Chapter 154: Fate’s Guidance Amidst the Dance of Talismans

The instant the withered hand lunged, Shen Yan yanked Pei Yue behind him, his fingertip slicing sharply through the air.

“Environmental Isolation Script, initiate!”

A translucent Data Stream barrier materialized out of nowhere, like a constantly refreshing Firewall, forcibly holding the wisp of black energy at bay three steps away. The black energy collided with the barrier, emitting a sizzling, corrosive sound, as if a Virus were gnawing at the System Underlayer.

Yu Xiaotang jumped back in fright, half her Candied Hawthorn dropping to the ground: “This thing can still evolve? Wasn’t it sealed back just now?!”

“Sealing it once won’t stop its will to survive.” Shen Yan stared at the Terminal Interface, his brow deeply furrowed. “It’s learning our Spiritual Power Frequency.”

Ye Zhao’s sword was already a third drawn, her gaze cold enough to freeze flames: “What now? Wait for it to breach our defenses?”

“No waiting.” Shen Yan took a deep breath and turned to Yu Xiaotang. “Xiaotang, listen to me—next, I’m going to teach you to write the simplest Spell Program: the Fireball Spell.”

Yu Xiaotang blinked: “Huh? Can’t I just draw a Talisman? Why do I need to type Code?”

“Because that Talisman you just drew nearly blew us all up.” Shen Yan’s tone was serious. “Drawing Talismans by intuition is a Talent, but here, Talent gets exploited as a Vulnerability. You need to understand: a Talisman isn’t a curse; it’s a Logic chain.”

He pulled up the Terminal simulation Interface, lines of green characters appearing: “Look, this is the underlying structure of the Fireball Spell. Variable A = Spiritual Energy input, Function B = ignition, output C = explosion. The Talismans you’re drawing now are equivalent to directly running an .exe without knowing what’s written inside.”

Yu Xiaotang leaned in for a closer look and stuck out her tongue: “So I’m that kind of ‘click-to-open-after-downloading’ naive user?”

“Pretty much.” Shen Yan’s mouth twitched. “Right now, I need you to learn how to Compile it yourself.”

Just as he was about to continue explaining, the Terminal suddenly chimed, popping up a new Notice:

【Detected High-Level Spirit Artifact resonance fluctuation, source: Star-Shattering Token fragment (87% match), location—thirty paces due east, three levels underground】

“Something is responding to you.” Luo Li suddenly spoke up, her ears twitching slightly. “That aura… bears the imprint of the Demon Emperor’s Bloodline.”

Shen Yan’s eyes lit up: “Let’s go, find the Command Token first.”

The five of them quickly advanced, passing through a narrow passageway into a deeper stone chamber. The floor was carved with intersecting Runes, and in the center stood a broken stone stele. Embedded at its base was a silver fragment the size of a fingernail, its surface swirling with a starlight-like glow.

“That’s it.” Shen Yan reached out to take it.

The moment his fingertip touched the fragment, the ground rumbled violently. Three bronze Mechanical Beasts burst from the earth, their bodies covered in Spiritual crystal armor, their eyes crimson like molten lava.

Yu Xiaotang instinctively flung out an Explosive Flame Script: “Burn them one by one!”

The Talisman Paper flew out, a fireball roaring toward the beasts. Yet, one of the Mechanical Beasts opened its mouth and swallowed it. Not only did the flames on its body not extinguish, they instead surged outward, tongues of fire even leaping from the seams of its armor.

“Holy crap? It eats my skill and gets stronger?” Yu Xiaotang jumped up and down.

“Stop attacking!” Shen Yan grabbed her wrist. “They’re absorbing the Talisman Energy to reverse Iterate—it’s like they have built-in AI learning Modules!”

Ye Zhao held her sword horizontally in front: “Then what do we do? Wait for them to finish feasting and then harvest us?”

“I’ll feed them an infinite loop.” Shen Yan sneered, typing rapidly on the terminal. “The core of the Fireball Spell is detonation, but what if I modify the ‘detonate’ function into an infinitely recursive call?”

He opened the Fireball Spell’s source code and inserted a command in the last line: “After execution, reload the program itself.”

“In simple terms, it’s like ordering food delivery—after finishing one order, they keep placing new orders for themselves until the system crashes.”

Yu Xiaotang listened in bewilderment. “So you’re going to paralyze them with ‘the delivery guy who never starves’?”

“Smart.” Shen Yan smirked. “Now, you’ll be the delivery person.”

“Me?”

“Yes. Draw the most basic fire-summoning talisman. I’ll inject the program into it, and you throw it into the Mechanical Beast’s mouth—remember, make it swallow it willingly.”

Yu Xiaotang gritted her teeth. “Playing so risky? What if it doesn’t eat it?”

“It will definitely eat it.” Shen Yan stared at those crimson eyes. “Because right now, it thinks you’re the tastiest one.”

Yu Xiaotang rolled her eyes but still pulled out yellow talisman paper. She lightly moistened the brush tip with the tip of her tongue and swiftly drew fire-summoning patterns.

A faint glow flickered at Shen Yan’s fingertip, and the program quietly embedded itself into the talisman paper.

“Go ahead, delivery girl.”

Yu Xiaotang narrowed her eyes and tossed it with a flick of her hand. The talisman paper spiraled toward the nearest Mechanical Beast. That creature indeed opened its mouth and swallowed it in one bite.

One second.

Two seconds.

The Mechanical Beast’s body suddenly stiffened, its crimson eyes flickering like a lagging screen.

“It worked!” Shen Yan exclaimed softly. “Its core is infinitely calling the detonation command, causing computational overload—movement latency at eighty percent!”

“Opportunity!” Ye Zhao’s eyes sharpened. With a tap of her foot, she shot forward like an arrow released from its bow.

Her sword was not fully drawn; relying solely on Sword Qi guidance, she traced an almost transparent trajectory in the air. The Sword Qi synchronized with the Data Stream, precisely cutting into the gap of the Mechanical Beast’s lagging movement, severing its spinal connection axis with one strike.

“Crack!”

A crisp sound of bronze breaking rang out. The first Mechanical Beast collapsed with a heavy thud, its spiritual crystal shattered, crimson light extinguished.

The other two began convulsing, their movements slowing increasingly, like old robots about to shut down.

Luo Li closed her eyes and focused, her cat ears gently rotating. Suddenly, she opened her eyes: “Three hundred paces southeast, strong resonance… There’s more than one Star-Shattering Token; the main component is over there!”

Shen Yan quickly picked up the fragments and placed them into a Spiritual Energy-sealed bag. The terminal automatically scanned, and a red line appeared on the map, winding deep into the heart of the ruins.

“Follow this path.” He pocketed the terminal, breathing heavily.

Yu Xiaotang slumped to the ground, patting her chest. “My heart nearly jumped out just then… Do you think I’ve improved a bit?”

“More than just improved.” Shen Yan glanced at her, unusually serious. “That throw you just made was textbook-level program delivery.”

Yu Xiaotang grinned, about to speak, but suddenly noticed blood seeping from Shen Yan’s sleeve.

“You’re injured?”

“Minor injury.” Shen Yan waved it off. “When writing the code earlier, I pushed my Mental Power too hard; my blood vessels couldn’t quite handle it.”

Pei Yue immediately stepped forward, placing her fingertip on his pulse point, her brow furrowing slightly. “You’re overdrawing. If you keep doing this, next time it might not be bleeding—it could be a cerebral hemorrhage.”

“Still gotta do it.” Shen Yan tugged at his lips. “If I don’t write the code, you’ll have to write your wills.”

Ye Zhao silently removed her outer robe and tossed it to him. “Put it on. Don’t tire yourself out before we even see the Demon Lord.”

Shen Yan took it but didn’t wear it, instead tucking it into a compartment of his backpack.

Luo Li crouched beside the fallen Mechanical Beast, using her claws to push aside the fragments. Suddenly, she said, “These materials… they’re not something ordinary craftsmen could create. The arrangement of spirit crystals matches the ‘Puppet Core’ described in ancient Demon Clan texts.”

“Someone was building war machines here,” Shen Yan narrowed his eyes. “And their target was likely the Central Hub controlling the entire ruins.”

Yu Xiaotang took a bite of candied hawthorn and mumbled, “So we’ve basically broken into the enemy’s server room?”

“More accurately, an old version’s testing environment,” Shen Yan opened the Terminal Log, recording the iteration characteristics of the Mechanical Beast. “They’ve learned to absorb Talismans. The next batch might become immune, or even replicate them in reverse.”

“Then let them learn all they want,” Ye Zhao said coldly. “Next time, I’ll cut off their ‘learning ability’ with one strike of my sword.”

The group took a brief rest, the atmosphere shifting from initial shock to a sense of control amidst the gravity of the situation.

Shen Yan leaned against the stone wall, staring thoughtfully at the red line on the map.

Pei Yue quietly approached and whispered, “Do you really plan to rely on Code all the way to the end?”

“It’s not that I want to, but fate forces me,” he smiled bitterly. “My skills, to put it bluntly, make me a bug fixer in the Cultivation Realm. While others train for ten years, I can solve problems in ten minutes by modifying a piece of Code.”

Pei Yue looked at him, then suddenly reached out and touched the inside of his arm—where there was a faint mark, like some kind of Comment.

“Have you ever thought…” she said softly, “why it was you who awakened this ability?”

Shen Yan paused.

Of course, he had thought about it.

The Star-Shattering Token his mother clutched before her death, the image of his father holding an infant and running desperately, the blue lotus mark in the forbidden texts of Medicine Valley, and the strange “Source Code Spiritual Root” within his own body…

All the clues pointed to a buried truth.

“I don’t know,” he finally said. “But I know that as long as I’m alive, this string of Code won’t stop.”

Pei Yue didn’t ask further, simply standing silently beside him as the four of them formed a circular defensive perimeter.

The stone chamber fell quiet, with only the occasional beep from the Terminal updating the path coordinates.

Yu Xiaotang bit into her candied hawthorn, gazing at the red line extending into the darkness, and asked softly, “So… are we really going down that path?”

Shen Yan nodded. “There, we’ll find not only answers but also the fate we must face.”

As soon as he finished speaking, the Terminal suddenly vibrated.

【Warning: Detected similar spiritual wave interference, source unknown, distance—thirty zhang, moving】

Everyone tensed instantly.

Shen Yan quickly shut off the Projection and whispered, “Stay quiet.”

At that moment, a faint scraping sound came from deep within the stone wall, like metal being slowly dragged.

Shen Yan’s hand slowly moved toward the Terminal, the tip of his finger glowing faintly with Code Flow.

(End of Chapter)