The death of the Northern Region did not happen with a bang, but with a brown, withering sigh.
In the agricultural belt of Sector 04, Overseer Liu—a former peasant who now commanded a squadron of Agri-Droids—watched his tablet screen flash red. One moment, the endless fields of spirit-rice were a vibrant, emerald green, swaying in the wind. The next, a ripple passed through the air, invisible but heavy, like a sudden drop in pressure.
The stalks didn't just droop; they turned ash-grey instantly. The water in the irrigation canals stopped shimmering and turned stagnant and muddy. The birds fell from the sky, their small hearts stopping as the ambient Qi they relied on to fly vanished into a vacuum.
"Report!" Liu shouted at his droids, tapping his console frantically. "Soil toxicity? Radiation leak?"
The droids, unfazed by the spiritual vacuum, beeped their analysis.
[Soil Nutrients: Nominal.][Hydration: Nominal.][Biological Status: Cell Necrosis due to Spirit Deprivation.]
Liu looked up at the sky. It wasn't grey with smog anymore. It was a translucent, shimmering purple. A barrier. A dome so massive it stretched from the eastern coast to the western desert, encapsulating the entire territory of Beiluo.
Five hundred miles away, perched on the highest peak of the Myriad Swords Sect, Sect Leader Ouyang watched the barrier solidify with a cruel smile. Behind him stood the Elders of six other Great Sects, their hands pressed against a massive formation stone the size of a palace.
"The Grand Spirit Lock Array is active," Ouyang announced, his voice carrying the weight of finality. "We cannot breach his iron walls. We cannot fight his metal puppets. But machines do not eat."
He looked down at the quarantined land.
"The mortals he elevated... they still need grain. They still need water. And in this world, nothing grows without the blessing of Qi. We have cut the root. In a month, his 'Kings of Industry' will be starving beggars. They will eat each other."
The other Elders nodded. It was the ultimate siege. They weren't fighting the army; they were fighting biology itself.
Inside the Administrator's Mansion, the air was stale. The ventilation systems were whining, struggling to filter air that had suddenly become "dead."
Ye Bai sat in the corner of the office, breathing shallowly. As a Spirit Severing cultivator, the array hit him the hardest. It felt as if he were underwater, the pressure crushing his meridians.
"They... they sealed the North," Ye Bai rasped, clutching his sword for stability. "No Qi can enter. No Qi can leave. The plants are dying, Administrator. The water is losing its vitality. The people will panic."
Jiang Chen sat in his chair, the green glow of his chest reactor illuminating the dark room. He was plugged into the city's mainframe, watching the resource graphs plummet.
"They think they are clever," Jiang Chen said, his synthesized voice devoid of fear. "They think that because they are dependent on nature, we must be too."
He pulled the cable from his chest and stood up. The hydraulics in his legs hissed.
"They just turned my city into a closed system."
Jiang Chen walked to the window. He saw the purple dome in the sky. He saw the withering trees in the courtyard.
"Ye Bai. Do you know why I love physics?"
Ye Bai shook his head weakly.
"Because physics works in a vacuum," Jiang Chen said. "Old Wu! Initiate Project: Eden. If nature refuses to feed us, we will build a new nature."
The response of the Iron City was immediate and terrifyingly efficient.
The sirens didn't wail a warning of death; they signaled a shift change. In Sector 04, the Agri-Droids stopped tending the dead fields. They began to dismantle them.
Massive construction machines, the Layer-3 Fabricators, rolled onto the farmland. They didn't plant seeds. They planted steel beams.
Within forty-eight hours, the horizon of Beiluo changed. The flat, open fields were replaced by towering, windowless skyscrapers. They were black monoliths, hundreds of meters tall, venting pure white steam.
Inside Vertical Farm Block A, Overseer Liu stood on a catwalk, looking down a shaft that seemed to go on forever.
There was no sun inside. Instead, thousands of banks of High-Intensity UV-LEDs bathed the interior in a pink-purple glow. There was no soil. The roots of the genetically modified crops dangled in a nutrient-rich mist sprayed by automated nozzles.
[Hydroponics: Active.][Growth Cycle: Accelerated (200%).][Yield Projection: High.]
"It's... it's unnatural," Liu whispered, watching a tomato plant grow visibly before his eyes, fed by a slurry of recycled biomass and chemical fertilizers produced by the factories.
"It's precise," a droid chimed in beside him. "No pests. No drought. No seasons. Only yield."
Liu picked a tomato from the vine. It was perfectly round, perfectly red. He took a bite. It was sweet. It didn't taste like "spirit rice" or "holy fruit." It tasted like science.
Outside the city, the blockade continued. Sect Leader Ouyang waited for the white flags. He waited for the riots. He waited for the smoke stacks to stop.
Instead, the smoke changed color. It turned white—pure water vapor.
"What are they doing?" an Elder asked, squinting at the distant city. "The rivers are dry. Where are they getting water?"
High above Beiluo, the Atmospheric Condensers roared to life. Huge intake fans sucked the dead, dry air of the barrier, compressing it, cooling it, and stripping every molecule of moisture from the atmosphere.
It didn't rain. The water was piped directly into the housing blocks.
Jiang Chen appeared on the giant screens in the city square. He looked at his people—15,000 citizens, plus refugees, all looking up with fear of starvation.
"The Sects have stolen the rain," Jiang Chen's voice boomed. "They have stolen the harvest. They want you to starve so that you remember your place on your knees."
He held up a loaf of bread—white, fluffy, baked from wheat grown in the dark towers.
"But we do not kneel to the weather anymore," Jiang Chen declared. "We control the light. We control the water. Let them keep their withered world outside. Inside the Iron City, we feast."
He tore the bread in half.
"Eat."
The crowd erupted. They didn't just cheer; they wept. The fear of the embargo shattered against the reality of industrial agriculture. They realized that their Prince hadn't just conquered armies; he had conquered hunger.
Sect Leader Ouyang watched the screens from his scrying mirror. He saw the mortals eating. He saw the towers glowing with artificial light. He saw the water flowing from taps that should have been dry.
His face turned purple.
"He... he ignores the Heavens?" Ouyang stammered. "He grows grain without Qi? How? It is an abomination!"
"It is worse," another Elder whispered, terror dawning in his eyes. "If mortals realize they don't need the land... if they don't need the sun... then they don't need us."
The blockade had backfired. Instead of starving the beast, they had forced it to evolve. Beiluo was no longer just a city. It was a self-contained spaceship on the surface of the planet, utterly independent of the natural order.
Jiang Chen turned away from the balcony. He walked back to his desk, where Ye Bai was slowly regaining his strength, drinking a bottle of electrolyte-enhanced water produced by the condensers.
"You broke the siege," Ye Bai said, wiping his mouth. "But the barrier remains. We are still prisoners."
"We aren't prisoners, Ye Bai," Jiang Chen sat down, the cables reconnecting to his chest. "We are incubating."
He pulled up the Project Gungnir interface.
"They blocked the land. They blocked the air. But they forgot one direction."
He pointed a metal finger upward.
"They trapped themselves in a cage with a tiger," Jiang Chen smiled, his green eye glowing. "System. Begin Phase 2 of the Space Program. If we can't go out... we go up."