Chapter 3: The Yin Node: Cybernetic Resurrection
The rain was still falling.
Old Chen pulled down the iron door of his repair shop and locked it directly.
"Follow me."
He said, then lifted an old wooden board behind the counter.
Beneath it, a section of concrete stairs was revealed.
I glanced at it.
"You have something else under your shop?"
"The shop is fake."
Old Chen carried the kerosene lamp and walked down.
"The real thing is below."
The stairs were narrow.
The plaster crumbled at the slightest touch.
After descending a dozen steps, the smell of engine oil faded, replaced by a musty odor.
Further down.
The smell of dead earth emerged.
The cardboard box in my hand began to feel heavier.
It wasn't the weight that changed.
It was the book inside that was moving.
Thump.
Once.
Old Chen stopped.
"You heard it?"
I nodded.
"It's awake."
The basement door had two layers.
The first was a wooden door.
The second was a rusty iron door.
The iron door was covered with yellow talismans.
Most had turned black.
Some were only half intact.
Old Chen took out a key.
Opened the door.
Inside was bigger than I expected.
Iron cabinets lined all four walls.
Each cabinet door had yellow talismans of different ages.
On the floor were ancient books.
Broken steles.
Broken stone figurines.
And several objects wrapped in black cloth.
In the corner stood a stone tablet.
Its surface was carved with the Eight Trigrams.
Among the sixty-four hexagram positions, six had already cracked.
I approached.
"Is this a suppression array?"
Old Chen nodded.
"Sixty-four hexagrams to lock the yin."
"There's a node pressed underneath."
"What kind of node?"
"A yin node."
He placed the kerosene lamp on the table.
"You can think of it as a server in a network."
I looked at him.
Old Chen sneered.
"Don't look at me like that."
"You young people talk about data packets; I talk about earth's energy."
"The things are different, but the approach is similar."
He said, pointing to the ground.
"Ten years ago, this could still hold."
"Just now, all the lights at the mass grave went out."
"The sixty-four hexagrams lost one external response."
"The array loosened."
As soon as he finished speaking.
Pop.
The first yellow talisman on the cabinet caught fire.
No matches.
No wick.
The yellow paper began to blacken from the middle.
The flame climbed along the talisman lines.
Then, the second.
The third.
All the yellow talismans on the iron cabinet burned simultaneously.
Old Chen's face changed.
"Step back."
I took a step back.
Suddenly, the ancient book in the cardboard box slammed hard.
Thump!
The box lid flew open.
The red eye was revealed.
The eyeball began to rotate.
Faster and faster.
Finally, it became a blur of red.
The basement light flickered.
I heard a sound coming from beneath the ground.
Rustle.
Rustle.
Like someone crawling in the soil.
The next second, black soil seeped out from the corner of the wall.
No water.
Just soil.
A thin layer, crawling along the floor tiles.
The tip of my shoe touched it.
The sole immediately made a "sizzling" sound.
The rubber was corroded.
"What is this?"
"Dead soil."
Old Chen pulled an ink marker from the iron cabinet and threw it to me.
I caught it.
The ink marker was old.
The body was cracked.
But the line inside was black.
I pinched it.
The line was very thin.
Harder than ordinary ink lines.
"Silver wire?"
Old Chen glanced at me.
"Finally, you've learned something."
"Soaked in black donkey blood."
"Inside is a silver conductor."
I looked up.
"What are you going to do with this?"
Old Chen pointed to the cardboard box.
"Connect it."
I didn't move.
"Are you crazy?"
"I'm not crazy."
Old Chen grabbed the bronze sword.
"What's crazy is the thing below."
The iron cabinet suddenly shook.
Bang!
The cabinet door bulged from inside.
Like someone was hitting it.
Old Chen thrust his sword.
Puff!
The sword tip pierced through the cabinet door.
A sharp scraping sound came from inside.
"Quick!"
"Don't you know how to write code?"
"Connect this line to the hard drive."
I looked at the ink marker in my hand.
"What do you want me to do?"
"Send the thing in the book back."
"Send it where?"
Old Chen raised his hand, pointing to the map on the wall.
A red pin was stuck there.
Exactly at the northwest of the old city.
The mass grave.
"There."
"That yin node is the source."
I understood.
"You want me to transfer it there?"
"Yes."
Old Chen gritted his teeth.
"Resurrection."
"Bounce it back from here."
I didn't waste words.
I took out the hard drive from my bag.
Opened the casing.
Pulled out the original data cable.
Stripped the ink marker line.
Inside, a very thin silver wire was revealed.
I scraped off the insulation with the tip of a knife.
Contact.
A spark flashed.
The hard drive indicator light turned on.
All sounds in the basement stopped for a second.
Then.
Boom!
The graphics card load maxed out.
The small computer I brought started automatically.
The fan began to scream.
The screen lit up.
In the black terminal, data streams cascaded like a waterfall.
A humanoid figure appeared again.
This time, not on the screen.
It stood inside the screen.
Its head tilted.
Its body kept tearing apart.
Like someone had stuffed a person into the wrong file format.
I typed the command.
First thread.
Failed.
Second thread.
Failed.
I changed the protocol.
Repackaged.
Third time.
Connection established.
TARGET: 10.24.7.13
ROUTE: ACTIVE
PORT: 4F2A
I gritted my teeth.
"It's done."
But Old Chen shouted:
"Not yet!"
The iron cabinet burst open.
A black hand reached out from inside.
Old Chen swung his sword.
Clang!
Sparks flew.
The black hand was knocked back.
But the next second, a second hand came out from the other side.
Grabbed Old Chen's shoulder.
"Yunfeng!"
I turned around.
Half of Old Chen's body had already been dragged into the cabinet.
He was desperately holding the cabinet door.
"Don't worry about me!"
"Run!"
I continued typing.
The last command.
Send back.
Execute.
The hard drive suddenly vibrated violently.
Hum—
The ink marker line snapped taut.
The silver wire glowed.
Like a tiny bolt of lightning.
The humanoid on the screen suddenly looked up.
The red eye slammed directly into the screen.
Crack!
The monitor split open.
A stream of black data rushed out of the hard drive.
Along the ink marker line, it drilled into the ground.
Then, a muffled thunder echoed through the basement.
Boom!!!
The floor tiles cracked.
The sixty-four hexagrams on the wall shook simultaneously.
From the six cracked hexagram positions, black soil burst out.
Old Chen finally broke free.
He grabbed me.
"Let's go!"
We rushed toward the back door.
Just after running a dozen steps.
The iron cabinets behind us all fell.
The stone tablet split in two.
The concrete above began to fall.
Old Chen kicked open the back door.
Cold rain rushed in.
He and I rolled into the alley.
Behind us.
With a rumble, the basement collapsed.
Dust poured out from the door crack.
Old Chen leaned against the wall, panting.
I looked at the ancient book in my hand.
The red eye on the cover had stopped moving.
It stared fixedly at the northwest.
Old Chen wiped the rain from his face.
"Before midnight tonight."
"We must reach the mass grave."
"Why?"
He looked at me.
"Because what was sent just now wasn't data."
"Then what was it?"
Old Chen didn't answer.
In the distance.
To the northwest of the old city.
A light suddenly turned on.
Red.
Like an open eye.
Old Chen said in a low voice:
"The door."
"The door over there is open."
I stuffed the ancient book into my backpack.
Turned and walked northwest.
The rain was still falling.
Mass grave.
I'm coming.
