108: Chapter 108 As long as the flame remains burning, I am no longer a pawn.

Chen Fan's heels clicked heavily against the passage floor.

Little Candle's small arms were wrapped around his neck, the top of her head rubbing against his chin and making it itch. However, at this moment, even his breathing felt like it was burning—the roar of the collapsing Archive Tower behind him still thundered in his ears. Charred scraps of paper flew past the back of his neck, one of them landing inside his collar and searing his skin with pain.

"Big brother, the wall is moving." Little Candle suddenly sniffled, her warm breath brushing against his earlobe.

Chen Fan looked up.

The crystal barrier at the end of the passage had begun to ripple at some point. Water droplets condensed on its surface were slowly sliding down the patterns. Every time a drop hit the ground, a blurred face appeared on the barrier—players who had been erased by the system.

There was a hunched old man, a child clutching a toy, and that ponytail girl, Late Lin, who had been turned into a puppet. Blood and tears streamed from the corners of her mouth, yet she gave Chen Fan a blurry smile.

"Don't be afraid." Chen Fan reached back and patted the back of Little Candle's knees, his palm touching her worn-out pant legs. "The answer we're looking for is right behind that wall."

Before his voice could fade, a raspy male voice came from within the wall, sounding like sandpaper scraping against a sheet of iron: "Old Chen, do you still remember that summer?"

Chen Fan's footsteps halted.

This voice was all too familiar—it was the gravelly voice of Old Zhang, the construction site foreman, but mixed with a mechanical hum.

"You were crouching in the pile of cement counting your wages when the last bronze coin rolled into a crack between the bricks."

"I used a shovel to help you dig it out and said, 'This scrap of copper can buy a bottle of iced soda.'"

Chen Fan's pupils constricted sharply.

That was three years ago. He had covered three night shifts for the foreman, and when they settled the wages, there was an extra greenish ancient coin. He later tucked it under his pillow until the day the world was gamified, when it was burned along with his bedding.

"That wasn't money." The voice inside the wall grew lower. "It was the 'Tinder Code' that the first generation of players carved into the data."

"With their last bit of computing power, they hid the Resistance Key within the most ordinary aspects of human life."

"Crack—"

Spiderweb-like cracks spread across the crystal barrier, and a translucent figure squeezed out from the fissures.

It was a man wearing a green cloth shirt. Half of his face was a blur of pixelated noise, but the other half bore a smile that Chen Fan knew all too well—it was the Broken Pen Official, the most mysterious renegade record-keeper of Gray City's Archive Tower. He always said he "kept accounts for the dead and recorded names for the living."

"Follow me." The Broken Pen Official raised his hand, and pale blue data-blood seeped from his fingertips, drawing a trail of light on the ground. "The Tinder Well is below."

Carrying Little Candle on his back, Chen Fan followed the trail of light downward.

The passage grew narrower and narrower. A damp, musty smell mixed with the scent of burning, until the tip of his shoe kicked against a protruding bluestone slab. A line of small characters was carved in the center of the slab: "The first rejector; the name is incinerated, but the soul remains."

The moment he lifted the stone slab, Chen Fan gasped.

In the subterranean abyss, a black iron wellhead floated in mid-air. The mouth of the well was covered in rust, yet a blue flame danced within it.

That flame neither rose nor fell, like a heartbeat on pause. Each flicker made Chen Fan's temples throb with pain—that wasn't an ordinary fire. It was formed by countless tiny threads of light intertwined, each thread being a "will of denial" that the system had failed to wipe clean.

"These are all the souls that refused to be assimilated by data." The Broken Pen Official's voice drifted down from above. "They burned their names, but they didn't burn their 'I am unwilling'."

Chen Fan pulled the coordinate map from his chest.

It was snatched from the iron racks of the Archive Tower, its edges still stained with the blood splattered when Silent Eye crashed into the furnace.

He took a deep breath and threw the map into the blue flame.

"Boom—"

The blue flame suddenly surged, illuminating the entire abyss as bright as day.

A star map appeared before Chen Fan's eyes: seven high towers were linked like a chain in the void, each spire wrapped in scarlet data chains. The tower in the very center, glowing with a purple light, was exactly the Starlight Tower they were looking for.

"Only by destroying the Starlight Tower can the global data link be severed." The Broken Pen Official's translucent finger pointed to the center of the star map. "But it is guarded by a shadow pact—that thing isn't a contracted spirit; it's the system's watchdog."

Just as he finished speaking, Chen Fan's wrist tightened.

Black mist coiled around him like a living creature, and the whispers of the shadow pact exploded in his ears: "He who reads the forbidden shall have his consciousness evaporated." He could see his skin turning black, like paper doused in concentrated sulfuric acid, sizzling with green smoke.

"Big brother!" Little Candle screamed and lunged forward.

Her small body slammed into Chen Fan's back, and the pale green rune on the inside of her wrist suddenly lit up like a bolt of lightning splitting dark clouds.

Seared by this light, the black mist of the shadow pact instantly recoiled like a snake's tongue, hissing as it retreated half a foot.

The Broken Pen Official spat out a mouthful of data-blood, his translucent body nearly scattering into points of light. "It's afraid of 'unregistered entities'!"

"The system's erasure program only recognizes registered souls. Little Candle... the Anti-contract her mother carved into her bones back then has made her a blind spot for the system!"

Chen Fan abruptly looked up.

Little Candle's small face glowed pearl-white in the light of the rune. She bit her lip, large tears splashing onto the back of his neck. "Mama said I have to help big brother remember everyone."

Remember everyone—this was Silent Eye's cry before she crashed into the furnace; it was the "I don't want to forget" roared by Late Lin's puppet; it was the traces left by thousands of human-skin puppets even as they clawed at their own faces and gouged out their eyes.

Chen Fan suddenly remembered the low murmur from the system earlier: "You... have been remembered." It turned out it wasn't the system marking him; it was him marking the system.

He pulled the bronze coin from his pocket.

The "soda money" the foreman had given him three years ago was now burning in his palm, a faint blue light seeping from its patterns—the same color as the fire in the Tinder Well.

"To hell with being a vessel." Chen Fan chuckled lowly and threw the bronze coin into the blue flame.

The blue flame instantly enveloped his arm.

The critical hit system vibrated violently in his consciousness. The prompt was no longer a mechanical electronic voice but sounded like someone whispering into his ear with a searing temperature: "You... are not a vessel... you are the tinder."

Images flashed before his eyes.

On that stormy night ten years ago, he had been struck by a sudden data stream. At that time, the system's prompt wasn't "Locking successful," but "Awakening failed."

It turned out that from the very beginning, the so-called "critical hit system" wasn't a cheat at all. It was a countermeasure program sealed into his body by the first generation of players using their last will, waiting for someone who could "be remembered," waiting for someone willing to say "no."

"Broken Pen Official." Chen Fan turned around. The blue flame climbed up his veins, condensing into two small flickers of fire in the depths of his eyes. "Take Little Candle to see Su Shuang."

Tell her... I am not a Purifier. I am the 'rejector' they have been waiting for.

The Broken Pen Official wiped away some data-blood and placed his translucent hand on the top of Little Candle's head. "Don't worry. I'll keep the tea at the Frost Moon Teahouse warm for you."

Little Candle clutched Chen Fan's collar, sobbing so hard she could barely breathe. "Big brother has to come back and drink the tea I brew!"

"It has to have osmanthus in it!"

"I will." Chen Fan squeezed her small wrist. The light of the rune felt warm, like a piece of warm jade. "Once I tear down that damn tower, I'll buy you ten bags of osmanthus."

He turned and walked toward the exit of the abyss.

From behind him came the Broken Pen Official's whisper: "Old Chen, remember—as long as the tinder isn't extinguished, I'm no pawn."

The prompt box of the critical hit system suddenly popped up. This time, it wasn't a cold percentage, but a line of burning words: [Critical hit rate recovering... Target: Liquidation].

On the ruins of Gray City, the Ink Judge knelt in the scorched earth.

His Brain-casket had completely shattered, crumbling into metal scraps across the ground. Memories flooded back like a tide—he remembered personally stamping "Erase" on Quiet Speech's file, remembered smiling as he crumpled Late Lin's name into a ball of paper, remembered those vibrant souls he had registered as "data errors."

"Quiet Speech..." He raised his blood-stained face and roared at the heavens, "I'm sorry!"

I've failed everyone!

The wind suddenly picked up.

Charred ashes were swept into the sky, swirling beneath the clouds to form a line of words—"Now it's our turn to say no."

By the time Chen Fan walked out of the passage, dawn had already broken.

He felt inside his chest; that bronze coin was still there, retaining the residual warmth of the Tinder Well's blue flame, searing his heart through the fabric.

In the distance, the spire of the Starlight Tower loomed in the morning mist like a poisonous thorn stabbing into the sky.

He flexed his wrist. The critical hit system's prompt thundered in his consciousness. On the critical hit rate panel this time, the 5% figure was climbing at a speed visible to the naked eye.

"Time to settle the score," Chen Fan said to the wind.

The wind picked up a charred scrap of paper and dropped it at his feet.

On it, three words were written crookedly: Chen Fan.

It had drifted down earlier when the Archive Tower collapsed.

He bent down to pick it up and tucked it into his chest.

The residual warmth of the bronze coin came through the fabric, as if someone had lightly tapped on his heart—it was the tinder beating.