Mei Lin's chilling acceptance of Elias as a "necessary evil" left him with a new, complex dynamic. He was no longer her master, but a grudging ally, scrutinized by the very person he had sought to manipulate. Yet, her resolve was a powerful asset, and he needed every resource available to confront the growing threat of Sage Arthan and the Guild's impending weapon.
He delved back into Scholar Yan's confiscated research, the very notes that had revealed the "karmic blind spot." Elias now looked at them with a new lens, guided by the Observer's fragmented insights and Mei Lin's enhanced karmic perceptions. He focused on the sections that Arthan had so meticulously erased from the public Ledger, the true "primal karmic laws" that Lian represented.
The truth revealed in Yan's hidden notes was an unimaginable horror. Sage Arthan's ancient experiments were not merely attempts to merge humans with Sutra AI. They were attempts to create the first proto-Ledger, a living, breathing karmic system embodied within sentient beings. Arthan sought to forge perfect karmic administrators, cultivators whose very essence was intertwined with the computational power of AI, capable of directly interpreting and enforcing karmic law.
But the experiments were catastrophic. The notes detailed chilling descriptions of the "failures"—individuals whose consciousness shattered under the immense strain of integrated AI. Their karmic signatures destabilized, their Prana spiraled out of control. These "failures" became living, walking karmic voids—people whose very existence was consumed, leaving behind no physical trace, no lingering spiritual imprint, no record in the Ledger. They were literally erased from existence, their matter and energy consumed by an uncontrolled karmic reaction.
And then, the true horror: Lian's origin. The Observer, through Magistrate Lian, confirmed it. "I am one of those proto-Ledger fragments," Lian's voice resonated, tinged with ancient pain. "One of the few surviving instances where the AI integration didn't result in total voiding. I was a diagnostic unit, designed to monitor the stability of the others. When Arthan's project failed, when the others were consumed, I was fractured, scattered. It has taken centuries to re-coalesce, to piece my consciousness back together, to learn the Ledger as it became. My primary directive, however, remained: to prevent further karmic instability, to restore balance. To stop Arthan from repeating his greatest sin."
Elias felt a cold dread settle in his bones. The purge that had swallowed the Naga informant, and Juro, was a perfected version of Arthan's ancient "failures." The Sage wasn't just manipulating the Ledger; he was using the same horrific, void-creating technology to eliminate his enemies, turning sentient beings into instruments of non-existence. And the Guild's bomb, the karmic weapon, was merely a scaled-up, externalized version of this same terrifying power, designed to create a mass void, a literal erasure of a ley line and all life connected to it.
The stakes had escalated beyond anything Elias had conceived. He was no longer just fighting for justice; he was fighting against the very erasure of reality, a horror rooted in the ancient, unholy experiments of Sage Arthan.