The rain in Sector 4 didn't wash things clean; it just redistributed the grime. It fell in heavy, oily sheets, shimmering with the iridescent slick of industrial runoff and the neon glow of the overhead advertisement holos.
Ren Xiao huddled in the shadow of a rusted cooling vent, his breath hitching in shallow, practiced rhythms. Above him, a massive holographic koi fish swam through the air, its scales flickering between gold and corporate blue the colors of the Azure Stream Bio-Tech Sect. A tagline floated beneath it in elegant, brush-stroke script: Purity is a Choice. Choose Azure.
"Choose Azure," Ren whispered, his voice cracking. "Right. I'll get right on that after I finish choosing between starvation and hypothermia."
He adjusted his goggles, the cracked lenses flickering as they struggled to highlight the spectral traces of Qi. Most people in Neo-Aetheria didn't need goggles to see the Dao. The elites, the "High-Bandwidth" cultivators of the inner circles, could feel the energy of the world like a second pulse. To them, the city was a symphony. To a "Null" like Ren, it was just a loud, confusing static.
But tonight, the static was singing.
A Spirit-Pipe, one of the massive conduits that carried refined Qi from the extraction plants to the high-rise cultivation chambers of the Cinnabar Data-Clouds, had a micro-fracture. It was barely a pinprick, likely caused by the shifting of the tectonic plates beneath the urban sprawl, but it was enough.
To the Cinnabar Sect, a leak this size was a rounding error. To Ren, it was a buffet.
He crept forward, his boots squelching in the toxic sludge of the alleyway. He was a "Scrapper," a scavenger of the spiritual waste that the city spat out. His body felt heavy, a familiar, dull ache radiating from his chest. This was the "Clogged Core" the medical defect he'd been born with. His meridians were like rusted pipes, narrow and filled with spiritual silt. He could touch energy, but he could never hold it.
He reached the conduit. It was a matte-black pillar, humming with a low-frequency vibration that made his teeth ache. At eye level, a faint, crystalline mist was hissing out of a hairline crack.
Pure, refined Qi.
Ren reached into his satchel and pulled out a battered, hand-soldered device: a Spirit-Siphon. He pressed the intake valve against the crack and watched the gauge. The needle jumped.
"Come on," he hissed. "Just a little. Just enough to pay the rent and maybe buy a real meal."
As the Siphon hummed, Ren felt a strange warmth on his chest. It wasn't the Qi from the pipe. It was coming from his inner pocket from the "scrap" he'd pulled out of a tech-dump three days ago. It was a heavy, blackened chip, no larger than a credit card, etched with symbols that looked less like circuitry and more like ancient calligraphy.
The Primordial Source Code.
Suddenly, the hum of the Spirit-Pipe changed. The low vibration turned into a high-pitched scream.
Ren's goggles flashed red. WARNING: SURGE DETECTED.
"Shit," Ren cursed. He tried to pull the Siphon away, but the device had fused to the pipe. The micro-fracture was widening, the metal groaning under the pressure of a sudden, unscheduled energy dump from the main servers.
A jet of blue flame raw, unrefined energy blasted out.
It hit Ren square in the chest.
In a normal person, this would have been an instant death sentence. The energy would have flooded their core, causing a spiritual meltdown. But Ren's core was a dead-end. The energy hit the "silt" in his meridians and backed up like a dammed river.
He fell backward, his back slamming into a pile of discarded shipping crates. The world turned white. His lungs screamed for air, but all he could taste was the ozone of burning spirit-matter.
System Error, a voice whispered. It wasn't a human voice. It sounded like a thousand mechanical gears grinding against a silk sheet.
Incompatible Hardware Detected.Scanning...Analyzing Clogged Meridian Network...Found: Primordial Source Code.Integration Initiated.
Ren's eyes flew open. He wasn't in the alley anymore. He was in a void of falling green light and floating gold sigils. He felt his "Clogged Core" being stripped apart, not by medicine, but by a brutal, digital force. The "silt" that had plagued him his whole life wasn't being cleared; it was being re-coded.
Targeting High-Pressure Surge, the voice echoed. Overclocking initiated. Duration: 60 Seconds.
Back in the physical world, Ren's body jerked upright. His skin turned a translucent, ghostly white, and his veins began to glow with a violent, flickering violet light. The Spirit-Pipe next to him exploded, a fountain of raw energy erupting into the sky.
But Ren didn't run. He reached out.
His hand entered the fountain of fire. Instead of burning, the energy was sucked into his palm, swirling around his arm like a trapped cyclone. The "silt" in his veins acted as a high-resistance filament it glowed white-hot, turning the raw energy into something far more concentrated.
"What... what is this?" Ren gasped. His voice sounded like it was coming from two places at once.
He felt a surge of power so absolute it was terrifying. For the first time in his life, he wasn't weak. He felt like he could reach up and tear the holographic koi fish out of the sky.
He looked at his hand. The Siphon was gone, melted into slag. But his fist was wreathed in a pulsing, static-heavy aura.
He didn't have time to process it. A shadow dropped from the rooftops above.
It was a Enforcer. A "Bronze-Rank" guard from the Cinnabar Data-Clouds, wearing a sleek, charcoal-grey combat suit. The guard landed with a heavy thud, his eyes glowing with the steady, artificial light of a combat-implant.
"Unauthorized siphoning detected," the Enforcer said, his voice modulated and cold. He drew a collapsible baton that hummed with kinetic energy. "Identify yourself, Scrapper, or be processed."
In any other circumstance, Ren would have been on his knees, begging for mercy. A Bronze-Rank cultivator could break a Null's ribs with a flick of a finger.
Ren looked at the Enforcer. Then he looked at the timer flickering in the corner of his vision.
45 Seconds.
"I'm just... having a bad day," Ren said.
The Enforcer didn't care. He lunged, the baton whistling through the air, aimed at Ren's skull.
Ren didn't think. He reacted. His body moved with a fluid, terrifying speed he shouldn't have possessed. He stepped inside the Enforcer's guard, his hand snapping out like a viper.
He caught the Enforcer's wrist.
The sound of shattering ceramic-armor echoed through the alley. The Enforcer's eyes widened. "What ? Your Qi... it's corrupted! It's all noise!"
"Then let's turn up the volume," Ren hissed.
He unleashed the energy he'd been holding. It wasn't a clean strike. It was an Overclocked Pulse. A wave of violet static blasted out of Ren's palm, slamming into the Enforcer's chest. The guard was launched backward, his reinforced suit sparking and short-circuiting as the "Dirty Qi" scrambled his internal systems.
The Enforcer hit the far wall of the alley, his armor scorched, unconscious before he even touched the ground.
Ren stood there, chest heaving. The power was still humming in his blood, but it was starting to hurt. A deep, searing heat was spreading through his limbs.
15 Seconds.
He had to get out of here. If one Enforcer was here, the Sect-Corp's rapid response team would be seconds away. They would track the surge. They would find him.
He turned to run, but his legs buckled. The "venting" process had begun. Smoke actual, grey smoke began to rise from his pores. The energy was leaving his body as quickly as it had arrived, leaving behind a trail of agonizing exhaustion.
5... 4... 3...
He dragged himself toward the sewer grate at the end of the alley. He knew these tunnels like the back of his hand. It was the only way to disappear.
2... 1... 0.
The violet glow vanished. The silence of the alley returned, broken only by the steady hiss of the ruptured pipe and the distant sirens of the Sector Police.
Ren collapsed into the dark, wet tunnel below, his fingers clutching the blackened chip in his pocket. His core felt like it had been scraped out with a hot iron, but as he drifted into a pained, semi-conscious state, one thought remained.
For sixty seconds, he hadn't been a Null.
For sixty seconds, he had been the apex.
POV: Director Ma-Ryung
Forty floors above the filth of Sector 4, Director Ma-Ryung sat behind a desk made of solid, spirit-treated obsidian. He wasn't looking at the city. He was looking at a data-scroll hovering in the air.
"A surge?" Ma-Ryung asked. His voice was soft, like the rustle of old parchment.
"Yes, Director," a subordinate replied, bowing low. "A Spirit-Pipe burst in the slums. We sent an Enforcer to investigate. He was found three minutes later with his internal meridians fried and his armor melted. The energy signature... it was irregular."
Ma-Ryung leaned forward, his eyes void of pupils, filled only with swirling grey mist narrowing.
"Irregular how?"
"It wasn't refined Qi, sir. It was... Noise. But it was Noise that had been structured. Like a code."
Ma-Ryung remained silent for a long moment. He tapped a manicured fingernail against the obsidian desk.
"The Primordial Source Code," he whispered to himself. "I thought it was destroyed during the last Format."
He looked back at the subordinate. "Find the Scrapper. Do not kill him. I want to see how a cockroach handles the fire of the gods."
"At once, Director."
As the subordinate hurried out, Ma-Ryung turned his gaze toward the window. Far below, in the dark veins of the city, a glitch had appeared in his perfect system.
And a glitch, if left unchecked, could crash the world.