Chương 102: Forge It (2/3)

As the [Anomaly: 10] Protocol initiated the final purge, throwing the Fiend's fractured soul violently backward, the entity felt the undeniable, crushing weight of that "Firewall" physically ejecting it.

It was not a gentle push. It was the metaphysical equivalent of being caught in the gears of a titanic, uncaring machine—each rotation grinding away another layer of its essence, splintering memories and consciousness into fragments that dissolved like morning frost beneath an unfeeling sun.

The Fiend's sanity fractured. The excruciating pain of its shredded soul was instantly eclipsed by the horrifying implications of its own miscalculation.

This was no abandoned husk! An artifact of this impossible caliber, protected by a seal that completely rejected the laws of the Heavenly Dao itself, could only belong to an existence so far above the Fiend that it defied all earthly comprehension. The kind of supreme being whose mere passing attention could erase entire cultivation realms from existence, leaving behind only scorched emptiness where mountains and sects once stood.

Whose property is this?! the Fiend's mind screamed in apocalyptic terror as the System began violently shredding its phantom coils, each severed thread burning away into nothingness like spiritual flesh meeting purifying flame.

"Senior! Great Senior! Please pardon me!" the fiend suddenly shrieked aloud, its guttural, rumbling voice breaking into a high-pitched, desperate plea that rattled the stalactites above. The sound bounced off the cavern walls in overlapping waves, creating a dissonant echo that made the very air shudder. Small fragments of stone rained down, pattering against the bedrock floor and disturbing the bone dust in tiny, expanding clouds.

"Pardon my blind, ignorant eyes! I did not know!"

It felt the crushing weight of an anomaly that operated entirely outside the grand laws of the Heavenly Dao—a cold, mechanical existence that devoured spiritual variables, rejected the mythos of the Heavens, and returned only unforgiving, hard mathematics. Numbers without mercy. Logic without soul. A void that consumed rather than cultivated.

Senior? Shi Yan, whose ears were ringing from the sudden, deafening shriek that had filled the enclosed space like thunder trapped in a bottle, blinked beneath the dark iron slits of his mask. The phosphorescent glow from the venting mechanism cast shifting shadows across his steel-gray eyes as they narrowed in genuine bewilderment. He felt a brief, profound moment of confusion pierce through his combat focus. Did it just call the System 'Senior'?

While he was trying to process the absurdity of the monster's reaction—his mind racing through tactical assessments and threat calculations that suddenly no longer seemed to apply—the scream that followed was the shrill, echoing wail of fundamental cosmic terror. It was the sound of something ancient and powerful realizing it had reached beyond its station and grasped something it should never have touched.

The Jiuli Fiend threw itself backward in a blind panic, its massive body scraping against stone with a grinding shriek of chitin against rock. All six of its massive arms flailed wildly in the air, fingers splayed and grasping at nothing, inadvertently smashing its own precious tools. Huge iron hammers—their heads still glowing faintly with residual heat from the forge—and heavy, rune-carved tongs were swatted aside like children's toys, sparking violently against the stone floor.

The metallic crashes rang out like discordant bells, each impact sending up its own small fountain of disturbed bone dust.

Its heavy, soot-blackened lower arms buckled under the weight of its terror, the joints folding at unnatural angles as muscle and sinew gave way. The gargantuan creature crashed brutally into the rear wall of the cavern with a thunderous boom. The impact sent a tremor through the bedrock that Shi Yan felt travel up through the soles of his boots, vibrating through his bones.

The collision shook loose a shower of dust and small rocks from the ceiling that pattered down like hail, some striking the shell-anvil with hollow tink-tink sounds, others disappearing into the bone dust covering the floor.

At the same time, the gray mist in the room abruptly dissolved.

Losing its cohesion without the Fiend's sustaining will and malicious intent, the phantom vapor evaporated into harmless, foul-smelling smoke that dispersed into the cold cavern air. The oppressive spiritual weight that had pressed down on every surface lifted all at once, like chains falling away.

The instant the metaphysical pressure of the Yin-grudge vanished, the suffocating, freezing weight on Shi Yan's lungs lifted. His next breath came easier, the frigid air no longer scraping his throat like shards of ice. The temperature in the cavern rapidly normalized, the unnatural cold bleeding away and being replaced by the stifling, sulfurous heat of the subterranean forge.

The acrid smell of molten metal and coal smoke rushed in to fill the void left by the dissipating Yin energy, thick and cloying in his nostrils. His breath, which had been visible as vapor just moments before, now vanished into the warming air.

The cavern became a theater of madness.

The Fiend's blind, stitched face jerked rapidly from side to side in panic, its movements sharp and animalistic, like a wounded beast searching desperately for an escape route it couldn't see. Thick lines of black, tar-like blood wept from its hidden eye sockets beneath the heavy leather mask, streaming down the cracked and weathered surface of its face in rivulets that dripped steadily onto its chest and apron. The reek of old iron and rotten incense intensified as more of the foul substance poured forth.

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"This lowly one did not see the Seal!" the creature babbled, its voice cracking and breaking between pitches—now deep and guttural, now high and desperate. It pressed its massive back into the stone wall as if trying to physically phase through the rock to escape, its chitinous plates grinding against the unforgiving surface with a sound like nails on slate.

It threw its upper arms over its head in a protective, groveling posture, the enormous limbs trembling violently as they crossed over one another in a pathetic parody of submission.

"I thought this Flesh-Vessel was asleep! I thought it was abandoned in the Yellow Spring!" The words tumbled out in a frantic rush, each syllable heavy with genuine terror.

"I am but a humble, chained smith of the Netherworld! I am filth! I am slag beneath the heel of heaven! I dare not covet the peerless property of a Great Venerable! Senior, do not erase my existence! Spare my soul from the wheel of oblivion!"

The human faces sewn onto its heavy blacksmith's apron—the souls it had trapped and tormented for centuries to power the bellows of its forge—felt the residual shock of the System's purge ripple through them like an aftershock.

Even they understood that the dominant force in the room had suddenly shifted. The hierarchy of power had been rewritten in an instant. They twisted into horrifying expressions of weeping awe, their leathery, preserved features contorting unnaturally as they sobbed incoherently. Dark tears—whether actual fluids or manifestations of spiritual anguish—leaked from their stretched, stitched mouths and hollow eye sockets, steaming faintly in the warming air as they struck the apron and dripped down toward the floor.

Their leathery mouths stretched wide in silent, terrified pleas for mercy from the unseen "Creator" they believed now loomed invisibly over the cavern, operating the invincible vessel standing before them. Some mouthed wordless prayers to forgotten heavens. Others simply wept, their faces frozen in eternal expressions of supplication and dread.

Shi Yan watched the meltdown in silence, his posture unchanging, his bloodshot eyes tracking every movement with the cold efficiency of a predator observing wounded prey. Then the next moment, a small, unobtrusive prompt flared and faded in the corner of his vision, pale text hovering briefly before dissolving into nothing.

[Quarantine Complete. Sieve Drain incurred from physiological stress: 12% Stamina Depleted.] Twelve percent, Shi Yan mentally calculated, his mind already running the numbers with clinical precision. He could feel the internal heat of his body re-stabilizing, the furnace of his metabolism beginning to bank its fires. His heart rate was already beginning to slow, dropping from a frantic, thundering war-drum rhythm that had shaken his entire frame back down to a disciplined fifty beats per minute.

The heavy, controlled pulses felt almost leisurely after the adrenaline-fueled sprint his cardiovascular system had just completed.

That was a massive metabolic cost just for standing completely still. The [Anomaly: 10] stat had acted as an impenetrable firewall, yes—a bulwark that nothing spiritual could breach—but holding that line required energy. Raw, physical energy.

The System had drawn heavily upon his body's glycogen stores, forcing his heart to pump at maximum capacity to sustain the structural lock that kept the foreign intent out. It had burned through reserves like a siege engine firing at full draw, consuming fuel to maintain the absolute barrier between his consciousness and the invading presence.

In a prolonged fight, losing twelve percent of his stamina pool without throwing a single punch would be a dangerous tactical deficit. It would mean entering combat already tired, already compromised. Against multiple enemies or in an extended engagement, that kind of hidden damage could mean the difference between walking away and bleeding out on cold stone.

But against an instant-kill, soul-targeting attack initiated by a centuries-old monster? An assault that would have shredded his mind and hollowed out his skull, leaving behind nothing but a meat puppet for the Fiend to wear?

It was an incredibly cheap price to pay.

At least there is no structural damage. No permanent neurological degradation. The Anomaly stat is fully functional. The hostile code has been erased. His mental checklist ran with cold efficiency, confirming system integrity like a soldier field-stripping his weapon after combat.

Now, the slight, hidden tension in his posture completely unwound. The rigid control he'd held over every muscle—preventing even the smallest flinch that might have disrupted the System's work—melted away. His shoulders dropped a fraction of an inch. His jaw unclenched, the ache in his teeth fading as blood flow returned to compressed nerves. The plan had changed.

He simply adjusted his footing, the thick, shock-absorbing pond-spider silk and Stoneback Boar hide of his armor shifting silently with his movements. The layered materials whispered against each other with a faint rustle, leather creaking softly as it flexed. Bone dust compressed further beneath his boots as he redistributed his weight, settling into a more neutral stance—no longer braced for internal catastrophe, but ready to move, to act, to seize the momentum that had so suddenly swung in his favor.

He tilted his masked head, the motion slow and deliberate, staring coldly at the cowering, hyperventilating mythical demon crumpled against the cavern wall like a discarded puppet with its strings cut.

So let me get the straight facts. His thoughts crystallized with brutal clarity. After the System activated its protocol to protect my mind, this thing experienced the block and assumed there is a 'Senior' cultivator remotely protecting me, huh.

Although Shi Yan didn't know the intricate, awe-inspiring mythology the Jiuli Fiend was currently writing about him in its head—a convoluted theory woven from terror and desperation, assigning him the role of precious artifact belonging to some transcendent immortal, a theory that had driven the demon to keep attacking and attempting possession despite having physically verified the absolute absence of Qi or a Dantian anywhere in his body—he understood the immediate tactical result.

The enemy had misidentified the threat. Completely.

If it hadn't tried to forcefully hack the mainframe, Shi Yan mused dryly, the mental analogy coming naturally from his previous life's military training, the System perhaps would not have triggered the Quarantine Protocol at all.

By attempting the possession, the Fiend had essentially electrocuted itself on the high-voltage fence surrounding Shi Yan's mind. It had reached for control and grasped only annihilation.

Now, Shi Yan no longer saw an inscrutable, overwhelming nightmare of the Yellow Spring—some ancient horror beyond his ability to comprehend or combat. He only saw an enemy combatant whose primary weapon system had catastrophically failed, resulting in a total psychological collapse. A broken opponent. A shattered threat.

The threat assessment had instantaneously plummeted from Lethal to Negligible.

He moved. His boots crunched softly through the bone dust as he crossed the remaining distance in measured strides, each footfall deliberate and controlled. Then he stopped right at the edge of the great fossilized anvil, the shell's ancient surface pocked and scarred from centuries of hammer blows.

His right hand moved smoothly, fingers curling naturally as his palm came to rest upon the empty, heavy scabbard attached to his hip. The worn leather was warm from proximity to his body, familiar and solid beneath his gauntleted grip. He raised his gauntleted left hand, the articulated metal plates of his armor clicking softly as they shifted, extending a single, steady finger that didn't waver even slightly.

He pointed to the pile of shattered orthodox swords—their fractured blades still gleaming faintly in the phosphorescent light—and the massive, scaled demonic arm resting on the dark shell, its claws still slightly curled, its hide still radiating a faint, fading warmth.

Then, he tapped the stone rim of the anvil twice. The harsh clack-clack of iron gauntlet against petrified bone echoed through the deathly silent cavern, the sound sharp and commanding, cutting through the Fiend's whimpering like a judge's gavel.

"Forge it," Shi Yan said. His voice, muffled and distorted into a low, mechanical rasp by the Iron-Yaksha mask, carried no anger, no boast, and absolutely no trace of spiritual pressure. There was no Qi coloring his words. No crushing weight of cultivation bearing down on the listener. No heavenly mandate humming beneath the syllables.

It was merely an order.