Chapter 39: Night Raid Warning: The Wave of Killing Intent in the Terminal

The medicine bowl flipped in mid-air, its steam still lingering.

Shen Yan’s pupils contracted sharply. His fingers were already pressed against the phone screen as he blurted out, “This soup smells pretty—”

Before he could finish, Ye Zhao’s sword moved.

The Frost Soul Sword’s icy gleam surged, a crescent arc slicing horizontally. The medicine bowl shattered into porcelain fragments mid-air, its contents freezing into icy beads before hitting the ground, clattering and scattering everywhere.

But Shen Yan didn’t let up. Instead, he grabbed Ye Zhao’s wrist and hissed, “Don’t stop! There are three more!”

Green text flashed frantically on the phone interface: 【High-Concentration Killing Intent Wave Locked】【Three Hostile Sources Approaching】【Target: Ye Zhao’s Residence】【Distance: Three Hundred Paces, Speed: Foundation Establishment Late Stage or Above】

His fingertips swiftly swiped across the screen, pulling up the thermal tracking program. A three-dimensional map instantly unfolded, showing three red dots advancing in a triangular formation. Their Spiritual Power Fluctuations were suppressed extremely low, almost blending with the night breeze. If not for the Terminal’s built-in Anomaly Monitoring System still running, they would have gone undetected.

“The Shadow Erosion people have learned their lesson,” Shen Yan gritted his teeth. “No more underhanded tricks—straight to assassination.”

Ye Zhao raised an eyebrow, the Sword Qi in her sleeve vibrating faintly. “Coming for me?”

“Coming for you.” Shen Yan tightened his grip on the Dust-Severing Sword. “But while the target is you, they’re the ones executing it. As for settling the score behind the scenes—that’ll still be me.”

He turned and strode away, his steps steady, each footfall landing precisely at the junction of eaves and shadows, like a Pointer gliding through Code. Ye Zhao followed closely behind. The two moved with seamless coordination, their breathing rhythms gradually synchronizing.

At the corridor’s corner, the wind suddenly stilled.

Shen Yan halted his steps. A Warning popped up on his phone: 【Unknown Threat Connected】【Data Scythe Detected】【Attack Trajectory Contains ‘Error 404’ Code Segment】

He abruptly sidestepped. A crimson arc of light grazed past the tip of his nose, tearing a rift in the air like the afterimage left by a crashing Program, its edges flickering with an eerie blue-white glow.

“Who?!” Shen Yan growled. His phone automatically Initiated defense preloading, his fingertips already inputting Commands.

A Dark Shadow slowly materialized. Half of a Bronze Mask gleamed coldly, the other side of the face hidden in darkness. A Scythe dripped with dark red liquid in their hand—not blood, but some kind of solidified Spiritual Power Residue.

The other party didn’t answer, merely raising their hand lightly and sweeping the scythe blade.

Space split open again, this time aimed directly at Shen Yan’s chest, moving at a speed beyond human reaction.

“Folded Space·Offset Mode, Initiate!” Shen Yan slammed his phone. His body shifted sideways by half a foot at the critical moment, but the hem of his clothes was caught by the scythe, instantly shredding into fragments.

His heart pounded violently, his mind flooded with the earlier “Error 404” Notice.

This wasn’t an ordinary Magical Artifact.

This was something capable of disrupting the rules of spells—like a Virus invading the System Core, specifically designed to kill Logic chains.

“Who are you?” Shen Yan stared into the eyes hidden behind the mask. “Why target… me?”

Ye Shi’er let out a light snort, his voice hoarse yet carrying a faintly familiar cadence, like the prelude to a Children’s Rhyme buried deep in Memory.

He didn’t answer. The scythe rose again. This time, a string of twisted Runes appeared on the blade—the ancient seal-script character for “death.” Yet, between the strokes were interspersed binary Encoding, clearly a man-made hybrid Killing Intent Program.

Shen Yan’s pupils contracted sharply.

This wasn’t fucking Cultivation—this was a hacker attack-and-defense battle!

He quickly activated the basic defense protocol and was about to input the verification key when his phone suddenly lagged. The screen flickered twice, displaying a line of text: 【Insufficient System Resources】【Recommend Closing Background Programs】

“I only have a body temperature monitoring app running in the background!” Shen Yan nearly cursed out loud. “You call that resource-intensive?”

Ye Shi’er advanced step by step, each swing of his scythe stirring up waves of data turbulence. Shen Yan’s terminal began to crash frequently, and even the thermal tracking map started to pixelate.

“Forced restart!” Shen Yan bit his fingertip, drew a blood sigil on the screen, and shouted, “Load—Primary Shield Protocol!”

A translucent data barrier instantly formed, blocking the horizontal slash of the scythe. The shockwave numbed his palms, nearly causing him to drop his phone.

But just as the barrier held, a new notice popped up on the terminal: 【Warning: Temporal Rift Energy Fluctuation Detected】【Source: Target Individual】【Correlation: 73.6%】

Shen Yan’s heart clenched.

This value… was too high.

It wasn’t something just any enemy could match.

He abruptly looked up, his gaze fixed on the eyes behind Ye Shi’er’s mask—in those eyes, a flash of green light identical to his own flickered for an instant, like the feedback signal during a system self-check.

“You… have also connected to the source code?” Shen Yan’s voice tightened.

Ye Shi’er remained silent, but his movements paused slightly. The scythe hung in mid-air, the blue light along its cracks flickering intermittently.

A sudden realization struck Shen Yan.

Twins, the car accident seven years ago, the awakening of the spiritual root… all the clues pieced together like blocks of code.

The person before him wasn’t just aware of the source code.

He was a branch split from the same system.

“Are you… a backup?” Shen Yan ventured to ask.

Ye Shi’er finally spoke, his voice low and hoarse: “I am the deleted line.”

As his words fell, the scythe moved again. This time, it wasn’t a straight thrust but traced a closed circular arc. In the air, the words “error404” appeared, resembling the error reporting interface of a system crash.

Shen Yan’s pupils contracted sharply. He immediately realized—this wasn’t an attack trajectory; it was vulnerability injection!

He leaped backward, frantically typing commands on his phone: “Close external protocol ports! Activate all firewalls!”

The data barrier instantly thickened, but the “error404” characters crawled along its edges like worms, attempting to infiltrate the internal logic layer.

“Damn it! This thing can self-replicate?” Sweat beaded on Shen Yan’s forehead as his fingers moved so fast they left afterimages on the screen.

Just then, the sound of a sword rang out from afar.

Ye Zhao had quietly flanked them. The Frost Soul Sword flashed coldly, its Sword Qi weaving like silk threads toward Ye Shi’er’s wrist.

Without turning his head, Ye Shi’er swung his scythe backward, unleashing a torrent of data turbulence that shattered the Sword Qi and rebounded a wisp of black mist, hurtling straight toward Ye Zhao’s face.

“Watch out!” Shen Yan shouted, forcibly interrupting the current program and switching to the emergency ally-protection protocol. A data chain materialized out of thin air, pulling Ye Zhao back half a step.

The black mist brushed past her shoulder, landing on the ground and corroding a patch of scorched earth.

“You can protect her for a moment,” Ye Shi’er said coldly. “But you can’t protect her life.”

“I’m not protecting her life,” Shen Yan replied, tucking his phone into his chest, gripping his sword with one hand and pressing the other against the wall. “I’m protecting—the present.”

Spiritual Power erupted from his palm, instantly activating the rune-embedded floor tiles throughout the entire corridor. It turned out to be an automated alert array he had secretly buried earlier, now fully activated, spreading a net of blue light.

“You didn’t know, did you?” Shen Yan grinned. “While sweeping the floor yesterday, I took the opportunity to upgrade the entire Sword Sect’s system.”

The runes on the ground lit up one after another, forming a triple interception matrix that closed in directly under Ye Shi’er’s feet.

For the first time, Ye Shi’er frowned. Swinging his scythe horizontally, he severed two chains of light, but the third curved around, attacking from behind.

As he sidestepped to evade, Shen Yan seized the chance to charge forward, the Dust-Severing Sword aimed straight for his throat.

“Clang—”

A metallic clash exploded.

Ye Shi’er raised his hand to block, using a mechanism at the end of the scythe’s handle to lock the blade in place.

The two stood face-to-face, their masks and glasses mere inches apart.

Shen Yan could see his own reflection in the bronze surface, and through the gaps in the mask, the faint outline of a dimple, achingly familiar.

“What do you really want?” he growled.

Ye Shi’er remained silent for two seconds before speaking softly, “To see if your life is worth living.”

Before the words faded, he stomped his foot, and his entire form dissipated like a Data Stream, scattering into countless fragments of Black Code, vanishing into the night breeze.

Shen Yan’s sword sliced through empty air, causing him to stagger half a step.

His phone immediately alerted: 【Target Disengaged from Tracking】 【Residual Energy Signature: Homologous Spiritual Power】 【Activity Level: Not Zeroed】

“He escaped?” Ye Zhao sheathed her sword, her brow furrowed tightly.

“He didn’t escape.” Shen Yan stared at the empty end of the corridor. “It was a withdrawal instruction execution.”

He lowered his head to look at his phone. The Terminal was still refreshing the log: 【Detected Residual Encrypted Signal】 【Content Unparseable】 【Transmission Time: Three Years Ago】 【Title: Brother, Are You Still Alive?】

Shen Yan’s finger paused.

Three years ago? Back then, he was still writing code, working overtime until dawn every day. What brother?

But the System wouldn’t lie.

He slowly raised his head, looking in the direction of Ye Zhao’s residence.

Three red dots were still moving, faster now.

“Don’t just stand there.” He hoisted the Dust-Severing Sword onto his shoulder. “The real work is just beginning.”

Ye Zhao glanced at him and suddenly asked, “Just how many things in your phone do I not know about?”

Shen Yan grinned. “Not many. Just an app capable of altering the Heavenly Dao.”

He strode forward, his steps resolute.

Behind him, moonlight spilled over the ground where the battle had just taken place. A few charred remnants of Talisman Paper swirled in the wind, one of them faintly inscribed with two words: Cycle of Reincarnation.

(End of Chapter)