The rain fell like tears from a dying sky, each droplet carrying the taste of rust and forgotten dreams.
Li Tian wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his dirt-stained hand, leaving streaks of mud across his weathered face.
At eighteen, he looked older—the kind of premature aging that came from carrying burdens meant for stronger shoulders.
The farm stretched before him, a patchwork of brown earth and withered hope. Where other properties on the outskirts of New Shanghai buzzed with steam-powered harvesters and mechanical planters, his family's land remained stubbornly analog. The hoe in his hands had belonged to his grandfather, and his grandfather's grandfather before that.
Its wooden handle was smooth from generations of callused palms, the metal head nicked and scarred but still sharp enough to bite into the unforgiving soil.
He knelt between the rows of struggling vegetables, replanting seedlings that had withered overnight.
Again. It was the third time this week, and each failed crop meant another day without proper food, another night listening to his grandmother's labored breathing through the paper-thin walls of their ramshackle farmhouse.
"Just grow," he whispered to a particularly pitiful carrot sprout, its leaves yellowed and curled. "Please, just grow."
The irony wasn't lost on him.
In the distance, the spires of New Shanghai pierced the perpetual smog like gleaming needles, their brass and copper surfaces reflecting the amber glow of a thousand steam engines.
The city thrived on innovation, on progress, on the marriage of magic and machinery that had redefined civilization. Yet here, barely ten kilometers from that marvel of the modern age, Li Tian couldn't make a simple vegetable survive.
As he worked, his gaze kept drifting to something that shouldn't exist—strange blue veins threading through the soil in the eastern corner of the field.
They pulsed with a faint luminescence that was only visible when the light hit them just right, like capillaries filled with liquid starlight.
He'd first noticed them three days ago, right around the time the dreams had started.
Dreams of whispers in languages he didn't recognize.
Dreams of hands reaching up from beneath the earth, grasping for something just out of reach.
Dreams that left him waking with dirt under his fingernails and the taste of copper on his tongue.
Li Tian shook his head, dispelling the unwelcome memories.
Dreams didn't pay for medicine.
Dreams didn't keep the creditors away. Dreams definitely didn't explain how his grandmother had managed to sit up yesterday for the first time in months, her eyes clearer than they'd been since his parents vanished five years ago.
The thought of his parents sent a familiar pang through his chest. His father, stern but kind, who'd taught him that honest work was its own reward.
His mother, whose laugh had been like wind chimes in a summer breeze. One day they'd been there, planning the spring planting and arguing about whether to invest in one of those new mechanical tillers.
The next, their beds were empty, their belongings untouched, as if they'd simply evaporated like morning dew.
The authorities had investigated, of course. Missing persons cases were taken seriously in the shadow of New Shanghai, where corporate espionage and industrial accidents claimed lives with disturbing regularity.
But the investigation had turned up nothing—no bodies, no signs of struggle, no witnesses. His parents had simply ceased to exist, leaving behind a failing farm, a sick grandmother, and a teenage boy who didn't know the first thing about keeping either alive.
Li Tian stood, brushing dirt from his knees, and surveyed his work.
The replanted seedlings looked as pathetic as their predecessors, but he'd done what he could.
Maybe tomorrow would be different. Maybe tomorrow the strange blue veins in the soil would mean something other than his slow descent into madness.
He was turning to head back to the house when a sound stopped him cold—the whisper-soft hum of perfectly calibrated gears, barely audible above the ambient noise of wind and distant city traffic.
Li Tian's blood chilled. He'd heard that sound exactly once before, three months ago, when a corporate survey team had "accidentally" wandered onto his property while conducting what they'd called "routine environmental assessments."
Routine. The word tasted like ash.
Li Tian dropped into a crouch between the vegetable rows, his heart hammering against his ribs.
Through the falling rain, he could make out a dark shape descending from the storm-heavy clouds—sleek, angular, moving with the predatory grace of a hunting bird.
The Iron Covenant logo was barely visible on its hull, a stylized gear wrapped in thorned vines, but he knew it by the sick feeling it triggered in his gut.
The scout mech touched down at the edge of his property with barely a whisper, its landing dampeners absorbing the impact with mechanical precision. It stood roughly three meters tall, humanoid in shape but unmistakably inhuman in its movements. Where a person would shift their weight or adjust their stance, the mech remained perfectly still, a statue of black metal and glowing amber sensors.
For a moment, nothing happened. Li Tian pressed himself lower into the furrows, praying that the rain and gathering dusk would provide enough cover. The mech's head turned with mechanical precision, scanning left, then right, then—
The sensors flared bright orange.
Li Tian's stomach dropped. Whatever the machine was looking for, it had found it. The mech began moving toward the eastern corner of the field, toward the section where the blue veins pulsed beneath the soil like a secret heartbeat.
No. The word echoed through Li Tian's mind with surprising force. Whatever's down there, it's mine. It's all I have left.
He didn't stop to think about the implications of that thought, or why he suddenly felt so possessive of something he didn't understand. Instead, he rose from his hiding place, mud-stained and shaking but determined.
"Hey!" His voice cracked slightly, betraying his fear. "You're trespassing on private property!"
The mech paused, its head rotating toward him with the sound of well-oiled servos. When it spoke, its voice was perfectly modulated, utterly without emotion.
"Civilian detected. This area has been designated for immediate survey under Corporate Mandate 247-C. Please evacuate the premises for your own safety."
"Survey for what?" Li Tian took a step closer, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. "This is my family's land. You have no right—"
"Anomalous energy readings detected," the mech continued as if he hadn't spoken. "Source identified. Beginning extraction."
The machine knelt beside one of the glowing crops—a radish that Li Tian had replanted just that morning. With delicate precision that seemed impossible for something made of metal and wire, it grasped the vegetable by its leaves and pulled.
The radish came free with a sound like tearing silk, trailing luminescent roots that pulsed with blue-white light. But it wasn't just the radish. The entire section of soil began to glow brighter, the network of veins suddenly visible as they spread outward like cracks in glass.
"No!" Li Tian lunged forward without thinking, driven by an instinct he couldn't name. "Put it back!"
The mech's arm moved faster than human eyes could follow, backhanding him across the chest with enough force to lift him off his feet. Li Tian hit the ground hard, the air driven from his lungs in a explosive gasp. Stars danced across his vision as pain flared through his ribs.
But something else flared too—something deeper, hotter, rising from a place he hadn't known existed. As Li Tian struggled to breathe, to think, to make sense of what was happening, the ground beneath the mech began to tremble.
The tremor started small, barely enough to disturb the surface of the puddles forming in the rain. But it grew stronger, more insistent, until the entire field was shaking like a living thing trying to wake from a deep sleep. The mech's sensors swept frantically back and forth, trying to identify the source of the disturbance.
Then the earth split open.
It wasn't a gradual process—no slowly widening crack or gentle subsidence. One moment the ground was solid, the next it gaped like a wound, revealing darkness that seemed to drink in the fading daylight. And from that darkness, impossibly, came a hand.
Not metaphorically. Not symbolically. An actual hand, skeletal and ancient, its bones yellowed with age but somehow still intact. It clutched something—a pendant of some kind, its surface covered in verdigris but still recognizable as jade beneath the corrosion.
The mech's systems shrieked in electronic protest as a pulse of energy erupted from the open grave. Every amber light on its hull flickered and died, leaving it standing silent and motionless in the rain. Even the constant background hum of its power core faded to nothing.
Li Tian pushed himself up on his elbows, staring in horrified fascination at the skeletal hand. As he watched, something impossible happened—the air around the grave began to shimmer, and he could have sworn he heard a voice carried on the wind.
"You... are the last."
The words weren't spoken so much as felt, vibrating through his bones like the echo of some vast bell. Li Tian scrambled to his feet, his pain forgotten in the face of this new impossibility. The last what? The last fool stupid enough to live on a cursed farm? The last person naive enough to believe that honest work could overcome corporate greed?
He was about to voice these questions when something caught the fading light—a glint of crystal embedded in the corpse's ribcage. Without thinking, he took a step toward the grave, then another. The skeletal hand seemed to beckon him forward, its grip on the jade pendant relaxing as if in invitation.
Li Tian knelt at the edge of the pit and reached out with trembling fingers. The crystal was warm to the touch, roughly the size and shape of a playing card but infinitely more complex. Its surface was covered in patterns that seemed to shift and change when he wasn't looking directly at them, geometric designs that hurt his eyes if he stared too long.
The moment his skin made contact with the crystal, it began to dissolve.
Not crumble or shatter—dissolve, like sugar in hot tea. The crystalline substance flowed over his hand like liquid light, soaking into his skin with a sensation somewhere between burning and freezing. Li Tian tried to pull away, but his muscles wouldn't obey. He could only watch in fascination and growing terror as the crystal merged with his flesh, leaving no trace of its passage except a faint tingling that spread up his arm.
Then something flickered in the corner of his vision—a translucent panel that shouldn't exist, glowing softly with amber text.
[System Initializing...]
[Host Identified]
[Spiritual Signature: Purity 99.9%]
[Primordial Codex: ACTIVATED]
Li Tian's vision exploded into light and data, streams of information flowing across his awareness like water through a broken dam. He could see the mech in perfect detail despite its systems being offline—every joint, every servo, every potential point of failure highlighted in blues and reds and amber. He could see the pattern of its movement protocols, the weight distribution that would telegraph its next action, the exact angle required to disable its primary motivators.
How did he know any of this? He'd never seen the inside of a machine more complex than a hand-crank well pump. Yet the information was there, as clear and certain as his own name.
Behind him, the mech's systems came back online with a sound like breaking glass. Amber lights flared to life along its hull as emergency protocols engaged, trying to make sense of what had just happened. Li Tian turned to face it, and for the first time since the machine had landed, he wasn't afraid.
"Warning," the mech announced, its voice slightly distorted by whatever had interrupted its systems. "Anomalous readings have intensified. Initiating suppression protocols."
The machine's arm reconfigured itself with mechanical precision, plates sliding apart to reveal the business end of an energy weapon. Li Tian had seen similar devices in the corporate security footage that occasionally made it onto the public broadcasts—weapons designed to pacify rioters and discourage corporate espionage. Supposedly non-lethal, though the distinction seemed academic when faced with their business end.
The weapon began to charge with a sound like singing crystal, amber light building in its focusing chamber. Li Tian's new awareness painted targeting vectors across his vision, showing him exactly where the mech would aim, exactly when it would fire, exactly how fast he would need to move to avoid incineration.
The problem was, he'd never moved that fast in his life.
But his body seemed to have different ideas about what was possible. As the weapon discharged, Li Tian found himself diving left with inhuman speed, the energy beam passing through the space where he'd been standing with enough heat to char the air. He rolled, came up running, and his hand closed around the first weapon he could find—his grandfather's hoe, still lying where he'd dropped it when the mech first appeared.
The tool felt different in his hands. Heavier, somehow, but also more substantial. More real. Blue light began to flicker along its surface, following the grain of the wood and highlighting every nick in the metal blade.
Li Tian didn't understand what was happening to him, but he understood one thing with crystal clarity: the mech was between him and his home, between him and his grandmother, and he would be damned if he let it take the only family he had left.
The machine fired again, tracking his movement with mechanical precision. This time Li Tian didn't just dodge—he charged, using his new awareness to predict the weapon's targeting pattern. The energy beam scorched the ground beside him as he closed the distance, raising the hoe like a sword.
The blade connected with the mech's leg joint in a shower of sparks and shrieking metal. Li Tian felt the impact travel up his arms, but instead of jarring him to the bone as it should have, the blow felt perfectly balanced, perfectly controlled. The hoe's edge, charged with whatever energy was flowing through him, parted the mech's armor like paper.
Hydraulic fluid sprayed across the muddy ground as the machine's leg buckled. The mech tried to compensate, tried to bring its weapon to bear, but Li Tian was already moving. Another strike, this one aimed at the power coupling beneath the machine's arm. Sparks flew as circuits shorted and the energy weapon went dark.
The mech crashed to its knees, systems failing in cascade patterns that Li Tian could somehow read like text. He raised the hoe for what he knew would be the killing blow—
"Retreat! Retreat!" The voice came from inside the machine, transmitted through speakers that crackled with interference. "Unknown hostile encountered! Request immediate backup!"
The mech's remaining systems engaged emergency protocols, flooding its damaged leg actuators with stimulants and override commands. It managed to rise unsteadily to its feet, weapon arm hanging useless at its side, and began a shambling retreat toward the edge of the property.
Li Tian stood in the rain, watching it go, the hoe still glowing faintly in his hands. Part of him wanted to pursue, to finish what had been started. But a larger part was simply grateful to be alive.
As the mech's form disappeared into the storm clouds, Li Tian became aware of another presence behind him. He turned to find his grandmother standing in the doorway of their farmhouse, no longer bent with age and illness but standing straight and tall. Her eyes, which had been clouded with cataracts for as long as he could remember, now fixed on him with startling clarity.
"They will come for you now," she said, her voice carrying easily across the distance between them despite speaking barely above a whisper. "Like they came for your father."
The words hit Li Tian like a physical blow. "Grandmother, what do you mean? What happened to my parents?"
But before she could answer, another system panel materialized in his peripheral vision, its amber text pulsing with quiet urgency.
[Analysis Complete]
[Location: Ancient Cultivation Site - Dormant]
[Warning: This land is a grave. The corpse beneath is the reason cultivation died.]
[Recommendation: Prepare for incoming threats]
Li Tian looked down at his hands, where blue energy still flickered around his fingertips like captured lightning. Whatever had just happened to him, whatever he had become, it was only the beginning. He could feel it in his bones, in the strange new awareness that painted the world in impossible colors.
The rain continued to fall, washing the blood from his knuckles and the hydraulic fluid from his grandfather's hoe. But it couldn't wash away the questions that crowded his mind, or the growing certainty that his quiet life as a farmer was over.
In the distance, the lights of New Shanghai glittered like false stars, beautiful and cold and utterly indifferent to the small drama that had just played out in a muddy field. But Li Tian was no longer looking at the city with the eyes of someone who dreamed of escape.
He was looking at it with the eyes of someone who finally understood that some things were worth fighting for.
And somewhere beneath his feet, in the darkness of an ancient grave, something that had been waiting for a very long time finally began to smile.