Date: November 7, 2025 - Afternoon (Estimated)
Lâm Minh's Cultivation: Foundation Establishment – Middle Phase (Qi Critically Low, Unconventional Recovery Initiated)
Spiritual Root: Heaven Tier (Stage 2/9 Unsealed – Fully Unsealed, Exhibiting New Properties)
Time lost all meaning in the lightless tomb of rubble.
Lâm Minh drifted between agonizing consciousness and blessed oblivion.
The pain was a constant, fiery companion, but beneath it, the golden thrum of his fully unsealed Heaven Tier Spiritual Root persisted, a stubborn spark of life.
It was different now, more active, more… aware than it had ever been.
He didn't know how long he had pulsed out his desperate, Qi-draining SOS.
He only knew that after the last one, he had slipped into a deeper darkness, a place beyond pain, hovering on the very precipice of non-existence.
Yet, he wasn't extinguished.
The Spiritual Root, no longer just passively filtering ambient motes, seemed to have awakened to a new function.
It was drawing in the diffuse, almost imperceptible spiritual energy of the Earth itself, not just from his immediate surroundings, but from deeper, purer ley lines he had never been able to sense before.
It was a slow, steady inhalation, as if the very planet was breathing life back into him.
The Qi it generated wasn't the explosive rush from a Spirit Stone, but a gentle, pervasive, and incredibly pure stream that began to nourish his shattered Dantian, mending the micro-fractures, soothing his ravaged meridians.
He surfaced back to a dim awareness, surprised to find a thin, steady trickle of incredibly refined Qi circulating within him.
It wasn't much, barely enough to dull the worst of the pain, but it was his Qi, generated without any external aid.
His Dantian, previously a barren desert, now held a small, growing oasis of energy.
How? he wondered, his mind still sluggish. No Spirit Stones… How am I recovering Qi?
The answer lay in the vibrant, almost joyful, resonance of his Spiritual Root.
It was actively breathing the world's energy, converting it into usable Qi at a rate that, while not as fast as consuming a High-Grade stone, was constant, tireless, and seemingly inexhaustible as long as he was alive and connected to the ambient world.
This was a profound shift.
A Heaven Tier Spiritual Root, Stage 2 fully unsealed, after a life-and-death baptism… it had transcended the need for conventional crutches.
It was becoming a self-sustaining engine of cultivation.
A power only spoken of in legends regarding those who reached the Void Shattering realm and beyond, who could draw power directly from the universe.
He was experiencing a fraction of that, far earlier than any known precedent.
The Kentron incident, his brush with absolute annihilation, had been the final, brutal catalyst.
This new ability, however, was just beginning its work on his grievous injuries.
Healing broken bones and torn organs required vast amounts of Qi, far more than his root was currently producing.
But the fact that he was producing it, that he was slowly, steadily regenerating, was a miracle in itself.
Meanwhile, miles away, on the heavily guarded western perimeter of the Kentron Industrial Sector, Hạnh, Cường, and Tuấn were in a state of frantic anxiety.
Minh Thư had, against all odds, made it out of the deep-level waste processing conduit system.
She had emerged nearly a full day after Lâm Minh had brought down the tunnel junction, covered in toxic sludge, traumatized, exhausted, but clutching her datapad with its precious cargo of PharmaDyn secrets like a sacred relic.
She had recounted her harrowing escape, the appearance of the Overseer, and Lâm Minh's desperate, self-sacrificing diversion.
"He… he made the tunnel collapse… to save me," she'd choked out, tears streaming down her face as she handed the datapad to Yan, who had arrived with a heavily armed extraction team from Trinh's department. "He's still down there! The Overseer… it was hunting him!"
Commander Trinh, receiving the data and Minh Thư's eyewitness account, had immediately classified Lâm Minh as MIA, presumed trapped or worse.
The Kentron sector was now even more of a death zone, with the enraged Silent Master and its surviving forces likely turning it into an impenetrable fortress.
A conventional rescue mission was deemed suicidal, even for Trinh's elite units.
The risk of losing more valuable assets to retrieve one operative, however gifted, was too high by standard military doctrine.
The plasma device remained on standby, a grim final option.
Hạnh, Cường, and Tuấn refused to accept it.
"He's alive! I know he is!" Hạnh insisted fiercely to Yan, her one good eye blazing. "Minh's not easy to kill. There has to be a way!"
Yan, though his expression remained stoic, looked troubled.
He knew Lâm Minh's value.
He also knew Trinh's cold pragmatism.
But then, one of Trinh's specialist technicians, monitoring an array of experimental, long-range spiritual energy sensors they had deployed around Kentron (a technology still in its infancy, based on some of Lâm Minh's earlier, cautiously shared insights), detected something.
"Commander… I have an anomaly," the technician reported, his voice tight with excitement.
"A repeating, extremely faint, but uniquely structured Qi signature.It's deep within Kentron, Sector Gamma-7, coordinates correlating with the pneumatic tube junction collapse Minh Thư reported. The signature… it matches Operative Minh's baseline spiritual resonance, but it's… pulsing. Like a beacon."
Lâm Minh's desperate SOS, amplified by his awakened Spiritual Root, had been heard.
Barely.
Trinh's eyes narrowed. "Is it a trap? The Silent Master attempting to lure us in?"
"The signature is too pure, Commander," the technician insisted.
"It doesn't carry the taint of the Silent Master's void energy or the artificiality of the Echoes. And the repetition… it's a coded sequence. A distress signal. Simple, but clear. He's alive. And he's signaling."
A heavy silence fell over Trinh's command post.
To send a team back into that active, hostile zone, especially with the Silent Master likely still enraged and hunting…
"His new partner, Specialist Minh Thư," Yan spoke, his voice carefully neutral.
"She analyzed the data fragment provided by Professor Trần Huy. It contained more than just ventilation shaft schematics. Thorne, in his paranoia, detailed several 'last resort' deep-level seismic charges he had planted, designed to cause localized, contained collapses to seal off sections of his archive if compromised. He also detailed their deactivation sequences and potential safe zones around them."
He looked at Trinh. "If Operative Minh is alive, and we know his approximate location, and we possess Thorne's knowledge of localized demolition points… a precision strike, not to kill the Silent Master, but to create an access point or destabilize the rubble trapping Minh, might be feasible. High risk, undeniably. But not impossible if we can lure the Overseer or other primary threats away from that specific sector momentarily."
Hạnh, Cường, and Tuấn, who had been listening with bated breath via a secure link Yan had granted them, chimed in.
"Commander, let us go!" Cường pleaded. "Minh saved our asses. We owe him. We can create that diversion!"
"We know Kentron's upper access better than most of your regular troops," Hạnh added, her voice firm.
"We can get a team in close, draw fire, give your specialists the window they need to reach that collapse site."
Commander Trinh was silent for a long moment, her fingers drumming on her console.
Lâm Minh was a Foundation Establishment cultivator, humanity's first through a replicable (they hoped) method.
He possessed knowledge and potential far beyond any other asset.
And he had, twice now, survived direct encounters with their most terrifying enemy.
The cold pragmatism warred with the undeniable value of the asset.
Finally, she spoke. "Prepare a covert retrieval team. Specialist Minh Thư will guide them with Thorne's schematics. Operatives Hạnh, Cường, and Tuấn… your offer for a diversion is… accepted. Coordinate with Operative Bao. You will draw attention to Kentron's eastern fringe, away from Sector Gamma-7. High explosive, significant noise, but minimal direct engagement. Pull out at the first sign of overwhelming resistance. Your survival is also a factor."
Her gaze hardened. "The retrieval team has one objective: extract Operative Minh. If he is alive. If not… recover what remains and the plasma device is to be armed for immediate deployment. We cannot allow his knowledge, or his failure, to fall into enemy hands or leave a lingering threat."
A desperate plan was set in motion.
Lâm Minh, buried deep in the earth, unknowingly fighting for every breath, had his lifeline.
His awakened Spiritual Root had not only kept him alive but had sent a whisper of hope across a desolate wasteland.
Now, it was a race against time, against the Silent Master's vigilance, and against the crumbling ruins of Kentron itself.