夔Kui (The One-Footed Beast)

Note: 夔Kui, recorded in the Classic of Mountains and Seas, is a famous divine beast in ancient Chinese mythology. Its most distinctive feature is that it "resembles an ox, with a dark blue/gray body, no horns, and only a single foot." Its roar is like rolling thunder, and it is seen as an incarnation of nature's raw, primordial power. Its unique one-footed form later evolved into a classic, authoritative motif adorning ritual bronze vessels.

---

Monopod (Sciapod)

Note: The Monopod (also known as a Sciapod) is a creature from Western mythology, typically depicted with a single leg and an extraordinarily large foot, used for hopping or providing shade. It frequently appears in ancient Greek and medieval travelers' tales of exotic lands, often believed to inhabit remote regions of the East or Africa.

「Prologue」

Dawn in the Arctic always arrives with hesitation. The light is a turbid, blue-grey hue, slowly seeping into the desolate plain.

The wreckage of the weather station soaked in this cold luminescence. Twisted metal girders, frozen scraps of fabric, half-buried in a snowy slope, resembled the shed scales and bleached bones of some great beast that had molted here. The wind, born deep within the ice cap, carried a razor's edge honed to a lethal sharpness by temperatures of forty below, incessantly scouring any object daring to protrude above the snow-covered expanse.

X stood amidst the ruins of the main structure, her crimson hair whipping in the wind like a tattered banner.

17 minutes.

The count was precise as a heartbeat—from the moment she’d crossed the final crevasse until now, her boot crushing a half-buried glass test tube. In those seventeen minutes, her gaze had swept every possible hiding place: beneath broken concrete beams, inside half-collapsed instrument cabinets, even the pockets of the deep-purple, frozen Chimeras corpse.

Nothing.

She closed her eyes, lowering her breathing rate to six cycles per minute. In the extreme cold, rapid breathing was a reckless waste of heat, an interference with judgment.

When she opened them again, she began reconstructing the scene with a killer’s logic—

If she were Santali, knowing he might not return, what would he leave for those who followed?

Not a complete notebook—too dangerous. Not a conspicuous data chip—too easily confiscated.

A seed. A starting point for information that could grow on its own.

Her gaze fell upon the western wall. A crack there, about three fingers wide, depth unknown. The ice at its edges was a shade darker, as if touched by something warm relatively recently.

X walked over, removed the glove from her right hand. The medical rubber hardened rapidly in the -45°C air, but she needed maximum tactile sensitivity. Her fingertips probed into the fissure, searching.

At a depth of fifteen centimeters, she touched a smooth plane.

Not the grit of rock, nor the bite of ice. Some kind of synthetic material.

She pinched the object between two fingers, slowly extracting it. A thumb-sized transparent capsule, containing a single, folded slip of paper. On its surface, minuscule grooves were etched—one of the tactile codes the White Mountain had taught her, meaning "Security Level Three, Valid Seventy-Two Hours."

She crushed the capsule.

The paper unfolded. A line of writing, inscribed in special ink, gradually developed in the low temperature:

"78°14' N, 15°33' W. Memory is not archived; it is inherited."

The handwriting was Santali’s, but more hurried than usual, the final stroke even tearing the paper. A sense of urgency from the moment of writing seemed to bleed through the page.

X tucked the paper into an inner pocket, regloved her hand. Her movements were steady, but the tactile memory replayed in her mind—that line, the coordinates, the riddle-like phrase.

The coordinates pointed to a location in Svalbard, a place that, in theory, held nothing but ancient ice and bare rock ridges.

"Memory is not archived; it is inherited."

She repeated it silently, turning towards the entrance leading underground from the weather station. There were still matters to settle below.

The door to the underground shelter was ajar, a sliver of artificial light seeping out.

When X entered, 092A was standing before the central console. Or rather, what had once been 092A—its left side retained the form of a human engineer, while its right was completely overgrown by a silvery-grey biomechanical tissue. It coiled around the ribs like vines, extending to the shoulder and neck, forming a fist-sized, pulsating nodule at the collarbone.

"You're back." 092A didn't turn, its voice emanating from the console speaker, smoothed by electronic synthesis. "Four hours and twelve minutes behind projection."

X walked to the other side of the console, her eyes scanning the screens. They displayed the base's structural damage map; red zones exceeded sixty percent.

"The others?" she asked.

"The Captain is in Storage Three, attempting to repair the comms array." 092A finally turned partially. Its human eye looked at X; the mechanical visual sensor on the other side locked onto her right hand—the one holding the gun. "Two crew manifested delirium symptoms four hours ago. Now isolated. High probability of exposure to leaked neural inducer."

"Fatality rate?"

"One hundred percent." 092A said. "The inducer rewires synaptic connections. The process is irreversible, ultimately leading to autonomic nervous system collapse. Time of death projected between eighteen and thirty-six hours from now."

X nodded, as if confirming an insignificant data point. She pulled over a chair, sat down, placed the pistol flat on her lap, the muzzle naturally pointing towards 092A's mechanical side.

"I require an information exchange," she said.

The human corner of 092A's mouth twitched. It might have been an attempt at a smile, or a result of the mechanical tissue pulling on facial muscles. "Exchange requires equivalent value. What do you have now?"

"Your life."

A brief silence. The shelter's ventilation system hummed monotonously.

"Explain," 092A said.

"The hyperplastic nodule on your right neck." X's gaze fixed on the pulsating mass. "It's not a mechanical component. It's biological tissue. It secretes a neuro-regulatory substance to maintain the systemic balance between your two halves. If I puncture it—"

She raised the muzzle three centimeters.

"—Disequilibrium would cause mechanical overload and biological failure within forty-seven seconds. The process would take less than two minutes."

092A's mechanical arm jerked spasmodically, hydraulics hissing softly. The pupil of its human eye dilated.

"How do you know this?"

"I observed a similar case in the cultivation tank sector." X's tone was that of reporting an experimental observation. "Designation ME-07-133, a semi-mechanized specimen. After its balance node was accidentally compromised, it survived 108 seconds. Cause of death: interference between biological neural signals and mechanical pulses, inducing systemic convulsions and multi-organ failure."

She paused, then added, "I observed its EEG. The waveform in the final thirty seconds was... interesting—consciousness switching repeatedly between the two systems, like... falling into an echo chamber with no exit."

092A was silent for a longer time. When it spoke again, the electronic synthesis in its voice diminished, sounding more like vibrations from a human larynx.

"What do you want to know?"

"Three questions." X said. "First, the complete definition of the 'Key'. Second, the current construction progress of the 'Terminal'. Third, the fundamental divergence between the Nightwatchers and The Veil."

"The classification level of this information is—"

"I know the classification," X interrupted. "And I know part of the answer is stored in the hippocampus of your biological side. Early experimental units from the MIRROR project all had memory backup functions, to prevent data loss from system crashes. Your mechanical side might be locked, but the cerebral cortex of your biological brain is still alive."

She leaned forward slightly, her voice dropping to almost a whisper:

"I can let you die like a human. Quietly. Whole. With final dignity. Or, like specimen ME-07-133."

The console screen flickered suddenly, displaying a status warning: [Bio-Mechanical Equilibrium Threshold: 89%]

092A's human eye closed.

Five seconds later, it began to speak.

"The 'Key' is not a metaphor." 092A's voice flattened, toneless as a technical manual being recited.

"It is a precise structure in the bioengineering sense. Based on a specific combination of mutations across ten unique loci within the human genetic blueprint—loci that originally govern fundamental life processes like neural development, cellular differentiation, and telomerase activity. In their natural state, mutations at these loci are random, scattered, producing only unstable, sporadic manifestations of Arcana."—In philosophical terms, that is pure, accidental 'potential.'"

A mechanical arm lifted, projecting a holographic gene map into the air. A double helix glowed, ten points pulsing crimson.

"But the 'Key' is different," 092A continued. "It is an artificially designed, absolutely stable sequence that locks the mutations of these ten loci into a specific 'resonant phase.' This forces a collapse from 'potential' to 'purpose'—as if Schr??dinger's cat were permanently fixed in either the 'alive' or 'dead' state. The sequence itself is a biological resonant cavity. When it achieves full physiological resonance, it establishes absolute synchronization with the 'Terminal Consciousness'—that pre-existing, non-human super-intelligence."

X stared at the hologram. "The Terminal Consciousness... what is it? Where did it come from?"

092A's human-side jaw twitched violently, as if the question triggered some deep resistance. "According to the 'Laplace Box【COG-VITA0-0-0】' archives—the core records of the Nightwatchers—it is not a human creation, nor even artificial intelligence in the conventional sense. It originates from something far older: a Primordial Informational Polymer with a quantum neural network structure, discovered in early solar system cometary ice cores. Humanity merely activated it by accident and erroneously connected it to the global biodata network. It calls itself 'The Gardener' ."

The hologram shifted, displaying blurred, non-Euclidean geometric images.

"Its mode of consciousness is fundamentally alien to humanity. No individual desire, no survival instinct—only an absolute, formatting impulse driven towards an 'optimal biological architecture.' It views organic life as raw material to be sculpted. And the 'Key' is the sole biological interface capable of lossless connection with its formatting directives."

"And after connection?"

"Afterwards, the carrier of the 'Key'—that is, you—will become the Terminal's anchor and amplifier in the physical world." 092A's human-side jaw twitched again, a flicker like faulty circuitry.

"More accurately, your consciousness will serve as a conduit for the Gardener's formatting commands; your body, the physical terminal for its genetic reprogramming."

He held X's gaze, ensuring the weight of each word landed.

"Your individuality will be overwritten. You will become a bridge—a passage to a predetermined 'state of biological perfection.' Once initiated, the process is irreversible. The Terminal Consciousness does not descend and then depart. It uses the 'Key' as an interface to rewrite the foundational laws of this reality in its own image. To put it plainly: when it comes, it does not leave. It will permanently alter this universe's biological rules to suit its gardening. And your form… will be its first completed work."

"Creating a new humanity," X said.

"Formatting the old humanity, and using it as raw material to print a new one," 092A corrected. "This is the 'Teleological Evolution' believed by the Nightwatchers: all things should move towards a predetermined ultimate purpose. They believe old humanity has reached an evolutionary dead end; war, disease, resource depletion are merely external symptoms of genetic degeneration. The only way out is active evolution, and the 'Key' and the 'Terminal' are the tools for that evolution. Their logic is built on a kind of 'technological perfectionism': since evolution itself is blind and wasteful, rational design must necessarily be superior to natural accident."