Chapter 129: Demon Power Barrier Traps the Mechanical Beast Tide

Shen Yan’s fingertips still pressed against Pei Yue’s wrist, the chill crawling up her pulse like an icy serpent. He was about to say something when the ground shook violently, spiderweb cracks exploding across the stone tiles of the entire side courtyard.

“Damn! Is this broken palace built on a fault line?” Instinctively, he pulled her into his arms, his back slamming against a crumbling wall as his phone screen cracked with a sharp snap.

The wall collapsed with a roar, and amidst the flying debris, twenty massive bronze beasts charged out, their steps synchronized with the grinding of gears. Their bodies were covered in dark green rust, yet dark red demonic energy seeped from their joints. Two bloody glows swept across the ruins from their eye sockets, locking onto the direction of the Tai Chi Hall in unison.

“The emperor hasn’t woken up, and Doctor Pei can’t move either…” Shen Yan quickly moved Pei Yue behind the broken wall, tearing off his shirt sleeve and ripping it into strips. He swiftly bound her trembling arm. “Don’t fall asleep yet. I’ll sing you a code version of ‘Lone Warrior’ to keep you awake.”

As he spoke, he pulled out his phone with one hand. The screen was cracked like a spiderweb, but the terminal interface still flickered: “Initiating low-power shield program—named ‘The Last Dignity of the Corporate Drone.’”

The moment the translucent data barrier rose, the first wave of poison needles whistled toward them. Thin as ox hair, the metal tips were wrapped in corrosive black mist. They struck the barrier with a sizzling sound, the edges of the data stream beginning to warp and peel away.

“This thing carries virus attacks?” Shen Yan stared at the terminal popup window, sweat beading on his forehead. “The defense value is dropping faster than a year-end bonus.”

Before his words faded, a purple shadow swooped down from the roof ridge. Luo Li landed with her nine tails spread wide, demon power surging out like a tide, forming three layers of shimmering light screens around the three of them. The outermost layer was blazing fox fire, the middle layer solidified into a rune array, and the innermost layer transformed into a flexible barrier, firmly protecting Shen Yan and Pei Yue.

“If you make one more sarcastic remark, I’ll throw you out as bait,” she panted, sweat beading at her temples, her tails trembling slightly.

“I’m just lightening the mood,” Shen Yan said, lowering his head to frantically tap on his phone. “Besides, now that you’re here, what do I have to fear? Isn’t this ready-made firewall material?”

His fingers flew as he called up a cross-platform API interface, channeling the demon power signal released by Luo Li into the source code system. A notice popped up on the interface: 【High-purity demon energy fluctuation detected. Compile into an executable defense module?】

“Compile! Absolutely compile!” He clicked confirm and entered the name: “Fox Fire · Mirror Reflection Protocol v1.0.”

As soon as the code finished running, the second wave of poison needles attacked again. This time, flowing green character patterns appeared on the barrier’s surface, like living program chains. The moment the poison needles touched the light screen, their trajectories abruptly reversed, turning in unison to shoot toward the shadows of the palace!

“Ah!” A muffled groan echoed as Xie Wujiu staggered out from the darkness, his left shoulder pierced with poison needles, his black robe corroded with charred holes.

“Well, well, if it isn’t our diligent State Preceptor?” Shen Yan grinned. “With that outfit, are you planning to cosplay as a ‘Netherworld Office Worker’ for Halloween?”

Xie Wujiu wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, his gaze icy. “Do you think you can stop this? These mechanical beasts were built using blueprints from your Shen family ancestral graves. Every single gear is soaked in your parents’ blood.”

Shen Yan’s expression darkened, his finger tracing a red line across the screen. “If all you can do is play the family card, then we really have nothing to talk about.”

He was about to continue writing the counter-script when suddenly, he heard a light rustling from the roof tiles above. Yu Xiaotang rolled down from the eaves, her twin ponytails half undone, clutching the last stack of talisman paper in her hand. The candied hawthorn had long been lost somewhere.

“Brother Shen!” She stumbled upon landing, nearly falling forward. “I circled around and sneaked into the library, and found that the power cores of these mechanical beasts are marked ‘Manufactured by Abyss Workshop’—they’re from the same factory as Ye Shi’er’s puppets!”

“Indeed not a local product.” Shen Yan narrowed his eyes. “Cross-border outsourcing, and no warranty included.”

Yu Xiaotang ignored his teasing, biting her fingertip until a drop of blood fell onto the talisman paper. “I still have three strawberry-flavored immobilization talismans. They can trap him for ten breaths.”

“Enough.” Shen Yan looked up at Xie Wujiu. “Ten breaths is enough for me to dig through his operation logs thoroughly.”

Yu Xiaotang nodded, sending the talisman paper flying out. It slid across the ground, drawing a pink vine-like formation diagram beneath Xie Wujiu’s feet. The talisman paper exploded, releasing a sweet, cloying fragrance, and talisman pattern chains suddenly rose from the ground, wrapping around his legs.

“What kind of crooked path is this?” Xie Wujiu roared angrily, spewing poisonous mist from his palms, attempting to corrode the talisman array. Yet the vines tightened the more he struggled, even preventing him from bending his knees.

“Strawberry flavor plus bloodline authentication, specially designed to counter old schemers.” Yu Xiaotang panted, hands on her hips. “My mom taught me—to deal with scumbags, you have to use a girl’s heart sniper.”

Seizing the opportunity, Shen Yan opened the terminal scanning mode and aimed it at the nearest mechanical beast. The interface displayed a structural analysis: 【Main Material: Bronze alloy (containing trace dragon bone powder); Energy System: Demonic energy-driven + mechanical gear linkage; Control Protocol: Fixed loop command set, no autonomous AI】.

“It’s indeed an automated script.” He sneered. “The person who wrote the code must be an outsourced intern—they didn’t even add any anomaly handling.”

He quickly wrote a “command hijacking program,” preparing to inject it into the mechanical beast’s control system through the barrier reflection channel. Just as he clicked run, Luo Li suddenly groaned softly, and the barrier trembled.

“I can’t hold on anymore… demon power is almost depleted.” She leaned against the wall, her tail drooping weakly.

“Hold on for five more seconds!” Shen Yan sweated on his forehead. “Wait until I push this code up, and let you see what it means when technology changes cultivation.”

The program loaded to eighty percent, Xie Wujiu suddenly laughed wildly. “You think this is over? The real killing move… has never been on the surface!”

He slammed his right hand onto the ground, and a black pattern spread along the palace path. From the direction of the imperial kitchen far away, heavy gear meshing sounds echoed.

Shen Yan’s pupils contracted sharply, and the terminal automatically switched to a heat map—three hundred zhang underground, a massive energy reaction was awakening.

“Wow, they even buried an Easter egg?” He grabbed his phone, carrying Pei Yue on his back as he moved closer to Luo Li. “Should we retreat?”

“If we leave now, all previous efforts will be wasted.” Yu Xiaotang blocked the doorway, holding only a damaged talisman in her hand. “And… don’t you want to know how your parents’ drawings ended up in the Abyss Workshop?”

Shen Yan remained silent for two seconds, then suddenly smiled. “Right, I hate it most when people treat my family history as draft paper.”

He handed Pei Yue to Luo Li and stood before the barrier himself, raising his phone overhead. On the screen, code cascaded like a waterfall.

“Come on, let’s see who is the real system administrator.”

Xie Wujiu struggled to look up, seeing Shen Yan’s fingertips glowing green, strings of characters flying out from the screen, entwining around the mechanical beasts.

The first giant beast’s eye sockets began to flicker with red light, as if the frames were stuttering.

Immediately after, its right arm slowly lifted, aiming at its own kind. Gears in its palm rotated, condensing into a venomous needle.

Shen Yan grinned: “Welcome to—reverse control mode.”

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(End of Chapter)