The sky above the Rust-Fang Wastes was the colour of a fresh bruise, a perpetual twilight stained by the exhaust of ancient, half-buried star-freighters and the volatile emissions of the earth-qi vents. Here, on this forgotten continent of a world once graced by celestial empires and then scoured by star-falking arks, the line between myth and machine was as thin as a razor's edge.
Lin Feng, at sixteen, navigated this treacherous landscape with the weary caution of one who had known little else. His name, 林风, meaning 'Forest Wind', felt like a bitter joke in this metal-scarred desolation. He moved with a silent, fluid grace, his patched-up grey tunic and trousers blending into the corroded landscape. In his hand, he held a simple, unadorned spirit-sensing rod—a length of polished brass inscribed with faint, glowing lines. It was a tool of his trade, one of the few legacies from his father.
He was a Qi-Forager, a scavenger of the new age. His prey was not just scrap metal or salvageable circuitry, but the latent spiritual energy that had seeped into the world following the Great Collision—the event that had shattered the heavens and rained down star-faring technology upon a world of cultivation. He sought Spirit-Bonded Cores within the mutated beasts, residual energy in ancient ruins, and, if the heavens truly smiled, a forgotten data-crystal holding a lost cultivation manual or a starship schematic.
Today, his target was a Nest-Grinder hive. The Nest-Grinders were a prime example of the world's bizarre fusion: insectoid creatures the size of hounds, with chitinous plates that hummed with bio-electric fields (the fantasy) and diamond-tipped drill mandibles capable of chewing through starship hulls (the sci-fi). Their cores were valuable, powering everything from a cultivator's spirit-lamp to a settlement's plasma-fence.
Crouched behind a ridge of fused slag and crystal, Lin Feng closed his eyes. He ignored the acidic tang of the air and the low, tectonic groaning of the earth. He reached inward, to the tiny, flickering spark of qi at his core—the Dantian. It was a feeble thing, barely enough to qualify him for the First Stage of the Body Tempering realm. Most children in the great floating cities or the subterranean arcologies had surpassed this stage by his age. But for an orphaned forager in the Wastes, it was a hard-won achievement.
He pushed that trickle of qi through his meridians and into the spirit-sensing rod. The brass glowed warmer, the lines pulsing with a soft, golden light. He extended his awareness, feeling the world not as shapes and sounds, but as a tapestry of energy signatures. He felt the dull, throbbing heat of the hive beneath the ground, a knot of aggressive, hungry life. Dozens of Grinders, their bio-qi sharp and metallic.
Too many, he thought. A direct approach was suicide.
His eyes, dark and perceptive, scanned the terrain. He wasn't just looking for a path; he was reading the flow of ambient qi, the whispers of the land itself. He noticed a faint, shimmering distortion in the air near a particular vent—a weak spot in the hive's perceived territory, perhaps where the ground-qi was too chaotic for the creatures to tolerate for long.
It was a chance. A slim one.
He moved, a shadow flitting between rusted spars and petrified fungal growths. The air near the vent was hot and smelled of ozone and rotten eggs. As he drew closer, his sensor rod suddenly vibrated, its glow shifting from gold to a frantic, warning azure.
Something else is here.
Before he could react, the ground in front of him exploded.
Dirt and shards of metal flew as a creature erupted from its burrow. It was a Rust-Steel Mantis, a nightmare fusion of the old world and the new. It stood as tall as a man, its body a masterpiece of biological evolution and mechanical augmentation. Its primary forelimbs were not mere scythes; they were monomolecular-edged blades of a dark, polished alloy that gleamed with a cold, intelligent light, seamlessly grafted to its organic limbs. Its carapace was a patchwork of naturally grown, rust-coloured plates and scavenged starship armour plating, welded together by some unknown biological process. Its head was a triangular horror, with multifaceted eyes that glowed with a malevolent red light, and its antennae twitched, scanning not just for movement, but for qi signatures and energy frequencies.
This was no mere beast. This was a Tier-2 Mutant, at least. A creature that had absorbed stellar radiation and ambient qi, evolving into something far more dangerous and intelligent. Its core would be a treasure, possibly containing a nascent spirit, a proto-soul that could be bonded with—tamed.
But first, Lin Feng had to survive.
The Mantis moved with impossible speed, a blur of rust and steel. One scythe-limb whistled through the air, aiming to decapitate him. Lin Feng threw himself backward, the wind of the passing blade ruffling his hair. He hit the ground hard, rolling to his feet, his heart hammering against his ribs. His spirit-sensing rod was now a steady, brilliant blue, its vibration a constant hum of terror.
Run. You have to run.
But as he backpedalled, his foot caught on a exposed pipe. He stumbled, and in that split second, the Mantis was upon him. The second scythe came down in a brutal, overhead chop. It was all Lin Feng could do to bring his brass rod up in a desperate, two-handed block.
There was a shriek of metal on strange metal. A flash of blinding blue sparks. The impact was immense, numbing his arms to the shoulders. He felt something give inside the rod. The inscribed lines flared once, catastrophically, and then went dark. The rod was severed, its spirit-conducting properties destroyed.
The broken tool had saved his life, but it had also left him defenceless and blind to the energy flows around him.
The Mantis let out a chittering sound that grated on the ears and the mind, a sound of pure, predatory triumph. It raised its scythes for the final strike.
This was it. The end of Lin Feng, the Qi-Forager. He would become just another set of bones picked clean by the Wastes, his name forgotten.
No.
A surge of defiance, born from a lifetime of struggle, flared within him. He wouldn't die cowering. He focused everything—his fear, his anger, his pitifully small reservoir of qi—into his eyes. It was an instinct, a last-ditch effort to see his killer, to understand the mechanism of his death.
As his meagre qi flooded his ocular meridians, the world changed.
The bruise-coloured sky, the rusted landscape, the monstrous Mantis—everything was overlaid with a shimmering lattice of light. He saw the Mantis not as a physical form, but as a complex, swirling core of violent red and black energy—its bestial qi. But intertwined with that was another pattern: a precise, geometric web of cool blue lines—cybernetic circuitry, a remnant of its stellar origin. And at the centre of its chest, where a cultivator's Dantian would be, pulsed a core of concentrated energy, a fusion of biology and technology. A Spirit-Tech Core.
This was his Azure Pupil, a latent talent he never knew he possessed. An ability to perceive the fundamental energies of the world, both spiritual and technological.
And in that moment of transcendent sight, he saw something else. A flaw. A hairline fracture in the web of blue circuitry, right at the joint of the Mantis's left shoulder. It was a weak point, a place where the biological and mechanical systems were imperfectly synced, leaking a faint, visible trickle of discordant energy.
Time seemed to slow. The scythes descended.
Lin Feng didn't think. He acted.
He threw the two halves of his broken spirit-sensing rod, not at the Mantis's body, but at that specific, glowing fracture.
The brass shards, still resonating with the residual energy from the block and his own qi, flew true. They weren't a weapon; they were a catalyst.
They struck the fracture.
There was no loud explosion, only a sharp crackle of overloaded systems. The blue circuitry around the Mantis's shoulder flared white-hot, then died. The creature shrieked, not in triumph, but in agony and confusion. Its left scythe-limb went limp, the monomolecular edge dimming. The harmonious fusion of its being was disrupted. Its movements became jerky, uncoordinated.
It was stunned.
Lin Feng didn't waste the opportunity. He scrambled away, putting distance between them. But as he did, his Azure Pupil still active, he saw the creature's energy state. The violent red of its bestial qi was receding, confused. The core in its chest pulsed erratically. And within that chaos, he sensed something new: a flicker of… vulnerability. A primitive consciousness that was no longer purely predatory, but was now afraid, disoriented.
An insane idea bloomed in his mind.
Taming was a legendary art. True Beast Tamers were revered figures who operated from gleaming citadels, using advanced neuro-linkers and profound soul-binding contracts to command mighty spirit beasts. They didn't tame wounded, half-mechanical monstrosities in the middle of a toxic wasteland with nothing but their bare hands and a strange eye technique.
But Lin Feng had nothing to lose.
He focused his will, pushing his awareness through his Azure Pupil. He didn't try to dominate or command. That was beyond him. Instead, he did what he had always done to survive: he observed, he understood, he adapted.
He projected a simple, raw emotion. Not aggression. Not fear. But understanding. An image of the fracture, of the pain, of the discord. And then, a question, woven from intent and qi: I see your hurt. Let me help?
It was a whisper in the storm of the Mantis's rage and pain. At first, it was ignored. The Mantis thrashed, trying to reignite its systems.
Lin Feng persisted, pouring the last dregs of his qi into this desperate, one-sided communication. He showed it an image of stillness, of the pain receding, of the systems calming.
Slowly, incredibly, the Mantis's thrashing subsided. Its head swivelled, and those malevolent red eyes fixed on him. But the malevolence was gone, replaced by a wary, pained intelligence. The flicker of vulnerability in its core grew stronger.
It took a single, clattering step towards him. Then another.
Lin Feng stood his ground, his heart in his throat, his body screaming at him to run. He kept his gaze steady, his intent clear.
The Rust-Steel Mantis stopped mere feet from him. It was still a terrifying engine of destruction, even with one limb disabled. It lowered its head, its functioning scythe resting on the ground. The red glow in its eyes dimmed to a soft, pulsing amber.
A thread of connection, tenuous as a spider's silk, formed between Lin Feng's mind and the creature's core. He felt its pain, its confusion, its innate drive to survive. And he felt a grudging, nascent acceptance.
He had not tamed it. Not in the way the stories told. There was no binding contract, no absolute obedience. He had… bridged a gap. He had offered a solution to its suffering, and it had, for now, accepted.
Exhausted, spiritually and physically drained, Lin Feng sank to his knees. The Azure Pupil faded, the world returning to its normal, grim palette. The Mantis remained, a silent, hulking guardian amidst the rust and ruin.
He looked at the creature, then at his own trembling hands. He had come for Nest-Grinder cores. He had found a near-death experience, the awakening of a strange gift, and a temporary truce with a mechanical predator.
From a pouch on his belt, he pulled out a small, dull-grey stone. It was his most prized possession, the only thing his father had left him. It was warm to the touch, and sometimes, in his dreams, he saw faint, star-like patterns move within its depths. He had never known what it was.
But now, as he held it, the Rust-Steel Mantis let out a soft, curious chitter. Its head tilted, its amber eyes fixed on the stone. For a fleeting second, Lin Feng's Azure Pupil flickered back to life without his command, and he saw the stone not as a rock, but as a deeply dormant, impossibly complex knot of cosmic qi and data-streams.
A legacy, waiting to be unlocked.
A slow smile spread across Lin Feng's face. The Wastes were no longer just a place of scavenging and survival. They were a place of discovery. The path of the Starfall Tamer had begun.
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End of Chapter 1