123: Chapter 123 You believe she's your salvation? I'll take her back!

Raindrops trickled down the broken tiles of the old theater, condensing into beads on Shadow Weaver's hair, plopping onto the back of her trembling hand.

She knelt on the wooden floor slick with rainwater. The broken spiderwebs hung limply by her feet like black snakes whose life force had been drained.

"Little Lin... I only wanted to save you..." Her voice was colder than the rain, the trailing syllables torn apart by the wind, like fragile porcelain about to shatter.

Chen Fan's battle saber was still plunged into the center of the stage. Rainwater flowed down the spine of the blade, forming thin, dark-red streams that washed over his blood-stained rubber shoes.

As he bent over, the bronze coin on his neck swayed—it was strung by Su Shuang herself, engraved with the two crooked characters for "Safety."

"You couldn't save him." He squatted down, his voice soft, as if afraid of startling something delicate. "His last words were for you not to come back."

Shadow Weaver looked up sharply, scattering the water droplets from her eyelashes onto Chen Fan's face.

The floating shadow of Little Lin on the stage was reflected in her pupils—the youth was covered in blood, yet he was still smiling. A bead of blood detached from his lip, tracing a half-arc of crimson in the empty air.

"He didn't know..." Shadow Weaver's nails dug into her palm. "He didn't know the System would turn residual souls into fuel, didn't know they would pump maggot-like commands into his consciousness..."

"Sister—" The high-pitched singing of the Theater Soul suddenly soared, shaking dust loose from the private boxes.

Little Candle had moved behind Shadow Weaver at some point, the Anti-Contract Rune on her fingertip glowing with a faint, eerie green light.

She said nothing, merely pressed the rune gently against Shadow Weaver's chest.

The resonance of lingering regrets exploded like a spark. Fragments of Shadow Weaver's memory surged forth: in a dark room late at night, sweating profusely, she was curled up in a chair while the System's piercing needle was driven into her temple, all to dredge up half a wisp of Little Lin's consciousness from the data torrent; when she gave the Shadow Pavilion spy false coordinates, her Adam's apple bobbed as she swallowed the words "Beware of traps"—she needed to force Chen Fan, this madman, to drag Little Lin out of the data cage with the cruelest means possible.

"Shadow Pavilion Secret Order Change!" Black Crow's blind eye suddenly twitched. His hand, reaching for the terminal, froze. "Target is out of control. Activate 'Silent Corridor' self-destruct sequence!"

The back of Chen Fan's neck instantly tightened like a drawn bowstring.

The notification sound from the critical hit system exploded in his mind, like the clang of a Broken Gong: [High-risk signal source detected, coordinates locked onto the ninth floor of the Starlight Tower].

He grabbed Shadow Weaver's blood-soaked collar. Rainwater streamed down both their foreheads. "Where is the map?"

Shadow Weaver suddenly laughed, blood-tinged foam spilling from the corner of her mouth. "It's in my blood... but you won't get it." She suddenly bit down on her tongue, but Little Candle seized her wrist.

The rune flared with a 'buzz.' The Anti-Contract power acted like an iron hoop, locking down her movement. "You aren't registered with the System, so they can't kill you," Little Candle's voice was colder than Shadow Weaver's. "But I won't let you die either."

Chen Fan pulled out the branded bronze plaque, one he had stripped from a Shadow Pavilion traitor earlier.

He pressed it against Shadow Weaver's chest, feeling her violent heartbeat pounding against his palm: "You claim to be salvation? Then use your blood to draw your hell."

The plaque began to heat up.

Shadow Weaver's blood crawled into the patterns as if it were alive.

Chen Fan smelled the sharp scent of rust explode near his nose. He looked at the ground—dark-red lines of blood were drilling out of the plaque, winding along the cracks in the bricks. First, they drew a spiral staircase, then chains, and finally, at the lowest point, they coalesced into an array diagram. Hundreds of light spots were locked inside, suspended beneath a blue-glowing 'Soul Fuel Extraction Array'.

"Sister Zhi..." The shadow of Little Lin on the stage moved. He reached out as if to touch Shadow Weaver's face, but his hand passed right through her fingertips. "If one day I become a puppet... you must kill me yourself."

Shadow Weaver's tears splashed onto the bloodlines, smearing the strokes of the characters for 'Little Lin'.

Chen Fan ripped the Shadow Pavilion key from her neck; the metallic coolness stung his palm.

The System suddenly shrieked: [Cooperative Critical Hit condition met!]. He remembered what Su Shuang had said when she used her fox spirit power to help him last time, hooking his collar with her finger: "Fanzi, if you ever need Big Sister, just call out."

"Su Shuang." He murmured the name, like reciting an incantation.

A faint, ethereal sweet fragrance wafted through the air—the scent of the osmanthus paste Su Shuang often used.

Shadow Weaver's pupils instantly glazed over—it was the residual charm power of the fox spirit, crossing several kilometers to precisely lock onto her mind.

Zero point three seconds was enough for Chen Fan to throw a punch.

The blue flame, wrapped in sorrowful critical force, blasted onto the key. The sound of shattering metal was like a stone sinking into a lake.

The bloodlines suddenly shot upward, piercing the theater roof and drawing a red silk-like ribbon of light through the rain curtain.

A buzzing sound echoed in the ears of all players across the city. Some rubbed their ears and murmured, "Ninth floor... there's light..." Others stared at the sky, the shadow of the bloodline reflected in their pupils.

As Shadow Weaver collapsed into Chen Fan's arms, her breath was weak as a leaf. "Kill me... don't let me live like him."

Chen Fan clenched the key fragments, feeling the sharp edges cut into his palm.

He looked up toward the Starlight Tower. The outline of the steel giant was blurry in the rain, but it couldn't block the bloodline stabbing straight toward it.

"I'm not stealing lives, nor am I stealing power," he said to the rain, his voice carried away by the wind toward the sky. "This time, what I'm stealing is—no one gets to decide how someone else lives."

On the floor of the old theater, the bloodlines had not yet cooled.

The dark-red patterns snaked like living snakes, seeping into the sewers with the rainwater, then emerging from various drains. Finally, they converged into a beam at the city skyline, pointing directly at the darkest floor of the Starlight Tower—where a door, sealed for ten years, was slowly cracking open.