The scent of Windchime Town was like a piece of rotten meat soaked in machine oil.
Raen stood under a rusted iron sign at the town entrance. The four crystal stakes in his chest throbbed faintly. Through his emerald left eye, the entire town was shrouded in an eerie dark red mist—that was the residue left from the mixture of mechanical and abyssal energies, like a layer of rotten gauze covering the crooked houses and cracked streets.
A hoarse voice came from the shadows. An old man wearing an oil-stained cloak squatted on an abandoned steam pipe. His right eye was a cloudy prosthetic, and his left hand toyed with several gear coins. At his feet curled a mechanical cat, its spine exposed, the grinding of its gears sounding like the breaths of a sick patient.
Raen didn't answer, only gently lifting the edge of his cloak to reveal the hilt of Frosttongue Sword. The silver-blue elven runes flickered faintly in the dim light, immediately silencing the old man.
"Hah, consider me talkative," the old man chuckled dryly, flipping the gear coins between his fingers. "Recently, those heading east are either running for their lives or looking to die—you look like the fourth kind."
"East?" Raen's fingertips brushed the sword's hilt. His emerald vision pierced through the mist, gazing toward the other end of the town. On the horizon, the fourth of the five dark red light pillars had become extremely glaring, and the farthest one—towards the Elven Forest—faintly emanated a sinister black hue.
The old man followed his gaze and suddenly lowered his voice: "Refugees from Glass City escaped here yesterday, about a dozen of them, said the land there's been overturned… There's an iron tree eating people." He made an exaggerated swallowing motion, and the gear coins clattered to the ground.
"If you want to go die, I won't stop you, but listen to the rules first—no magic in town, no asking what shouldn't be asked, and absolutely no…"
His words suddenly stopped.
At the end of the street, four figures draped in white linen floated slowly by, their feet hovering about four inches above the ground. Beneath the linen, metallic reflections glinted, and from where their heads should be, dark green mist seeped out continuously. On the walls they passed, mold instantly condensed into precise gear patterns.
Abyssal Pilgrims—low-level agents of the Council, specialized in gathering intelligence along border areas.
The old man shrank back into the shadows like a chicken whose neck was grabbed. Raen pressed down on the restless Frosttongue Sword. The four energies inside him maintained a delicate balance; the stakes' seals prevented him from fully unleashing his power but unexpectedly concealed energy fluctuations.
The Pilgrims suddenly stopped. The one in the middle lifted its "head," two green lights beneath the linen locking onto Raen's position.
"Life… response…"
The mechanical cat puffed up and screamed, breaking free from the old man's hand and darting into the sewer. Raen's dragon blood tattoos glowed faintly with heat, but more dangerous was the Life Seed in his chest—even sealed, it was resonating with the Corruption Seed in the distance.
The Pilgrims floated closer, the linen moving as if blown by an invisible wind. The foremost one suddenly extended its "hand"—which was no limb but a shapeshifting tentacle made of countless tiny gears, etched with blood-sucking runes.
"Detection… necessary…"
The tentacle struck like a poisonous snake toward Raen's chest!
The rusty tavern sign creaked in the wind.
Raen sat in a corner, poor-quality beer gleaming with metallic luster in his cup. Four "corpses" were stacked in the back warehouse—if those mechanical puppets burned out by the [Dragonfire Implosion] could be called corpses at all.
"You're fucking crazy?!" The bartender—a burly man with both arms replaced by mechanical prosthetics—slammed a rag onto the table. "The Pilgrims report to the Council every four days! Tomorrow a purge squad will be here!"
"Then we talk somewhere else." Raen pushed over a Faen silver coin; his emerald left eye glowed faintly. "Where are the Glass City refugees?"
The coin spun on the table, humming with a pure tone. The bartender's mechanical eye kept adjusting its focus, eventually succumbing to the lure of the ancient currency.
"Second floor, fourth door." He lowered his voice. "But don't expect to get anything out of them—those who escaped alive are all crazy."
The wooden stairs groaned beneath Raen's feet. His fingertips brushed over mold patches on the wall. The emerald vision scanned for residual information: at least seven different races had stayed here, the newest traces less than two days old, carrying the unique alchemical radiation signature of Glass City.
The door was unlocked.
As it opened, a stench of rot hit Raen's nose. Five or six ragged people huddled on a moldy carpet; some wept quietly, others stared at the walls with vacant grins. The only alert one was a gnome wearing a monocle, nervously scribbling in a notebook with trembling hands.
"A scholar?" Raen crouched down, flipping the silver coin between his fingers.
The gnome's pupils suddenly constricted. "Fa—Faen silver coin… You're from the Holy Alliance?"
"Used to be." Raen pocketed the coin, the Frosttongue Sword's scabbard lightly tapped the floor, and the silver-blue aura of [Calm Spell] quietly spread. The refugees' sobbing gradually ceased, vacant eyes gaining focus.
The eye behind the monocle blinked. "Grimm, archivist from the Fourth Alchemy Institute in Glass City… We saw it come alive with our own eyes."
His mechanical prosthetic leg clicked as he pulled out a memory crystal from his pocket. When activated, the projected image made Raen's dragon blood boil instantly—
In Glass City's central plaza, the mechanical giant tree's roots tore through the earth. Countless incubation pods hung like fruits among the branches; inside each floated a child. At the crown, twelve robed figures were performing a ritual. The glowing liquid in their hands flowed into the trunk, gradually turning the giant tree's metal surface into… flesh and blood.
"The first day was just an earthquake," Grimm's voice trembled. "By the second day, all the mechanical creations started going haywire. By the fourth day…"
The image shifted. A robed figure pulled back their hood, revealing a face similar to Erica from Raen's memories—only younger and more… perfect. Her mechanical eye gleamed pure gold, and on her chest was the same mark as the baby's.
"The first-generation vessel," Grimm's teeth chattered. "That's what they called her. When the moon is completely covered by gears, she'll open the gate…"
Raen suddenly pressed the memory crystal to pause. In the last few frames, a familiar purple-gold glow appeared at the base of the giant tree—fleeting, but unmistakable.
Ravenna's heart was still beating.
"Are there any other survivors?"
Grimm shook his head. "When we escaped, the east wall was still standing, but later…" He pointed outside.
Beneath the dark red sky, mechanical birds patrolled. Their wings were sharp metal blades; their abdomens housed pulse devices that emitted waves disrupting magic with every beat.
Abyssal Messengers: Longfeathers—deadlier than the models from Glass City times.
The floor suddenly trembled. The bartender rushed upstairs; the hydraulic pipes in his mechanical arm burst. "The Purge Squad is here! They brought [Life Detectors]!"
Raen's emerald left eye scanned the street: five four-meter-tall [Abyssal Executioners] were going door to door searching. The leader's chest-mounted scanner beeped incessantly, like a countdown from the Grim Reaper.
Worse yet—the Life Seed inside Raen violently trembled, resonating with the detector!
"Through the back alley!" Grimm pushed open a hidden door. "Follow the Rust River to the end, there's a—"
Suddenly, the entire wall exploded.
The executioners' chainsaw arms tore through the bricks, the jagged teeth just half an inch from Grimm's skull. Raen drew Frostwhisper; Frost Nova exploded in the confined space, freezing the joints of two executioners with extreme cold. But the remaining four had already locked onto their targets, their chest-mounted Life Extractors beginning to charge!
"Get down!"
As Raen dove over Grimm, a green light swept the previous spot—two refugees were hit directly, instantly aging into dried husks. The mechanical voice of the executioners announced coldly:
"Life Seed detected… recovery protocol… initiating…"
Suddenly, the tavern's roof collapsed. A small figure fell from above, her metallic right arm piercing the energy core of the lead executioner!
Purple-gold electric sparks surged wildly; the executioner convulsed as if short-circuiting. The attacker used the momentum to flip, landing on the table before Raen—
A girl about twelve or thirteen years old.
Her left eye was a mechanical prosthetic; her right eye pure purple-gold. Her right arm was fully mechanical, with flowing patterns identical to Ravenna's; and her chest—
No heartbeat.
"Follow me," the girl's voice crackled with electronic distortion. "If you want to see 'her.'"
The Rust River was actually an abandoned industrial drainage canal.
Raen followed the girl running through the pipes, behind them the burning wreckage of five executioners. The girl's mechanical arm emitted high-frequency pulses, temporarily disrupting the trackers' signals.
"Who are you?" Raen's emerald vision scanned her mechanical structure—highly similar to Ravenna's alchemical design, but more… primitive.
"Code name Gamma, first-generation failure," the girl didn't look back. "'Mother' considered emotions a flaw, so she scrapped us."
At the end of the tunnel was a rusted submarine pod. The moment the hatch opened, Raen's four energies surged wildly—inside, suspended in the central life-support device, floated half a purple-golden heart!
Countless wires connected to it, each beat pumping alchemical energy to sustain over a dozen children around it. These children bore varying degrees of mechanical modifications, but all had faint glows on their chests—artificial, degraded Life Seeds.
"She used herself as the power source," Gamma gently touched the life-support device. "When we escaped, only this fragment remained of her."
Raen pressed his hand against the glass dome. Though only half a heart, the familiar energy fluctuations unmistakably belonged to—
"Ravenna…"
Suddenly, the pod's screen lit up. In the blurry image, mechanical tree branches wrapped around a purple-golden light cluster; with each contraction, more energy was extracted. At the treetop, white-robed figures stood in a circle around a gradually forming female silhouette.
"They're reconstructing her," Gamma's mechanical eye flickered wildly. "Using the 'Mother's' mechanical gifts and her own alchemy… When the moon is completely devoured…"
The screen switched. The gear-moon now showed only one last arc uncorrupted—the arc's endpoint was the direction of the Elven Forest.
Grimm suddenly grabbed Raen's cloak. "Legend says when the Life Ancient God fell, its last power turned into a seed… The Council doesn't want to unleash the Corruption Seed…"
"But to replace it," Raen finally realized. "To use a mechanized false god to substitute the Life Seed."
The submarine pod trembled violently. Gamma's mechanical arm projected a holographic map—red dots marked at least twenty executioners surrounding the Rust River exit.
"No time left." She operated the console. "The pod can take you downstream to the Elven ruins, but—"
Raen suddenly pressed her shoulder. "What about the children?"
Gamma's purple-golden right eye blinked, revealing a weariness beyond her years. "We have our own mission."
She pulled a small device from her pocket and pressed a button. Instantly, all the children's mechanical parts lit up simultaneously—an ominous sign of overload.
"Wait!" Raen's jade left eye tracked the flow of energy. "You're going to self-destruct?"
"No." Gamma smiled. "We're going home."
She pointed at the screen. In the image of the mechanical giant tree, one of the cultivation pods suddenly lit up with a purple-golden spot—like a lighthouse in the darkness.
"She left us coordinates… and a final gift."
The submarine pod began to descend. Through the murky viewport, Raen saw Gamma and the children standing hand in hand on the shore. As the first Executioner burst through the tunnel entrance, all the children's chests simultaneously bloomed with light—
That light was not an explosion, but a teleportation.
Twenty purple-golden beams shot into the sky, flying toward the mechanical giant tree, while the submarine sank into the polluted depths, carrying the last hope toward the Elven Forest.
Raen clenched Frostwhisper Sword tightly; the four crystal spikes in his chest vibrated with a buzzing hum.
This time, there was no turning back.