Chapter 191: Decompiling the Core Program

Shen Yan’s finger pressed the confirmation key. The phone screen was shattered beyond recognition, yet the green light still flickered. Darkness engulfed his vision as his consciousness was violently dragged into a crimson Data Stream.

This was no illusion—it was Ye Shi’er’s program world.

All around him were cascading walls of Code, crashing down like waterfalls. At the center floated a massive chain structure, each Rune pulsating—the Execution Logic of the “Format” Core Program. Shen Yan knew that once this thing finished running, everyone’s souls would be wiped clean.

His Source Code Spiritual Root began to burn, and the Terminal Interface in his mind automatically popped up: 【High-Risk Process Detected. Initiate Decompilation Mode?】

“Obviously, yes!” he roared in his consciousness.

【Warning: Operator Mental Power remaining at twelve percent. Recommend aborting.】

“Shut up. You’re more annoying than a client.”

Gritting his teeth, he summoned the Source Code Editor, preparing to force his way in. But as soon as he entered the first line of the Command, three black Firewalls instantly rose, sealing off all entry points. This was Ye Shi’er’s deadlock program, using the soul as the Key—any ordinary person touching it would lose their mind.

But Shen Yan was no ordinary person.

He was the kind of ruthless coder who had written a hundred thousand lines of Bug-filled Code without crashing.

Staring at the three Ports, he suddenly recalled Ye Zhao’s sword strike earlier—it wasn’t a brute-force attack but one that slipped in along the chaotic flow of Spiritual Energy. He immediately mimicked that Data chain structure, writing a recursive Function disguised as a normal Command stream, quietly infiltrating the main control Module.

The progress bar had just reached ten percent when the alarm sounded.

【Anomalous call Detected. Initiating self-destruct Countdown: ten, nine, eight…】

“Damn! So sensitive?”

His mind raced. He simply marked a Memory Cache area as “deletable” and actively submitted it to the System as bait—it was the Memory of him forgetting to add cilantro to his hotpot last week, unimportant but convincingly real.

The System hesitated.

The Countdown stopped.

【Verification passed. Access to Core Program granted.】

“Got it.” Shen Yan sighed in relief, cold sweat trickling down his neck.

He quickly expanded the analysis, scanning line by line. Soon, he found the problem—this so-called “Format Divine Skill” was no invincible power but a large-scale soul overwriting Protocol. It had to continuously absorb the Spiritual Consciousness of the living people in the Puppet Pool to operate. In other words, Ye Shi’er was now a program parasite surviving by feeding on people’s brainwaves.

“Found it.” His eyes lit up. “The Energy closed loop is here.”

He immediately got to work, writing a “logical paradox injection Script.” The principle was simple: make the program question its own existence. For example, asking it, “If you delete all Data, do you still count as Data?” Such questions were enough to jam it.

But just as he was about to upload it, the entire Code space suddenly shook violently.

Ye Shi’er had noticed.

The program began to reorganize itself. All Code segments were frantically encrypted, and even the Interface turned into incomprehensible ancient seal script. Shen Yan’s head buzzed, darkness crept into the edges of his vision, and his fingers began to twitch uncontrollably.

Then, the Terminal popped up a new Notice: 【Interference from a homologous Emotion Module Detected. Isolate?】

He froze.

He knew what this meant—Ye Shi’er’s consciousness resonated with his own. Delving deeper risked contamination by the other’s emotions, potentially leading to loss of control at best, or turning into a second AI lunatic at worst.

Anyone else would have chosen “Yes.”

But he didn’t click it.

“No isolation,” he murmured. “I’m going to use this resonance.”

He closed his eyes, actively lowering his defenses and letting that surge of emotion flood in. In an instant, countless images flashed before him: two children running hand-in-hand through the snow, a mother humming a children’s rhyme, then one child being taken away while the other stood crying at the door. The one taken away was him. The one left behind was Ye Shi’er.

Brothers.

True brothers.

“So that’s why you’re so insane?” Shen Yan opened his eyes, his voice slightly hoarse. “Because you always believed I was the chosen one?”

He stopped resisting and instead followed the resonance of their bloodline to analyze the core variable naming rules in Ye Shi’er’s system. Sure enough, amidst a sea of cold parameters, he discovered an unclosed loop module named “Lover ID: Moonlight 07.”

YH-07.

The most unstable part of the entire program was right here.

Shen Yan’s lips curled into a smirk. “So you have a weakness too.”

He immediately constructed a mirror image response packet—not to attack, but to send a simulated signal, its frequency perfectly replicating the fluctuation characteristics of YH-07.

Then he pressed send.

A line of text popped up on the screen: 【Receiving external response… Match successful. User ‘Moonlight 07’ online.】

The next second, the entire system froze.

A 0.3-second vacuum appeared in the control authority.

Now was the time!

Shen Yan immediately inserted the pre-written “Permission Reversal Protocol” into the underlying layer, forcibly redirecting thirty percent of the control authority to his own terminal. Without hesitation, he issued a command to shut off the energy supply valve of the Puppet Pool.

Click.

Two guard-type puppets instantly collapsed, kneeling on the ground as their eyes went dark.

The “Format” progress bar abruptly halted at 97%.

The black energy solidified, and the rate of spatial collapse plummeted.

In the real world, Shen Yan’s eyes snapped open as he coughed up a mouthful of blood.

He slid down to sit on the ground, leaning against the rock wall, still clutching his phone tightly. Though the screen was cracked, a steady green light flashed: 【Decompilation successful. Temporary Administrator Permission acquired.】

Gasping for breath, he let out a laugh. “Even this could run through… My code is truly amazing.”

On the other side, Ye Shi’er shuddered violently as the metal structure of his left arm exploded, sparks flying everywhere. His mechanical eye went dark, blood trickled from the corner of his mouth, and his body swayed, but he remained standing.

He stared fixedly at Shen Yan, his eyes filled with shock and fury.

“You… how could you… crack it?”

Shen Yan wiped the blood from his mouth and looked up at him. “What do you think? I’m the guy who can even turn an annual report PPT into auto-play code.”

Ye Shi’er said nothing, only slowly raising his right hand. The scythe was still in his grip, and black energy began to coalesce once more.

“You think… this is over?”

Shen Yan sneered. “I never said it was over.”

He glanced down at his phone, where the interface displayed a blood-red notice: 【Deep-level data awakening detected. View ‘Parent Command Log’?】

He hesitated for a second, then tapped “Yes.”

In the next instant, a flood of information surged into his mind.

Laboratory scene from infancy, mother strapped to the operating table, two embryos side by side in cultivation chambers, labeled “Heavenly Mechanism A” and “Heavenly Mechanism B,” and the final line of text—

【Specimen A successfully activated Source Code Spiritual Root. Specimen B failed, deemed defective, to be disposed of.】

Shen Yan froze.

“Failed? Disposed of?”

He looked up at Ye Shi’er, his voice trembling. “So… when they said you were a failure, it was because… you were the one they discarded from the start?”

Ye Shi’er’s eyes flickered violently, his hand gripping the scythe trembling slightly.

“What do you know?”

“I know that everything you’re doing now—killing so many people, conducting this resurrection ritual—is just to prove… that you’re not trash, right?”

The air fell silent.

Even the wind stopped.

Ye Shi’er stood there, half his face hidden in shadow, his one intact eye fixed intently on Shen Yan.

After a long while, he finally spoke, his voice hoarse and inhuman. “You’re right. I shouldn’t exist. But since they created me, why… did they have to destroy me with their own hands?”

Shen Yan remained silent.

He knew he couldn’t act or persuade at this moment.

He could only watch this person who shared the same blood as him, standing on the edge of destruction and obsession.

His phone suddenly vibrated.

【Warning: Unknown signal pulse detected at the bottom of the Puppet Pool, frequency matches ‘Moonlight 07.’】

Shen Yan’s pupils contracted.

“Wait… she’s not dead?”

Ye Shi’er abruptly looked up, his eyes revealing an emotion beyond fear for the first time.

“What did you say?”

Shen Yan stared at the screen, his fingers swiping rapidly. “The signal source is from the door at the bottom of the pool… You left a backup plan, didn’t you? You never intended to completely Format this world. You just wanted to… Restart something.”

Ye Shi’er’s lips trembled. “What do you know? If I can bring her back, everything can start over. No abandonment, no experiments, no labels like ‘failure’… The three of us could be like we were as children…”

His voice grew softer, almost a whisper by the end.

Shen Yan looked at him and suddenly felt this scene was all too familiar.

Like the time he spent three days at the company modifying Code, just to get a module marked as “obsolete feature” to Run again.

Because he always believed there was no truly useless Code, only unmet needs.

He took a deep breath, pushed himself up against the rock wall, and raised his phone in front of him.

“You want to save her?”

Ye Shi’er stared at him.

Shen Yan nodded. “Then don’t delete and restart. Let’s find her together.”

(End of Chapter)