The agricultural planet Xia-Ghulat was dying to music.
From orbit, it looked like a rotting fruit—continents puckered into necrotic folds, oceans reduced to viscous sludge that pulsed in time to the Harvesters' anthem. Chu Feng's fungal sensors detected the truth beneath the decay: every withered crop, every skeletal farmhand, every cracked irrigation canal was a note in the Famine Symphony, a bio-acoustic weapon turning hunger into event horizons.
Ling'er materialized in the dropship's fungal growth pod, her form today favoring solidity over subtlety. The black-market stabilizers she'd grafted to her phoenix core left geometric scars across her collarbones—hexagons of borrowed time.
"The third movement peaks in seven hours," she said, projecting a hologram of the planet's screaming core. "They're converting children's stomach acids into singularity fuel."
Chu Feng's Bloodvine roots itched with phantom hunger. The Celestial Spindle stolen from Jiang Yue's lab lay heavy against his spine, its dormant threads whispering of better ways to die. "Where's the orchestra?"
Ling'er's smile cut like a scalpel. "Where else? The breadbasket."
The Grand Silo rose from Xian-Ghulat's heartland like a cancerous obelisk. Its walls, woven from calcified grain and human teeth, resonated with the Harvesters' magnum opus:
First Violins: Starving farmers bowing their own stretched intestines
Percussion: Infant skulls drummed by skeletal hands
Conductor: A Harvester avatar with Li Zichen's stolen face
The music wasn't sound but absence—a ravenous silence that unraveled chloroplasts. Chu Feng's Bloodvine Seed convulsed as the Symphony's fifth movement began.
"You'll need countermeasures." Ling'er pressed a fungal pod to his throat. "The Scorekeeper's weakness is perfect pitch."
The pod burrowed into his vocal cords. Suddenly he could see the Symphony's structure—a fractal pattern of despair with one missing note.
Human hope. They can't replicate it.
Host 005's clone manifested atop the Silo, its voice a church bell forged from Li Zichen's stolen screams. "Maestro! Our prodigal phoenix returns!"
Ling'er's stabilizers hissed. The Harvesters hadn't just stolen Li's face—they'd made him the Symphony's composer.
The Concert
Ling'er ascended the podium, her phoenix core burning through stabilizers to assume the conductor's role. Chu Feng's fungal implant translated her baton strokes:
"Play the famine.
"Play the grief.
"Play the child who licks dew from rusted blades."
The orchestra obeyed. New black holes blossomed above dying wheat fields. Chu Feng moved.
His Bloodvine roots drilled into the planet's crust, releasing genetically weaponized mycelium. The Symphony's hunger notes collided with fungal counterpoints:
Starvation Chords vs. Photosynthetic Sonatas
Grief Crescendos vs. Symbiotic Harmonies
Apocalypse Finale vs. Rebirth Refrain
Farmers collapsed as their stomach acids reversed polarity, becoming seed banks. Chu Feng's Sundial Shard overheated rewinding micro-deaths.
Then Xia appeared.
The Betrayal
She descended in a shower of pollen, her vine-laced eyes glowing with stolen phoenix DNA. "You shouldn't have resurrected me, auntie."
Ling'er's baton faltered. The Symphony veered into atonal chaos.
Xia's roots pierced Chu Feng's fungal network, injecting a corrosive melody. "The Harvesters promised me a garden that never rots."
The Bloodvine Seed screamed. Chu Feng's counter-Symphony began to unravel.
Ling'er did the unthinkable.
She snapped her baton.
The Silence
The fungal implant in Chu Feng's throat ruptured. Out poured Jiang Yue's lullaby—the one true note the Symphony couldn't digest.
"Hush now, weapon mine
Godhead grows on borrowed time…"
The black holes shivered. The Grand Silo's tooth-wall crumbled. Xia's vines withered as the lullaby's genetic memory overwrote her corruption.
Host 005's clone howled. "You'll starve with them!"
Chu Feng's Bloodvine seized the Symphony's core—a black hole mid-collapse. The Celestial Spindle flared to life, threads weaving the singularity into something new.
The Harvest
When the dust settled, Xian-Ghulat's corpse bore strange fruit:
Black holes transformed into wheat gene vaults orbiting the planet
Farmers' ribcages became greenhouses growing luminous rice
The Grand Silo now a hollow reed playing eternal lullabies
Ling'er lay broken at the podium, her stabilizers shattered. Xia crouched nearby, half-redeemed by Jiang Yue's song.
"Why?" Chu Feng asked, his voice raw.
Xia pressed a seed pod into Ling'er's chest. "Even rotten gardens need tending."
The pod bloomed—a Silent Bell forged from the Symphony's corpse.
Final Image:
As they left orbit, the planet's new crops sang in perfect pitch. Beneath the soil, Host 005's surviving fragments began composing a counter-lullaby.