Chương 91: A Malfunction in Hell (3/3)

Unlike Shi Yan, the gatekeeper was in chaos.

An omission.

A stain beyond the register.

The ghost-fire gave a violent shudder—the pale green flames convulsing like a poisoned lung—then burst backward from Shi Yan's chest in a spray of spectral embers, retreating into the rusted lantern as though it had touched some unspeakable taboo. The sudden recoil sent ripples of displaced Yin energy cascading outward across the bridge, and the frost coating the rotting planks cracked audibly, fracturing into jagged spider-webs of ice that hissed and steamed against the damp wood.

For the first time, the Gatekeeper staggered back half a step.

Its bone-white fingers spasmed around the lantern cord. The translucent skin stretched taut over its knuckles, the tendons beneath visible like knotted cords of old sinew.

"What... are you?"

Its ancient voice trembled.

Not with anger. Not with confusion. But with something far older and more primal—a recognition of wrongness so fundamental that even an ageless sentinel of the Yellow Spring could not suppress its instinctive recoil.

A trace of genuine fear seeped through that hoarse and lifeless tone, like water seeping through a cracked burial jar.

"No karmic thread. No bond to the Six Paths. The lantern follows the root and finds only a broken abyss. You possess a soul, yet Heaven holds neither your birth nor your death in its records. You are one outside the inward cosmos."

The void beneath its straw hat did not blink—it had no eyes to blink with—but the gray emptiness rippled, contracting inward as though trying to comprehend what stood before it.

Shi Yan remained silent.

Behind the snarling iron Yaksha mask, his breathing stayed measured. Controlled. His chest rose and fell in the same deliberate rhythm as before, his jaw no longer clenched but resting neutral, expression unreadable beneath the cold metal.

He had anticipated this exact collision of logic.

When an ancient netherworld artifact attempted to forcefully hook a soul that did not belong to this universe, Shi Yan knew he was risking catastrophic failure.

Either the contradiction would trigger the Heavenly Dao and erase him on the spot, or his [Anomaly] stat would act as a biological firewall.

But thankfully, the System had held. The quarantine was absolute.

His fingers flexed once at his sides—a brief, unconscious test of his own mobility now that the spectral threads had withdrawn. The cold air bit at the exposed skin of his knuckles where his right hand remained unarmored, but the sensation was sharp and real. He was still here. Still intact.

The Gatekeeper possessed immense power, but at its core, it was simply an ancient operating algorithm. It could only judge and collect what was registered within the native database of Samsara.

Because Shi Yan was not born beneath this Heaven, he bore no karmic mark of this world. The soul-lantern therefore could not seize him.

After a long silence, the Gatekeeper slowly lowered the iron hook.

The motion was deliberate, almost ritualistic, as though acknowledging the conclusion of a failed rite. The corroded metal scraped faintly against the edge of its straw raincoat, flaking rust dusting the frost-covered planks below. The sound was dry and brittle, like the crumbling of old parchment.

The crushing Yin pressure that had blanketed the road ebbed away at once, dissolving back into the cold mist that drifted along both sides of the Yellow Spring path. The viscous resistance in the air vanished, and Shi Yan felt the metaphysical weight lift from his limbs like chains falling away. His muscles responded instantly, no longer restrained by the suffocating law of the crossing.

The mist recoiled outward, no longer pressing inward with hostile intent, and the frost ceased its relentless spread across the damp wood. The bridge groaned softly beneath their combined weight, the planks settling back into their natural rot.

"You bring disorder into the Yellow Spring, outsider."

Its voice was cold and ancient—neither wrathful nor kind, but like an old law given tongue.

The words carried no emotion, no judgment, only the flat recitation of fact. The tone was that of a stone tablet engraved ten thousand years ago, still standing in an empty hall where no incense burned.

"This lantern gathers only those accounted for beneath Heaven. You bear no karmic mark, and so its flame cannot receive you."

The Gatekeeper's gaze remained fixed upon him.

The gray void beneath its hat did not waver, did not shift. It simply observed—a timeless, patient scrutiny that held no warmth, no curiosity, only the cold weight of eons spent watching souls pass through its domain.

"Yet if you step into the Midnight Ghost Market in such a state, you will be as living flesh cast among starving ghosts."

The green lantern swayed gently in its grasp, the pale flame inside flickering once, casting distorted shadows across the bridge. The light crawled over Shi Yan's brigandine like oil sliding across iron, leaving faint traces of luminescence that faded as quickly as they appeared. The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

"All who trade in death, Yin, and souls will sense the emptiness upon you. They will covet it. They will seek to tear open your body and spirit to uncover the secret of your existence."

So my lack of a karmic mark makes me a beacon in there, Shi Yan concluded.

That was no threat. It was simply a fact.

To the things lurking within the netherworld, his body was something Heaven had failed to record—a blank space unclaimed by fate, devoid of the trace all living beings ought to possess. Creatures of that sort did not ignore abnormalities. They circled them. Tested them. Devoured them if given the chance.

Behind the iron Yaksha mask, Shi Yan's eyes did not change.

His pupils remained steady, reflecting nothing but the sickly jade glow of the lantern. His breathing stayed even. His posture, rooted and unyielding, gave no indication of hesitation or doubt.

Let them come, he thought coldly.

Whether they were beasts in the field or ghosts in the dark, hunters were hunters. In his previous life, he had learned more than enough about how such things died. Ambush predators relied on surprise, on the paralysis of fear, on prey that ran or froze. He had stopped being prey a long time ago.

And this risk had been necessary from the start.

A soldier did not squander lifespan, soul-force, or stamina merely to pass a gate. To weaken oneself before entering hostile ground was not caution, but incompetence. Resources were finite. Every expenditure had to be justified by tangible gain, and paying a toll that stripped away vitality before the real engagement began was tactically suicidal.

He had found the flaw and used it.

The restriction had been bypassed.

The road ahead was open.

With the matter settled, Shi Yan casually reached his unarmored right hand into his spatial pouch.

The motion was unhurried, almost dismissive, as though the confrontation that had just transpired was nothing more than a routine checkpoint. His fingers disappeared into the mouth of the worn leather pouch, brushing past the cold metal of weapon hilts and the jagged, blood-crusted edges of several baleful spoils—trophies taken from beasts and men alike—before stopping upon a single low-grade spirit stone.

The stone was small, no larger than a thumb joint, its surface rough and cloudy with impurities. Faint traces of spiritual energy pulsed weakly within, barely perceptible even to those with refined senses. It was the cheapest currency a cultivator could carry, worth less than a single meal in most mortal towns.

He withdrew it and flicked it forward with one finger.

Clink.

The spirit stone fell squarely into the rusted bronze bowl.

The dull, metallic sound of impact echoed once across the silent bridge, then stopped. For a heartbeat, nothing happened. The stone sat motionless in the bowl, its cloudy surface glinting faintly in the green lantern light.

"The flesh-toll is paid," Shi Yan said, voice rough behind the Yaksha mask.

"Now open the way."

The words were blunt. Transactional. Spoken not as a request, but as a statement of completed obligation.

The dull sound of the low-grade spirit stone striking the bottom of the rusted bowl did not fade. Instead, the metallic clink began to resonate, stretching and vibrating until it became a deafening, harmonic drone that filled the entirety of the cavern.

The single note swelled impossibly, layering upon itself in overlapping frequencies that should not have been able to coexist. The air itself began to hum, vibrating with a force that pressed against Shi Yan's eardrums like thumbs digging into soft tissue. The sound was no longer audible—it had become physical, a tangible pressure that crawled along his skin and rattled his teeth.

Before Shi Yan's eyes, the fabric of the Sump began to violently unravel.

The spatial distortion did not happen gradually; it tore open like a severe laceration in the atmosphere. Reality folded inward at the edges, the rotting wooden bridge and black water beyond warping as though viewed through fractured glass. Hairline cracks of brilliant, sourceless white light split the air, spreading outward in jagged, fractal patterns that hurt to look at directly.

The heavy, claustrophobic air of the subterranean aqueduct shifted into something impossibly thin and razor-sharp, smelling of ancient ozone, dried blood, and burning burial paper. The scent clawed at the back of Shi Yan's throat, acrid and bitter, tasting of charred offerings and old ash.

The physical environment warped. The black, glass-like water of the subterranean lake abruptly tilted upward, as if gravity had snapped at a ninety-degree angle. The surface of the water rose vertically, defying all natural law, suspended in place like a wall of liquid obsidian. Small ripples traveled across its surface, moving sideways instead of outward, their motion unnatural and disorienting.

Yet Shi Yan remained rooted to the rotting wooden pontoon, his heavy iron boots held firmly in place by his monstrous fifty-five points of [Physique]. His thighs locked, his center of gravity dropped low, and the soles of his boots bit into the damp planks with enough force to leave shallow impressions in the softened wood. The world twisted and screamed around him, but his body remained an immovable anchor.

Then came the sensory overload.

His newly mutated cranial nerve cluster—the biological foundation of his [Acoustic-Blood Tracker]—suddenly went haywire. The quiet dripping of the cavern was instantly overwritten by a cacophony of impossible, overlapping sounds that stabbed into his skull like heated needles.

"Where is the Heaven? Where is the Heaven?!"

"It burns… the black water burns my eyes…"

"We are forgotten! The Dao is dead, the Dao is dead, the Dao is dead…!"

"Give me back my face… I cannot find my face in the dark…"

"Flesh for the ferry! Rip the flesh… strip the bone!"

The whispers did not come from the fog. They manifested directly inside the fluid of his inner ear, scratching at his mutated cranial nerves like a thousand rusted needles dragging across raw bone. Each voice was distinct yet layered atop the others, creating a dissonant choir of agony and madness that bypassed his eardrums entirely and resonated within the liquid channels of his vestibular system.

The voices overlapped, multiplying perfectly in sync with the violent distortion of the cavern's atmosphere. What began as a few isolated, weeping echoes rapidly cascaded into a deafening, suffocating storm of ethereal terror. Hundreds became thousands, thousands became millions, until the sheer density of sound threatened to drown out thought itself.

Ughh…

Shi Yan's hands shot up instinctively, palms pressing hard against the sides of his Yaksha mask as though he could physically block out the invasion. His eyes squeezed shut, the muscles around his temples spasming involuntarily. His jaw clenched so tightly that the iron mask groaned faintly against the pressure.

Holding his head and closing his eyes, Shi Yan heard all of them—the screaming of millions of souls, a collective, unending wail of agony belonging to the Yellow Spring. He heard the terrifying, deafening clash of metal grinding against metal, like two colossal, mountain-sized swords crossing in a forgotten cosmic war. The sound was so vast, so impossibly loud, that it ceased to be sound at all—it became a force, a shockwave that threatened to shatter the fragile architecture of his nervous system.

But then he forced his eyes open.

His eyelids peeled back slowly, resisting the instinct to stay shut. His pupils dilated sharply, adjusting to the sudden shift in light as the pale mist evaporated and was replaced by something far more malevolent.

Through the dense, swirling violet fog that had replaced the white mist, fragments of a broken timeline flashed like strobe lights in the periphery of his vision. The images were not illusions—they were echoes, residual imprints of events so catastrophic that the fabric of space itself still bore their scars.

The voices were silent then. But he saw a massive, bleeding black sun hanging upside down in an ash-choked sky. Its surface was cracked and weeping rivulets of molten darkness that fell upward into the void above, defying all sense of direction. The horizon beneath it was a wasteland of shattered stone and petrified forests, their branches twisted into shapes that suggested torment frozen in time.

He saw celestial immortals, their pure white robes stained black with corruption, falling from the clouds like dying flies. Their faces were serene, untouched by fear or pain, but their bodies were hollow—empty shells tumbling through the air, their internal organs already consumed by something unseen.

He witnessed the phantom echo of an environment he did not recognize—a titanic stone gate wrapped in rusted iron chains the size of palaces, slowly cracking open to release a tide of pure, unadulterated darkness. The chains snapped one by one, each rupture accompanied by a thunderous boom that shook the earth and sky alike, and from the widening gap poured a liquid shadow that moved with intent, hungry and aware.

Then, without warning, the swirling violet hues of the dimensional rift completely vanished, replaced by an aggressive, overwhelming crimson.

The shift was instantaneous. The violet fog bled out of existence, and in its place came a red so deep and viscous it looked like the inside of a wound. The color saturated everything—the bridge, the water, the mist, the very air itself—until the world resembled the interior of a living body, pulsing and wet.

What the—my vision... why is it bleeding out?

Shi Yan's breathing hitched for the first time since the confrontation began. His hands dropped from his head to brace against his knees, his body instinctively lowering into a defensive crouch. His vision swam, the red overlay intensifying until he could no longer distinguish shapes or distances with any accuracy.

Shi Yan did not panic, but an immediate, icy spike of alarm registered in his mind. The terrifying red overlay wasn't an illusion in the fog; it was happening inside his own retinas.

The blood vessels in his eyes were gorging themselves, pushing against the ocular walls as biological pressure skyrocketed inside his skull. He could feel it—a throbbing, building tension behind his eyeballs, as though something were trying to force its way out from within. His vision pulsed in time with his heartbeat, each throb of his blood-furnace sending another surge of pressure into his cranial cavity.

Why? What is happening? Is this the so-called Heart Demon?

No. That was impossible. According to the fragmented memories of his body's original host, and the countless Xianxia texts he had consumed in his previous life, a 'Heart Demon' was a tribulation of the spirit—a corruption of a cultivator's Dao Heart caused by trauma, greed, or suppressed fear. It was a spiritual affliction, not a physical one, and it manifested as illusions, false visions, or crippling doubt that eroded one's will to advance along the path of cultivation.

But Shi Yan had no Dao Heart to break. He had no Dantian to suffer Qi Deviation. He was a mechanical, Daoless entity.

If it's not spiritual corruption, then this is purely a hardware malfunction?