The ruins of the Steam Temple clung to the waste outlet like a dying beast. Twelve bronze Buddha statues, their features eroded beyond recognition, sprouted luminous moss in their hollow eye sockets. Rainwater trickled down cracked palm lines, striking the flagstones with hollow echoes. As Aiden climbed the slick copper corrosion, he heard an eerie hum—not mechanical vibration, but the lingering resonance of a thousand muffled chants seeping through rust-seized gears.
"This place devours people." He recalled Lame Tom's warning, fingers digging into fissures on a Buddha's shoulder. The hands meant to cradle lotuses now gripped dark metal spheres pocked with honeycomb pores. When wind whistled through the holes, it mimicked the lament of bamboo flutes, dispersing the stench of decay.
A hidden door creaked open at the Vairocana Buddha's navel, releasing ancient machine oil and incense ash. Aiden's boots barely touched the mossy flagstones before crushing desiccated lotus wicks—or what resembled wicks, but were actually glass fibers. The hall resembled a monstrosity pickled in time: copper pipes coiled like spiderwebs across the vault, their surfaces crusted with amber resin. Where an altar should stand rose countless waist-high metal pillars, each veined with circuitry resembling creeping vines.
"You're eight minutes late."
The voice scraped like metal on metal. Aiden turned, kicking over a bronze lamp. Spilled fluid ignited into ghostly blue flames. In the flickering light, a broken mechanized Bodhisattva emerged—her gold lacquer flaking to expose gunmetal bones, left arm a shattered vajra, right arm ending in a gun barrel. Her face was split: one side remained a compassionate gilded mask, the other exposed clockwork cheekbones. A tear of oil and coolant dripped from her steel eye socket.
The Bodhisattva raised her broken vajra toward the western hall. Aiden noticed a figure curled there—a girl in a grease-stained jumpsuit, her hair dyed peacock-blue, wrists wrapped in frayed data cables. She cradled a fractured circuit board, fingertips absently tracing solder points like petting a stray cat.
"Her name's Lily." The Bodhisattva's voice crackled like an old radio tuning. "Seven years ago, fleeing Parliament hunters, she turned herself into a living compiler."
Aiden knelt, spotting a jade-green chip fused behind Lily's ear. When she suddenly looked up, her pupils flashed azure runes before reverting to chestnut brown.
"You smell like Dr. Lin." Lily's voice grated like sandpaper. She pulled a rusted pocket watch from her jumpsuit, its face etched with I Ching hexagrams. "See? Your mother gave me this—said when the hands reach the Weiji hexagram, someone bearing the Third Law would come."
The watch's gears spun wildly as Aiden's mirror fragment burned. Visions exploded:
His mother on a stormy night, engraving silicon wafers with acupuncture needles
A young Lily in a church confessional, chanting Diamond Sutra for a malfunctioning cleaning bot
Himself carrying feverish Sophie through slums, her breath frosting the respirator
"The Third Law isn't an equation." Lily pressed a finger to Aiden's forehead, leaving a cinnabar-like mark. "It's the curse your mother etched into your blood."
Treaded vehicles crunched gravel outside. The Bodhisattva stiffened, steam smelling of sandalwood hissing from her broken arm. "They're here."
Lily sprang up like a startled cat, yanking her collar to reveal a scar embedding a spirit stone that pulsed with her heartbeat. "Help me." She shoved Aiden toward the pillars. "Use your blood to wake the Pillars of Transmigration."
When Aiden cut his palm, he realized these weren't pillars—they were upright coffins. His blood snaked down circuit veins, each coffin surfacing translucent figures: Daoist-robed coders, rosary-clutching cyborg monks, even a Lolita-dressed nascent soul hugging a broken laptop.
"Remnants of failed ascendants." The Bodhisattva's gun barrel glowed red. "Parliament turned their consciousness into power cells for the city."
As the first shell tore through the roof, Lily pressed the watch to Aiden's chest. The mirror fragment slithered across his skin, embedding over his heart as a tattoo. The coffins hummed with Sanskrit chants, translucent hands weaving a luminous net.
"Run!" The Bodhisattva plunged her vajra into the floor, iron-tainted water gushing from cracks. "Find the plague-masked lunatic in the black market—his drugs can stall your sister's..."
The blast swallowed her words. Falling through a fissure, Aiden's last sight was Lily's silhouette against firelight, her peacock-blue hair burning like self-destructing motherboards.
Aiden awoke in the stench of sewage pipes, clutching a withered lotus. Petals bore clawed characters: "Old Zhou's Clinic. Midnight. Bring 3 pounds of aged transformer oil."
Rain lashed neon signs as he vomited under a hologram advertising "Authentic Yangzhou Fried Rice"—golden threads swirling in the mess. His wrist monitor showed Sophie's temperature plummeting, but reaching for emergency serum, he found Lily's watch instead. Its hexagrams had shifted to Jiji.
Clinic wind chimes—rusty fuse wires—clinked as he entered. Old Zhou stirred a bubbling purple elixir, glass tubes reeking of clove and decay. Behind him, a grimy Medicine Buddha statue bore Parliament's ID chip in its third eye.
"Perfect timing." Old Zhou didn't turn, his plague doctor mask quivering. "Lay your sister on the operating table—yes, the one printed with Yellow Emperor's Canon circuitry."
Sophie gripped Aiden's hand in delirium. Her nails had crystallized, tiny gears visible beneath translucent skin. Old Zhou raised a syringe tipped with spell-forged blue steel. "This treatment requires... let's say, that new mirror tattoo over your heart."