2026-04-06 17:43:36Lin Feng's POV
The smoke in the Great Hall hadn’t even fully settled before the weight of the world crashed back down on me. I had survived Shen’s strike, but I wasn't a hero yet. I was just a survivor who had forgotten his place. The High Priest’s shock had quickly curdled into indignation. A Zero-Percentile Nullity standing in the wreckage of a Tier-4 spell wasn’t a miracle to them, it was an insult to the natural laws of Mana. Before I could take a second step toward Shen, the heavy iron grip of the Academy Guards locked onto my scorched arms. "Insolence," the Priest spat, his voice trembling with a mix of fear and fury. "To provoke a High-Talent and defile the Awakening Ceremony... take him to the Pits. Let the filth scrub the filth." The Scavenger Pits sat at the very bowels of Silver-Spire, a series of damp, echoing caverns where the Academy’s pride, the spirit beasts, were housed. It was a place of rot, sulfur, and the constant, low-frequency growls of creatures that viewed humans as snacks. I was thrown into the muck of a Drake’s pen, the sludge seeped into my open burns. I didn't wince. I watched the red screen flickering in the corner of my vision, tracking my stats like a vulture circling a carcass. "Still alive, trash?" Shen stood at the edge of the pit, flanked by two lackeys. He had changed into fresh robes, but his pride was still singed. He held a small, glowing orb of Stinging-Hex mana between his fingers. "I heard you like it," Shen mocked, flicking his wrist. A bolt of purple energy hissed through the air and slammed into my shoulder. It didn't burn like the fire; it felt like a thousand needles being driven into the bone. [Minor Trauma Detected: Stinging-Hex.] [Points Harvested: 5.] Five points? I stared at the counter. The "Devouring Void-Body" was working, knitting the flesh back together, but the yield was pathetic. I looked at the Gacha menu. A single "Basic Pull" cost 100 points. "Is that it?" I asked, pushing myself up from the Drake dung. I spat a glob of blood into the straw. "My little brother hits harder when he’s throwing a tantrum, Shen. Are you sure you’re a Tier-4?" Shen’s face turned a violent shade of plum. "You’re begging for it now? Fine. Let’s see how much you can swallow." He signaled his lackeys. For the next hour, they used me as a living target. Stinging-Hexes, minor Frost-Chills, Wind-Blades that nicked the skin but didn't deep-cut. It was a calculated torture, enough to hurt, but not enough to trigger a formal investigation. [Total Points: 145.] [1x Basic Pull Available.] Pull, I commanded. The rusted wheel spun, sluggish and depressing. It landed on a grey icon. [REWARD: 1x Loaf of Stale Spirit-Bread.] [Description: It’s dry. It’s hard. It’ll stop your stomach from growling.] A piece of rock, hard bread materialized in my hand. I stared at it, then at Shen. This wouldn't work. If I stayed at this level, I’d be a well, fed punching bag for the rest of my short life. I didn't need bread, I needed a god-slaying edge. And for that, I needed to die, or get close enough to see the gates. I dropped the bread into the filth. "You’re boring me, Shen," I said, my voice echoing in the damp cavern. I forced myself to stand, my legs shaking from the dozens of micro-traumas. "You’re all talent and no balls. You’re afraid that if you actually try to kill me, the Academy will see you as a monster. But we both know the truth. You’re afraid you can't kill me." I walked toward the edge of the pit, stopping only when the heat from his aura began to singe my hair. I looked him dead in the eye, ignoring the "Danger" warnings flashing across my vision. "Give me your best shot. Right here." I tapped the center of my chest, over my heart. "One 'Flame Burst.' If I die, you’ve cleaned up the Academy’s trash. If I live... well, you’ve already lost, haven't you?" "Shen, don't," one of the lackeys whispered. "The Elder Mu is nearby..." "Shut up!" Shen roared. He was shaking. His mana was leaking out in jagged bursts of orange light. "You think you’re special because you can take a hit? You’re a Zero! You’re nothing!" He didn't just cast a spell. He drew in a massive breath, his entire chest cavity glowing like a furnace. The air in the Scavenger Pits began to boil. The drakes in the nearby pens began to howl in distress. "Burn in hell, Lin Feng!" He thrust both palms forward. A concentrated beam of white-hot Flame Burst erupted. It wasn't a flicker; it was a physical force, a pillar of pure elemental destruction that hit me with the weight of a falling mountain. The world turned white. The pain wasn't a needle anymore, it was an ocean. I felt my skin vaporize. I felt the air in my lungs turn to steam. My heart hammered once, a frantic, desperate rhythm, and then it stuttered. [CRITICAL DAMAGE DETECTED.] [Vital Organs: 12% Integrity.] [Near-Death State Confirmed.] [Hidden Multiplier Triggered: THE GAMBLER’S DESPAIR.] [Luck Stat increased by 5,000% for 10 seconds.] [Points Harvested: 15,000.] I was falling.
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Chapter 201: The Symphony of the Void
Yun Qian's POV“I think I genuinely love being a part of him. I can't have him, he'll never see me how I see him, but being a part of him is one way I can get close to him.” This is what I told myself. I had been operating as a permanent system unit within Feng's interface, I projected a massive acoustic field across the upper atmosphere, her bone-flute playing a song of simply zero velocity. Existing within the quiet, central processing layers of the King of Ash was unlike my past life in the cold scrap-mines or my brief tenure as a silver-crested specter on the flagship deck. I was no longer a fragmented file floating in the ocean wind, I was embedded directly into the foundational logic of his Ash-Forge Core, a harmonic sub-routine pulsing alongside his heavy, rhythmic heartbeat. From this deep vantage point, I could feel the immense, un-enchanted heat of his soul-forge, the quiet resolve of Imoabasi’s data-vines, and the steady, zero-percentile anchor of Lin Chen below.When t
Chapter 200: The Grounding Stylus
Lin Chen's POV Standing at the base of the rail-cannon, I decided to use my father's old iron stylus to re-route the celestial hand's leaking data down into the earth. Things like these are very compulsory to help accomplish Feng's full plan. I believe he hasn't told me everything he has planned yet, but the little I know, I'd help him implement it to the best of my abilities. The sky above the Grand Registry Ark vibrated with a sharp, high-frequency whine as the massive golden fingers remained pinned against Imoabasi’s emerald data-vines. Golden static and blue compliance code bled from the joints of the giant hand, spraying across the upper atmosphere like pressurized steam from a cracked pipe. Up on the promenade, my brother Feng held his heavy forge-hammer ready, his face looking up and his eyes locked directly onto the sky. But I didn't look at the gods. My eyes were fixed on the copper-lined grounding rails embedded in the marble docks beneath my boots.I held my father’s d
Chapter 199: The Sylvan Shielding
Lin Feng's POV The sky above the floating continent didn't just darken, it groaned under the weight of the golden hand descending through the atmosphere. The fingers, each wide enough to span a city block, were carved from solid, burnished gold and laced with glowing blue compliance runes that hummed with a high-frequency whine. The air pressure dropped so fast my eardrums popped, and the golden marble docks beneath our boots began to spiderweb with deep fissures.The divine hand came down like a falling mountain, aiming its massive palm straight for the peak where Feng stood, targeting the Ash-Forge Core pulsing in his chest.I didn't step back. I didn't wait for Feng to swing his forge-hammer. Grounding my heels into the cracked marble, I drove the emerald-veined stone plate of the Sylvan Codex directly into the central data-line beneath my feet."Activate The Sylvan Fortress!" I shouted, my voice cutting through the deafening roar of the descending mass.A dense, blinding networ
Chapter 198: The First Strike Against the Sky
Lin Feng's POV“Yes.” I responded and immediately pulled the handle. The white light radiating from the Seventh Server Gate didn’t blind me as I stepped up to the floating interface bar, it was actually very bright. Up close, the input field was cold, dead silent, and totally devoid of the shimmering golden flourishes that used to accompany every interaction with the system. There were no drop-down menus or pre-compiled choices designed to entice a user into spending credits. It was just a thin, dark line hovering in the empty air, waiting for raw data.I reached out, my fingers calloused and stiff from years at the anvil. Instead of picking up a hammer or typing a command syntax, I pressed my open palm against the black bar.I didn't enter a command script to claim the divine throne for myself, nor did I request an upgrade to my personal status screen.I began to write names. First was Scribe Shen, whose fingers had turned stiff from logging illegal tax quotas in the coal pits. T
Chapter 197: Target: The Heavens
Lin Feng's POV The notification locks down every remaining interface from the Scavenger Pits to the Grand Ark, its text written in a clean dark ink that carries no mana. Across every quadrant of the world, the blinding golden advertisements, the parasitic credit trackers, and the flashing lineage alerts died in a single, silent millisecond.In the frozen scrap-mines of the North, on the high-society balconies of the ruined Southern Capital, and across the obsidian decks of the oceanic fleet, millions of glowing blue screens instantly flickered and turned to a cold, unyielding pitch-black. The text that burned across them carried no imperial magic, no high-frequency administrative radiation, and no Gacha compression scripts. It was pure, un-enchanted ink, a baseline reality written in the plain, unpolished syntax of common iron.For ten thousand years, humanity had lived under the ticking clock of their allocated life-points, their every breath audited by the lineage lords. Now, t
Chapter 196: The Sovereign Synthesis
Lin Feng's POV“ssss….” I winced when I felt the touch of heat inside my brain, it was as though the gacha tried to say something, and immediately retreated. I paused, then continued. The floating, white-hot geometry of the Seventh Server Gate did not hum with the familiar friction of lower-tier engines or the wet, mechanical grind of the subterranean cogs, it vibrated at a pitch so absolute it flattened the acoustic profile of the Basilica into dead, un-indexed silence.I stood before the floating, white-hot geometry of the Seventh Server Gate, all six Tablets I acquired were floating in a circular orbit around my head like a crown of rusted iron, it was beautiful not going to lie.The six artifacts, the Sylvan Codex, the Scales of Fate, the Scepter of Tyranny, the Ledger of Wealth, the Scepter of Tides, and the shattered, re-stitched frame of the Mirror of Truth, no longer radiated their distinct, factional hues. Stripped of their imperial lacquer by the [Equalization Protocol], t
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