The tracking data readout on Lin Ke’s workbench flickered at eleven forty-two at night.
It wasn’t an external attack.
A copper needle on the northern monitoring electric-shock cell dropped by eighteen millivolts. It marked a secret current bleed across Pylon Three.
Lin Ke looked up from the manual he was copying. Beside him, Shen Yue sat on a crate, checking the lead ribbons of her array controller under the yellow glow of an oil lamp.
“Northern pylon circuit,” Lin Ke said quietly. “Someone just applied an authorized sect override key to the bypass gate.”
Shen Yue’s face tightened. “Grand Elder Feng Xuan... He promised at the assembly that the sect would defend our legal rights during the seven-day trial window.”
“An institutional bureaucrat doesn’t defend rights,” Lin Ke said, picking up his iron metal pen. “He calculates debt. To Feng Xuan, the Seventh Ward is a runaway process consuming too many system resources and threatening his standing with the Imperial Court.”
He pulled up the test model screen.
