Chapter Three: You Block the Chips; I Buy the Rules

Han handed him a black card. It bore no YaoCore mark, only a key encircling a gear and three words: THE COVENANT SOCIETY. “Midnight. The old observatory. Bring the A1. You will learn why the world’s most advanced space equipment accepts only YaoCore chips.” Han walked away. The empire had cracked, but it had not fallen. As Chenzhou closed his fist around the card, a thousand chips greeted his new authority. Behind them, he detected an impossibly faint signal from thirty-six thousand kilometers above Earth. “Xuanniao Core calling the successor.” “Lu Qiming consciousness fragment remains waiting.” Chenzhou looked through the glass dome into daylight.