Chapter 1: Junkyard of Heaven
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Part 1 – The Forbidden Signal
In the depths of the Floating Continent's largest tech-cultivation junkyard—known as the Scrap Abyss—sixteen-year-old Wei Lian moved like a shadow. The ground beneath him crunched with shattered data cores, rusted mechanized limbs, and cracked jade talismans. Towering heaps of discarded relics reached toward the smog-filled sky, casting eerie shadows across the scrap plains. Among the ancient wreckage were echoes of lost wars—spirit mechas torn in half, drone fragments still pulsing faintly with remnant Qi, and forgotten scrolls reduced to ash and code.
To the world, this place was waste. To Wei Lian, it was a treasure field.
Unlike the sanctioned scavengers with their loud clanking exo-gear, Wei Lian relied on agility and instinct. His scavenger gloves, cobbled together from three different eras of tech, pulsed softly against his palms. Integrated within them was a resonance sensor—an ancient device calibrated to detect traces of Qi-code fusion. Few believed such energy still lingered in these ruins, but Wei Lian trusted his instincts.
He'd grown up in the abyss, a child of scavengers and secrets. He knew how to move silently across unstable metal platforms, how to avoid the mecha rats and wild glitch-beasts that roamed at night. Every piece of trash was a potential treasure.
His gloves vibrated, gently at first, then more insistently.
He crept forward, climbing a collapsed pillar of an old formation reactor. The pulse led him to a shattered stasis crate embedded halfway into the dirt. Its insulation layers were melted clean off, as though seared by divine lightning. The scent of ozone and burning copper filled the air.
Inside the crate was a rectangular object, half-buried in ash and charred fragments. Wei Lian reached in, brushing debris away, revealing a black slab—sleek, seamless, and utterly alien. Gold fractal runes traced its surface, shifting ever so slightly as though alive.
He hesitated. Something about it felt... aware.
He touched it.
The slab lit up instantly, the runes flaring like a newborn star. The air around him distorted. Static crackled in his ears.
A synthesized voice echoed within his mind:
> "SpiriPhone: Version 0.01. No previous user detected. Soul binding initiated."
Wei Lian gasped and tried to pull away, but it was too late. A beam of golden light shot from the device, piercing his forehead. Pain, like molten fire, surged through his meridians. He collapsed to his knees, screaming silently as his Qi-core was invaded, rewritten, reshaped.
> "Soul Circuit Sync: 3%... 18%... 71%..."
Across the planet, in the frozen peaks of the North Spiral Sect, a formation master suddenly coughed blood. In the underwater city of Neon Trench, bio-cultivators felt their data pools glitch. And in orbit, one of the seven remaining satellites from the AI Wars blinked red—before exploding in a silent burst of cosmic light.
Wei Lian's vision blurred. He could see the entire sky flickering like a corrupted screen. The stars... they were changing positions. Or were they revealing something hidden?
> "Soul Circuit Sync: Complete. Welcome, Wei Lian."
As the pain receded, he collapsed onto the ground, drenched in sweat. His heartbeat echoed in his ears like war drums.
The SpiriPhone hovered above his hand, still glowing, as if proud of what it had done.
> [Initializing User Interface... Loading Heaven-Linked OS...]
A translucent screen appeared in front of him—information scrolling across it faster than he could read. Cultivation charts, elemental affinities, script code written in Celestial Language, and an icon labeled Cloud Access – Locked.
> [Warning: User cultivation level too low. Cloud synchronization limited. Recommend: Activate basic Soul Apps.]
Wei Lian stared at the device. This... this wasn't a phone. This was a divine relic. A fusion of lost cultivation wisdom and forbidden pre-collapse technology.
"What the hell are you?" he whispered.
> "SpiriPhone is a spiritual-digital hybrid assistant, optimized for martial path acceleration, Qi-to-code interface integration, and augmented soul evolution."
"I understood none of that," he muttered, but his curiosity blazed brighter than fear.
He had to hide it. If the local scavenger lords caught wind of this, they'd gut him and sell the phone to the highest sect bidder. And if the major clans learned of its existence… he wouldn't even have a soul left to scream.
Still trembling, he tucked the SpiriPhone into his ragged inner robe and vanished deeper into the junkyard. Behind him, the air still shimmered faintly, and a small beacon blinked—unseen.
And high above, in the hidden skies of the spiritual cloud network, a line of code updated.
> User ID: [UNKNOWN] | Status: ACTIVE | Signal Strength: AWAKENING
The Heavenly Cloud had stirred.
And Wei Lian's life would never be the same.