Elena's voice through the crystal was precise.
It was always precise. That was the specific quality of someone who had spent seven years operating inside a system she was working against — every word chosen, every pause intentional, every piece of information delivered in the specific order that made it most useful rather than most dramatic.
"The Harvest mechanism in Sang-min's cellular architecture responds to a specific frequency," she said. "The Founders have been tuning it since Year Zero. Every gate he cleared. Every capacity increase. Each one a calibration of the biological interface." A pause. "The interface requires the Harvest frequency to activate. Which is generated by the secondary mechanism network."
"Which is offline," Jinsu said.
"Ten of eleven nodes offline," Elena confirmed. "The biological mechanism cannot complete the Harvest without the secondary network providing the activation frequency. Even with direct proximity activation — which Aris Thorne was attempting — the frequency source is gone." A pause. "Sang-min is safe. The mechanism is dormant."
Jinsu looked at Sang-min standing in the intersection.
At the diminished output. At the golden armor. At the twenty-two years of cultivation sitting in his cellular architecture like a loaded weapon with the firing mechanism removed.
"For now," Jinsu said.
"For now," Elena confirmed. "The Founders can rebuild the secondary network. It took them twenty-two years to build it the first time but they have the schematics. They have the data. They have twenty-two years of refinement to draw on." A pause. "They'll build it faster the second time."
"How much faster," Jinsu said.
Elena was quiet for a moment. The specific quiet of someone who has run the numbers and doesn't like the answer.
"Months," she said. "Not years. The infrastructure exists. The knowledge exists. The Founders have resources we can't quantify." A pause. "We have months, Jinsu. Not twenty-two years."
Jinsu looked at the city around him.
At the ten dark mechanisms. At the forty-seven Void Constructs visible in the streets — the army of deleted things standing in the sunlight of a Tuesday morning where ordinary people with ordinary mornings could see them. Some of those people were filing them as sensor errors. Some of them were taking out their phones. Some of them were standing very still with the specific expression of people whose frameworks have just encountered something that requires expansion rather than dismissal.
Months.
Not twenty-two years.
Not enough time to end the farm.
Enough time to change what the farm's next cycle finds when it tries to run.
"The thirty-seven names," Jinsu said.
"Ready," Elena said.
"Send them to Sang-min," Jinsu said. "He's going to reach out."
"Sang-min reaching out to thirty-seven S-Rank hunters will trigger every Association monitoring protocol still active," Elena said. "He's a flagged entity. His communications are being logged."
"Good," Jinsu said.
Elena was quiet for a beat.
"You want them to know we're reaching out," she said.
"I want the Founders to know that the thirty-seven know," Jinsu said. "A hunter who knows what the altar is runs differently than a hunter who doesn't. A hunter who knows is a disrupted cultivation. A disrupted cultivation produces inconsistent yield. Inconsistent yield is a problem the secondary network wasn't designed to handle."
A pause.
"You're not trying to save thirty-seven hunters," Elena said.
"I'm trying to contaminate thirty-seven cultivations," Jinsu said. "Every hunter on that list who spends the next few months carrying what Sang-min carries — knowing what the capacity means, understanding what the threshold is — is a hunter whose mana is developing under conditions the Founders haven't modeled."
"Fear changes mana," Elena said quietly. "The cultivation data shows it. Emotional state affects capacity development. Hunters who train under controlled, optimized conditions develop differently from hunters under sustained stress."
"The farm optimizes for compliance," Jinsu said. "Compliant hunters develop predictably. Hunters who know they're being farmed—"
"Don't," Elena said.
"Don't," Jinsu confirmed.
A pause.
"That's very cold," Elena said.
"Yes," Jinsu said.
"Is it working?" she said. "The ember. Is it still—"
"Present," Jinsu said.
The word arrived the way the Engine confirmed it — automatic, certain, without hesitation.
"Good," Elena said.
She sent the thirty-seven names.