CHAPTER XI — Pillar of Radiance, Bureau of Secrets Stirred
2127 Words
Deep within Pinewhisper Courtyard, silence congealed thicker than pitch.
Qin Hao sat cross-legged upon frozen, snow-scabbed earth. Before him lay the moss-stained millstone slab—altar to forgotten labor. The Tripodal Violet-Aether Starfall Crucible rested there, its form to mundane eyes a crude, fissured clay lump, streaked with the mud of recent ablutions.
Only beneath Qin Hao’s fathomless consciousness did its true majesty unveil.
Within the crucible—
No mere flames danced.
A microcosmic nebula—pure entropy given form—collapsed inward! Stellar currents, sharp as annihilation’s razors, engulfed the nine nascent pill-embryos suspended at its heart!
Each embryo’s surface endured torrential erosion! Essence compressed to singularity! Impurities atomized into cosmic dust!
Three days. Three nights.
Qin Hao’s hands wove archaic seals—each gesture summoning an invisible thread of cosmic law from the firmament’s abyss. These filaments, potent enough to shatter stars, pierced the courtyard’s derelict roof-tiles, impregnating the crucible’s stellar core!
*THUD! THUD! THUD!*
Invisible hammers of law struck!
Beyond the crucible—
The courtyard’s deep leylines lay utterly drained—a titanic vacuum! Subterranean fractures groaned ceaselessly! Distant energies roared against an unseen dam—a torrent barred from replenishing the desiccated core!
Inside the shack, Qingwu writhed in infernal torment.
The glacial core of her Nine Yin Devouring Meridian—
Hammered day and night by this tripartite law-pressure—
Fissures!
Spreading visibly!
Waves of soul-freezing Yin-chill, ever more violent, were wrenched free—only to be brutally imprisoned within her frail vessel by the unrelenting law-weight!
Agony—ten thousand ice-needles piercing every nerve-ending!
She clenched her jaw, stifling shattered whimpers, nails gouging splinters from the icy plank bed. Her pallid face contorted in extremity. Only within her sightless eyes’ depths, at each energy-tide’s peak, flickered frames—ever clearer—of the tripodal crucible and the man who commanded celestial might!
*Abrupt stillness!*
Within the stellar core—
Absolute. Timeless. Energy itself congealed.
The nine suspended embryos—
Forged by infinite collapses, tempered by law’s hammer—
Now…
Resembled nine cosmic singularities—black holes drained of all radiance, leaving only frigid, dead nuclei!
Minuscule! Pure! Blackness absolute!
Motionless!
Scarcely deserving the name “pill”!
Was this the zenith? Summoning cosmic law-threads to forge… inert cinders?
Qin Hao sat immobile upon frozen mud, eyelids lowered, a statue petrified for eons.
Within this silence fit to shatter immortal souls—
Deep within Qin Hao—
In the primordial core of his being—a sanctum rarely touched, ancient as bedrock—
A wisp—infinitesimal, distilled through eons of cosmic tides and law-tempering—
Stirred.
Primordial!
Indomitable!
Immutable!
Chaos-Breath from creation’s dawn!
This mote of breath—less than dust! Yet bearing the fundamental order upholding myriad worlds!
As it left his form—
Within the crucible—
The nine dead singularities—
Like seeds parched unto death meeting genesis-dew—
Their hyper-compressed, “null”-state chaotic potency—
Ignited! By the immortal order within that Chaos-Breath!
*BOOOOOOM—!!!*
An indescribable metamorphosis detonated within the black-hole hearts!
No light!
No heat!
No energy bled!
Only ineffable, titanic vitality—a cosmic genesis-explosion!
Birthed within dead nuclei! Surging through every atom!
Ignition! Shaping! Soul-Forging!
Nine singularities completed their apotheosis—from dead voids to vessels of creation’s fire!
Nine pill-embryos!
Form remade! Imperfections smoothed by unseen hands! Each orb perfect, lustrous yet profoundly restrained—obsidian depths swallowing infinite void!
At each obsidian core—
A point!
Merely a point!
Smaller than a mote’s millionth fragment!
Yet pure! Dazzling! Radiating the cosmos’ fundamental truths—enough to stagger celestial minds!
A mote of Prismatic Chalcedony Radiance!
*Ignited!!!*
*HUMMMMMMMM—!!!*
Not sound!
A vibration transcending senses—striking the fabric of law itself! Centered on the crucible—it tore reality’s veil! Exploded!
Qin Hao’s form remained rooted. His lowered eyelids snapped open!
*“Seal.”*
A single primordial syllable! Resonant with absolute, timeless order!
His fingertip crushed a withered straw-root hidden beneath the millstone!
*Phut!*
An ochre-gold luminescence—earth’s will incarnate—flared! It raced through the crucible’s natural ice-c***k patterns—ancient stellar glyphs—completing a circuit!
*CRUNCH!*
The nascent Prismatic Radiance—brilliant enough to illuminate galaxies, heralding supreme creation—
The wave of creation-immortality essence—capable of piercing all barriers—
Was ensnared! By an unseen, formless net! Contracted! Quenched!
Along with the law-vibration!
Brutally forced back into the Tripodal Starfall Crucible!
Compressed! Immured! Entombed within its stellar glyphs and fracture-lines!
Radiance vanished!
Vibration silenced!
As if the universe-shattering anomaly were illusion!
Only the nine obsidian pills remained! Their surfaces seemed to ripple with a fleeting, near-invisible prismatic afterglow—then subsided into profound, jade-like darkness!
Celestial Origin Restoration Pill!
Forged! Radiance sealed within nine apertures!
Divine splendor contained! Not a wisp escaped!
Pinewhisper Courtyard—
Plunged back into desolate silence! Rot-leaf stench reclaimed the air! As if the reality-altering moment never was! Only Qingwu’s form—collapsed in utter exhaustion on the plank bed, unconscious—bore witness.
…
Simultaneously! Capital City! North Mountain! 300 meters underground!
Bureau of Secrets! Seventh Deep-Space Tactical Command—“Celestial Eye”!
The colossal spherical command center—diameter exceeding 200 meters! Its vaulted dome, an inverted star-ring, embedded with countless micro-luminous azure nodes! Shadowless cold-light bathed hundreds of hive-like workstations in an eerie, inhuman cerulean glow.
Air hung sterile, filtered to molecular purity. Only the ultra-low hum of advanced electronics formed a background drone—slumbering leviathans breathing softly.
Before each operator, at least three massive holographic screens streamed torrents of data: scrolling analytics, shifting astro-topographical maps, real-time energy waveform graphs—refreshing faster than eyes could track. Operators wore specialized neuro-interface helms, faces sculpted in concentration, pupils mirroring cascading information.
“Report to Primary Monitor: ‘Houyi’s Gaze’ equatorial orbit array, Phase III, Module 3 self-diagnosis complete. Detection accuracy stabilized at 99.99981% theoretical threshold.”
“Report: Pacific Abyssal Array ‘Yujiang’ transmits micro-perturbation spectrogram of controlled zone. Entropy stable.”
“Report: Kunlun ‘Boundary Stele Station’ triaxial spirit-pressure model refresh complete. No anomalous deviation.”
Robotic voices recited in orderly cadence.
Yet—
Precisely as the pill-radiance ignited in Pinewhisper—a billionth of a millisecond before its law-vibration detonated—
Deep within the “Celestial Eye” sphere—
Every data stream! Every energy waveform! Even the dome’s myriad azure nodes!
Simultaneously—
Flickered!
Minutely! Eerily! A fluctuation defying electronic logic!
The sensation…
As if all reality’s operating rules were frozen! Twisted! Then violently “reset”!
Screens displayed a billionth-second data-glitch—gone before conscious notice!
*SCREEEEEEEECH—!!!*
An ear-splitting, maximum-level energy surge alarm!
No delay!
Almost simultaneous with the radiance’s suppression!
Erupted from the command sphere’s heart—
The gargantuan, crystalline cluster-core console—the “Cosmic Net Array”!
The Cosmic Net Array!
The Bureau’s surveillance nexus! Its core detection matrix forged from legendary Yuanshen Star-Sand—harvested from the abyssal depths beyond Guixu’s Dead Sea—capable of capturing cosmic string vibrations! Its twelve rotating ring-arrays of archaic runes tore from their orbits! Accelerated madly! Screeching with metallic friction and energy howls! Each rune blazed like white-hot iron!
*ZZZZZT!—*
The colossal ring-screen! Displaying Earth’s baseline aetheric substrate—a smooth, dark-blue silk of energy flow—
Over the region marking Jiangcheng, Huaxia—
Tore!
A microscopic, near-invisible distortion-seam!
Fleeting! Like the ghost-trail of a razor across silk!
But!
Where that spectral fissure passed—
The Array’s twelve ring-arrays—
Instantly spiked to unprecedented crimson! Rune-rotation redlined! Molten gold transmuted to retina-scorching blood-red! The core detection clusters screamed imminent overload!
*Wail—OOOONNNN—!!!*
The alarm—a doomsday knell!
“Gods above!!”
“What’s happening?!”
“Cosmic Net overload?! Impossible!!”
Tranquility shattered! The sphere erupted! Operators—statues moments before—jolted upright! Faces drained! Neural-interface streams exploded into chaotic light-shards!
At the central suspended command platform—
The figure codenamed “Chiyou”—Xiao Pojun—froze mid-posture. Impeccable dark-green tactical suit, shoulders broad as fortress gates, hair cropped like steel bristles. His granite-hewn face, bronze under the azure light, became glacial. Eyes—deep wells seasoned in c*****e—contracted to pinpricks, riveted to the colossal, baleful scarlet ancient character—“*” (Pill)—materializing in the air before him!
*CRUNCH!*
Bronzed knuckles cracked, low and sickening!
“Tch…” A sound—icy, laced with shock, absurdity, and volcanic battle-l**t—hissed between clenched teeth.
Instantly—
The war-machine reactivated!
“Maximum Authority! Codename ‘Chiyou’ commands!” His voice—tempered alloy—held zero hesitation. Each syllable hammered the dead air, cold as grinding steel!
“One! Sever all physical and data links between the Cosmic Net Array and peripheral systems! Physical severance! Engage ‘Godfall’ optical locks! Seal the Core Mother Array Plate!”
“Two! Purge all raw energy detection data and analytical reports from the Array, timestamp: 30 seconds pre-event to present! Maximum Authority—triple overwrite! Traces eradicated!”
“Three! All ‘Celestial Eye’ personnel enter wartime status effective immediately! Sign Supreme Oblivion and Loyalty Covenants! Comms devices surrendered; implant ‘Sealed Lips’ neural inhibitors! Until deactivation, this hall is your prison!”
“Four! Initiate Supreme Classified Protocol: ‘Houyi Shoots the Suns’! Target: Jiangcheng, Huaxia! Objective: Maximum priority intervention! Spare no resource! Mobilize all assets… find him!”
Xiao Pojun whirled! His titanic frame radiated space-rending pressure! A hand slashed the air!
“Seventh Action Team! All ‘Night Owl’ combat units!”
“With me!”
“—To Jiangcheng!”
The command—a war-drum from hell’s depths—slammed down!
…
Jiangcheng. Desolate Pinewhisper Courtyard.
Within pitch-thick night. Embers glowed beneath a collapsed earthen stove, etching Qin Hao’s profile in silhouette. The vile scorched-void reek had thinned in the bitter wind, leaving only decay’s cloying breath. He had wrapped the nine profound-black pills in coarse oilpaper, stowed in the canvas sack’s corner.
*Gurgle…*
A distinct, hollow rumble—from an empty stomach—violated the courtyard’s silence.
Its source—
Qingwu, curled on the plank bed. Consciousness flickered back from the void of exhaustion. Adrift between residual agony and blankness, primal instinct asserted itself. Three days without sustenance; her stomach protested vehemently in pain’s brief lull.
Qin Hao unscrewed a soot-blackened aluminum canteen, pouring its last dregs of murky water into a chipped earthenware bowl. From the sack’s depths, he retrieved a pinch of brittle, yellowed fragments—unidentifiable as tea or dried wild herbs.
*Rustle.*
He tossed the “tea” into the turbid water.
Rose. Dragged the grime-caked canvas sack to the decrepit doorframe, propping it against rotting wood.
He approached the stove.
Upon it sat a grime-encrusted iron wok, its base crusted with ancient grease. Beside it, a crumpled plastic bag—once holding glutinous white lumps (frozen dumplings)—lay gaping and desiccated. A “charity” from Steward Zhou Fu days prior.
Qin Hao bent, pinched the bag’s edge, dumped the remaining rock-hard dumplings into the wok.
*Clatter.*
Frozen dumplings struck cold iron.
He picked up a roughly hewn, splintered firewood stick, tossed it onto the stove’s lingering crimson embers.
*Phfft.*
Acrid smoke curled, stinging the air.
He didn’t glance at the icy dumplings.
Calmly, with hands capable of bending cosmic law—hands that sent the Bureau of Secrets into panic—he grasped a half-chipped earthenware ladle. Scooped murky water, slick with grease and debris, from a nearby bucket.
*Splash.*
Turbid water flooded the wok, submerging the frozen lumps. Droplets spattered the grimy rim, raising dirty froth.
Within the stove, the crude stick, licked by crimson embers, crackled weakly, finally catching—a feeble, guttering, ochre flame.
The flame struggled against the wok’s icy base.
The derelict yard sighed under the wind’s lament. Air thickened with acrid smoke, stagnant water’s reek, and the faintest hint of… thawing food.
Qin Hao stood before the stove.
Silent.
Waiting for the filthy water to boil.
Inside the shack.
On the icy plank bed.
In the gloom, Qingwu’s body shifted minutely. Her vacant sockets turned vaguely towards the stove. Chapped lips parted infinitesimally. Her stomach growled again—a hollow echo in the desolate yard.
- Writer
