The iron doors gnashed shut behind them. As the final, thunderous metallic collision ebbed into nothingness, an absolute, tomb-like silence swallowed the air—interrupted only by the phantom hiss of fluids coursing through the labyrinthine conduits in the distance.

  Lin Xiao remained rooted to the threshold. She scanned this subterranean bastion, a fortress seemingly mummified by the ages.

  The amber glow of electricity was absent here; instead, the chamber was bled in the flickering, erratic violet pulse of luminescent glass tubes embedded in the masonry. This spectral light grazed against gargantuan brass gears and the obsidian-dark surfaces of ebony furniture, stretching shadows into skeletal distortions. At the studio’s heart, a colossal Difference Engine, a mechanical leviathan of intricate levers and oscillating dials, churned with a rhythm that felt unnervingly discordant—a chaotic heartbeat of brass. Along the walls, open shelving groaned under the weight of countless yellowed vellum scrolls, their edges curled like parched skin, tattooed with a feverish density of maps and occult celestial coordinates.

  It possessed the manic aura of a nineteenth-century mad scientist's lair, yet beneath the artifice of steam and brass lay a sense of the sacrosanct—a gravity older than history itself.

  "Set it down," Joe muttered, hooking his black umbrella onto a cast-iron peg by the wall. He shed his sodden, heavy coat to reveal a modern, off-white shirt—its coarse, wrinkled texture a jarring, mundane intrusion against the ancient theater of the room.

  Lin Xiao moved tentatively toward the massive ebony workbench, unwrapping the flannel bundle with the reverence of a priestess handling a relic. Watching Joe rummage through the mechanical detritus, she saw him pull out a towel and extend it toward her. "Dry yourself," he said.

  She could no longer tether her questions. Her voice, thin and fragile, rippled through the hollow expanse:

  "Who... who are you, truly? Those men called you a 'Tier-1 Interference Source.' And this station... this entire world... none of this should exist beneath the foundation of Taipei"

  Joe’s hands stilled. He paced toward the console and ignited a nuclear-core kerosene lamp. The flaring brilliance carved deep canyons into the furrows of his face, illuminating eyes that held the weight of eons.

  “Names are merely labels; their meanings shift with the passage of eras.” Joe turned around, leaning against the workbench. His tone was as flat as someone discussing the weather. “If you require a concrete concept—I hail from Sirius, a higher-dimensional civilization beyond your line of sight. I have inhabited this planet for... far longer than the history of this basin's formation.”

  Lin Xiao gasped, reflexively taking a half-step back. “An alien?”

  “I despise that word; it reeks of cheap cinema,” Joe smirked self-deprecatingly. “In Sumer, some called me Enki. In the history you know, I was once known as Fuxi; others called me Cangjie or Da Yu. I participated in the layout of this city and mended its fractured ley lines on more than one occasion.”

  He paused, observing Lin Xiao’s nearly catatonic expression. His tone softened slightly. “But now, I am merely an old man who repairs clocks in Dihua Street. You can do as the neighbors do and just call me Old Joe.”

  Lin Xiao felt as though an overheated computer had been jammed into her skull. Enki? Fuxi? Overlaying these mythic names onto this man—who had just grumbled about missing out on sesame oil kidney noodles—created a staggering sense of the absurd.

  “So... the myths are all true?” Lin Xiao murmured, her hands knotting together instinctively.

  “Myths are simply the limited vocabulary of later generations attempting to explain high-level technology they couldn't comprehend.” Joe waved a hand, clearly unwilling to get bogged down in details. “I am revealing this to you because the moment you stepped into Momentary with that object, you triggered a shift you haven't yet perceived. You can no longer lead an ordinary life—at least not until I find the reason why.”

  Joe took a step forward. The gaze behind his monocle was as sharp as a flare, as if it could pierce through her very marrow and blood.

  “Now, it’s my turn to ask.” His voice was low and solemn. “Who are you?”

  Facing eyes that felt as though they could dissect her soul, Lin Xiao flinched. She opened her mouth, her voice sounding foreign to her own ears.

  “I... I’m just Lin Xiao. I was born in Taipei. I studied document conservation in university and now work at a library. My grandfather left me that old bookbinding shop, and this bronze brick... it was just a paperweight he used. This is the craziest thing that has ever happened to me.”

  Lin Xiao spoke slowly, her tone carrying a vacancy that bordered on utter bewilderment.

  Joe stared at her for a long time, his brow furrowing slightly behind the monocle. This background was too mundane—so ordinary it made him doubt his own judgment. Was it possible that the heart of this earthquake—one powerful enough to disturb the tracks of causality—was not this girl, but the lifeless object itself?

  He averted his gaze, turning his attention to the bronze brick wrapped in the flannel shirt upon the ebony table. Under the glow of the kerosene lamp, the rust-encrusted Taotie patterns shimmered with a faint, dark crimson, resembling some organ fallen into a deep slumber.

  "If that is the case, then this is an exceedingly rare 'inevitable coincidence,'" Joe murmured, as if speaking to himself.

  "And what you did back there..." Seeing Joe’s expression soften, Lin Xiao felt a sliver of courage return. She gestured urgently, "The slips of paper you slapped in the shop, that glowing array on the floor... was that sorcery? Magic? Do superpowers actually exist in this world?"

  Joe let out a short, sharp chuckle. He idly picked up an unused, yellowed talisman from the workbench, his fingertips tracing the strange, fibrous texture of the paper.

  "Superpowers? Magic? Those are just romantic terms your kind invented because you couldn't comprehend the underlying principles." Joe tossed the talisman carelessly back onto the table. "Before the Third Civilization—what your legends call Atlantis—human capabilities were far beyond your imagination. Back then, humans had no need for speech; consciousness could interface directly. They needed no tools; they could transport monoliths and cleave through mountains using nothing but the resonance of sonic frequencies."

  Lin Xiao listened, utterly stunned. These words shook her even more than his earlier revelation of being from another planet.

  "But after the axial tilt, everything was ruined. The energy fields fell into chaos, and humans lost the ability to resonate with the ley lines. Your genetic code was forcibly altered, brain potential was throttled, and lifespans were slashed to a mere few decades." Joe turned, his gaze drifting toward churning Difference Engine on the wall. "The 'sorcery' you saw is, in essence, nothing more than the precise manipulation of residual energy."

  He picked up a brush tipped with a shimmering fluid and traced a phantom line in the air.

  “Imagine that a mantra is actually a specific sonic frequency used to trigger energy in the environment. And the talisman...” He tapped the yellowed paper. “This, in itself, is a specialized energy-conductive material. The runes drawn upon it are not random scribbles; they are ‘circuit diagrams’ composed of fluidic electronics. Once I provide the correct power source, it generates a specific physical effect according to the circuit’s path—stasis, combustion, or repulsive force.”

  “So, I am not casting spells.” Joe looked at Lin Xiao, his tone as clinical as a physics instructor’s. “I am merely using a few old batteries and flashlights in this blacked-out ruin you call Earth, trying to find a way out for you all.”

  With that, Joe turned and paced back toward the massive ebony table. His focus had returned to the bronze brick, the lens of his monocle refracting a stern, concentrated light.

  Stunned, Lin Xiao picked up the yellow paper. Its texture was peculiar—not fragile like ordinary Xuan paper, but possessed a subtle resilience. Touching it gave her the haunting illusion of brushing against dried skin. She lowered her head, her fingertips instinctively tracing the cinnabar-like fluid lines as she processed Joe’s theory of “circuit diagrams.”

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “Just a circuit diagram...” she murmured. As a conservator of ancient texts, she was accustomed to sensing the soul of an artifact through her fingertips.

  At that moment, Joe leaned over to retrieve a high-frequency scanner—shimmering with a faint blue light—from a drawer, preparing to begin his study of the brick.

  In the dim, flickering shadows of the kerosene lamp, no one noticed that as Lin Xiao’s fingertip rested on a pivotal junction of the rune, the dormant yellow paper reacted as if sensing a faint voltage.

  Hum—

  An extremely subtle, nearly transparent flash of white light sparked for a fleeting instant where her finger met the paper’s surface.

  Old Joe pulled over a cast-iron swivel chair and sat down, gesturing for Lin Xiao to take a seat at the massive ebony table.

  "Those people..." Lin Xiao sat, her eyes still darting uneasily toward the sealed iron door. "You said they are the Illuminati? Why would they hunt you so brazenly in Dadaocheng? If you are truly... Fuxi, shouldn't they be treating you with divine reverence?"

  Joe let out a cold snort as he idly toyed with a brass gear on the table. Skreeee—ga— The sharp, piercing screech of dry metal friction erupted in the stillness, setting one’s teeth on edge. He rose and walked toward the other end of the studio. "Let’s finish that coffee first. I find myself in need of a cup as well."

  Nestled against the cavern wall was a "vertical planting wall" bathed in a violet-spectrum glow. Several fleshy plants—"Geothermal Soybeans" and "Stratum Nuts" with silver-veined leaf edges—thrived within the crevices of the basalt. Joe picked up a transparent collection cup filled with nuts, held it against the light to inspect the markings, and gave it a quick shake. He poured the contents into an extraction device shaped like an antique typewriter. Accompanied by a faint grinding sound, a few ounces of fresh, rich plant milk flowed into a brass cup.

  Joe patted the gargantuan machine standing against the studio wall. It was a fully automated mechanical steam espresso maker he had cobbled together a few years back, powered by gear-linkage and ley line energy. Built primarily of red copper and cast iron, its skeletal frame revealed a complex labyrinth of interlocking pipes, gears, and bearings.

  He pulled an opened bag of espresso beans from a drawer and poured them into the top funnel. When he pressed a luminescent button engraved with star-chart patterns, the entire machine awakened like a slumbering leviathan.

  The quartz grinding chamber at the top began to rotate, the sound of shattering beans filtered by the heavy brass casing into a steady, low-frequency hum. Immediately, a mechanical tamper composed of multiple linkages descended with surgical precision. Driven by a pneumatic steam structure, it issued two rhythmic thump-clack sounds, followed by a twist that pressed the coffee puck into a perfectly level, dense disc.

  Finally, a conveyor belt moved the puck toward the group head. As the magnetic infusion activated, the needles on the pressure gauges within the red copper conduits instantly leapt toward the 9-bar redline. Harnessing geothermal heat to bring the water to exactly 90°C, a thick stream of espresso—crowned with deep brown crema—began to pour slowly from the brass spouts.

  Simultaneously, a steam wand at the other end extended silently into the milk reservoir. The machine’s sensory system precisely tracked the rising temperature curve of the plant milk, issuing a series of delicate hiss, hiss sounds.

  Once the espresso and the frothed milk were ready, the tray beneath the machine began to rotate and tilt slowly. A pair of mechanical hands, connected by precision gears, controlled the cup's angle and flow with surprising elegance. With a final, concluding clack from within the machine, two lattes featuring perfect latte art appeared.

  Joe handed one cup to Lin Xiao and lifted his own. As he gazed at the fine texture of the foam, his tone became as steady and profound as the rising steam.

  "In your legends, worshipping gods is a quest for protection. But in the eyes of this civilization's power players, 'gods' are merely 'high-level resources' with unique capabilities from past eras. As for the Illuminati—think of them as proxies who have mastered fragments of ancient heritage to rule the world. Their true master is an old colleague of mine: Simon."

  Joe traced a circle in the air. Amidst a faint zzt-zzt of electrical hum, the dim violet plasma light projected a blurry holographic image of Earth, shrouded in a stifling gray grid. The image rapidly zoomed out to reveal the moon, 380,000 kilometers away. Lin Xiao stared at the familiar satellite, only to realize its surface shimmered with the faint outline of complex metallic structures. It didn't look like stone; it looked like a slumbering fortress.

  "Simon and I arrived here together forty billion years ago; that lunar ark was our vessel," Joe’s eyes turned icy. "But after the destruction of Atlantis, the severe axial tilt had a fatal impact on us. Now, both Simon and I are locked within these mortal shells—immortals unable to return to the ark. To tighten his grip on this chaotic endgame, Simon deployed an energy layer outside the atmosphere: 'The Veil'."

  "The Veil monitors every corner of the surface and every ripple in the ley lines, ensuring no detail on Earth escapes his sight. Simultaneously, its frequency waves restrict human genetic development to prevent it from spiraling out of control. Simon is attempting to reconstruct the lost navigational tools to return to the ark, but we cannot extract sufficient technology or energy from the human side. Therefore, he chose to collaborate with the forces lurking in this planet's darkest corners. " Joe let out a cold, sharp hiss through his teeth.

  Joe hesitated for a heartbeat before glossing over the details with a vague tone. “Deep beneath your feet, there dwells another race—an even older lineage of beings who fled underground after their defeat in an ancient war. Simon struck a bargain with them: the Subterraneans provide the technology and energy, while Simon acts as their proxy on the surface, harvesting power and capturing… me.”

  “Why do they want to capture you?” Lin Xiao pressed.

  “Because for thousands of years,I have remained a jagged stone in their craw for millennia.” Joe let out a self-deprecating chuckle, his gaze drifting toward the black umbrella in the corner. “To be honest, it’s not Simon who is desperate to catch me—it’s those creatures hiding in the deep. Ever since I struck down 'Chiyou'—their genetically engineered monstrosity—at the Battle of Zhuolu, I’ve spent these millennia of wandering driving them back whenever I saw them infiltrating human civilization. And, of course, I’ve culled quite a few of their so-called 'elites' along the way.”

  Watching Lin Xiao, Joe seemed to recall fragments of the past, his voice heavy with a weariness and sorrow that spanned ten thousand years.

  “To Simon, there is no irreconcilable conflict between us. Fundamentally, we are the same kind; we simply have different ideologies. I could never understand his impatience. If he had let humanity develop steadily, they would have eventually provided the energy and technology he requires. Instead, he chose to turn a blind eye, allowing the Subterraneans to cannibalize human society. As long as they provide the tech and power he needs, he is willing to cast the gates wide, letting those subterranean entities seep into your world. But I refuse to watch history repeat itself.”

  “Simon thinks I’m stubborn—that I’m the old colleague ruining his ‘business exchange,’ Putting him in a difficult position with his subterranean partners. So, whenever I surface, he triggers The Veil to lock onto my coordinates and, per his cooperation agreement, hands me over to those filthy creatures. However…”

  A playful, knowing curve tugged at the corner of Joe’s mouth. “Simon clearly isn't playing for keeps. Otherwise, with his level of authority, I wouldn't have been able to hide for thousands of years.”

  "If you've managed to hide for thousands of years without a hitch," Lin Xiao looked at him, bewildered, "why today? Why were they able to corner you in Dadaocheng now of all times?"

  The cold stoicism on Joe’s face vanished, replaced by an expression clouded with confusion and foreboding. He didn't look at her; instead, he turned toward the ticking Difference Engine. Its needles were jumping in an erratic, disordered frenzy, emitting a rhythmic ka-ka-ka—the sound of gears spinning madly after a precision ceramic vessel had shattered under immense pressure. The cadence was as frantic as a heart on the brink of collapse.

  "Because today, the 'Time' of this planet has malfunctioned."

  Joe let out a long sigh and walked to the workbench. He looked at Lin Xiao’s blank expression and fell silent for a moment, appearing to weigh how to describe the catastrophe in a language humans could grasp.

  "Miss Lin, we exist in different dimensions, and our understanding of 'Time' is fundamentally different. To your kind, time is a flow; you stand in the stream, able only to see the ripples passing before your eyes. But to me, time is more like a pre-written, stop-motion script that is currently being projected. I stand in the theater’s projection booth, able to witness the past, present, and future of this play all at once."

  Joe’s expression turned graver than ever as he pointed toward the violently vibrating instrument.

  "However, the very instant you stepped through my door today, this script—which has been playing for four billion years—suddenly snapped. The future, once fixed and singular, became diverse and blurred in that second, like a straight line exploding into countless divergent paths. In all my eons of existence, I have never witnessed such a phenomenon."

  Lin Xiao froze. She remembered the moment back in the shop when the air seemed to solidify for a heartbeat—that illusion of the world suddenly turning "unreal," as if a heartbeat had been skipped.

  "This violent spatiotemporal tremor caused a brief but severe energy disorder. The hidden 'blind spot' I’ve maintained for two hundred years was completely exposed in that instant. In the surveillance of The Veil, I was once merely a segment of static among countless signals; now, I am the most glaring crack on the screen. Not only did Simon instantly lock onto my coordinates, but he surely felt the chaos of the future just as I did."

  Joe lowered his head, staring at his slightly trembling fingers—an instinctive anxiety born from his inability to comprehend the source of this "snap."

  "While Simon usually turns a blind eye toward me, facing a spatiotemporal Discontinuity of this magnitude has made him desperate to confirm exactly what happened. Therefore, this time he has no choice but to honor his arrangement with those subterranean crawlers and send the Illuminati to 'seriously' clean house." Joe gave a bitter smile, a trace of wariness toward the unknown flickering in his eyes.

  "Miss Lin, you and this bronze brick simply happened to appear at this specific point in time. The true crisis is that the script for the future has been burned away—and I don't even know which scene comes next."

  Enki:

  Fuxi:

  Cangjie:

  Da Yu (Yu the Great):

  Chiyou and the Battle of Zhuolu: