Chapter 60: Algorithm Crisis: The Great Outbreak of Vulnerabilities in the Classics

Shen Yan stared at the connection request for “Childhood Old Account-207” on his phone, his fingertip hovering over the reject button. Before he could press it, the corner of his eye suddenly caught a glimpse of a smear of crimson on the gray-robed man’s shoe tip.

It was cinnabar.

Not ordinary mud, but the soil from the Seal of the Forbidden Land that the Medicine Boy had stepped on when he broke into the library last night. Getting even a speck of this stuff on you would trigger a System mark, yet this person before him hadn’t set off any alarms. Instead, he had walked all the way to the entrance of the Pill Furnace room.

“Pei Yue,” Shen Yan’s voice was extremely low, “don’t turn around. Someone is remotely stuffing something into the Jade Slip.”

Pei Yue’s fingers trembled slightly, but her expression remained unchanged. She only gave a slight nod.

The two separated a few steps apart with tacit understanding. Shen Yan pretended to adjust his sleeves while quickly pulling up the Background Process List. Sure enough, beneath the “Automatic Alchemy Main Program,” there was a hidden subprogram disguised as a temperature calibration module, named “Spiritual Flow Stability Optimization Patch.”

—A Patch? Who gave him the Permission?

He sneered and opened the Code tree, preparing to delete it, when the System suddenly popped up a Notice:

【Warning: This Patch is already bound to the cores of thirty-seven Pill Furnaces】

【Uninstalling will trigger a chain reaction of furnace explosions】

“What a clever trap,” Shen Yan gritted his teeth. “First, frame me for tampering with the Classics, and now hold the entire Medicine Valley hostage?”

Before his words faded, a commotion erupted in the distance.

Several Disciples ran out of the Pill Furnace room in a panic, shouting as they fled, “It’s terrible! All the senior brothers who took the new Pills have gone mad! Their eyes are open, they’re muttering the same word over and over, and they can’t be woken up even if you hit them!”

Shen Yan’s heart sank. He immediately rushed toward the Pill Furnace room.

Pushing open the door, the sight before him made him gasp—over three hundred Disciples sat cross-legged on the ground, their eyes vacant, their lips moving slightly, chanting three words in unison:

“Fire… middle… woman…”

As if their consciousnesses were being uniformly controlled by some Program.

He quickly opened the Terminal to scan, but the result displayed: “Program running normally, no anomalous output.”

Normal, my foot!

This was clearly some kind of high-frequency resonance wave that had infiltrated their Spiritual Consciousness through the Pills, creating a collective hallucination. The problem wasn’t with the main Logic, but with that secretly replaced Patch.

“Someone used my Code as a cover to graft an Inner Demon induction program,” Shen Yan clenched his phone tightly. “The target isn’t me—it’s the entire cognitive system of Medicine Valley.”

Pei Yue crouched down, checking the pulse of one of the Disciples. Her frown deepened. “This isn’t ordinary illusion magic. It’s a scene pieced together from real Memory Fragments… What they’re seeing might be something that actually happened.”

Just as she spoke, roof tiles clattered above.

Xie Wujiu, draped in an elder’s robe, stood on the roof ridge, holding a glowing Jade Slip. His voice carried across the entire area: “Fellow disciples! I have just intercepted the private Log of the traitor Shen Yan—he unauthorizedly modified the Algorithm of the ‘Lingshu Prescription Annotations,’ implanted self-destruct Logic, all to seek revenge for being expelled from the sect years ago!”

The crowd erupted.

“I knew there was something wrong with this Pill!”

“Seize him and burn him as a sacrifice to the heavens!”

“Kill this Devil Clan lackey!”

Roars of anger surged like a tidal wave. Shen Yan stood where he was, his face ashen.

He knew that the real attack was never with fists, but with people’s hearts.

“You’re talking nonsense!” Pei Yue suddenly raised her voice, stepping in front of Shen Yan and pulling a yellowed ancient book from her robe. “This is the original handwritten copy of the Taisu Medical Canon, given to me by my mother on her deathbed! Look for yourselves—the original formula was already missing two lines of key parameters. A disaster was bound to happen!”

She flipped open the pages, pointing at a line of ancient runes with her fingertip. “What Shen Yan modified was wrong, not malicious. He saved more people.”

The crowd froze.

Xie Wujiu sneered, “Is the Saintess shielding a spy? Have you been bribed as well?”

“And what about you?” Shen Yan suddenly spoke, his voice soft yet silencing the entire hall. “Why were you stripped of your cultivation base twenty years ago? Was it because you also tampered with forbidden classics?”

Xie Wujiu’s face paled instantly.

“I don’t know who sent you, but I know this—you’re not afraid of me modifying the Code.” Shen Yan stepped forward. “You’re afraid of the truth being decompiled.”

He raised his phone, attempting to upload the complete log to prove his innocence. But as soon as he opened the permission management interface, the System flashed a red notice:

【Master Formation has been externally hijacked】

【User permission downgraded to Observer】

“Interesting,” Shen Yan chuckled. “Even the System can be locked down. You’ve dug deep here, haven’t you?”

The three hundred disciples trapped in the illusion continued murmuring softly, their voices growing increasingly synchronized, as if a ritual were nearing completion.

“We saw… a woman in the flames… holding a child… blood dripping onto a book…”

Shen Yan’s pupils contracted.

That was a memory imprint.

Only those who had witnessed it firsthand would retain such traces in their spiritual consciousness.

“To break this deadlock, we need to reverse-engineer this illusion signal,” he said. “But it requires a sufficiently powerful decompilation key… and someone willing to pay the price.”

Pei Yue looked up at him and suddenly smiled faintly. “You once said that Code can convey intentions, right?”

Before he could react, she bit her fingertip, letting blood drip onto the phone screen, swiftly drawing a twisted rune.

Golden light spread along the blood trail, instantly activating a long-sealed functional module deep within the System.

【High-Level Blood Pact detected】

【Initiating Reverse Decompilation Mode】

【Source consumed: Caster’s vitality】

“Pei Yue!” Shen Yan tried to stop her, but she grabbed his wrist firmly.

“Don’t waste time,” she whispered, her voice as light as the wind. “You write the Code. I’ll hold on.”

Golden Code surged like a torrent, flowing backward along the meridians of the three hundred disciples, piercing through the illusion barrier, and finally converging into a clear image:

A snowy night, a desolate temple.

A young man knelt in the courtyard, his meridians shattered, blood staining the snow. Standing before him, a woman held a broken-meridian blade, her voice cold. “All who dare tamper with the Guizang Canon shall meet this fate.”

The scene zoomed in—on the woman’s sleeve was embroidered the emblem of the Celestial Clan.

And the young man’s face was unmistakably Xie Wujiu in his youth.

The hall fell into dead silence.

Xie Wujiu stood on the rooftop, rigid, the sneer on his face completely frozen.

“So it was you,” Shen Yan stared at him. “You don’t hate me. You hate yourself for almost becoming a sacrifice back then. And now, you want to make me the second you?”

No one spoke.

The three hundred pairs of vacant eyes slowly closed, the murmurs ceasing.

Wind swept across the square, lifting Pei Yue’s hair. Blood still dripped from her fingertip, her face pale as paper, yet she remained standing tall before Shen Yan.

“You have no evidence!” Xie Wujiu finally roared out, “A mere illusion can convict someone? Absurd!”

“No conviction is needed.” Shen Yan shut down the Terminal, the phone casing already charred and smoking. “I just wanted everyone to know who the real parasite hiding behind the Classics truly is.”

He steadied the swaying Pei Yue and asked softly, “Can you hold on?”

“Yes.” She smiled weakly. “I’m just a bit cold.”

Shen Yan took off his coat and wrapped it around her, his gaze sweeping across the surroundings.

Angry glares remained, suspicious whispers lingered, but he offered no further explanation.

Some battles aren’t won with words.

Xie Wujiu snorted coldly and turned to leave.

“Wait.” Shen Yan suddenly called out to him. “You can’t erase that Memory, because it’s already engraved in everyone’s Spiritual Consciousness. Just like a Vulnerability—no matter how deeply it’s hidden, once it runs, it will eventually be exposed.”

Xie Wujiu paused mid-step but didn’t turn back, only tossing out a final remark: “Then wait. Wait until you all die in your own Code.”

The wind swept through the lingering snow, extinguishing the last lamp at the edge of the square.

Shen Yan held Pei Yue, standing still. Behind him were three hundred disciples who had just awakened but whose eyes were filled with confusion; ahead were countless gazes, complex and inscrutable.

His phone screen flickered intermittently, finally displaying a line of text:

【Detected unknown Signal reconnecting】

【Source: Mother of Tribulation—Sub-channel 03】

Just as his fingertip touched the confirmation key, Pei Yue suddenly gripped his arm tightly.

“Don’t click.” Her voice was faint, carrying a slight tremor. “This time… it feels different.”

(End of Chapter)