The heavy iron door groaned under the pressure of Lu Yan's grip, the metal screaming as his obsidian claws found purchase in the narrow seams of the frame. Behind them, the violet light from the jade basin cast long, distorted shadows that danced against the basalt walls like restless ghosts. Lin Xiyao stood close to Lu Yan's back, her medical chest heavy against her hip and her "Heavenly Forensic" system working in an automated loop to monitor the atmospheric toxicity.
"The lock is reinforced with cold-forged steel and an alchemical adhesive," Lu Yan grunted, his voice dropping into a low, bestial frequency that made the air in the small chamber vibrate. "It was designed to keep something in, not just to keep us out."
"Strike the center hinge," Xiyao whispered, her eyes glowing with a faint sapphire light as her system highlighted a structural fracture. "The heat from the laboratory on the other side has made the metal brittle at that specific point."
Lu Yan didn't hesitate. He pulled back his fist and drove it into the hinge with the force of a battering ram. The sound was like a thunderclap in the confined space. The door buckled, the iron shearing away from the stone wall, and a wave of pressurized steam hissed through the opening. It smelled of sulfur, bitter almonds, and the coppery tang of fresh blood.
They stepped through the threshold into a cavernous hall that defied the traditional architecture of the Ming Dynasty. This was not a place of wooden beams and paper screens; it was a forest of brass pressure vessels, glass tubes, and winding copper pipes that snaked across the ceiling like the intestines of a metal giant.
"My system is overwhelmed," Xiyao said, her hand reaching out to steady herself against a cold stone pillar. "The concentration of 'Wolf-Spirit' essence in the air is high enough to trigger a mutation in an unprotected human within thirty minutes."
"Then we do not stay for thirty minutes," Lu Yan replied, his amber eyes scanning the rows of glass vats.
Inside the vats, suspended in a thick, translucent fluid, were human subjects in various stages of transformation. Some were barely recognizable as men, their limbs elongated and their torsos covered in patchy, silver-white fur. Others were still human, their eyes wide with a silent, frozen terror.
"Welcome, Commander Lu," a voice drifted from the shadows at the far end of the hall. It was a high, thin sound, like a flute played by a dying man. "And the little physician who has caused my master so much grief. You are just in time for the final distillation."
A man stepped into the light of the glowing violet vats. He was dressed in the dark, official robes of the Imperial Academy of Medicine, but his face was a mask of scar tissue and alchemical burns. This was Master Mo, Eunuch Wei's chief alchemist and the man who had refined her father's research into a weapon of mass destruction.
"You have desecrated my father's work," Xiyao said, her voice shaking with a mixture of rage and forensic clarity. "He sought to stabilize the catalyst to save lives, not to turn the Emperor's guard into a pack of mindless slaves."
Master Mo let out a dry, rattling laugh. "Stability is for the weak, Physician Lin. Your father was a dreamer. He didn't understand that power requires a loss of self. Look at your Commander. He is the most successful subject we have ever produced, yet he clings to his humanity like a drowning man to a piece of driftwood."
"I am not a subject," Lu Yan growled, his claws extending as he took a predatory step forward. "I am the man who is going to end your experiments."
"Are you?" Master Mo smiled, revealing teeth that had been filed into sharp points. He reached for a heavy brass lever connected to the largest vat in the center of the room. "The Blood Moon reaches its zenith in three hours. By then, the water in the Forbidden City will be fully saturated. Every soldier, every eunuch, and every concubine will hear the call of the Alpha. And they will not look to you for leadership, Lu Yan. They will look to the one who holds the leash."
Xiyao's system suddenly screamed a red-level alert.
[Heavenly Forensic System: Critical Event Detected] Mechanism: The central vat is connected to the primary palace aqueduct. Status: Release sequence initiated. Time to Contamination: 120 seconds.
"Lu Yan! The lever!" Xiyao cried out, already reaching into her medical chest for her remaining vials of 'Cold-Moon Essence'. "If he pulls that, the city is lost!"
Lu Yan lunged, but Master Mo was faster than a man of his age should have been, his movements fueled by the very catalyst he had spent decades refining. The battle for the soul of the Ming Dynasty had finally reached its boiling point, and the silence of the garden above was about to be broken by the first howl of a thousand wolves.