The Mystery of the Ten Rings

Dawn's faint light, like the gaze of something dying, struggled through the warehouse's filthy transom windows, casting a few wavering patches of light across the cold concrete floor before they were swallowed by the darkness deeper inside. The air was mixed with the pungent sting of disinfectant, lingering blood, and a faint bitter herbal scent—the medicine Ming Shiyin had brewed all night to suppress the remaining poison in Lanling King's body. Blended with motor oil and rust, it painted a hopeless scene in the aftermath of battle.

Xiang Yi curled up in the hollow of a pile of discarded tires, barely covered by an old, oil-stained blanket. His eyes were closed, his face pale as paper, with deep shadows beneath his eyes. The brief resurgence brought on by forcibly overextending his mental strength had long since faded, leaving only a deeper exhaustion that seemed to hollow out his soul. This twelve-year-old body felt as though it had been bound by rusted iron chains. Every attempt to focus brought stabbing pain to his temples, as if they had been stuffed with red-hot iron sand. Even every breath hurt.

Across from him, Lanling King lay unconscious on a makeshift metal table. His breathing had steadied, but the pallor left by blood loss and poison was still frightening, making him look like a jade carving weathered by wind and rain. Like a true shadow, A Ke stood silently in the darkness beside the table, her hood pulled low enough to reveal only her cold, chiseled chin. Her arms were folded, and she appeared relaxed, but Xiang Yi knew that beneath that still exterior, every muscle was taut like a spring compressed to its limit. The slightest disturbance could unleash lethal killing intent. In the corner, Guiguzi floated in midair. The Xuan Weizi mist around him flickered like a candle guttering in the wind as he struggled to maintain the warehouse's fragile Cognitive Interference field and block outside scrutiny. He too had expended a great deal, and exhaustion was carved into his aged face.

The only one moving was Ming Shiyin.

He sat cross-legged on a small clean patch in the center of the warehouse. An ancient bronze divination disk floated before him, rotating slowly as complex trigrams flowed across its surface in faint, mysterious light. His hands formed seals, nearly transparent streams of energy winding around his fingertips. With every thread he fed into it, a fragile bluish tint showed beneath his already pale skin, as though the spinning bronze disk were forcibly draining away his life. Each infusion made the corners of his mouth tremble harder, while fine beads of cold sweat seeped from his temples as if he were carrying an enormous burden.

He was divining the meaning of a keyword Guiguzi had urgently intercepted from the black market last night—"Ten Rings Syndicate."

The warehouse was deathly silent, broken only by Lanling King's breathing and the nearly inaudible hum of the rotating disk. Xiang Yi laboriously opened his heavy eyelids and looked toward Ming Shiyin. Every divination burned away a piece of the seer's life. The blood he coughed up, the red-stained front of his robes, and the increasing white in his hair all weighed upon Xiang Yi's heart like heavy stones.

"Sir..." Xiang Yi's voice was hoarse, like sandpaper scraping wood. "Don't force yourself if you can't do it." He did not want to see anyone else fall, especially for the sake of some vague target.

Ming Shiyin did not respond. Every ounce of his will was focused on his fingertips and the rotating divination disk. His gaze was incredibly sharp, as if it could pierce matter itself, fixed upon the muddy waves surging through the river of fate.

Suddenly!

"Pfft—"

A mouthful of blood burst from Ming Shiyin without warning, like crimson plum blossoms scattering across the spinning bronze divination disk!

The blood did not slide off. Instead, the disk absorbed it instantly! The light on its surface abruptly turned a blinding scarlet before shifting into an ominous dark red! The orderly rotating disk suddenly shook violently, letting out a mournful hum as the trigram symbols representing the Ten Rings Syndicate flashed, twisted, and reformed wildly!

Xiang Yi's heart jolted. He sat upright abruptly, and the blanket slipped off him. A Ke in the shadows instantly tensed like a drawn bow! Guiguzi's cloudy old eyes snapped open, his floating body leaning slightly forward as the Xuan Weizi mist churned violently.

"Ugh...!" Ming Shiyin let out a suppressed groan of pain. His body swayed violently, barely holding his posture. He stared at the disk, blood vessels filling his eyes as though he wished to see through the boiling dark-red glow.

For several seconds, the red light on the disk twisted madly. Then, amid violent trembling, it slowly condensed into four blurry, warped ancient seal-script characters seemingly traced in thick bloody light—

A Dragon Trapped in Shallow Waters!

The four bloody characters did not remain still. They seemed to struggle and rise and sink within a boiling pool of blood, their strokes twisting and writhing as they radiated suffocating resentment, unwillingness, and savage malice! The air throughout the warehouse seemed weighed down by invisible murderous energy! At the edges of the characters, the bloody light continued to struggle and dissipate, like an imprisoned dragon soul roaring in rage.

"Cough... cough, cough..." Ming Shiyin broke into another wrenching fit of coughs. Blood streamed from the corner of his mouth, swiftly staining his robes. The light in his eyes dimmed, leaving deep exhaustion and a trace of alarm.

"A dragon trapped in shallow waters?" Xiang Yi repeated softly, his brow knotting tightly. This omen was far too dangerous and unclear. "Does it refer to the Ten Rings Syndicate? Or... Tony Stark?" He thought of the future Iron Man trapped in that cave.

Ming Shiyin panted as he laboriously wiped the blood from his mouth. His voice was weak but clear. "No... This omen does not point to a trapped beast, but... a hidden dragon! Its power has already taken shape, its claws and fangs are already sharp, yet it is prevented by... the time, the place, or... human calamity from entering the sea... from taking flight..." He panted, looking toward the still-restless bloody light. "This 'dragon'... harbors boundless resentment and concealed ferocity... Its 'confinement' is not due to weakness, but... because the moment has not come? Or because... shackles bind it? The omen is muddled, like seeing a dragon through fog. One can see only its savage claws and fangs, not its full form, and cannot know whether its 'confinement' is self-imposed, or... imposed by another."

"A hidden dragon?" Xiang Yi turned the phrase over in his mind, alarm bells ringing. This description did not match the flamboyant arms dealer Tony Stark from his memories. Was there an even deeper secret behind the Ten Rings Syndicate? That vague image of the Mandarin flashed through his mind again.

At that moment, Guiguzi suddenly spoke from the corner, his voice carrying the ethereal echo of Xuan Weizi. "My lord, the Profound Micro-Particle Network captured a fragment of high-frequency encrypted information last night. Its source points to an underground intelligence site somewhere in Southeast Asia, and its content concerns the recent activities of the Ten Rings Syndicate. Preliminary analysis is complete..."

Guiguzi raised a withered finger and tapped lightly through the air. Sparse particles of Xuan Weizi light rapidly gathered, intertwined, and projected—a clear yet somewhat rough three-dimensional image of a mechanical blueprint abruptly formed!

The instant the blueprint's core section appeared, Xiang Yi felt as if his heart had been seized brutally by an icy iron hand!

It was unmistakably the outline of a humanoid suit of armor, crudely assembled from a large number of scrap metal parts! It was primitive beyond belief, but the circular energy core in its chest, the rough transmission structures in its limbs, and the iconic half-face protective mask... all carried an unforgettable sense of familiarity!

"Mark I?!" Xiang Yi's pupils contracted as he blurted it out! How had the Ten Rings Syndicate acquired Tony Stark's invention for surviving in the cave?!

"The blueprint's origin is unknown. The sender used multiple encrypted relay points, making it difficult to trace." Guiguzi's voice was grave. "However, the final transmission node vanished in the Golden Triangle region, overlapping with the intercepted Ten Rings Syndicate weapons-smuggling routes."

Xiang Yi's heart sank to the bottom. The Mark I blueprints had fallen into the Ten Rings Syndicate's hands... What did that mean? Replication? Proliferation? A drastic change in the future? If Stark Industries technology fell into the hands of terrorists...

His gaze became a probe, fixed tightly on the floating blueprint as his brain ran at overload, analyzing the disasters that each component might bring. Then, as if drawn by a magnet, his sharp eyes locked onto an utterly inconspicuous corner in the lower right of the blueprint!

There was no marking for dimensions or materials there, but a tiny ancient seal-script character that seemed to pierce through the "paper" itself! It was as though someone had dipped a carving knife in boiling blood and chiseled it into the cold logic of this machinery! It stood utterly at odds with the surrounding industrial design, radiating solitude, desolation, and even... a strange sense of belonging.

"Xu."

"Xu?" Xiang Yi murmured, his heartbeat suddenly accelerating. The surname had no particular connection in the Marvel world. Was it the designer? The supplier? Or... some kind of code name?

Just as he concentrated on that isolated character, Ming Shiyin, who had been staring at the four boiling bloody words on the divination disk, suddenly shuddered violently without warning!

Clang—!

A piercing sound rang out, like a string of fate being forcibly snapped!

At the center of the floating bronze divination disk, a hair-thin yet incomparably clear crack suddenly appeared! It tore from the savage dragon head in the character for "dragon" all the way to the rippling water beside the character for "waters"! Dark-red bloody light seeped through the fresh crack, corroding it with a scalp-prickling hiss, as if some living thing deep inside were desperately trying to crawl out!

"Urgh!" Ming Shiyin gave a muffled groan, as though struck by lightning! His hands snapped back from their seals and clutched protectively at his chest. His face instantly turned a sickly golden hue! He stared at the savage crack, and for the first time, intense shock and... incredulous agitation appeared in his eyes.

"Sir!" Xiang Yi sprang to his feet, the overwhelming headache instantly suppressed by the sudden change.

"I'm... I'm fine..." Ming Shiyin breathed rapidly, his voice trembling from the depths of his soul. His eyes did not leave the crack, as if he could see some connection beyond comprehension through it. "This crack... was not caused by an outside force... It was... the omen itself that could not bear the true meaning of that 'dragon'... Even... even stranger..." He laboriously raised his head to look at Xiang Yi, then instinctively glanced at the solitary seal-script character "Xu" in Guiguzi's projection. His expression became extraordinarily complicated, filled with unprecedented confusion.

"At the instant... the divination disk shattered... this old man... felt a trace of... agitation from deep within my bloodline? Weak as a dying candle in the wind, yet... hot as a branding iron! It... seemed to resonate faintly with this character, 'Xu'?!"

Ming Shiyin's words fell like a meteor into still water, stirring soundless towering waves in the silent warehouse.

Agitation from deep within his bloodline? Resonating with the mysterious seal-script character "Xu" carved into the Ten Rings Syndicate's weapon blueprint?!

Xiang Yi's pupils shrank to pinpoints! An absurd, bone-chilling cold swept through his body! Someone from the Kingdoms Continent... ancient seal script from the Marvel world... These two lines that should never have crossed had been forcibly twisted together by a crack in a divination disk? Was it a hallucination born from divination overexertion? Or did it point toward a horrifying truth buried beneath the river of time? The Ten Rings Syndicate, the Mark I blueprints, the mysterious character "Xu," Ming Shiyin... these fragments had been forcibly linked together, radiating a terror-inducing unease.

A Ke silently slid half a step out of the shadows like a viper poised to strike. From beneath her hood, her icy gaze swept over Ming Shiyin's sickly golden face and the crack in the divination disk that seemed to be breathing before settling on Xiang Yi's tightly furrowed brow. The air froze.

"Bzz—"

An incredibly faint electronic buzz, yet one enough to pierce the suffocating silence, suddenly sounded from a corner of the warehouse.

It came from an old signal receiver half-covered by debris and connected to a crude antenna—a surveillance device Guiguzi had assembled from scrap parts.

Guiguzi's cloudy old eyes immediately opened wide and turned toward the receiver. His withered fingers traced through the air, and several pale golden Xuan Weizi particles drifted toward the device, analyzing an incredibly weak encrypted communications residue it had captured.

Several seconds later, Guiguzi turned back. Even his floating body seemed to grow heavier, and his voice was more grave than ever. "My lord, emergency interception. Source: an internal S.H.I.E.L.D. encrypted channel. Clearance level: Level 7, exclusive to Phil Coulson. Target: Su Rui, codename Nestling."

Xiang Yi's heart plunged into ice. Su Rui! S.H.I.E.L.D.'s "eyes"!

"The content?" Xiang Yi's voice was cold. Last night's bloodshed, the fog surrounding the Ten Rings Syndicate, and Ming Shiyin's strange reaction had stretched his nerves to the breaking point.

"Not a voice transmission. It is a data-retrieval directive." Guiguzi quickened his speech. "The directive demands a deep extraction and analysis of the creation, modification, and access records for all electronic files from every student in Su Rui's class over the past three months, with special emphasis on Xiang Yi—especially 'abnormal modification logs at irregular time points.' Coulson specifically marked: 'Find the points of logical discontinuity.'"

"'Points of logical discontinuity'..." Those five words stabbed into Xiang Yi's spine like five poisonous icicles! He could practically see Coulson's gentle yet all-seeing eyes dissecting the web of disguise he had painstakingly constructed, inch by inch through cold electronic signals, searching for the traces of tampering that Guiguzi's superb methods had concealed but might have left as tiny "burrs" in the underlying logic! A strike at the foundation! Coulson truly had not given up. The clues from the satellite intrusion had become vague, and the ninja dart fragments might have been dealt with, but he had dug directly toward the foundation of Xiang Yi's identity—the modification records of his electronic files!

The warehouse temperature plummeted to freezing. The chill brought by the Ancient One's all-penetrating gaze had not faded. Lanling King was badly wounded, the Ten Rings Syndicate was shrouded in mystery, Ming Shiyin's origins had become a riddle, and now S.H.I.E.L.D.'s most professional hunter had drawn his deadliest electronic scalpel!

A Ke emerged completely from the shadows like a ghost. Her twin blades left their sheaths without a sound, only two chilling arcs of Arc Light slicing through the gloom. Her gaze no longer remained fixed on the entrance. Like the most precise radar, it silently swept over every electronic device wreckage and port in the warehouse that might leak information. Her meaning was clear: invisible electronic intrusion was deadlier than drawn blades and guns.

Ming Shiyin held his chest, his breathing ragged. His gaze upon the crack in the divination disk was filled with unprecedented confusion and deep exhaustion, as if that instant of scorching agitation had drained not only his strength, but also certain understandings rooted in his soul.

Xiang Yi stood where he was, his thin figure seeming small beneath the warehouse's vast shadows. The headache from overexertion gnawed at his will, and his body was so weak it felt as if it might fall apart at any moment. Ahead lay the hidden dragon of the Ten Rings, behind him were S.H.I.E.L.D.'s pursuers, in the darkness was the Sorcerer Supreme's watchful gaze, and beside him were companions covered in wounds and shrouded in mystery... Every step in this game was lethal.

And yet—

On his face, pale enough to seem almost translucent, the tiny cold spark deep in his bloodshot eyes did not go out. Instead, as though tempered by extreme cold, it erupted with dim yet incomparably sharp light! There was no longer any youthful hesitation in that light. Only the calm and madness of a player facing a dead end, ready to perish together with the board remained!

He slowly raised his head. His eyes swept over the badly wounded Lanling King, over A Ke standing guard like an electronic hunter, over the weary Guiguzi and the confused Ming Shiyin. Finally, his gaze seemed to pierce through the cold metal walls toward the city, toward S.H.I.E.L.D.'s "Nestling" named Su Rui.

At the corner of his mouth, an icy curve slowly, very slowly, rose without the slightest trace of a smile.

"Logical discontinuity?" The boy's voice rang through the deathly silent warehouse, carrying a trace of hoarseness but clear as a blade freshly drawn after tempering. "Then let them search. The more carefully... the deeper they search..."

He tilted his head slightly. The cold curve at his lips deepened with an almost innocent cruelty. His fingertips unconsciously tapped lightly against the cold old tire beneath him, producing dull, rhythmic sounds like he was calculating a countdown.

"...the faster they'll fall into the pit."

His gaze seemed to casually sweep across an inconspicuous abandoned port in the corner of the warehouse, one connected to the outside network.