Gao Jun sent two messages.
Lin Feng watched him do it from the base of the iron ladder, already wearing his field boots, the splinted left arm strapped against his torso with an extra length of binding tape Gao Jun had cut without being asked. The analyst worked the overlay's communication interface fast, practiced. Hundreds of field dispatches in four years had made the motions automatic.
The first message went to Dr. Lian's approaching team: divert to waypoint coordinates, hold position, await further contact. The coordinates Gao Jun selected were twelve kilometers south-southwest, outside the beasts' current patrol radius and outside the cascade's most recently activated zone.
The second message went to Dr. Lian directly: field situation update, practitioner engaging corrupted beasts with untested technique, division team repositioned to safe standby. Team status unchanged, authorization unchanged, ready for redeployment on coordinator's order.
"The team diverts," Gao Jun said, closing the overlay's communication panel. "The team does not withdraw. If you go silent for more than two hours, I reactivate the original request and bring them in."
"Two hours."
"Two hours." He picked up his rod. Held it. "That's my operational assessment of the time required for your plan to either work or fail conclusively. After two hours, the situation changes regardless of outcome, and I adjust the response."
Lin Feng accepted this. The analyst had made his compromise: the diversion protected the team from the immediate engagement while the standby order preserved the option to bring them in. He disagreed with the operation. He also understood it was happening, and he'd built his contingency around that.
"Two hundred meters," Lin Feng said. "Overlay recording. Same as before."
"I know the drill." Gao Jun climbed the ladder first.
---
The surface of the Barrens above Hub Fourteen-Northeast was flat terrain broken by scattered rock formations, the conduit lines running beneath the soil in a web of amber luminescence visible in the early afternoon light. The cascade's activation had been running for over a week now, and the energy density in this sector was higher than it had been during the wolf fight. The air had that weighted quality, the formation-frequency output from the conduit infrastructure pressing against Lin Feng's skin like humidity.
Gao Jun moved to his observation position: a low rock shelf two hundred and twenty meters north-northeast, elevated enough for the overlay's sensors to maintain line-of-sight to the engagement area. He settled in without comment.
Lin Feng found his position.
The conduit lines beneath Hub Fourteen-Northeast converged from three directions into the hub's supply junction. The densest cluster of activated infrastructure in the immediate area. He stood directly above the convergence point, where his routing sense would have the highest resolution through the greatest number of conduit lines simultaneously.
He opened his direct conduit interface.
The network flooded back in. The routing sense expanded from nothing to full three-dimensional perception in under a second, the conduit infrastructure's formation-frequency environment snapping into focus like a light turning on in a dark room. Monitoring sensors, activated lines, cascade energy, the hub's supply junction beneath his feet humming with steady output.
And his template signature, broadcasting through every activated conduit line in the region at fifty-two point eight percent efficiency.
The beacon was back.
The two beasts responded immediately.
Their formation-frequency signatures, which had been circling at nine hundred meters in their cooperative patrol pattern, stopped. Both signatures oriented toward his position simultaneously, the patrol arc collapsing into a direct approach bearing. Through his routing sense, Lin Feng read the shift in their biological cycling: the passive hunting mode converting to active pursuit, the corrupted energy in their bodies redirecting from patrol-level output to the concentrated configuration he'd seen in the wolf right before it charged.
Two beasts. Both incoming. The closer one at eight hundred and sixty meters. The farther at nine hundred and ten.
He had minutes.
Lin Feng dropped his routing sense through the conduit lines toward the closer beast's position. The infrastructure beneath the approaching animal was activated, running at cascade specification, its monitoring sensors providing formation-frequency data that his direct interface could read at a resolution the overlay could never match.
The beast's cycling patterns appeared in his perception.
Similar to the wolf. The same fundamental architecture: corrupted energy organized into cycling loops, layered configurations, junction points where the loops connected and reinforced each other. This beast was different in specifics, the particular arrangement of loops reflecting its own decades of corrupted absorption, but the structural rules were the same.
He found the first junction point.
He applied the interference through the conduit line running beneath the beast's approach path. A targeted formation-frequency disruption at the exact frequency the junction needed to maintain its cycling loop, the same technique he'd used in the buffer work.
The junction held.
The beast's biology fought the interference. The corrupted cycling pattern at the junction point absorbed his disruption and regenerated. Not the way the buffer patterns had regenerated, slowly and mechanically, from residual structural memory. This was active regeneration. Living tissue maintaining its formation-frequency configuration through biological processes that responded in real time to the disruption.
He pushed harder. More output through the conduit line. His template's efficiency dropped a fraction as he increased the interference's amplitude.
The junction cracked. The cycling loop attached to it stuttered.
The beast stumbled. Through the monitoring sensors, Lin Feng saw the closer beast's gait break for half a stride, one leg failing to find its rhythm, the formation-frequency enhancement in that limb momentarily disrupted.
Then the junction rebuilt. The cycling loop resumed. The beast recovered and kept coming.
He'd broken it for less than a second. In the buffer, a broken junction stayed broken because the energy had no living biology to rebuild from. Here, the beast's corrupted tissue was a factory running around the clock, reknitting every pattern he cut.
Faster. He needed to break faster.
He found the next junction. Applied the interference. Broke it. The beast's distortion field flickered on the left side of its body, the warped air losing coherence for a moment before the cycling restored itself.
Seven hundred meters.
He broke a third junction. A fourth. Each one cost template efficiency, each one disrupted the beast's cycling for a fraction of a second before the biology compensated. The accumulation was doing something: the beast's distortion field was less stable now, the warped air around its body flickering in irregular patterns as the cycling tried to maintain coherence against the repeated disruptions.
But it was still coming. Still enhanced. Still dangerous.
Five hundred meters.
He switched targets. The second beast was at seven hundred and fifty meters, approaching on a converging path. He reached through the conduit infrastructure toward it and read its cycling patterns. Different configuration, same rules. He found a junction and broke it.
This beast barely noticed. A flicker in its stride, a moment's disruption, then full cycling restored. He'd split his attention between two targets and the interference output per target had dropped below the threshold for meaningful disruption.
He couldn't fight two at range. He couldn't even fight one at range.
Three hundred and forty meters. The closer beast's formation-frequency output was at full pursuit intensity. Through the monitoring sensors, he could see its shape: not a wolf. Bigger. Broader. Some kind of corrupted bear or boar, its body low to the ground, the distortion field tight against its bulk.
Two hundred meters.
Lin Feng stopped the ranged disruption and pulled his routing sense back to the conduit lines immediately beneath his position. He had maybe twenty seconds before the first beast reached him. The ranged work had partially disrupted its cycling, the accumulated junction breaks weakening the pattern's overall stability even though each individual break had been repaired. The beast's distortion field was running at maybe seventy percent of normal coherence.
Seventy percent of a distortion field that had seized his arm muscles from three meters and cracked his ribs from a glancing blow.
He planted his feet over the conduit convergence point and waited.
The beast came out of the broken terrain at full charge. It was a boar. Corrupted, massive, tusked, the formation-frequency distortion bending the air around its head into a wedge shape that split the wind as it ran. Its cycling was damaged but functional, the patterns he'd cracked regenerating even as new instabilities propagated from the weakened junctions.
He let it come to forty meters and hit it with everything.
Not targeted disruption. A simultaneous assault on every junction point he could reach through the conduit convergence beneath his feet, the supervisor-class interface driving formation-frequency interference through three conduit lines at once, each line carrying a disruption pattern aimed at a different layer of the beast's cycling architecture.
The boar's distortion field collapsed.
The warped air around its body flew apart, the formation-frequency armor disintegrating as seven cycling loops lost their junctions simultaneously. The beast's legs, suddenly running on biology alone without the corrupted energy enhancement, buckled at the transition from supernatural speed to natural speed. It hit the ground at thirty meters and slid across the stone surface in a spray of gravel and torn soil, the massive body still carrying the momentum of its charge even as the energy that had been driving it went silent.
Lin Feng's template dropped to forty-nine point six.
The boar was on the ground, twenty meters away, alive, struggling to stand. Without its cycling, it was still a massive animal with tusks and muscle mass, but its movements were slow. Uncoordinated. The formation-frequency disruption had left its biology in a state of shock, the corrupted patterns trying to reassert themselves against the residual interference still propagating from the conduit lines.
He ran.
Twenty meters with cracked ribs and a splinted arm. Each step was a cost calculation his body was making without his permission. He reached the boar as it got its front legs under it, the tusked head swinging toward him with the instinctive aggression of a wounded animal that didn't need supernatural energy to be dangerous.
He grabbed its ear with his right hand.
The consumption began.
Faster this time. The boar's cycling patterns were already shattered, the junction architecture that had organized its corrupted energy into resistant configurations lying in pieces from the simultaneous disruption. The energy that flowed into the contact point was less organized, less resistant. Still corrupted, still carrying the residual configurations of decades of absorption, but without the cycling loops to maintain those configurations in real time.
His template's override processed the patterns in seconds instead of minutes. The corrupted energy reformatted, transferred, entered the buffer in a state that was already partially compatible with his integration cycle.
The boar weakened beneath his hand. The tusked head drooped. The front legs that had been pushing the animal upright folded.
Thirty seconds. The consumption was complete.
The boar's body went still. The formation-frequency energy drained out of its biology, leaving behind a very large, very dead animal cooling on the broken stone.
*Template efficiency: 48.1%.*
Down, not up. The consumption had cost more efficiency than the consumed energy had replaced, because the simultaneous junction disruption at range had burned through his reserves. The beast's energy was in the buffer now, partially processed, waiting for the integration cycle to break the remaining corrupted patterns and convert the medium.
He'd consumed the beast in thirty seconds instead of four minutes. The technique worked. Ranged disruption followed by consumption.
But his template was lower than when he'd started.
The second beast was two hundred meters out.
Lin Feng stood over the dead boar with his hand still on its cooling flank and his routing sense tracking the second beast's approach through the conduit infrastructure. This one was faster than the boar had been, its formation-frequency signature reading as something leaner, more agile, the cycling patterns running at a higher frequency.
His template at forty-eight point one percent. Not enough for another simultaneous junction assault. Not enough for ranged disruption and consumption both.
One hundred and fifty meters.
He pulled his hand off the boar and turned to face the second beast's approach vector. His right arm shook. His ribs were a wall of pain that his template's formation-frequency monitoring had stopped bothering to itemize. The splinted left arm hung useless.
One hundred meters. Through the monitoring sensors, the second beast materialized from behind a rock formation: a cat. Some kind of corrupted wildcat, sleek and low, its distortion field running at full coherence, the cycling patterns undamaged and operating at pursuit-level intensity.
He had nothing left for ranged work.
Fifty meters.
The cat accelerated. The burst of speed that preceded contact, the same final-approach pattern the wolf had used, the body lowering, the distortion field pulling tight.
The conduit lines beneath Lin Feng's feet pulsed.
Not his command. He hadn't reached into the infrastructure. His direct conduit interface was active, connected, but he hadn't issued a formation-frequency adjustment or a disruption command or any administrative function through the conduit convergence point.
The pulse originated from the conduit lines themselves.
The formation-frequency output from the three converging lines spiked upward, the cascade energy surging through the infrastructure in a coordinated burst that radiated from the convergence point outward through the surface terrain. The pulse hit the approaching cat at forty meters, and the beast's cycling patterns detonated.
Every junction in the cat's corrupted architecture failed simultaneously. Not the targeted, surgical disruption Lin Feng had applied to the boar. A blunt, massive formation-frequency event that overwhelmed the beast's entire cycling system in a single pulse. The distortion field didn't flicker or collapse. It shattered, the warped air around the cat's body blowing outward in a visible ring of displaced energy.
The cat hit the ground and didn't move.
Not dead. The monitoring sensors showed its biology still active, its formation-frequency output reading at the level of a natural animal, but the corrupted cycling that had given it its enhancement was gone. Destroyed. The beast lay on the stone twenty-eight meters away, its legs twitching, its body in the same shocked state the boar had entered after Lin Feng's manual disruption.
Except Lin Feng hadn't done this.
He stood over the conduit convergence point with the routing sense reaching through the infrastructure, reading the energy that had produced the pulse. The formation-frequency signature was conduit-class. Administrative specification. The same type of command his supervisor-class access would generate, but not his command.
Something in the network had issued a supervisor-class pulse through the conduit lines beneath his position, targeted at the corrupted beast that was about to kill him.
His routing sense reached deeper into the substrate, searching for the source.
The distributed presence of Old Ghost gathered in the conduit lines, thick and concentrated in a way it had never been at Hub Fourteen-Northeast, as if something had compressed ten kilometers of background resonance into the three lines running beneath Lin Feng's feet.
The presence said nothing.
