363: Chapter 364 Engineer Shovel, Physical Disconnection and Formatting

Exactly 6:15 AM.

Sunrise.

Lin Qi didn't hesitate. He poured Dao Source into the entrenching tool with all his might, and the blade cut horizontally 18 meters underground.

No sound.

No vibration.

This strike wasn't a "cut"; it was "formatting."

With the blade as the starting point, the Dao Source formed a flat disk only two millimeters thick but with a radius of twelve meters, pushing out horizontally.

Wherever the disk passed, the underlying structure of all matter was rewritten by the Dao Source. Rocks became loose grit, the circuits of the Law roots were cleared line by line, and the internal energy flow snapped instantly.

Three main root systems were severed simultaneously.

The cut surface was as smooth as if sliced by a laser.

The moment they were cut, a chain reaction occurred in the Law network of the entire Rotten Wood Forest.

On the surface.

Lin Qi couldn't see it, but he could "hear" it.

Within the perception range of the Dao Source—with the Central Ancient Tree as the center—the pulses of all Law roots became disordered at once.

The stable frequency of twelve times per minute turned into chaotic high-frequency tremors the moment the main root system was severed—like a server that had run for a hundred years suddenly having its power cord pulled, all processes crashing simultaneously.

It blue-screened.

Lin Qi didn't stop.

The second strike.

This strike cut upward at a thirty-degree angle, targeting the shallower secondary roots directly beneath the ancient tree's trunk.

The formatting disk pushed out again, this time expanding its radius to twenty meters.

All Law roots below ten meters underground were completely severed.

The Central Ancient Tree lost over seventy percent of its root connections.

If Ku Ye's perception network were compared to the internet—what Lin Qi just did was like squatting in the server room and snapping the fiber optic cables one by one.

Physically pulling the network cable.

The most primitive, crude, and effective way to cut the network.

What's the use of your firewall being powerful? I'll just pull the cable directly.

---

On the surface.

The center of the Rotten Wood Forest.

Beside the ancient tree.

Ku Ye sat cross-legged next to the pillar of light of the faith channel.

He had been in a meditative state for less than thirty seconds.

His consciousness was combing through energy nodes along the veins of the faith channel. This was his daily routine for sixty years, starting precisely at sunrise, regardless of the weather.

The first second, everything was normal.

The second second, he perceived something was slightly wrong.

The signals from several perception nodes in the distant edge areas weakened, as if suppressed by something.

The third second—

All perception nodes snapped simultaneously.

Ku Ye's meditative state was violently interrupted.

His eyes snapped open, a pair of cloudy, brown-spotted old eyes flashing with an intimidating light in that instant.

Then that light froze.

Because he realized he had "gone blind."

Not truly blind. It was that the perception network he had maintained for a hundred years had completely paralyzed at this moment. Within a fifty-kilometer radius, he couldn't perceive feedback from any tree, any blade of grass, or any fallen leaf.

It was as if the entire forest had vanished from his world in an instant.

"How is this possible..."

Ku Ye's voice was as dry as a snapping withered branch.

He looked down at the light pillar of the faith channel by his feet—the originally stable golden-green light pillar was flickering violently, like a fluorescent lamp with unstable voltage. The values on the energy input side were jumping wildly, dropping from full load directly to less than thirty percent.

The root system had been severed.

Not just one or two, but all the main root systems had been severed at once.

"Who?!"

Ku Ye's body sprang up from the ground.

His Law power unfolded fully at this moment, an aura of decay spreading outward with him as the center. Everywhere it passed, the remaining withered branches and fallen leaves on the ground accelerated their rot, turning into Ashes.

But when this power spread thirty meters out, it hit an invisible wall.

Not a wall in the physical sense, but a void in terms of information.

His Law power tried to detect the intruder's location through the root network, but the roots were already severed. Like a driver used to GPS navigation suddenly finding the satellite signal gone and not even a paper map on hand.

Ku Ye had lived for over a hundred years and had been immersed in the Law of Decay for over eighty years.

He had never experienced such a situation.

It wasn't a frontal Breakthrough of the defense line; the defense line itself had been removed from the bottom up.

The attack came from underground.

The moment Ku Ye realized this, he stomped his feet hard against the ground. The Law of Decay poured into the soil, trying to perceive the situation underground.

He perceived it.

Below ten meters underground, there was a void.

All Law roots, the energy network in the fossil layer, and the perception tentacles he had spent decades slowly infiltrating downward—all had been erased.

Erased clean.

As if someone had taken an eraser and rubbed out every stroke of his writing underground.

No, not rubbed out.

Overwritten.

Ku Ye could feel an unfamiliar energy signature remaining in those cleared areas, not belonging to any Law system he knew.

That energy was silent, dense, and self-contained.

Like a silent deep sea.

"...The variable predicted by the Lord Prophet."

Ku Ye's pupils constricted to the extreme.

He remembered the brief warning received through the channel three days ago: the High Priest of the Eastern Mining Area had fallen, the killer was unknown, and the method was "Overwrite Erasure."

The Prophet ordered all strongholds to raise their alert Rank.

Ku Ye had done so. He encrypted the frequency of the perception network, added three layers of Law barriers, and even set up a Decay Field around the ancient tree as a trap.

But all his defensive measures were based on one premise: the intruder would come from the surface.

Entering from the edge of the fifty-kilometer perception network, being discovered layer by layer, and blocked layer by layer.

He never imagined someone could come from underground.

Even more so, he never imagined someone could travel two thousand kilometers silently through the underground fossil layer completely covered by his perception network, lurk directly beneath him, and then strike the moment he meditated.

This wasn't a battle.

This was an execution.

Ku Ye's hands began to tremble, not from fear, but from rage.

A hundred years.

He had taken root in this Rotten Wood Forest for a hundred years.

Starting from a sapling, he cultivated a perception forest with a fifty-kilometer radius; starting from a tiny Law root, he wove a faith network that penetrated the fossil layer.

And now someone was squatting under his house, cutting his connection with two strikes of the shovel.

How to describe this feeling?

It was probably like a veteran netizen who had carefully managed an account for ten years, only to have it stolen, the password changed, the binding canceled, and the friend list cleared.

A heart attack wouldn't even be enough to describe this pain.

Ku Ye opened his mouth, wanting to roar.

But his voice got stuck in his throat.

Because the ground beneath his feet split open.