161: Chapter 161 The Fire Illuminates the Sky Stele, Illuminating the Path, Not the Soul

As the seven pillars of light pressed down, Chen Fan’s back molars ground together with a clatter.

He could hear his own violent heartbeat slamming against his ribs, shaking the tips of Su Shuang's hair in his arms.

The countdown in his sea of consciousness glowed a blinding red—[Seal Complete · 12 Seconds]—and the edges of the blood-red text were seeping black mist, like some living thing gnawing away at time.

"Don't even reach seven..." The mournful cry of the Echoing Stele suddenly exploded in his eardrums.

Chen Fan's Adam's apple bobbed, sweat sliding from his brow into his eyes, yet he dared not blink.

The six glowing steles on the rift's rock wall cast spots of light onto his retinas; their hexagonal outlines overlapped in his vision, like traps circled in red ink—it turned out the six steles were not for suppression, but for setting up an array.

The seventh Empty Stele remained in place, dull gray like a roadside stone someone had abandoned.

Chen Fan stared at it, suddenly recalling the arrowheads of the incomplete Star Map in the Tactical Atlas, recalling the slight pause of the fingertips when stroking the stele at the Ruins of Return.

"Safe position?" He let out a cold laugh, the metallic taste of blood in his throat growing heavier. "You kept this last breath because you were afraid the formation was too rigid and couldn't swallow the new sacrifice, right?"

Su Shuang in his arms stirred, her eyelashes brushing his collarbone with an itch.

Her hand clutched the corner of his robe, the force as light as a drifting leaf: "Ah Fan..."

"Don't be afraid." Chen Fan lowered his head, touching the top of her head with his nose.

Su Shuang's Fox Fire, in his perception, was faint yet stable, like a lamp flickering in the wind, yet this very lamp had blocked three sneak attacks from the Light Erosion Pulse for him earlier that night.

He gently placed her on the ground, tore off a blood-soaked corner of his robe, and wrapped it around the jade pendant at her neck—that was the token of the Fox Demon Bloodline; when he had hugged her and crashed into the rock wall earlier, the jade pendant and the Empty Stele had resonated for a fleeting moment, sending a numb vibration through both their palms.

"Borrowing a little of your blood," he smiled at Su Shuang, rubbing his fingertip across the small scratch on her wrist.

Su Shuang didn't pull away; instead, she offered her arm further into his palm, the red mole at the corner of her eye trembling: "Burn through it."

The instant the blood droplet landed on the Empty Stele, Chen Fan heard the sound of a bell.

It wasn't the clear chime of a temple bell, but a humming resonance of metal grinding against metal, drilling down from the base of the stele into the earth.

The jade pendant grew hot in his palm, and faint golden light seeped from its patterns, intertwining with the distorted human face engravings on the stele's surface.

As the system prompt exploded in his sea of consciousness, he got goosebumps on the back of his neck—[Remnant Whisper · Second Segment Activated] [Critical Hit Rate Leaps to 40%] [Tactical Atlas · Fragment Two: Reverse Energy Conduction].

"So that's it." Chen Fan stared at the blue light pattern suddenly unfolding in his mind, his throat tightening.

In the Tactical Atlas, the six bright steles were like six blood-sucking insects, drawing black mist up from underground—that wasn't sealing energy; it was the 'failed memories' erased by the system, turned into nourishment after hope was squeezed dry.

And the seven pillars of light were merely chains formed by this corrupted energy.

"Hiss—!"

A burning pain shot through his left arm.

Chen Fan looked down and saw the Light Erosion Pulse from the rock wall climbing up his battle boots; the black and purple patterns were like living snakes, whitening the skin wherever they passed, even corroding gaps into the thunder patterns of the hammer of the thunder god.

Just as he was about to swing his hammer to sever it, a withered, branch-like hand suddenly shot out from the shadows and tightly gripped his ankle.

"Connect the seven points, open the gate!" The map breaker crawled out from a crack in the rock wall, his hair dusted with stone fragments, his eyes red as if about to bleed. "They are coming in through the gate! They—"

"Who are 'they'?" Chen Fan squatted down, grabbing the map breaker by the shoulders and shaking him.

The other's fingernails dug deeply into the back of his hand, but he felt no pain—the skin around the map breaker's wrist was peeling back, revealing bone engraved with a Star Map underneath. "The 'they' you mentioned, are they the reapers behind the system?"

The map breaker suddenly laughed, the sound like a broken bellows: "The Ruins of Return wants to make you the seventh stele! He wants your failure, your despair, wants you to become new nourishment..." His fingers frantically scratched the ground, seven shallow lines crookedly forming a stellar burst. "Complete the formation, and the cycle continues forever..."

Chen Fan's pupils contracted to pinpricks.

He remembered the look in the Ruins of Return's eyes when he said, 'Every act of resistance is a marker,' and how the Light Erosion Pulse specifically targeted those full of hope to devour them—it turned out the cruelest thing wasn't suppression, but squeezing the blood out of the resistors and feeding it to the formation as fuel.

"Damn it, I won't let you have your way." He wiped the sweat from his face and gripped the hammer of the thunder god in return.

The blue flame on the hammer burned even brighter, searing his palm. "You want a sacrifice? I'll be the one to light the fire!"

He forcefully thrust the hammer of the thunder god into the groove at the top of the Empty Stele.

Star patterns lit up on his chest, crawling down his arm to cover the hammer handle; the seed of fire, the blue flame, surged along the metal lines into the stele body, like a red-hot iron spike driven into mud.

"Reverse Energy Surge · Triggering in 3 seconds." As the blood-red text of the Critical Hit Foresight exploded before his eyes, Chen Fan bit his tongue until it broke.

Sweet, metallic blood flooded his throat, but he laughed even more fiercely—the reverse conduction path in the Tactical Atlas lit up like a galaxy in his consciousness; the suction mouths of the six bright steles were reversing, and the black mist that should have been fed to the light pillars was now being drawn back through his hammer handle.

"Boom!"

The first backlash came faster than predicted.

Chen Fan's eardrums were almost shattered; the six bright steles wailed simultaneously, the faces on their surfaces twisting into vortices, and black mist jetted out from their bases, pouring into his body along the Empty Stele's patterns.

A faint blue light surfaced beneath his skin—the critical hit system was operating wildly, converting this corrupted energy into his own power—just as the prompt [Chain Critical Hit × 8.1] popped up, he swung the hammer of the thunder god down hard onto the center of the Empty Stele.

The rift trembled.

The stone hand of the Ruins of Return had just touched the seventh stele when the entire figure suddenly froze.

His Stardust Eyes spun violently, the light particles in the vortex falling away like a shower of star dust: "Stop! You will awaken—"

"Awaken what?" Chen Fan braced himself on the hammer and straightened up; sweat dripped from his chin onto the stele surface, splashing sparks. "The light you sealed? The truth you hid for nine thousand years?"

The response was a roar.

The memory torrent of six generations of critical hitters poured out from the Empty Stele.

Chen Fan saw himself transform into a youth in coarse work clothes, chasing a foreman who owed wages in a downpour; into a blood-soaked player being torn apart by wild monsters in the Newbie Village instance; and then others—a Teahouse proprietress in a cheongsam burning away the Light Erosion Pulse with Fox Fire, a one-armed old soldier carving the word 'Resist' onto the rock wall with a broken saber, a little girl with twin ponytails clutching half a loaf of bread saying, 'I don't want to be erased'...

These memories poured in like molten iron, seeping through the gaps in the stone fingers of the Ruins of Return.

The first crack appeared on his stone cheek, half of his Stardust Eyes dimmed, and his voice finally cracked: "I sealed it for nine thousand years... just to prevent the light from being seen..."

"Light should not be hidden." Chen Fan dragged the hammer toward him, each step gouging deep pits into the rock surface. "What should be burned is this stele of yours."

The Empty Stele suddenly glowed white.

A line of newly carved text appeared on its surface, as if written in flame: "The Seventh Fire, Not Extinguished."

A sound of tearing air came from the distance.

Chen Fan tilted his ear, hearing a metallic shriek tearing through the air—was it the remnants of the Shadow Pavilion?

Or the 'Finality Protocol' troops sent by the system?

He didn't look back; his gaze remained locked on the Ruins of Return.

The stone body of the Ruins of Return cracked further, revealing the faint blue core within.

He looked at Chen Fan, only a glimmer of light remaining in his Stardust Eyes, like a candle about to be extinguished: "You... will burn longer than we did."

Chen Fan didn't reply.

He bent down and picked up Su Shuang; her body temperature seeped through her clothes into his embrace, reminding him of the ginger tea with double the brown sugar in the Newbie Village.

The pillars of light above the rift were still twisting, the seven golden beams looking like silk ribbons scattered by the wind, revealing a sliver of open sky.

The Ruins of Return raised its stone hand.

Chen Fan saw stardust condensing at his fingertips—it was the posture for summoning the final seal.

"Ah Fan," Su Shuang whispered in his arms, "Look."

He followed her gaze upward.

In the light from the sky, something was falling.

(Faint blue light seeped from the cracks in the crumbling stone body of the Ruins of Return; the last glimmer in the Stardust Eyes flickered erratically.

His stone finger drew half an arc in the void, as if trying to hook something, or perhaps resisting something.

The tremor of the rift grew more violent, and the distant shrieking sound grew closer.)