Chapter 165: The Fusion of the Healer’s Benevolent Art and the Demon Clan’s Secret Technique

Shen Yan stared at the undulating waveform on his phone screen, his brow tightly furrowed. Pei Yue and Yu Xiaotang stood not far away—one was lowering her head, rubbing a medicine pouch, while the other was biting into a candied hawthorn—yet the Spiritual Power frequencies emanating from their bodies seemed entangled by some invisible thread, drawing closer and closer.

“Warning: Biological resonance intensity has exceeded the threshold. Spiritual Veins backflow expected in three seconds.” The moment the system’s notification tone sounded, the silver needle in Pei Yue’s hand suddenly flew out, heading straight for the face of a nearby unconscious villager.

“Retract!”

Ye Zhao’s Sword Qi swept out, pinning the silver needle into the rock wall, where it trembled faintly. Everyone turned to look at Pei Yue, whose face had turned pale, her fingertips still twitching slightly.

“I didn’t control it…” Her voice was as light as the wind. “It felt like a force was pulling at my meridians.”

Shen Yan’s fingers moved swiftly across his phone, pulling up a dual Spiritual Power spectrum. When the two waveforms overlapped, they automatically generated a stable string of encoding, like some ancient authentication protocol.

“I understand,” he said, looking up. “You two are like two routers connected to the wrong network, your signals are colliding, and you’ve automatically formed a local area network.”

Yu Xiaotang blinked. “What do we do? Disconnect?”

“Why not try sharing a hotspot?” Luo Li suddenly spoke up, her cat ears twitching slightly. “My clan has a secret technique that uses pain as a channel to convert external forces into one’s own rhythm. If we use Demonic Fire as a relay, perhaps we can help Pei Yue stabilize her needle path.”

Shen Yan’s eyes lit up. “Brilliant! That’s like adding a firewall and setting up a proxy server.”

He immediately began modeling in his mind, breaking down Medicine Valley’s “Return to Origin Needle Technique” into neural pulse code and feeding it into the debug interface. Pei Yue took a deep breath and picked up the needle again. Luo Li stood behind her, a wisp of purple flame rising from her palm as she slowly pressed it against Pei Yue’s back.

“Go!”

The moment the silver needle pierced the acupuncture point, the purple flame coiled around the needle like silk, traveling along the meridians. A popup window appeared on the terminal: “Detected positive and negative energy counterbalance. Self-healing program activated!”

The black patterns on the villager’s skin began to fade, and his breathing steadied.

Pei Yue let out a sigh of relief, sweat beading on her temples. “So… it wasn’t me using the needle. My body found the path it needed to take on its own.”

Luo Li withdrew her Demonic Fire, her tail unconsciously curling. “My clan’s ancient texts mention ‘human-demon synergy,’ but no one has ever dared to try it. After all, everyone knows that Medical Cultivators fear evil fire burning their meridians, and the Demon Clan dislikes silver needles disrupting their energy.”

“Not anymore,” Shen Yan grinned. “What we’re doing is cross-border integrated development—an Android shell running iOS, still smooth as ever.”

Before he finished speaking, his phone suddenly vibrated.

【Alert: High-intensity Demonic Energy fluctuations detected in a rift on the cliff face one hundred meters away, mixed with fragmented data encoding. Match rate: ninety-seven percent—Target: Ye Shi’er】

“He’s here,” Shen Yan narrowed his eyes, looking toward the dark cave at the base of the cliff. “That bastard is up to his data puppet tricks again.”

Ye Zhao instantly drew her sword. “Let’s go cut him down.”

“Wait,” Shen Yan stopped her. “Last time, he was able to resurrect remnant souls, which means there’s a backup node behind him. We need to break the link first, then dismantle the core.”

Yu Xiaotang thrust her bamboo skewer into the ground. “Then I’ll set up a triple-seal talisman array to give him a forced restart.”

“You handle cutting off the energy circuit,” Shen Yan quickly assigned tasks. “Ye Zhao, weave a firm barrier with Sword Qi to create a ‘data cage’; Luo Li, focus on attacking the core hub, use Demonic Fire to directly burn the protocol stack; Pei Yue, prepare the ‘Spirit Demon Needle’—once I decompile the control layer, you’ll pierce the mother body for me.”

The five swiftly approached the cliff edge. A narrow crevice lay hidden behind scattered rocks, dark and devoid of light. As they neared, they could see several villagers pinned to the stone wall, with black light chains suspended above their heads, their essence slowly being extracted.

“Same old trick,” Shen Yan sneered. “Using living people as cache pools—do they really think I can’t format them?”

He tapped fiercely on his phone, lines of code cascading down like a waterfall.

“Ye Zhao!”

“Got it!” She flicked her sword tip, seven strands of Sword Qi crisscrossed into a net, sealing the flow of space. Black mist collided with the Sword Net, emitting a crackling sound like a short circuit.

“Yu Xiaotang!”

“Done!” Three golden-patterned Talisman Papers spun out, forming a triangular formation in midair. Talisman flames intertwined into chains, firmly clamping onto the source of the light chains.

“Luo Li!”

“Leave it to me.” She leaped up, Demonic Fire surged, transforming into a whip that lashed deep into the crevice. A muffled sound followed, and a certain hub exploded in response, black mist swirling like boiling water.

“Now!” Shen Yan shouted. “Pei Yue, pierce the mother body!”

Pei Yue bit her fingertip, a drop of blood fell onto the tip of the jade needle. She stepped forward, the Silver Needle carrying remnants of Demonic Fire, precisely piercing into a condensed core of black mist.

“Decompilation initiated—execute!”

Shen Yan pressed the confirm key.

The entire cliff face shook violently, black mist scattered like a snow avalanche. The villagers whose essence had been extracted all slumped weakly, the light chains shattered inch by inch, leaving only scorched remains on the ground, emitting faint smoke.

The wind quieted.

Shen Yan crouched down, picking up a chip from the ashes, its edges still stained with a bit of blood. He examined it closely and murmured, “This thing… isn’t driven purely by Demonic Energy.”

“What do you mean?” Ye Zhao walked over.

“There’s residual code inside.” He pointed to a faint engraving inside the chip. “It looks like a command package remotely written by someone, and the encryption method… feels familiar.”

Yu Xiaotang leaned in, still chewing Candied Hawthorn. “Who did it? Ye Shi’er?”

“No.” Shen Yan shook his head. “It’s the mastermind behind him. This technique… is exactly the same as the project that forced my father to death years ago.”

The air suddenly chilled.

Pei Yue gently leaned against a rock, the tip of her finger still retaining a trace of Demonic Fire warmth. Luo Li stood silently beside her, her tail naturally drooping, covering half of her body. Ye Zhao withdrew her sword into its sheath, her gaze falling on the entrance of the dark cave at the cliff base, which was as black as a well.

“Should we go down and check?” Yu Xiaotang asked.

Shen Yan didn’t answer, only looking down at the chip in his hand. The Terminal was parsing it; the progress bar reached halfway, then suddenly displayed a line of text:

【Identification successful: Command source—Shadowbone Valley old Server cluster, last access record: twenty years ago, midnight, user permission: Heaven’s Secret Holder】

His breath caught.

Twenty years ago—that was the night his father held him while being hunted.

It was also the same day the Saintess of Medicine Valley disappeared.

“So you’re all here.”

A clear, cold voice came.

Everyone turned.

Pei Yue remained seated, but her Medicine Pouch had opened unnoticed, its crystal outline glowing faintly. She looked up at Shen Yan, her eyes calm, unlike her usual self.

“I said, before my master passed away, he told me to wait for someone,” she whispered. “To wait for someone who could restart the Abyss Gate.”

Shen Yan’s heart tightened. “You… are you lucid?”

“Not lucid,” she smiled. “It’s the Memory Crystal in the Medicine Pouch speaking. It says—your father left a message.”

The wind swept past the cliff’s edge, lifting strands of her hair.

She said: “Find the end of the Source Code, and do not trust the living Shadow.“

Shen Yan clenched the chip tightly, his knuckles turning white.

Just then, a faint line of engraved text appeared on the surface of the chip, as if scratched with a needle:

“Brother, this time I fixed the Bug for you.”

(End of Chapter)