"You're overcomplicating a simple geological quirk, Miss Lin," I said, my voice as flat and unyielding as the concrete beneath us. "I'm an architecture student. I'm here because the structural integrity of these old vaults is a case study for my midterms. If your sensors are glitching, you should probably call your tech support, not interrogate a stranger."
I didn't wait for her rebuttal. I turned and walked away, my heart hammering a rhythm that I fought to keep out of my footsteps. Behind me, I felt her eyes—not just her physical sight, but that strange, piercing pressure that had triggered the System's warning.
Lin Yue didn't follow. She stood in the center of the ruins, tapping her obsidian device against her palm, a thoughtful frown tugging at her perfectly calibrated features.
"Architecture," she whispered to the empty air. "We'll see."
The Observer Status: The Glitch in the Human Eye
As I hurried back to the Sector 4 metro, I called up the System Overlay. The text floated in my peripheral vision, glowing a warning amber.
[GLOSSARY: 'OBSERVER' STATUS]
[DEFINITION: A mortal individual born with an 'Un-Anchored' consciousness. While they cannot wield the Dao, they possess the rare ability to perceive the 'Vibrations' of the hidden reality.]
[THREAT LEVEL: MODERATE — OBSERVERS CANNOT INTERFERE, BUT THEY CAN EXPOSE.]
In the old world, Lin Yue would have been a "Seer" or a "Prophetess." In this world, she was a data-anomaly. Because the Great Anchoring had been so thorough, most humans were "blind" to the true nature of the world. They saw a tree; they didn't see the stabilized energy node. They saw a building; they didn't see the anchoring seal.
But Lin Yue was different. Her genetics, refined by generations of the world's most expensive prenatal care, had accidentally created a bridge back to the old sight. She couldn't do anything, but she could see the "Silence" I left behind. To her, I wasn't a man; I was a hole in the static of the world.
While I spent the next three days burying myself in my studies at the Tian-Gong Institute, trying to appear as mundane as possible, Lin Yue was moving pieces across a much larger board.
She didn't use thugs or spies. She used Data.
In a high-rise office overlooking the city, Lin Yue sat before a panoramic display. "Search: Li Ren. Cross-reference academic records with localized energy dips."
"No direct correlation found," the AI replied.
"Expand the search," she commanded, leaning back and sipping a tea that cost more than my apartment's monthly rent. "Check his birth records. Check every hospital visit. And find me the security footage of every 'Geological Event' in Sector 7 over the last decade. I want to see if a certain 'quiet student' was within a two-mile radius of every stabilized fault line."
She was looking for the pattern of my life—the trail of "Maintenance" I had performed since I was a child.
Back in my dorm, I sat at my desk, sketching a blueprint for a bridge that would never be built. I felt a strange itch at the back of my neck.
[SYSTEM ALERT: PASSIVE SCAN DETECTED]
[SOURCE: REMOTE DATA-HARVESTING]
[STATUS: NEUTRALIZED VIA 'NORMALCY' FILTER]
I frowned. The System was protecting my digital footprint, but it couldn't protect my physical presence. Lin Yue wasn't looking for magic; she was looking for a person who was too normal.
I looked at Mao, my three-tailed cat, who was currently chasing a dust mote that didn't exist. "She's not going to stop, is she?"
Mao let out a low chirp, his extra tails flicking in a pattern that looked suspiciously like a warning.
I realized then that my denial hadn't ended the encounter; it had turned me into a challenge. To a girl who owned everything, the only thing more valuable than a resource was a secret. And I was the biggest secret on the planet.