The patrol radius shrank to one point five kilometers at the sixth hour.
Gao Jun tracked it with the overlay's passive sensors, marking each orbit of the two beasts on the display's mapping function. The spiral was clear: concentric circles, each one tighter than the last, the two formation-frequency signatures maintaining their parallel track as they closed on the hub's position. Not random searching. Systematic elimination, the beasts narrowing their hunting pattern with a method that had no business existing in animals operating on corrupted instinct.
"They're not tracking your signature," Gao Jun said. He'd been running the analysis for an hour, checking the overlay's readings against the division's behavioral models, discarding the models one by one as the beasts failed to match any catalogued pattern. "Your interface has been off for five hours. Your template output is at passive biological minimum. If they were following your signal, they'd have lost the track entirely and expanded the search radius. They're contracting it."
"The hub."
"The hub." He pulled up the conduit infrastructure mapping on the overlay. Hub Fourteen-Northeast sat at the junction of three activated conduit lines, its single pillar drawing a steady supply of cascade energy through the network. That draw created a formation-frequency signature that was not Lin Feng's template. It was infrastructure. Constant, low-level, impossible to turn off without shutting down the hub entirely. "The conduit supply line generates a detectable formation-frequency event at the hub's position. It's much weaker than your template signal. But at one point five kilometers, with two beasts reading the environment through their corrupted formation-frequency sense—"
"They can feel the hub."
"They've been feeling it since they arrived. The hub signal was always there. Your template beacon was louder, so they tracked that. When the beacon went dark, they defaulted to the next strongest signal in the area." He paused. "Which is the infrastructure they're standing on top of."
Lin Feng sat on the diagnostic platform and considered shutting down the hub.
It was possible. His supervisor-class access could take the single pillar offline, cut the supply line, reduce Hub Fourteen-Northeast to a dead chamber underground. The beasts would lose the infrastructure signal the way they'd lost his template signal. They might expand their search radius again, might drift away.
But shutting down the hub meant shutting down the monitoring sensors in this sector. Shutting down the conduit infrastructure that connected him to the wider network. Making himself blind and the hub useless in a single action. And when he wanted to restart it, the activation event would be the loudest formation-frequency signal in the region.
He couldn't shut down. He couldn't stay dark. The beasts were closing regardless.
"One kilometer," Gao Jun said. "Patrol radius has contracted to one kilometer." He checked the time on the overlay's display. "The third beast is now four hours out. When it arrives, the pattern suggests it will join the patrol rather than compete with the existing pair."
Three beasts circling the hub at close range. Four division practitioners eight hours away.
"How did Dr. Lian respond to your request?" Lin Feng asked.
Gao Jun's rod stopped.
The analyst had been waiting for this question. He was prepared. He wasn't looking forward to it. "I contacted the division's field coordination two hours ago through the overlay's standard communication channel. Not through the conduit network. You were working the buffer. I made the operational assessment that your condition, combined with the convergence pattern, warranted a support request."
"You didn't tell me."
"You were in the buffer. The work was producing results. Interrupting you to discuss a request I'd already decided to make would have reduced your processing time without changing the outcome." He said this without apology. "Dr. Lian approved the deployment. Four field practitioners from the Hub Seven-West research team, equipped for beast engagement. Departure in two hours, arrival at Hub Fourteen-Northeast in approximately eight hours from now."
"What did you tell her about the beasts?"
"Formation-frequency signatures consistent with corrupted beasts in the low-to-mid tier classification. Cooperative hunting behavior not documented in the division's survey data. Convergence on an activated hub with a Devourer-class practitioner in recovery from first beast consumption." He paused. "She asked about the consumption. I told her the overlay data would be transmitted with the preliminary report."
"You're giving her the consumption data."
"I told you I would. The overlay's recording of the fight, the formation-frequency interaction during the consumption, the energy transfer readings. It's field data collected during a division-authorized observation. Withholding it would be a formal breach."
Lin Feng considered arguing. He didn't. Gao Jun had made a tactical decision during a field emergency using the analyst's own professional judgment and institutional obligations. That was what field operatives did. The fact that the decision gave the division more data about the Devourer's Path was a consequence, not a betrayal.
"Four practitioners," he said. "Against three beasts with cooperative hunting behavior and formation-frequency distortion fields."
"The odds are not favorable. I noted that in the request."
"And Dr. Lian sent them anyway."
"Dr. Lian is a field director who has been studying corrupted beasts for eleven years. She sent four practitioners because that's what she had available and because the alternative was doing nothing." Gao Jun picked up his rod. It spun once, slow. "The alternative is always worse for field directors."
Lin Feng let the assessment sit.
His template at fifty-two point eight percent. The buffer holding its remaining corrupted patterns, the isolation walls intact but the patterns inside still pressing. His left arm in a splint, his ribs bound, his right arm functional but unreliable under strain.
The buffer work had taught him something.
Not the technique of pattern-breaking, though he'd gotten better at that over the four hours of concentrated work. Something about the patterns themselves. About how corruption organized energy.
The corrupted cycling loops in the wolf's consumed energy had structure. Hierarchy. Each loop reinforced the others, shared junction points, built layered configurations that resisted disruption through mutual support. But the loops were not intelligent. They were mechanical. Corruption imposed a pattern on energy, and the pattern self-replicated according to rules that were consistent and readable.
If the rules were consistent, they were predictable. If they were predictable, they could be disrupted from outside.
Not consumed. Disrupted.
The consumption had required physical contact because Lin Feng's template needed to override the beast's corrupted patterns and absorb the underlying energy. But what if he didn't need the energy? What if he only needed to break the patterns?
A corrupted beast's formation-frequency enhancement came from its cycling. The loops of corrupted energy that drove its biology beyond natural limits, that gave it the distortion field, the speed, the strength, the ability to read formation-frequency signals in its environment. Without the cycling, the beast was an animal. A large animal, certainly. But an animal without the formation-frequency armor and the supernatural speed and the corrupted-instinct hunting capability that made it dangerous.
Breaking the cycling patterns from outside. Through the conduit interface. At range.
The technique would be different from the buffer work. Inside his own template, he could read the patterns directly, apply interference at junction points with precision. In an external beast, he'd need to read the patterns through the conduit infrastructure, find the junction points at a distance, apply interference through the conduit lines the beast was standing on.
It was the Wei Sen operation applied to biology instead of infrastructure.
"Gao Jun." He stood up from the platform. The ribs reported their objection. He noted it and continued. "The pattern-breaking technique I used in the buffer. The corruption in the beast's consumed energy had consistent structural rules. Junction points. Cycling loops. Layered configurations."
"I saw the overlay readings during your buffer work. The formation-frequency events were logged."
"If those structural rules are consistent across corrupted beasts, not just the consumed energy in my buffer, then the two beasts circling the hub should have the same architecture. The same cycling patterns. The same junction points."
The rod stopped. "You're proposing to break their cycling from inside the hub. Through the conduit lines."
"Through the conduit infrastructure beneath their patrol radius. The beasts are walking on activated conduit lines. Their biology is absorbing energy from those lines. The connection goes both ways. If I can read their formation-frequency patterns through the infrastructure and identify the junction points—"
"You can disrupt their cycling without physical contact." Gao Jun was running the analysis. "The overlay data from the wolf fight shows the corrupted cycling architecture in detail. If the architecture is consistent across specimens of similar classification..." He checked the recordings. "The structural patterns in your buffer match the theoretical models for corrupted energy organization that the division published six years ago. The junction-point hierarchy is consistent with the model."
"Then it should work."
"It should work in theory. It has never been tested." He looked at Lin Feng. "And it requires you to reactivate your conduit interface."
There it was. The tradeoff.
Reactivating the interface meant turning the beacon back on. His template at fifty-two percent, broadcasting through the activated conduit network, readable by every corrupted beast in the region. The two beasts circling at one kilometer would lock on instantly. The third beast, four hours out, would accelerate. Any other beasts drawn by the cascade's activation that the monitoring sensors hadn't yet detected would get a fresh signal.
He'd be painting a target on the hub and everyone in it.
"I can't do it from here," he said. "The beasts need to be on the conduit lines I'm reading through. That means outside, on the surface, where the activated infrastructure runs beneath the terrain." He paused. "And I need them close. Buffer-work resolution requires proximity. Not touch range, but close enough for my routing sense to read individual cycling loops."
"How close?"
"Fifty meters. Maybe less."
Gao Jun set down his rod.
"The division team will be here in eight hours," he said.
"In eight hours, there will be three beasts circling this hub at a radius that will be well under a kilometer. The division's four practitioners are equipped for standard beast engagement. They are not equipped for beasts with cooperative hunting behavior and formation-frequency distortion fields that can seize muscle function at three meters. They'll lose people."
"You'll lose yourself."
"I might." Lin Feng looked at the overlay display. The two signatures circling. "Contact Dr. Lian. Tell her team to divert to waypoint coordinates that you choose, somewhere outside the beasts' current patrol radius. Tell them to wait there."
Gao Jun didn't move.
"If the pattern-breaking works, the beasts lose their enhancement. They become animals. I can handle animals at fifty-two percent. If it doesn't work, the beasts converge on my position and the division team is not caught in the engagement."
"And you?"
"If it doesn't work, I go dark again and retreat into the hub. Or I don't." He kept his voice level. "Either way, four division practitioners are not positioned to die for an untested theory."
The analyst stood at the workbench for a long time. The overlay display cycled through its passive tracking update. The two beast signatures completed another orbit. The patrol radius contracted another hundred meters.
"I asked Dr. Lian for support because the situation required it," Gao Jun said. "Not because I wanted you to have witnesses for an experiment."
"I know what you asked for."
"Do you." The rod was on the workbench. He didn't pick it up. "I asked for practitioners who can fight because I assessed that you cannot fight right now. That assessment has not changed in the last ten minutes. Your template is at fifty-two percent with an unstable buffer, three cracked ribs, and a left arm that the splint is holding together. The pattern-breaking theory is sound. The operational plan is reckless."
"The operational plan is the only option that doesn't put division people between corrupted beasts and a formation-frequency engagement they're not trained for."
"So train them. Wait for the team. Show them the overlay data. Develop a coordinated approach. You have eight hours."
"The patrol radius will be under five hundred meters in eight hours. The beasts will find the hatch."
Gao Jun was quiet.
"Relay the diversion to Dr. Lian's team," Lin Feng said. "Waypoint coordinates of your choosing. Tell them to hold position until they receive an all-clear or until twenty-four hours pass without contact. If twenty-four hours pass, they report the hub as compromised and fall back to Seven-West."
"You're asking me to tell the division that you might be dead and to accept it."
"I'm asking you to keep four people out of a fight they can't win." He looked at the analyst. "You'll be on the surface with the overlay. Two hundred meters, same as before. Recording."
The rod stayed on the workbench.
"That's not what I asked them for," Gao Jun said.
