Chapter 91: The Council's Judgment

Shen Yan stood in the center of the Elder Hall, his hands and feet bound by Rune Chains like a tightly wrapped zongzi. He had just returned from the Western Wastes battlefield, his head still buzzing, his Consciousness Sea feeling as if it had been stirred three times with a fork. The Terminal Interface kept flickering with garbled characters, perfectly mirroring his current state—on the verge of collapse, loading failed.

The Great Elder sat high upon the dais, holding a pitch-black Judge’s Brush, his gaze cold enough to freeze an entire Spiritual Vein. He raised the brush tip and pronounced the verdict word by word: “Shen Yan, human cultivator, for bewitching the Half-Demon Princess with evil arts, activating the Myriad Demons Devouring Heaven Array, and disrupting the order of Bloodlines, the crime warrants execution.”

As soon as the words fell, the verdict materialized into solid chains, clattering as they wrapped around Shen Yan. Iron rings formed from condensed Spiritual Energy creaked, squeezing his bones to the point of cracking.

Instinctively, he tried to call up the Terminal to decompile this “Law Code,” but the moment the Screen lit up, a line of green text popped up: 【Core Protocol encrypted, Permission insufficient, access denied】.

“Damn it,” Shen Yan cursed under his breath. “Is this thing a non-reversible closed-source System?”

Gritting his teeth, he forced himself to endure, his mind racing. This wasn’t a trial—it was just going through the motions to kill a Program. They had even welded the underlying architecture shut, and he still thought he could run a Patch?

The chains tightened further, nearly immobilizing his limbs. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the faint, cold smile at the corner of the Great Elder’s mouth and instantly understood—today’s show was never meant to let him walk out alive.

Just as the final Seal was about to descend, a deafening “boom” erupted overhead.

Glazed tiles shattered into fragments, sunlight mixed with dust pouring down as a purple-red figure descended from above. Nine Fox Tails traced graceful arcs in the air, resembling the special effects of a max-level boss unleashing their ultimate move in some game.

Luo Li stomped, shattering the Rune Array Core on the ground, and with a single palm strike, she reduced the main chain to Spiritual Power Residue.

“I declare him innocent,” her voice, though not loud, reverberated throughout the hall. “In the name of the orthodox Princess of the Demon Clan, I reject this proposal.”

As she spoke, she took out the Star-Shattering Token and pressed it into the center of the judgment platform.

Instantly, ancient markings appeared on the platform’s surface, golden light swirling, perfectly matching the Blood Pact at the tip of her finger. The entire Elder Hall trembled, dust even shaking loose from the ceiling.

The Great Elder shot to his feet. “Have you gone mad?! Consorting with outsiders is one thing, but you dare use the Princess’s Authority to interfere with the judgment?!”

“I’m not interfering,” Luo Li said coldly, staring him down. “I’m correcting. You say his awakening of the Formation is a Tribulation? But if not for him, who would teach the mixed-blood little demons to sense Spiritual Energy? Who would repair the Teleportation Array broken for centuries? Who would break the ‘Pureblood Supremacy’ nonsense rules set by these old fossils?”

She turned to Shen Yan, tearing the chains from his body with a swift, decisive motion, even straightening his collar for him—though the plaid shirt was already singed at one corner.

“You want to punish him?” Luo Li declared loudly. “Then I plead guilty too. I was the one who brought him into the Sacred Ground, I let him touch the Star Map, I… willingly signed the Blood Pact.”

After speaking, she spread her Nine Tails, shielding Shen Yan entirely behind her, her aura overwhelming.

The Great Elder trembled with rage, his beard shaking as he waved for the guards. “Seize them! Both are guilty!”

But when the hall doors opened, what rushed in were not guards but a group of little demons holding up light signs.

On the signs made of Fluorescent Talisman Paper, bold characters read:

“Long live Shen Yan’s teachings!”

“Code changes the fate of demons!”

“Oppose pureblood hegemony, support cross-clan programming!”

The leading fox spirit even printed out the “Gluttonous Snake Cultivation Method” and stuck it on her forehead, waving a flag while shouting: “Teacher Shen said when he taught us our first Spiritual Energy Circulation Function—as long as the logic is sound, anyone can cultivate immortality!”

The entire hall fell silent.

Even Shen Yan was stunned: “This… this works?”

He remembered he had only said it casually back then, just to coax the little demons into paying attention during class, adding offhandedly, “If you ever become great cultivators in the future, remember to erect a monument for me, with the words ‘Long live Shen Yan’s teachings’ written on it.”

He never expected someone would actually take it seriously, and even mass-produced fan merchandise.

The Great Elder’s face turned ashen, wanting to unleash his authority but not daring to act—these were all the future seedlings of the Demon Clan. If he truly struck them down, a clan-wide rebellion could erupt by tomorrow.

The atmosphere remained deadlocked. Several elders exchanged glances, and finally, the Great Elder spoke gravely: “Since the Princess has exercised her authority to protect him, the punishment shall be temporarily waived. But this matter is not over. We must initiate the Ancestral Spirit Heart-Questioning Array to examine whether his heart harbors any intention to cause chaos!”

As soon as he finished speaking, intricate Formation Patterns appeared on the ground, with an eerie blue light rising upward—clearly intending to forcibly read Shen Yan’s memories.

Luo Li sneered as she stepped in front: “Going through someone’s mind again? Have you forgotten how you treated me last time? You said my Bloodline was impure and nearly threw me into the Bone-Corroding Pool. And now? Without the Code Resonance between him and me, the Western Wasteland Gate wouldn’t even be one percent unlocked.”

She glanced back at Shen Yan, her gaze softening slightly: “What do you want to ask him? Are you going to say again that he shouldn’t have saved me? That he shouldn’t have rewritten fate? That he shouldn’t have allowed ‘aberrations’ like me to walk with their heads held high?”

Shen Yan’s throat tightened with warmth.

He didn’t speak, simply taking a step forward to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with her.

His Terminal suddenly displayed a line of text automatically: 【Detected large-scale Emotional Resonance. Suggest initiating Public Interaction Mode】.

He ignored the damned System, instead reaching out and gently grasping Luo Li’s hand.

That grasp seemed to press a hidden switch.

From outside the hall came the sound of orderly footsteps as more and more little demons poured in. They held not only light boards but also banners painted with Binary Runes, stone tablet models engraved with “HelloWorld,” and some even carried a statue pieced together from scrap metal—depicting Shen Yan squatting in the square teaching a lesson, holding a phone as a pointer.

“We support Shen Yan!”

“Technology knows no bounds, cultivation is equal for all!”

The shouts came wave after wave, overwhelming the council of elders until they couldn’t utter a word.

The Great Elder stared fixedly at the two, finally flicking his sleeve and sitting down: “Today’s matter… shall be postponed.”

The meaning was clear: We can’t win against you now, but we’ll remember this.

Shen Yan breathed a sigh of relief, his legs feeling a bit weak. He glanced down at his hand, still tightly clasping Luo Li’s. She noticed but didn’t pull away; instead, her fingertips curled slightly, as if in response.

“That was… pretty cool just now,” he whispered.

“Stop flattering,” she rolled her eyes at him. “If you ever treat yourself like a Test Machine and charge into danger again, I’ll lock you in the Herb Field to grow cabbages.”

“What for?”

“To feed the foxes.”

The two exchanged a smile.

Just then, Shen Yan’s Terminal vibrated again.

Green text appeared: 【Detected Anomalous Data Packet attempting to connect. Source unknown. Intercept?】

He frowned slightly and was about to operate when he discovered that the hidden folder “Childhood Backup_Auto-Syncing” had opened a preview page on its own—

Inside was a blurry image: an old room, its walls covered in handwritten Code, a small boy sitting at a desk, his back thin and frail, speaking softly to a teddy bear.

The camera slowly zoomed in, and inside the bear’s right ear, the character “dream” flashed past.

Shen Yan’s pupils contracted sharply.

Before he could react, the Terminal suddenly went black for a moment. When it lit up again, an unfamiliar Notice appeared on the homepage:

“System update complete. New feature available: Memory Retrospection Simulator (beta). Run now?”

(End of Chapter)