The ancestral hall was thick with the scent of burning incense and simmering rage.
The Luo family council had assembled in full force—elders in their ceremonial armor, generals with plasma scars still fresh on their skin, scholars clutching data-slates filled with casualty reports. The holographic war table at the center displayed a rotating model of the Long family's stronghold in Fuzhou, its defenses marked in glaring red.
Elder Wu slammed his fist onto the table, making the hologram flicker. "We must retaliate! Strike Fuzhou's eastern garrison before they finish mobilizing!"
A chorus of agreement rose from the younger warriors.
Luo Jinhai sat motionless at the head of the table, his face carved from stone.
Yuchen watched his grandfather's hands—veined and weathered, the knuckles white where they gripped the armrests. The old man's silence was more telling than any outburst.
"And how many of our sons and daughters will die for that strike?" Jinhai's voice was quiet, but it cut through the room like a blade. "The Long family outnumbers us three-to-one in functional mechas. Their battleship fleet is at full strength. Ours?" He gestured to a shattered holographic projection of the Luo's last remaining mecha battalion—scorched husks from the desert ambush. "We lost all twelve Rank-4 Fenghuang-class units in the wastelands. What exactly do you propose we attack with?"
The room fell silent.
Elder Wu's jaw worked, but no rebuttal came.
Yuchen's nails bit into his palms.
This wasn't just strategy.
This was surrender.
Dawn found Yuchen in the fortress's highest tower, watching the first light creep across Lanzhou's terraced rooftops. The city was beautiful in the pale gold morning—a masterpiece of floating gardens and cascading waterfalls, its defensive energy shields shimmering like soap bubbles.
It was also indefensible in a prolonged siege.
Xing pressed against his leg, the pup's warmth a steady comfort.
"Didn't expect to find you moping up here."
Jiang limped into view, his mechanical leg whirring softly. He carried two steaming cups of bitter Xining black tea, the scent sharp enough to cut through the morning chill.
"I'm not moping," Yuchen said, accepting the cup. "I'm thinking."
"Same damn thing." The old engineer leaned against the railing, his gaze tracing the distant smudge of mountains where the Long family territories began. "Your grandfather's right, you know. We can't win a straight fight."
Yuchen's cup cracked slightly in his grip. "So we just let them attack us? Let them poison our air, sabotage our Phoenix—?"
"Did I say that?" Jiang's grin was all teeth. "I said we can't win their way. Never said we couldn't invent a new way."
The old man pulled a data-chip from his pocket and tossed it to Yuchen. The holographic display that flickered to life showed schematics—ancient ones, pre-Collapse, marked with the Luo sigil.
Mechas.
But unlike anything Yuchen had ever seen.
"The Zhuque-class prototypes," Jiang murmured. "Designed right after the Awakening, when we first bonded with the Phoenix. Never went into full production—too unstable, too alive."
Yuchen zoomed in on the central reactor design. His breath caught.
It wasn't a standard plasma core.
It was a fusion engine—one that required Phoenix feathers as catalysts.
"You're saying we could build these?"
Jiang snorted. "Kid, I'm saying you will build them. Just not here."
He tapped the hologram, shifting the display to a sprawling complex nestled in the mountains beyond Xining.
"Our real forge was never in Lanzhou. It's there. And it's been waiting."
The Luo Dynasty's territory was smaller than most—four fortified cities linked by underground mag-lev tunnels:
First, Lanzhou - The ancestral heart, where the Phoenix slept beneath the fortress.
Second, Xining - The industrial spine, home to weapons labs and mecha foundries.
Third, Yinchuan - The agricultural hub, its terraced fields feeding the nation.
Forth, Golmud - The military spearhead, guarding the western wastelands.
"All our mechas were born in Xining's core forges," Jiang explained as they pored over maps in the archives. "But after the Collapse, we moved production underground. Literally."
The schematics showed a labyrinth of tunnels beneath Xining's mountains, shielded from orbital scans and seismic probes. At its center—
"The Chongming Facility," Jiang said, with the reverence most reserved for sacred texts. "Where we built the first Fenghuang units. Where your father designed the plasma lances that won the Wei-Xing border wars."
Yuchen's throat tightened.
He'd known his father was a strategist, a leader.
Not an engineer.
Not like him.
Xing nosed at the hologram, his ears pricking forward.
"How soon can we leave?" Yuchen asked.
Jiang's grin was feral. "Thought you'd never ask."
They left at midnight, disguised as a supply caravan bound for Yinchuan.
Jinhai said nothing when Yuchen came to bid farewell—just clasped his grandson's shoulders with crushing force and pressed an ancient key into his palm. The metal was warm, etched with phoenix feathers.
"The forge answers to blood," was all he said.
The journey west was tense. Every shadow could hide Long family scouts; every canyon might conceal an ambush. But Xing's enhanced senses kept them off main roads, his nose twitching at the faintest trace of foreign tech or unwashed bodies.
Three days of hard travel brought them to Xining's outer defenses—a series of checkpoints manned by Luo soldiers in light mecha exoskeletons. Their commander, a grizzled woman with a plasma burn across her cheek, recognized Jiang instantly.
"Took you long enough, old man."
Jiang flipped her off. "Nice to see you too, Mei."
The mountain pass beyond the checkpoint looked unremarkable—just another rocky slope dotted with scrub grass. Until Commander Mei pressed her palm to a hidden scanner, and the very mountain opened.
The tunnel beyond sloped downward, lit by bioluminescent fungi that pulsed gently as they passed. The air grew cooler, then warmer, then charged—like the moments before a lightning strike.
Then the tunnel ended.
And Xining's heart lay before them.
The Chongming Facility was a cathedral of fire and steel.
Massive gantries stretched toward a vaulted ceiling where automated drones flitted like bats. Half-assembled mecha frames hung suspended in magnetic fields, their skeletal forms gleaming. And at the center of it all—
A forge powered not by electricity or plasma, but by a single, eternal flame.
A Phoenix feather's fire.
Jiang let out a shaky breath. "Home sweet home."
Yuchen stepped forward, the key burning in his grip.
Somewhere deep below, machinery stirred.
Waiting.
Hungry.
The Chongming Facility hummed with latent energy as Yuchen stood before the holographic schematics of the proposed Tier-5 battleship. The blueprints flickered in the dim light, casting jagged reflections across the reinforced alloy walls.
Old Jiang leaned against a console, arms crossed, his mechanical leg whirring softly. "You realize what you're asking for, kid? A Tier-5 battleship isn't just a weapon—it's a statement. The kind that makes the Long family piss their silk robes."
Yuchen didn't smile. "Good."
Xing, now fully grown into his Celestial Hound form, let out a low rumble of agreement. His golden eyes tracked the holographic projections with eerie intelligence.
The Luo family council chamber was silent as Yuchen laid out his plans.
"We don't just need to rebuild—we need to surpass," he said, gesturing to the floating schematics. "The Crimson Flame Command Unit and Crimson Scar Unit will be our answer to the Long family's numerical advantage."
The designs were sleek, deadly.
- Crimson Flame Command Unit: A heavy-armored mecha with integrated plasma lances and adaptive camouflage, designed for frontline command and shock assaults.
- Crimson Scar Unit: A lighter, modular frame capable of switching between stealth infiltration and long-range sniper configurations in minutes.
Elder Wu's wrinkled face twisted in skepticism. "And where, precisely, do you plan to source the materials? Our mines are depleted, and buying refined ore would bankrupt us."
Yuchen tapped the display, shifting the projection to a map of the wastelands. Red dots marked scrapyards, ruined battlefields, even the skeletal remains of pre-Collapse cities.
"We don't buy refined metal. We take what others threw away."
A murmur rippled through the elders.
"You want us to become scavengers?" spat Elder Feng, his jade-tipped cane clacking against the floor.
"No," Yuchen countered. "I want us to become alchemists."
He pulled a small ingot from his belt—a dull, mottled metal that shimmered oddly under the light.
"Mutated ore alloy. Smelted from wreckage in Xining's forges. Stronger than titanium, lighter than carbon fiber. And it resonates with Phoenix energy."
The elders leaned forward despite themselves.
Jiang smirked. "Kid's got a point. Why pay for steak when you can get a feast for free from the trash?"
The real controversy came with the second part of Yuchen's proposal.
"Qinghai Lake," he said, the hologram shifting to display the vast body of water northwest of Lanzhou. "We build our shipyard beneath it."
The chamber erupted.
"Impossible!"
"The beast infestations—"
"The water pressure alone—"
Luo Jinhai raised a hand, and silence fell like a guillotine.
"Explain."
Yuchen zoomed in on the lake's topography. "The lake is nearly the size of Lanzhao itself. Its depths are already home to Rank E-F aquatic beasts—harmless if left alone. We cull the higher-tier threats, then use nano-sealant technology to create an airtight dome beneath the surface."
He tapped another command. The hologram showed a submerged structure, its curved walls reinforced with the same mutated alloy.
"The water becomes our camouflage. No satellite scans, no prying eyes. Just a dead zone where our enemies will see nothing."
Jiang whistled. "And when the battleship's ready? You gonna part the damn waters like some ancient prophet?"
Yuchen's lips quirked. "No. We'll fly it out."
The schematics shifted again, revealing the proposed Tier-5 battleship in all its terrifying glory—a sleek, dagger-shaped vessel with gravitic thrusters and plasma-shielded hull plating.
"The Vermilion Sovereign," Yuchen announced. "Hybrid carrier-battleship. Capable of deploying all twelve new mecha units simultaneously. And armed with this."
The weapon schematic made even Jinhai lean forward.
A railgun system powered by compressed Phoenix feathers.
Elder Wu's voice was hushed. "That's... that's a city-killer."
Yuchen met his grandfather's gaze. "No. It's a deterrent."
The council debated for hours. Concerns were raised—resources, security, the sheer audacity of the plan.
But in the end, there was only one question that mattered.
Jinhai stood, his aged frame casting a long shadow.
"All in favor?"
Hands rose. Slowly at first, then all at once.
The old patriarch nodded.
"Begin immediately."
By dawn, the first salvage teams were already moving.
Luo engineers in radiation-shielded exoskeletons picked through the carcasses of dead mechas in the wastelands. Barges dredged Qinghai Lake for pre-Collapse metal deposits. Even the family's children joined in, sorting through junk piles with an enthusiasm that turned grim work into a treasure hunt.
Yuchen oversaw it all from a makeshift command post on the lake's shore, Xing prowling the perimeter with watchful intensity.
Jiang handed him a steaming cup of tea, his grizzled face unreadable. "You know the Long family will hear about this eventually."
Yuchen watched as a crane lifted the rusted skeleton of a Wei-Xing Titan from the lakebed.
"Let them."
Somewhere beneath Qinghai's placid surface, the first foundations of the Vermilion Sovereign were being laid.
And the world had no idea what was coming.
The foundries of Xining burned day and night.
Great crucibles of blackened steel glowed cherry-red along the mountain's hollowed belly, their contents bubbling with molten promise. Workers in heat-resistant suits moved like shadows through the steam and smoke, their visors reflecting the unnatural shimmer of the mutated metals being born within.
Yuchen stood at the central observation platform, his hands braced against the railing as he watched another batch of scrap being fed into the largest furnace. The wreckage of a Long family hover-tank hissed as it slid into the flames, its alloy skin peeling away like dead flesh.
"Still think this will work?"
Jiang's voice was barely audible over the roar of the fires. The old engineer stood beside him, a data-slate clutched in his grease-stained hands. Numbers scrolled across its surface—temperature readings, molecular stability indexes, energy resonance levels.
Yuchen didn't answer immediately. His eyes tracked the progress of a massive robotic arm as it stirred the molten pool with a rod of purified Phoenix feather-core. The moment the two materials made contact, the liquid metal shuddered, its color shifting from orange to a deep, pulsating crimson.
"It's working," he said at last.
The proof was in the ingot taking shape at the casting station—a slab of mottled grey metal streaked with veins of glowing red. As the workers quenched it in a bath of ionized water, the metal sang, a harmonic vibration that made the entire facility's lights flicker.
Xing, perched on a gantry above, let out a low whine. His ears flattened against his skull.
Jiang scowled at the readings. "Resonance levels are 30% higher than projected. That's not just mutated ore anymore, kid. That's something new."
Yuchen stepped closer to the cooling ingot. He could feel the energy radiating from it, a warmth that had nothing to do with residual heat. When he pressed his palm against its surface, the Luo markings on his wrist flared in response.
"We'll call it Phoenix Steel," he murmured.
Assembly Bay Seven smelled of ozone and fresh grease.
The skeleton of the first Crimson Flame Command Unit hung suspended in its cradle, its frame only half-complete. Technicians swarmed over it like ants, welding reinforced plating to its titanium-alloy bones. At eighteen meters tall, it already dwarfed the older Fenghuang-class models, its proportions broader, more brutal.
Yuchen circled the platform, examining every joint, every weld.
"The reactor housing is too exposed," he said, pointing to the mecha's spine. "One lucky shot there and the whole unit goes critical."
Chief Engineer Mei Lin wiped sweat from her brow with the back of her hand. "We're waiting on the next batch of Phoenix Steel for the armor plating. Until then—"
"Improvisation." Yuchen grabbed a stylus and sketched directly on the holographic schematic floating beside them. The image shifted as he redesigned the housing on the fly, adding overlapping plates that would slide into place during combat. "Interlocking segments. They'll shift with the mecha's movements but seal tight under impact."
Mei studied the changes, her lips pursed. "That'll add at least two hundred kilograms to the overall weight."
"Which is why we're using the new alloy for the leg actuators." Yuchen tapped the blueprint where the mecha's thighs would be. "Fifty percent stronger than standard hydraulics. Test results came back this morning."
A chime sounded from the overhead comms.
"Director Luo to the control room. Priority alert."
Jiang's voice held an edge Yuchen hadn't heard since the desert ambush.
The surveillance footage was grainy but unmistakable.
A convoy of Long family hover-transports, slinking through the deadlands just fifty kilometers east of Qinghai Lake. Their insignia had been scrubbed from the vehicles' hulls, but the telltale dragon-shaped bulks of Jiao-class mechas walking escort were impossible to miss.
Jiang zoomed in on one transport's open cargo hatch.
"See that? Those are deep-earth seismic scanners. The kind you use for finding underground bases."
Yuchen's fingers tightened around the edge of the console. "How long have they been there?"
"Scouts spotted them at dawn. They're moving slow—methodical. Like they know something's here but can't pin it down yet."
On the screen, one of the Jiao mechas paused, its sensor array swiveling toward the camera's hidden position. The feed dissolved into static.
Xing growled, his tail lashing.
Yuchen stared at the frozen image—the Long family's war machines standing just beyond the horizon, closer than anyone had dared come in decades.
"We need more time," he said quietly.
Jiang snorted. "What we need is a distraction."
The plan was simple.
Dangerously so.
Yuchen stood before the Luo council once more, the holographic map displaying their territories glowing between them.
"We let them find a base. Just not the base."
His fingers traced a path along the Qilian Mountains north of Qinghai.
"There's an abandoned mining complex here—pre-Collapse uranium excavations. We reactivate it. Make it look like we're building something worth hiding."
Elder Wu stroked his wispy beard. "And when they attack this decoy?"
"We give them a show." Yuchen brought up schematics of the Fenghuang-class mechas—their oldest, nearly decommissioned units. "Outdated models, rigged with remote controls and enough plasma charges to make a nice fireworks display."
Jiang grinned. "Nothing like a good explosion to convince people you've lost something valuable."
Jinhai had been silent throughout the presentation. Now he leaned forward, his aged eyes sharp.
"And the real facility?"
Yuchen met his grandfather's gaze.
"We go dark. Complete communications blackout. No signals in or out until the Vermilion Sovereign is operational."
The silence stretched.
Then Jinhai nodded.
"Make it happen."
Two nights later, the "mining complex" lit up with activity.
Luo engineers in full radiation gear marched in formation between prefabricated structures. Dummy mechas stood sentry at the gates, their reactors pulsing with just enough energy to fool long-range scans. And beneath it all—hidden tunnels filled with enough explosives to level a city block.
Yuchen watched from a camouflaged bunker three ridges away, his eyes glued to the thermal displays.
"They're taking the bait," murmured Commander Mei.
On the screens, heat signatures emerged from the eastern tree line—twelve humanoid forms moving with trained precision. Long family infiltrators.
Xing's ears twitched. He could likely hear their footsteps from here.
Jiang adjusted the detonator in his hands. "Another five minutes. Let them get nice and comfortable."
Yuchen exhaled slowly. This was the delicate part. Too soon, and the Long family would suspect a trap. Too late, and they might discover the ruse.
A new alert flashed on the console—a secondary team approaching from the north.
"Shit," Mei hissed. "They brought a Shui-class scanner mech. That thing'll see right through our decoys."
Yuchen made the decision instantly.
"Trigger it now."
Jiang didn't hesitate.
The mountain erupted.
The fireball lit up the night sky, visible even from Lanzhou's highest towers.
By dawn, Long family retrieval teams were already picking through the smoldering wreckage. They found just enough to confirm their suspicions—scorched mecha parts bearing Luo sigils, shattered comms equipment, even a few "classified" documents (carefully forged by Jiang's team).
The message was clear: the Luo Dynasty had been building something in secret.
And now it was gone.
Deep beneath Qinghai Lake, shielded by a hundred meters of water and a dome of Phoenix Steel, the Vermilion Sovereign's skeleton grew by the hour.
Yuchen walked its length, his boots ringing against the metal gangways. The battleship's spine stretched nearly three hundred meters already, its curved ribs awaiting the armor that would make it whole.
In the adjacent hangar, the first completed Crimson Flame unit stood ready for testing, its armor gleaming dully under the work lights.
Jiang joined him at the observation deck, two cups of bitter Xining tea in hand.
"Decoy worked like a charm. Long family's pulling back their scouts." He took a sip, made a face. "Now comes the hard part."
Yuchen nodded, watching as workers scrambled over the battleship's growing frame.
Somewhere above, the world thought the Luo family was broken.
Let them think it.
For now.
The desert outside Golmud City had been a testing ground for generations.
Sun-bleached bones of failed prototypes littered the dunes, half-buried monuments to the Luo family's relentless pursuit of power. Today, the sands would bear witness to something new.
Yuchen stood at the observation bunker's reinforced window, his breath fogging the glass as the dawn light painted the wastes in hues of blood and gold. Behind him, the family elders murmured amongst themselves—some skeptical, others barely containing their anticipation.
Only Jinhai remained silent, his gnarled hands resting atop his cane, his gaze fixed on the metal behemoth standing at the test zone's center.
The Crimson Flame Command Unit waited like a slumbering god.
Eighteen meters of Phoenix Steel and ambition.
"Begin the activation sequence," Yuchen ordered.
The comms crackled. "Powering primary reactor."
Deep within the mecha's chest, the Phoenix-feather core ignited.
The desert screamed.
At first, everything proceeded as expected.
- Hydraulic systems pressurized with a satisfying hiss
- Sensor arrays booted up, painting the terrain in crisp holographic detail
- Plasma lances hummed to life along the mecha's forearms
Then the resonance started.
The Phoenix Steel plating shivered, its mottled surface rippling like liquid before settling into new, sharper angles. The veins of crimson running through the alloy pulsed in time with the reactor's rhythm—not just reflecting light, but producing it.
Elder Wu stumbled back from the observation glass. "What in the nine hells—?"
The mecha took its first step.
And the ground melted.
Where its foot touched, the sand fused into glass, radiating outward in a perfect circle. The air itself distorted around the machine, heat haze forming a phantom silhouette of wings.
Jiang's voice cut through the stunned silence. "That's not in the specs."
Yuchen's fingers tightened around the comm unit. "Pilot report."
The response came through gritted teeth. "Systems nominal but—hngh—it's like the damn thing's alive. Reactor output climbing past safety limits!"
The holographic displays confirmed it. Energy readings spiked into the red, yet the mecha showed no signs of distress. If anything, it moved smoother now, its motions fluid where they should have been mechanical.
Jinhai's cane struck the floor. "Shut it down."
Yuchen hesitated. "Grandfather, we need to understand—"
"Now."
The kill command was sent.
The Crimson Flame unit went still.
But the glow in its chest took thirty-seven seconds longer to fade than it should have.
The debriefing chamber beneath Golmud's fortress was thick with tension.
Pilot Chen sat wrapped in a thermal blanket, his hands still shaking from the neural feedback. "It wasn't just responding to my controls," he rasped. "It was... anticipating them. Like it knew what I wanted before I did."
Jiang scowled at the diagnostic reports. "That's impossible. Even with AI assist, neural sync lag is—"
"Unless the metal itself is retaining memory," interrupted Elder Mei, her fingers tracing the strange patterns now visible on the mecha's salvaged plating. "The Phoenix Steel wasn't just forged from scrap. It was forged from Luo scrap. Our battles. Our victories. Our history."
A hush fell over the room.
Yuchen picked up a discarded fragment of armor. The moment his skin made contact, his vision blurred—
A battlefield. The scent of burning plasma. A warrior's last stand—
He dropped the metal with a gasp.
Jinhai's eyes narrowed. "You saw something."
"It remembers," Yuchen breathed.
Xing, who had been silent throughout, let out a low whine. His golden eyes reflected the flickering emergency lights—and something older.
Something knowing.
Five hundred kilometers east, in a darkened surveillance outpost overlooking Qinghai Lake, Long Fei studied the satellite feeds with growing frustration.
"Nothing. No activity. No heat signatures. Just... water." He slammed his fist on the console. "The Luo don't just abandon projects. Where the hell are they really building?"
His scout captain swallowed hard. "Sir, our seismics did pick up something... unusual. The lake's thermal currents are wrong. Too regular. Almost like—"
"Like something's disturbing them from below." Long Fei's smile was venomous. "Dispatch the Shui-class units. Full underwater sweep."
The scout paled. "But the beasts—"
"Are the least of our problems if the Luo complete whatever monstrosity they're hiding down there."
As the orders went out, none noticed the small drone—Luo-designed, no larger than a songbird—that detached from the outpost's roof and vanished into the night.
Yuchen received the alert in Golmud's war room.
"Long family's sending submersibles to Qinghai," Jiang reported, tossing the drone's data to the main display. "We've got maybe forty-eight hours before they find the dome."
The elders erupted in protests.
"We need to move the project!"
"Impossible at this stage—"
"Then we fight—"
Yuchen silenced them with a raised hand.
"We distract them." He pulled up a map of the Long family's territories, zooming in on the sprawling supply depots outside Fuzhou. "Their western garrison stocks fifty percent of their frontline munitions here. Barely guarded—they think we're too weak to strike that deep."
Jiang's grin was feral. "Let me guess. You want to burn it."
"Not us." Yuchen tapped the display, highlighting the winding path of the Ganjiang River. "The Crimson Scar prototype is ready for field testing. Stealth configuration. One mecha, in and out before they know what hit them."
Jinhai studied his grandson for a long moment. Then, slowly, he nodded.
"Make sure they see the flames from Fuzhou's towers."
The Crimson Scar moved like a ghost.
Clad in its stealth plating—another Phoenix Steel innovation—the mecha was little more than a heat shimmer as it waded through the Ganjiang's murky waters. Its pilot, a grizzled veteran named Shao, had handpicked the infiltration team himself.
"Thermal scans show twenty guards on perimeter," came the whisper over comms. "All ground units. No mecha patrols."
Shao's voice was calm. "Plant the charges on the fuel silos first. Let the fireworks cover our exit."
The operation took precisely six minutes and forty-three seconds.
The first explosion lit up the night like false dawn.
By the time Long family reinforcements arrived, their entire western munitions stock was an inferno—and the attacker had vanished without a trace.
The alert reached Long Fei just as his submersibles were preparing to dive into Qinghai's depths.
"Fuzhou's under attack!"
He stared at the footage—Luo-style plasma burns crisping the depot's remains.
"A trick," he snarled. "They want us looking west while—"
His comms officer interrupted. "Sir! New seismic activity at the Qilian site!"
The monitors flickered to life, showing fresh energy signatures blooming where the decoy base had been destroyed.
Long Fei's fist clenched. "Divide the forces. Half to Fuzhou. Half to Qilian."
As his subordinates scrambled to obey, none noticed his lingering stare at Qinghai's placid surface.
Or the doubt in his eyes.
Back in Golmud, Yuchen watched the reports come in with quiet satisfaction.
"They took the bait," Jiang confirmed. "Pulled three Jiao units off the lake patrol."
Jinhai studied the holograms, his expression unreadable. "This buys us time. Not victory."
Yuchen nodded. "Then we'll use it well."
Outside, the first Crimson Flame unit stood ready under the desert stars—its Phoenix Steel skin still humming with latent energy, its reactor core dreaming of fire.
And deep beneath Qinghai Lake, the Vermilion Sovereign grew closer to waking.