Night had fallen. The stars were faint, veiled behind clouds of dust and silence.
Deep beneath a forgotten ruin, buried in the windswept sands of the north, a stone gate stirred. Ancient glyphs pulsed with life as the door slid open with a heavy groan.
Lin Xian stepped inside.
His body still ached from the battle with the Hunter, wounds wrapped hastily with blood-soaked cloth. But his eyes were calm, focused. He hadn't come here to rest.
He had been invited.
A man awaited him—clad in a cracked silver robe, one eye replaced by a mechanical lens, the other burning with spiritual light. His voice echoed through the chamber.
"Welcome, Lin Xian. You've slain a Protocol Hunter. That makes you more than a survivor… it makes you dangerous. Just like us."
Inside the chamber, a round table crafted from the spine of a long-dead dragon loomed. Seated around it were a dozen figures, none of them ordinary cultivators.
They were the Forgotten Ones—marked by the System, hunted, erased.
A girl with ghost-pale skin and necromantic tattoos across her arms, commanding an army of the dead.
A former prodigy with his spiritual root destroyed, now surviving through a brain-chip implant.
A man who no longer had a physical body, his soul surviving by devouring corrupted data.
They were survivors of a different war. A hidden war.
"We weren't weak," the silver-robed man said. "We were too strong. The System couldn't control us. So it erased us. Or tried to."
Lin Xian remained silent as he approached the table. A scanning rune passed over his body, reading his core, his blood, his fate.
[Scan Complete – Host Identified: Lin Xian]
[Status: Dragonblood Carrier | Title: Systembreaker]
[Access Granted to War Council Archive – Tier: Cobalt]
"Why me?" Lin Xian asked softly.
The necromancer girl smirked, her eyes glowing like dying embers.
"Because you broke the rules," she said. "And the System hates anything it can't predict."
The silver-robed man placed a damaged map on the table—edges burned, but a glowing symbol at its center pulsed with power.
"This is one of five Architect Cores that keep the System Grid alive," he said. "Hidden under the wastelands. Code name: Node Zero."
"Destroy it… and the entire western network collapses."
Lin Xian studied the map.
Burning symbols. A place beyond even spiritual perception. A place outside fate.
He clenched his fist.
"Then I'll burn it down."
[Main Questline Updated – Rise of the Rebellion: Phase II]
[New Objective: Locate and Destroy Architect Core Node (1/5)]
[Risk Rating: Omega-Level | Temporary Alliance Formed: Forgotten Ones]
[Trust Threshold Required: 65% to unlock Strategic Support]
Far beyond the ruins, buried in the clouded skies above, something stirred.
The System… was watching.