When Li Ming came to, his mouth was full of dirt.

  Not the dry, dusty kind—the wet kind, mixed with something that had started rotting. He coughed, felt copper rise from somewhere deep in his throat, swallowed it back down.

  First second after opening his eyes, he thought: still underground. Still level three.

  But no. Wrong light. Wrong air. Wrong everything.

  He pushed himself up. His palm sank into something soft and black, liquid oozing between his fingers. Around him: crooked wooden markers, half of them broken, most of them half-buried, words worn off whatever they used to say. Beyond that, grave mounds getting eaten by wild grass, cracked coffin corners jutting out like broken teeth.

  Mass grave.

  Qingyun Sect's back mountain mass grave. He knew this place. First year of cultivation, he'd helped dump a body here—some servant who'd starved outside the Scripture Library. He'd stood right about here, watching them shove that stiff corpse into a hole, thinking: that's what a human life is worth, huh.

  Now he was the one lying in it.

  Crows on the dead trees, watching him. Red eyes, bright as fresh blood. One of them tilted its head, checking if he was still breathing.

  "Shit."

  His voice came out wrong. Hoarse. Like someone else's.

  He got his knees under him. Started to stand. That's when his left wrist lit up with something that wasn't pain—hotter than pain. Like someone running burning wire through his veins. He looked down.

  Stopped.

  Something was moving under his skin.

  Not veins. Veins didn't glow blue. Whatever this was, it crawled. Wound its way up from the inside of his wrist, along his forearm, heading for his elbow. Living vines growing inside his blood vessels. Every time they moved, they left a trail—faint, pulsing, syncing with his heartbeat.

  He tried to make a fist. The things inside his arm contracted. Then pushed back, burrowing deeper.

  Head rush. Almost blacked out.

  He remembered the dark space. The countdown hitting zero. The Administrator's voice still echoing: "You touched the Source Code." Then something had thrown him out. The system, purging him like a virus.

  This was the price, then.

  Before he could think it through, sound came from somewhere far away.

  Sharp. Cutting. Metal screaming against glass. No—not just one sound. Hundreds of bells, all ringing at once, all being torn apart by wind. The noise didn't come from any direction. It came from everywhere. Drilled into his ears like it wanted to scrape them raw.

  Li Ming didn't move.

  Soul-Seeking Bells.

  He'd heard about them. Never heard them—because anyone who heard them ended up dead or worse. Rumor said the Law Enforcement Hall only used them on traitors. When those bells rang, everything within ten li got tagged. Every living thing. Every dead thing. No exceptions.

  They were hunting him.

  "Move. Now."

  He turned. First step, he nearly fell. His left arm had stopped burning and started tearing—something underneath the skin, ripping through fascia. He looked. The skin from wrist to elbow had gone transparent. The blue patterns underneath were so clear they looked painted on.

  He tore a strip off his robe. Bit down on it. Wrapped it around his forearm, twice, tight. Blood still came through. Soaked the cloth. Started dripping.

  It hit the ground.

  Hiss.

  Where the drops landed, the dirt started smoking.

  Li Ming stared.

  The blood was etching something into the earth. Not words. Not runes. Something else. He didn't recognize it until the second symbol appeared. Then the third. Fourth.

  01010011 01000001 01010110 01000101

  Binary.

  His blood was writing binary.

  "SAVE."

  He said it out loud. His voice shook.

  So it hadn't disappeared. All those bugs he'd fixed. All that code he'd rewritten. Deleted. It was still here. In his blood. In his body. Turned into... what? Storage?

  The bells rang again. Closer.

  He stopped looking. Started running.

  He knew this terrain. Had to—outer sect disciples had tried to kill him enough times that he'd memorized every grave, every tree line, every shadow. He cut around a collapsed mound, ducked into the forest's dark edge, feet silent on rotting leaves. Wind left. Wet right. Bells behind.

  He ran for maybe fifteen minutes. The things in his arm crawled up to his shoulder.

  Didn't stop to look. Could feel them—those glowing patterns spreading toward his chest. Every pulse of his heart pushed them forward another inch.

  His foot caught on something. He pitched forward, caught himself with his hands, but his left arm buckled. He went down on one knee. Blood dripped from the soaked cloth, hit stone.

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  Sizzle.

  More symbols burned into the rock.

  01010100 01010010 01000001 01010000

  TRAP.

  He stared at the word. Throat dry.

  Then he saw it. Half-buried in the dirt next to the stone.

  A jade pendant.

  Chipped edges. Cracks all over the surface. But the character carved into the center was still clear. He reached down. Pulled it free. Wiped off the mud.

  Wang.

  His fingers locked up.

  He knew this pendant. From somewhere. The memory was fog—just a shape, seen through cloth.

  The bells again.

  Closer. Close enough that he could hear other things now. Footsteps. Robes brushing against underbrush. Voices, low and urgent.

  He stood. Shoved the pendant into his robe. Kept moving.

  The light wall appeared ahead.

  Sky-Locking Great Array.

  Qingyun Sect's boundary line. Unbroken since the sect was founded. They said anything that flew into it got shredded. Even Nascent Soul cultivators walked through the front gate.

  He wasn't flying. He was running.

  He hit the wall.

  The wall hit back.

  Not a physical impact. Something worse. Something inside him lit up like a warning, and then the rejection came—not from outside, from within. His meridians felt like they were being threaded with a thousand needles, all at once. Vision went white. Knees cracked against stone.

  He coughed. Blood sprayed the light wall's surface.

  More symbols rose in the blood pool on the ground.

  01000100 01001001 01000101

  DIE.

  He stared at the word. Chest heaving. Copper taste flooding his mouth.

  "Don't."

  A voice, behind him.

  Li Ming spun. Hand on the ground, ready to move.

  Shadow under the trees. A figure dressed in black—head to toe, face covered, only eyes visible. No presence. No footsteps. Just... there.

  "Who are you?"

  No answer. The figure moved. Fast. Three steps and a hand was reaching for his shoulder—

  Li Ming twisted away. Not fast enough. The hand locked onto his shoulder blade.

  "Be still."

  Quiet voice. Heavy with something that made his spine lock up. The other hand came up, holding something in front of his face.

  Another jade pendant.

  Same chips. Same cracks. Same character carved in the center.

  Wang.

  Same as the one in his robe.

  Li Ming's heart stuttered.

  "Wang Elder—"

  The grip on his shoulder shifted. Moved to his throat. Squeezed.

  The eyes behind the mask locked onto his. The voice dropped to something barely above a breath: "Do you hear the crows?"

  Li Ming went still.

  Crows?

  He listened. Wind in the trees. Leaves. The distant screaming of bells. No crows.

  The hand stayed where it was. Pressing. The eyes swept his face—searching, measuring.

  A few seconds. Then the grip released.

  "Come with me."

  The figure grabbed his wrist. Pulled him toward the light wall. Li Ming stumbled after, throat aching, words stuck somewhere behind his sternum.

  Hand seal. The jade pendant in the other hand. They both vanished.

  Li Ming's meridians tore open.

  Not pain. Pain had a shape. This didn't. It was like being threaded by a thousand burning wires, each one pulling in a different direction. He tried to scream. Nothing came out.

  Eyes opened. He was several paces away from where he'd been.

  The light wall still stood in front of them. They hadn't crossed.

  Li Ming knelt on the ground. Breathing hard. Blood in his mouth.

  The black-clad figure stood beside him, frowning. Looking at his own hand—trembling, the fingertips going gray. Fading, like old ink.

  "The array reads what's in you." Half to himself. "This won't work."

  "Who—" Li Ming gasped. "Why are you helping me?"

  The figure looked at him.

  Didn't answer.

  Then: a blade. The figure's palm splitting open.

  "What—"

  "Hold still."

  The bleeding palm pressed against Li Ming's back.

  Heat. Not warmth—heat, spreading from the contact point like fire through veins. He felt something pouring into him, through that wound. His vision blurred. Tears ran down his cheeks. His jaw locked so hard his teeth ached.

  Blood mist rose.

  In the mist: golden light. Twisted shapes. Not characters. He knew these shapes.

  The Administrator's mask. The patterns on it.

  Same.

  His eyes widened. He tried to speak—

  "Go."

  Another seal.

  They crossed.

  Li Ming felt his meridians shatter. Rebuild. Shatter again. Rebuild. Over and over until there was nothing left but sensation, until he stopped being a person and became just a point of awareness moving through something that wanted to tear him apart.

  He opened his eyes.

  Kneeling on cold, wet stone. Strange forest around him. Water somewhere in the distance. Wind nearby. Behind him, the light wall's afterimage cut across the night sky like a scar.

  He pushed himself up. His arms shook.

  The patterns had reached his collarbone now. Still moving. Climbing. He could feel them changing things—turning his blood vessels into channels, his bones into something that could hold data.

  The black-clad figure stood a few paces away. Back turned.

  In the moonlight, Li Ming saw it: a crack at the base of the figure's skull. Thin. Something splitting underneath the skin. Gray light flickering at the edges, like embers about to die. The hands, too—fading from flesh color to gray to something translucent.

  "Why..." He couldn't get enough air. "Why help me?"

  No answer.

  Long enough that the question started to dissolve into the silence.

  "Because you're useful."

  Barely a whisper now. The voice sounded worn, like something being scraped against stone. Every word costing something.

  "Useful for what?"

  A pause. Then: "Find the external Administrator."

  Li Ming's chest tightened.

  "You know who it is."

  A shake of the head.

  "But Wang Elder—"

  "The clue's in you." Cutting him off, voice suddenly sharp. "The first bug you fixed—"

  Stopped.

  The figure's pupils changed.

  Li Ming watched it happen. Gold bleeding in from the edges, like ink in water. Then the gold becoming streams, symbols, a cascade of—

  Data.

  For one instant, something flickered in those eyes. A warning. Or maybe an apology.

  The figure's body started to shake.

  He looked at his own hand. Fingers gone completely transparent—trees visible through them. Skin peeling off in patches, like dead bark, revealing the glow underneath.

  "Damn." The voice cracked. "Run."

  "What—"

  "Run!"

  A shove. Hard enough to send Li Ming stumbling.

  He caught his balance. Turned.

  The black-clad figure was coming apart.

  Not blood. Not bone. Pixels. Like bad reception on an old screen, chunks of him vanishing into nothing. Left arm already gone. Shoulder flickering, unstable. His face starting to blur, features dissolving into scattered points of light.

  "Who are—"

  "GO."

  The figure turned to face whatever was coming.

  Li Ming ran.

  Behind him: sounds. Fighting. Impact. A scream—short, cut off.

  He didn't look back.

  He ran until the ground dropped away. Until there was nothing in front of him but black water, roaring.

  Mountain stream.

  He stopped. Bent double. Hands on his knees. Chest heaving. Lungs burning. Throat raw.

  He reached down. Scooped water with one hand. Tried to wash the light off his arm.

  The reflection that looked back wasn't his face.

  He froze.

  In the water: his left eye, golden. Not just the white—the whole thing. Pupil, iris, all of it covered in patterns. The same patterns he'd seen on the Administrator's mask.

  He touched his eye.

  The reflection rippled. Went back to normal.

  Brown iris. White sclera. Nothing strange.

  A hallucination. Had to be.

  He looked up.

  Across the stream.

  Movement in the underbrush.

  A figure crouched beside a tree. Back turned. One hand pressed against the bark. Fingers moving—carving.

  Li Ming squinted. Used the moonlight.

  Bloody fingers.

  Lines being cut into the wood.

  He couldn't see all of it. Just pieces.

  But those pieces matched the patterns on his arm.

  Exactly.

  His breath stopped.

  The figure turned.

  Chen Feng.

  Something between his teeth. Hands covered in red. Eyes empty—dead man's eyes. But the fingers kept moving. Kept carving. Didn't stop.

  Code, running down the trunk. Disappearing into the earth.

  An array.

  Or a message.

  Or both.

  Li Ming tried to call out. His throat wouldn't work.

  His left eye burned.

  He looked at the water again.

  Golden.

  The patterns were moving now. Alive. They pulled together, formed a shape—

  The Administrator's mask. Staring up at him from the stream.

  His legs gave out.

  He fell forward.

  Cold water swallowed him.

  The last thing he heard, before everything went dark:

  Crows.