Chapter 21: Undercurrents Surging: The Mystic Gate's Wanted Order

Shen Yan leaned against the cold tiles of the restroom, his fingers leaving afterimages as they swept across the phone screen. The moment the black fog pressed down upon the city, he knew something was wrong. As soon as the jade talisman burrowed into his brow, the terminal erupted with a series of alarms: “High-density spiritual energy scan wave approaching. Disguise protocol remaining: three minutes.”

Gritting his teeth, he channeled the residual energy from Yu Xiaotang’s strawberry talisman paper into the stealth module. The code flow twisted and turned through his meridians, looking exactly like his graduation project that had been sent back for rewriting by his advisor. But there was no time to fix bugs now—outside the window, seven or eight patrolling paper cranes were already floating in the air, each eye glowing with spiritual light, dazzling like the LED lights on a company annual party prize wheel.

“Alright, since you want to play big, I’ll give you a show.”

He took a deep breath, his fingertips tapping rapidly as he pulled up the city’s public Wi-Fi node map. Twenty access points were instantly locked, and the mirror image clone program began to compile. This trick had come to him in a flash of inspiration while squatting on the toilet last night. The principle was the same as opening multiple game accounts to farm dungeons, only this time, he was farming the city-wide wanted order.

“Loading biological data template… injecting trace spiritual energy fluctuations… synchronizing projection—initiate!”

The moment his words fell, “Shen Yan” simultaneously appeared in every blind spot of the city’s surveillance. The one at the convenience store entrance was munching on a hot dog, the one at the bus stop was looking down at his phone, and the one in the underground parking lot was even arguing with a security guard. Each carried a faint, elusive trace of spiritual energy, enough to fool those novice disciples of the Mystic Gate who only knew how to recite incantations.

Sure enough, in less than two minutes, hurried footsteps echoed in the hallway.

“Break the door!” At Li Muyun’s command, three Mystic Gate disciples lifted a rune-inscribed copper hammer and charged at the door. As wood splinters flew, all twenty illusions simultaneously looked up at the sky, as if rehearsed in advance.

“Target spotted in the southeast district!”

“No, he’s on West Street!”

“There’s also an aura at North Square!”

The communication jade talismans immediately erupted into chaos, with teams scrambling toward different directions. Li Muyun stood still, his brow furrowed. “Too coordinated… This isn’t fleeing for his life. It’s a provocation.”

Meanwhile, the real Shen Yan was already stuck halfway into the toilet drainpipe.

“Who designed the city’s pipe network to be this narrow?” he cursed as he stuffed his phone into a waterproof bag. With his other hand, he quickly wrote commands in the air, forcibly activating the “Lubrication Spell · Low-Budget Edition.” With a rush of water, he slid down the pipe, leaving only the roar of sewage rushing past his ears.

The sewer was pitch black, but his phone could still hold out for a while. The terminal interface flickered faintly, warning of a sewage backflow risk 300 meters ahead. Just as he thought to speed up, his foot slipped into a mud pit, nearly smashing his chin against the iron grate cover.

“Did I switch from being a programmer to being a rat?” He wiped his face, only to find his hand covered in slime. “Once this is over, I’m writing an optimization proposal to the city hall.”

As he struggled to get up, the manhole cover above his head was gently lifted a crack from the outside.

A silver needle flashed, and the latch snapped in response.

A delicate face peered down from the manhole opening, the scent of medicinal herbs mingling with the night breeze.

“Five more steps ahead is the main sewage channel. Do you want to be washed into the sea to feed the fish?”

It was Pei Yue.

Shen Yan grinned, but before he could speak, he was hit on the head by the medicine pouch she threw at him.

“To mask the smell. It stinks,” she said with a tone of disgust, though her eyes swept over his soaked collar as she secretly formed a calming spell with her fingertips.

He opened the medicine pouch and sniffed it. A bitter herbal scent rushed straight to his head, but it did indeed cover up the spiritual breath brought on by the chaotic code on his body.

“How did you know I was here?” he asked, panting.

“Every time you recklessly use spells, your pulse shifts three points to the left,” she rolled her eyes at him. “And did you forget? When I applied the Foundation Establishment liquid to you last time, I embedded a tracking cinnabar in your wrist bone.”

Shen Yan was taken aback. “You really are managing me like a patient to the end?”

“What else?” she snorted lightly. “Leave you to fend for yourself, only for you to test some ‘Infinite Loop Fireball Spell’ on yourself again, blow up half the city, and then I’d have to clean up the mess.”

He couldn’t find the words to respond, only letting out two dry chuckles. Yet the tension that had been tightening in his heart all night finally loosened by half an inch.

The two walked along the main passageway as the water flow gradually quickened, and occasional vibrations from vehicles passing overhead rumbled through. When they reached a fork in the path, Pei Yue suddenly stopped.

“There’s a residual formation ahead,” she closed her eyes to sense for a moment. “It’s not the work of the Mystic Gate. It feels more like… the resonance frequency of an ancient teleportation array.”

At that moment, Shen Yan’s phone vibrated, and a new notice popped up on the terminal: “High-intensity energy fluctuation detected. Source location: Southeast Abandoned Park.”

He looked up. The night sky beyond the iron fence flickered intermittently, like the shaky image of an old television with poor signal. Between the outlines of distant buildings, a faint, illusory star map slowly rotated, carrying an undeniable gravitational pull.

“Is the Abyss Gate about to open?” he murmured.

“You recognize this formation?” Pei Yue glanced sideways at him.

“I’ve seen it once before, inside a glowing tree,” he smiled bitterly. “That time, I was saved by a woman with cat ears.”

Pei Yue narrowed her eyes at him. “Did you provoke someone you shouldn’t have again?”

“This time, it really wasn’t me who started it,” he raised his phone. “Look, the system didn’t even have time to warn me. It just popped up an ‘Emergency Connection Request.'”

In the center of the screen, a line of small green text slowly appeared:

【Unknown source attempting to connect. Allow coordinate synchronization?】

His finger hovered over the confirmation button, hesitating to press it.

Behind him was the deadly trap he had just escaped; ahead was the ancient formation about to restart. He knew that once he clicked, he might be leaping into an even larger whirlpool.

But he also understood that some things were unavoidable.

Just like the moment of the car accident years ago, the code of fate had already begun to recompile.

He took a deep breath and was about to press down—

“Wait,” Pei Yue suddenly grabbed his wrist, lowering her voice. “Someone’s coming.”

Footsteps echoed from upstream, uniform and rhythmic, accompanied by the faint clinking of metal armor. Three figures walked against the current, the leader holding a bronze lamp with an eerie blue flame that cast reflections of densely packed runes on the walls.

“It’s the Mystic Gate’s cleanup squad,” Pei Yue quickly pulled him into a side tunnel. “They’ve brought spirit-detecting compasses. We can’t force our way through.”

Shen Yan stared at the phone interface, his heart pounding like a drum. The star map grew brighter, and the connection request began flashing red, pulsing like a countdown:

【Synchronization will be forcibly initiated in thirty breaths】

He glanced at Pei Yue, then at the exit leading to the outside world.

The next second, he abruptly pulled out the silver needle from his pants pocket—the one she had used to wake him last time—and thrust it into the ground crack with a backhand motion, simultaneously drawing a reverse diversion talisman in the air.

“What are you doing?” she exclaimed in surprise.

“Delivering a package for them.” He grinned, tapping the final line of the command with his fingertip.

The water flow suddenly reversed course, sewage cascading backward like a waterfall, carrying rotten leaves and rubble toward the incoming path. As the bronze lamp extinguished, the entire passage plunged into darkness.

And Shen Yan had already pulled Pei Yue toward the upstream exit.

Outside the iron grate, the Star Map projection abruptly expanded, energy waves spreading in ripples, precisely covering their location.

The phone screen finally froze on that line of green text.

His thumb slowly descended.

(End of Chapter)