Waking was not a single event. It was a series of failed restarts, each one a fresh wave of agony.
First came the pain, a low, systemic throb that seemed to originate from his very bone marrow. Then came the cold—a deep, seeping dampness that had leeched all warmth from his limbs. He was lying face-down in mud and decomposing leaves, the organic, earthy stench filling his nostrils along with the metallic tang of his own dried blood.
His mind, a precision instrument now reduced to a rusted, sputtering engine, struggled for purchase. It latched onto the last coherent thought before the darkness took him: Water. Medicine.
The thought was a command. A line of code in a corrupted program that still, somehow, insisted on running.
He pushed himself up with an arm that trembled under the strain. The world tilted violently, a smear of greens and browns. He stayed on his hands and knees for a long moment, breathing shallowly, waiting for the vertigo to pass. He was a machine running on emergency power, every non-essential function shut down.
Only when the world solidified did he turn his attention to the bundle clutched to his chest.
He laid Chi Tong on a patch of moss, his movements slow and deliberate, mimicking the care of a bomb disposal expert. The sight was a physical blow. The silver carapace, once a symbol of transcendent evolution, was now just damaged metal. The cracks had widened, and a viscous, dark fluid—a horrifying mixture of silver blood and internal hemolymph—was still oozing sluggishly from the grievous wound on its abdomen.
Lin Ke placed two fingers on Chi Tong's neck, just below the head segment. He wasn't feeling for a pulse in the human sense; he was sensing for the faint, rhythmic vibration of its internal energy circulatory system.
It was there. But it was weak, erratic. A flickering light bulb about to go out.
His scientific mind, cold and detached even in the depths of his despair, began its diagnosis.
Problem 1: Systemic Energy Cascade Failure. The final, desperate attack had not just depleted Chi Tong's energy; it had overloaded every channel, every node. The biological components that regulated this flow were fried. It was like running a supercomputer's voltage through a desktop motherboard. The result was cellular breakdown and rampant internal hemorrhaging.
Problem 2: Exoskeletal Integrity Compromised. The cracks were more than cosmetic. They were structural failures. They exposed the delicate inner workings to infection and prevented the creature from maintaining proper internal pressure.
Problem 3: Shock. A predictable, but lethal, consequence of the first two problems.
The conclusion was simple and brutal: without immediate intervention far beyond his capabilities, Chi Tong was actively dying. The process of decay was not a possibility; it was an ongoing algorithm. His only role was to find a way to interrupt it.
He tore a strip of cloth from the bottom of his own shirt. It was filthy, but it was all he had. He gently, carefully, tried to clean the worst of the grime from the main wound, his touch as light as a whisper. Chi Tong didn't even flinch. It was too far gone.
The act felt hollow, useless. A ritual to appease his own crushing guilt. He was the one who had pushed it this far. This was the result of his ambition, his calculation. The equation had balanced, and Chi Tong was the price written on the other side. The thought didn't just bring guilt; it brought a cold, clarifying self-loathing. He had been arrogant. He had been a fool.
But self-loathing was a luxury he couldn't afford. Survival was the only morality that mattered now.
Water.
The command resurfaced. Dehydration would kill him before he could even begin to solve Chi Tong's problems. And if he died, Chi Tong's last, faint hope died with him.
Leaving Chi Tong hidden in the hollow of a large, gnarled root system, he began to move. He didn't walk. He stumbled, using trees for support, his body a dead weight he had to drag through the oppressive humidity. This part of the jungle was different. The trees were older, their canopies thicker, strangling the light. The air was heavy, still, and pregnant with the sounds of things he couldn't see.
He followed the slope of the land, a basic principle of survival. Water flows downhill.
He found it after what felt like an eternity. A stream, not clear and bubbling, but slow and dark, its water the color of steeped tea, stained by the tannins of millennia of fallen leaves. It snaked through the forest floor, bordered by thick, black mud and strange, fleshy-looking ferns.
He fell to his knees at its edge, scooping the murky water into his hands. He paused for a second, his scientific mind screaming at him about bacteria, about parasites. Then he drank, long and deep. It was the most exquisite thing he had ever tasted.
As the water began to shock his system back to a higher state of functionality, his senses sharpened. And he noticed something.
Growing right at the water's edge, half-submerged in the black mud, was a patch of moss. But it was unlike the others. It glowed with a faint, internal luminescence, a soft, pulsating green light, like a cluster of tiny, living embers.
He recognized it instantly.
[Veridian Heart-Moss].
It wasn't a medicine in the traditional sense. It was a unique bio-agent. It didn't heal; it stabilized. When consumed by a creature with an energy circulatory system, it acted as a biological coagulant and a temporary regulator, forcing the chaotic energy flow into a state of near-stasis. It wouldn't fix the damage, but it could pause the algorithm of decay. It could buy him time.
A surge of something wild and desperate—not hope, but the possibility of hope—shot through him.
He reached for it, his fingers sinking into the cold, slick mud.
And then he froze.
Reflected in the dark, still water, just behind his own haggard face, was another.
It was pale, humanoid, and attached to a long, slender body that was camouflaged perfectly against the trunk of a nearby tree. Two huge, black, multifaceted eyes stared not at him, but at the glowing moss. And from its thin, lipless mouth, a long, coiled proboscis slowly, hungrily, began to unfurl.