Lin Xun didn't mind cleaning duty. He minded how quiet it got.
The deeper he walked into the old resonance wing, the more the silence pressed in. Dust blanketed every surface, thick and dry, with just enough spiritual residue lingering in the air to make his skin itch. The ceiling lights flickered at irregular intervals, and somewhere overhead, the Qi circulation array gave off a tired wheeze that echoed through the empty hall like an old man trying to breathe through his teeth.
His mop cart rattled over the broken floor tiles as he scanned the doors lining the corridor. Most of them were marked for dismantling. He'd been told not to touch anything still plugged in, especially if it sparked, hummed, or pulsed. Not a hard rule to follow.
The hallway ended at a sealed steel door that had clearly been installed long before he was born.
SOUL SYNCHRONIZATION CHAMBER – MODEL V-XI
Status: Decommissioned
Beneath the official label, someone had scratched a message into the frame by hand, nearly buried under layers of grime:
For those who repeat until they understand.
He stared at the words for a moment, his breath catching slightly. Bad timing. He'd been stuck at the fourth layer of Qi Condensation for the better part of a month now, just shy of the fifth. Everything was steady—his cycles clean, his spiritual sea stable—but no matter how many hours he practiced or how many refinement pills he rationed, the next step just wouldn't come.
Repeating hadn't helped him understand anything so far.
He keyed the override code, and the door groaned open.
The air inside was colder, drier, and still. The kind of silence that made his ears ring if he stood in it too long. The room was bare except for a single capsule resting at its center on a slightly raised platform. It looked more like a relic from a museum exhibit than functioning equipment. Silver-gray plating dulled by corrosion, spirit lines barely visible beneath the dust, and a nest of dead cables spilling from the back panel like dried roots cracked open at the base.
Lin Xun stepped closer, eyes scanning the edges for any sign of active formation work. Nothing. The thing didn't hum or glow, and the inner chamber was sealed shut.
He circled the pod slowly, recalling a class vid he half-ignored the year before. Early cultivation tech. Back when researchers still believed they could optimize meditation states through mechanical resonance. Most of those experiments were shut down decades ago—too unstable, too inconsistent, and too many spiritual backlash cases to justify keeping them around.
He crouched to inspect the exposed relay panel. His assignment was simple: clear surface dust, record visible damage, and avoid tampering with spirit circuitry. He reached in carefully, brushing aside a copper contact node to log the condition, when something inside clicked.
The pod gave off a faint vibration.
He stood immediately, tension prickling across his back. A moment later, the top half of the chamber hissed open. A shallow line of light lit the interior from within, pulsing dimly in a soft blue hue.
He stared. The pod's cradle looked intact, lined with worn cushioning and faint grooves etched into the walls like old spiritual inscriptions. It looked... active. But not alive. More like it had been left on standby, waiting for someone who never came.
Lin Xun glanced back down the hall. Still empty. He turned back to the pod.
"Five minutes," he murmured under his breath. "Just curious."
He stepped inside and sat down.
The lid closed with a soft hiss, sealing him into the dim blue interior. The air grew warmer, wrapping around his limbs and chest with the kind of comfort usually reserved for spiritual immersion chambers, but gentler, quieter. The hum beneath the surface was barely audible, rhythmic and slow, like someone breathing just below hearing range.
He let his back settle into the seat, then closed his eyes. His breathing followed the rhythm almost naturally.
Inhale.
Draw the Qi in through the chest.
Spiral it downward.
Exhale and guide it through the meridians.
The familiar sequence calmed his thoughts. His body relaxed into the pattern with ease, muscle memory carrying him through each part of the cycle. It was nothing special—just the base-grade breathing method taught in first-year theory—but he'd practiced it more times than he could count. He knew how it was supposed to feel.
But something shifted.
Not in the room. Inside.
A pulse, low and steady, surfaced at the edge of his spiritual sea. Then another, stronger this time, followed by a sudden tightness that pulled inward like a knot forming in his core.
He opened his eyes.
A pinpoint of light floated across the upper interior of the pod, drifting through the air as if it weighed nothing at all. It pulsed softly, once, then began to move with purpose.
Before he could react, the bead of light darted forward and struck his chest like a spark snapping into dry tinder.
There was no noise. Just a bloom of pressure from the inside out.
The light in the pod flared.
Then everything went dark.
After some time, he woke up lying on the floor.
The hatch of the pod was open again. The machine sat quiet and lifeless, its soft blue light extinguished. One of the internal panels had cracked, a thin scorch line trailing across the side. The rear conduit looked completely burned out.
Lin Xun sat up slowly, blinking against the faint sting behind his eyes. He flexed his hands. Stood. No pain. No numbness. No physical damage.
But something sat in his chest now. Not in the flesh. Deeper than that.
A weight, subtle but real, pressed from within the core of his spiritual sea. It wasn't intrusive. It didn't hurt. It simply existed, like a stone resting in water that hadn't been there before.
He ran a hand over his uniform. No scorch marks. No injuries. No reason to tell anyone anything.
He cleaned what he could, logged the cracked panel as minor heat damage, then pushed his cart back down the hall toward the main staircase.