2026-04-06 19:40:09Lin Feng's POV
I climbed the steps. Every movement was heavy, my muscles denser, my weight literally cracking the fine gravel under my bare feet. I stopped three paces from my brother. "Chen," I said. My voice was a low rasp. He didn't flinch. He stepped toward the edge of the stage, addressing the crowd of hundreds. "Citizens of the Spire! Honor is not a right of birth, but a harvest of merit! My brother, Lin Feng, is a void. A rot that threatens the prestige of my house and this institution. To prove my devotion to the Light, I must sever the tie that binds me to the darkness." The crowd erupted. "Cut the rot! Long live the Spire!" They weren't just shouting; they were salivating. They wanted to see the "Zero" humbled by his own blood. Chen turned back to me. His eyes were cold, but I saw the tiny tremor in his hand as he reached for the dagger. He wasn't doing this for justice, he was doing it for a scholarship. For a chance to leave the mud behind. "Forgive me, brother," he hissed, leaning in close as he raised the blade. "But you were always a burden." He didn't aim for a non-lethal limb. He drove the Fang of Loyalty straight into my left shoulder, twisting the jagged steel as it bit into the bone. [CRITICAL EMOTIONAL TRAUMA DETECTED: KIN-BETRAYAL.] [TRAUMA MULTIPLIER: 10x.] [LUCK STAT: +500% (Temporary State: 'Heart-Broken')] The pain was exquisite. It wasn't the searing heat of Shen’s fire or the stinging bite of a hex. This was cold. It was a vacuum in my chest where my brother’s love used to live. I felt the system frantically harvesting the essence of the betrayal, the red screen in my mind blurring into a violent, pulsating violet. [Points Harvested: 25,000.] [Current Total: 40,000.] The crowd roared in approval as blood soaked through my tattered tunic. Chen kept his hand on the hilt, his face inches from mine, waiting for me to scream, to beg, to give the crowd the satisfaction of my collapse. Instead, I reached up. I didn't grab the knife. I gripped Chen’s shoulder, pulling him even closer, until our foreheads touched. "Is that all, Chen?" I whispered. His eyes widened. The coldness in them shattered, replaced by a sudden, stabbing fear. He tried to pull the knife out, but my muscles had clamped around the blade like a vice. It wouldn't budge. "You gave me exactly what I needed," I breathed into his ear. "The ultimate pull. Thank you, brother. Your cowardice just bought me the world." I let my knees buckle, not because I was weak, but because the Gacha wheel in my mind had reached a terminal velocity. It wasn't a wheel anymore, it was a screaming cyclone of black glass and weeping eyes. [EMOTIONAL PEAK REACHED.] [EXECUTING 6-STAR "LEGENDARY" DRAW...] The world around me froze. The cheers of the crowd became a dull, underwater thud. The Tablet in my pocket vibrated so hard it felt like it was liquefying. A single, golden spark erupted from the center of the wheel, diving straight into my chest. [CONGRATULATIONS!] [You have obtained the 6-Star Forbidden Artifact: "The Phantom Rib".] [Type: Skeletal-Bound Weapon (Growth Type).] [Description: An invisible, unbreakable blade forged from the condensed essence of your own agony. It resides within your ribcage, undetectable by mana-scans. It can be drawn through the skin without leaving a wound.] The pain in my shoulder vanished. Not because the wound healed, but because it was eclipsed by the sensation of a new rib growing, sharper, longer, and made of something that didn't belong in this dimension. I fell to the floor of the stage, the dagger still buried in my shoulder. To the crowd, I looked like a dying dog. To Chen, I looked like a conquered ghost. But internally, I felt my hand ghosting over my own chest. My fingers brushed against the skin over my heart, and I felt it, the cold, sharp hilt of a blade that only I could touch. "The marking is complete!" the Deacon cried, stepping forward with the branding iron. "Lin Feng is now a pariah of the Silver-Spire!" I stayed down, my face hidden by my matted hair. I felt the Phantom Rib pulse in time with my heartbeat. The "Extermination Trials" were only two days away. They thought they were sending me to a slaughterhouse. They didn't realize they had just given the sheep a wolf’s tooth. I looked at Chen’s feet as he walked away, his silver robes fluttering in the wind. Run while you can, little brother, I thought, the System screen flashing one final, ominous message. [NEW STATUS: Predator in Training.] [Next Spin Tier: Massacre.] **** The stinging scent of the Fang of Loyalty’s poison was still thick in my veins as the guards tossed me back into the Scavenger Pits. They didn't put me in a cell this time. They threw me into the "Gravel-Run," a series of lightless tunnels beneath the spirit beast pens where the Academy dumped its organic waste. It was a death sentence disguised as a chore. I hit the cold, damp stone, the dagger still protruding from my shoulder. My vision swam. The "Slave-Marking" on my neck burned with a dull, rhythmic throb, a constant reminder that I was now officially less than human. Skitter. Skitter. The sound of claws against stone echoed through the tunnel. I pushed myself up, my breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps. My wounds were festering, the edges of the burns from Shen’s fire turning a sickly shade of grey. I was starving, my stomach cramping so hard it felt like it was trying to eat itself. Three pairs of glowing, amber eyes materialized in the darkness. Gravel-Dogs. Low-level scavengers with teeth like jagged flint and a hunger that never ended. They didn't hunt for sport, they hunted because they were as desperate as I was. [Status: Severely Weakened.] [Vitality: 18%.] [Warning: Multiple infections detected.] The lead dog lunged, its maw opening to reveal rows of serrated bone. Now, I thought. I didn't reach for the dagger in my shoulder. I reached into my own chest. My fingers didn't hit skin, they passed through a shimmering, translucent veil. My hand closed around a cold, slick hilt that felt like it was made of frozen starlight and old grudges. I pulled. There was no sound, no blood, only a faint, metallic shing that vibrated in my teeth. The Phantom Rib was nearly three feet long, a curved, wicked sliver of obsidian-glass that seemed to drink the meager light of the tunnel. The Gravel-Dog met the blade mid-air.
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
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,
You may also like
East Meets West (Cultivation World)
OROCHIsBLADE31.3K viewsSSS-Rank Devourer: I Consumed My Way to Godhood
hungrycat22.0K viewsRise Of The Powerful Husband
Dark Crafter27.2K viewsU.L.S: Rise of HAKHAMANESH
Erfan_Sh27.2K viewsI am the Apocalyse
Timitich F221 viewsRejected by Her, Chosen by the System
Holloway170 viewsMy God Is a Clumsy Disaster
Keenan219 viewsReborn as a Monster with the Multiplier System
KaJiKaRin 02219 views