2026-04-06 19:40:40Lin Feng's POV
The invisible edge didn't just cut, it erased. The beast’s head fell to the left, its body to the right, the cauterized wound puffing out a cloud of black ash instead of blood. [Kill Confirmed: Gravel-Dog (Tier 0).] [Reward: 50 Agony Points.] The other two dogs paused, their primal instincts screaming at them that something was wrong. But the smell of my rotting flesh was too enticing. They charged together. I didn't move with the grace of a warrior. I moved with the desperation of a man who had already died once. I swung the Phantom Rib in a wide, clumsy arc. The blade sliced through stone and bone alike. In seconds, the tunnel was silent again, save for the sound of my own heavy breathing and the steady drip-drip of the pus from my shoulder hitting the floor. I slumped against the wall, the invisible blade dissolving back into my skeleton. I needed to eat. I looked at the carcasses, my stomach churning. "Well, well. The rat has a sting." A flicker of torchlight illuminated the far end of the tunnel. A man stepped forward, clad in the leather armor of the High-Talent Guard. It was Kenan, one of Young Master Shen’s personal dogs. He held a heavy mace that hummed with Tier-2 Earth mana. "Master Shen was worried the dogs would be too quick," Kenan sneered, his eyes scanning my broken form. He didn't see the Phantom Rib, he only saw a dying boy and three dead mutts. “He wanted me to make sure you felt every minute of your final hour. Commoners shouldn't have the dignity of a quick death." He stepped over the bisected remains of the Gravel-Dogs, his mace glowing a deep, heavy brown. "Look at you," Kenan laughed, raising the weapon. "Starving, bleeding, and marked. You really thought you could be something, didn't you?" I didn't answer. I stayed on the ground, my head bowed. I could have drawn the blade again. I could have tried to gut him as he approached. But 50 points per dog wouldn't get me through the Extermination Trials. I needed a catalyst. I needed the "Hunter" to provide the "Prey" with a reason to ascend. "What's the matter, Lin Feng? No clever words left?" Kenan brought the mace down, not at my head, but at my outstretched arm. CRACK. The sound of my radius and ulna snapping echoed through the cavern like a gunshot. I let out a scream that was only half-faked. The pain was a white-hot spear that traveled straight to my brain. [HEAVY TRAUMA DETECTED: FRACTURED RADIUS/ULNA.] [BONUS MULTIPLIER: 'SADISTIC OVERFLOW' DETECTED.] [Points Harvested: 8,000.] "That’s one," Kenan grinned, his face twisting with a sick, voyeuristic pleasure. "Let’s see how many snaps it takes to make you beg for the finish." He raised the mace again, aiming for my ribs. Spin, I commanded the void in my mind. Give me the price for this arm. The blood-red Gacha wheel appeared, spinning with such violence that the weeping eyes on the interface began to bleed. The needle blurred past 'Iron Skin' and 'Stone-Wall Parry.' It was hunting for something darker, something that matched the malice in Kael’s eyes. [TOTAL POINTS EXPENDED: 10,000.] [EXECUTING 'DESPAIR-GRADE' PULL...] The wheel stopped dead on a black-and-violet icon depicting a hand crushing a glowing heart. [CONGRATULATIONS!] [You have obtained the 5-Star Skill: "Soul-Devouring Counter".] [Type: Reactionary Passive (Level 1).] [Description: When a killing blow or heavy strike is delivered, you may sacrifice the energy of the impact to momentarily paralyze the attacker’s soul. Duration: 7 seconds. Cost: 5% Vitality.] Kenan swung. The mace whistled through the air, aimed directly at my charred chest, backed by the full weight of a Tier-2 Earth-Elementalist. I didn't dodge. I leaned into it. The mace connected with my sternum. I felt the air leave my lungs, felt my vision go black at the edges as my ribs groaned under the pressure. But instead of being crushed, the kinetic energy hit a wall of dark, violet mist that erupted from my skin. The mace stopped mid-swing. Kenan's eyes went wide. His pupils shrunk to pinpricks, his body suddenly locking into a rigid, trembling statue. [SOUL-DEVOURING COUNTER ACTIVATED.] [Target: Kenan (Tier 2) - Paralyzed.] I looked up. My broken arm hung limply at my side, and blood was leaking from my mouth, but the grin I gave him was the most terrifying thing in that tunnel. "You're right, Kenan," I whispered, my voice thick with the iron taste of my own blood. "Commoners shouldn't have a quick death." I reached into my chest, the Phantom Rib emerging with a low, predatory hum. "So I'm going to take my time with yours." Behind Kenan, the shadows of the tunnel seemed to lengthen, the Tablet in my pocket pulsing with a hunger that was no longer just mine. It was the Tablet's first real meal. [TARGET ACQUIRED: TIER-2 SOUL.] [ESTIMATED HARVEST: LEGENDARY.]
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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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