2026-04-06 19:41:05Lin Feng's POV
The damp stone of the Gravel-Run seemed to pulse in time with my shattered arm. Kenan stood frozen, his eyes wide and vibrating with a primal, soul-deep terror. The violet mist of the [Soul-Devouring Counter] snaked up his arms like hungry vines, turning his tan skin a sickly, translucent grey. "My... mana..." Kenan managed to choke out, his voice sounding like it was being dragged through gravel. "What are you... doing to me?" "I’m not doing anything, Kenan," I whispered, the [Phantom Rib] hovering inches from his throat, though he couldn't see the invisible blade. "The Void is just hungry. And you brought a feast." I could feel it. The Tier-2 Earth mana he had spent a decade cultivating was being ripped from his meridians. It didn't flow into me like a refreshing spring; it hit my core like molten lead. My [Devouring Void-Body] groaned under the pressure, the "Zero-Percentile" vacuum in my soul finally finding something to grind into dust. [MANA ABSORPTION IN PROGRESS...] [Target: Kenan (Tier 2 Elementalist).] [Conversion Rate: 100% Efficiency (Void-Attribute).] [Physical Strength: +300% (Surge)] "Your parents were dogs," Kenan hissed, even as his knees began to buckle under the soul-paralysis. "They died in the mud, just like you. A Commoner... playing at being a cultivator... it’s an insult to the heavens." The mention of my parents didn't trigger a burst of hot rage. It triggered a cold, clinical curiosity. I wondered how much "Agony" I could harvest from his fear if I took my time. [CRITICAL EMOTIONAL TRIGGER: PARENTAL INSULT.] [LUCK MULTIPLIER: 2x.] [POINTS HARVESTED: 1,500.] I didn't use the [Phantom Rib]. That was too clean. Too quiet. For the first time in my life, I felt the heavy, intoxicating weight of power coiling in my muscles. I let the invisible blade dissolve back into my marrow. I stood up. My broken arm gave a wet, sickening thud as the bones knit themselves together, forced into place by the sheer pressure of the stolen mana. I towered over Kenan as he fell to his knees, the paralysis finally breaking, replaced by a crushing spiritual weight. "You talk a lot about 'Natural Order', Kenan," I said, my shadow stretching long and jagged across the tunnel walls. "Let’s test your theory." Kenan scrambled backward, reaching for a dagger at his belt. "Stay back! I’m a citizen of the Spire! You’re just…” I didn't let him finish. I stepped forward, my movement a blur of stolen speed. I didn't punch him. I didn't stab him. I wound back my right hand, the absorbed Earth mana coating my palm in a shimmering, crystalline gold. WHACK. The sound wasn't a slap. It was an explosion. My palm connected with Kenan's jaw with the force of a battering ram. The impact sent a shockwave through the tunnel, extinguishing his torch. I felt his mandible shatter like cheap porcelain under my fingers. His body didn't just fall, it was launched sideways, slamming into the stone wall of the drake pen with a crunch that made my own teeth ache. He slumped into the filth, his face a distorted ruin of blood and bone. His eyes were rolled back, his Tier-2 pride leaking out of his ears in the form of dark, spent mana. [OBJECTIVE COMPLETE: DELIVER THE FIRST FACE-SLAP.] [BONUS REWARD: 2,000 AGONY POINTS.] I walked over to his twitching form. I felt... light. The starvation was still there, but it was being drowned out by the sheer adrenaline of the harvest. I reached down and ripped the Silver-Spire Hunter’s Badge from his chest, the metal cold against my palm. Then, I slid the spatial ring off his broken finger. A quick pulse of my new, stolen energy cracked the ring's primitive soul-seal. [INVENTORY ACQUIRED:] [30x Low-Grade Spirit Stones.] [1x Tier-2 Healing Salve.] [1x Map of the Extermination Trial Grounds.] I uncorked the healing salve and smeared the glowing green paste over my shoulder wound and my chest. The relief was instantaneous, the cooling sensation washing away the rot and the fever. I crunched down on a spirit stone, the raw energy sparking against my tongue like lightning. I looked back down the tunnel, toward the faint light of the upper world. For all of my life, I had been the punching bag. I had been the "Void," the "Nullity," the "Trash" that everyone stepped on to reach the light. I gripped the Hunter’s badge until the edges bit into my skin. "Nineteen years of hell," I whispered to the darkness, the red Gacha screen flickering one last time before I stepped into the shadows. "Now, I start the harvest." [NEW QUEST: THE EXTERMINATION TRIAL.] [GOAL: SURVIVE THE HUNT.] [REWARD: ???] The Tablet in my pocket gave a final, hungry throb. The "Zero" was gone. The predator was hungry.
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Chapter 115: The First Law Of The Gutter
Lin Feng's POVThe soot from Junjie’s final, violent combustion had finally settled into the crevices of the flagstones.Standing over the empty courtyard where the high-tier elder's ash was scattered, I didn't feel the standard rush of administrative triumph that usually accompanied a 100% sector conquest. My left violet eye tracked the slow, lazy drift of gray flakes as they dissolved into the muddy puddles left behind by the recent regional rainfall. The High-Spires were mine, yes, but they were currently listed as a bankrupt database. The foundations were cracked, the slave-collars were piled in a rusted heap beneath the northern granaries, and the local network latency was fluctuating by nearly thirty percent as the server’s passive logic tried to reconcile an empire without subjects.With a twitch of my left thumb, I pulled upward on the empty air, opening the fully unlocked Gacha interface.The screen didn't display the standard golden lottery banners or the flashy, premium-
Chapter 114: The Reclaimed Disrupted Node
Yue's POV Armed with the thirty-day stay of execution, I did not waste a single millisecond celebrating my temporary survival. The silver glyph on my left palm was already warm, a localized fever that radiated through the meat of my hand and sent micro-shocks of pure imperial data up my forearm. Thirty days was a lifetime in a standard skirmish, but to completely reverse a total structural regression across an entire province? It was a razor-thin margin. I needed assets, not raw commoner muscle or the broken, un-enchanted dregs that Lin Feng was currently coddling in the valley, but certified administrative minds who understood the architecture of the old ledger.The upper capital’s asylum sanctuaries were designed specifically for this purpose, repository vaults for the living dead.When a high-tier academy fell or a provincial house was liquidated for systemic errors, those elite disciples who weren't turned into fertilizer were stripped of their primary attributes and stored wi
Chapter 113: The Citadel Of Iron Laws
Yue's POVNahh, I couldn't let that happen. The cold beyond the provincial border did not merely bite, it audited.Leaving the smoking ruins of the Academy behind, I forced my remaining silver light-wings to expand, the feathers whistling like jagged glass against the high-altitude pressure gradients.Every vertical mile I climbed away from the High-Spires felt like tearing old silk from an unhealed ulcer. The soot of Lin Feng’s newly stabilized [Weeping Domain] still clung to the filigree of my chest piece, a gray, greasy film that refused to dissolve even under the friction of the jet stream. I didn't look back. I couldn't afford to let my internal navigation array log the orientation of the graveyard he was building.Below me, the world flattened into a sterile, white sheet of iron-rimmed tundra, the frost-bitten northern wastes that guarded the approach to the capital. My wings flickered, their luminescent silver lumens dropping by seven percent every three hundred leagues as
Chapter 112: The Wicked Brew
Yun Qian’s POV The blood dripping from my mangled left shoulder had slowed to a thick, molasses-like crawl, staining the ruined velvet of my tattered gown into a deep, bruised purple.I didn't stay atop the carriage to watch the final calculations of the ledger. The moment the silver lattice of [The Weeping God’s Tear] shattered into fine white dust, the exact second the terminal kinetic force of the Tier-5 core was gagged and smothered by the administrator's miracle pull, I let my body slide effortlessly off the silver-trimmed roof. My bare feet touched the stones without a single vibration, my acoustic parameters perfectly synchronized with the deep, structural groaning of the mountain's shifting foundation.I moved away from the light. I stepped backward, melting into the long, monstrous shadows cast by the burning pillars of the library ruins, watching the unfolding tragedy from the safety of the heavy, oil-slick fog.My eyes were wide, dancing with a beautiful, frantic, and ent
Chapter 111: The Brother's Secret
Lin Chen's POVThe violent, silver-threaded silence that followed the collapse of the alchemical dome suffocated the courtyard of the spires. I fell to my knees in the gray slush, my hands trembling so hard they sank deep into the wet charcoal dust. The heavy, freezing iron fragments of my broken slave-collar were scattered around my boots, but the raw skin of my throat wasn't cooling down. Instead, the phantom weight of the lineage was burning hotter, a sharp, white-hot sting radiating from the precise spot where our father’s hidden inscription had been carved into the metal."Junjie..." I choked out, the name catching in my raw, steam-blistered lungs. He'd grown to be everyone's favorite over the last few weeks. Across the ruined plaza, Lin Feng didn't move. He sat like an iron statue beneath the frozen, monument-like chassis of the scavenger golem, his fingers clutched tightly around the charred, crumbling husk of the apprentice. His solitary violet eye was completely wide, un
Chapter 110: The Blood Bond Bonus
Lin Feng's POV “ahhh!!! Shit! Shit!”The blue interface of the Gacha Tablet exploded into a blinding, multi-layered waterfall of extremely toxic purple data lines that completely filled the socket of my solitary eye. I don't know how to explain it, but the pain echoed in my skull. "Junjie!" I screamed, the raw, un-administrative force of my voice tearing the vocal cords in my throat until the hot taste of copper filled my mouth.I lunged forward, the heavy iron links remaining on my wrists snapping through the purple smoke like striking vipers. But unfortunately, I was already too late, the horizontal geometry of the trap had achieved its total, terminal alignment.The clumsy junk-merchant’s apprentice didn't wait for my calculation. He didn't wait for a server bypass line or a diagnostic patch. With that final, soot-stained smile still fixed onto his face, Junjie completely relaxed his spirit-channels, allowing his core to collapse inward, and threw the entire weight of his body
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