Chapter 96: The Warning of Dual Souls Merged

Shen Yan felt as if his brain had been stuffed with an old-style printer, rumbling as it poured in code. These characters weren’t entering through his eyes but were being chiseled through the crown of his head and poured downward, carrying the rusty residue of memories.

He and Luo Li were still falling, but now it was impossible to tell whether their bodies were plummeting or their consciousness had been extracted into a Data Stream. All around them flashed images—an infant crying, the Star-Shattering Token shattering, two identical children lying in a pool of blood on the Celestial Clan Altar.

“Don’t believe these,” he bit the tip of his tongue, issuing a Command in his Consciousness Sea. “Sandbox Initiate, Isolated Operation.”

The world before his eyes suddenly stuttered, as if a Patch had been applied during video buffering. The chaotic, colliding Memory Fragments were framed within a translucent Cube, like the computer in the farthest corner of an internet cafe server room with a “Under Maintenance” sign.

“You can do this too?” Luo Li’s voice came from beside him, somewhat ethereal but steady enough.

“My main job is writing Bugs,” he tugged at the corner of his mouth, his fingers tapping in the void. “Now I need to find the real Source File.”

He called up the Ancient Demon Clan Code Repository he had secretly backed up earlier, comparing it line by line. Soon, he noticed something amiss: the Rune Sequence used in the ritual procedure from the memories was completely identical to the “Star Shattering Order Splitting Technique” in the Primordial Inscription Manuscript, down to the exact same Error Check Code.

“Damn, it really wasn’t made up,” he cursed under his breath. “We’re not twin brothers—we’re just someone’s Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V.”

As soon as he finished speaking, the System Interface suddenly popped up a window:

【Accept ‘Heavenly Dao Reboot’ authentication?】

The green Cursor blinked twice over the word “No.” Without a second thought, Shen Yan prepared to click it. But before he could move the Mouse, the window began its own Countdown: 00:02:59.

“Who gave you the Permission?” he snapped, switching directly to the Background Process List. “How dare you automatically download the Core Module without my consent?”

After entering the Command, however, a prompt appeared: “Permission overridden.”

He froze for a moment, turning to look at Luo Li. She was staring intently at the swirling memory images, her Nine Tails unconsciously unfurling to shield them both.

“Do you get the feeling…” she suddenly spoke, “that they weren’t trying to resurrect someone or take over the world.”

“Then what were they trying to do?”

“To escape,” she said. “That Celestial Clan man, his eyes showed no fear of death. It was like… someone trapped for too long finally seeing light through a crack in the door.”

Shen Yan’s heart jolted.

At that very moment, the Memory Vortex suddenly rearranged itself, revealing a new scene—

The Celestial Clan Outcast stood at the center of the altar, clutching two Soul Flames in his hands, and sneered, “When dual souls meet, the Heavenly Dao will reboot. And I will use this to escape the Cycle of Reincarnation.”

“Well, well, so we two brothers are his Escape Pod?” Shen Yan sneered. “Complete with an Auto-Start System?”

Just as he was about to inject an Interference Command in reverse, a sudden tightness gripped his chest. The tips of his fingers uncontrollably overflowed with black-red Data Streams, like a USB Drive infected and frantically reading and writing.

“Not good!” Luo Li grabbed his wrist. “You’re Resonating with him!”

“Shut up, I’m…!” Sweat beaded on his forehead as he forcibly steadied his mind. “This wave is a High-Level API calling a Low-Level Driver—I need to Break the Link!”

He abruptly severed the contract connection with Luo Li, and in that instant, it felt as if an ice pick had been driven into his temple. The strands of light between them shattered inch by inch, and the impact of the memory flood weakened slightly.

But the countdown was still ticking: 00:01:13.

“You idiot!” Luo Li suddenly glared at him. “Do you think disconnecting will protect us? We’re already on the same frequency!”

After saying this, she bit her fingertip, and blood transformed into a silver thread, tracing ancient Demon Clan runes in the air.

“This body protects only this person.”

The runes descended, crashing directly into the system underlayer, forcibly erecting a barrier in front of the authentication protocol. The countdown abruptly halted, frozen at 00:00:07.

Shen Yan gasped for breath, watching the words slowly fade away.

But the next second, the entire interface suddenly blue-screened.

There was no error code, no crash report—only a line of cold black text floating against the blue background:

【Warning: Dual Souls Coexisting violates the Heavenly Order and will ultimately trigger a restart.】

“Violating the Heavenly Order?” Shen Yan stared at the words and suddenly laughed. “So, my very existence is an illegal program?”

“But they forgot,” he slowly straightened up, gently tapping the blue screen with his finger. “Illegal programs can also decompile the operating system.”

Luo Li looked at him, her eyes filled with worry and an undeniable pride.

“You still plan to keep investigating?”

“Yes,” he nodded. “Right now, what I most want to know is who pressed the Enter key back then to execute the ‘Soul Splitting’ command.”

“What if the answer makes you completely collapse?”

“Then I still need to know which half of me was deleted.”

After saying this, he reached out and took her hand. The contract symbol in his palm, though dim, still pulsed faintly, like a stubbornly beating heart.

The surrounding memory images began to loop, replaying the splitting ritual over and over. The infant’s cries, the runes burning, the Celestial Clan man turning to leave…

Suddenly, one of the images stuttered.

Shen Yan narrowed his eyes. “Wait, replay segment three, in slow motion.”

The image froze at the moment the man sealed the soul. The character “Seven” on the swaddling clothes was clearly visible, and behind him, an extremely thin shadow swept across the wall—it wasn’t a projection but another humanoid outline wearing modern clothes, seemingly holding some kind of device.

“What the hell…” Shen Yan’s pupils contracted. “Is this a recording?”

“Someone was documenting the entire process on-site?” Luo Li also noticed the anomaly. “But those clothes… they look like…”

“A grid shirt,” Shen Yan’s voice tightened. “The kind I wear to work.”

The air suddenly fell silent.

The memory flood continued to surge, but both of them froze.

If someone in a grid shirt appeared in the Celestial Clan secret chamber a thousand years ago, if this splitting experiment was recorded from the very beginning, if the so-called “Heavenly Dao Protocol” was actually a program written long ago…

Then the question arose.

Who was the real programmer?

Shen Yan slowly raised his hand, looking at the residual black-red Data Stream at his fingertip, and whispered, “I might not be a bug.”

“I’m an update package.”

Luo Li didn’t speak, only gripping his hand tighter.

The warning text on the blue screen began to flicker faintly, like breathing.

And in the distance, among the countless repeated images of “Dual Souls Split,” one detail was quietly changing—

The infant that had been lying on the left side of the altar shed a drop of blood tears from the corner of its eye.

That drop of blood slowly condensed into a binary number.

Zero.

(End of Chapter)