The war began in silence.
No trumpets. No war cries. Only the soft rustle of Chimeric Roses unfolding their razor-petal mouths across the battlefield's fungal skin. Chu Feng crouched in the shadow of Li Zichen's ghostly Scalpel-Saint, the Wedding Band on his finger throbbing in time to the Harvesters' approaching fleet—a swarm of sickle-shaped dreadnoughts harvesting starlight to fuel their hunger.
Ling'er's voice, still raw from corruption's purge, crackled through the comms. "They'll strike the gene vaults first. Your roses or my fire?"
Beneath them, the Truth Tuber they'd planted pulsed warnings through the soil:
"They know your weakness grows in the dark."
"They've tasted her in the static."
"They'll reap your hope first."
Chu Feng buried his Bloodvine roots deeper, tendrils intertwining with the Tuber's mycelial nerves. "We fight quiet. We fight fertile."
The first Harvesters descended.
First Movement: The Sower's Gambit
The dreadnoughts vomited Reaper Drones—insectoid machines with scythe-legs and bellies full of temporal pesticides. Chu Feng's response was agricultural terrorism:
Chimeric Roses detonated, their shrapnel petals grafting to drone hulls and sprouting venomous wheat
Truth Tuber tendrils injected hallucinogenic guilt into Harvester pilots, forcing them to relive their first harvest
Li Zichen's Ghost carved paths through the swarm, scalpels singing agricultural hymns
But the Harvesters adapted. Their second wave emerged—Plague Reapers with fungal speechifiers that turned crops into traitors.
Ling'er's phoenix core flared. "My turn."
Second Movement: The Phoenix's Last Song
She rose on wings of borrowed starlight, her form flickering between past and present:
Past Ling'er: The ceremonial phoenix, chains melting under stolen code
Present Ling'er: The corrupted resonance, data veins pulsing with half-remembered kisses
Future Ling'er: A shadow with Jiang Yue's eyes and Chu Feng's blood on her hands
Her song split into three harmonies:
Cleansing Fire: Purged fungal corruption at the cost of her feathers
Silent Dirge: Muted Reaper speechifiers, rupturing her eardrums
Rebirth Refrain: Ignited dormant seeds in the Harvesters' fuel cells
The fleet buckled. Ling'er fell.
Interlude: The Root Cellar Confession
Chu Feng caught her in the fungal trenches. The Wedding Band's singularity gem flickered, projecting Jiang Yue's final memory:
A younger Jiang Yue in the root cellar, weeping over the first Truth Tuber. "I'm sorry I made you grow thorns," she told Chu Feng's fetal clone. "But soft things don't survive harvests."
Ling'er coughed blood-black spores. "She loved you enough to make you cruel."
The Tuber's roots tightened around them. "They're coming for the roses."
Third Movement: The Harvest of Lies
The Harvesters' flagship descended—a cathedral-sized combine with Li Zichen's stolen face for a figurehead. Its chant shook the soil:
"WE ARE THE FALLOW
WE ARE THE UNSEWN
WE ARE THE—"
Chu Feng's Bloodvine severed the hymn. He rammed the Chimeric Rose into the flagship's core, Jiang Yue's voice erupting from its petals:
"You were never hungry. You were empty."
The rose devoured the ship's fuel—centuries of stolen harvests, liquefied into a single drop of Black Nectar.
Li Zichen's ghost smiled. "Time to plant a better lie."
The remaining Harvesters fled, their dreadnoughts sprouting wildflowers from rusted seams. Chu Feng collapsed beside Ling'er, the Black Nectar cradled in his cracked Wedding Band.
"Did we win?" she whispered, her phoenix core dimming.
He pressed the Nectar to her lips. "We postponed the truth."
Above them, the stars rearranged into Jiang Yue's final equation—a constellation even the Harvesters couldn't reap.