The Rise of Steel and Spirit

Dawn painted Harbin's skyline in hues of molten gold, but Yuchen saw none of it.

His fingers flew across the holographic display in Jiang's workshop, reconstructing the corrupted data packets from the Sutherland mech. The sabotage code was sleek, professional—the kind of work only an organization-backed hacker could pull off.

Xing lay draped across his shoulders like a living scarf, his silver-marked fur bristling whenever the code hit a particularly nasty encryption knot.

"Well?" Jiang grunted, tossing a wrench into a toolbox with a clatter. "You crack it yet?"

Yuchen exhaled through his nose. "Whoever did this knew Sutherland systems inside out. They left a backdoor in the neural sync module—something that would've made the mech seize up mid-combat."

Jiang's cybernetic eye whirred as it focused. "Any fingerprints?"

"Not yet." Yuchen isolated a string of code—a repeating sequence disguised as standard diagnostics. "But this isn't just sabotage. It's a message."

Jiang leaned in. "What kind of message?"

Yuchen rotated the hologram. "The kind that says 'we own your tech.'"

A knock at the workshop's sliding door cut through the tension.

Vera Sutherland stood framed in the morning light, her usual smirk absent. "We need to talk."

Vera didn't sit. Didn't bother with pleasantries.

"Three more mechs went down last night," she said, pacing the grease-stained floor. "Same signature. Same backdoor exploit."

Jiang crossed his arms. "You got enemies, princess. That's not our problem."

"It is when the Luo Family just offered to 'assist' our investigation." Vera's gaze flicked to Yuchen. "And when their chairman took a special interest in your apprentice."

Xing's growl vibrated against Yuchen's neck.

Yuchen kept his voice level. "What do you want?"

Vera stopped pacing. "I want you to find who's behind this. Officially, Sutherland techs are handling it. Unofficially?" She tossed a data chip to Jiang. "We're compromised. I need outside eyes."

Jiang caught the chip, weighing it in his palm. "Price just doubled."

Vera didn't blink. "Done."

Yuchen frowned. "Why us?"

"Because," Vera said, turning to leave, "you're the only ones in this city not on someone's payroll."

The door hissed shut behind her.

Jiang exhaled. "Well. That's trouble."

Yuchen stared at the data chip. "We're taking the job?"

Jiang's grin was all teeth. "Kid, we're not just taking it. We're gonna burn whoever's behind this."

The data chip led them to the underbelly of the Outer Zone—a black-market tech bazaar known as the Scrap Cathedral.

Rusted shipping containers formed makeshift stalls, vendors hawking everything from bootleg neural interfaces to weapons that definitely violated the Harbin Arms Accord. The air reeked of ozone and desperation.

Jiang adjusted the hood of his work jacket, keeping his cybernetic eye shadowed. "Stick close. And let me do the talking."

Yuchen nodded, Xing slinking at his heels in silent-mode—a trick the pup had recently mastered, his silver markings dimming to near-invisibility.

They stopped at a stall manned by a gaunt man with too many fingers. "Jiang," the vendor rasped. "Heard you pissed off the Wei-Xing boys last week."

"They pissed themselves first," Jiang said, slapping a handful of credit chits on the counter. "Looking for chatter on mech hacks. Recent ones."

The vendor's extra fingers twitched. "That's organization business. Bad for health."

Jiang added another chit.

The vendor sighed, palming the credits. "Rumor says Ironfang Syndicate's got a new code-slicer. Some prodigy they pulled from the ruins of Shanghai."

Yuchen's pulse jumped. "Shanghai fell five years ago."

"Exactly," the vendor said. "Kid grew up in the wreckage. Learned to speak machine-code before he could talk."

Jiang's eye narrowed. "Where's their base?"

"Old subway tunnels beneath Sector 9. But Jiang—" The vendor lowered his voice. "They're not just hacking mechs. Word is they're prepping for something big."

Jiang tossed him a final credit. "Keep your head down."

As they walked away, Yuchen matched Jiang's stride. "You think this is connected to the Luo Family?"

Jiang's jaw tightened. "Everything in this damn city connects back to the organizations eventually."

Sector 9's subway entrance was a yawning mouth of shattered concrete, the remnants of pre-collapse infrastructure swallowed by time and darkness.

Jiang ignited a portable glowrod, the pale light revealing tracks long since stripped of metal. "Stay sharp. Ironfang likes traps."

Xing went first—his night vision far superior to human eyes. His ears swiveled, catching sounds even the glowrod's hum couldn't mask.

They'd gone fifty meters when the first trap triggered.

A pressure plate clicked under Jiang's boot.

"Down!" Yuchen yanked him backward as a rusted blade swung from the ceiling, missing Jiang's throat by inches.

Jiang cursed. "Good catch."

Xing sniffed the blade, then growled at the shadows ahead.

Yuchen's visor flickered to life, its low-light mode revealing tripwires, acid-spray nozzles, even old landmines repurposed as proximity bombs.

"They really don't want visitors," he muttered.

Jiang cracked his knuckles. "Lucky for them, we're invited."

They moved slower now, Yuchen disabling traps with careful precision. The tunnel deepened, the air growing thick with the scent of ozone and something sharper—industrial coolant.

Then, light.

A cavernous chamber opened before them, lit by flickering holograms and the glow of a dozen stolen mech cores.

At its center, a boy no older than Yuchen hunched over a terminal, his fingers a blur across the keys. His arms were laced with subcutaneous circuitry, veins glowing blue beneath pale skin.

The Ironfang code-slicer.

Behind him, shadows moved—armed syndicate members, their weapons humming to life.

Jiang sighed. "Well. This got complicated."

The boy didn't look up.

"You're late," he said.

Then the lights went out.

The darkness lasted only a second before emergency glowstrips flickered to life along the cavern walls, bathing the underground chamber in eerie blue light.

Yuchen's combat instincts flared—three hostiles closing in from the left, two more taking cover behind stacked mech cores. His fingers found the plasma pistol at his belt. One shot left.

The code-slicer hadn't moved.

"Don't." The boy's voice was calm, fingers still dancing across his terminal. "You shoot, and the acid vents open. We all dissolve."

Jiang's cybernetic eye whirred as it adjusted to the low light. "Kid's not bluffing. I'm reading failsafe triggers all over this place."

Xing's silver markings pulsed in warning as Ironfang enforcers emerged from the shadows—their armor cobbled together from scavenged mech parts, their weapons crude but lethal.

The code-slicer finally turned. Up close, he looked even younger than Yuchen, his eyes an unnatural electric blue from retinal implants. "You're the ones who cracked my backdoor."

Jiang snorted. "That was my apprentice. Took him ten minutes."

A muscle twitched in the boy's jaw. "Impossible. That code was—"

"—flawed," Yuchen cut in. **"You left traces in the tertiary buffers. Sutherland systems purge cache every six hours. Your sabotage should've been untraceable by then."**

Silence.

Then the boy laughed—a sharp, brittle sound. "You're not just some Outer Zone rat, are you?"

Yuchen didn't flinch. "Who paid you to start a war?"

The enforcers tensed.

The code-slicer's smile vanished. "You don't know what you're digging into."

Jiang stepped forward, his voice dropping to a growl. "Try me."

The code-slicer—who introduced himself as "Wraith"—led them deeper into the Ironfang hideout, past corridors lined with stolen tech.

The inner chamber was a shrine to obsession. Holograms of mech schematics floated in the air, each marked with the Luo Family's phoenix insignia.

Yuchen's breath caught.

"The Xuanwu-class," Wraith said, pulling up a shimmering blueprint. "The Luo Family's newest combat mech. Hybrid close-quarters design—integrates ancient martial arts with modern artillery."

Jiang whistled. "No wonder everyone wants it. That thing's a work of art."

Wraith's fingers flicked, zooming in on the core schematic. "Problem is, the Luo protect their secrets. No one gets close. So someone hired us to force their hand."

Yuchen studied the blueprint. The design was brilliant—elegant in its lethality. Every joint, every weapon placement, followed principles he vaguely remembered from his father's training. Martial arts made metal.

"How?" he asked.

Wraith smirked. "By making it look like the Luo were attacking other organizations. Sabotage Sutherland mechs, leave Luo digital fingerprints. Next would've been Wei-Xing. Then Ironfang itself."

Jiang's eye darkened. "You were gonna spark a corporate war."

"And in the chaos," Yuchen realized, "someone would raid Luo vaults for this." He pointed at the Xuanwu schematic.

Wraith nodded.

Xing let out a low growl, his golden eyes fixed on the hologram.

Yuchen's mind raced. The Luo Family was rigid, traditional—but not reckless. They'd never risk open war without absolute certainty of victory. This plot reeked of outsiders.

"Who hired you?"

Wraith hesitated. Then—

A gunshot rang out.

The code-slicer crumpled, a smoking hole in his chest.

"That, said a voice from the shadows, "is confidential."

The shooter emerged—a woman in a tailored gray suit, her face obscured by a high-tech veil that shimmered like liquid mercury. Six more operatives flanked her, their weapons trained on Yuchen and Jiang.

"Ironfang's services are no longer required," she said, stepping over Wraith's body. "Neither are yours."

Jiang's hand inched toward his toolbelt. "Shanghai Ghosts. Should've known."

The woman tilted her head. "Jiang Wei. Once the Luo Family's head engineer. How far you've fallen."

Yuchen's pulse spiked. Jiang worked for the Luo?

Jiang's voice turned icy. "I quit when they started putting profit over people."

The Ghost ignored him, focusing on Yuchen. "And you. The missing Luo heir. How... convenient."

Yuchen's blood turned to ice. No one was supposed to know.

Xing's fur stood on end, a silent snarl forming.

The Ghost raised her pistol. "The boy dies first."

Jiang moved.

A wrench flew through the air, smashing into the lead Ghost's veil. The high-tech fabric short-circuited, revealing a face Yuchen recognized—from wanted holos, from whispered warnings.

"Lin Xiao," Jiang spat. "Wei-Xing's top assassin."

Lin smiled. "And you're outnumbered."

The chamber erupted in gunfire.

Yuchen dove behind a stack of mech batteries, Xing at his heels. Plasma bolts seared the air where he'd stood.

"Jiang!"

"Busy!" Jiang was wrestling with two Ghosts, his cybernetic arm sparking as it overloaded a stun baton.

Lin Xiao advanced on Yuchen, her pistol steady. "The Luo heir, alive after all these years. My employer will pay triple for you."

Xing lunged—

Lin sidestepped, kicking the puppy aside. Xing hit the wall with a yelp.

Rage ignited in Yuchen's veins.

Something inside him unlocked.

His body moved without thought—a fluid series of dodges and strikes his muscles remembered but his mind didn't. A palm strike to Lin's wrist, snapping bone. A knee to her ribs. A spinning kick that sent her pistol skittering across the floor.

Lin gasped. "Luo Family martial arts..."

Yuchen didn't let her finish.

His final strike—a precise chop to the carotid—dropped her like a stone.

Silence.

Jiang stared at him from across the room, the last Ghost unconscious at his feet. "Well. That's not something you see every day."

Xing limped over, licking Yuchen's hand as if to say, "About time you remembered who you are."

Wraith was still alive—barely.

Yuchen knelt beside him as the code-slicer coughed blood. "Who... are you really?"

"Doesn't matter," Yuchen said. "The Ghosts. Who sent them?"

Wraith's laugh was wet, broken. "Check... the terminal."

His fingers trembled as he input a final command. The holograms shifted, revealing a encrypted communique—a single name repeated like a mantra:

"Ironfang Syndicate."

But beneath it, buried in the code, was something else.

A financial trail.

Leading straight to the Wei-Xing Organization.

Jiang cursed. "They were playing both sides. Using Ironfang to start the war, then cleaning up loose ends."

Wraith's breathing grew shallow. "The blueprint... it's not just a mech." His hand gripped Yuchen's sleeve. "It's a key. To something the Luo buried..."

His eyes glazed over.

Dead.

Back in the workshop, dawn was breaking.

Jiang scrubbed grease off his hands, watching as Yuchen studied the data they'd salvaged.

"Wei-Xing wants that Xuanwu blueprint bad," Jiang said. "Enough to kill for it."

Yuchen traced the Luo insignia on the hologram. "We have to warn them."

Jiang's eye dimmed. "The Luo Family doesn't take outsiders' words lightly. Especially not from exiles and nameless kids."

"Then what?"

Jiang exhaled. "We do what we've always done. We survive."

But Yuchen was already standing, Xing at his side.

"No," he said quietly. "I need to see it. The Luo Fortress."

Jiang studied him for a long moment. Then—

"You sure you're ready for that, kid?"

Yuchen's fingers curled into fists.

"I have to be."

The workshop's neon sign flickered in the evening drizzle, casting jagged shadows across the grease-stained floor. Yuchen sat on an overturned mech battery, staring at the holographic blueprint floating between them—the Xuanwu-class mech, its schematics still glowing with the Luo Family's phoenix insignia.

Xing lay across his lap, his silver-marked fur dimmed to a quiet shimmer. The pup had been unusually subdued since their return from the Ironfang tunnels, his golden eyes tracking Yuchen's every move as if sensing the storm beneath his skin.

Jiang tossed a rag onto the workbench with more force than necessary. "You're really thinking about going to them?"

Yuchen didn't look up. "They need to know."

"And what then?" Jiang's voice was uncharacteristically sharp. "You think they'll welcome you back with open arms? The Luo don't forgive desertion—not even from family."

Yuchen's fingers stilled on Xing's back.

Desertion.

He hadn't deserted. He'd been left.

The memory of Border City-17's final hours flashed behind his eyes—his father's last stand, his mother's whispered plea to run, the way the evacuation ships had lifted off without them. The Luo Family hadn't come for their own blood. Why should he risk his life for theirs?

Jiang sighed, dragging a hand down his face. "Look. I get it. That's your blood out there. But sending you to the Luo Fortress now? That's suicide."

Xing whined softly, pressing his muzzle against Yuchen's wrist.

Jiang crouched in front of him, his cybernetic eye whirring as it focused. "There's another way."

Captain Li arrived at midnight, rainwater dripping from her reinforced trench coat.

"You two look like hell," she remarked, shaking water off her gloves before accepting the mug of synthetic coffee Jiang shoved at her.

Jiang didn't smile. "We need a favor."

Li's sharp eyes flicked between them before landing on the holographic display. "That's a Luo mech schematic."

"Not just any schematic," Yuchen said quietly. "The reason people are dying."

He played the recording they'd salvaged from Wraith's terminal—the encrypted Wei-Xing orders, the assassination attempt, the truth about the Xuanwu blueprint being a key to something greater.

Li's expression darkened with each passing second.

"This is bigger than a corporate feud," she said when it ended. "If Wei-Xing's trying to provoke war with the Luo..."

"Harbin burns," Jiang finished grimly. "The Luo won't hold back. Not with their ancestral secrets at stake."

Li exhaled sharply. "What do you need?"

Yuchen met her gaze. "Someone has to warn them. Someone they'll actually listen to."

Li's lips thinned. "You're asking me to walk into the Luo Fortress and accuse Wei-Xing of treason."

"No," Jiang cut in. "Just deliver the evidence. Let them draw their own conclusions."

A tense silence stretched between them. Outside, the rain pattered against the reinforced windows like impatient fingers.

Finally, Li nodded. "I'll do it. But not for the Luo." She jabbed a finger at Yuchen. "For him. Because whatever he is to you, Jiang, it's written all over his face that this matters."

Yuchen's throat tightened.

Li stood, draining her coffee in one gulp. "I leave at dawn. Pray the Luo don't shoot the messenger."

Three days passed with no word.

Yuchen threw himself into work—rebuilding a salvaged mech core, recalibrating Xing's makeshift sensor array, anything to keep his hands busy and his mind from spiraling.

Jiang didn't comment, but his watchful presence was a constant weight.

On the fourth morning, the workshop's proximity alarm blared.

Yuchen nearly dropped the plasma torch he'd been using to weld a fractured hydraulic line. Xing's head snapped up, his markings flaring silver as he positioned himself between Yuchen and the door.

Jiang's cybernetic eye whirred, syncing with the external cameras. "Well. That's unexpected."

The monitor flickered to life, revealing a sleek Luo skimmer parked outside, its obsidian hull gleaming under the weak sunlight.

No guns. No armed escorts.

Just a single figure in Luo colors waiting at the door.

Yuchen's pulse roared in his ears. "Is it—?"

"Not Jinhai," Jiang said, relief coloring his tone. "One of their mid-rank envoys."

The tension in Yuchen's shoulders eased slightly. If the Luo Family had discovered his identity, they wouldn't have sent a subordinate.

Jiang opened the door before the envoy could knock.

The Luo representative—a woman with steel-gray hair pulled into a severe bun—inclined her head in the barest approximation of respect. "Engineer Jiang."

Jiang crossed his arms. "You lost, princess? Inner Zone's that way."

The envoy ignored the jab, her sharp eyes scanning the workshop before landing on Yuchen. "The Luo Family acknowledges your... discretion in this matter."

Yuchen stiffened.

She continued, "The evidence you provided has been verified. Wei-Xing's operations in Harbin have been... dealt with."

A chill ran down Yuchen's spine. Dealt with in Luo parlance meant executed.

The envoy produced a sealed metal case, offering it to Jiang. "A token of appreciation."

Jiang didn't take it. "We don't want your bribes."

"Not a bribe." The envoy's lips curled slightly. "A gift. For the boy."

Xing growled as the case clicked open, revealing a single data chip nestled in black velvet.

Yuchen frowned. "What is it?"

"Knowledge," the envoy said simply. "The Luo never forget a debt."

With that, she turned and left, the skimmer's engines humming to life as it lifted into the smog-choked sky.

The data chip contained no messages, no threats, no further acknowledgments of Yuchen's existence.

Just training modules.

Martial forms. Mech piloting techniques. Even rare beast-taming methodologies—all bearing the unmistakable stamp of Luo Family archives.

Jiang whistled lowly as he scrolled through the files. "This is... extensive."

Yuchen traced the holographic characters floating above the chip—a single phrase repeating in elegant script:

"Blood calls to blood."

Xing nudged his hand, his golden eyes knowing.

Jiang sighed, rubbing his cybernetic eye. "Well. Guess we know someone in that family's still got a conscience."

Yuchen closed his fist around the chip, the weight of it heavier than any weapon.

"Not conscience," he murmured.

"A test."

That night, Yuchen dreamed of a phoenix wrought in steel, its wings spread across a battlefield.

When he woke, the chip was still clenched in his hand.

Jiang was already at the workbench, tinkering with a disassembled plasma rifle. He didn't look up as Yuchen approached.

"You're staying, then."

It wasn't a question.

Yuchen glanced at Xing, at the workshop, at the city beyond—a place that had become more home than anywhere since the world ended.

"Yes."

Jiang nodded, as if he'd expected nothing else. "Good. Then we've got work to do."

He slid a battered mech core across the table.

"Lesson one starts now."

The morning sun filtered through the grime-streaked windows of Old Jiang's workshop, casting geometric patterns across the floor. Yuchen stood in the center of the makeshift training area, his muscles coiled tight as Jiang circled him like a weathered hawk.

**"The difference between a soldier and a survivor,"** Jiang said, his voice rough with decades of smoke and shouting over machinery, "is that a survivor knows when to break the rules."

Xing lay nearby, his silver-marked fur catching the light as he gnawed on a scrap of reinforced wiring. His golden eyes tracked Jiang's movements with eerie focus.

Jiang stopped abruptly, tossing a rusted wrench at Yuchen's chest. "Catch."

Yuchen's hands snapped up on instinct, fingers closing around the cold metal.

"Wrong," Jiang grunted.

Yuchen blinked. "What?"

Jiang snatched the wrench back and threw it again—harder this time. When Yuchen caught it, the old man kicked his legs out from under him. Yuchen hit the concrete floor with a grunt, the impact vibrating through his bones.

"You caught the wrench," Jiang said, looming over him. "But you didn't catch the foot coming at your knees. Survival isn't about reacting to one threat—it's about seeing the whole field."

Xing let out a soft "yip", as if agreeing.

Yuchen exhaled sharply and pushed himself up. "Again."

Jiang's lips twitched. "That's the spirit."

Days bled into weeks, and the workshop became more than just a shelter—it became home.

Mornings were for training. Jiang drilled Yuchen in everything from hand-to-hand combat to mech maintenance, his teaching style as unrelenting as the Harbin winters.

"A mech is only as good as the pilot's understanding of it," Jiang would say, forcing Yuchen to reassemble a plasma core blindfolded. "You gotta feel the machine like it's part of you."

Xing, ever the opportunist, would steal tools when Yuchen least expected it, forcing him to adapt mid-task.

"That damn mutt's teaching you situational awareness better than I ever could," Jiang admitted grudgingly after the third time Xing swiped a hydrospanner right out of Yuchen's grip.

Afternoons were for work. The reputation of Jiang's workshop meant a steady stream of clients—**Outer Zone mercenaries needing gear repaired, Inner Zone elites looking for off-the-books upgrades, even the occasional Harbin Resistance member with a bleeding-edge prototype that "fell off a truck."

Yuchen learned to navigate the delicate dance of politics without stepping on toes.

"The Sutherland rep pays in credits but lies about the damage," Jiang warned him once. "The Wei-Xing lackey pays in black-market beast cores but will short you if you don't count 'em. And the Luo envoys? They don't haggle, but they always watch."

Yuchen kept his expression neutral at the mention of the Luo, but Xing's ears would flatten every time.

Nights were for the data chip.

Locked in the workshop's back room, Yuchen pored over the Luo training modules, committing every martial form, every mech schematic, every tactical stratagem to memory.

"Blood calls to blood," the chip's inscription read.

Yuchen wasn't sure if it was a promise or a warning.

One evening, as Jiang repaired a damaged neural interface, Yuchen finally voiced the question that had been burning in his chest.

"You worked for them. The Luo Family."

Jiang's hands stilled for only a second before resuming their work. "Yeah."

"Why'd you leave?"

Jiang set down his tools with deliberate care. "Same reason your father did. The Luo protect their own, kid. But 'their own' gets narrower every year."

Yuchen's fingers tightened around the mech component he'd been cleaning. "Did you know? Who I was?"

"Not at first." Jiang's cybernetic eye whirred softly. "But you've got your mother's frown and your father's stubbornness. Took me about five seconds after that first fight to put it together."

Xing, curled up in Yuchen's lap, lifted his head as if sensing the shift in the air.

"You never said anything," Yuchen murmured.

"Neither did you." Jiang leaned back in his chair, the old metal creaking under his weight. "Family's complicated. Blood's just blood. What matters is who you choose to stand with."

The words settled over Yuchen like armor.

Winter came to Harbin in a fury of biting winds and frozen rain.

Yuchen stood on the workshop's rooftop, watching the city lights flicker through the storm. Xing pressed against his leg, a warm, steady presence.

Somewhere out there, beyond the Shield of Harbin, beyond the ruins and the wildlands, the Luo Fortress stood in Beijing—unyielding, unbroken, waiting.

One day, the call would come.

Not today.

Not yet.

But soon.

Yuchen closed his eyes, feeling the weight of the data chip in his pocket, the hum of the city below, the quiet certainty in Jiang's words.

What matters is who you choose to stand with.

Xing licked his hand, pulling him back to the present.

Yuchen smiled faintly and scratched behind the pup's ears.

"Let's go home."