36: Chapter 36: My Empire, I Want to Read It, and That Face That Shouldn't Have Appeared
The firmament was torn open with a hideous gash.
From the pitch-black rift, viscous Death Qi surged outward, thick as ink.
A giant hand, covered in signs of decay, stretched out from the opening.
It spanned ten thousand years of time, carrying an almost fanatical obsession, descending upon this world.
This hand ignored the thousands of trembling Cultivators on the training ground, and it also ignored the collapsing Mountain Protection Grand Array.
Its five fingers slightly opened and closed.
The entire earthpulse of the Cloud Break Mountain Range trembled violently, as if welcoming the long-forgotten Monarch.
"You villain! How dare you!"
Su Qianqian's delicate cry rang out; at this moment, she carried none of her usual frail, scholarly air.
Golden battle armor flowed with sacred divine radiance, and the 'Spring and Autumn Great Brush' in her hand carved a hundred-zhang-long golden arc across the sky.
"Pen strokes of judgment, carving history for the ages!"
Golden ink spots exploded, transforming into countless battle spears that stabbed toward the rotting giant hand.
However, these attacks, potent enough to severely wound a Peak Nascent Soul Cultivator, were instantly swallowed whole by the abyss-like darkness the moment they touched the giant hand, without even causing a ripple.
The headless figure's body merely shuddered slightly.
An invisible sound wave exploded between heaven and earth.
"The laws... that I... established... I... shall reclaim..."
The voice did not originate from a throat but from a friction deep within the earth's core, shaking people until their Divine Souls felt they would shatter.
Li Mo stood behind Su Qianqian and could clearly feel the back heaving as she stood guard before him, yet she did not retreat half a step.
This made his mood exceptionally complex.
"Saintess, our acquaintance hasn't reached the point where I should risk my life to accompany you in folly, right?"
Li Mo muttered under his breath, his hand already reaching into his robes, tightly pressing down on the dragon vein heavenly book that was heating up fiercely.
The heavenly book screamed.
It wasn't out of fear, but a violent resonance of a fated encounter.
[Warning! The remnant Soul of the original Author of the dragon vein heavenly book has been detected!]
[The opponent is attempting to forcibly reclaim the Administrator Privilege!]
[Because the Host has completed the in-depth analysis of Volume One, current Privilege Rank: 51%.]
[Opponent Privilege Rank: 49% (Incomplete Soul State).]
[System Suggestion: While he is weak, take his life! Directly use the 'Logic Patch' to overwrite him!]
"Patch? This thing's logic is the tyrannical way of an emperor from ten thousand years ago. How am I supposed to patch that?"
Li Mo's peripheral vision caught sight of Su Qianqian's golden armor shattering inch by inch, and a wisp of blood slipped from the corner of her lip.
He couldn't wait any longer.
He abruptly reached out and shoved Su Qianqian violently to the side.
The giant hand obscured the sky's light, just about to touch his head. The cowardly dodging Li Mo had always employed vanished completely.
He closed his eyes.
The [Divine Sense Hacker] and [Truth Tampering] in his Sea of Consciousness instantly overloaded and began operating at maximum capacity.
"You want this dynasty? You want these laws?"
Li Mo's voice suddenly turned cold and ethereal, as if it didn't belong to this dimension, "Too bad, the era has changed."
"In my version—no, in my version, you've already wrapped up your scene!"
The moment the words fell, Li Mo violently flipped open the first page of the dragon vein heavenly book.
He didn't use even a sliver of spiritual power.
His Divine Sense transformed into an invisible 'red modification pen,' and within the gaps of the runes swirling on the heavenly book, he forcefully squeezed in a line of annotation:
[Author's Note: This story is purely fictional. Any resemblance to reality is coincidental. Furthermore, the protagonist is already dead; offer incense if you have business.]
Boom!
The rotting remnant hand, which carried world-overwhelming pressure, strangely froze in mid-air the instant it contacted this line of text.
That supreme power capable of erasing the rules of the world suffered a violent logical collapse upon colliding with the word 'fictional.'
To Ji Wushuang, the founding Emperor, he was the authority of 'reality.'
But the answer Li Mo provided was—you are just a story.
"Roar—!"
A roar of extreme rage mixed with utter bewilderment came from the depths of the black rift.
The giant hand struggled violently, attempting to erase that damnable annotation, but Li Mo's attack was not over.
He slapped the sleeve where Little Black, who had long been famished, was waiting impatiently.
"Little Black, go, eat his 'plot'!"
Little Black roared and flew out, its star-filled cover expanding wildly.
It didn't bite the giant hand but opened its massive maw toward the black lines of Karma overflowing from the rift, which represented the founding history of the Great Zhou Dynasty, and began devouring them ravenously.
Crunch! Crunching sounds!
"I... am... not... reconciled..."
The huge headless figure flickered in the Void. The previously solid rotting flesh began to turn transparent and illusory at a speed visible to the naked eye.
For a remnant Soul relying on 'historical memory' and 'earthpulse faith' for revival, the most fatal attack was never the destruction of the Physical Body.
It was the dissolution of his 'sense of existence.'
When the entire world (or rather, the System) acknowledges that you are merely an outdated, fictional passage, you cease to exist entirely.
As the last line of Karma was swallowed by Little Black, the black rift in the sky began to heal rapidly.
The arrogant giant hand, finally just three inches away from Li Mo's head, turned into a wisp of smoke and vanished without a trace.
The oppressive might covering the sky dissipated.
The Cloud Break Mountain Range returned to tranquility.
The entire audience was dead silent.
Everyone's mouths hung open, staring blankly at the young man still clad in a faded, washed-out Servant uniform, standing with his hands behind his back in the wind.
Dugu Yun's wine bottle slipped from his hand for the second time; this time, he even forgot to feel distressed.
Ye Gucheng's long sword clattered onto the ground. The way he looked at Li Mo was no longer that of a master.
It was the gaze one used to look up at a miracle.
Su Qianqian, who was most severely injured, knelt halfway on the ground, supporting her body with the broken long brush.
She looked up at Li Mo's back. For the first time, the emotion named 'awe' appeared in her Eye of True Sight, which could pierce through falsehood.
"He... he used a few lines of text... to 'cancel' an ancient Demon God?"
Su Qianqian's mind was blank.
Had all the sage texts she read over the past decade gone to the dogs?
However, Li Mo had no time to enjoy the attention of the masses right now.
His gaze was locked tightly onto the dragon vein heavenly book in his arms, which had finally quieted down.
After repelling Ji Wushuang's remnant Soul, the last few tightly locked pages of the heavenly book had miraculously loosened.
The Final Chapter, unlocked?
Li Mo's heartbeat accelerated, and he subconsciously reached out, slowly turning to the very last page of the entire book.
That page contained no text, no runes.
Only a lifelike portrait of a person.
The person in the painting was wearing an extremely strange outfit.
A white dress shirt, a black suit.
He was holding a modern Parker fountain pen, looking out of the frame with a meaningful smile.
The moment he saw that face, Li Mo's mind buzzed, and his Divine Soul shook violently.
That face...
It wasn't his.
Nor was it the Ancestor Master of the Heavenly River Sword Sect.
It was the web novel editor who used to message him at three in the morning every day, urging him to submit his manuscript before his Transmigration!
Below the portrait, there was also a line of modern simplified Chinese annotation, so small it was almost illegible.
"Little Li, this chapter is quite good, but the logic is still a bit jumpy. Keep it up, I think your 'Longevity Sweeping Monk' can hit the Golden Ranking List. P.S.: Your shadow seems to be smiling still."
Li Mo's hand trembled violently.
He suddenly lowered his head and looked at the ground.
The setting sun cast his shadow long and narrow.
His shadow lay quietly on the ground.
But at the mouth contour of that shadow, a fissure slowly peeled open.
It was the signature professional smile of his editor—a smile Li Mo knew too well.
"Damn it."
The book in Li Mo's hand dropped to the ground.
A terror of being completely dominated by an existence from a higher dimension crawled over every inch of his skin.