The moment the drones finished welding the patch onto the Earth Shaker's chest, the humming stopped.
For five thousand years, the canyon had vibrated with a subsonic frequency—the song of the leaking Spirit Vein. It was a pulse that every living creature in the Northern Wastes had grown accustomed to, like the beating of a mother's heart.
Now, deep in the earth, Jiang Chen watched the diagnostics turn green. The leak was sealed. The energy was no longer bleeding into the rock; it was circulating internally within the golem, recharging its batteries.
"Seal confirmed," Jiang Chen said, checking his suit readings. "Let's go top-side. I want to see how the new reactor integrates with the grid."
He didn't realize that by fixing the machine, he had rung a dinner bell.
Twenty miles north, in the frozen crags of the White Ridge, a pair of eyes snapped open. They were pale blue, pupil-less, and burned with a cold, predatory intelligence.
Winter-Fang was a Rank 3 Spirit Beast—an Ice Wolf Alpha the size of a carriage. He ruled a pack of three thousand. For generations, they had slept near the warmth of the "Singing Earth." The Qi leaking from the ground kept them strong and full.
Suddenly, the warmth vanished. The food was gone.
Winter-Fang stood up, shaking the snow from his crystalline fur. A low growl rumbled in his throat. Around him, thousands of smaller wolves woke up, whining in confusion. The ambient Qi was fading rapidly. The cold was biting deeper than usual.
But there was still one source of heat.
Far to the south, a pillar of smoke rose into the sky. It smelled of sulfur, iron, and... meat.
Winter-Fang let out a howl that shattered the icicles on the nearby trees. It wasn't a call to hunt. It was a call to migrate.
The pack moved. A white tide sweeping across the grey snow.
Beiluo City was quiet. It was 3:00 AM. The only sound was the rhythmic thumping of the steam pistons in the steel mill.
On the Northern Wall, Guard Captain Han walked the perimeter. He wore the new Winter Combat Gear—padded white fatigues, a steel helmet, and a thick thermal cloak. He carried a customized Type-56 assault rifle with a primitive telescopic sight.
"Anything on the scopes?" Han asked the technician manning the console in the guard tower.
"Negative, Captain. Just wind and snow," the technician replied, staring at the green glow of the radar screen. "Wait..."
The screen flickered. A single dot appeared at the edge of the range (5km).
Then another. Then ten. Then hundreds.
The technician tapped the screen. "Sir? Is the machine broken? It looks like... rain?"
Han looked at the screen. The entire northern sector was a solid wall of green static moving south.
"That's not rain," Han whispered, the blood draining from his face. "Sound the alarm! beast Tide!"
Wooooooooo-ooo!
The air raid sirens, usually reserved for Sect attacks, wailed into the night.
In the barracks, lights snapped on. Soldiers rolled out of bunks, grabbing rifles and helmets. They didn't panic. Three weeks of drilling and good food had turned the starving peasants into a professional force.
"Man the walls! Load High-Explosive!"
Jiang Chen was already in the Command Center when the first report came in. He looked at the thermal satellite feed (relayed from the high-altitude drone).
"Wolf Pack," Jiang Chen noted, his voice calm. "Estimated count: 3,500. Lead unit: Rank 3 Alpha."
"They are moving fast, Administrator," Chen Wei noted nervously. "They will hit the minefield in two minutes. Should we deploy the tanks?"
"No," Jiang Chen said. "Tanks are for breakthrough. This is a Tower Defense scenario. Activate the Kill Zone."
The wolf pack crested the final ridge before the city. They saw the metal walls, the glowing floodlights, and the heat radiating from the factories. Hunger drove them mad.
Winter-Fang roared, and the pack surged forward. They were fast—blurring streaks of white that moved at sixty miles per hour.
They hit the 1,000-meter mark.
CLICK.
A wolf stepped on a pressure plate hidden under the snow.
[Bouncing Betty Mine: Triggered.]
The mine didn't explode instantly. It launched a canister into the air, waist-high.
BOOM.
The canister detonated, spraying hundreds of steel ball bearings in a 360-degree radius.
Five wolves were shredded instantly.
But five was nothing. The pack didn't stop. They poured over the ridge, triggering mine after mine. explosions blossomed like fiery flowers in the snow.
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM.
Wolves yelped and flew through the air. Ice armor shattered against steel shrapnel. But the sheer weight of numbers was overwhelming. They used the bodies of the fallen as a bridge to cross the minefield.
"They are at 500 meters!" Han shouted into his radio. "Open fire!"
On the walls, the Mk II Sentry Turrets spun to life.
These weren't the heavy .50 cals used against the Elder. These were Twin-Linked Miniguns (7.62mm), designed for crowd control.
BRRRRRRRRRRRRT!
The sound was like canvas tearing. Tracers lit up the night, forming solid lines of fire connecting the walls to the snow.
The wolf pack ran into a wall of lead. The front row simply evaporated. The sheer volume of fire—6,000 rounds per minute per turret—turned the snow red.
But these were Spirit Beasts.
Some of the larger wolves opened their maws, spewing cones of freezing mist. The mist hit the incoming bullets, freezing them in mid-air or slowing them down enough to bounce off their hides.
"They are countering the ballistics!" a soldier screamed. "The Ice Qi is thickening!"
Winter-Fang, the Alpha, finally made his move. He saw the turrets. He gathered his Qi.
He howled, and the ground beneath the minefield erupted. Massive spikes of ice, twenty feet tall, shot up, creating a shield wall that blocked the turret fire.
"Cover!" Winter-Fang commanded mentally.
The pack swarmed behind the ice spikes, advancing safely toward the moat.
Jiang Chen watched the tactical map. The "Ice Wall" tactic was clever.
"Clever girl," Jiang Chen muttered. "But ice is brittle."
"Artillery," he commanded. "Direct fire. Use the Flak 88s."
On the corner bastions, the heavy anti-air cannons leveled out. Usually pointed at the sky, their barrels lowered to parallel with the ground.
"Target the Ice Spikes. High Explosive."
THOOM. THOOM.
The 88mm shells crossed the distance in a blink.
They smashed into the ice wall.
CRASH.
The ice didn't just break; it shattered into millions of razor-sharp shards. The explosion behind the wall turned the wolves' own cover into shrapnel.
Winter-Fang was thrown back, his fur singed. The cover was gone. The miniguns resumed their song.
The Alpha realized this was not a hunt. It was a slaughter. But retreat meant starvation.
He locked eyes on the main gate. He sensed the heat behind it.
Winter-Fang gathered every ounce of his Rank 3 Qi. His body began to glow with blinding blue light. He grew in size, his muscles tearing, his ice armor thickening until he looked like a glacier on legs.
He charged.
He ignored the mines. He ignored the bullets. They pinged off his glowing hide like rain. He was a tank made of magic.
"The Alpha is breaking through!" Han yelled. "He's going to ram the gate!"
"Let him come," Jiang Chen said.
The Alpha hit the steel gate.
CLANG!
The heavy blast doors buckled. The hinges groaned.
Winter-Fang reared back for a second strike. One more hit, and he would be inside the city, feasting on the soft humans.
The gate began to open.
Winter-Fang snarled in triumph. They were surrendering!
The gate slid open fully.
Standing in the archway was not a terrified meal.
It was a lone figure in a heavy environmental suit, holding a weapon that looked like a oversized trumpet connected to a backpack tank.
[Weapon: Microwave Emitter (Prototype).][Principle: Dielectric Heating.]
"Sit," Jiang Chen said.
He pulled the trigger.
There was no beam. No projectile.
But Winter-Fang suddenly felt... hot.
The water molecules inside the wolf's body—in his blood, his brain, his eyes—began to vibrate at 2.45 gigahertz.
The ice armor on his skin didn't melt from the outside; it exploded from the steam pressure building underneath it.
OWWWWOOOO!
The Alpha screamed—a sound of pure agony as he was cooked from the inside out. His eyes boiled in their sockets. His brain scrambled.
He collapsed, twitching, steam pouring from his mouth and ears.
The rest of the pack, seeing their invincible leader fall to an invisible attack, broke. The hunger was forgotten. The fear of the "Invisible Fire" took over.
They turned and ran.
"Cease fire," Jiang Chen ordered, releasing the trigger. The heat sink on his backpack hissed.
He walked up to the steaming corpse of the Alpha. He nudged it with his boot.
"Old Wu," Jiang Chen radioed. "The fur is ruined, but the meat is pre-cooked. Tell the kitchen to prepare a feast."
"And the Core?" Old Wu asked.
Jiang Chen pulled out a knife. He carved into the chest of the beast. He pulled out a crystal blue sphere, pulsing with cold energy.
[Item: Rank 3 Ice Core.][Potential Application: Cryo-Storage for food, or Coolant for the Railgun 2.0.]
"We keep the Core," Jiang Chen said, holding it up to the floodlights. "Summer is coming, and I need air conditioning."
The Siege of Beasts was over. The Wall had held.
But as the soldiers cheered, Jiang Chen looked North, past the retreating wolves.
His radar was picking up a new signal. Not a beast. Not a sect.
A convoy. A massive one, flying flags of gears and cogs.
"The Heavenly Craft Sect," Jiang Chen recognized the emblem from the archives. "The merchants have arrived."