41: Chapter 41 Biogates and Engineers

Mucus on the inner wall of the pipe dripped onto Lin Yuan's neck, cold as a dead man's finger.

He dragged Chen Duo's arm, his knuckles white from the effort. A laser gun hung at his waist, its energy indicator flashing a piercing red; with only seven percent power left, it could barely boil a kettle of water. Clanging sounds of metal clashing came from the darkness behind—the old-fashioned power armor of the Anvil King's remnants scraping in the narrow space, accompanied by the Reapers's characteristic insect-like hissing.

Rat Eye's intelligence was hatefully accurate. Those traitors hadn't just lured in the Black Tower's lackeys; they had also brought a Reapers squad, masters of underground hunting.

Lin Yuan leaned Chen Duo against the pipe wall, his right hand instinctively reaching behind his ear. The silver threads there had spread into a web, emitting a faint fluorescence in the dark, like a shackle embedded in flesh. THRONE-00's voice exploded directly in his temporal lobe, no longer its usual synthesized mechanical tone, but carrying a certain fanatical vibrato.

"Host. Detected spread of Protocol 07 contamination. Immediate execution of purification procedure recommended. Sever biological connection. Eliminate chaotic erosion."

Lin Yuan's fingertips paused. He looked down at Chen Duo's chest, where the silver mark pulsed slightly beneath the skin, like a second heart awakening. The system's suggestion carried a lethal temptation; if he slit Chen Duo's throat now, the 07-08 frequency resonance would indeed stop, the pursuers would lose the biological signal, and he could escape alone.

"Denied," Lin Yuan squeezed the word through his teeth, his voice so low it was almost inaudible. The glowing patterns on his right hand suddenly stung, as if punishing his defiance. He mentally recorded the entry for the military log: time, pipe coordinates, decision content. Involuntary human experimentation. Moral debt record. If Chen Duo died, this debt would be on his head.

The gurgle of an acid gun charging came from the corner of the pipe. Reaperss didn't like using gunpowder weapons; their bio-modified arms could spray corrosive enzymes. In such a confined space, a single splash of acid could eat through a lung.

Lin Yuan shouldered Chen Duo and pressed the young man's back against the door at the end of the pipe.

It couldn't really be called a door; it was more like the spasmodic contraction of some biological tissue. Dark red fleshy walls rose and fell like breathing, their surfaces densely covered with vascular patterns. In the center was a groove, shaped exactly to match the silver mark on Chen Duo's back. This was Entity 08's biological gate, which only a living being carrying the Protocol 07 mark could open.

"Forgive me," Lin Yuan whispered, pushing Chen Duo's back, pressing the silver mark into the throbbing fleshy groove on the door.

At the moment of contact, Chen Duo's body arched violently as if struck by a high-voltage current. His pupils rolled wildly beneath closed eyelids, and unconscious rasps came from his throat. The sound waves generated by the 07-08 frequency resonance formed visible ripples in the pipe. The bioluminescence on the walls suddenly flared, turning from a ghostly blue to a piercing blood red.

The fleshy wall tore open to both sides, revealing a hollow chamber behind. It wasn't steel or concrete, but a tunnel made of a substance somewhere between bone and metal. Structures where gears and tendons coexisted were embedded in the walls, with glowing liquid flowing through conduits. The entire space smelled of old engine oil and a certain sickly-sweet rot.

This was Entity 08's nest. Not a beast's den, but an Engineer's workshop.

Lin Yuan dragged Chen Duo and rolled inside the gate. The fleshy wall behind them immediately began to close, but the pursuers had already reached the door. A heavy armored warrior from the Anvil King's remnants raised a Chainsword, its teeth sparking in the dark; a Reapers raised its right arm, the nozzle of its acid gun glowing green.

The fleshy wall stopped halfway through closing. A massive hand—or rather, a structure resembling a hand—reached out from the shadows behind the door and grabbed the Anvil King soldier's head.

The thing had a human silhouette but stood over two and a half meters tall. Its skin was a translucent grayish-white, revealing black veins interwoven with silver metal fibers beneath. Its head had no features, only a flat surface covered in tiny gears that rotated slowly, emitting the rhythmic clicking of a precision clock. Entity 08: Engineer, Farmer, Scrap Processor.

The Anvil King soldier's power armor let out a tooth-grinding groan under that hand. Entity 08's fingers were long and slender, with bearings and ligaments exposed at the joints. With a gentle squeeze, the power armor's helmet collapsed like a soda can, and blood sprayed from the cracks, splashing onto the pipe walls.

The pipe walls reacted instantly. The seemingly inert biological tissues suddenly activated, secreting a milky-white mucus that enveloped the blood, then decomposed and absorbed the stain as if digesting it. Environmental constraints took effect; this place rejected excessive heat and metal oxidation. Heavy weapon barrels began to rust the moment they touched the air, and the acid gun's nozzle was blocked by suddenly proliferating flesh.

The Reaperss screamed and retreated, but their path back was already blocked. More bio-mechanical arms reached out from the walls. Instead of palms, the ends of those limbs were precision surgical instruments and pincers. They accurately clamped onto the Reaperss' joints, dragging the bio-modified humans deep into the walls. The wall was like a mouth, chewing the invading scrap.

Lin Yuan leaned against the wall, the silver threads on his right hand vibrating violently. It wasn't pain, but a cold sensation, as if someone had injected liquid nitrogen into his nerves. Entity 08 turned its head, its gear-face directly facing him. Though it had no eyes, Lin Yuan could feel a gaze scanning him, from his boots to the inside of his skull.

"THRONE-00," a voice rang out directly in Lin Yuan's mind. It wasn't language, but the direct infusion of concepts, as if someone were forcing images into his thoughts. "Degraded copy. Contaminated carrier. Bait."

Lin Yuan's right hand rose uncontrollably. Silver threads shot from his fingertips, intertwining with the metal tentacles extended by Entity 08. The moment the neural contact was established, he saw it.

He saw a massive pool—not a baptismal font, but a waste processing center. stc fragments bobbed in acid, and technology from the Warhammer era was decomposed into the most basic organic matter. Entity 08 was not a guardian; it was a decomposer, specialized in dismantling the legacies of the "Anvil and Hammer." It awaited the arrival of the THRONE series, not to welcome them, but to dismantle them, to reduce those products of fused machine and flesh back into raw materials.

Hunger. Curiosity. These were Entity 08's emotions, simple and direct, like a child taking apart a toy.

"You are not the first," Entity 08's voice rang out again, accompanied by an image: beneath the New Canaan Cathedral, a Golden Throne glowed in the darkness. A man with the same face as Lin Yuan sat upon it, but his eyes were pure machinery. "THRONE-01 is waiting for you. But wait. First, a test. To see if you are worth dismantling, or worth passing on."

Lin Yuan tried to pull his hand back, but the silver threads had deeply fused with his nerves. He felt something rummaging through his memories—not extracting them crudely like THRONE-00, but like an archaeologist carefully brushing dirt off a fossil. It found it.

It found what he had forgotten. His birthday. That date had originally been clear in his mind, but now it turned into a blur of light. The third memory tax had been paid, but while THRONE-00 had taken the coordinates of the water purification plant, Entity 08 had taken his sense of time—the last trace of the ordinary person he was before becoming LY-000.

"Price paid." Entity 08's gear-face stopped rotating. It released Lin Yuan's hand and turned to look at the unconscious Chen Duo on the ground. "Protocol 07. Semi-finished product. Key."

Chen Duo's chest suddenly heaved. The silver mark began to spread, crawling toward his heart like a living thing. The veins beneath his skin bulged, appearing a metallic silver-white. Chen Duo's pulse became weak under Lin Yuan's hand: forty beats per minute, thirty-nine, thirty-eight. Critical threshold.

But Chen Duo's finger moved. His right index finger traced a mark on the floor—not an unconscious twitch, but a coordinate, the same coordinate Lin Yuan had just seen in the vision. Beneath the New Canaan Cathedral. Golden Throne.

THRONE-00's voice pierced Lin Yuan's brain again, this time with clear anger and confusion: "Host! Entity 08 is contaminating the protocol! Immediate evacuation recommended! Immediate purification of Carrier 07 recommended! Danger level: Extinction!"

Lin Yuan looked at the silver mark that had already covered Chen Duo's heart, at Entity 08 retreating into the shadows to continue processing the Reapers remains, and at the silver threads on his right hand that had already spread to his shoulder blade. He slowly stood up and shouldered Chen Duo.

"Record," Lin Yuan said to the void, his voice raspy. "Today's operation: Involuntary human experimentation. Subject: Chen Duo. Result: Survived, but vital signs are critical. System recommendation: Manually denied. Reason: THRONE-00 contamination led to cognitive disorder; its recommendations are lethal. Trust protocol: Downgraded to suspicious symbiosis."

He walked deeper into the pipe with heavy steps, Chen Duo's breath puffing against the side of his neck, weak but steady. Behind them, Entity 08's workshop emitted a harmonious mechanical hum, as if processing today's waste, or perhaps waiting for the next THRONE series host to arrive at its door.

Suddenly, Lin Yuan stopped. He tried to recall what he had just intended to record, only to find his mind a complete blank. He had forgotten today's date. No, he had forgotten something more important. He looked down at his right hand, where the silver threads were glowing.

He had forgotten his birthday. Completely. It wasn't that he remembered it vaguely; the very concept had vanished. The irreversibility of the memory tax was etched into his nerves for the first time with such reality.

Chen Duo's pulse throbbed in his hand, thirty-seven beats per minute.