Chapter 40: Bloodbath Under Moonlight: Infinite Loop Traps a Powerful Enemy

The moment the medicine bowl shattered into icy fragments, Shen Yan had already dashed out.

He didn’t glance at the frozen soup splattered on the ground, nor did he care about the Talisman Paper scraps drifting in the wind. His fingers swept across the phone screen, leaving a trail of afterimages. At the end of the corridor, three sources of hostility were rapidly approaching, their red dots nearly colliding with the doorframe of Ye Zhao’s residence.

“Can you use that move you just performed again?” Ye Zhao followed him, her sword tip trembling slightly, the cold aura still lingering.

“No.” Shen Yan didn’t look up. “But I’ll write a new Program to let him taste what an Infinite Loop is.”

As he spoke, he abruptly thrust the Dust-Severing Sword into a Rune fissure on the ground—the Array Eye Node he had secretly altered while sweeping last night. A flash of silver light, and the tiles of the entire corridor began to shimmer with blue patterns, like a circuit board awakened.

“Automated alert array, connect to main control Permission.” He murmured softly, a bead of blood seeping from his fingertip as he drew an initiation symbol on the screen. “Target: Code fragment reassembly entity. Lock coordinates—ice bead core!”

The phone vibrated once, displaying a Notice: 【Reassembly probability predicted: 83%】【Lock successful】

The next second, Ye Shi’er’s figure indeed slowly coalesced at the center of the frozen medicine soup. Black mist surged, his Scythe not yet raised, Shen Yan shouted loudly: “Initiate! Infinite Loop Program—attack trajectory repeated 1,024 times!”

Boom!

Rings of Data ripples erupted from the floor tiles, transforming into transparent chains that coiled toward Ye Shi’er. Each chain replicated his attack movements from the previous second, lunging from all directions simultaneously, like a thousand people striking with the same blade.

Ye Shi’er’s pupils contracted. His sickle blade swept horizontally, shattering the first illusion, but the second, the third… the hundredth followed relentlessly. Every parry he made was recorded and replicated by the System, pressing back against him.

“This… is not a technique.” He whispered, his voice carrying a hint of fluctuation. “This is… a cage of rules.”

Shen Yan grinned. “You’re right. I’m not a Cultivation practitioner, I’m a Programmer. And you—are now a Bug.”

The chains tightened further, Ye Shi’er’s form began to distort, like an Image with poor Signal. He suddenly looked up, his mouth beneath the mask gently parting, a melody slowly flowing out:

“Moonlight bright, shines on riverbed, brother Encoding till dawn…”

Shen Yan’s mind buzzed.

This tune… why is it the same rhythm as the Terminal Warning tone?

He looked down at his phone. The Screen was flashing wildly: 【External audio injection Detected】【Frequency match: 97%】【System Logic oscillating】

Damn!

The Infinite Loop Program began to tremble, replication layers plummeting from 1,024 to 500, 300, 100… on the verge of Collapse.

“Ye Zhao!” Shen Yan roared fiercely. “Give me a strand of your Sword Qi! Pure!”

Ye Zhao didn’t ask why. The Frost Soul Sword sliced through the air, a Silver Thread-like Sword Qi detached from the blade, shooting straight into the Data Barrier fissure.

Just as the Sword Qi touched the Code chains, a sudden anomaly occurred—the silver light fused with the blue patterns, generating countless black-and-white intertwined symbols, sweeping across the scene like a binary torrent.

“Compression Protocol, initiate!” Shen Yan gritted his teeth, inputting the final line of Command. “Closed-loop execution, retain only one layer!”

The originally chaotic thousand-layer Loop instantly collapsed into a single-ring chain, becoming even more condensed, fiercely strangling Ye Shi’er’s neck.

“Ugh—!”

A muffled groan forced Ye Shi’er to reveal his True Body, his scythe stuck mid-air, his body cracking with fine fissures like pixel misalignment before a Program crashes.

Shen Yan gave him no chance to catch his breath, drawing his sword and lunging forward. The Dust-Severing Sword slashed across Ye Shi’er’s left shoulder, sending a spray of blood droplets.

Strangely, those drops of blood did not fall to the ground but hovered in the air, flickering with a faint green light, eerily resembling scrolling characters in a Terminal Log.

“That’s not blood you’re bleeding,” Shen Yan gasped, staring at the green glow. “It’s Code.”

Ye Shi’er staggered back, supporting himself against the wall with his left hand, blood seeping from the edges of his mask. He didn’t flee. Instead, he chuckled softly and continued humming that Children’s Rhyme, but the tune had changed:

“The Code written by little brother, can’t run through a lifetime…”

Shen Yan’s heart jolted violently.

The title of that unparsable Encrypted Signal from three years ago suddenly surfaced—”Big brother, are you still alive?”

He stared fixedly at the faintly visible dimple beneath the other’s mask, his throat dry. “Who are you? Why are you singing in my language?”

The air fell silent for a moment.

Ye Shi’er raised his hand, his fingertip tracing the crack on his mask as if touching some long-lost Memory. He didn’t answer, only slowly turned around, his figure gradually merging into the shadows.

But just as he was about to disappear, that murmur still drifted over:

“I just… wanted to see if the Code you wrote could run through this lifetime.”

The wind ceased.

The corridor returned to silence, only the blue patterns on the floor tiles still faintly pulsing, displaying the green characters: “Loop Executing.”

Shen Yan leaned on his sword, a sharp pain shooting through his left arm. Looking down, he saw his sleeve already soaked through with blood, drops sliding down the hilt and seeping into the crevices of the Runes.

He tried to raise his hand to wipe his sweat but found his fingertips numb, a buzzing in his head as if two Systems were forcibly synchronizing.

“Are you alright?” Ye Zhao approached, her brow furrowed.

“I’m fine,” he forced a smile. “It’s just… a bit like getting slapped by the product manager after pulling an all-nighter fixing a Bug.”

Ye Zhao didn’t smile, her gaze falling on his arm. “The bleeding won’t stop.”

“Minor issue,” Shen Yan said while trying to close the Loop Program in his phone. “Once I wrap this up…”

But the Screen suddenly flashed with red text: 【Warning: Detected residual Energy of the same origin】【Match rate increased to 91.2%】【Recommend immediate disconnection】

His finger froze.

Same origin… again.

This wasn’t a coincidence. The green light in the blood, the rhythm of the Children’s Rhyme, the dimple beneath the mask—all pointed to the same answer, one he dared not dwell on.

“Who exactly are you…” he murmured, his voice hoarse.

Ye Zhao looked at him, then suddenly reached out and pushed him toward a corridor pillar. “Don’t just stand there. The enemy might still have a backup plan.”

Shen Yan leaned against the wall, breathing heavily. His phone was still lit, the Loop Program still Running, but he felt his own consciousness beginning to spin as well, like falling into some recursive Function he couldn’t exit.

“The formation I set up… shouldn’t drain Mental Power this much,” he frowned. “Unless… the System is resisting something.”

Ye Zhao stared at the string of green warning text and suddenly said, “That thing in your phone—has anyone ever seen it before?”

Shen Yan was taken aback. “How did you know?”

“Because every time you speak, it’s like you’re arguing with someone invisible.” She paused. “And… the ‘programs’ you write never use incantations.”

Shen Yan gave a bitter smile. “So I’m the least like a cultivator.”

“But you’ve saved me three times.” Ye Zhao’s voice was soft. “First with the automatic Sword Control Script, then with the invisible Clone, and now… this time.”

Shen Yan didn’t respond. He looked down at his bleeding wrist and suddenly noticed a drop of blood trickling along the cracks in the floor tiles, silently merging with the Code he had embedded earlier in the Formation’s core.

Immediately after, a new message popped up on his phone:

【Anomaly Data Access】 【Source: Unknown】 【Content: Countdown Initiated】

Before he could react, the Runes along the entire corridor suddenly flared, their blue light shifting to a dark crimson, as if some external force had seized control of their Permission.

“Something’s wrong.” He looked up sharply. “Someone is reverse debugging my Program!”

Ye Zhao’s sword was already half-drawn, her gaze sharp as lightning as she scanned their surroundings.

Shen Yan stared intently at the Screen, his fingers trembling as he entered a query Command.

Just then, a faint sigh drifted on the wind, like an echo crawling out from the depths of Memory:

“This time… let me protect your Cycle of Reincarnation.”

(End of Chapter)