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 213: The Final Taboo
(Author’s Farewell & Aftermath)The quiet that followed was a foreign sound.For two hundred and twelve chapters, the world had been defined by calculated misery, divine scripts, and the unrelenting noise of a predatory system designed to farm human soul-value. Numbers had dictated life. Probabilities had governed death.Standing on the edge of the iron-clad capital as it drifted through the uncharted dark, Lin Feng looked down at his calloused hands.Beside him, Imoabasi stood in silence, her hand resting over his. There were no flashing blue screens hovering in their vision, no notifications urging them to make another trade, pay another tax, or roll another high-stakes gamble just to survive until sunrise.The compliance grid was gone. The divine servers were silent. For the first time since the first credit was logged, humanity was simply free.Lin Feng didn't claim to be a savior. He had simply been a man forced into an impossible game, wielding the King of Ash’s hammer because
Chapter 212: The Eternal Void
Lin Feng's POV The grey wool of our father’s general cape was heavy across my shoulders, stiff with old grease, coal dust, and the dried red mud of the northern frontier. As Chen draped it over my back, the familiar weight settled against my spine, smelling faintly of tobacco, scrap iron, and the cold winter rain of the northern mines. I reached up, my calloused fingers adjusting the worn leather strap across my collarbone, feeling the rough texture of the fabric that had once protected the man who started this whole long, bloody war.We stood on the outer stone platform at the absolute edge of the celestial continent, where the polished white marble of the old gods ended and the vast, infinite ocean of black void began.To my right stood Chen, his dark scribal lenses tucked securely into his breast pocket, his right hand resting comfortably on our father’s iron stylus. To my left stood my Imoabasi, my queen, my everything. Her hand was wrapped tightly around mine, her skin glowin
Chapter 211: The Gathering at the Anvil
Lin Feng's POV The supreme council chamber was no longer a hall of gilded silk, marble pillars, and floating light-visors. The commoners had stripped the high arches down to their bare granite bones, tearing out the gold leaf and the crystal chandeliers to pave the roads and warm the shanties in the Scavenger Pits.At the center of the vast, circular hall, where the Master God’s throne of floating code-disks had once rested, sat a single, heavy block of pitted charcoal-iron.It was my father's old iron anvil.George and four gear-workers had hauled it up from the subterranean scrap-pits three days ago, dragging it through the Seventh Server Gate on a heavy pine sled.The metal surface was scarred with hundreds of deep, jagged hammer-marks from decades of illegal forge work in the northern mines. It was stained with soot, machine oil, and the dry, rusted flakes of cold iron slag. It looked completely out of place in the grand architecture of the celestial realm, yet it held the enti
Chapter 210: The Sovereign Core
Imoabasi's POVThe streets of the new Silver-Spire capital didn't smell like the old imperial cities. There was no overwhelming scent of ozone from high-voltage compliance arrays, no sharp metallic tang of defensive wards humming in the gutters, and no suffocating perfume wafting from noble carriages.It smelled of roasting root vegetables, damp cedar lumber, fresh river salt, and the sweet, heavy haze of woodsmoke rising from three thousand hearths.I walked down the main thoroughfare, my bare soles pressed against smooth cobbles that had been cut from the shattered pillars of the First Domain.Beside me, the city was alive with a steady, unhurried rhythm. Blacksmiths were hammering out agricultural plows where weapons of war had once been cast. Former archive clerks were sitting on overturned wooden crates, teaching young foundry apprentices how to read basic contracts using charcoal on birch bark.I stopped near the central plaza, watching a group of five young children, their li
Chapter 209: The Final Orchestration
Yun Qian's POVWith the internal server completely stabilized, my silver-crested avatar form didn't dissolve into scattered pixels or burn out from the strain of holding the stratospheric dome.Instead, my translucent silhouette merged directly into the foundational logic of Lin Feng’s database core, settling into a state of perfect, permanent balance.I was no longer a phantom sub-routine struggling against system latency or a desperate spirit clinging to a broken marrow-pipe flute. I was the very air that moved across the two continents, the quiet, structural framework that filtered raw data through his Ash-Forge Core and kept the universal ledger anchored to the earth.I no longer felt the painful friction of jealousy or the manic rush of my old marrow-pipe melodies, my sound had become the natural baseline of the wind.In the old days, back when we were hiding in the scrap-mines or fighting through the blood-soaked avenues of the Grand Registry Ark, every note I played was a viol
Chapter 208: The Unindexed Sea
Lin Chen's POV I expected more, I swear I did. The edge of the celestial continent didn't end in a dramatic, jagged cliff or a roaring waterfall dropping into a blue sky. It simply stopped.I stood on the final slab of cracked marble, my leather work boots overhang over an infinite, silent void. Down below, where the ocean had once met the horizon, there was no water, no salt, and no land. There was only a vast, endless sea of blackness or nothingness, stretching out into the dark beyond the borders of our world's server.I raised my father's old iron stylus and held it up against the starless expanse.Up here, far removed from the bustling noise of the plaza where George and the gear-workers were hauling away the last of the gods' jade pillars, the air was cold and dead quiet. There was no wind to carry the smell of coal smoke, and no system chimes echoing off the clouds. The light from our newly reclaimed realm radiated behind me in a warm, amber dome, but past this threshold,
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