Indigo dusk settled over Canglan. The streets smelled of fried lotus root and spilled rice wine. Drums thumped, fireworks popped, and hoarse crowds argued about the tournament long into the night.
Inside the Grand Imperial State Suite, the noise faded to a murmur. Sandalwood panels and heavy curtains shut out the city. Jade basins trickled beside the walls.
Austin ignored the silk and gold. His attention was fixed on the twelve-inch black cube resting on the rosewood worktable.
The First Epoch Root Core.
Xiaoyao and Jiang Taixu sat across the room. Both were studying repair logs rather than standing in awe of the cube.
Jiang wore clean gray work clothes after three days on the arena crew. His probation copy, signed Root Core release, and completion sheet lay in Xiaoyao’s ledger. He was allowed to observe, but the six-pin cable stayed out of his reach.
Austin picked up a brass measuring tool. “Jiang, what do you do if a measurement disagrees with my drawing?”
“Stop and check it,” Jiang said. “Even if you made the drawing.”
“Right. Good instructions survive questions.”
Under the table, Pug sprawled on a crimson rug. All three heads snored. His paws twitched as he chased dream pheasants.
Austin sat on a cedar stool and leaned close to the cube’s six-pin port.
“Gold-plated contacts. Clean edges. No corrosion after three thousand years in ice. Somebody cared about the work.”
He laid out needle-nose pliers, a work knife, and six copper leads salvaged from the lightning system on Sunset Peak. Then he stripped the wire ends and twisted each one tight.
“Watch for stray copper hairs. One loose strand can bridge two pins and fry the board. No next-day parts delivery out here. Burn this thing and we’re building replacements from rocks and jewelry wire.”
Jiang checked the pin count against Austin’s note. “The note says six leads. I see six. The port is clean.”
“Good. Checking the work matters more than praising it.”
Austin guided each lead onto a gold pin.
Click. Click. Click.
He checked every connection. Power, ground, data lines, clock signal, and case ground. The core needed exactly 480 volts DC to start.
He took hold of the bare leads. In his dantian, the White Dwarf Seed burned at three hundred thousand degrees. Austin did not release raw lightning. He narrowed the flow until it was steady and controlled.
Target: 480.0 Volts DC. Current Limit: 2.5 Amps.
BZZZZZZT.
Blue static snapped around his knuckles. The study smelled of ozone.
For three seconds, the cube remained dead.
Then a relay clicked inside it.
Clack.
A horrible digital shriek split the quiet.
SCREEEEEEEEE-AWWWWW-CHIK-KRRRRRR-DONG-SHSHSHSHSH!
The unmistakable cry of an old dial-up modem.
Jiang jumped two feet into the air. His sandals slapped the floor.
“VOID DEMONS! The ancient titan is chanting a soul-severing curse!”
He reached for the sword that no longer hung at his hip.
Austin waved him down without looking away.
“Quiet. It’s just the modem connecting. Eight data bits, no parity, one stop bit. Nobody touch the wires. Break the link now and you’ll corrupt the data.”
The shriek warbled, flattened into white noise, and stopped.
BEEP.
Cyan light ran through the fine lines on all six faces of the cube. A projector cast a column of blue light toward the ceiling. Maps, code, and rotating models filled the room.
Austin’s HUD linked to the stream.
Austin grinned.
The model showed a huge underground complex buried miles into the western mountains. Blast doors, airlocks, power stations, deep geothermal wells, and automated research bays filled its levels.
“A pre-collapse research vault, five hundred and twenty kilometers west. And this cube isn’t just a server. It’s the master key for every door.”
He leaned back on his stool.
“Clean expedition. No sewer crawl. No hunting keys off monsters. No ninety-minute lever puzzle. Badge in at the front door and walk straight to the good salvage.”
Jiang kept his hands behind his back and studied the map. “Five hundred and twenty kilometers west. If I ever receive a survey assignment, I’ll need a route and written access.” He did not ask for the key.
Austin reached for the leads.
“Data’s downloaded. Let’s disconnect before the charge banks—”
A surge of power and ancient data shot back through the wires.
CRACK!
It tore into Austin’s palms and raced down his spirit veins into his dantian. Records from a civilization that moved moons and hollowed asteroids poured into him in millions of dense pulses.
The White Dwarf Seed swallowed them all.
Its heat shot past five hundred thousand degrees. Gravity crushed the thin hydrogen layer around its core until fusion began.
DING!
A golden banner filled Austin’s vision.