The shadow of the monitoring network, the whisper of the Symbiotic Vines, and balance's blind spot
Three months after the Balance Monitoring Network was completed, an unusual alarm broke the tranquility of Heaven Dou City.
In the council's monitoring center, dozens of crystal screens flashed red alerts simultaneously. Seven of the points of light representing the energy nodes of the continent were dimming at an alarming rate—this was not the distorted energy of the Seed of Annihilation, but a more insidious "devouring," as if something was silently absorbing the vitality of the energy nodes.
"It's the Symbiotic Vine planting area in the Western Wasteland." The Mechanic Race Engineer in charge of monitoring pulled up the real-time footage. In the footage, the once lush Symbiotic Vine were withering at a visible rate, the soil at the roots of the vines turning dark brown and emitting a faint aura of death. "The energy loss rate is too fast. At this rate, the ley line energy of the Western Wasteland will be completely depleted in three hours!"
Tang San's Purple Demon Eye pierced through the screen, staring at the withered Symbiotic Vine. The vine's cellular structure was not distorted, nor were there any remnants of Annihilation Energy; it was more like... all the essence of life had been drained from it. He noticed a detail: on the withered vine, the veins of the leaves were abnormally neat, as if they had been forcibly "combed" by some force.
"It's not natural withering, nor is it Seed of Annihilation," Tang San said in a deep voice. "This energy loss carries a strong sense of 'order.' The energy of each vine starts from the root tip and flows out at a uniform rate along the veins, as if it were extracted by a sophisticated instrument."
Blue Crystal brought up an energy flow map of the Western Wasteland. In the map, a pale gray energy flow was seeping out from the roots of the Symbiotic Vine, flowing along the cracks in the earth's veins towards the depths of the wasteland, ending at an ancient battlefield designated as a "forbidden zone"—the site of a great war between humans and the Beast Soul Race a hundred years ago, said to retain strong Resentment Energy that had been suppressed by the life energy of the Symbiotic Vine.
"Is it Resentment Energy at work?" Xiao Wu frowned. She could sense a faint negative emotion emanating from the scene. "But Resentment Energy is chaotic, how can it have such a well-organized way of being extracted?"
"Unless someone has 'tamed' the resentment with the Order Energy," Dai Mubai, his Netherworld Thrust opening and closing in his palm. "Just as the mainframe uses absolute order to restrain the Mechanic Race, someone has forcibly suppressed the chaos of the resentment with the Order Energy, turning it into a controllable 'energy straw.'"
This conjecture instantly tightened the atmosphere in the monitoring center. Anyone capable of simultaneously manipulating Order Energy and Resentment Energy was no ordinary enemy. Tang San immediately made a decision. "Blue Crystal, you lead the Mechanic Race engineers to reinforce the defenses of the other energy nodes; Dai Mubai, you use spatial power to seal the ley line exits in the Western Wasteland, preventing further energy loss; Xiao Wu, come with me to the Western Wasteland to find the source of the energy extraction."
The scenery of the Western Wasteland is even more shocking than it appears on screen.
Patches of Symbiotic Vine lay sprawled on the ground, the brown soil riddled with fine cracks, each step producing a crisp, shattering sound. A thick aura of death permeated the air, even dimming the sunlight. Tang San crouched down, his fingers touching a vine that hadn't completely withered. The sensation emanating from his fingertips wasn't chaotic energy fluctuations, but a cold, mechanical "rhythm"—each energy pulse was perfectly synchronized, like a wound-up machine.
"It's the ' Order Shackles '." Tang San's voice carried a hint of coldness. "Someone has inscribed tiny Order Runes inside the vines. These runes draw energy at a fixed frequency, while suppressing the vines' self-repairing abilities."
Xiao Wu's Teleportation carried them along the pale gray energy flow. The closer they got to the ancient battlefield, the denser the Resentment Energy in the air became. However, this density was not a chaotic outburst, but rather like compressed black mist, flowing along a fixed trajectory, with even the speed of its drifting remaining astonishingly consistent.
At the center of the ancient battlefield stood a broken stone tablet, covered with blurred runes—the very "Soul-Suppressing Talisman" used a century ago to suppress Resentment Energy. Now, the Soul-Suppressing Talisman's light was dim. Around the tablet, a massive array was carved into the ground, its patterns identical to the Order Runes within the Symbiotic Vine. A pale gray energy flowed along the patterns, converging at the top of the tablet, where a figure in a black robe stood with his back to them, hands pressed against the tablet, chanting incantations.
"It's him!" Xiao Wu exclaimed in shock, "It's Mo Wushang's disciple, Mo Chen!"
The man in black robes slowly turned around, revealing a young but bloodless face. His left eye was a normal black, but his right eye was covered by a layer of silver metallic film, gleaming with a cold light—it was the mechanical prosthetic eye left behind by Mo Wushang, capable of analyzing the trajectory of energy flow.
"Tang San, we meet again." Mo Chen's voice had a metallic quality, and the metallic membrane of his right eye contracted, revealing a pupil that shimmered with red light. "You didn't expect this, did you? The resentment you regarded as the 'source of chaos' can become such a highly efficient energy tool under the constraints of order."
Tang San looked at the hands pressed against the stone tablet, hands covered with metal prosthetics similar to Mo Wushang's, their surfaces engraved with Order Runes, continuously channeling Resentment Energy into the formation. "What are you trying to do? Extracting earth vein energy, is it to resurrect Mo Wushang?"
"Resurrect that loser?" Mo Chen scoffed, the red light in his right eye growing even more piercing. "He was too weak, only daring to use dark energy to modify the Mechanic Race, yet he didn't understand the true power of order. What I want to do is use Resentment Energy and Order Runes to construct a completely new 'balance'—a world without chaos, without difference, absolutely 'equal'."
He pointed to the withered Symbiotic Vine: "Look at these vines. In life, some were strong, some were weak, some were tall, some were short. How unfair! Under my formation, they wither at the same speed and die in the same way. This is true 'equality'."
"This isn't equality, it's stifling." Tang San's Blue Silver Grass silently spread, Entanglement the edge of the array. "Balance isn't about erasing differences, it's about allowing different existences to find their place. Like the Symbiotic Vine and the metal remnants, the vine has its vitality, and the metal has its hardness; they nourish each other, rather than assimilate each other."
"Enough with the nonsense." Mo Chen's metal prosthetic limb slammed into the stone tablet, causing the array's light to surge instantly, and the pale gray energy flow to become even more robust. "Once I've absorbed all the earth vein energy, the Soul-Suppressing Talisman will shatter. At that time, the Resentment Energy, bound by order, will sweep across the entire continent, turning all life into 'equal' energy carriers!"
As he spoke, the ground around the stone tablet began to tremble. The Resentment Energy from a hundred years ago, like a giant beast awakening, transformed into countless gray energy snakes under the restraint of the Order Runes, rushing towards Tang San and Xiao Wu! The trajectory of these energy snakes was exceptionally precise, and each attack blocked all angles of evasion, clearly indicating that they had been "programmed".
"Xiao Wu, interfere with his prosthetic eye!" Tang San roared, and the Blue Crystal Grass erupted with Chaos Energy, colliding with the gray energy snake. The disorder of the Chaos Energy perfectly countered the resentment that was restrained by order, and the energy snake disintegrated instantly, like ice and snow encountering fire.
Xiao Wu unleashed her Charm skill at full power, a pink halo enveloping Mo Chen's right eye. The red light of the metal prosthetic eye flickered violently, and Mo Chen's movements visibly slowed down—although the mechanical prosthetic eye was powerful, it could not handle the emotional fluctuations contained in the Charm skill, and the program experienced a brief malfunction.
"Now!" Tang San seized the opportunity, infusing the power of the Chaos Azure Lotus into the Blue Silver Grass. The vines, as if possessing life, spread backward along the patterns of the array, enveloping and eroding the Order Runes one by one.
Mo Chen roared, and his metal prosthetic limb erupted with intense Order Energy, attempting to sever the Blue Silver Grass. However, the disorder of the Chaos Energy prevented the Order Energy from locking onto its target. Instead, the Blue Silver Grass led the ordered energy to the core of the formation, where it collided with the Resentment Energy.
"No!" Mo Chen watched helplessly as the array's patterns began to malfunction, the restrained Resentment Energy spiraling out of control, rampaging through the array like a wild horse. "My order! My equality!"
The backlash from the Resentment Energy caused the stone tablet to tremble violently, the light of the Soul-Suppressing Talisman to be completely extinguished, and a huge crack appeared in the ground of the ancient battlefield. Mo Chen, along with his metal prosthetic limb, fell into the bottomless crack, leaving behind only a roar of unwillingness.
As the formation collapsed, the energy loss from the Western Wasteland stopped. Tang San immediately guided Chaos Energy into the earth's veins, and tiny green shoots began to sprout from the roots of the withered Symbiotic Vine. Although the recovery was slow, it was full of tenacious vitality.
On the way back to Heaven Dou City, Xiao Wu looked at the gradually recovering greenery on the wasteland and said softly, "The 'equality' that Mo Chen talks about is actually a blind spot of balance, isn't it? We always think about the balance between chaos and order, but we forget that there is also a pseudo-balance like 'extreme equality'."
Tang San nodded, his heart filled with emotion. "The enemies of balance are never just chaos and rigidity, but also this kind of strangulation under the banner of 'equality.' True balance should be like the Symbiotic Vine and the metal debris, allowing for the existence of differences and finding a fulcrum for symbiosis within those differences, rather than forcibly grinding all existence into the same shape."
Inside the monitoring center, Blue Crystal and Dai Mubai were repairing the ley lines affected by the energy extraction. Seeing Tang San return, Blue Crystal pulled up the latest monitoring data. "The other energy nodes have stabilized, but we've discovered that Mo Chen's formation left ' Order Seed ' within them. If they aren't completely removed, they may recur in the future."
"These seeds are precisely the opportunity for us to perfect the balance." Tang San looked at the Order Runes flashing in the data, a glimmer of understanding in his eyes. "They remind us that safeguarding the balance requires not only fighting against external threats, but also being wary of internal blind spots—those seemingly reasonable but actually life-suppressing 'pseudo-balances'."
Three months later, the Symbiotic Vine in the Western Wasteland fully recovered. However, this time, the vines were no longer a single emerald green, but interwoven with various colors such as golden yellow, light purple, and silver-white. This was a genetic mutation induced by Tang San using Chaos Energy, which gave each vine a unique resistance, making it impossible for the unified Order Runes.
This "deliberate difference" has become a new landscape in the Western Wasteland, and also a mark for the Balance Guardian to remember the lessons learned.
Tang San stood at the edge of the wasteland, watching the colorful vines swaying in the wind. He understood in his heart: the path of exploring balance will always encounter new blind spots, but as long as we maintain respect for differences and awe for life, we will surely find the unique Way of Balance that belongs to this continent in the fog.
Those enemies lurking in the shadows, those beings attempting to distort the balance through extreme means, will only strengthen the guardians' resolve through each trial.