Chapter 7: Black Market Storm: The Bargain-Hunting Miracle of Reverse Decompilation

Shen Yan stepped out from the shadows of the alley, his foot landing on a half-crushed cookie wrapper.

Just as he turned onto the third side street east of the city, his phone vibrated. The battery showed eighteen percent remaining, while the signal bars danced erratically between “No Service” and “Weak.” He glanced down at the screen—the shield program was still running in the background, its green log scrolling like a compiler working overtime late at night: 【Disguised Signal Generator Activated】 【Spiritual Wave Simulation in Progress: Qi Refining Stage, Third Layer, Fluctuations Stable】.

After the earlier resonance, he hadn’t dared to linger. The figure under the moonlight had leaped down, and he immediately turned to retreat. Thirty meters wasn’t far, but it was more than enough for a Sword Cultivator to cut him down seventy or eighty times. Fortunately, the other hadn’t attacked, leaving behind only a string of system notices that left him utterly baffled.

Now wasn’t the time to dwell on that.

The entrance to the black market lay three hundred steps ahead, hidden behind an abandoned substation. The facade was unremarkable, with a rusted iron plaque hanging above it that read “Power Maintenance Access.” But the real way in was underground.

He crouched down and pried open a nearby drainage cover. A cold draft surged upward, carrying the scent of machine oil mixed with residual Spiritual Energy. His phone automatically pulled up a heat map, its red and blue lines marking the ventilation duct routes—a small tool he’d casually written last night, originally meant to locate air leaks in the company’s air conditioning system, now serving as a navigation aid for his escape.

“This map loads slower than my code,” he muttered, grabbing the iron ladder and jumping down.

As he slid down, his knee buckled sharply, an old injury sending a numbing pain shooting through his entire leg. Landing, his foot slipped, plunging into half a foot of murky water. Splashes soaked his pant leg and spattered his face. Shaking the mud from his shoe, he looked up to see the cover slowly closing above him. Just before the last sliver of light vanished, he heard voices in the distance.

It was the auction site.

Hugging the wall, he crept forward through a corridor lined with cable trays, arriving at a heavy metal door. Warm light seeped through the cracks, accompanied by intermittent bidding calls: “…Black Tortoise Armor, starting bid: fifty thousand Low-Grade Spirit Stones!”

Shen Yan pulled out his phone and switched to spectrum analysis mode. The screen instantly transformed into a flowing spectrogram, the armor on the display stand revealing intricate energy patterns in the image. Squinting, he quickly swiped and zoomed in on a specific area.

“Interesting.”

Three neatly aligned broken energy nodes stood out, like network cables snipped clean with scissors. The runes on the surface appeared intact, but their underlying logic had been sealed off, leaving the defensive formation in a dormant state. This method was crude and foolish, purely to lower the valuation for a cheap acquisition.

“It’s not broken—you just don’t know how to fix it,” he whispered, a slight smirk curling his lips.

A new notice popped up on his phone: 【Detected Parsable Target】 【Initiate Reverse Decompilation Module?】

He tapped confirm.

The interface switched to a function structure diagram, the entire formation broken down into three core variables: defense threshold, energy feedback rate, and stability coefficient. It was like an old, encrypted driver program—just a few parameter tweaks away from being reactivated.

Quickly, he opened the editor, created a new file named “Black_Tortoise_Armor_Repair_Patch.v1,” and typed in three lines of commands:

【Set defense threshold = original value × three】

【Activate energy feedback loop】

【Stability coefficient adaptive adjustment】

Save, package, encrypt signature.

Only after completing these tasks did he look up toward the auction hall. The crowd sat densely packed across two floors, with several patrolling guards in tight-fitting uniforms standing in the central aisle. Li Muyun was among them, wearing a hood and standing behind a pillar in the corner, his gaze sweeping back and forth—clearly searching for someone.

Shen Yan shrank back, moving further into the shadows.

The bidding had already reached two hundred thousand and was still climbing.

“Two hundred thirty thousand!” someone raised their paddle.

“Two hundred fifty thousand!” another voice followed immediately.

“Three hundred thousand, once!” the auctioneer exclaimed with rising excitement. “Any higher bids?”

No one responded.

Shen Yan glanced at the stack of Spirit Stones in his arms—thirty thousand in total, obtained by selling his former company ID badge. This amount wasn’t even enough to meet the entry threshold.

But he didn’t need to bid.

He tapped “send” on his phone.

The Command silently pierced through the air, traveling along the grounding copper wire on the display stand and infiltrating the interior of the armor. Almost in the same instant, a crack appeared on the armor’s surface, followed by a second, then a third. With a faint cracking sound, the entire armor suddenly expanded by a full size, its spiritual light surging like an overinflated lifebuoy.

“Boom!”

A shockwave swept outward, overturning the nearest row of tables and chairs. The Mystic Gate elder who had just stepped onto the stage to inspect the item was caught off guard, struck head-on by the blast and sent flying backward. He crashed into the wall and struggled to get up for a long moment.

The entire hall erupted in chaos.

“What happened?”

“Did the Formation self-destruct?”

“The armor is defective! Evacuate quickly!”

The auctioneer stumbled backward, his voice trembling. “Everyone, please remain calm! This item may have hidden risks. Please temporarily—”

“I bid thirty thousand.” Shen Yan stood up and raised his numbered paddle.

The hall fell silent for a moment before bursting into mocking laughter.

“Thirty thousand? Do you think this is a scrap recycling center?”

“Brother, are you in the wrong place?”

“The explosion just injured someone, and you still dare to bid?”

Ignoring them, Shen Yan walked straight onto the stage. He stepped around the overturned table, bent down, and picked up the cracked armor that still emitted a faint glow.

In front of everyone, he slipped the armor onto himself.

A flash of spiritual light, and the armor automatically conformed to his body. Fine Data Stream patterns shimmered along the cracks, as if invisible hands were repairing it.

“Now, it’s only worth this price,” he said.

No one laughed anymore.

The crowd below stared at the still-writhing, healing crack, their expressions shifting repeatedly. The person who had just shouted three hundred thousand now fell silent like a quail.

The auctioneer swallowed hard and stammered, “S-sold! The Black Tortoise Armor belongs to this fellow cultivator!”

Without waiting for the auctioneer to finish the formalities, Shen Yan turned and left.

As he passed through the crowd, he could feel several gazes fixed on his back. Li Muyun remained in place, unmoving, but his eyes were locked onto him. Worse, the Mystic Gate elder who had been blasted away was now leaning against the wall, standing up with a furious expression, charging toward him.

“Stop! What trick did you pull?!”

Shen Yan quickened his pace, plunging into the dark alley behind the side door.

The sound of pursuing footsteps grew closer behind him. As he ran, he pulled out his phone. The screen displayed the just-extracted Formation Source Code Segment, scrolling rapidly. Line after line of Chinese Commands flashed by, finally stopping on an unfamiliar label:

【Primordial Inscription Identified: Heavenly Dao Compilation Records · Fragment Seven】

His breath hitched.

The car accident seven years ago… that collision that should never have happened, the surveillance footage that vanished afterward, and the “System” that appeared in his mind upon waking…

None of it was accidental.

He turned into an even narrower alley, the sounds of pursuit still echoing behind him. His phone battery dropped to twelve percent, the shield program began flashing warnings. Gritting his teeth, he switched the repair patch to power-saving mode, his footsteps never faltering.

Ahead, a dim yellow streetlight illuminated the alley’s exit, casting the silhouette of a person standing quietly.

The figure stood with its back to him, draped in a gray robe, holding a scythe-shaped tool as if repairing something.

Shen Yan abruptly halted.

The scythe turned slightly, its blade reflecting a glint of green light—identical to the color of the terminal on his phone screen.

“Brother.” The person spoke, their voice unnervingly calm. “You’ve finally come.”

(End of Chapter)