Chapter 42: Sword Sect Old Ancestor: The True Meaning in the Gourd

Shen Yan’s phone was still suspended in mid-air, the progress bar stuck at 57%. The green light in his arm pulsed like an unfinished loop, twitching his nerves. His left hand trembled as he typed out a command: “Pause all background processes.” The screen flickered twice, and the blood-red patterns finally fell silent.

Just as he was about to help Ye Zhao up, a wave of wine aroma descended from above.

This was no ordinary scent of wine—it carried the aged fragrance of a three-hundred-year-old jar, steeped with sword spirits and capable of fermenting Spiritual Energy into a vortex. Immediately after, a mottled gourd shot through the air, its mouth opening wide. A milky-white airflow swirled into a tornado, sucking him straight inside.

“Hey—?”

Before he could finish, he was already flying.

Ye Zhao reached out to grab him, but her fingertips only brushed against a gentle yet unyielding Sword Intent. With a light push, she staggered back two steps, watching helplessly as Shen Yan was swept into the clouds by the gourd, disappearing toward the back mountains.

A laugh echoed in the air, hoarse and triumphant: “Girl, this lesson isn’t for you to understand, nor is it your turn to hear it.”

—Well, the Old Ancestor had personally summoned him. There was no refusing.

Shen Yan nearly face-planted upon landing, but his instincts kicked in just in time—a forward roll dissipated the impact. Looking up, he thought, What in the world is this place?

A desolate mountain wilderness, with stone tablets standing everywhere, each cracked with strange fissures, as if left behind by a program that had crashed and been forcibly shut down. The wind was light, but it sent chills down his spine, as though countless eyes were debugging code all around him.

Just as he was about to pull out his phone to check the map, a popup window suddenly appeared on the Terminal:

【High-dimensional Spiritual Power field detected】

【Suspected residual signals from the original Source Code Protocol】

【Recommend initiating low-latency reflective shield】

“Perfect timing,” Shen Yan thought with delight, tapping the screen with his finger. “Initiate Defense Module.”

A nearly transparent layer of light spread over his skin, like applying a protective film to a phone.

The next moment, the ground trembled.

A hunched old man emerged from the mist, clad in tattered gray robes, wearing worn-out straw sandals of indeterminate age, and holding the same gourd from earlier. He took a swig as he walked, wine dripping down his beard and solidifying into Runes upon hitting the ground.

“Kid,” the old man squinted at him. “Show me your Code swordsmanship.”

Shen Yan blinked. “Shouldn’t you start by asking, ‘Who are you?’”

“I ask, you answer,” the old man stomped his foot, causing the entire cliff to hum. Seven stone tablets lit up simultaneously with fractured patterns, forming an incomplete Formation. “One more word, and I’ll delete you like an invasive program.”

Shen Yan quietly tucked his phone closer to his chest. “Understood, client boss.”

He didn’t draw his sword or chant any incantations. Instead, he raised his phone, lightly tapped the screen, and ran the most basic Sword Qi simulation program. A pale blue Data Stream overflowed from his fingertip, coiling into a virtual small sword that slowly rotated in his palm.

The old man stared blankly for a moment, then grinned widely. “Ha! Interesting! Is fighting with phones all the rage in the Cultivation Realm now?”

“This isn’t fighting, it’s development,” Shen Yan said earnestly. “This is a low-code platform—drag-and-drop spellcasting, perfect for beginners.”

The old man laughed even louder, shaking loose pebbles from the mountain rocks. “Arrogant! But I like it!”

Before the words had fully left his mouth, he flicked his wrist, sending a rusted, broken sword flying out.

The sword was no more than three feet long, covered in patina, with several chips along its blade, looking as if it had been tossed into a scrap heap and buried for eight hundred years. Yet the moment it hit the ground, Shen Yan’s phone vibrated violently, and the terminal began refreshing frantically:

【Warning: Detected original protocol signature】

【Match with host’s Source Code Spiritual Root: 98.7%】

【Initiate version rollback?】

Shen Yan’s pupils contracted.

This sword… he had seen it before.

Not in reality, but in the images from memory fragments—on the day he woke up from the car accident seven years ago, the green characters flashing through his mind were arranged in exactly the same pattern as the cracks on this sword’s surface.

“Do you recognize this sword manual?” The old man’s voice suddenly turned cold, like the final notice before a system’s forced restart.

Shen Yan didn’t speak, staring at the broken sword as the data in his mind automatically aligned. Those cracks were not damage at all—they were encrypted source code, the underlying commands written into the Heavenly Dao in ancient times.

He took a deep breath and silently recited in his mind: “Confirm, version rollback.”

The phone screen instantly erupted with green light.

“Boom—!”

The entire cliff shook violently as the broken sword rose into the air, its rust flaking away to reveal flowing silver patterns within. In an instant, countless Sword Qi transformed into a Data Torrent, like a galaxy pouring downward, rushing straight toward Shen Yan’s brow.

His head felt as if it had been plugged into a terabit network cable, with a torrent of information flooding in—

Three hundred years ago, a Sword Cultivator had devoted his entire life to compiling the Way of the Sword into a heritable program. After failing ninety-nine times, he finally carved this “First-Generation Source Code Protocol.” He called himself “Old Ancestor,” sealed his lifelong knowledge into the broken sword, and vowed to wait for someone who could read the code.

That person was not a genius, not a descendant of gods, but—someone who could refactor the Way of the Sword using modern logic.

In other words… him.

“Hahahahaha—!”

The old man threw his head back and laughed, his laughter tearing through the clouds and scattering birds for miles around.

“I’ve waited three hundred years! Three hundred years! So many geniuses came to test the sword, all of them just copying homework! Reciting mantras! Only you—” He pointed at Shen Yan, his eyes blazing with intensity, “You actually know how to code?”

Shen Yan knelt on the ground, his hair whipped into disarray by the Data Storm, his ears filled with the hum of Code Flow. He opened his mouth, his throat too dry to speak, and finally managed to choke out:

“So… I’m not a pre-installed system? I’m… a genuine licensed user?”

“Bullshit!” The old man kicked him in the shoulder. “You’re the developer’s reincarnation! What license? You wrote this thing yourself!”

Shen Yan froze.

I wrote it?

Wait, so I’ve been working for myself all along?

Still dazed, his phone suddenly popped up a new notice:

【Protocol synchronizing】

【Identity verification passed】

【Unlocked permission: Cross-Cultivation Technique API Interface】

【New skill acquired: Reverse Decompilation · Way of the Sword Chapter】

Immediately after, the broken sword slowly descended, hovering before him. All traces of rust had vanished, and a line of small characters appeared on the blade:

“For the one who can decode”

Shen Yan reached out to take it. The moment his fingertips touched the hilt, a warm current surged up his arm and spread throughout his body, as if the system had finally connected to the genuine server.

He looked up at the old man. “So you’re the Sword Sect’s Old Ancestor?”

“Only now figuring it out?” The old man rolled his eyes. “If I hadn’t seen you casting spells with your phone, I wouldn’t have bothered with you. In the entire Cultivation Realm, you’re the only one who can recognize this as code, not runes.”

“Then why are you hiding here drinking?”

“I was waiting for you!” The old man took a swig. “Three hundred years ago, I calculated that some fool would come with a phone to modify my Sword Array. But I waited and waited, and only a bunch of bookworms showed up. It pissed me off so much I had to act crazy and drink my sorrows away every day.”

Shen Yan’s mouth twitched. “So you went bald waiting for an update?”

“Pretty much.” The old man patted his shoulder. “Now that you’re here, this Old Ancestor’s mission is complete. Time to retire.”

With that, he turned to leave.

“Wait!” Shen Yan called out. “What about Ye Zhao? She said her mother left a piece of broken jade and told her to protect the person with flowing Code blood… What’s that about?”

The old man paused, glanced back at him meaningfully. “Why do you think she became your Receiver?”

“What do you mean?”

“Thirty years ago, a woman came to me holding a piece of broken jade.” The old man lowered his voice. “She said she dreamed of a child in the future, with light planted in his heart. She begged me to leave a Backdoor—so that if that day came, she could catch him.”

Shen Yan shuddered.

“That woman… her surname was Ye.”

The wind suddenly stilled.

Shen Yan sat on the ground, holding the broken sword, with only the Terminal’s final Notice echoing in his ears:

【Synchronization Complete】

【New Task: Repair Sword Tomb Main Array】

【Requires Resonance of Four Female Auras】

He looked toward the direction of the mountain corridor below, as if he could still see Ye Zhao sitting there, the faint glow of that drop of blood lingering at the tip of her finger.

So from the very beginning, someone had been waiting for him.

Not the System, not fate—a person.

He grinned, a bit foolishly.

“Seems like I’m not the only one writing Code in this game.”

He pushed himself up from the ground, but as soon as he steadied himself, he sensed something was off.

A faint, metallic scent hung in the air, like rust mixed with rain-soaked earth.

He looked down and saw a drop of dark red liquid seeping from a crack in the stone beside his foot. The moment it hit the ground, it solidified into a half-formed, fragmented character, like a truncated Error Reporting Code.

Shen Yan’s eyes turned cold.

Before he could react, the broken sword behind him suddenly hummed, its tip pointing straight toward the dense forest in the northeast.

At the same moment, his phone flashed a Warning:

【External Debug Request Detected】

【Source: Unknown】

【Allow Access?】

He stared at the drop of blood, slowly raised his phone, and hovered his thumb over the word “Deny.”

The wind rustled his plaid shirt, and the broken sword trembled faintly in his palm.

In the distant woods, a withered leaf silently drifted down, landing on the cracked ground.

(End of Chapter)