Mechanical Heart, Burning Desire
In 2075, Earth has been cleaved in two by core energy. In the City Core District, flying cars weave a silver web through the sky and the elite's neural links flow with data. On the outskirts, steel skeletons pierce the heavens, while half-mechanical people cling to life by scavenging core-energy blocks. And Ling Feng is the most conflicted figure in this divided world.
After a laboratory explosion, his left arm and leg are replaced with silver-blue machinery. In his palm, he clutches an old watch left by his mother, Zhang Ning. The words “Xiao Ye” inside the cover burn into his heart. His mechanical arm can activate a 1.2-meter energy blade, yet cannot hold the dark chocolate Lin Wanqing offers him. It can withstand the shock wave of a core-energy mine, yet he fears hurting the old scar on Zhao Zhi's waist, visible beneath her work clothes. He can synchronize his consciousness with the AI Lingxi, yet his mechanical joints seize and tremble in front of Chen Xihong in her tight lab suit.
He is a “perfect test subject” in Gu Mingyuan's eyes and an “incomplete existence” to the rogue AI. Yet he insists on charging into the L7 Laboratory with his round little AI companions, the Xiaoties: to uncover the truth behind his parents' explosion, to find the “emotional feedback factor” hidden in the compatibility fluid, and above all, to prove that the ultimate purpose of machinery is not to create gods, but to protect the people who make his whole body burn with feeling.
When Feiyue's silver mechanical wings wrap around him to shield him from an explosion, when Zhao Zhi's modified car smashes through the mechanical guards, and when Lin Wanqing's fingertips brush the core-energy conduit in his mechanical wrist, Ling Feng finally understands: his mechanical body is no flaw, but armor that protects his soft spots. Deep inside the L7 Laboratory, Gu Mingyuan's dark-gold prosthetic finger is poised over a core-energy needle, aimed at Ling Feng's beating human heart. What it holds is more than data: it is the last hope for humans and machines to coexist.
