VOL.1 Chapter 11: Slumbering Bloodline, The Spying Void Web
The moment the off-road SUV rolled out of Sanxingdui’s protected archaeological reserve, morning mist crested the jagged ridgeline of the Dragon Gate Mountains.
Bright daylight flooded the world beyond the windows, muffling the bustle of mortal life behind thick glass. On either side of the highway, village chimneys wisped thin plumes of cooking smoke, orderly green farmlands stretched to the horizon, and traffic hummed along at an unhurried pace—an unremarkable, tranquil dawn for ordinary humanity.
Inside the vehicle’s cabin, a separate, fractured reality prevailed.
Dead silence, unrelenting tension, a bone-deep cold clinging to every surface.
The rear bench had been flattened flat, where Daipithy lay motionless. Not a single ripple of spirit power stirred around her form; her breaths were so faint they might as well have vanished entirely. Her ashen cheek rested against dark vehicle padding, the gilded bloodline runes etched beneath her skin hidden away, only flaring into faint golden streaks when angled light cut across her flesh. They resembled a curse forced into dormancy, lying quiet, waiting either to rekindle or fade to extinction.
These marks were the permanent scars left by merging her life force with the ruin veins, irrefutable proof that her fate was chained inseparably to the Wood Ruin.
Over the coming six months, if the seal held fast, she might cling to a fragile, fleeting existence. But should the seal destabilize, the subterranean veins would turn their backlash upon her first, unraveling her soul, bloodline, and spirit root layer by layer—no tonic, no ritual could mend the damage, no remedy existed to reverse it.
Jam sat rigid in the front passenger seat, his spine held straight, never slumping against the headrest.
Agony from the penetrating wounds across his shoulders and back burned his nerves without cease, residual Void venom creeping slow through his meridians. Every pulse of his heart sent a dull, stabbing throb echoing deep within his bone marrow. He made no attempt to smother the pain with spirit power, no small ritual to dull the ache; he chose to let the agony remain sharp and unobscured.
For Ruin Guardians, pain is the anchor of unbroken clarity.
After clashing with an entity forged in ancient power, the smallest lapse in vigilance could split their defenses wide open and spell total ruin. That constant, stinging torment served as an unending reminder: their war was far from finished, their death sentence had been carved in stone, and their foe had never truly departed.
The vehicle gained steady speed, gliding smoothly past the suburban sprawl.
Bangbangtu gripped the steering wheel in the driver’s seat, his grip unshakable, the car held dead-center in its lane without a single drift. The tactical bandages wrapped tight around his chest were soaked through with dark crimson blood, inky Void residue seeping along the fabric’s woven threads—an indelible stain left by corrosive Void energy, which would gnaw at his meridians day in and day out, slowly eroding the very foundation of his physical form.
He did not speak a single word for the entire drive, his gaze fixed rigidly on the road ahead, yet his peripheral vision never left the rearview mirror.
In that reflective pane, the silhouette of Sanxingdui shrank smaller and smaller, swallowed at last by rolling morning fog and distant rooftops.
But within his heightened Guardian senses, that stretch of cursed earth had never truly slipped away.
“The boundary aura hasn’t softened,” Bangbangtu broke the silence at last, his voice rough and graveled, still thick with the tang of dried blood. “If anything, it’s gone quieter. Quiet enough you’d swear whatever’s watching has clamped its breath shut entirely.”
Jam lifted his gaze, staring through the windshield toward the stacked mountain ranges far on the horizon, his tone cold and unyielding. “This is his standard dormant posture.”
“Kaelor has no need to maintain constant pressure. He only needs to lock the boundary coordinates and preserve his Void sensory links to keep the dig site anchored to his perception. No matter how far we travel, every choice we make, every shift of our power, remains laid bare before his sight.”
Sage occupied the left rear seat, leaning against the cabin wall with a yellowed thread-bound ancient scroll unfurled across her knees. Its paper pages were brittle with age, edges frayed and worn thin. The text scrawled across them was no mortal script—instead, winding ancient runic lines, underground vein diagrams, and the layered logic of ruin vein balance. These were the secret manuscripts passed down through every generation of Ruin Guardians, the only record holding the raw, unaltered blueprint of the Dai bloodline’s sealing ritual.
The crust of dried blood lingered at the corner of her lips, her complexion pale and cool, the exhaustion of drained spirit power hidden beneath her calm features. Still, her movements stayed precise and steady. Her fingertips brushed lightly over the fragile pages, a wisp of pale white spirit light thin as silk winding along the runic pathways, picking apart, tracing, and replaying the core logic of the forbidden ancient art bit by bit.
“I’ve completed an initial breakdown of the ritual’s foundation,” Sage spoke softly, her tone clear and level, stripped of emotion, bearing only cold, calculated deduction. “The Oath of Ruin Bond was not a creation unique to the Dai Clan. It was the final fail-safe measure built into the ancient Realm Wardens’ system, a last resort crafted to counter total Void collapse. Its original design relied on collective sacrifice: multiple bloodlines acting as mediums, underground vein spirit power as support, and runic formations as locks to share the seal’s backlash evenly, so no single bearer would burn through their core essence entirely. But this full system was lost entirely during the great cultural cataclysm three thousand years ago.”
“The Dai descendants inherited only an incomplete, isolated copy of the ritual.”
“Incomplete means irreversible cost.”
Three plain sentences laid bare the full horror of Daipithy’s predicament.
She had inherited her ancestors’ sacrificial ritual, yet none of the balancing safeguards that came with it. One soul bearing a mountain’s weight, a single mortal holding back the collapse of the world. Every backlash, every drain on vitality, every year of lifespan burned away fell solely upon her shoulders—no shared burden, no fallback remedy, no escape route.
Silence settled heavy over the cabin once more.
No one sighed, no one voiced pity. Such was the unspoken law of the Ruin Guardian squad: accept the cost, acknowledge the deadlock, hunt for a way to break free. Superfluous sentiment served no purpose in their fight.
Inside the front passenger storage compartment, Banbandin’s spare terminal hummed with a faint, low-frequency vibration—no shrill alert chimes, no flashing visual warnings, a covert background alert system he’d engineered himself, programmed only to trigger when microscopic Void particle activity spiked.
A faint, steady, unrelenting thrumming.
Banbandin leaned back against the right rear seat, his legs stretched flat, spine held straight. Even drained to the bone, he remained poised to leap into combat at a moment’s notice. Both hands curled around the terminal, his fingers flying across the screen, dark eyes locked tight on the scrolling streams of data, his brows drawing tight as gravity settled over his features.
“I’ve picked up a new signal signature.”
Banbandin’s voice stayed calm and restrained, delivering the anomaly report with clinical precision. “It’s no overt surge of Void energy, no sharp power spike, and it does not match the movement patterns of the Orb Reavers. It is an ultra-low-frequency signal scattered across the entire site.”
“It forms a web.”
Sage lifted her eyes, a sharp glint cutting through her cool gaze. “A Void information network.”
“Those microscopic residual particles are linking to one another, weaving together, building permanent signal channels. They are no longer scattered isolated monitoring points—they have formed an independent full-site perception network, separate from mortal technology and our Guardian formations alike.”
This marked a catastrophic escalation in Kaelor’s surveillance: his observation had shifted from passive recording to active domain locking.
The entire Sanxingdui dig site, the underground vein networks spanning a hundred li in every direction, the airspace, the rock strata—all wrapped beneath this invisible Void web. The squad’s travel paths, fluctuations in their spirit power, formation schematics, the pace of their ancient manuscript research, even the rhythm of each member’s heartbeat and the rate of their wound recovery would sync in real time to the dormant adversary’s senses.
Complete, unobscured visibility, surveillance without a single blind spot.
“Can we block it?” Jam asked, his tone low and heavy.
Banbandin’s fingers raced across the screen, scrolling through reams of complex coded data as red warning banners blazed unyielding across the display. He shook his head slightly, his tone flat and objective. “Physical shielding is impossible.”
“The Void web roots itself within the rock’s micro-fissures, sustained by tiny pores in the strata. It never erupts, never damages formations, never leaks volatile energy—so it does not register as a hostile Void presence. Standard barriers, runic wards, and signal-blocking hardware are all completely ineffective. Forcing a full purification would trigger underground vein resonance, destabilizing the already fragile seal, and the cost far outweighs any gain.”
The most unbeatable conflicts never stem from brutal, head-on assaults. They come from this silent, omnipresent surveillance that clings to you, impossible to shake off.
Every plan you draft, every formation you build, every solution you carve out for survival is watched, analyzed, and predicted by your foe from start to finish.
With three thousand years of patience backing him and absolute total information advantage, Kaelor held the overwhelming upper hand.
“Then we abandon all attempts to conceal ourselves,” Jam reached a swift, decisive conclusion. “We surrender the element of surprise to buy speed of progress.”
“From this moment forward, all research, formation construction, and monitoring reconstruction will proceed openly, on a regular, unhidden schedule. We do not fear his observation—what we cannot afford is to waste precious time stalling.”
“The three-month deadline for a complete theoretical framework, the six-month timeline for full implementation, remain unchanged. We double our pace.”
The order landed, and every member fell into compliance without the slightest hesitation.
The vehicle pulled into a hidden suburban safe house: a low standalone villa tucked unobtrusively within an ordinary residential neighborhood. Its plain white walls and grey window frames blended seamlessly with the surrounding homes, indistinguishable from any civilian dwelling—a private base reserved exclusively for the Ruin Guardian squad’s emergency rest, strategic deduction, and research work.
No elaborate precision machinery filled its halls, no lavish furnishings lined its rooms. It offered only absolute secrecy, quiet isolation, and a secure space to race through tactical breakdowns amid their deadlock.
The car rolled to a halt, the engine cutting out entirely.
The hum of machinery faded, leaving only faint distant civilian chatter and the rush of traffic wind beyond the walls, a stark divide between two worlds.
Bangbangtu stepped out first, standing on the entry steps. His aura unfurled silently, sweeping a full three-hundred-sixty-degree scan of the surrounding air, ground, and shallow underground vein fluctuations. Once he confirmed no Void tailing particles, no fixed Void-web observation nodes, no lurking threats, he raised a hand to signal all clear.
Jam leaned forward, lifting Daipithy steady into his arms.
Her frame felt unnervingly light, stripped of the iron resilience she’d carried while activating her bloodline ritual and anchoring the seal. Her skin ran cool to the touch, her bloodline dormant, her spirit root suspended in slumber—an empty vessel clinging tenuously to life, liable to fade away at any moment.
The gilded runes beneath her skin lay dormant still, the mark of a fate burned nearly to ash, waiting for its final chapter.
The group filed into the safe house one by one, locking the door tight and drawing heavy blackout curtains to block all outside light and prying eyes.
The room plunged into dim shadow, tension thick enough to weigh on the lungs.
There was no window for rest, no pause to tend to their wounds. The moment they crossed the threshold, they slipped straight into wartime research and deduction mode.
Banbandin rushed immediately to connect the safe house’s backup server, building a brand-new monitoring framework from scratch. Hundreds of split data streams flooded the display screens, endless scrolling lines of underground vein metrics, Void energy thresholds, airspace fluctuation readings, and rock strata stress curves refreshing one after another.
He discarded the entirety of the old barrier monitoring system, scrapping its core logic entirely. No longer focused on blocking Void energy outright, he rebuilt the network around three core functions: capturing microscopic particles, tracing the Void web’s pathways, and reverse-tracing its source.
“All legacy hardware is rendered useless,” Banbandin reported as he typed rapid lines of code. “Kaelor has fully unpacked every flaw in our old monitoring logic; every vulnerability is laid bare to him. The new system runs on randomized chaotic algorithms, its tracking patterns unpredictable, its early-warning logic uncyclical. Even if the Void web records every operation we perform, it will never be able to forecast our next formation layout.”
Jam stood at the room’s center, gaze fixed on a blank whiteboard mounted to the wall, his voice low and unyielding. “How long until full functionality?”
“Seventy-two hours,” Banbandin answered without hesitation. “Within three days, we will achieve full site coverage, zero-blind-spot particle capture, millisecond-level early warning, and simultaneous mapping of all Void web nodes to reverse-trace Kaelor’s general dormant territory.”
This timeline represented the absolute limit of their capacity.
Trapped in a deadlock, every member’s potential had been forced to its breaking point—no weariness, no slackness, only a desperate race to carve out survival and hold the seal intact.
On the opposite side of the room, Sage spread out every ancient scroll, runic rubbing, and underground vein map across a long wooden table. Yellowed parchment, fragmented stone impressions, blurry carved stone imagery stacked layer upon layer, all fragmented records left by generations of Ruin Guardians—the sole key to breaking the Dai bloodline’s sacrificial deadlock.
Her fingertips never ceased glowing with faint pale light as she parsed each ancient rune word by word, untangling the ritual’s layered pathways, contrasting the incomplete forbidden art against the full ancient wardens’ system, her cool features sharp with unbroken focus.
“I’ve uncovered the critical missing link,” Sage spoke after a short pause, cutting through the room’s heavy silence.
Her finger tapped a fragmented stone rubbing etched with the original three-thousand-year underground vein balancing structure; its lines worn and blurred, yet holding the solution to their predicament.
“The fatal flaw of the Dai Clan’s ritual is its single-bearer burden, with no external medium to offset the strain. Within the complete ancient system, there existed a Ruin Core Anchor to absorb the bloodline’s backlash, a primordial artifact meant to bear the underground vein’s corrosion in place of a living spirit root, stabilizing the seal permanently.”
Jam’s eyes narrowed. “What is the Ruin Core Anchor?”
“The lost central relic buried within the primary Sanxingdui sacrificial pit,” Sage replied, each word sharp and clear. “It is neither the Bronze Sacred Tree nor the Protruding-Eyed Nuo Mask. It is an unexcavated primordial core artifact buried deep in the main pit, the foundational carrier poured by the ancient ancestors to anchor the underground veins and stabilize the seal—the natural balancing heart of the entire Wood Ruin formation.”
“For three thousand years, the seal held fast first through the ancestors’ sacrificed flesh, then sustained by the Ruin Core as its final safeguard. The Core vanished without record in recent centuries, forcing the Dai Clan to replace the artifact with living human vessels, trading their bloodline for the Core’s function, generation after generation trapped in endless sacrifice.”
A single sentence wove together the full tragedy of their three-millennia fate.
The unending cycle of martyrdom the Dai bloodline could never escape, the steady decay of the seal—every root of their crisis traced back to one single catastrophe: the loss of the core anchor, leaving the formation’s foundation crippled beyond repair.
Bangbangtu stood at the window, his back turned to the rest of the squad, clutching a simple detection rune in one hand as he sensed the thin, unshakable Void aura lingering outside. His voice rumbled low. “That leaves only two paths to break the deadlock.”
“First: recover the lost Ruin Core, restore the formation’s anchor point, and free the Dai bloodline entirely from its sacrificial burden. Second: artificially replicate the Core’s function, constructing a man-made substitute anchor with modern technology to mimic the artifact’s primordial balancing power.”
“Both paths carry insurmountable hurdles,” Sage stated plainly, no softening of the truth. “The Ruin Core vanished three thousand years ago, its location unrecorded, its clues broken and scattered—searching for it is akin to fishing for a needle in the ocean. Artificial replication is equally hopeless: the balancing logic of primordial ancient artifacts far outstrips the limits of modern spirit craft and technological architecture, with zero margin for error.”
Silence descended over the room once more.
Crises layered one atop another, the deadlock tightening with every passing hour.
Their foe lurked in hiding, the Void web watched their every move, the seal drained itself day by day, their comrade’s life ticking away on a six-month clock, and both potential paths to salvation fraught with mortal peril. The three-thousand-year game of fate had never offered easy solutions; every glimmer of survival had to be wrested from the jaws of ruin.
Jam crossed to the bedside, gazing down at the slumbering Daipithy.
Her complexion remained ghostly pale, her breaths shallow, the golden runes beneath her skin dormant and still, as if she had burned away every spark of fire within herself and surrendered to quiet waiting. She had traded half her lifespan to buy humanity six months of fragile peace, yanking the squad back from the brink of instant collapse—and now every weight of their struggle rested upon the remaining four.
“We will pursue both paths simultaneously,” Jam delivered his final verdict, his tone unshakable, no trace of hesitation.
“Sage, continue deconstructing the ancient scrolls and runic records to pinpoint the exact timeline and geographic coordinates of the Ruin Core’s disappearance. Sort through every fragmented clue to prioritize locating the original artifact first.”
“Banbandin, build digital models in parallel, deducing the feasibility of artificial anchor replication from scratch, constructing a virtual simulation framework. Even if the odds stand at one in ten thousand, dissect every critical parameter to its core.”
“Bangbangtu, rotate perimeter patrol shifts while tracking all Void web nodes. The moment you detect any fluctuation in Kaelor’s core energy, report instantly—do not engage in direct conflict without orders.”
The three responded in unified, low voices. “Acknowledged.”
Orders clear, duties divided, every member locked into wartime high alert. Trapped in an impossible deadlock, the Ruin Guardian squad launched their cruellest countdown battle yet.
Time slipped by minute by minute, sunlight shifting outside the windows from early morning to midday.
Mortal civilian life flourished unbroken, the world wrapped in quiet stability, unaware of the high-stakes game unfolding in hidden seclusion, unaware a group of burdened souls fought tooth and nail to carve out a future amid ruin.
Inside the safe house, data streams rolled nonstop, runic deductions progressed without pause, Void particle signals were tracked endlessly—no rest, no slack, no release from their vigil.
By afternoon, Banbandin’s terminal flagged an anomalous data spike.
The fluctuation did not originate from the archaeological site, but deep within the uninhabited northern reaches of the Dragon Gate Mountains, a fleeting, heavily suppressed surge of high-tier Void energy. Its frequency and textural signature matched Kaelor’s primordial core essence perfectly.
“Dormant coordinates captured,” Banbandin’s voice sharpened abruptly. “Northern Dragon Gate Mountains, remote old-growth forest. The surge lasted only a split second, deliberately contained—a test leak of energy, designed to gauge the limits of our monitoring systems.”
Bangbangtu spun on his heel, his gaze sharp as blade steel. “He’s testing our capabilities.”
“Exactly,” Jam nodded, heavy shadow pooling in his eyes. “He is verifying whether we retain the capacity to monitor, track, and counterattack after our brutal battle. He gauges our upper limits, calculating the optimal moment to strike and claim victory once the six-month window expires.”
“Send a deceptive signal back,” Jam ordered without delay. “Banbandin, fabricate artificial blind spots in our monitoring feed, deliberately expose simulated flaws to make him believe our systems are unstable, our strength depleted, and we pose no meaningful threat.”
“We feign weakness?” Bangbangtu raised an eyebrow.
“Not feign weakness—we lure him into recklessness,” Jam’s gaze deepened, cold resolve woven into his measured tone. “He possesses three thousand years of patience, a timeline we cannot hope to outwait. We must manufacture cracks in our own defenses to force him to make a premature move.”
“He waits for us to crumble; we wait for him to make a mistake.”
Banbandin grasped the strategy instantly, his fingers flying across the terminal to tamper with core monitoring data, simulating tracking blind zones, sensor malfunctions, and systemic instability, feeding the falsified signal back into the Void web’s transmission channels.
In an instant, an invisible battle of information waged silently across the airspace and underground veins.
No smoke of combat, no roar of clashing power—yet a life-or-death standoff churned beneath the surface, every step fraught with hidden peril.
Sage stared down at the fragmented ancient spread across the table, speaking softly with quiet foresight. “He will believe the deception, but never fully trust it.”
“Three thousand years of caution has been carved into his instincts. He will relax his vigilance only marginally, never launching a reckless full assault. The window we gain will be fleeting, narrow at best.”
“It will be enough,” Jam’s gaze drifted back to the unconscious Daipithy, his voice low and weighty.
“We do not need an extended opportunity. We only require one single flaw, one moment of unguarded movement, one fleeting gap in his vigilance.”
“One opening is all we need to break the cycle of fate.”
Silence reclaimed the safe house once more.
Data streams continued scrolling, runic research pressed forward, perimeter patrols maintained unbroken vigil, and the Void web lingered, spying every action they took.
Outside the walls, mortal life bloomed in quiet prosperity, days unfolding in uneventful calm.
Within the closed room, fate bore down heavy, the six-month death sentence ticking closer with every heartbeat.
The three-thousand-year game remained unresolved, the shadowed battle between light and dark waged without cease.
The abyss slumbered hidden within the mountain depths, a slumbering bloodline lay within arm’s reach, and the Ruin Guardians stood balanced on the knife’s edge between shadow and light—bearing wounded flesh, unyielding resolve, and solitary courage to press on through this unacknowledged, unsupported, unshared millennial burden of fate.
A new round of hidden, silent slaughter beneath the surface had fully begun.