The rain that fell on Beiluo City that morning did not taste of industrial soot or the sterile, recycled water of the atmospheric condensers. It tasted of salt.
At the main gate of Sector 01, Overseer Zhao sat in the command booth of the security checkpoint. His new uniform was crisp, and the interface of the automated turret grid hummed under his fingertips. He felt powerful. He controlled enough firepower to level a mountain.
Then, the rain changed. It coalesced.
A figure walked out of the downpour. He was a tall man, wearing robes that shimmered like oil on water. He had no umbrella, yet the raindrops curved around him, refusing to touch his skin. Two antler-like protrusions made of coral jutted from his forehead.
"Halt!" Zhao spoke into the intercom, his training kicking in. "You are entering a Restricted Industrial Zone. State your business."
The turret sensors spun, locking onto the figure. The threat assessment bar on Zhao's screen didn't turn red. It turned black.
[Target: Class-Unknown.][Energy Density: Infinite.][Action: Pray.]
The man looked up at the camera. His eyes were vertical slits of burning gold.
"I am Ao Guang," the man said. His voice didn't come through the speakers; it came through the water in Zhao's own body, vibrating his blood. "Ruler of the Eastern Deep. I am here to speak with the metal man who ate my son."
Zhao's hand hovered over the alarm button, trembling. The Dragon King. The father of the Kraken.
"Let him in," Jiang Chen's voice cut through the comms, calm and absolute. "And Zhao? Offer him a towel. It's polite."
The conference room in the Administrator's Mansion had been reinforced with additional structural supports, just in case. Ye Bai stood by the window, his hand white-knuckled on his sword hilt. He was a Spirit Severing Saint, but Ao Guang was an Ascendant Beast—a being that had lived since the Pre-Era.
The doors opened. Ao Guang entered. He did not walk; he glided. The air around him smelled of the crushing depths of the ocean.
Jiang Chen sat at the head of the table. He didn't stand. The cables from his chest reactor pulsed with a steady, rhythmic green light.
"Your son tasted like chicken," Jiang Chen said.
Ye Bai choked.
Ao Guang stopped. The golden eyes narrowed. The pressure in the room spiked, cracking the glass of the water pitcher on the table.
Then, Ao Guang laughed. It was a deep, rolling sound like boulders crashing underwater.
"He was slow," Ao Guang said, taking a seat. The chair groaned but held. "My son was a glutton. He thought he could swallow the sun. He choked. That is the law of the wild."
"You aren't here for revenge?" Jiang Chen asked, leaning forward.
"I have three hundred sons," Ao Guang waved a hand dismissively. "If I avenged every one that died of stupidity, I would have no time to rule. No, Iron Prince. I am here because of this."
Ao Guang reached into his robe and pulled out a metal canister. It was an empty containment vessel from the Radiation Scrubbers Jiang Chen had used to clean the Kraken's fallout.
"The water around your metal island," Ao Guang said, his voice turning serious. "It is... clean. For ten thousand years, the runoff from the Nether Sect and the wars of the land has poisoned the continental shelf. My scales itch. My coral gardens are grey."
He slid the canister across the table.
"You killed the Kraken with fire, but you cleaned the water with machines. I want those machines."
Jiang Chen looked at the canister. He processed the request. The Dragon King wasn't a monster; he was a landlord dealing with pollution.
"I can build Industrial Filtration Units," Jiang Chen said. "Massive ones. Powered by fusion. We can scrub the entire Eastern Sea in five years."
"Good," Ao Guang nodded. "Name your price. Pearls? Sunken gold? Shipwrecks?"
"I don't need gold," Jiang Chen tapped the table. "I need a rope."
"A rope?"
"I am building a tower to the moon," Jiang Chen pointed upward. "I have the base. I have the counterweight. But I lack a material strong enough to connect them. Steel snaps. Carbon is too brittle."
He looked at the Dragon King.
"I need something that can hold the weight of a world. I need a Dragon Spine."
The room went deadly silent. Asking a Dragon for his spine was usually a suicide note.
Ao Guang stared at Jiang Chen. He looked at the glowing reactor in the cyborg's chest. He looked at the blueprints for the filtration units.
"You wish to climb the sky?" Ao Guang mused. "The Envoys will not like that."
"I don't care what the Envoys like," Jiang Chen said.
Ao Guang reached into his spatial domain—a ripple in the air behind him. He pulled out a massive, white object. It was a segment of bone, polished like jade, radiating an aura of absolute indestructibility.
"This is the spine of my grandfather," Ao Guang said, slamming the massive bone onto the table. It weighed tons, yet he handled it like a twig. "He fell during the Great Spirit War. It is indestructible. It stretches when infused with energy. It is the strongest tether on this planet."
"It will do," Jiang Chen ran his sensors over the bone. [Tensile Strength: Infinite.]
"Build your tower," Ao Guang stood up. "Clean my ocean. And when you reach the moon... send me a postcard. I have always wondered if there is water up there."
The construction of the Space Elevator—designated Project: Babel—began the next morning.
It was not built from the ground up. It was dropped from the sky.
The UNSC Kunpeng ascended to the upper limit of the atmosphere, acting as the initial anchor. From its cargo bay, the processed Dragon Spine—now drawn out into a thin, shimmering white cable thousands of miles long—was lowered toward the city.
In the City Square, thousands of mortals gathered. They watched the white line descend from the clouds like a thread of spider silk from the heavens.
Overseer Zhao stood with his crew of Construction Droids. Their job was to secure the anchor point.
"Here it comes!" Zhao shouted over the wind. "Lock the clamps! Mag-Lev generators to full power!"
The cable touched the Ground Station—a massive pyramid of reinforced concrete and steel built in the center of the crater where the Earth Shaker Golem had once slept.
CLANG.
The clamps engaged. The cable went taut.
For a moment, the entire city vibrated. The Kunpeng in the upper atmosphere pulled up, keeping the tension. The Dragon Spine held. It didn't snap. It hummed with a frequency that resonated with the planet's rotation.
"Tether secure!" Old Wu announced from the control center. "Deploying the Climber."
The Climber was not a rocket. It was a carriage. A train car designed to grip the cable and climb it using magnetic induction.
Jiang Chen stood at the base of the elevator. He wore a new suit—the void-sealed version of his Ronin armor.
"The Sects locked the horizon," Jiang Chen said to Ye Bai, who looked up at the cable disappearing into the blue. "So we built a back door."
"It is a long climb," Ye Bai said. "Are you sure the Pre-Era base is still there?"
"The data says yes," Jiang Chen stepped into the Climber. "And if it isn't... I'll build one."
The ascent took twelve hours.
As the Climber rose, the sky turned from blue to indigo, and then to the stark, empty black of space.
Jiang Chen watched the curvature of the world appear below him. He saw the purple dome of the Spirit Barrier covering the North. From up here, it looked small. A toy bubble.
He saw the Star Palace of the Envoys in the distance, a glittering jewel orbiting the equator.
"System," Jiang Chen commanded. "Active Stealth Mode. We are just a blip on their radar."
The Climber reached the Geostationary Terminal—the endpoint of the cable, anchored by a captured asteroid (a smaller project he had completed using the gravity runes).
From there, a shuttle waited. The Lunar Lander.
The short hop to the Moon was silent. No roar of engines, just the hiss of maneuvering thrusters.
Jiang Chen landed in Tycho Crater.
The dust settled. It was grey, silent, and dead.
But in the center of the crater, half-buried in the regolith, stood a structure. It wasn't a ruin.
It was a Door. A massive, circular airlock made of the same seamless alloy as the desert silo. Above it, a light was blinking.
Blink. Blink. Blink.
"They left the lights on," Jiang Chen whispered, stepping onto the lunar surface. The gravity was light. His heavy cyborg body felt weightless.
He walked to the airlock. He plugged in his interface.
[Welcome, Administrator.][Facility: Lunar Command.][Status: Dormant.][Garrison: 12,000 Mechanized Units.][Super-Weapon: The Hammer of Dawn (Ion Cannon).]
Jiang Chen smiled. The smile was hidden by his helmet, but the green light of his reactor pulsed with triumph.
"Wake them up," Jiang Chen ordered. "All of them."