In the morning breeze, the phoenix-tree leaves of the Nanjing Museum rustled softly. Under the moonlit eaves of glazed tiles, Chen Yuan's crystal-soled boots clicked against the Republic‑era blue bricks as he gazed upon the bronze tomb guardian before him. Its eyes—once intended to hold colored glass—now swirled with chaotic energy. Its forepaws crushed a half‑mechanized corpse, and at its heart lay a pocket watch inscribed with the words "Presidential Palace."
"Old Qing," he muttered, tracing the newly grafted lotus‑scroll gearwork on his crystal arm, "your choice of gatekeeper is awfully retro." The resonance of cloud‑thunder scales on his armor harmonized with the bronze beast's plated armor. "Want to pack this guy back to the Cthulhu world? The mechanists of Iron Fortress would pay good coin to retrofit him with a steam core." His jade token trembled at his chest, warmth pooling in his fingertips—and in that moment, the guardian's pupil reflected his father's figure: in 1937 Nanjing, the young Chen Yuanshan had sliced through its warding seal with a cloud‑thunder dagger.
Lilith's shadow‑cloak brushed his shoulder. In her silver gaze he saw bullet‑scarred museum walls. "Selené's astral core has detected seventeen chaotic anchors in the Republican Pavilion," she whispered, sweeping her hand over the guardian's bronze hide. "Three are embedded in the sacred bronzes of Sun Yat‑sen Mausoleum." Sparks flew where her shadow energy collided with the museum's protective talismans—talismans tainted by the gunfire of the Shanghai Defense.
Old Mo's caravan rattled to a stop at the Lingxing Gate. His mechanical tendrils greedily drank the lingering astral glow from the glazed tiles. "Back in '37, your father taught at Jinling University," he grumbled, "and he and your mother rewired the entire museum's artifacts. Even the Nationalist leader Wang Jingwei's sedan—now its engine's clogged with a shard of the Deep Abyss's core." He shook his newly‑won Republican compass; its needle quivered toward the underground crypt.
Chen Yuan's crystal fingers snapped shut, and the beast's foreleg cracked open, revealing a hidden astral anchor. "So we're not here to study the Kunyu Wanguo Map," he smirked, "we're here to clear out the Republican mechanical graveyard?" He kicked at the bricks, an echoing crack forming cloud‑thunder etchings beneath his boots. "Selené, can you avoid the Martyrs' Monument when you set the waypoints? I'd rather not scuff up the granite with my gears."
The crypt's iron doors bore lacquered talismans from the Republican era. The instant Chen Yuan's bone‑resonance touched the wood, cannon blasts—echoes of those who fell defending Nanjing—erupted in his mind. Their steel rifles melted into the beast's claws. His crystal arm morphed into a skeletal key; cloud‑thunder etchings on the lock transformed into a code of Nationalist gears, and with a mechanical "click," the doors swung open to reveal a chamber of strange bronze machinery.
"Old Qing, you sure know how to pick a locksmith test," he chuckled, eyeing the floating bronze lamp. Inside, its oil was solidified astral energy, its flame shaped like swirling cloud‑thunder. "Next time, have Nika upgrade the lock—fingerprint reader with a cloud‑thunder motif, so I don't have to bleed golden ichor every time I sneak in." His jade token hummed with solemnity—then, as he stepped inside, it injected astral light into the rusty generator, and gears ground to life, playing the 1937 air‑raid siren.
A deep bronze cauldron suddenly issued a low hum. Chen Yuan's star‑sense picked up twenty‑three warped energy currents. He yanked Lilith aside as tendrils—woven from telephone wire—snaked forth, each line etched with wartime Morse code that, when deciphered, formed blasphemous summoning rites.
"If the museum knew they were hiding 'phone‑worms' in their bronzes, they'd form a special task force," he quipped. His crystal arm split into a turbine drill, its blades humming the codes and shredding the wires. "Lilith, use shadow energy to sever their comms; Old Mo, train your eyeball talisman on that cauldron's core. Time for a cross‑dimensional disconnection surgery."
The battle was stranger still. The tendrils absorbed electromagnetic energy, stalling his turbine. Then he realized the core was actually a 1930s pocket watch. He channeled the Ninth Variation of his Reverse‑Entropy Rite, tuning his aura to Nanjing's frequency; the watch halted—and the wires dropped away, revealing his father's diary pages concealed inside.
"Cheap knockoff timepiece," he muttered, stashing the pages in his arm's data module. The cracks in his crystal plating sealed themselves, Republic‑era gear motifs flickering into place. "Old Mo, can I use this for a timer? Please, no more accidental midnight necromancy routines." Old Mo's tendrils caught a floating astral anchor from the cauldron, the eyeball talisman blinking fiercely. "Better than a timer—this is your father's pure abyssal energy, immunizing your arm from Cthulhu corruption. Though…" He tapped the diary cover, titled A Handbook for Cthulhu— "Your father almost turned the palace lions into corpse‑puppets. Good thing your mother anchored their soul‑flames with star‑forged tassels."
Selené's fragments of starlight reassembled overhead. "Thirty‑seven chaotic currents cluster at street level," she warned, her silver hair drifting. "It's the East Asia branch of the Abyssal Temple. They've refined Nanjing constructs—those mechanized corpses are welded with the rifles of Rain Flower Terrace martyrs!"
Footsteps echoed down the halls. Through a grate, Chen Yuan saw thirty‑seven uniformed priests in yellow tunics bearing an iron coffin, its surface enmeshed with living gears inlaid with human finger‑bones. Each bone bore the same cloud‑thunder pattern as his own scales. His bone‑resonance thundered.
"Cthulhu's own honor guard?" he marveled, his crystal arm shaping into five bone‑cannons. Cloud‑thunder shells struck the mechanized corpses, and upon impact, the air shimmered with the stray notes of the March of the Volunteers—another ward his father had inscribed.
Lilith's shadow‑blade severed the coffin's spirit conduits. Selené pinpointed the coffin's core for him. "Tonight," he declared, "we give these abominations a lesson in modern history."
The coffin lid flew open—and Chen Yuan's breath caught. Inside lay a fully mechanized corpse. At its chest was his father's jade token, its mechanical heart pulsing with abyssal energy. Engraved on its neck was one string of numbers: 19371213—the day Nanjing fell. His crystal finger traced another engraving: 0731—his own birthday.
"Father…" he whispered, his crystal arm flaring with heat, scales blooming with a protective sigil his father once wove over the city. "Old Qing, you even skimped on Dad's mechanical heart? These gears make Iron Fortress look precise." His jade token flared fiercely—then dumped his mother's jade‑fragment energy into his arm. The mechanical heart's pulse found perfect harmony with his crystal veins, replaying the boom of 1937's artillery.
The priests' corpses erupted in abyssal energy. Chen Yuan couldn't leave his father's coffin behind—it slid into his jade space. In the maelstrom, his crystal arm donned a war form: behind him sprouted tricolor wings of gear, firearm, and cloud‑thunder. Each feather launched bone‑arrows inscribed with the words "Never Forget Nanjing Massacre," which dealt double damage to chaos.
"Old Mo, catch your new relic!" he barked, and tendrils snatched the priests' cores from the wreckage. Where cloud‑thunder arrowheads struck the inscriptions, the Chinese characters 勿忘国耻 ("Never Forget National Humiliation") blazed into the air. "Selené, do you think Dad would jack us first? Me or Old Qing?"
Her astral core rippled; the fragments depicted his father wielding a wrench: "He'd check your load‑out—why are your bone‑arrows etched with Treaty of Shimonoseki clauses? Where's the Nanjing Defence data?"
By dawn's toll, Chen Yuan stood before the glass‑cased Kunyu Wanguo Quantu, now pulsating in sync with his jade token. The map's etched cloud‑thunder routes glowed, revealing global astral anchors. On the glass, his mother's handwriting appeared:
"Yuan'er—go to the Nanjing Museum for the third astral anchor.
P.S. Change your gear oil—stop using Rain Flower Terrace pebbles!"
Old Mo reclined atop the caravan, tinkering with the time‑core. The eyeball talisman reflected the mausoleum's pavilion. "Your mother planted seven anchors across Nanjing, each locking away a fragment of Qing's soul," he grinned, waving the newly found diary. Inside lay a yellowed photo: young Chen Yuanshan arm‑in‑arm with Su Mingyue in qipao, both flashing peace signs beside the tomb guardian.
Lilith pointed across the plaza as a squad of museum guards in Civil‑era garb hurried toward the crypt with patterned flashlights: "It's the East Asia division of the Grey‑Robed Council—here to collect the abyssal cores." Her silver eyes shimmered with mischief; her shadow energy etched a "Museum Specialist" badge on Chen Yuan's crystal arm. "Want me to let them know your mechanist arm's forged from the rifles of Rain Flower Terrace martyrs?"
"Spare me." He tapped the caravan's wheel; his crystal boots left imprints of the Blue Sky and White Sun crest. "I'm more concerned if Nika can build Dad a new arm—maybe in Civil‑era style, with the crest on the gears and a compass pendulum for the power port. Don't want him waking up and calling my taste 'Cthulhu‑punk farmhouse chic.'"
The caravan slipped through the astral rift. Chen Yuan looked back at the museum: staff were drawing cloud‑thunder barriers around the bronze cauldrons, and inside one lay a telephone‑worm reverting into plain metal. He touched his jade token, feeling the resonance with his father's fragment. His crystal arm, acting on its own, scored a final rift in space. On the other side shimmered the mausoleum pavilion, its protective beasts turning their heads in salute.
"Jade token," he whispered to the astral light, feeling his crystal veins hum, "if I start a 'Reverse‑Entropy Cultural Preservation Fund,' can I register as heritage under national law? After all, who else can restore Cthulhu‑tainted relics with a mechanist arm and purify them from chaos?" The token vibrated with a bittersweet laugh—then fed him one last memory shard: his father in the pavilion, repairing a Chaos‑soaked Treatise on Nation‑Building with cloud‑thunder energy, his mechanist arm gripped by an identical Blue Sky crest wristband.
In the underground chamber, his father's coffin glowed once more. The mechanical heart within beat in time with Chen Yuan's crystal arm. Old Mo subtly slotted the time‑core into its gears, a sly smile twisting his lips as he pulled from his watch's hidden compartment a faded 1937 Nanjing‑to‑Chongqing steamer ticket inscribed "Chen Yuanshan & Su Mingyue"—the true names of Chen Yuan's parents, and the prelude to their fight against Chaos.
Lilith's shadow fell across the caravan. She eyed the new war‑runes on his arm, concern flickering in her silver gaze. "You know," she murmured, "Selené's core shows your future—at the mausoleum, you'll teach children with jade tokens how to catalog mechanized relics. One little arm sports the same crest as your father's."
"Stop." Chen Yuan spun, his crystal fingers etching a prohibition sign in midair. Yet his arm, independently, carved "No Touching—Reverse‑Entropy Zone" in Chinese and English upon the caravan's interior wall. "Before I become the National Museum's special consultant, let me turn Old Priest's memory‑bubbles into Nanjing night‑lights—infinitely better than his childhood on the rocks, and they'd make great WWII memorial souvenirs."
The caravan rumbled through space‑time. Chen Yuan gazed at the rainbow glow flowing over his mechanist arm, a sudden warmth in his chest. From the Cthulhu plains to Beijing's Forbidden City, across machines and monsters, he'd carved a path of witty defiance and marvel. Ahead lay the mausoleum's anchorage and the Abyssal Temple's East Asia branch—but none daunted him now.
For he understood: his ultimate "golden finger" was never the jade token or a system interface, but the unbending human spirit nestled between two worlds. With that resolve, he would forge a brand‑new Reverse‑Entropy destiny—one where history's shattered relics and cosmic horrors alike could coexist under the iridescent glow of cloud and thunder.