo lied. He held up a stone tablet covered in freshly inscribed array runes.

"Professor Whitmore said the Follower was using a bypass pattern to override the friend-or-foe identification system. We found the same pattern on every puppet in the city he controlled."

"And you're certain your replacement pattern will work?"

"If I'm wrong, you get vaporized instantly." Leo shrugged.

"Probably less painful than self-detonating. Win-win."

"That's not comforting, Leo."

"We agreed you would be the first one to try. Besides, you don't plan on staying behind once the Imperial secret police show up, right?" Kevin looked at the fortress doors and gulped.

"Fine." Kevin took a deep breath.

"Give me the tablets." Leo handed two tablets over. The stones were still warm. He had just finished the inscription fifteen minutes ago.

"Remember, don't lose these stone tablets." Leo said.

"And if anything goes wrong, blame Professor Whitmore." Kevin gave him one last glare, turned, and stepped through the fortress doors. The heavy slabs closed behind him with a low grinding sound. Leo turned and looked back at the elevator shaft to the surface. Somewhere above, the Imperial Court's secret police were making their way toward the underground seal. The Shen family estimated they would arrive sometime this week. They could come any moment now. The problem was the Enlightened.

Leo knew the man was the one that crafted Lord Hollowfang's secret police identity token. Was the Enlightened just a formation master who was just responsible for producing their identity tokens? Or did he have a greater role? An hour passed. The fortress doors remained closed. The grinding sound returned. The heavy stone doors swung open, and Kevin stumbled out onto the bridge. His face was pale. His legs shook with each step. He gripped the stone tablets against his chest.

"It worked." Kevin's voice came out hoarse. He held up the tablet Leo had given him, the one inscribed with the Follower's bypass pattern.

"Four Deity Transformation puppets. I walked right past them. They didn't attack." He laughed, but it came out wrong.

"Kevin? You okay?" Kevin shook his head slowly.

"You don't understand. You can't understand until you're in there." He swallowed hard.

"They're... Leo, they're looking at you. They don't have faces, but you can feel them watching. And the pressure..." He trailed off.

"I did it. I replaced the bypass patterns." Kevin managed a grin that looked more like a grimace.

"Now the secret police are going to have a very bad day if they come poking around down here."

"Good." Leo gave him a pat on the back. He felt Kevin flinch at the contact.

"Now we test the new one." Kevin's expression went blank.

"What?"

"Leave the Follower's tablet here. We need to confirm the replacement pattern actually works and that the old one isn't what's keeping you safe." Kevin gripped both tablets tightly. His knuckles went white against the stone.

"You want me to go back in there? With an untested pattern?" His voice cracked.

"Leo, I literally just watched you inscribe it in front of me. The ink isn't even dry."

"The pattern works fine, Kevin! Didn't you just walk out?"

"That was with both tablets! I'm not going to leave this one behind!" Kevin clutched the Follower's tablet tighter, pressing it against his chest. Leo sent a mental command to the Sunshifter. The flying sword shot forward and struck the tablet on Kevin's chest before he could react. Stone shattered. Fragments scattered across the bridge. Kevin stared at the empty space where the tablet had been. A piece of debris bounced off the railing and tumbled into the abyss below. You could be reading stolen content.

Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

"What the HELL, Leo!"

"Now you don't have a choice." Leo pointed at the remaining tablet in Kevin's other hand.

"Go test it." Kevin's face twisted. For a moment, Leo thought he might actually throw a punch.

"You are a sociopath."

"You'll thank me later."

"I will literally never thank you for this. I want you to know that. I'm going to talk about this with my therapist. I'm going to tell her everything. And when she asks why I have trust issues, I'm going to show her a picture of your face." Kevin turned and marched back toward the fortress doors. His shoulders were stiff with anger. His hands trembled as he held the remaining tablet. The doors ground open. Kevin stepped through. The doors closed behind him. Leo waited. The seconds stretched. One minute. Two.

Maybe he should have double checked his work instead of lying to Kevin about it. Three minutes. If Kevin died in there, he'd respawn on Earth. He'll be fine. Four minutes. The grinding sound returned. The heavy slabs swung open. Kevin emerged, still alive, still holding the new tablet. His face was almost gray, as if he had seen his own death. Leo looked at Kevin and felt a twinge of guilt. It lasted about two seconds. If the pattern had failed, Kevin would have had just a quick trip back to his VR pod on Earth.

Seventy-five hours of respawn cooldown and maybe some Spirit Calming Tea. Honestly, it would have been less painful than self-detonation. Besides, the secret police were coming. They didn't have time to double check their work.

"You good?"

"No."

"Good. Let's see what's inside." Kevin stared at the fortress doors.

"As long as you're coming too."

"Of course," Leo agreed. They stepped through the entrance, passing under an inscription that glowed with crimson light, and emerged into a vast central atrium that soared at least two hundred feet overhead. Intricate hexagram scripts covered the walls, each symbol pulsing with a deep red radiance. The formation channels were wider here, thicker, carrying energy that made the air feel charged and heavy. At the corners of the chamber, arranged like ancient sentinels, stood four Deity Transformation puppets.

Each one towered sixty feet tall, their bodies sculpted from dense spiritual granite. The faceless heads of the constructs slowly turned to track Leo and Kevin as they entered. Leo's knees buckled. His body wanted to kneel. His spine wanted to bend. Some ancient part of his brain, the same part that made prey animals freeze before predators, screamed at him to prostrate himself before these monuments of power. Divine power. Leo steadied himself and forced his legs straight.

He looked up and faced the nearest puppet head on. In place of eyes, top-tier spiritstones blazed with cold blue light, falling across him like judgment. He thought about the Nascent Soul puppets in the temple. Those had been terrifying. Those had killed Arthur and Mike in seconds. This was a full realm above that. Leo let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. The new identification token worked. If it hadn't, he would have already been back on Earth, waiting out his death cooldown.

Honestly, the thought of being forced to confront his reckless spending terrified him a little more than these divine constructs. He straightened up a little bit, patted himself off, and quietly slipped the Follower's original identification token back into his storage ring. He couldn't let Kevin see that he had hedged his bets. Kevin stood frozen beside him, his face pale and his breathing shallow. His eyes were fixed on the nearest construct with a glazed look.

"Kevin." No response.

"Kevin!" Kevin blinked. He shook his head.

"I'm fine. I'm fine." He didn't sound fine.

"You'd think the third time facing these things would be easier. It's not." The pair moved deeper into the chamber, approaching the nearest construct. Up close, the scale became almost incomprehensible. Leo's entire body could fit inside the puppet's fist with room to spare. The spiritual granite that formed its body was dense enough that his divine sense slid off it like water off glass. The hexagram scripts covering each construct were packed so tightly that individual characters blurred together at a distance.

Leo tried to read them anyway, tried to derivate the formation logic the way Mr. Morimoto had taught him, but the energy flowing through the channels made his divine sense itch. It was like trying to read a book while someone shone a spotlight directly into his eyes. He gave up trying to understand them. Instead, he pulled up his VR pod's interface and activated the screenshot function. Click. Click. Click. He circled the nearest construct slowly, capturing every angle. The leg joints. The torso plates.

The formation nodes where energy concentrated before flowing outward. The head, with its spiritstone eyes that tracked his movement with patient, endless attention. Click. Click. Click. Three percent royalties. That was their deal with the government on whatever they learned using the military research grant. Three percent of any commercial applications. Leo had no intention of handing these screenshots to the government. These were Deity Transformation level formations.

The kind of knowledge that corporations would kill for. Leo was keeping these for himself. When the time came to negotiate, he wanted at least twenty percent. Maybe twenty-five. Click. Click. Click. He moved to the second construct and started the process again. Kevin watched him for a moment, then turned away.

"I'm going to check the other rooms." Leo nodded without looking up from his work.

"Sounds good." As he worked, his mind drifted to the translated tablets. The formation researchers they had hired had decoded forty-three percent of the hexagram script vocabulary. Not enough to read everything, but enough to piece together the broad strokes of what had happened here. The citizens of the Empire had called themselves Wardens. Every citizen, from laborers to rulers, had shared the same title. They were guarding against something. Or guarding something. The tablets weren't clear on which.

What was clear was how the Empire had fallen into corruption. The Empire was ruled by a Great God, the Azure Profound Continent's term for what modern cultivators called Void Refining. That being had ruled the Empire for over two thousand years and had begun to reach the end of his lifespan. Rather than passing on his empire on to his heirs, he attempted to transcend the weakness of living flesh. He began a transformation, seeking to become like one of the jianshi the Empire was known for producing.

The Great God tried to become immortal by transforming himself into an undead. The tablets weren't clear about what happened. Maybe his experiment hadn't worked. Or maybe it had worked too well. Either way, the Empire fell into corruption. The Wardens sealed themselves underground, activated the containment protocols, and closed the doors behind them. They would forever watch over their Great God's tomb, making sure that he would rest eternally in peace. Willingly or not. Leo looked down. A thought nagged at him.

The Slaughter Qi rising from below. The way it seeped through the city, thick enough to taste. The Wardens had built their containment systems to last for eternity. Their formations self-corrected and repaired damage. So why was the qi getting through? Was it the Enlightened? Had he been down here before? Poking at formations, overriding puppet protocols, stripping the city of anything useful. Had he damaged something? Weakened a seal he didn't understand?

Or had the leakage been happening for centuries, slow and steady, and nobody had been around to notice? Leo turned back to the construct and kept taking screenshots. He tried not to think about what was stirring below.

Leo followed Kevin through the fortress corridors. The first room Kevin wanted to show him sat at the end of a long hallway, behind a door that had already been forced open. Scorch marks blackened the frame where someone had burned through the formation lock. The Follower had been here. Leo stepped inside and stopped. Six massive pipes dominated the chamber, each one emerging from the floor and disappearing into the ceiling.

They were arranged in a row, smallest to largest, and each one was connected to a control panel covered in hexagram scripts. The smallest pipe was perhaps a foot in diameter. The largest was closer to four. Kevin pointed at each pipe in turn, mouthing cultivation tiers. Qi Refining. Foundation Establishment. Gold Core. Nascent Soul. Deity Transformation. Void Refining. Leo's mind went blank. He stared at the fifth pipe. The Deity Transformation pipe.

It was three feet in diameter, and when he extended his divine sense toward it, he felt the faint vibration of flowing spiritual qi. It was full. Active. Flowing. That's impossible. The Thousandsteppes and the Lanternmarches were barren provinces. Everyone knew this. The only Tier 5 spirit vein west of the Savage Mountains sat in the Western Seat, over a thousand miles away. That single vein was the foundation of Cloudpiercer's entire domain. But this pipe was full. And flowing.

Which meant there was a Tier 5 spirit vein somewhere below this city. Somewhere in the depths beneath the containment levels. A source of Deity Transformation spiritual qi that had been pumping power into these ruins for thousands of years, completely unknown to the outside world. Leo thought about the implications. He knew that tens of thousands of Nascent Soul Lords lived on the Azure Profound Continent. Every single one of them needed Tier 5 spiritual qi to advance to Deity Transformation.

The demand was infinite. The supply was not. Lords spent centuries waiting for access to known veins. They fought wars over succession rights. If word got out that an unclaimed Tier 5 vein existed in the western provinces, the resulting conflict would make the War of Western Unification look like a border skirmish. Leo forced himself to look at the sixth pipe. The Void Refining pipe. It was empty. His divine sense passed through it and found nothing. But the machinery was intact.

The formation scripts were undamaged. The control panel still responded to spiritual input. This pipe had worked. At some point in the distant past, Void Refining spiritual qi had flowed through this chamber. Leo's hands started shaking. Void Refining spiritual qi was the rarest substance in existence. There wasn't even a single Tier 6 spirit vein on Earth. And here was a pipe. An empty pipe, yes. But a pipe that proved a Tier 6 vein had existed somewhere in this region.

Maybe it still existed, somewhere deep underground, in the depths of the Slaughter Qi. Leo stared at the empty pipe and tried to imagine what would happen if the cultivation world learned about this. Every Deity Transformation Lord on the continent would converge on the western provinces. The sects would mobilize. The temples would send their armies. The Imperial Court itself would march west with everything it had. Leo thought about Cloudpiercer.

The Follower had said Cloudpiercer was planning to march against the Beast Kings, but Leo didn't trust anything that man had said. What if Cloudpiercer's plan was not that at all? What if his real plan was to destroy the containment facilities to uncover the spirit veins below? Sure, the seals would break, and whatever was imprisoned below would be released. But there would be a chance that top tier spirit veins would also be revealed.

That Tier 5 and Tier 6 spiritual qi which had been locked away for millennia would suddenly become available. The Follower's words echoed in Leo's mind.

"The Enlightened has cultivated for centuries. He has transcended every limitation you cling to." Maybe that was true. But Leo was starting to suspect that Cloudpiercer and the Enlightened hadn't transcended anything. They were just willing to burn the world down if it meant they could advance to Void Refining. Leo looked at the empty pipe one more time. Then he turned and followed Kevin to the second room. He had mentioned finding an elevator room that descended into the depths.

Leo needed to see for himself what was below.