68: Chapter 68 Eyes from the Underworld and System Noise

The trajectory vanished silently into the churning spring.

There was no earth-shattering explosion as expected, no flashy special effects of ice crystals scattering, not even a single splash.

Just like that, it was gone.

It was like a drop of water falling into a pot of boiling oil, yet it didn't even make a sound.

Shen Xiao's pupils constricted violently.

The next instant, time in the entire Ice Cave seemed to have been pressed on a pause button.

The bubbling hot steam ceased abruptly, and the bone-chilling cold current froze instantly. The spring, which had seemed to be boiling, "closed" at a speed visible to the naked eye—no, not closed, frozen.

In the blink of an eye, the water surface became smooth as a mirror, without even a ripple having time to spread, completely sealed in eternal silence.

The ice surface reflected the pale light of the moonstones on the ceiling, clear enough to mirror a person's silhouette.

"Click..."

A faint, crisp sound, like bones breaking.

Shen Xiao turned his head abruptly.

He saw the seven ice-sculpted Puppets that were closing in from all directions; the eerie cinnabar red light between their brows extinguished all at once, like a snuffed-out candle flame.

Their movements froze completely.

The female Puppet in the front row still maintained the posture of slashing her ice-crystal hand-blade towards Xia Lengbai's neck, the tip less than three inches from Xia Lengbai's skin.

The guard holding the longsword had its tip pointed directly at Shen Xiao's brow, the cold light flowing on the blade also solidified into a dead object.

Seven Puppets, seven ice sculptures.

True ice sculptures.

Dead silence.

Absolute, thorough dead silence.

Even the sound of the spring "freezing" disappeared; the entire Ice Cave fell into a suffocating, nihilistic silence, like the vacuum of the Universe.

Only two sounds echoed.

Xia Lengbai's ragged gasps, as if she were about to cough out her lungs.

Shen Xiao's suppressed, rusty-tasting cough from deep in his throat.

"Cough... cough cough..."

Half his body was still frozen in the ice, his chest heaving violently. Every breath tugged at the five deep, bone-visible frostbite wounds on his left shoulder, making his vision go black with pain.

But he gritted his back teeth tightly, his gaze locking onto the dead-silent spring like a hawk.

Xia Lengbai's situation was no better.

The ice crystal long arrow had exhausted her last bit of spiritual power. At this moment, she was like a skin bag with its bones removed, staggering as she knelt on one knee on the ice, her left hand pressing firmly against the ground to keep from collapsing completely.

She looked down at her right wrist.

The blue-black toxin had indeed not spread further, but it hadn't receded in the slightest, like a venomous snake coiled in her arm, flicking its tongue, lying quietly in wait.

"Did... did we succeed?"

Her voice was hoarse, filled with a touch of disbelief.

Shen Xiao didn't answer.

His intuition was screaming wildly.

Something was wrong.

It was too quiet.

This quietness didn't feel like the calm after a crisis was resolved; it felt more like the moment before a storm, when all things between heaven and earth held their breath.

Sure enough.

In the center of the mirror-smooth spring surface, a ripple spread out without warning.

It wasn't a water ripple.

The water surface was dead, completely frozen.

That ripple was more like... a ripple in space itself, as if someone had thrown a pebble into an invisible mirror. The spreading ripples diffused through the Void Realm, distorting the light, distorting the reflections, and even distorting the texture of the air.

The hairs all over Shen Xiao's body stood on end.

In the center of that ripple, something was "floating" up.

No, not floating.

It was "appearing".

From beneath the ice, from the cracks in space, from some abyss transcending material dimensions, it slowly "emerged".

It was not a physical object.

It was an eye.

A phantom of an eye, composed entirely of ice-blue light, so huge it made the Soul tremble.

It was as large as half the Ice Cave, its pupil as deep as a bottomless Ice Abyss. The ice-blue light was not warm, but carried a kind of eternal, extreme, and indifferent coldness.

It was as if this eye had existed for billions of years, having watched the birth and destruction of countless stars, the rise and collapse of countless civilizations, and now, it just casually parted the curtain of time and glanced downward.

It was merely a "glance".

Shen Xiao's gaze met that pupil.

He saw what was deep within the pupil.

Not the reflected scene of the Ice Cave, not the light of the moonstones overhead, but... countless strange runes and lines flowing rapidly.

Those lines crisscrossed, dense and numerous, outlining a kind of massive, grid-like three-dimensional structure beyond imagination.

Every line was flowing, every node was flickering, they intertwined, connected, and extended, as if it were a... chessboard covering the entire world.

heavenly dao chessboard.

This name exploded in Shen Xiao's mind.

A vast, ancient, inhuman will, with the appearance of this eye, swept through the entire Ice Cave like an invisible tsunami.

That will carried no emotion, no purpose, not even any targeted malice.

It just "existed", and merely by "gazing", it was enough to make flesh-and-blood beings feel as small as ants.

Xia Lengbai was stiff all over, unable to move even a fingertip.

Her Soul was trembling, her teeth chattering uncontrollably, and cold sweat rolled down her forehead like rain.

She wanted to look away, but found her eyes were as if nailed to that giant ice-blue eye, unable to move at all.

She saw Shen Xiao.

Shen Xiao's body was trembling violently, to such an extent that even his lower body, frozen in the ice, was shaking along with it.

His seven orifices.

Blood was seeping from his seven orifices.

Bright red blood snaked down from the corners of his eyes, nostrils, mouth, and ears, outlining shocking patterns on his pale face.

But he himself seemed completely unaware, just staring wide-eyed, fixedly watching that giant eye, his lips moving, but unable to make any sound.

Shen Xiao's Sea of Consciousness was currently experiencing a destructive storm.

The System interface, that translucent light screen floating deep in his consciousness that had always been running stably, was now like an old computer invaded by a virus, instantly covered by countless snowflakes and distorted garbled code.

[Warning! Warning! Unknown high-dimensional interference detected!]

[Data link interrupted... Attempting to reconnect...]

[Error! Error! Protocol conflict! Core module under forced external access!]

Sharp alarm sounds echoed wildly in his Sea of Consciousness, but in the next second, they turned into continuous high-frequency noise, so sharp it felt like countless steel needles piercing his eardrums simultaneously.

Shen Xiao felt like his head was about to explode.

But in the gaps of that overwhelming noise and garbled code, something was forcibly squeezing into his consciousness.

Not sound.

It was some kind of more primitive, more direct information injection, as if someone had plugged a data cable directly into his Soul, reading his very existence in an unreasonable, overbearing way.

That information was intermittent, fragmented, like a broadcast with a bad signal coming from very far away:

"Det... detected... 'Trace of Heavenly Dao'... "

"Interface protocol... err... error..."

"Acc... access permissions... in... insufficient..."

"Reject external... forced access..."

"Target locked... host identification code... abnormal... abnormal..."

Shen Xiao's pupils contracted sharply at that moment.

Trace of Heavenly Dao.

Interface protocol.

Access permissions.

These words exploded deep in his mind like thunder, shattering his long-held vague guesses and faint suspicions, revealing the bloody truth beneath.

Just then, the "gaze" of that giant ice-blue eye seemed to shift slightly for an instant.

It landed on Shen Xiao.

More accurately, it landed on that Dark Gold Core deep in his Dantian, which was spinning crazily and covered with fine cracks on its surface.

It landed on that Soul imprint in his Sea of Consciousness, which was bound to the System and emitting a faint light.

That gaze was like substance, piercing through flesh, bones, Dantian, and Sea of Consciousness, seeing through him from inside to out, from Soul to body.

Shen Xiao's blood froze at that moment.

He felt like a person stripped of their clothes and thrown onto an operating table; every cell, every memory, every thought was ruthlessly dissected, inspected, and analyzed by that gaze.

Three breaths.

That gaze lingered on him for only three breaths.

But for Shen Xiao, it felt like three long centuries had passed.

Then, without warning.

That giant ice-blue eye, along with the rippling spatial waves, dissipated like a phantom.

It left no trace behind.

The spring resumed its bubbling.

Only this time, there was no longer the scorching hot steam from before; only pure, bone-chilling coldness kept welling up from the bottom of the spring, pushing the temperature of the Ice Cave even lower.

Shen Xiao spat out a mouthful of black blood violently.

That blood landed on the ice, actually still emitting wisps of cold air, as if it had been frozen.

His whole body, like a Puppet with cut strings, collapsed heavily onto the icy edge, his eyes unfocused, pupils losing their focal point.

Fresh blood continued to seep from his seven orifices, staining his face a shocking crimson.

His lips moved slightly, emitting an extremely faint, almost inaudible murmur:

"...Interface... permissions..."

"So... the System... is really..."

Before he could finish, his head tilted to the side, and he passed out completely.

The Ice Cave returned to silence.

Only the seven Puppets that had lost their spiritual light remained, like seven dead objects, standing quietly around the spring.

Bone-chilling cold air kept welling up from the bottom of the spring, misting into a thin fog, slowly flowing over the ice surface.

Xia Lengbai knelt on the spot on one knee, her whole body stiff.

Her gaze shifted back and forth between the seven Puppets, the dead-silent spring, and the unconscious Shen Xiao, her lips pale without a trace of blood.

She didn't know what that was just now.

She didn't know what that eye was.

She didn't know what Shen Xiao's unfinished sentence meant.

But she knew she had just seen something that shouldn't have been seen.

Some kind of... existence that transcended her cognition, transcended the rules of this world.

Her Soul was still aching faintly, as if burned by that gaze.

From deep within the spring came an extremely faint, almost imperceptible sigh.

That sigh was so light it felt like a hallucination, fleeting, yet it carried an indescribable sense of satisfaction, as if something had finally waited for its long-awaited prey.

Xia Lengbai looked up abruptly, staring fixedly at the bubbling spring that was emitting cold air.

The spring surface was calm as usual.

There was nothing.

She gritted her teeth, pressed her left hand against the ice, and stood up with difficulty.

Her right arm had completely lost sensation, the blue-black toxin coiled across her entire forearm like a hideous venomous snake.

She staggered to Shen Xiao's side, crouched down, extended her left hand, and reached for his breath.

Weak, but still there.

She heaved a sigh of relief, but in the next second, her gaze fell on Shen Xiao's blood-stained face.

At the corner of his mouth, the unfinished word seemed to still linger.

"System..."

Xia Lengbai repeated it in a low voice, her brows tightly knitted, a flash of deep doubt in the depths of her eyes.

She looked up at the only exit of the Ice Cave—the narrow fissure passage.

Outside the passage was the vast ice field.

Behind her were seven dead-silent Puppets, a spring emitting bone-chilling cold air, and an unconscious man covered in blood who had just glimpsed a terrifying truth but was powerless to investigate further.

Xia Lengbai took a deep breath, bent down, grabbed Shen Xiao's collar with her left hand, dragged him up, and half-carried him on her shoulder.

She didn't look back.

She moved step by step towards the fissure passage, every step taken with extreme difficulty, the toxin in her right arm ravaging wildly, the frostbite on her left shoulder aching faintly, and her spiritual power was at its bottom.

But she didn't stop.

Behind her, in the bubbling spring, amidst the dense cold mist, something beneath the water surface seemed to be slowly waking up.