Zero protocol: Red, The code ascendant

The rain had long since stopped, but the air still clung to the forest like a soaked shroud. Wet leaves squelched under Lian Xue's boots as she climbed steadily through the mist-covered slope. The faint scent of ash and burnt flesh trailed behind her. She hadn't looked back once.

Wanluo was gone.

Not burned to the ground, but wounded—its streets hushed by the fear of what had passed through it. She hadn't killed everyone. Just enough to remind the sects watching that she would not kneel.

Now she needed space again.

Time to adapt.

Time to survive.

Power Level: 6.7

Almost to 7. Almost.

But that "almost" was what got people killed.

---

Her new shelter was nothing more than an abandoned shrine tucked between a twisted cluster of stone pillars deep in the Shattered Pine Range. There were no spirit beasts nearby. No villages. Just wind and cold and the occasional rustle of broken branches.

She liked it.

The shrine was cracked in places, its offerings long since rotted. Weeds clawed through the steps like nature was trying to pull it back underground. But the foundation was strong. Dry. Isolated.

Perfect.

She activated her perimeter scouts again, setting the drones to a silent scan rotation every ten minutes. Her traps were buried—metal threads laced with reactive charges woven into the soil. Only a few people could even see them, let alone survive them.

Inside, she shed her robe.

Her arms were bruised, cut. Her shoulder had started to stiffen. The marrow fluid she'd injected in Wanluo had worked, but the backlash was worse than she'd anticipated. Her neural channels had burned from the strain.

She needed rest.

But rest never came alone anymore.

---

By the third night, she heard them.

Voices.

Low. Sharp. Local.

Three men and a woman, camped barely a hundred meters from the shrine, cloaked in an illusion spell so thin it made her teeth itch. They weren't rogues or wandering cultivators. They had uniforms—red sashes with the sigil of a broken sun.

Another sect.

She listened.

"She's somewhere in this region. Eastfang put out a private call. Triple bounty if brought in alive."

"Alive?" one man scoffed. "What kind of demon girl needs to be alive?"

"Not a demon. Mortal, they said. No spirit roots."

"Then how the hell is she killing Core cultivators?"

"That's what we're here to find out."

She retreated into the dark of her shrine, breath held.

She didn't fear them.

But the more attention she drew, the more came looking. Wanluo had cracked open the rumors, and now they were spreading. Sect after sect, mercenary after mercenary—some driven by greed, some by revenge.

Most wouldn't survive meeting her.

But she couldn't kill forever without consequence.

Each corpse, each trap sprung, each drone deployed—it chipped away at her reserves. Her injuries slowed her down. Her systems weren't fully recovered. If they sent someone smarter… or worse, if they started to study her, adapt to her tactics…

That would be the end.

---

She made her move on the fourth night.

Silent.

Precise.

She didn't aim to kill. Just to warn.

Using her terrain mapping, she created a sonic distortion field along the ridge. As the four cultivators stepped forward, their balance faltered. The woman stumbled first, slipping on the destabilized earth. A moment later, she screamed—the sound engineered to amplify directly into their ears from her hidden nodes.

She let the scream echo for two full minutes.

No attack.

No enemy.

Only fear.

When they finally fled, they were shaking.

She left them alive.

She needed the message to spread.

---

The next day, she collapsed.

Her legs gave out halfway through adjusting a perimeter node. Her vision fuzzed, her left hand spasmed. Static laced her thoughts. A silent alarm blinked behind her eyes.

Warning: Neural Sync Disruption. God-metal interface overheating.

She hadn't pushed herself this hard since the escape from the outer sect.

Her body hadn't stopped moving in over a month.

Sleep was shallow. Healing was slower than ever. She had pushed her systems into overdrive during the Eastfang conflict and never stopped to let them recalibrate.

Now her body was reminding her.

That she wasn't invincible.

That she still bled.

---

She lay beneath the shrine altar, surrounded by fragments of her folded glaive, wrapped in a worn cloak. Cold seeped in through the floor.

For the first time in weeks, she let herself feel.

The fear.

The exhaustion.

The weight of being alone.

There was no team behind her.

No allies waiting.

Every person she'd encountered either wanted her dead… or wanted to sell her for coin.

In the end, no matter how smart she was—how fast or precise or adaptive—it would only take one slip. One moment of hesitation. One stronger cultivator with the right ability.

And she would fall.

That night, she dreamed of the void again.

But this time, she wasn't floating.

She was falling.

---

Power Level: 6.9

New Ability: Pulse Veil

A low-field distortion aura capable of scrambling spirit sense for up to five seconds at a time. Range: five meters. Cooldown: three hours.

Not much. But just enough to vanish in the middle of a fight. Just enough to disappear.

It had manifested during the third day of silent recovery beneath the shrine. She'd been trying to channel residual kinetic force into her weapon casing and instead triggered a brief disruption burst that made her entire form flicker from sight.

Not invisibility.

Just... absence.

She ran the simulations twelve times. All successful.

A ghost. Not untouchable.

But untraceable.

---

It came in handy faster than she expected.

Three days later, a bounty group from a border sect named Frostfire sent ten cultivators to search the range. She watched them from a distance—silent, cloaked, calculating.

Nine Foundation stage. One early Core.

Standard formation. Left flank weaker. Central anchor was the Core user. She noticed him spitting occasionally. Poison cultivator.

Her cloak absorbed the wind. Her eyes narrowed.

She could leave. Slip past. Let them tire themselves out.

But they were smart.

They left tracking seals in their footsteps. Arcane markers on trees. Subtle things—meant to detect spiritual shifts.

She'd have to pass directly through one of them.

Or fight.

She waited until dusk.

Then she moved.

One step. Two. Ten.

She dropped directly behind the second rearguard.

Pulse Veil.

She vanished from his senses, cut his throat in silence, and slipped forward like a whisper.

The next two fell before they could shout.

The Core user sensed something. He roared, letting poison spiral through the trees.

She countered with a flash bomb—timed with her drone's arrival.

The Core cultivator stumbled, blind, eyes bleeding.

She didn't kill him.

She cut his qi circulation channels. Ruined his dantian.

Then whispered in his ear:

> "Tell your sect. I'm done running."

---

Power Level: 7.0

Another wall broken.

And with it came a new addition.

Ability: Kinetic Phase Armor

By using stored impact energy, she could reinforce her body with a reactive shell for three seconds. It didn't make her invulnerable—but it could stop a sword strike. Maybe even block a spell.

She tested it twice.

The energy cost was high.

But it would save her life.

---

That night, the shrine burned.

Not by her hand.

Someone had followed the Frostfire team.

Someone who didn't care about warnings.

Or fear.

She barely escaped through the emergency tunnel she'd carved beneath the altar.

When she reached the cliffside above the shrine, she saw them—two cultivators in robes that shimmered like oil on water. No sigils. No crests.

Assassins.

Sent by someone who knew she couldn't be bought.

They didn't chase her that night.

But they would return.

She could feel it in her spine.

---

She ran until dawn.

Her legs numb. Her breath tight.

She collapsed near a riverbank, surrounded by mist.

And she made a decision.

If they wanted her dead that badly…

Then she would stop hiding.

She would stop waiting.

It was time to strike back.

But not blindly.

She would find the sects funding these hunters.

Track their information routes.

Cut off the flow of coin and orders.

One base at a time.

One shadow at a time.

Lian Xue was done reacting.

Now, she would become the storm.

---

Power Level: 7.0

Current Abilities:

Magnetic Disruption Field

Adaptive Reflex Enhancement

Kinetic Redirect

Pulse Veil

Kinetic Phase Armor

---

The bounty hunters would come again.

The sects would whisper.

And the world would watch.

But none of them knew what she really was.

Not yet.

They thought she was a clever mortal.

A ghost girl.

A mistake.

But she wasn't a mistake.

She was a weapon being forged in silence.

And one day soon—

She would stop running.

And start breaking the world apart.