20: Chapter 20 The red light at the top of the tower is alive!

The morning light was sliced into fragments by the signal tower. Chen Fan stood five meters from the tower's base, the bronze bell shard in his work pants pocket vibrating so much that his thigh felt numb.

Dark purple vines were climbing the metal supports on the tower's body. A faint blue data stream flowed down the surface of every vine, their tendrils flicking out like living things—just now, he had watched an audacious newcomer reach out and touch one. The vine instantly wrapped around the other person's wrist, the newcomer's pupils suddenly dilated, and he screamed while clutching his head, rolling into the bushes.

"Get out of my way, all of you!" Brother Dao's Broken Gong-like voice came from the right.

Chen Fan turned his head and saw the green-armored axe-wielder stepping on his companion's back to climb onto the tower base, followed by four underlings wearing bronze badges.

Brother Dao's battle-axe gleamed coldly, its edge still smeared with blood splashed from robbing a BOSS two days ago: "My 'Mountain Splitter' here is peak green equipment. Cutting down a few broken vines is as easy as cutting vegetables, isn't it?"

Before the words even landed, the battle-axe cleaved into the nearest vine. "Chii—" The sound of metal scraping against data pierced the eardrums, and the vine exploded like a punctured balloon, countless light particles surging back toward Brother Dao.

The leading underling reacted quickly, lunging forward to shield his boss, but as soon as he touched the light particles, he convulsed and collapsed, black blood oozing from his mouth.

Brother Dao was jolted back a couple of steps, the axe handle leaving red marks on his palm, veins bulging on his neck: "Damn it! Do it again!"

Chen Fan squatted down, rubbing the cracked cement on the ground with his fingertips.

The vibration frequency of the lingering bell had changed. It shifted from a regular, light tremor to a rhythmic throbbing, strongly resembling the sensation he felt that night deep beneath Newbie Village when he pressed the bone shard against the Zombie King's iron crown. "Thump—thump—" He pressed his ear to the ground, and a heartbeat echoed from below, three times slower than his own pulse. With every beat, the vines on the tower grew brighter.

"This tower isn't equipment," he swallowed, recalling what Su Shuang had said last night when she swept his fox tattoo with her fox tail—"The hub of the system often resembles a living thing more than a monster."

His fingers unconsciously stroked the patch on his work uniform cuff—it was the one Xiao Tao had sewn for him by the stove in the Teahouse after he was scratched by a steel bar last month. "It's a container," he suddenly stood up, tearing off the strip of work cloth from his back and wrapping the bronze bell shard in three layers. "A container for living things."

The vine's blind spot was beneath the third cement slab to the left of the tower base—this was what he had just scanned out with the shard.

Chen Fan took a deep breath, bent his knees, and slid along the ground, slipping into the gap like a shadow.

The smell of mildew mixed with rust flooded his nostrils. When he looked up, the daylight was gone.

The red light inside the tower was even more dazzling than it appeared from the outside, like countless blood vessels coiled around the metal supports. A translucent, misty substance flowed within every 'vessel.'

Chen Fan pulled out his lighter and flicked it. The flame illuminated the spherical capsule in the center—inside the two-meter-diameter transparent shell, the red mist was slowly condensing. At the very center, a crystal the size of a fingernail had precipitated, radiating a cold light that made his teeth ache.

"Please insert the chip into the main data shaft to complete the repair." A mechanical voice boomed overhead, but Chen Fan just laughed.

He pulled out the bone shard from his bosom, which he had picked up from the corpse of Old Horse Head in Newbie Village—back then, Old Horse Head had been judged as failed in the mission, and his entire body looked as if it had been drained, leaving only this section of charred leg bone.

At this moment, the bone shard was burning hot against his chest, perfectly synchronized with the pulse of the red mist inside the capsule. "Repair my foot," he muttered, tearing off the cloth bag at his waist, which held the porcelain bottle Xiao Tao had stuffed in for him. "This is packing up souls."

As the ointment was smeared onto the bronze bell shard, it emitted a sweet, fishy odor. Su Shuang had said that fox demon blood powder could cause a 0.3-second delay in the system's scan—enough time for him to do many things.

The instant the shard touched the main shaft interface, Chen Fan's wrist trembled slightly.

He recalled the bell-shaking technique Su Shuang had taught him: press the clapper with his thumb and give it a slight twist. "Ding—" A faint, crisp sound echoed, and the red mist inside the capsule suddenly surged wildly. The crystal, which had been slowly condensing, began to disintegrate, and the system prompt turned shrill: "Illegal reverse injection detected! Mission progress rolled back 30%!"

"Which bastard is causing trouble?!" Brother Dao's roar came from the top of the tower. Chen Fan took the opportunity to snatch a newly generated chip.

The moment his blood dripped onto the chip, all the blood in his body turned cold—a wrinkled face floated up inside the crystal. It was Old Horse Head!

The old man's mouth was agape in an 'O' shape. Chen Fan could even see the undried tears at the corner of his eyes: "This isn't a material..." His voice trembled, "It's a compressed soul package!"

"Beep—beep—" Alarms suddenly blared. The red light overhead condensed into a tentacle as thick as a human arm, stabbing toward his throat with a wind-blade-like shriek.

Chen Fan instinctively closed his eyes, but in the darkness, he heard Su Shuang's voice, seeping into his consciousness like moonlight steeped in tea: "Listen to the heartbeat—your critical hit is the knife that tears it apart."

He suddenly opened his eyes, and the fox tattoo on his fist glowed pink.

This was a trace left from his spiritual resonance with Su Shuang last night, and it was now heating up along with his heartbeat. "Come on!" Chen Fan shouted, advancing instead of retreating, his right fist meeting the thickest tentacle.

"Critical Hit Judgment triggered! Damage × 3.5 times!" As the prompt faded, his punch tore through the red mist. The tentacle collapsed like a punctured balloon, and the red light inside the tower instantly dimmed by more than half.

The system announcement began to stutter: "Mission... abnormal... participant... data... chaotic..." Chen Fan clenched the chip and rushed out of the tower base, crashing directly into Brother Dao, who was charging in with his blood-stained axe.

Brother Dao's pupils were bloodshot, and half a data vine was wrapped around his axe blade: "Hand over the chip! Dare to block my way—"

"There are human souls inside!" Chen Fan roared until his throat hurt. "Old Horse Head, and Aqiang who died in Newbie Village last month, they are all in that damn tower!"

Brother Dao's axe strike paused for a moment, but the next second, he swung down even more viciously: "I only believe in my fists!"

Chen Fan retreated onto the high platform of ruins. The chip in his bosom was so hot it almost burned through the cloth.

Su Shuang's parting words echoed in his ears: "Every time you trigger a critical hit, the soul fissure deepens..." He looked down at the fox tattoo on his arm; amidst the overlapping pink and brown, an extremely fine crack was slowly extending. "Then I'll use this crack," he clenched his fist, knuckles turning white. "I'll chisel through its sky."

A blinding red light suddenly flashed at the top of the tower, forming two bloody characters in mid-air.

When Chen Fan looked up, the light had dissipated, but he had clearly seen it—it was "frost soul."

When the lanterns in the Teahouse lit up in the twilight, Chen Fan pushed open the door.

Xiao Tao ran out from the inner room holding a bowl of medicine, but she froze when she saw the chip in his arms: "Is that..."

"Place it next to the bone shard." Chen Fan gently set the chip on the tea table. The section of charred leg bone was lying quietly there.

When the chip was ten centimeters away from the bone shard, the air suddenly rippled.

Xiao Tao's medicine bowl clattered to the ground. Chen Fan held his breath—

A holographic illusion began to emerge on the table: a tower enveloped in red light, with runes he had never seen carved on its spire.

And in the deepest part of the tower's base, a ball of light wrapped in black mist was slowly rotating.