Mike Chen sat in the passenger seat, staring blankly out the dust-streaked window at the barren, sun-scorched expanse of the West Texas desert. It had been thirty-two hours since they fled San Francisco. Thirty-two hours of living off lukewarm gas station hotdogs, stale black coffee, and a bottle of off-brand ibuprofen that Lao Li had found under the floor mats.
Mike’s right arm was securely, if crudely, strapped to his chest with duct tape and greasy medical gauze. His ribs screamed a sharp, localized protest every time the Camry hit a pothole on Interstate 10.
"Drink some water, kid," Lao Li grunted, tossing a plastic bottle onto Mike’s lap without taking his eyes off the shimmering asphalt. The old man looked exhausted, the deep lines on his face caked with desert dust, but his hands on the steering wheel were steady. "You’ve been staring at that dead screen for two hundred miles. It's not going to magically fix your shoulder."
Mike looked down at his cracked smartphone resting on his lap. The screen was completely black.
When Mike had smashed the local core server with his U-lock, he hadn't just caused a localized blackout; the cascading logic failure had caused the entire Heavenly Dao global grid to crash. For exactly six hours, the world had been blissfully, terrifyingly offline. No pop-up ads. No premium levitation. Just gravity and silence.
But six hours was a lifetime in Silicon Valley.
"They’re going to reboot it," Mike rasped, his throat bone-dry. "They have redundancy servers in San Jose, Seattle, and Austin. They’re just patching the physical breach. As soon as the grid comes back online, my GPS signature is going to ping the nearest cell tower, and the Compliance Department will drop a tactical strike team on our heads."
"Then we keep moving until we hit the dead zones," Lao Li said stubbornly. "That DeepMind girl—Maya—she gave you coordinates. We just follow the map."
Mike pulled the tiny, analog flip-phone Maya had given him out of his pocket. It didn't have a touchscreen or an app store. It just had a crude, pixelated GPS compass pointing stubbornly toward the desolate plains of West Texas. Look for the massive Hashrate anomalies, she had said.
Before Mike could reply, his cracked smartphone—the one sitting dead on his lap—suddenly violently vibrated.
Mike flinched, nearly dropping the device into the footwell.
The screen didn't just turn on; it exploded into a blinding, hyper-saturated display of pastel colors. Gone was the rigid, corporate blue of the old Heavenly Dao UI. Gone was the terrifying red
[FLAGGED ANOMALY] banner that had marked him for death.
Instead, a perfectly polished, high-definition video began to autoplay on his screen.
A young man appeared. He looked no older than twenty-one. He had a mop of artfully messy hair, piercing, unnervingly bright eyes, and he was wearing a vintage band t-shirt under an unzipped, casually expensive hoodie. He was standing in a sunlit, open-plan office filled with indoor trees and Cultivators lounging on beanbag chairs.
"Hey everyone," the young man said, his voice dripping with forced, algorithmic empathy. "I’m Ethan. Ethan Zhao. And I know the last few hours have been… really scary for a lot of you."
Mike stared at the screen, his breath hitching. "Who the hell is this kid?"
"As of 4:00 AM this morning, NovaTech has officially acquired the Heavenly Dao Corporation in a hostile, decentralized buyout," Ethan Zhao continued, offering a warm, perfectly focus-grouped smile to the camera. "The old management lost their way. They built walls. They put price tags on the fundamental right to Cultivate. They created a toxic, pay-to-win ecosystem that marginalized our most vulnerable community members."
Ethan took a step closer to the camera, looking deeply, intimately into the lens.
"That ends today. Welcome to Heavenly Dao 3.0."
A sleek, minimalist logo flashed on the screen.
"Effective immediately, all base subscription fees are abolished," Ethan announced, his voice echoing from Mike’s tinny speaker. "No more Premium paywalls for breathing. No more hoarding of Grade-A Qi in the wealthy districts. The universe belongs to everyone. Cultivation is now, and forever will be, one hundred percent free."
Lao Li nearly swerved the Camry off the road. "Free? Did he just say free? Did your little stunt actually force them to unionize the heavens?"
"Shut up, Lao Li. Listen," Mike hissed, his eyes narrowing. His gig-worker instincts, honed by years of algorithmic abuse, were screaming at him. There was no such thing as free lunch in the gig economy.
"But a free ecosystem requires a healthy community," Ethan Zhao’s smile widened, but the warmth didn't reach his eyes. "Instead of paying with your wallets, you will now fuel the network with your engagement. Introducing the 'Harmonic Resonance Score'. By participating in community events, sharing your Cultivation milestones, and maintaining a positive, highly-engaged emotional state, your Karma will naturally increase. Negative emotions, hostility, and anti-social behavior will temporarily throttle your bandwidth to protect the community."
The video faded to white, replaced by a smooth, pastel-colored dashboard.
Mike stared at his account page.
The $74,520.00 accelerated debt was still there. But the
[BANNED] status had vanished. Instead, his account was labeled: [Status: Rehabilitation Mode].
A soft, friendly notification pinged.
[Welcome back, Mike! We see you've had a stressful 24 hours. Your heart rate is elevated and your cortisol levels indicate severe anxiety. Your Harmonic Resonance is currently at 12%. Take a deep breath! Watch this 15-second mandatory mindfulness video to unlock your baseline Qi flow!]
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
Mike felt a chill settle deep into his bones, far colder than the freezing rain of the Golden Gate Bridge.
"It's not free," Mike whispered, horror dawning on him. He watched a tiny, microscopic bar at the top of the screen tracking the micro-fluctuations in his facial expression using the front-facing camera. "The old system just wanted our money. This kid… Ethan Zhao… he wants our dopamine. He’s mining our emotions. They're going to digitally lobotomize the entire working class by throttling anyone who gets angry."
"Turn it off!" Lao Li yelled, glancing at the phone. "If your account is active, they have our GPS! They're going to send the hit squads!"
Mike frantically swiped at the screen, trying to power the device down. "I'm trying! The physical power button is disabled! The software has locked out hardware inputs!"
[We notice you are trying to disconnect, Mike! Disconnecting indicates anti-social tendencies. Harmonic Resonance dropping to 9%. Applying mild Qi-restriction penalty.]
Mike felt a sudden, suffocating tightness in his chest as the ambient, dirty nature Qi that Lao Li's car was gathering was suddenly artificially repelled from Mike's body. The algorithm was actively weaponizing his own biology against him.
"Screw your resonance," Mike snarled. He rolled down the passenger window, grabbed the cracked smartphone, and hurled it into the unforgiving Texas desert. It shattered into a dozen pieces against a passing cactus.
He fell back into his seat, gasping for air as the algorithmic restriction shattered along with the phone's motherboard.
"We are officially ghosts," Mike panted, clutching his bandaged ribs. "But NovaTech is going to own the world by next Tuesday. We need to find Maya."
Lao Li grunted, adjusting his grip on the steering wheel. "Look ahead, kid. I think we just did."
Mike looked through the dusty windshield.
They had turned off the interstate miles ago, driving down an unmarked, deeply rutted dirt road. Rising from the heat haze of the desert floor, miles from any recognizable civilization, was a massive, sprawling industrial complex.
It wasn't a sleek corporate spire. It looked like a graveyard of shipping containers stacked three stories high, surrounded by a rusty chain-link fence topped with razor wire. Dozens of massive, industrial cooling fans the size of jet engines were built into the sides of the containers, spinning frantically and kicking up massive clouds of red dust.
A deep, continuous, earth-shaking thrum vibrated through the ground, so powerful it rattled the loose change in Lao Li's cup holder.
"What in the name of the Jade Emperor is that?" Lao Li muttered, slowing the Camry as they approached the fortified iron gates.
"That," Mike said, pulling out Maya's analog flip-phone, which was now beeping furiously as it achieved proximity to the coordinates, "is a Hashrate anomaly."
As the Camry rolled to a halt in front of the gate, a pair of heavy, menacing automated turrets bolted to the fence suddenly swiveled, their laser targeting sights painting the Camry's windshield with twin red dots.
"Identify yourselves," a synthesized, highly paranoid voice crackled from a hidden PA speaker. "This is private property. If you are affiliated with Heavenly Dao, NovaTech, or the IRS, you will be vaporized immediately."
Lao Li slowly raised his hands off the steering wheel. "Mike. Please tell me your hacker girlfriend gave you a password."
"She's not my girlfriend, she's a deeply irritating statistical anomaly," Mike muttered. He rolled down the window and leaned his head out, ignoring the red laser dot resting perfectly between his eyes.
"Maya Lin sent us!" Mike yelled over the roar of the cooling fans. "Tell her the delivery boy is here, and he didn't bring any pizzas!"
For a long, tense moment, nothing happened. The turrets maintained their lock.
Then, with a loud, metallic clank, the heavy iron gates began to slowly slide open.
The laser sights deactivated. Mike let out a breath he didn't realize he was holding. Lao Li put the car in drive and slowly rolled into the compound.
The sheer scale of the operation was staggering. Inside the shipping containers, Mike could see rows upon rows of heavily modified, glowing server racks. But they weren't running corporate Cultivation software. They were jury-rigged, Frankenstein machines, sparking with raw, unrefined energy.
A figure emerged from the shadow of the central container.
It was Maya.
She was still wearing the same chunky knit sweater, though it was now covered in desert dust and engine grease. Her hair was still haphazardly pinned up with a pencil, and she was carrying a heavy mechanic's wrench in one hand and her military-grade laptop in the other.
She walked up to the passenger side of the Camry. She looked at the duct tape holding Mike's arm together. She looked at his bruised face, his bloodshot eyes, and the sheer exhaustion radiating from his pores.
"You look like absolute garbage, delivery boy," Maya said, her tone as flat and analytically superior as ever.
"And you look like a nerd who hasn't showered in two days," Mike shot back, kicking the car door open and groaning as he stood up in the blistering desert heat.
The corners of Maya's lips twitched upward into the faintest ghost of a smile. "I see your abrasive defense mechanisms are fully operational. That is a promising sign of cognitive stability."
"Who are your friends, Maya?" a new voice called out.
From behind a stack of rusted servers stepped a man who looked like he had been living on a diet of energy drinks and paranoia for a decade. He was rail-thin, wearing cargo shorts, flip-flops, and a t-shirt that read 'Decentralize or Die'. He had dark, frantic eyes and a literal bandolier of USB drives slung across his chest.
"Mike, Lao Li," Maya gestured with the wrench. "Meet Miner. He is the proprietor of this establishment."
"A Cultivation farm?" Lao Li asked, stepping out of the car and looking around at the massive cooling fans. "I've heard rumors. You're scraping ambient nature Qi and converting it into localized digital assets."
"Bitcoin is dead, old man," Miner said, pacing erratically. He spoke a mile a minute, constantly checking his surroundings. "I mine raw, cryptographic Spiritual Energy. No corporate oversight. No Centralized Heavenly Dao. I’ve been running this rig completely off the grid for two years. But with NovaTech taking over… they’re going to run localized sweeps. If Ethan Zhao's algorithms detect my Hashrate, he'll send the corporate hit squads to format my entire rig."
"That is why I brought them here," Maya said, turning to Mike. She opened her laptop, the screen reflecting in her thick glasses. "While you were driving, I finished decrypting the packet I stole from the San Francisco core server. NovaTech's 'Harmonic Resonance' algorithm isn't just a social credit score, Mike. It's an emotional siphon."
Mike leaned against the Camry. "I know. I saw it. It throttles you if you get angry."
"It's worse than that," Maya's voice dropped, the academic detachment replaced by genuine, chilling urgency. "It takes that anger, that stress, that fear… and it converts it into dense, weaponized energy for the CEO's personal Cultivation. Ethan Zhao is turning the entire user base into a human battery farm."
Miner nervously adjusted his USB bandolier. "We have the hardware to fight back. My mining rigs can generate enough raw, decentralized Qi to create a massive, localized EMP. But we need a delivery system. We need someone who understands the System's blind spots."
Maya looked directly at Mike.
"You smashed a server with a bicycle lock," Maya said. "But NovaTech is entirely algorithmic. You cannot hit a concept with a piece of steel."
Mike looked at the sprawling, noisy, chaotic crypto-cultivation farm. He looked at the frantic, paranoid Miner. He looked at Lao Li, who was already inspecting the rusted perimeter fence with the critical eye of a veteran driver evaluating a bad neighborhood.
Finally, Mike looked at Maya.
He didn't have Root access anymore. He didn't have his Frankenstein e-bike. He didn't have a 4.8-star rating.
But as he felt the dull throb of his broken ribs, and remembered the suffocating, artificial smile of Ethan Zhao, Mike felt that familiar, spiteful gig-worker rage begin to boil in his chest.
"I might not be able to hit an algorithm with a lock," Mike said, a slow, dark smirk spreading across his bruised face. "But I know how to deliver a highly malicious package right to their front door. Hook me up to your mining rigs, Miner. It’s time to teach these Silicon Valley kids the true definition of a Denial-of-Service attack."
"Free to use! your emotions are the price." Ethan Zhao is... a lot.
This guy gives Marcus a run for his money in the "terrifying CEO" department. What are your thoughts on the new big bad? Discuss on
Read the next steps of the crew's plan on , 6 chapters ahead
Welcome to the desert. We have turrets.
Welcome to Volume 2! The rules have changed, and Heavenly Dao 3.0 is officially the most terrifying iteration yet. The transition from hard paywalls to algorithmic emotional manipulation is a direct critique of modern social media ecosystems—except here, getting 'throttled' literally means you can't breathe. Ethan Zhao is going to be a phenomenal villain.
Our team is finally assembled! We've got the physical hacker (Mike), the traditionalist driver (Lao Li), the genius analyst (Maya), and the paranoid crypto-miner. The dynamic between Mike and Maya is already sparking perfectly—they insult each other because they respect each other.
As they prepare to launch a decentralized counter-attack against NovaTech, what role do you think the mysterious 'Backup Unit' involving Sister Zhang's husband will play? Drop your theories in the comments! If you're excited for the road trip of Volume 2, please hit that Favorite button and leave a Review! See you in Chapter 11!