Chapter 128: Medicine Valley’s Secret Method to Cure the Royal Gu Poison

The sound of the second watch still echoed in his ears, yet Shen Yan’s fingers were already pressed against the screen of his phone. The Terminal Interface glowed faintly, the last line of the Notice stuck on “Trace the origin of the Bloodline?” with no further movement.

Gritting his teeth, he deleted the pending Command and swiped his fingertip, calling up the heatmap reload Program. “Now’s not the time to find my father. Saving lives comes first.”

As soon as he finished speaking, a golden light shot up into the sky from the direction of the Taiji Hall, followed by a sudden, violent shudder across the entire palace’s Dragon Qi network, as if something had bitten into it. The golden Talisman Pattern on Shen Yan’s chest throbbed intensely, as though someone were typing Code directly into his veins.

“It’s here,” he murmured. “The emperor is about to fall.”

The next moment, the commander of the imperial guards knelt on one knee, his tone urgent. “His Majesty has suddenly collapsed, his breathing intermittent. The State Preceptor requests that Young Master Shen enter the palace immediately to administer treatment!”

Shen Yan sneered. “Xie Wujiu certainly knows how to put on a show. First, he threatens me with my mother, and now he wants me to save his master?”

But before he could refuse, the Terminal suddenly flashed a new alert—【High-risk Gu Worm fluctuation Detected. Type: Qianji Gu (unnamed variant). Infection path exhibits Protocol-level resonance with Host’s Source Code Spiritual Root】.

His pupils contracted.

Qianji Gu? Wasn’t that the forbidden poison said to specifically target the royal Dragon Qi, causing victims to bleed from all seven orifices and convulse to death?

And… it resonated with the thing inside him?

While he was still stunned, a medicinal fragrance drifted on the wind. A green skirt brushed the ground as Pei Yue appeared beside him, her hair slightly disheveled, clearly having rushed all the way from Medicine Valley. Without asking further questions, she lifted a silver thread into the air, gently placing the other end on the Jade Slip handed over by the guard.

The Silver Needle trembled faintly, refracting a rainbow-like halo that suddenly turned purplish-black.

“It is indeed the Qianji Gu,” she said softly, each word sharp as a blade. “Ancient texts record that this Gu uses familial bonds as the trigger and resentment as the bait, devouring the heart and seizing the meridians. Death is certain within three days. Only the Saintess’s essence blood can lure it out.”

As she spoke, she retrieved a Pill from her Medicine Pouch. It was pure white, its surface covered in intricate Talisman Patterns.

“This is the ‘Return to Origin Poison Removal Pill’ I refined using thirty-year snow lotus and nine-cycle soul-returning grass, but…” She paused. “It can only force the Gu Worm out of the body; it cannot eradicate it completely. Without external guidance to channel the Energy deep into the Dragon Qi Nodes, it will instead accelerate the emperor’s loss of vitality.”

Shen Yan stared at the Pill and suddenly laughed. “So you’re handing me a bomb and asking me to defuse it?”

Pei Yue glanced at him, her expression serious. “You’re the only one who can write spells as Code. If you can convert this Pill’s Energy into an executable Command stream and inject it precisely along the Dragon Qi network, you can sever the Gu poison’s Loop.”

Shen Yan looked down at his phone. His Mental Power hadn’t recovered yet, and complex Programs couldn’t Run. Forcing a load might cause an outright explosion.

But he wasn’t afraid.

What he excelled at was Opportunistic Acquisition-style programming.

“Alright then, let’s go for a low-spec reverse Decompilation,” he grinned, his fingers tapping rapidly. “I don’t need a full Run. I just need to reverse-analyze the Energy structure of the Poison Removal Pill and turn it into an ‘auto-injection Script’.”

Pei Yue nodded, placed the Pill in her palm, closed her eyes to focus, and slowly squeezed a drop of blood from her fingertip onto the Pill.

In an instant, the Pill transformed into a beam of white light, shooting straight toward Shen Yan’s phone Screen.

“Warning: Unknown energy packet detected, attempting to parse…” The system notification tone had just sounded when the entire interface began to distort, as if invaded by a virus.

“Damn! Does this thing come with its own firewall?” Shen Yan slapped his phone. “Don’t panic, don’t panic, let me try adding a proxy layer—”

He quickly pulled up an empty function framework, named it “Disguised Authentication,” then wrapped the energy flow of the poison removal pill inside, disguising it as an ordinary spiritual energy replenishment program.

“Alright, now it’s a legitimate process.” He sighed in relief. “Next, send it into the emperor’s body.”

Pei Yue immediately formed a hand seal, guiding with a silver needle to channel the data stream output from Shen Yan’s phone into the jade slip, which then connected to the golden thread array on the dragon bed.

White light flowed along the golden threads, slowly infusing into the emperor’s body.

At first, everything went smoothly. The terminal showed the gu worm’s toxicity activity had decreased by sixty percent.

But just as the data stream was about to reach the core meridians, a sudden mutation occurred!

The emperor abruptly opened his eyes, both pupils completely black. A mechanical, garbled noise issued from his throat, and he spat out a string of distorted characters—exactly matching the abandoned logs in Shen Yan’s source code interface!

“Not good!” Shen Yan shouted. “The gu worm has consciousness! It’s mimicking my code logic!”

Before his words faded, the data stream was suddenly counterattacked. A black program surged upstream, following the golden threads straight toward Pei Yue!

She had no time to withdraw her hand, only feeling a chill in her meridians. Her Dark Jade Cold Pulse instantly froze, leaving her entire body rigid in place.

“Pei Yue!” Shen Yan lunged forward, yanking the golden threads apart while slamming his phone hard onto the ground. “Force interrupt connection!”

The screen shattered, and the data stream abruptly ceased.

But that wisp of black energy had already burrowed into Pei Yue’s wrist, spreading upward along her bloodline.

Her face turned deathly pale, lips turning blue. A mouthful of blood sprayed out, splattering onto Shen Yan’s plaid shirt like an unfinished line of error reporting comment.

“You idiot!” Shen Yan pulled her into his embrace, his voice trembling. “Who told you to take it head-on!”

Pei Yue managed a weak smile, her fingertips still trembling. “No… it’s fine. I just… temporarily sealed it.”

Shen Yan stared intently at the terminal’s residual image, his mind racing—since the gu worm could mimic his code, that meant it relied on some “known protocol” to operate.

Then he’d simply change the protocol!

“How long can you hold on?” he asked.

“Half an incense stick’s time,” she replied, closing her eyes to regulate her breathing. “Any longer… and the cold pulse will shatter.”

“Enough.” Shen Yan wiped his face and reactivated his phone’s broken screen. “I refuse to believe I can’t beat this damn thing today.”

He took a deep breath, opened the “reverse decompilation” function, dragged the contaminated data stream from earlier into the analysis window, and began dissecting it line by line.

Three minutes later, he found the vulnerability—the gu worm’s counterattack mechanism was based on a fixed callback function, triggering the same response sequence with each attack.

“Got you,” he sneered. “You’re just an infinite loop robot.”

He quickly wrote a “recursion trap” program, disguised it as follow-up instructions for the poison removal pill, then used his own essence blood for signature authentication to ensure system acceptance.

“This time it’s not an injection, it’s fishing,” he whispered. “I’ll make it actively burrow in, and then—format.”

Pei Yue weakly opened her eyes. “You’re using yourself as bait?”

“What else?” He shrugged. “I’m not exactly a good person anyway. What’s a little sacrifice?”

After speaking, he bit his finger and wrote the final command on his phone: 【Initiate decoy protocol, target: Qianji Gu core process】.

White light reappeared, but this time, the Data Stream was no longer gentle. Instead, it carried a strong seductive signal, simulating the illusion of “Source Code Spiritual Root fully activated.”

The emperor’s body convulsed violently, and black energy surged out, rushing straight toward the Data Stream.

“Hooked!” Shen Yan’s eyes sharpened, and he immediately executed the deletion command.

Boom—

Spiritual Energy Turbulence erupted throughout the entire side courtyard. Blood trickled from the emperor’s nose and mouth, but his breathing gradually stabilized. Shattered fragments of Code drifted through the air like fireflies, and faint purple traces slowly dissolved.

Success.

Shen Yan slumped to the ground, sweat pouring down his back, his head buzzing as if he had just run an eight-core Concurrency process.

Pei Yue leaned against a pillar, the dark red stain on her sleeve spreading wider and wider. She tried to raise her hand to wipe her sweat but found even the tip of her finger frozen and unresponsive.

“Hey.” Shen Yan crawled over, grabbed her wrist, and felt a piercing coldness. “Can you still hold on?”

She nodded, her voice almost inaudible: “Yeah… just a little cold.”

Shen Yan frowned, glanced down at the Terminal, and saw the last line of Code still flashing: 【Establish Gu poison behavior model, trace infection path】.

He knew it wasn’t over yet.

The true source had yet to surface.

He looked up at the still-unconscious emperor, then down at the pale-faced Pei Yue in his arms, and suddenly pulled her closer.

“Don’t fall asleep,” he said. “If you dare close your eyes now, I’ll add a Bug to every piece of Code I write from now on.”

(End of Chapter)