Chapter 204: The Crisis of the Four Women: Signs of Disappearance

The wind stopped.

Shen Yan had just breathed a sigh of relief when the countdown on his phone screen reached zero. Before the program run success prompt could pop up, he suddenly sensed something was wrong.

The tip of Ye Zhao’s finger was turning pale, like an old TV screen with poor signal, the edges beginning to blur and turn transparent. She looked down at her hand, frowned, and tried to channel her Spiritual Power, but there was no response.

“What’s going on?” Her voice was steady, but a flicker of panic flashed in her eyes.

Shen Yan rushed over and grabbed her wrist. The touch was still there, but her body temperature was dropping. He immediately opened the Terminal, pulled up the anchor protocol, and frantically typed Code.

“Don’t move, let me check.”

Before he finished speaking, Pei Yue coughed lightly, and her Medicine Pouch slipped from her shoulder, hitting the ground with a dull thud. She looked down at her arm, where the skin at the cuff was gradually fading, like pencil lines being erased by an eraser.

“I… can’t remember who gave me this jade hairpin,” she murmured. “I remembered it just yesterday.”

Luo Li suddenly raised her hand to touch her ears. Her cat ears were still there, but their outlines had grown illusory. She gritted her teeth. “It’s not an injury, nor is it poison… We’re being ‘deleted.’”

Yu Xiaotang, still holding half a Candied Hawthorn in her mouth, suddenly spat it out, her face pale. “It’s so bitter… The sweetness is gone? Even the taste can’t be retained?”

The four women stood in a circle, their bodies gradually emitting a faint glow, growing more and more transparent. They could still speak, their consciousness clear, but their Spiritual Power was completely unusable—because their identities were being corrected by the Timeline.

This world did not have them.

A vein throbbed on Shen Yan’s forehead as his fingers flew across his phone. “Impossible! You clearly crossed over with me! How could the System judge you as Anomalous Variables?”

He forcibly accessed the Heavenly Dao Background Log, searching through recent operation records. Finally, in a stream of encrypted Data, he discovered a hidden Command:

【Executor: Unknown】

【Operation: Batch Delete Anomalous Variables】

【Target: Y.Z, P.Y, L.L, Y.XT】

Four abbreviations, all the initials of their names.

“Who did this?” Shen Yan growled, slamming his phone on the ground before picking it up again. “I’ll add you all to the registry right now!”

He rewrote the reverse entropy maintenance Program, using his own Source Code Spiritual Root as the Server to simulate the Life Frequencies of the four women, forcibly mounting them into the current Timeline.

【Warning: Targets are not on the current Timeline registration list】

【Suggest terminating the connection, otherwise the Host’s Mental Power will suffer irreversible loss】

“Shut up!” He slapped the Screen. “I’m the Heavenly Dao Patch administrator! If I say they can exist, they can exist!”

Green light overflowed from his phone, wrapping around the wrists of the four women. The speed of their transparency slowed but did not stop.

Sweat beaded on Shen Yan’s forehead, and his breathing grew heavy. He knew this trick wouldn’t last long. His Mental Power was draining like a leaking bucket.

Ye Zhao watched his trembling fingers and whispered, “Don’t push yourself. You can’t save everyone.”

“Save your breath,” he said without looking up. “The last time you said that, you rushed forward to block the poison needle. This time, it’s my turn to be the protagonist.”

Pei Yue smiled weakly, leaning against the stone tablet. “Every time you say something like that, you end up blowing up the furnace.”

“So be it,” Shen Yan grinned. “At worst, we’ll all turn to dust together. That still counts as living and dying together.”

Luo Li narrowed her eyes. “If you dare die, I’ll burn you to charcoal with Demonic Fire and then revive you.”

Yu Xiaotang sniffled. “Brother, I’m scared… I won’t get to see tomorrow’s candied hawthorn.”

Shen Yan paused, his eyes growing hot. But he didn’t look up, only finishing the last line of code.

“Run! Lock their existence for me!”

The phone buzzed, green light erupting violently. The four women’s bodies stabilized for a few seconds.

But the next moment, black mist descended from the sky.

A Devil Clan general stepped through the air, clad in obsidian armor, holding a broken ancient sword. What dripped from the sword tip wasn’t blood, but clusters of flashing image fragments—among them, a figure with silver hair and white robes, strikingly similar to the woman in Ye Shi’er’s memory.

He landed without a sound, standing five zhang away, sneering.

“Outsiders will ultimately return to zero.”

Shen Yan looked up, his gaze cold as a blade.

“What are you? Who gave you the right to decide who should exist?”

The Devil general raised his broken sword, pointing at the four women. “They shouldn’t be here. On the seventh day of the Divine War, there were never five intruders. History cannot be altered.”

“History?” Shen Yan scoffed. “Your so-called Divine War is just a piece of rotten code that keeps restarting, isn’t it? Who gave you the permission to delete user data?”

“Permission?” The Devil general chuckled lightly. “I am the Liquidator, specializing in eliminating paradox bodies. You brought them here, creating errors. Now, I will fix them.”

He swung his sword, black mist coalescing into a giant blade that slashed straight down.

Shen Yan roared, pouring all his remaining code into the defensive array. The phone screen instantly cracked, blood seeping from his fingertips and flowing down the metal frame.

He lunged forward, spreading his arms, shielding the four women.

“As long as I’m still running ‘Shen Yan.exe,’ you’re not data trash!”

Green light exploded, forming a hemispherical barrier. The black mist blade collided with the light membrane, emitting a piercing friction sound, sparks flying everywhere.

The barrier trembled violently, developing fine cracks.

The four women lay behind him, their bodies still translucent, consciousness intact. Ye Zhao stared fixedly at his back, her lips moving but unable to make a sound.

Pei Yue tried to raise her hand but found she couldn’t even move her fingertips.

Luo Li’s vertical pupils contracted, her Demon Power completely suppressed.

Yu Xiaotang watched the half-eaten candied hawthorn roll in the dust, tears silently falling.

Shen Yan’s legs trembled, his knees almost buckling. The System frantically issued warnings:

【Mental Power overflow danger】

【Program crash risk 97%】

【Source Code Spiritual Root overload, recommend immediate termination】

He bit the tip of his tongue, forcing himself to stay conscious.

“I don’t believe in fate,” he whispered. “What programmers hate most are predetermined endings.”

He supported himself with one hand on the ground, the other clutching the phone tightly, squeezing out the last bit of Mental Power.

“Listen to me—no matter who wrote this program, I’m changing the main storyline today!”

He suddenly looked up, eyes bloodshot, staring straight at the Devil general.

“You delete them? I’ll inject personality backups in reverse! You clear the memory? I’ll build permanent cache! You format? Even if I become a virus, I’ll stubbornly stay in the system!”

The Devil general’s eyes flickered slightly, seemingly not expecting a mortal to resist Karma erasure.

“Stubborn,” he said coldly. “Then be erased together.”

Black mist gathered again, thicker than before, carrying the scent of decaying time. The broken sword raised high, the entire battlefield seeming to freeze.

Shen Yan slowly straightened up, even though his entire body was shaking.

He glanced back at the four women.

Ye Zhao gave him a nod.

Pei Yue smiled.

Luo Li blinked.

Yu Xiaotang stuck out her tongue playfully.

He turned and faced the demon general, taking a step forward.

Green light spread beneath his feet, like a path paved by a torrent of Code.

He raised his phone, its shattered Screen still flickering with the final line of command:

【Initiate: Guardian Protocol · Final Version】

Then, he charged forward.

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(End of Chapter)