The celebration in Beiluo lasted for three days. The Kraken meat, though tough and chewy, was rich in spiritual energy; a single bowl of calamari soup could keep a laborer warm for a week without a coat. The city was drunk on victory and seafood, the streets lit by the neon glow of the new electric grid powered by the captured Ghost King essence.
But in the quiet of the Administrator's office, the mood was somber. Ye Bai stood before the holographic map, tracing a line to the far west, beyond the burning plains of the Nether Sect's former territory.
"I found it twenty years ago," Ye Bai said, his voice low. "I was chasing a Blood Demon that had slaughtered a village. I tracked it to the edge of the Great Dust Sea. I was young, arrogant. I thought my sword could cut the wind itself."
He tapped a blank spot on the map—a void where the cartographers had drawn only skulls.
"I flew into the desert. Five miles in, I fell."
"Fell?" Jiang Chen asked, the servos in his hand whirring as he adjusted a blueprint.
"My flight technique failed," Ye Bai said, a shadow crossing his face. "My Qi didn't leave me, but it... solidified. It became heavy, sluggish like mud. I crashed into the dunes. The demon I was chasing died—not from me, but from thirst. It withered in hours."
Ye Bai looked at Jiang Chen. "That place hates life, Administrator. It is a Null-Qi Zone. Cultivators who enter become mortals. Spells fail. Flying swords become scrap metal. I only survived because I walked out on foot, eating scorpions. But before I left... I saw it."
"The Ruin?"
"A spire of silver," Ye Bai nodded. "Buried in the sand. And guarding it were men made of brass and glass. They didn't have souls. They ticked."
Jiang Chen leaned back, the green light of his chest reactor pulsing.
"Automatons," Jiang Chen murmured. "Pre-Era Tech. And if it's a Null-Qi zone..."
He smiled, a sharp, metallic expression.
"Then it's the only place on earth where I have the home-field advantage."
The construction of the expedition vehicle took place in Sector 09, the newly designated "Heavy Fabrication Yard." The scale of the project was so immense that the roof of the factory had to be removed to allow the cranes to operate.
Foreman Liu—the son of Old Man Liu—stood on a catwalk, shouting orders to a team of fifty riveters. Below them sat the chassis of a monster.
It wasn't a tank. It was a Land Train.
Two hundred meters long, articulated in five segments, and moving not on rails, but on massive, four-meter-wide caterpillar tracks. The front engine block was shaped like a wedge, reinforced with the harvested shell of the Armored Crabs from the sea battle.
"Tighten the lateral stabilizers!" Liu shouted. "This beast has to cross dunes, not pavement! If a track slips, we are stranded!"
A group of merchants from the Blood Fire Sect, who were in the city to buy more napalm, watched from the viewing platform. They were trembling.
"It... it is a city on wheels," a merchant whispered. "How many horses will pull it? A thousand?"
"No horses," a passing mortal worker said, wiping grease from his face with a grin. He patted the side of the massive engine block. "Just one heart."
Inside the engine room, Jiang Chen was overseeing the installation of the Type-4 Fission Reactor. It was a sealed unit, smaller than the city's grid but potent enough to drive the massive electric motors turning the treads.
"The shielding is lead and gold alloy," Old Wu explained, checking the seals. "It will contain the radiation. The crew quarters are in the rear cars, protected by water tanks."
Jiang Chen nodded. "And the armaments?"
"Four Quad-20mm Anti-Air Mounts on the roof," Wu listed. "Two 105mm Howitzers in the broadside sponsons. And the main plow is electrified."
Jiang Chen touched the cold steel of the hull. This wasn't just a vehicle. It was a statement. In the Dead Zone, where gods became men, this machine would be the only god left.
"Christen it," Jiang Chen ordered.
Old Wu smashed a bottle of cheap rice wine against the tracks.
"I name you... The Sovereign Express."
The departure was a spectacle. The ground shook as the massive electric motors torqued the treads. CLANK-CLANK-CLANK. The sound was deep and rhythmic, a mechanical heartbeat that resonated in the chests of the 20,000 citizens cheering at the gates.
They weren't cheering for a cultivator flying overhead. They were cheering for their brothers and sisters—the mechanics, the cooks, the gunners—who were riding inside the beast. For the first time, mortals were going on an expedition into the forbidden lands, not as slaves or porters, but as the crew.
Inside the Command Car, the atmosphere was tense.
Ye Bai sat in a passenger seat, looking uncomfortable. He had brought his sword, but he kept touching the hilt, reassuring himself it was still there. Beside him sat fifty of the Ronin Guard, their cybernetic eyes glowing in the dim red combat lighting.
"We are approaching the perimeter," the navigator announced. "Crossing into the Desert of Silence in T-minus two minutes."
"Watch the gauges," Jiang Chen sat in the captain's chair, plugged into the ship's sensor suite. "Let's see what happens to the physics."
The massive land train rolled over the last patch of scrub grass and hit the red sand.
Instantly, the air shimmered.
Ye Bai gasped. He grabbed his chest. "My... my Dantian."
He slumped forward. The aura of the Sword Saint—the pressure that could cut steel—vanished. He looked up, his face pale. He looked... normal. Just a middle-aged man with a sword.
"It feels like being suffocated," Ye Bai wheezed. "The Qi... it's gone. Inert."
"Welcome to my world," Jiang Chen said. He checked his own systems.
[External Qi Density: 0%.][Reactor Output: 100%.][Hydraulics: Nominal.][Electronics: Nominal.]
"The reactor works," Jiang Chen announced. "Fission doesn't care about Qi. Physics is universal."
He looked at Ye Bai, who was struggling to stand under the weight of his own body, unassisted by spiritual energy.
"Sit down, Sword Saint," Jiang Chen said gently. "You are a passenger now. Let the mortals drive."
Three days into the desert, the silence was absolute. No wind. No birds. Just the endless red dunes and the grinding of the tracks.
In the mess hall car, the social dynamic had flipped upside down.
Ye Bai sat at a table, eating canned peaches. He was moving slowly. Without Qi to reinforce his muscles, the desert heat was exhausting him. He was sweating—something he hadn't done in a hundred years.
Across from him, a mortal mechanic named Xiao was laughing, arm-wrestling a Ronin Guard. Xiao was full of energy. He was used to labor. He was used to the heat. To him, the air-conditioned train was paradise.
"You look pale, Master Immortal," Xiao said kindly, sliding a bottle of water to Ye Bai. "You need to hydrate. You can't just absorb moisture from the air here."
Ye Bai took the water. His hands shook slightly. "It is humbling," he admitted. "I ruled the Eastern Coast. I fought the Kraken. But here... without the Heavens' favor... I am weaker than you."
"You aren't weak," Xiao said, pointing to the diesel generator humming in the corner. "You just have the wrong engine. We..." he tapped his chest, "...we run on bread and stubbornness. We work everywhere."
Ye Bai drank the water. He looked at the mortals around him—the gunners checking their sights, the cooks chopping vegetables. They weren't afraid of this dead land. They had brought their own life with them in steel boxes.
"Administrator Jiang was right," Ye Bai whispered. "Humanity is resilient."
Suddenly, the red alert siren blared.
"CONTACT FRONT!" The intercom screamed.
Ye Bai instinctively reached for his sword, then remembered he couldn't use sword beams. He felt a spike of genuine terror.
"Battle stations!" Jiang Chen's voice boomed.
Ye Bai ran to the bridge window.
Rising from the sand dunes ahead were shapes. Not beasts.
Walkers.
They were tripod machines made of brass and oxidized copper, standing ten meters tall. They moved with a jerky, clockwork rhythm. Their "eyes" were large, focusing lenses that gathered the harsh sunlight.
"Pre-Era Guardians," Jiang Chen analyzed from the command chair. "Solar-powered thermal lasers."
One of the tripods fired. A beam of concentrated sunlight melted the sand ten meters in front of the train.
"Range, 2000 meters!"
"Ye Bai, stand down," Jiang Chen ordered, seeing the Saint grip his sword. "You can't cut that beam without Qi."
Jiang Chen turned to the gunnery chief—a mortal man named Sergeant Zhou.
"Sergeant. Show the Saint how we fight in the Iron City."
Zhou grinned. He gripped the firing sticks of the 105mm Howitzer turret.
"Gun one. High Explosive Anti-Tank. Fire."
BOOM.
The entire train rocked as the cannon fired.
The shell didn't need Qi. It didn't need a mantra. It followed a ballistic arc calculated by math.
It slammed into the center leg of the lead Walker.
CRUNCH.
The explosion blew the brass leg apart. The tripod toppled over, crashing into the sand in a cloud of gears and springs.
"Hit confirmed!" Zhou cheered. "Reloading!"
Ye Bai watched, stunned. A mortal had just destroyed a construct that would have given a Foundation Establishment cultivator trouble. And he did it from two kilometers away, while drinking coffee.
"All units, free fire," Jiang Chen ordered. "Do not stop the train. Ramming speed."
The Sovereign Express accelerated. The anti-air cannons leveled out, shredding the smaller clockwork spiders scurrying across the sand. The train plowed through the wreckage of the fallen Walker, its crab-shell plow smashing the brass torso flat.
As they crushed the ancient machine, Jiang Chen looked at the horizon.
There, rising from the heat haze, was the Silver Spire. It wasn't a temple.
It was a Launch Silo.