The twin-rotor propulsion engines of the unbranded black-ops stealth transport vehicle hummed with a low, sub-audible frequency that vibrated directly into the granite plateau of Mount Tai’s summit. The structural cloak draped over the hull was flawless, catching the pale sapphire light streaming from the geometric atmospheric lens above and distorting the vehicle's edges until it looked like nothing more than a shifting pocket of mountain air.
Lin Feng stepped off the central plateau line, his sneakers crunching softly over the fine gravel. He stopped at the baseline of the transport vessel's lowered hydraulic ramp, his vacant, bottomless eyes looking through the dim cockpit glass toward the tactical instrumentation arrays lighting up the pilot's deck.
Behind him, Han Xue and Bai Qingxi stood shoulder to shoulder, their respective respiratory frameworks tightly constrained by the dropping pressure of the mountain baseline. The corporate heiress kept her hand steady against the fabric of her crimson tunic, while the successor of the Northern Frost Sanctuary scanned the surrounding ridges with a cold, calculated intensity.
"The boarding sequence is authorized, Student Lin," Director-General Sun commanded, his gravelly baritone carrying the unyielding weight of a military executioner as he stepped up to the edge of the ramp. He handed the heavy obsidian data pad directly to Lin Feng's porcelain-smooth hand. "The flight path is locked under Code Black protocols. The Central Bureau has cleared a linear high-altitude corridor straight from the Sector 02 ridge to the primary containment perimeter at the absolute center of the Mount Tai rifts."
Lin Feng casually accepted the data pad, his fingers sliding across the interface to verify the real-time satellite telemetry looping across the glass.
[ FLIGHT PROFILE INITIALIZED: PERIMETER ENTRY]
[TRAJECTORY VECTOR: MOUNT TAI SECTOR 01 CORE]
[AIRSPACE CORDON: 100% FEDERAL ABSOLUTE MILITARY ISOLATION]
[WARNING: ELEVATED ELECTROMAGNETIC TURBULENCE DETECTED AT ZERO-POINT BASELINE]
"The legacy clans are still sifting through the gray ash at the mountain pass, General," Lin Feng said softly, his smooth voice easily cutting through the low thrumming of the stealth rotors. He stepped onto the composite metal floor blocks of the cargo cabin, slinging his worn utility backpack neatly into a side reinforcement rack. "They believe that by consolidating their surviving vanguard squads near the outer logistics line, they can intercept my transit line. They don't understand that when the primary grand rifts split the bedrock, a ground blockade is nothing more than wet paper."
Bai Qingxi followed him into the pressurized cabin, the automated environmental shields instantly snapping shut behind her heels to seal out the freezing mountain draft. She unpinned the golden hairpin from her hair, allowing the integrated scanning logic boards inside the jewelry to interface directly with the transport vessel’s terminal monitors.
"The financial markets inside the capital core have completely flatlined, Lin Feng," she stated, her voice returning to its polished, calculated corporate rhythm as the screens populated with scrolling rows of red market indicators. "The
Southern Flame Syndicate’s
board directors have officially initiated an internal asset purge. They are burning their transaction records and withdrawing their remaining operational capital from the state banks to fund a last-ditch defensive network around their ancestral sanctuaries."
"Let them burn their ledgers, Director Bai," Lin Feng murmured smoothly, his golden-flecked eyes looking through the heavy ballistic viewing ports toward the receding granite ridges below as the stealth vessel lifted into the clouds. "They spent forty years accumulating stolen power from the earth's leaks, assuming their vaults could withstand the absolute evolution of the continent. Tomorrow morning, when the first ancestral inheritance realm tears open the bedrock, their family lineage will have no more value than common river silt."
Han Xue sat on the opposite equipment bench, her midnight-black silk trench coat wrapped tightly around her frame. Her glacial gaze remained fixed entirely on the unblemished skin of Lin Feng’s neck, her mind still frantically running calculations on how his dual-loop framework had grounded Marshal Huo’s terminal execution arc without a single trace of cellular friction.
"The Northern Frost Sanctuary has monitored the geocentric root for three generations, Lin Feng," she said, her crisp, ringing voice dropping into a low frequency that caused the cabin's metal partition panels to faintly ring. "Our ancestral scripts claim that the core gateway of Mount Tai contains a primeval guardian entity—a Tier-3 Abyssal Sentinel whose passive energetic mass can calcify a Stage 9 Flesh Refinement practitioner's bone marrow from a distance of three hundred meters. If your dual-loop alignment drops by even half a hertz during the initial entry, the backlash will turn this entire vessel into liquid iron."
Lin Feng didn't answer her with a traditional martial defense or an academic rebuttal. He simply closed his bare right fist inside his gray utility jacket pocket, the liquid engine within his
Dantian
accelerating its spin until his scoured
Du Channel
vibrated with a deep, silver-white geocentric weight.
"The sentinel is just another variable on the board, Student Han," Lin Feng whispered, his calm voice carrying an unhurried, mountain-like density that caused the vessel's internal electronic systems to briefly flicker into a pristine golden light loop. "And the board belongs entirely to me."
The stealth transport plunged deep into the churning wall of gray electromagnetic smog, cutting through the final barrier of the capital stage as the twenty-four-hour countdown to the primary awakening continued to bleed away into the dark.