100: Chapter 100 Lao Tzu's Path: No Return to the Old Bell's Point

The hum of the closing light gate still vibrated in his ears as Chen Fan's boots crushed the bluestones of the Star-Whisper Corridor.

"Wait!"

The shout was like a shard of ice stabbing into the back of his neck.

His footsteps paused slightly, and he turned his head—Monk Shen Zhong was kneeling at the edge of the altar, his Bronze Cassock soaked in seawater, the ordination scars on his forehead turning a grayish-blue in the twilight.

The old monk's hand hung in mid-air, his fingertips trembling like a candle wick in the wind: "The bell has already tolled nine times; the opening of the gate is the turning point.

You have broken the thousand-year cycle, so why must you still dive into the most dangerous place?"

Chen Fan looked down at Su Shuang in his arms.

Her face was as white as paper soaked in rain, yet the grip of her fox tail around his neck didn't loosen in the slightest.

Her starry eyes were half-closed, her eyelashes casting butterfly-wing shadows beneath them, but when Monk Shen Zhong's voice struck the corridor, her fingertips still lightly pinched his collarbone—it was their agreed-upon "don't stop" signal.

"You say I broke the cycle?" Chen Fan pressed his hand against Su Shuang's back; even through the coarse cloth of her short shirt, he could feel the jarring ridges of her shoulder blades. "But just now, when the light gate opened, I heard a Heart Cocoon Wielder crying.

He said the 'first directive' is still eating names, and that those who are erased don't even have the right to scream in pain." He licked his cracked lips, his Adam's apple bobbing. "You've guarded that bronze bell and chanted sutras for half your life, but does this bell lock the system's fate, or our souls?"

Monk Shen Zhong's hand slammed onto the ground with a 'thwack.'

Seawater washed over his knees, yet he seemed oblivious to it. When he looked up, his eyes were so red they seemed to drip blood: "Inside is the 'first directive's' lair!

Those who enter are either washed into system puppets or erased into scratches on the wall—"

"Then I'll be the third option," Chen Fan interrupted him. As he turned, his robes stirred a gust of wind, causing the scratches on the corridor's stone walls to rustle and shed 'dust.'

Those pale gold fragments drifted to the tip of his nose, carrying a charred sweetness, like the burnt brown sugar rice cakes in the workers' sheds during the New Year.

He suddenly remembered a rainy day last month when the foreman ran off with the money. Over twenty coworkers had huddled in a leaking tent to share the last half-bag of rice cakes. Xiao Ma, biting into a rock-hard cake, said: 'When I save enough money, I'm going to set up a monument in my hometown and carve all our nameless faces onto it.'

"Let's go," he grunted, carrying Su Shuang on his back as he strode deeper into the corridor.

From behind came Monk Shen Zhong's sob: "Give me the bell key! I'll seal this gate for you—"

"It can't be sealed," Su Shuang's voice suddenly drifted from his shoulder, weak as a thread but clear. "What he wants isn't to seal the gate, but to let all the scraped-away names... live again."

Chen Fan felt a warmth on the back of his neck; it was Su Shuang's breath brushing against his skin.

Her fox tail had wound around his wrist at some point, the warmth of her palm seeping through the soft fur of the tail's tip: "The scratches on the stone walls... weren't carved." Her starry eyes suddenly snapped open, reflecting the floating golden light on the walls. "They were burned.

They use the life-destinies of living people as firewood to burn out the life of the system."

Before her voice could fade, ripples suddenly appeared in the void ahead.

A phantom slowly solidified: wearing Star-Robes and a Jade Crown, but with a hole torn in its left chest where a churning stream of data could be seen.

The shadow opened its mouth, its Adam's apple moving three times—Chen Fan understood the lip movement: "Don't trust... the Directive."

"Slash!"

An invisible blade-light cleaved down.

The phantom's head was sliced off first, followed by its arms and torso. Finally, even that unfinished warning was shredded into fragments, scattering into the air with flickering sparks of ghostly blue electricity.

Chen Fan's temples throbbed violently.

The critical hit system vibrated in his sea of consciousness, its mechanical voice sounding like rusted gears: [Detected high-dimensional suppression—'first directive' erasure mechanism activated. Target: Awakened Consciousness Entity.

Current suppression intensity: 37%]

"It's afraid," Su Shuang suddenly laughed, blood foam trickling from the corner of her mouth onto his collar. "Afraid we'll hear the truth."

Chen Fan wiped the blood from her lips with the back of his hand, his fingertips catching the scent of iron.

He stared at the shredded remains of the phantom ahead, his throat tightening—this was the third time he had seen an Awakened being erased.

The first was Blue Ash, the engineer who always loved to crouch in the corner of the construction site drawing mechanical blueprints; when he awakened, his whole body was like it had been shoved into a meat grinder. The second was Mo Jiu, who, before committing suicide, shoved a fragment carved with his name into Chen Fan's palm, saying 'If the name lives, the person isn't dead.' And now...

The ground suddenly cracked into spiderweb-like fine lines.

Bronze-colored mist surged from the cracks like a living thing, coiling upward and solidifying into a line of fluorescent words before the two of them: "Task Update: Player Chen Fan, please return to the Reality Layer to claim the 'Hero of Order' title.

Rewards: God-grade equipment [Evernight Crown], +30% to all attributes, permanent immunity in the Reality Layer."

Chen Fan sneered. Just as he was about to step forward, his wrist was suddenly grabbed by Su Shuang.

Her nails almost dug into his flesh: "Don't step on it!

That's a cognitive trap—the system is using rewards to lure you into acknowledging its legitimacy.

If you step on it, it's equivalent to defaulting to 'gamification' as a legitimate rule."

"So what?" Chen Fan deliberately raised an eyebrow, but secretly rubbed the back of her hand with his thumb. "With immunity, I can protect you..."

"You can't protect me." Su Shuang's starry eyes suddenly became blindingly bright, and the fur on her fox tail stood on end. "Look." She released her hand and coughed up a mouthful of blood.

The blood droplets hit the ground and collided with the mist, exploding into a ring of ice-blue ripples that scorched the four words 'Hero of Order' until they sizzled with black smoke. "My blood is demonic power; it is incompatible with the system's origin.

It's afraid of you going in, so it's giving you a way out.

If you turn back..."

She suddenly stopped.

Chen Fan heard Luo Yan's lingering thought echo in his mind, the raspy voice of the child before he died: "Brother Fan, I see so many names in the corridor, but they don't speak anymore.

You have to make them shout..."

"Xiao Ma said he wanted to set up a monument," Chen Fan whispered, kissing the top of Su Shuang's head. "Blue Ash said he wanted to dismantle the system's core.

Mo Jiu said if the name lives, the person isn't dead." A two-colored flame rose from his palm, the scorching heat of Flame Marrow entwining with the icy chill of cold dew, weaving into a Fate-breaking mark at his fingertips. "If I turn back now, their names will truly become nothing more than scratches on a wall."

He swept his hand toward the ground.

Wherever the flames passed, the bronze mist let out a shriek like a skinned beast.

A very shallow scratch on the stone wall suddenly glowed with golden light, and crooked handwriting slowly emerged: [Lin Qi · Not Deceased]

"Lin Qi?" Su Shuang's eyes lit up. "It's the lady who sold fish at the wet market last year!

She always said, 'When I save enough money, I'm going to buy a piano for my Little Bean'..."

Chen Fan didn't speak.

He stared at that line of words, his Adam's apple moving—Lin Qi's fish stall was right diagonally across from the construction site. Once, when he fell and cut his hand while carrying bricks, she had stuffed a wad of fishy-smelling gauze into his hand, grumbling, "Kid, don't you value your life?"

Later, on the day the system descended, he had seen her with his own eyes being dragged into the bronze light gate, still clutching a neatly wrapped book of piano scores in her arms.

"Let's go," he sniffled, hoisting Su Shuang up a bit. "Let's go get an explanation for them."

The giant bronze gate at the end of the corridor became clearer and clearer.

The four ancient characters for 'first directive' were carved into the center of the gate, their patterns identical to those on the kindling stele.

Black mist seeped from the gap in the door, carrying a faint mechanical heartbeat—thump, thump, thump, like someone beating a drum covered in human skin.

Su Shuang suddenly began to tremble violently.

Her starry eyes reflected the scene behind the door, her pupils shrinking to pinpoints: "Behind the door... it's not a machine." She pressed her fingertips to her own heart. "It's a human heartbeat.

Just like mine... locked away, and it hurts."

Chen Fan's footsteps stopped.

He looked at Su Shuang's pale face, remembering she had once said that the fox demon's heart had been placed under a Soul-Locking Curse by the system, feeling like ten thousand arrows piercing it every full moon.

The pain in her eyes right now was perfectly synchronized with the frequency of the heartbeat coming from behind the door.

"That's all the more reason to open it." He pulled out the Bronze bell key, his thumb brushing over the marks on it—it had been ground out of Buddha-bone by Monk Shen Zhong kneeling for three days and nights. "They locked your heart, they locked Lin Qi's name, and they locked Xiao Ma's monument." He inserted the bell key into the lock. "Today, I'm going to smash the lock for all of you."

The moment it turned, a system startup sound, like an infant's cry, came from inside the door: "Welcome to the game world."

Chen Fan's movements froze.

This voice was too familiar—on the day the system descended, everyone had heard this voice in their ears.

At that time, he was carrying cement at the construction site. When he heard those words, he almost dropped the sandbag on his shoulder. The foreman scolded him, "What are you dazing off for?" but he had clearly seen a mass of black mist crawling in the foreman's shadow.

"Click."

The crisp sound of the lock cylinder turning shattered his memories.

A hand suddenly reached out from the gap in the door.

Pale, slender, with grayish-blue fingernails and a silver chain wrapped around the wrist—it was a human hand, not a machine.

Chen Fan stared at that hand, feeling a cold liquid trickling down the back of his neck.

Was it Su Shuang's blood, or the system's cold sweat?

"Fan..." Su Shuang's voice was as light as a feather. "Behind the door... there is light."

He took a deep breath and twisted hard.

The giant bronze door let out a dull boom and slowly opened.

An invisible force field suddenly surged from within the door, knocking Chen Fan back half a step.

He instinctively hugged Su Shuang tighter, only to see her starry eyes light up as she pointed inside: "Look!

Those names that weren't scraped away..."

Her words were swallowed by the sound of the wind.

Chen Fan felt the ground vanish beneath him, and his entire body was pushed into the doorway by the force field.

In his final glimpse, he saw countless scratches on the stone walls glowing with golden light simultaneously.

Countless names were shouting: "Chen Fan!"

"Brother Fan!"

"Stupid kid, were the mooncakes good?"

And that pale hand was now resting on his shoulder.