Chapter 139: Memory Legacy in the Temporal Rift

Shen Yan’s finger still hovered over the phone screen. Pei Yue’s words, “My life has long been bound to your program,” pierced his mind like a red-hot needle, buzzing incessantly. Above, the crack in the ceiling erupted with a violent purple light, and bloodstains twisted into the characters “Abyss” on the floor, as if carved into the ground with a knife.

He bit the tip of his tongue, spitting a mouthful of vital blood onto the phone’s interface. The terminal screen flickered and finally displayed a line of green text: “System restarting… Warning: High-risk data intrusion detected.”

“Enough nonsense,” he growled. “Strip that image clean for me!”

Purple light poured down from the dome, coalescing into a massive scroll. In the image, a man clad in tattered celestial robes held an infant, his fingertip tracing the child’s chest as a flowing line of code slowly sank into the body—the nascent form of the Source Code Spiritual Root. In the next frame, Xie Wujiu knelt before the Demon Lord, slicing open his wrist as blood flowed into a black cauldron, a sickly smile on his face.

“So you were a lapdog all along,” Shen Yan sneered, his fingers swiftly swiping to activate reverse decompilation permissions, peeling away layers of chaotic data. But just as he locked onto the key frame, a chilling consciousness violently crashed into his Consciousness Sea.

“Do you think… understanding it can change anything?” Xie Wujiu leaned against a dragon pillar, his left hand still forming seals, his lips curling into a grin. “Fate is a program written in stone. You are merely variables executing commands.”

Ignoring him, Shen Yan pressed the phone face-down against his palm, a drop of blood seeping into the edge of the screen. The System Interface suddenly displayed a never-before-seen subdirectory, its cover depicting a broken jade pendant.

Immediately after, a blurred figure materialized, dressed in old-fashioned robes, his features bearing a striking resemblance to Shen Yan’s.

“When the Demon Lord’s mark appears in the world, go to the Demon Clan Sacred Land and seek the ‘Nine-Tailed Celestial Fox,’” the man’s voice rasped, as if ground by sandpaper. “Only her bloodline can awaken the complete law.”

Before the words faded, Luo Li abruptly raised her head, her cat ears standing upright like blades. The Star-Shattering Token Imitation on her wrist emitted a resonant purple light, causing her entire arm to tremble.

Shen Yan quickly scrolled through past logs—at 3:17 a.m. on the day of the car accident, a surge of Demon Power erupted in Luo Li’s village. The moment she awakened her Half-Demon form coincided precisely with the activation of his Source Code Spiritual Root. He then pulled up fragmented records of the Demon Clan’s genealogy, comparing the evolution of bloodlines. When the result appeared, his breath caught.

A perfect match.

“So you’re the reincarnation?” he turned to look at her, his voice low.

Luo Li remained silent, staring only at her burning wrist, her tail unconsciously tensing.

Xie Wujiu suddenly let out a derisive laugh. “You think she’s a princess? She’s a sealed container! A thousand years ago, before that Celestial Fox immolated herself, she embedded her essence into a human infant to escape the Celestial Clan’s purge—and now, what’s inside her is awakening.”

Ancient runes began to surface on the hall’s pillars, as if scorched by invisible flames, filling the air with the smell of burning. Shen Yan knew time was running out. Forcibly inserting the phone into the interface of his chest armor, he captured the residual energy frequencies of the four women one by one: Ye Zhao’s Sword Qi, Pei Yue’s medicinal aura, Luo Li’s Demon Power, and Yu Xiaotang’s Talisman Patterns—all compressed into a navigation key, marking a set of coordinates in the northern snowfields.

“The Demon Clan Sacred Land… found it,” he gasped, veins throbbing at his temples.

Xie Wujiu struggled to stand, slamming his left hand hard against the ground as the remnants of Demonic Energy surged wildly. “None of you are leaving! The ritual isn’t over yet—”

Shen Yan raised his hand and cast a memory anchoring program. Three core images were packaged, encrypted, and stored deep within the Source Code Core, labeled “Trigger Only in the Future.” After finishing, he looked at Luo Li, his gaze complex yet resolute. “No matter whose reincarnation you are, right now, you are Luo Li. The road ahead—do you want to walk it together?”

She fell silent for a second, her tail gently coiling around his forearm, the light of the Star-Shattering Token unwavering.

“I’ll go with you.”

The violet light abruptly contracted, the edges of the Rift began to collapse, and the entire hall shook violently. Shen Yan took one last glance at his phone, where a terminal notice flashed: “Temporal Rift closing. Initiate Legacy Protocol?”

He pressed confirm.

In that instant, countless Memory Fragments flooded his mind—a snowy night a thousand years ago, a purple-haired woman cradling a young fox, sealing the last trace of her origin into a human infant amidst a thunderous Tribulation; at the edge of the image, a young Luo Li curled up in a corner of a ruined temple, an old demon holding an umbrella as he carried her away, leaving two trails of footprints in the snow.

The truth landed.

“Memory legacy complete…” he murmured. “The mission… has begun.”

Before the violet light swallowed everything, Xie Wujiu’s cold laughter still echoed: “You can’t escape… the Cycle of Reincarnation was set long ago—”

Before he could finish, the entire space was stretched into a thin line.

The light dispersed.

Shen Yan remained kneeling in place, his phone pressed tightly against his chest, his face pale as paper, yet his eyes no longer held the confusion from before. He slowly looked up toward the healing crack in the Rift, his lips moving but no sound emerging.

Luo Li stood beside him, her ears twitching slightly, her tail still wrapped around his arm. The light of the Star-Shattering Token reflected in her pupils, like a burning cluster of starlight hidden within.

In the distance, Xie Wujiu lay sprawled on the ground, the hand seal in his left hand still active. Black blood oozed from between his fingers, silently flowing into the cracks between the floor tiles, outlining a fragmented summoning array.

Shen Yan suddenly turned his head and said to Luo Li, “You know what? When I used to write Code, I was most afraid of two things.”

She blinked.

“One was an infinite Loop, and the other was… someone secretly altering the Underlying Logic.”

He paused, his gaze sweeping toward Xie Wujiu’s direction.

“But now I realize, as long as the main thread doesn’t collapse, even if it veers off course ten thousand times, it can still be saved with a Patch.”

Luo Li let out a soft snort. “So what Patch are you planning to apply now?”

Shen Yan glanced down at his phone. The navigation module was still running, the coordinates of the Demon Clan Sacred Land steadily blinking. He took a deep breath, pulled the phone from the armor Interface—the screen was cracked, but it still worked.

“First, upgrade this broken System to the latest Version,” he said, a faint Code Flow glowing at his fingertips. “Then, give some self-righteous old-version villains… a forced uninstall.”

As soon as he finished speaking, he coughed violently, spattering blood onto the screen, right over the “Confirm Proceed” button.

Luo Li frowned, reaching out to steady him.

But he waved her off, forcing himself to stand up. His legs were still trembling, yet his back was straight.

“Even if I can’t walk, I have to keep going,” he wiped his mouth, grinning with a hint of roguishness. “Otherwise, by the time they finish their online update, we won’t even be able to access the login Interface.”

Luo Li stared at him for two seconds, then suddenly lifted her heels and gently pressed her forehead against his shoulder.

“Then let’s tackle the dungeon together,” she whispered. “This time, I’ll be your cheat.”

Shen Yan froze for a moment, then grinned.

He raised his hand, about to respond, when the last strand of violet light overhead suddenly trembled violently. A whisper that belonged to no one drifted from deep within the fissure:

“Administrator Permission… has been locked by the preset inheritor.”

(End of Chapter)