"Data diagnostic initiated. No issues detected so far."
While Rover and Danjin set out beyond Jinzhou's walls for a wholesale slaughter of anything unlucky enough to cross their path, the female Rover had teamed up with Yangyang and headed for the outskirts as well, chasing down clues to the cipher token's mystery.
Back inside the Huaxu Academy, Baizhi was marshaling every available researcher into a full-scale audit of the system data.
The incident in the virtual space had shaken her more than she cared to admit.
Beneath the cool exterior she wore like armor, the girl was earnest to a fault, and right now that earnestness had curdled into guilt. She'd invited the Rovers for a physical examination to repay them for saving her life. Instead, she almost got them killed.
Baizhi pressed her fingers to her temple and let out a long breath.
She so rarely botched anything that the feeling sat wrong on her, like a coat cut for someone else. Before she could dwell on it further, a researcher pinged her with the diagnostic report.
"System check complete. One critical error, three security vulnerabilities, all requiring immediate patches. Contact Mr. Mortefi and Principal Investigator Xiangli Yao for assistance. However, none of these anomalies are related to the crisis Rover experienced. The source of the anomaly has vanished... or rather, it was consumed by that little creature called Abby. Cross-reference the system's historical logs. Find out what data was consumed and what caused the anomaly in the first place."
Despite the string of unfortunate surprises lately, Baizhi remained as reliable as ever. Under her direction, the team soon located the logs corresponding to the data Abby had devoured.
"This... this is the Retroact Rain data that General Jiyan brought back from the Battle Beneath the Crescent years ago! Well, specifically the portion we were never able to decode."
The researcher stared at the results, voice pitching higher with disbelief.
Years ago, during the war against a Threnodian that became known as the Battle Beneath the Crescent, Jinzhou's forces had been caught in a bizarre, reality-warping downpour. The Retroact Rain had devastated the Midnight Rangers. A field medic named Jiyan, now the Verdant General of the Midnight Rangers, had led the surviving troops in a fighting retreat, preserving Jinzhou's military strength and, crucially, recording the rain's frequency data.
That data was the reason Jinzhou hadn't fallen in the campaigns that followed. It had given the Huaxu Academy the means to analyze and understand the Retroact Rain at last.
But the researchers had also discovered something else buried in that data: a segment that resisted every attempt at decryption. No algorithm cracked it. No framework made sense of it.
Everyone had written it off as corrupted junk. Understandable, given the conditions. Recording anything at all in the middle of that battle had been a miracle. A little data corruption was expected. The important thing was that the Retroact Rain analysis had succeeded.
Until today, when that "corrupted data" had been drawn out by Rover's presence, manifesting in the virtual space as a Threnodian's will and spawning a Calamity Class Tacet Discord from nothing.
The realization hit Baizhi like ice water down her spine.
It was never corrupted data.
It was Threnodian data.
"That's entirely plausible," another researcher said, voice tight. "The Battle Beneath the Crescent was fought against a Threnodian. The Retroact Rain was the anomaly, not the objective. The field teams recorded the rain's frequency data without realizing they'd also captured a fragment of the Threnodian's own Frequency."
Baizhi reached for her coffee, desperate for something to steady her nerves. Her fingers were trembling too badly to hold the cup still.
Threnodians. The terror that shadowed Civilization itself.
Time and again, they had driven the world to the brink of extinction.
The value of actual Threnodian Frequency data was incalculable. Every major research institution on Solaris-3 would kill for it: the Black Shores, the Deep Space Union, the Stellar Academy, and countless others.
And all this time, the Huaxu Academy had been sitting on it.
Yet the data's very existence proved how futile possession alone was. Huaxu was a world-class institution. They'd had Threnodian data in their archives for years and hadn't even recognized it for what it was, let alone decoded it.
That wasn't incompetence.
It was the nature of Threnodians themselves.
They could not be destroyed. Could not be decoded. Could not be understood. If Tacet Discords were monsters born from chaotic Frequency, then Threnodians were chaos itself.
"Ms. Baizhi, what do we do now?"
"We improvise." She steadied her breathing. "I'll ask Rover whether Abby can regurgitate that Frequency data. With any luck, it's still recoverable. We can't study it now, but someday..."
Her hands clenched into fists. Humanity was a species that moved forward. Generation after generation laid themselves down as foundation stones, building Civilization to heights that would have seemed impossible to those who came before. Giving up was never an option.
As long as they refused to surrender, the flame of human Civilization would never go out.
Of course, if Abby could hear Baizhi's plan, the little Echo would be deeply offended. First it got fed fake food, and now they wanted it to spit everything back up? That was borderline Echo abuse. At the very least, they'd owe it an extravagant feast afterward.
Then Baizhi's hand jerked. Coffee sloshed over the rim of her cup. A thought had surfaced unbidden, and her heart skipped.
There's been far too much Threnodian-related activity these past two days... Wait. What did I just...
A single stray thought.
It pulled threads together in her mind that she hadn't realized were connected.
Yesterday's encounter with the Crownless. After a sleepless night combing through the archives, she'd confirmed what the legends claimed: that Overlord Class Tacet Discord had once been a weapon forged by a Threnodian, a vanguard blade of destruction.
Today, the Threnodian data resonating in response to Rover's presence. The front lines growing more strained by the week. Tacet Fields and Tacet Discord Tides appearing with increasing frequency.
"No... it can't be..."
She wanted to be wrong. But the records she'd dug up last night stared back at her, and her throat went dry.
Though the detailed accounts had been scrubbed each time, scattered references survived across Jinzhou's and Huanglong's histories. Rover had appeared multiple times throughout the centuries, and every single appearance coincided with catastrophe.
The Battle of the Gorges of Spirits. The Siege Crisis. And once, during a wartime plague that nearly consumed Jinzhou, a figure with golden eyes and dark hair had arrived carrying emergency vaccines.
She appeared like a savior out of legend, descending whenever the world faced a crisis beyond its ability to resist, turning the tide at the last possible moment.
And now, two Rovers had arrived at once.
"Does that mean... another crisis is coming to Jinzhou?"
Baizhi could not sit still.
At that same moment, at Jinzhou's main gate.
"I'm going to have to ask you both to stop right there. It's dangerous beyond the walls. For your own safety, please head back into the city."
Two sentries stepped forward to block Rover and Danjin as they approached the gate. The front lines were engaged with a Tacet Discord Tide, they explained. No civilians were permitted outside during a crisis period.
Danjin smiled and held up her Pangu Terminal.
"Hm? You don't look familiar, sir. Don't you recognize me?"
"Can't say I do, and even if you're somebody important's kid, right now nobody's going..." He trailed off, eyes locking onto her screen. "Wait. Clearance authorization?"
On the other side of the gate, a second sentry had been in the middle of stopping a girl dressed in Taoist robes. The commotion drew his attention, and the moment he glanced over, his eyes went wide.
"Oh! Little Danjin! Never mind then, let her through!"
"Uh, sir, is that really okay? Even with clearance, it's a warzone out there. Letting a young girl walk into that..."
"Relax, you're new, so I get it. She looks sweet, but trust me, she hits harder than any of us."
As Jinzhou's unofficial reigning champion of monster kills, Danjin was a familiar sight to the gate sentries. They'd watched her stroll out looking pristine and come back drenched in enemy blood more times than they could count. The "Little Reaper" had long since earned her reputation.
"Well... alright, I suppose. But what about this gentleman?"
"Here." Rover blinked, then offered his terminal with an easy smile. "My clearance."
The sentry's jaw nearly hit the cobblestones.
"M-maximum security clearance?!"