Chapter 59: Night Assault in the Mist: The True Identity of the Dark Shadow

Shen Yan stared at the fleeting shadow of the copper coin hair tie on his phone screen, his fingertip poised to tap the confirmation key for “Initiate Defense.” Suddenly, his head felt heavy, as if someone were drilling into his temples with an electric drill. The previous wave of decompilation had nearly drained him, leaving the phone casing hot enough to fry an egg. In the lower-left corner of the system interface, a line of small text floated: “Mental Power remaining: 17%. Recommend immediate shutdown for rest.”

Gritting his teeth, he tucked the phone into his robe and prepared to manually form seals to set up a defensive array. Just then, a cold hand clamped around his wrist.

“Don’t move.” Pei Yue’s voice was low, like wind whistling through bamboo cracks. “This aura… it’s not Ye Shi’er.”

Shen Yan froze. “But the signal characteristics match perfectly.”

“Matching doesn’t mean it’s him.” Pei Yue released him and pulled three silver needles from her sleeve. The needle tails were engraved with crooked runes—spiritual patterns she had modified herself for spirit gathering. Outsiders couldn’t decipher them, but Shen Yan recognized them at a glance as the binary encoding logic he had casually taught her last week.

She crouched down, driving the silver needles into the cracks of the stone floor at specific angles while silently reciting an incantation. Shen Yan recognized it as a fragment of the “Mystic Meridian Spirit-Guiding Art,” but the rhythm was disrupted, as if a standard function had been forcibly altered into a recursive call.

“Are you running a custom script?” he whispered.

Pei Yue ignored him. Biting the tip of her tongue, she spat a mouthful of vital blood onto the needle tips. A blue light suddenly erupted, rippling through the air as if an invisible membrane had been torn apart.

In the eastern section of the library, between the bookshelves, mist churned violently. A dark shadow twisted and contorted, its form swelling and shrinking erratically, its movements stiff like a lagging video stream. It tried to retreat but was firmly locked in place by the magnetic field formed by the silver needles, each step feeling like climbing a steep slope in reverse.

“Code injection failed, initiating physical disguise,” Shen Yan narrowed his eyes. “A typical low-level imitation technique, not even properly written with anomaly handling.”

Before he finished speaking, the dark shadow exploded with a puff of white smoke, revealing a familiar face—it was the young medicine boy who had been clutching a pill furnace and wailing in despair during the day.

The boy knelt on the ground, trembling all over, his coarse cloth robe stained with dust. In his arms, he clutched a charred fragment of a jade slip.

“I… I didn’t mean to…” His voice trembled. “I just wanted to look at that program… just a glance…”

Shen Yan frowned. “Which program?”

“The one for automatic alchemy!” The medicine boy looked up, tears filling his eyes. “You don’t know… every day, people are punished for failing to refine pills, forced to kneel before incense burners. The light punishments leave them bruised and bleeding, the severe ones shatter their meridians… I’ve seen it with my own eyes—a senior brother blew himself up during alchemy, convulsing on the ground with no one to save him…”

Trembling, he raised the jade slip fragment. “I wanted to make a copy, but as soon as I connected, I was hit with a warning about insufficient permissions… I thought, maybe I could sneak in and look at the original code… But as soon as I touched the bookshelf, I heard the alarm go off…”

Shen Yan and Pei Yue exchanged a glance.

“So, you weren’t sent by anyone?” Pei Yue asked.

“No! Absolutely not!” The medicine boy shook his head desperately. “I just… I just wanted so badly to learn this technique… Senior Brother Shen, you must be incredibly skilled to write a program like that, right? I want to become skilled too, at least… at least to save a few more fellow disciples from dying…”

The air fell silent for a moment.

Shen Yan looked down at the child—his face smeared with snot and tears, fingers red from the cold, nail beds filled with crushed medicinal herbs. This was no spy, just an ordinary person crushed by the system for too long, finally grasping at a lifeline.

He suddenly remembered his own state when he first transmigrated: hunched over his desk fixing bugs, called useless by others, even having to ration his coffee. If someone had been willing to teach him something real back then, he would have knelt and kowtowed too.

“Get up.” Shen Yan sighed, removing the wristband from his arm. “You can learn the basic parameters, but you must not alter the core algorithm, and you absolutely cannot bring it into the archives.”

The Medicine Boy froze. “You… you’re not arresting me?”

“Why would I arrest you?” Shen Yan said casually while exporting a simplified version of the program. “I’m not an administrator. The rules of Medicine Valley aren’t mine to enforce.”

The wristband glowed green as the data transfer completed. The Medicine Boy held it, his hands trembling like a sieve.

“There’s more,” Pei Yue said softly. “Starting tomorrow at chen hour, come to the Medicine Hut to find me. I’ll teach you to identify medicinal properties, and… keep your hands in check.”

The boy immediately knelt, kowtowed heavily, then turned and stumbled away, his figure disappearing down the corridor.

Shen Yan gazed at the empty bookshelf area and suddenly asked, “Do you think Xie Wujiu might use this against us?”

“He has his own troubles right now,” Pei Yue shook her head. “But what puzzles me is, why tonight of all nights? Who led him here?”

Shen Yan didn’t answer, instead lowering his head to reopen his phone. As the System Interface loaded, a new notice popped up:

【Warning: Anomalous program copy replication detected】

【Replication path: Unknown Terminal → Jade Slip Fragment (No. 047)】

His pupils contracted. “Damn.”

“What is it?”

“That jade slip… he brought it from the alchemy room, right?”

“Probably.”

“Which means someone had already planted a receiver, waiting for him to touch it?” Shen Yan sneered. “This wasn’t stealing knowledge—it was fishing.”

Pei Yue’s expression shifted. “You mean… someone deliberately let him break in just to get your Code?”

“What else?” Shen Yan stared at the screen. “How could an ordinary Medicine Boy precisely locate the signal access point? And just happen to carry a jade slip fragment capable of receiving data? This script is too neatly written.”

The two fell silent for a moment.

The night wind swept through the corridor, making the candle flames flicker and the bookshelf shadows sway back and forth. Just as Shen Yan was about to speak, his phone vibrated once.

A new message appeared:

【External Device requesting connection】

【Device ID: Childhood Old Account-207】

His breath hitched.

He remembered that number.

It was the first programming account he’d used in the orphanage, later sealed away along with those memories. In theory, no device should still be able to access it.

Pei Yue sensed something was wrong and gently grasped his other hand.

Warmth seeped through his skin.

Shen Yan didn’t move, staring at the connection request, his fingertip hovering over the reject button.

Just then, faint footsteps sounded from the end of the corridor.

Not the Medicine Boy.

The steps were steady, landing without a sound, as if treading in the gaps of time.

Shen Yan slowly looked up and saw a figure standing at the corner.

The person wore the gray robe of a Medicine Valley menial, head bowed, holding an extinguished lantern.

But Shen Yan noticed—the tip of his shoe was stained with a speck of crimson mud.

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(End of Chapter)