Chương 35: A Message He Shouldn’t Read (3/3)

As the massive digital payload of pure data flooded his system, the thick, corrosive chains of Demonic Qi hanging from the willow canopy above finally lost their power source. The oppressive weight that had saturated the grove for weeks dissolved in an instant. The black chains—each link forged from condensed malice and fed by stolen life force—shuddered violently before unraveling into harmless wisps of gray mist that dispersed on the sluggish, swamp-thick air.

Shi Yan sat heavily against the cold edge of the stone dais, his spine pressing hard against the blood-slick granite as the adrenaline rapidly bled out of his system to reveal the profound, agonizing physical toll of his actions. His breath came in ragged, wet hitches, each inhalation scraping like rusted iron through his throat. A coppery tang coated his tongue—whether from internal bleeding or simply the rancid miasma he'd been inhaling, he couldn't tell.

The burns on his right side throbbed with a sickening, pulsating heat that seemed to radiate all the way down to the bone, while his broken left forearm radiated a dull, nauseating grind of bone-on-bone friction every time he shifted his weight. Even the slightest movement sent fresh jolts of white-hot agony lancing up his arm and into his shoulder.

Tsk, he could feel his whole body was wrecked. Every nerve screamed in protest. He let his head fall back against the stone, the rough surface cool against his sweat-drenched scalp, staring up at the dark canopy of the weeping willows. Their twisted branches swayed gently now, no longer burdened by their grim harvest of suspended corpses.

At least getting this much [Dao Embers]... it's worth the damage output, he paused, feeling the sharp, stabbing pain in his ribs with each shallow breath.

At the same time, he noticed the immediate environmental shifts rippling through the grove. Dozens of emaciated, half-drained villagers—men, women, even children—plummeted from the trees like broken marionettes whose strings had been severed. They splashed heavily into the shallow, dark waters of the swamp, sending up sprays of stagnant, foul-smelling liquid that caught the faint crimson glow still emanating from the array.

"Ah... my head..."

"My boy! Where is my boy?! Someone, please... I can't feel my legs..."

"The blood... the demon's blood array is broken... are we dead? Is this the underworld?"

Groans of utter disorientation and agony echoed through the grove as the survivors began to miraculously wake up, their voices hoarse and cracked from weeks of enforced silence. Some dragged themselves through the shallow mud on trembling limbs, fingers clawing desperately at the slick ground as they patted their own bleeding wrists with shaking hands and wept in sheer disbelief. Others simply lay where they'd fallen, too weak to move, their hollow eyes staring unseeing at the dark sky above.

Their words only registered briefly to him—distant, muffled sounds barely penetrating the fog of pain and exhaustion clouding his mind. Instead, he focused entirely on a strict, deep-chest breathing exercise to manually regulate his failing heart rate. Four counts in. Hold for four. Four counts out. The rhythm was mechanical, practiced, the same technique he'd used countless times in his former life when adrenaline crashes threatened to shut his body down.

System, he commanded mentally, his eyes snapping open—or rather, staring dead and exhausted at the corrupted canopy above him, his gaze unfocused and glassy. How many stat points do I need to repair my injured body?

He waited. And waited.

And then... silence. The interface remained entirely blank, not even the faintest flicker of transparent blue light appearing in his field of vision.

His eyebrows furrowed in sharp, momentary frustration, the muscles in his jaw tightening as a pulse of irritation cut through the fog of pain before slowly loosening as rationality reasserted itself. He felt the severe, throbbing agony in his ribs and the grinding friction in his left arm with renewed clarity, eventually giving up with a ragged sigh that made his chest hitch painfully.

Right. I forgot. This isn't a traditional game with an 'auto-heal' function, tsk.

System, he amended the command, wincing as a sharp spike of pain shot through his burnt shoulder, the sensation like hot coals being pressed directly into raw flesh. Calculate the Dao Ember cost to upgrade my [Physique] from 45 to a flat 50.

The transparent blue screen flickered instantly to life in the dark, its pale luminescence casting faint shadows across his scarred face as it laid out the biological arithmetic of his survival.

[System Calculation Request: Confirmed.] [Current Reserves: 12, 025 Dao Embers] [Physique: 45 → 50 (5 pts × 150) = 750 Embers] [Total Deduction: 750 Dao Embers. Remaining Reserve: 11, 275] [Warning: Forced cellular reconstruction will violently override current physical trauma. Confirm Mass Allocation?] Looking at the last transparent screen, the corner of his eye twitched involuntarily—a tiny muscular spasm betraying his irritation. So you know I'm in pain, yet you pretended you didn't? What a greedy fellow.

But this greedy fellow is also his golden finger; what can he do, ask the villagers for help? Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

Yes. Execute.

[Allocation Confirmed. 750 Dao Embers consumed.] [Major Threshold Breached. Initiating forced cellular reconstruction.] He braced himself, fingers curling against the cold stone beneath him and shoulders tensing despite the pain, but the reaction was still utterly savage.

A blinding surge of heat detonated in the center of his chest, radiating outward like a star going supernova within his ribcage. It wasn't the searing, external heat of Demonic Qi that had scorched his flesh moments before; it was the intense, microscopic friction of his own cellular structure tearing itself apart and multiplying at an exponential rate—millions of cells dying and being reborn in the span of heartbeats.

His pulse skyrocketed, his mortal heart pounding like a rapid-fire piston—each beat so violent he could feel it reverberating through his entire torso—straining to pump the newly forged blood throughout his body at a pace no natural cardiovascular system was meant to sustain.

The blistered, melted flesh along his right ribs and thigh hissed loudly in the damp air, steam rising from the wounds in thin, acrid wisps. The burnt, dead tissue—blackened and cracked like charred paper—instantly flaked and sloughed away in thick sheets, violently pushed out as dense, flawless new muscle fibers rushed upward to replace the void like fast-growing vines reclaiming scorched earth.

It felt like a thousand burning needles stitching his skin together at once—an uncomfortably hot, agonizingly intense itching sensation that crawled beneath the surface of his regenerating flesh and forced a low grunt from his lips, his teeth gritting so hard his jaw ached.

At the exact same time, a sharp, deafening crack echoed from his left arm—the sound reverberating through the grove like a dry branch snapping under immense pressure.

The broken radius bone did not gently heal; the sudden influx of hyper-dense bone marrow physically dragged the fractured edges back into perfect alignment with brutal, mechanical force, grinding the jagged fragments together with ruthless efficiency. The bone instantly calcified around the mended seam, thickening and hardening to match the newly established Tier-2 density constraints, the sensation akin to molten metal being poured directly into his marrow and solidifying in real-time.

His left hand spasmed involuntarily, fingers jerking and curling as new neural pathways reconnected with violent electrical impulses.

The reconstruction gradually subsided, the inferno beneath his skin cooling degree by agonizing degree until only a faint, lingering warmth remained.

The grove fell quiet once more, broken only by the distant sobs of survivors and the intermittent crackle of smoldering wood from the western edge of the camp where the herb crates still smoldered.

By the time he slowly stood up—muscles protesting the movement despite their newfound integrity—and methodically sheathed his steel dagger with practiced efficiency, sliding the Grave-Rot-stained blade into its leather scabbard at his belt, an elderly villager was already approaching. The one Li had called Uncle Chen.

The old man was weakly crawling through the mud toward the dais, his gnarled hands sinking wrist-deep into the black sludge with each agonizing pull forward, his breath wheezing in thin, rattling gasps.

The old man looked up at the dead, mutated monstrosity draped over the crystal coffin—at the unnatural green scales still faintly glimmering in the crimson light, at the obsidian talons that had claimed so many lives now limp and harmless—and then at the tall, imposing figure of Shi Yan standing in the smoldering ruins.

The cultivator's silhouette was backlit by the faint glow of the array, his scarred face half-shadowed, his bearing radiating a cold, military precision despite the fresh burns still visible on his exposed skin.

"Y-You..." the old man rasped, his voice cracking with emotion, his eyes wide with a mixture of primal terror and yet... profound, trembling respect. Then, pressing his forehead down into the bloody mud with a wet squelch, prostrating himself fully in the traditional gesture of deepest gratitude, he said, "You... the Heavens sent an immortal to save us... You slew the demon..."

Shi Yan looked down at the trembling villager, his expression unreadable, carved from stone. He felt no swell of heroic pride, no warm satisfaction at being called a savior. To him, this was merely a neutralized hostile zone—a successful operation with acceptable collateral and minimal friendly casualties.

"Are you the elder of this settlement?" Shi Yan asked, his voice calm and measured, carrying the flat, professional tone of a soldier conducting post-operation assessment, neither touched by the scene of suffering around him nor proud of slaying that demonic cultivator.

"I... yes, Immortal..." The old man's voice quavered, barely above a whisper.

Shi Yan pointed a burned, calloused finger across the grove toward the surviving stack of wooden crates previously hauled in by the Silk & Ash Chamber—the ones that hadn't been caught in the eruption's blast radius.

"Those crates. Do they belong to your village?"

The old man followed the gesture, his rheumy eyes squinting through the darkness at the distant shapes, then shivered violently—whether from cold, trauma, or residual fear, it was impossible to tell.

"N-No... the d-demon brought them from the outside. They smell of curses and blood. We want nothing to do with them, Immortal. Please..."

"Understood," Shi Yan replied and nodded once, a curt, economical movement.

"Then I am claiming them as spoils."

Without waiting for further permission or any expression of gratitude, Shi Yan turned his back on the weeping villagers and walked purposefully toward the central dais to complete his primary objective, his boots leaving clear impressions in the blood-saturated mud with each deliberate step.

He stepped up to the crystal coffin, the Frost-Jade surface still pristine despite the carnage, and methodically began to search the dead physician, his hands moving with practiced efficiency as he ignored the pathetic tragedy of the man's final resting posture—the way his human hand lay so tenderly against the glass above his wife's preserved face, the grief frozen forever in that last gesture.

Shi Yan secured the stolen Chamber goods first—three spatial pouches, each one heavy with condensed medicinal herbs and spirit stones—tucking them securely into his belt where they hung with satisfying weight. But while methodically looting the dead physician's blood-stained inner robes, his fingers brushed against a cold, smooth object tucked into an inner pocket near the man's heart.

A jade slip? He pulled it out, holding it up to catch the faint crimson glow from the array. The light filtered through the translucent emerald surface, revealing intricate script carved into its core.

It wasn't a physical book or a paper ledger. It was a slim, emerald-green Transmission Jade Slip—the kind used by cultivators to store sensitive information that couldn't be trusted to mortal writing methods.

Ah, the classic stored-information setup in a xianxia world. Shi Yan, as a xianxia reader in his past life, naturally deduced that as he turned the glowing jade over in his palm, feeling its cool weight and examining the hairline formations etched along its edges. Let's see what the target was transmitting.

As for how? Obviously...

He gripped the stone more firmly, his thumb running along its smooth surface, and then thought, System, help me break this.

[Error: Incompatible medium. Object classified as external non-consumable data storage.] [No absorbable Dao or Technique detected. Translation Protocol denied.] [Activation requires direct external Qi-conduction.] Well. That was unexpected. Although that was what he thought, his eyes remained calm, never wavering or showing surprise—his expression maintaining that same flat, analytical mask.

But instead of becoming disheartened, his gaze glowed with a spark of intellectual curiosity, the kind of problem-solving focus that had kept him alive through countless impossible scenarios in his previous life.

Let's see, how should we break it? As far as he recalled, the content was perhaps related to the 'Cloud Mirror Sect,' the original host body's sect.

As far as he knew, this sect was righteous on the surface, but then harvested the original host body's spiritual roots just because of some treasure?

That just made no sense. Logic dictated there had to be more to the story—some missing variable that would explain the contradiction. Thus, he stared at the inert piece of jade in his hand, rolling it between his fingers thoughtfully. It said it needed Qi, huh. Well...

Looking around, he took in his surroundings with fresh tactical assessment. He was standing in a swamp positively drowning in residual spiritual energy—Yin and Yang Qi still cycling through the damaged array beneath his feet, the air itself thick with ambient power.

Perhaps he didn't need to generate his own Qi?

Turning back to the altar, Shi Yan observed the gently humming, crimson grooves of the Blood-Refining Array beneath his boots with renewed interest. The array was mostly dormant now—its primary function disrupted by Physician Li's death and the damaged runes—but it still pulsed with residual, high-density Yin-Yang energy, the glowing channels breathing with a slow, rhythmic throb like a sleeping beast's heartbeat.

So, I need battery-like energy, and I need a conductive wire.