115: Chapter 115 I heard it, but I refuse to believe that nonsense.

The faint blue light deep within the earth's veins suddenly surged, streaks of blurred light flashing across the viewport of the data skiff.

Little Candle pressed her back against the cabin wall, the cold sweat seeping from her palms warming the Anti-Contract Rune. The bronze piece engraved with an inverted star pattern was scorching her skin right through the coarse fabric—this was the precursor to the system scanning them, a burning sensation too familiar, like ants gnawing at her marrow.

"Silent Fissure! Turn left!" Chen Fan's low roar cut through the engine's drone.

As he closed his eyes, the critical hit system churned violently in his sea of consciousness, blood-red warnings searing like a red-hot iron poker: [False positioning signal generating—Acoustic Fingerprint Net is weaving itself.]

When he opened his eyes, his pupils contracted to pinpricks. He tapped his knuckles against the bulkhead: "Broken Pen Official, trust me this time."

The gray-robed old man's fingers flew across the control panel, the ink-stained cuffs of his sleeves brushing against the data threads.

He didn't turn around, merely yanked the threads fiercely. The skiff suddenly tilted, three silver probes scraping past the stern and piercing the rock wall, kicking up fine crystal dust.

Chen Fan saw sticky, fluorescent mucus clinging to the tips of the probes. That was the Administration Bureau's "Acoustic Fingerprint Net," specifically designed to capture original sound data—anyone ensnared by it would have even the tremors of their soul stripped away as a specimen.

"Double-layered encoding," Black Crow’s voice sounded like shards of broken porcelain grinding together. He sat cross-legged at the skiff's core, his ten fingers dancing a bizarre rhythm on the damaged terminal as the original sound fragments in his bone dish were disassembled into green data streams.

Dark red blood beaded from the blind youth's earpiece, yet he seemed oblivious: "They used 'Welcome to the New World' as the sugar coating, wrapping up 'Soul Harvest Activation' inside." He suddenly paused, his Adam's apple bobbing. "And there's something deeper..."

A chill traced down the back of Chen Fan's neck.

That rainy night ten years ago flashed back—the downpour hammering the corrugated iron shed at the construction site, him rushing the heatstroke-stricken Old Zhou toward the hospital. The system prompt exploded in his ear just then: "Container compatibility test in progress."

The next second, Old Zhou's body collapsed like an emptied sack, and on the inner side of Chen Fan's wrist, a faint cyan test marking remained to this day.

"Ding—"

As the mechanical sound pierced the silence of the earth's veins, Little Candle's Anti-Contract Rune burned so hot it nearly scorched through the fabric.

The shadow pact seeped out from the void, resembling a crumpled ball of black mist. The moment its tentacles wrapped around the skiff’s hull, the metal let out a teeth-grinding moan. "I'm not registered!" Little Candle shrieked, throwing herself forward and slamming the rune onto the hull. Blood seeped from beneath her fingernails. "The system can't manage unregistered entities!"

The black mist violently retracted; the shadow pact’s tentacles recoiled as if scorched by fire.

Chen Fan seized this half-second gap, a faint blue fire seed rising in his palm—it was the "Reverse Scale Flame," tempered with critical hit energy.

He pressed the flame onto the terminal interface. Energy surged backward along the data stream into the earth's veins. The blood-red text in his sea of consciousness suddenly exploded: [Pre-translation triggered—True Command: Activate 'Echo Corpse Swarm' encirclement.]

"Boom!"

Web-like cracks burst across the rock wall, and dozens of pale, mottled corpses crawled out.

Faint green phosphorescent fire flickered in their eye sockets, and a unified chant rolled from their throats: "Purification protocol initiated... Eliminate pollution source..." But Chen Fan had already carved Black Crow's parsed "System Lie Comparison Chart" into the seven branch channels. The Echo Corpses suddenly froze; some repeated "Soul Harvest," others shouted "Container Compatibility," and finally, they began tearing each other apart—they had never received the true coordinates and could only treat each other as the pollution source.

"Let every ear that hasn't gone completely dead hear how they were deceived," Chen Fan wiped the crystal dust from his face, his voice icy.

The data fire seed resonated with the earth's veins, scattering outward. The entire space hummed, like a colossal bronze bell being struck.

As the data skiff scraped past the remains of the corpse swarm and rushed into the safe node, Broken Pen Official suddenly coughed violently.

Pale blue data blood seeped from beneath his gray robe. He wiped his mouth and tapped his knuckles toward the Starlight Tower: "They are rebuilding the 'Acoustic Control Hub' at the tower summit, preparing to broadcast the 'Ultimate Soothing Sound'—" The old man's voice trembled. "The moment that thing sounds, all awakened memories will be formatted, cleaner than wiping a blackboard."

Black Crow suddenly looked up, and a flicker of light appeared in his blind eyes.

He fumbled and grabbed Chen Fan's wrist, pressing his fingertip against the faint cyan marking on the other's inner wrist: "But there's a loophole... The remnant soul of the Light Speaker is still there, and they only respond to..." The youth smiled, a bead of blood dripping onto the terminal from his chin. "They only respond to the 'person who understands the original sound.'"

Chen Fan looked down at the marking on his own wrist.

Ten years ago on that rainy night, the system said it wanted to "protect" him; now Black Crow said it was "container compatibility."

He pulled out the bronze coin from his pocket—it was the change Su Shuang gave him at the Teahouse, engraved with a small fox on the reverse side.

Rubbing the surface of the coin with his fingertip, he let out a low laugh, his voice tempered like steel: "Then I'll just be that madman who 'doesn't understand the rules.'"

"Beep—"

The warning alarm exploded inside the cabin.

Chen Fan looked up and saw a red light sweep across the end of the earth's veins through the viewport—the Starlight Tower's countdown showed only seven pulses remaining.

Little Candle suddenly tugged his sleeve, pointing toward the shadow on the skiff's right side: "Did you hear that? There's noise coming from the direction of the Old City." She frowned. "It sounds like... like a rusty loudspeaker scraping."

Chen Fan listened closely.

Amidst the hum of the faint blue light flow, there was indeed a faint, intermittent static sound, very much like the electrical noise preceding the startup of some old piece of equipment.

He stared at that shadow, the bronze coin pressing a red mark into his palm—in the ruins of the Old City, there really was an abandoned broadcasting station, what was it called... 'Thunder Sound Pavilion'?