The Gears of the Clock

Li Wei adjusted his messy collar with one hand while staring at the auspex he had stolen from the engineering vehicle.

The red light on the screen reflected off his grim face.

"The source of that 'stasis pulse' is in the subterranean core.

As long as it doesn't shut down, the surface will be purged every few hours."

"Furthermore, according to the readings on this, the pulse frequency is accelerating. Before long, the surface will become a permanent stasis zone. By then, even the air will freeze, and we'll be trapped and left to die up there like bugs in amber."

Sister Elena leaned against the cold blackstone wall, still struggling to calm the shameful aftershocks of a moment ago.

Hearing this, she raised her head with a pale face.

"So... the only way is down?"

"The only way is the control room." Li Wei pointed to a high-energy node displayed on the auspex.

"Necron Tomb Worlds usually have portals—Stone Gates, or at least some kind of hub capable of controlling this planet's defense system."

"We have to go shut down that damn pulse, or grab a portal and get out of here."

"But that lord..." Elena thought of the terrifying metallic giant, and her body shuddered again.

"It went on patrol. Or went to report to a higher-ranking lord." Li Wei put away the auspex and tightened his grip on the broken sword in his hand.

"This is the window of time it left us. It's short, but we have no choice."

"We either wait up there to die, or go down and take a gamble." Li Wei looked at Elena. "Wasn't that Archmagos captain of yours heading down too? If he's still alive, maybe he knows how to operate these damn things."

At the mention of the Archmagos, a glimmer of hope flashed in Elena's eyes.

"Archmagos Kilgrave... He is an outstanding xenos archaeologist of the Adeptus Mechanicus. If he's down below, we will surely be saved!"

"Then pray he hasn't turned to ash yet." Li Wei did not pierce this slim hope.

In this universe, going missing usually meant death, or something worse than death.

The two began their descent.

The subterranean structure of the obelisk was less of a tomb and more of a massive, precision instrument.

There was no gloomy aura of corpses here, only an extreme, suffocating sense of order.

The corridors were wide and straight, the walls composed of some kind of black living metal that absorbed light, their surfaces carved with geometric patterns flowing with green light.

The air was cold and dry, completely devoid of dust.

Silence.

Absolute silence.

Even the sound of their footsteps was swallowed by the eerie metal floor.

This environment made Li Wei feel deeply uncomfortable.

It didn't look like a place where living things resided, but rather the inside of a computer motherboard.

Here, life was redundant garbage code.

"Watch out." Li Wei suddenly stopped and reached out to block Elena.

The corridor ahead changed.

The floor had vanished. In its place were countless massive, slowly rotating black gears.

These gears hovered over an abyss, meshing with one another and emitting a low hum.

And in the gaps between the gears, deadly green arcs of electricity flashed from time to time.

This was a gauntlet path.

Or rather, this was the "viscera" of this Tomb World at work.

"We have to jump across." Li Wei observed the pattern of the gear rotation.

"Follow my rhythm. Step on the uncharged gear."

He leaped onto it first.

Thud.

The moment he landed on the gear, Li Wei felt the metal beneath his feet seem to shift.

That gear had been rotating clockwise, but the moment Li Wei (the pariah) stepped on it, it stuttered like it had a bad connection, its rotation slowing by half a beat.

"Hm?" Li Wei's eyes brightened.

Necron technology was material technology, but their technological core—living metal—depended to some extent on a divine power called "C'tan" or extremely complex quantum entanglement.

And Li Wei's "Void Field" seemed to interfere with this delicate quantum balance.

Even a machine would feel "confused" by his presence.

"Come on!" Li Wei turned back and shouted. "While it's lagging!"

Elena gritted her teeth, hoisted her robes, and stumbled across.

When she landed on the gear Li Wei was on, that gear immediately returned to its normal speed and even accelerated, as if trying to shake these two intruders off.

"Hold on to me!" Li Wei grabbed Elena's hand (this time Elena didn't pull away, her survival instinct overcoming her disgust) and, using the centrifugal force of the gear, lunged toward the next platform.

The two of them were like fleas jumping inside a giant clockwork.

Around them were countless rotating black giant wheels, and beneath their feet was a bottomless abyss flashing with green light.

Finally, they landed on solid ground on the opposite side.

Elena knelt on the ground and dry-heaved (that familiar motion-sickness feeling again), while Li Wei vigilantly surveyed his surroundings.

This was a circular hall.

In the center of the hall stood a massive control console.

And connected to the console was... something.

"That is..." Elena raised her head, then covered her mouth as tears welled up and spilled over.

It was a half-human, half-machine monster.

He wore the tattered red robes of the Adeptus Mechanicus, his lower body already disassembled, countless conduits plugged directly into his spine and internal organs, anchoring him to that Necron control console.

His braincase had been opened, and several fiber-optic cables flashing with green light were plugged directly into his gray matter.

Archmagos Kilgrave.

He was still alive.

Or rather, he was "alive" in an extremely agonizing way.

The Necrons hadn't killed him.

They had turned him into a translator.

Or treated him as a biological CPU used to understand human logic.

"...Archmagos!" Elena cried out as she rushed forward.

"Don't touch him!" Li Wei tried to stop her, but he was a step too late.

The moment Elena's hand touched the Archmagos.

That cyborg, who had been hanging his head as if dead, suddenly convulsed violently.

His single remaining bionic eye suddenly flashed with red light, staring fixedly at Elena.

"Run... away..." The Archmagos's vocal unit emitted a harsh noise, a sound mixed with human language and Necron binary code.

"They are... watching... through my eyes..."

"I am watching too." Another voice, cold and devoid of emotion, directly overrode the Archmagos's voice.

That voice came from the walls on all sides, from the abyss beneath the earth.

A Tomb Technician.

The true master of this Tomb World.

"An interesting variable," that voice echoed in the hall.

"A tech-priest who refuses to surrender the code no matter how he is tortured."

"A female bound by faith."

"And..."

The lights around the hall suddenly all turned crimson.

The Archmagos's body began to vibrate violently, the conduits plugged into his brain reversing flow as green Necron energy madly poured into his body.

"...A void."

"A perfect container to load the 'Destroyer Virus'."

Crack!

The mechanical arm on the Archmagos suddenly reversed, grabbing Elena in front of him. A massive hydraulic pincer clamped onto her neck, lifting her into midair.

"Elena!" Li Wei raised the broken sword and rushed forward.

"Stop, Soulless." That voice carried a hint of mockery.

"If you take one more step closer, I will crush her spine."

"Though I have no interest in such lowlife carbon-based organisms, I am curious..."

The Archmagos turned his head, that red-flashing eye staring at Li Wei.

"Does a man without a soul possess an emotion... called 'sacrifice'?"

Li Wei stopped in his tracks.

He looked at Elena, hanging in midair with a purplish face.

Then he looked at the Archmagos, who had been completely controlled.

This was no longer a beast's hunt.

This was an experiment by a high-intelligence AI.

The opponent was toying with them.

"What do you want?" Li Wei asked coldly, lowering the sword in his hand.

"Simple." The floor in the center of the hall split open, rising to reveal a transparent energy cage.

The cage was empty, save for countless green bolts of lightning dancing within it.

"This is a 'Soul Stripping Chamber'. It is usually used to disassemble stubborn psykers into batteries."

"But I cannot calculate what will happen if I put you inside. Will the machine overload? Or will you generate a soul?"

"Such unknown data makes me... feel pleasure."

The Archmagos's mechanical arm tightened slightly, and Elena let out a pained groan.

"Get in." "If you can survive a 100% power strip without dying, I will let this female go."

"Or, you can turn around and leave. I will snap her neck and resume my slumber."

"Make your choice, variable."

Li Wei looked at that green electric chair.

Then he looked at Elena.

She was struggling, her eyes filled with fear, but as she looked at Li Wei, she managed a difficult headshake.

"Don't... don't mind me... go..."

Li Wei fell silent.

He was an egoist.

He had come here purely to survive.

To sit in an electric chair for a woman he had known for less than a few hours, who had even looked down on him?

This was illogical.

This violated the laws of survival.

However.

Li Wei suddenly smiled.

"You know, tin can." Li Wei threw away the broken sword in his hand and strode toward the energy cage.

"You calculated one thing wrong."

"I'm not here to save her."

"I'm here... to show you what a real 'bug' looks like."

Without a shred of hesitation, he stepped into the green cage.

"Come on!" Li Wei spread his arms and roared into the void.

"Turn your power to maximum! Let's see whether your machine blows up first, or I die first!"

"As you wish." The cage closed.

Countless bolts of green lightning instantly struck Li Wei's body.