Chapter 5: Undercurrents: The Mystic Gate Disciples' Pursuit Game

The phone screen was still lit, the two characters piercing Shen Yan’s eyes like nails—Wait.

He didn’t move, didn’t dare to move. The cold wind from the subway station crept up his pant legs, the scrapes on his knees burning fiercely, as if scalded by an error reporting box popping up when code compilation failed. Leaning against the wall, his fingers hovered above the screen, trembling at the tips.

It wasn’t fear.

It was his mental power nearly depleted, even raising a hand felt like loading a frozen webpage.

But just then, the terminal suddenly refreshed automatically: 【High-level tracking spirit wave detected, source direction: due north three hundred meters, approaching rapidly】.

“So fast?” He gritted his teeth, stuffed the phone into his pocket, and dragged his leg toward the exit. With each step, his head buzzed as if someone were repeatedly plugging and unplugging a USB drive, the noise overwhelming.

The rented room was on the top floor of a six-story building in the old city. Two lights in the stairwell were broken. As he climbed, supporting himself against the wall, he heard his own panting louder than a server’s overloaded fan.

He closed the door, locked it, and drew the curtains in one fluid motion. Slumping onto the edge of the bed, he placed the phone on his knees. The interface still flashed: 【System core thread anomaly, immediate restart recommended】.

“Restart my ass… I’m about to shut down myself,” he muttered, yet still opened the source code editor, called up the backup file of the automatic sword flight control program, and prepared to delete the log traces left from the battle.

Just after typing “delete old logs,” the terminal suddenly popped up a window: 【Warning: Current environment spiritual energy fluctuation unstable, high-energy-consumption operations not recommended】.

“Shut up, I’m the master,” he confirmed with a press of Enter.

But the next second, his fingers slipped, and he entered the wrong parameter—instead of “delete logs (old data),” he accidentally typed “refactor space (template=clean mode).”

The air instantly froze.

The floor began to glow, green grids spreading from beneath his feet like a living Excel spreadsheet. The walls turned translucent, scrolling lines of variable names appearing: “temporary room status=damaged,” “gravity offset=0.3,” “light intensity increased by 999.”

“Damn it,” Shen Yan stared wide-eyed. “Did I write ‘cleaning spell’ as space refactoring?”

Before the words fully left his mouth, the entire room let out a “crack” and transformed completely into a three-dimensional maze floating in the data stream. The ceiling vanished, replaced by a constantly refreshing waterfall of code; the windows turned into function interface windows, displaying 【External access request: denied】.

He himself was automatically protected by the program and pushed into the node at the very center of the maze—a small space enclosed by hexagonal light frames, eerily reminiscent of a programmer’s ultimate dream refuge: low power consumption, high concealment, with a built-in firewall.

Outside the door, footsteps echoed down the hallway, growing closer.

Three figures stopped at the entrance. The leader was a young man in a gray robe, holding a bronze spirit-detection plate, its pointer spinning wildly.

“Li Muyun, are you sure it’s here?” a disciple behind him whispered.

“No mistake,” Li Muyun narrowed his eyes. “That wave of spiritual energy turbulence just now had a ninety-seven percent match with the data signature from the temple explosion. This person isn’t a cultivator—they’re an anomaly using unorthodox methods to tamper with the rules of heaven and earth.”

“Break the door?” another disciple drew a talisman sword.

“Wait.” Li Muyun raised his hand. “There’s Formation fluctuation inside. Rushing in might trigger a countermeasure.”

As soon as he finished speaking, the door opened automatically.

It wasn’t forced open or blown open—instead, the entire door dissolved into a stream of green code, slowly fading into the air.

The three exchanged glances and stepped inside cautiously.

In the next instant, the world changed.

The corridor extended infinitely, with mirrored doors lining both sides, each emitting identical footsteps from behind. The floor was covered in dense error messages: 【Segmentation Fault】, 【Memory Leak】, 【Access Denied】.

“Illusion?” one of them roared, swinging his sword at the projection on the left.

As the sword light flashed, the “self” opposite also swung his sword. The two clashed head-on, blood splattering.

“This isn’t an illusion!” another shouted. “This is real Spatial Folding! We’ve been separated into parallel data layers!”

“Shut up!” Li Muyun gritted his teeth, pulling out a golden-patterned Talisman Paper and pressing it to his forehead. “Heavenly Eye Technique·Dispel Delusions!”

The talisman burned, and the scene before his eyes abruptly changed—countless green data chains intertwined into a web, while at the true center of the room, a stable signal source pulsed steadily.

“He’s there! Follow me!”

They sprinted toward the signal source, but after ten steps, they found themselves back where they started. Someone grew impatient and directly detonated a thunder talisman they carried, but instead of blasting through a wall, it triggered a recursive loop code. The dust from the explosion was filled with repeated lines of “while True: print(‘error’).”

In the chaos, one person accidentally touched a teammate’s back, mistaking them for an enemy, and struck out with seventy percent of their power. The victim immediately coughed up blood, collapsing to the ground and convulsing.

“Stop!” Li Muyun roared. “Stop fighting! This is meant to provoke us!”

No one listened.

Another disciple, eyes red, bellowed, “I don’t believe this! I’ll blast this damned place open with my true essence!”

He formed hand seals with both hands, gathering Spiritual Energy into a hammer and smashing it violently toward the ceiling.

But just as the Spiritual Power took shape, the entire space shuddered violently. All code streams flashed simultaneously, followed by a cold, mechanical System Notification Tone echoing throughout the maze:

【Detected illegal energy injection】

【Initiate Decompilation Defense Protocol】

【Target locked: Mystic Gate Disciple A】

【Executing: Infinite Loop Dizziness】

The disciple’s movements halted abruptly. His eyes rolled back, and he began spinning in place, muttering incessantly, “I’m dizzy, I’m dizzy, I’m dizzy…”

Li Muyun’s face turned ashen. “This isn’t a technique… This is…?”

He suddenly looked up, staring at the floating green characters in the air, and shuddered all over.

“This style… impossible…” he murmured. “Twenty years ago, before Xie Wujiu was crippled, he used this kind of spell-transformed Spiritual Patterns!”

At that moment, a crack split open at the center of the maze.

An elderly man stepped out, dressed in black robes with dark golden compass patterns embroidered on the cuffs. With a wave of his left hand, he tore open a data channel leading directly to the core. His gaze sharp as a blade, he fixed it on Shen Yan’s hiding place.

“Forbidden Technique of the Celestial Clan,” the old man’s voice was hoarse. “You dare use it again?”

Shen Yan huddled within the light frame, listening in clearly through reverse monitoring on the Terminal.

“Xie Wujiu?” he thought silently. “That genius whose Cultivation Base was crippled? What does he have to do with me?”

The old man clearly didn’t need his answer. With his right hand forming a Hand Seal Formation, a complex Formation Diagram materialized beneath his feet, slowly taking shape.

“Deploy the ‘Soul-Locking Array’,” he said coldly. “Seal his Spiritual Consciousness and bring him back to the Sect for interrogation.”

Li Muyun was startled. “Master, what if he is innocent?”

“Innocent?” the old man sneered. “Twenty years ago, Xie Wujiu also claimed he was merely researching new spells. And what happened? He nearly used ‘Reverse Fate Compilation’ to rewrite the Cycle of Reincarnation of the Heavenly Dao! Today, this person has reappeared with the same technique—he must be an accomplice!”

Shen Yan felt his eyelids twitch.

“So you Mystic Gate folks arrest people based purely on association?” he muttered under his breath. “I call this technological innovation, okay?”

Seeing the Soul-Locking Array nearing completion, he quickly entered a recursive Code into the Terminal, naming it 【Escape Backdoor_v1】, and quietly injected it into the floor’s Data layer.

As soon as the opponent completed the spell, the Energy Fluctuation would meet the Trigger Conditions, and this Code would automatically generate a hidden path leading to the window’s drainage pipe.

Just as he clicked “Deploy,” the old man suddenly looked up. “Who is writing Code?!”

Shen Yan immediately covered his phone.

“There is something unseen in this room,” the old man said sharply. “He is modifying the spatial Logic in real time! This isn’t a Forbidden Technique—it’s… programming?”

Li Muyun froze. “Programming? You mean… like modern people using computers?”

“Fool!” the old man snapped. “What do you think the ‘Heavenly Dao Compilation Record’ is? That was originally the Celestial Clan’s Operating System! And this kid…” He stared intently at the center of the maze. “He’s actually using a handheld machine to Run Spell Programs—this is a desecration of the Cultivation Realm!”

Listening to this, Shen Yan couldn’t help but roll his eyes. “Hey, you can scold me all you want, but could you not make my technical approach sound so low-level? This is called cross-era integrated innovation.”

He quietly checked his Mental Power reserves: 【Remaining: 12%】.

Not enough to escape far, but enough to hold out until the Backdoor activated.

The old man had already begun chanting the final Incantation Script of the Soul-Locking Array, each syllable heavy, causing the air to tremble with every word.

Shen Yan held his breath, his finger hovering over the “Initiate Backdoor” button.

Just then, the Terminal suddenly popped up a new message:

【External Signal Connected】

【Encrypted Channel: Anonymous User】

【Content: Xie Wujiu is a test case written by your father. Don’t believe them】

Shen Yan’s pupils contracted.

Before he could react, a night breeze suddenly rose outside the window.

A faint Sword Qi swept across the rooftop, tracing an extremely thin silver line in the darkness before vanishing in an instant.

And on his phone Screen, an unnamed new Program was silently Running:

【Traceability Protocol_v0.1】

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(End of Chapter)