65: Chapter 65 STC Melting and Neural Anchoring

The disinfectant smell in the medical tent mixed with the scent of blood, clinging to the deep nasal cavity like a greasy film. Every breath carried the rust and the sweet, cloying odor of rotting organic matter. Camilla stared at the old-fashioned monitor; its screen cracked like a spiderweb, and her brother's brainwave curve was turning into sharp, jagged teeth. Each peak was accompanied by an unnatural twitching of the skin on his neck, as if something alive was slithering beneath the surface. That was a sign that The Twelfth's imprint was struggling in the brainstem stagnation zone; its neural tentacles, like hungry roots, were searching for cracks to break through the soil.

"Forty-seven minutes left." Camilla's voice was flat, but her fingers gripped the tactical tablet until they turned white, her knuckles making a faint clicking sound. She didn't look up, but Lin Yuan could feel that gaze pinning to his back like a thermal cutter, carrying the unique, scrutinizing weight of a wasteland warlord. Outside the tent, the thermal cutter on the Sector-7 gate emitted a stuttering hiss, like the death rattle of some giant beast.

Lin Yuan stood at the tent entrance, radioactive dust leaking in through the gaps in the curtain, forming sparkling streams of particles in the faint light of the STC. He glanced at Chen Duo. His brother leaned against the alloy support, his blind eyes replaced by the Blood Covenant vision, golden light swirling beneath his irises like molten metal stirring slowly in his eye sockets. Through the data cable, Lin Yuan knew Chen Duo was scanning every life sign in the tent, including the outline of the modified pistol at Camilla's waist and the surging adrenaline levels of the two medics behind her.

"Conventional medical treatment cannot stop the activation." Lin Yuan spoke, overriding the hiss of the thermal cutter in the distance. His voice sounded dull in the space enclosed by the tarpaulin. "Once the stagnation zone is breached, the neural tentacles will take over the brainstem within ninety seconds. Your brother will become a wetware terminal for The Twelfth, a breathing communication relay station."

Camilla turned around, her right hand hovering three centimeters above her holster—a well-practiced, refined draw stance. Her eyes were bloodshot, devoid of tears, holding only the cold hardness seen after too many betrayals in the wasteland, like obsidian polished by radiation storms.

"You knew all along." She stated, her tone frighteningly steady. "THR-09-Ω. Those tentacles. You watched me bring my brother into Sector-7, you knew what was inside. You knew he would become bait."

The air in the tent solidified, as if even the radioactive dust had stopped floating. The medic instinctively stepped back, crushing a glass ampoule with their boot; the crisp shattering sound was amplified in the deathly silence.

Lin Yuan took a step forward, his boot soles crushing the dried blood scabs and making an unsettling crunching sound. Camilla's right hand instantly dropped, the grip of the gun pressing against her palm, her thumb already having disengaged the safety.

"I knew." Lin Yuan said, his gaze crossing over the muzzle to look directly into her pupils. "And I know how to push it back. But you need to make a choice."

"What choice?" Camilla's fingers slid outside the trigger guard, a habitual action to suppress the urge to shoot.

"Look at me." Lin Yuan raised his left hand, palm up, his knuckles trembling slightly due to the neural stinging before the STC activation. "And don't shoot."

The STC template unfolded in his palm.

Metal flakes slid out from his cuffs like living things, folding, interlocking, and extending in the air, emitting a hum similar to the bass of a pipe organ. The sound did not travel through the air but resonated directly within the skull. Plasma arcs leaped between the gaps, the blue-white light illuminating everyone's faces in the tent, casting twisted, deformed shadows on the canvas. The air was filled with the scent of ozone mixed with incense and machine oil—the holy chant of grimdark industrial aesthetics, ancient and violent.

Camilla's gun was half-drawn, frozen there. She had seen laser cutters from the Rust Belt Chamber of Commerce, and water pressure reactors from the Water Purification Gang, but she had never seen this... technology that seemed to manifest directly from myth. The metal was singing on its own.

"STC Standard Template Construct." Lin Yuan's voice was clear amidst the low-frequency holy chant of the machine spirit, every syllable carrying the resonance of metallic vibration. "Neural stabilization neck ring, third-generation modified. It's not a weapon; it's medical equipment. Specifically designed for neural parasitic imprints."

The system interface flickered in his field of vision, crimson and golden data streams intertwined: [Suggested production: Battle suit / Plasma pistol. Survival probability increase: 23%. Moral risk: Low. Resource consumption: Acceptable.]

Lin Yuan ignored it. He swiped his finger across the void, selecting the medical module. The green light of ethical verification flashed, accompanied by a slight, almost regretful electronic sigh from the system. He felt a sharp pain in his temples; that was the neural load from the STC activation. There was no free technology; every deployment consumed his bio-electric reserves.

"What do you need to pay?" Camilla's voice was dry, her Adam's apple bobbing. She didn't retract the gun, but the muzzle dropped fifteen degrees, shifting from her heart to her thigh. This was a subtle concession; she was calculating her brother's survival odds and the win rate of an armed confrontation. The instinct to survive in the wasteland told her that this man's value had exceeded the fleeting satisfaction that death could provide.

From killable to controllable.

"Resources." Lin Yuan stared at the metal ring gradually taking shape in the center, fine beads of sweat seeping from his forehead. "And the sanity to not pull the trigger for now."

The sound of metal folding became sharp, like countless tiny hammers striking an invisible Anvil. The prototype of the neck ring appeared, its silver-gray surface flowing with fine circuits formed by atomic-level reorganization. Those patterns were not engraved; they grew from inside the metal, like veins stretching out in a leaf. The grimdark industrial aesthetic displayed religious-like precision and violence, every seam so perfect it was terrifying, as if this object had existed somewhere in the universe and was simply summoned from the void by the STC.

Chen Duo suddenly turned his head, facing the shadows in the corner of the tent, his blind eyes wide. In the Blood Covenant vision, Lin Yuan shared the view: in the ocean of golden data streams, a 0.3-second log fragment was dissipating, as if devoured by an invisible giant beast, leaving only the scorched marks of residual current, like a beach struck by lightning. It was the operation record deleted by THRONE-01 in the background, encrypted data regarding the homology of THR-09-Ω and The Twelfth.

"It is hiding." The neural signal transmitted by Chen Duo carried a cold warning, like a needle piercing into Lin Yuan's temple. "About the numbering, about the source of the imprint. It is afraid of you knowing."

Lin Yuan's heart skipped a beat, but he forced his facial muscles to remain calm. The machine spirit was deleting logs, and he couldn't be distracted right now. Camilla's gun was still in her hand, and his brother's brainwaves were still deteriorating.

"Ninety seconds more." Lin Yuan said, his voice steadier than he had expected.

Camilla stepped forward, the muzzle raising again, pointing at the center of Lin Yuan's eyebrows. The Anvil Legion soldiers outside the tent became restless, at least three rifles aimed at the entrance, the sound of bulletproof vests rubbing together like snake scales scraping against rock.

"If my brother dies," Camilla's voice squeezed out from between her teeth, carrying the scent of blood. "I will cut you into pieces—not metaphorically, literally cut you into pieces—and then feed you to the things inside Sector-7. I will watch you get eaten alive by those machine spirits."

"Reasonable." Lin Yuan stared at the nearly completed neck ring, watching the tiny double-headed eagle emblem emerge on the metal surface—the maker's mark that the STC could not erase. "But if he lives, we need to renegotiate the command rights after entering Sector-7. I do not accept being treated as bait or a pawn."

"Are you bargaining?" Camilla's index finger pressed against the trigger, the contact between metal and metal making a soft sound.

"I am establishing trust based on mutual destruction." Lin Yuan extended his hand, the STC light casting sharp shadows on his face, making his outline look like a sculpture rather than a living person. "You can shoot at any time, I can stop at any time. But that is a lose-lose. You lose your brother, I lose... a potential technology demonstration subject."

Camilla's finger trembled on the trigger, suppressing her rage. As a leader, she was used to solving problems with violence and responding to threats with bullets. But at this moment, violence could not save her brother, and the technological disparity made her re-evaluate the odds. In front of this man, that gun might be no different from a fire poker.

"Put it on." She finally said, the muzzle drooping toward the ground, but her left hand quietly pressed a shortcut key on the tablet—the signal to summon snipers. "But if that thing turns my brother into a monster, I will make you wish you were dead. The interrogation room of the Anvil Legion still has electricity."

Lin Yuan took the neck ring spat out by the STC. The metal carried residual heat, its surface flowing with a faint blue light, and from within came an extremely faint, heartbeat-like pulsation—the low-frequency operation of the machine spirit. He walked to the medical bed. Beneath the skin of his brother's neck, subtle wriggling could be seen, with purplish-blue blood vessels bulging. Those were the neural tentacles attempting to break through the stagnation zone, like roots breaking through the soil.

The moment the neck ring clicked shut, his brother's body arched violently, his spine making a terrifying cracking sound. The monitor emitted a piercing alarm, the brainwave curve spiking to the danger threshold, and red warning lights spun crazily in the tent.

"What are you doing!" Camilla rushed over, her pistol pressing against Lin Yuan's waist.

"Suppressing the reaction!" Lin Yuan pressed down on the frantically spasming shoulders, feeling the muscles twitching under his hands like they were being electrocuted. "The neural tentacles are resisting! They are contracting!"

Chen Duo rushed over, pressing his hands on his brother's temples. The golden veins of the Blood Covenant surged from his palms like liquid gold flowing into the skin, forming a glowing vascular network beneath the surface. Through the link, Lin Yuan felt that pain—like red-hot iron wire engraving on the cerebral cortex. The Twelfth was sending memory fragments from before the farm's destruction through the imprint: burning barns, screaming children, black cracks splitting the sky, attempting to re-anchor control over the host through emotional resonance.

Lin Yuan gritted his teeth and increased the power. The neck ring emitted a low hum, an invisible force field spreading to cover the head, the air distorting due to the concentration of energy. The wriggling tentacles seemed to freeze, slow down, stop, and finally went limp in the neural tissue like dead parasites.

The alarm stopped. The brainwave curve returned to a smooth ripple, and although still weak, the signs of a runaway were gone. His brother's breathing became long and regular, only his chest no longer rose and fell autonomously but moved passively with the pulse rhythm of the neck ring.

Camilla stood by the bed, the muzzle completely lowered. She looked at her brother's steady chest, then at Lin Yuan, her expression as complex as spilled chemical reagents. She reached out to touch the metal ring on her brother's neck, her fingertips trembling as she felt the precision craftsmanship that did not belong to this era.

"He..." Her voice was hoarse. "Is still unconscious. Not awake."

"The stabilizer suppressed The Twelfth's activity, but it also blocked some autonomic nervous responses." Lin Yuan straightened up, feeling dizzy and nauseated; the cost of using the STC was backfiring. "He won't wake up, but at least he won't become a puppet. This is temporary stabilization, not a cure. The radiation of the wasteland has permanently damaged his nerves, and this neck ring just... locks the progress of the deterioration."

Camilla was silent for a long time, her fingers lingering on her brother's pale cheek. She looked up at Lin Yuan, and for the first time, something other than hostility appeared in her eyes—a kind of desperate reliance: "What kind of person are you? This kind of technology, even the Rust Belt Chamber of Commerce doesn't have it. Even the wrecks of the old-era armories don't have it."

"Someone who wants to survive." Lin Yuan put away the STC, the metal flakes retracting into his cuffs, leaving a brief red mark on his wrist. "Just like you. I just choose to use technology instead of bullets to prolong my lifespan."

Outside the tent, the thermal cutter stopped humming, replaced by the heavy roar of hydraulic devices. The Sector-7 gate opened, revealing the pitch-black passage behind it, like the entrance to a giant beast's esophagus.

Camilla's expression switched back to the cold hardness of a legion leader. She grabbed the tablet and glanced at it, her face looking even worse: "The gate is open, but it's not right inside. Scans show a large number of unidentified machine spirit signals. Not the crazy noise of The Twelfth, but another kind. Older, more... quiet. Like a grave breathing."

THRONE series. First-generation Purification Protocol.

Lin Yuan and Chen Duo exchanged glances. Through the Blood Covenant, Lin Yuan received his brother's final warning, carrying the cold texture of binary code: "It knows what is inside. It is afraid. Do not fully trust it, brother."

Camilla didn't notice this silent exchange. She turned and gave the order, her voice echoing outside the tent: "First squad hold the entrance, snipers take position, targets undetermined. If he makes any rash moves, you are authorized to fire. Repeat, authorized to fire."

Armed coexistence. Lin Yuan understood this signal; he was neither a guest nor a prisoner, but a partner with a gun pointed at him. He helped the weak Chen Duo up, his brother's body terrifyingly light, the Blood Covenant vision still flickering unstably: "Then, let's see what is buried in Sector-7."

They walked out of the tent, the radioactive dust wind blowing in their faces, carrying a mixture of metal and rot. The Sector-7 gate opened like a pitch-black mouth in the smoke, and the tremor of infrasound waves came from within—the sleeping breath of ancient machine spirits. Lin Yuan could feel THRONE-01 flickering in the depths of his consciousness, that deleted 0.3-second log like a thorn stuck in the core protocol, reminding him of the dangerous balance between loyalty and concealment.

The truth had not yet been exposed, but the crack already existed, like the first fissure on a glacier.

And in the Anvil Legion ranks, a soldier quietly lowered their binoculars, fingers tapping rapidly on their tactical gloves to send an encrypted communication. The blue-white light of the STC production, that technological miracle transcending the era, had been transmitted through the retina to the receiving terminal of the Rust Belt Chamber of Commerce. In the wasteland, such light meant power, meant wealth, and also meant death.

New voyeurs had already locked onto this light.