Chapter 121 Cleansing up the traitor Qin Wentian, a lifetime debuff permanently sealed.

When Lin Ye struck down with that palm, seventy percent of the Abyss Resonator inside Qin Wentian had already shattered.

The remaining thirty percent was still desperately releasing dark purple pulse energy, each pulse causing the veins under Qin Wentian's skin to light up, as if someone had stuffed a string of flickering neon tubes about to burn out inside him.

Su Qinghan had already dragged Qin Wentian behind a piece of cover outside the radiation range of the Abyss Core, shielding him with the healing light shield in her hand, its edges constantly eroding and regenerating as they were corroded by the residual Abyss energy.

When Qin Wentian opened his eyes, dark purple bloodshot veins that hadn't yet faded were still crawling through the whites of his eyes.

He saw that it was Su Qinghan in front of him, and his lips moved as he let out a dry, hoarse voice: "The intern public terminal on the logistics link is logged into my permissions.

Only three people have physical access to that terminal, one of whom left last month to join an overseas shell company of the Black Crow Consortium.

I put the file in the second drawer of my office, and the key is with Ghost."

He coughed, and the blood he spat out was dark purple, evaporating into a small, pungent cloud of gas the moment it hit the ground.

Su Qinghan held down his shoulder to keep him still, while simultaneously syncing the list of three internal suspects Qin Wentian mentioned to Ghost in the alliance channel.

Ghost spent less than a few minutes pulling up the account activity logs for those three, discovering that the intern who had resigned and jumped ship to the Black Crow Consortium had made several abnormal logins on the public terminal during non-working hours on the day of their resignation, each session lasting about three to four minutes—just enough time to plug in a USB drive and copy the data before leaving.

Even more critical evidence was that the physical security log of that public terminal showed that the terminal casing had been pried open by external force during the intern's last login, and a micro physical backdoor chip had been added to the motherboard.

Ghost compared the chip's hardware ID with the Abyss energy directional communication logs intercepted from the logistics system backend, confirming that it was this very chip that had sent the final permission unlock signal toward the Abyss Rift at the exact second Qin Wentian fell.

"The chain of evidence is closed." Ghost's voice was steady in the command channel, "The person who physically intruded obtained Qin Wentian's biometric signature, remotely unlocked his permissions, diverted the equipment transport route, and simultaneously used that chip to trigger the Resonator inside Qin Wentian.

This person is not in the country now; the last communication location for the Black Crow Consortium's remaining stronghold was in a port city in Southeast Asia."

After hearing this, Lin Ye turned his head to look at Qin Wentian lying on the ground behind the cover.

Qin Wentian's veins were no longer glowing, and the dark purple bloodshot veins were slowly fading from the whites of his eyes, but his face was as gray and pallid as rice paper just fished out of water.

He used his still-movable hand to grab Su Qinghan's cuff and asked if the permissions had been fully recovered and if the logistics link had been restored.

Su Qinghan told him that all permissions had been transferred to the backup link and logistics had been re-allocated, only then did he loosen his fingers and lean the back of his head against the stone wall of the cover, letting out a heavy breath.

"Qin Wentian." Lin Ye's voice carried across the battlefield through the black-gold light of the domain.

Qin Wentian struggled to turn his head to meet Lin Ye's gaze.

"I gave you a chance before because I saw you risk your life to guard the supply line during the decisive battle against the Abyss. You did indeed contribute during the Black Crow Consortium incident.

But your security issue didn't just start this time—the Abyss energy inside you has never been fully cleaned since you were corrupted by the Abyss at the edge of the Abyss Rift last time.

You didn't take it seriously, and I was negligent in checking. This time, you almost caused the collapse of the entire logistics line; you are responsible, but it wasn't active betrayal. I will give you two choices now."

Lin Ye withdrew his right hand; the dark red energy ball in front of the Lord of the Abyss had shrunk by a circle under the suppression of the domain, but the Decay energy in his hand remained as stable as a mountain as he spoke.

"First, I clear all the Abyss energy inside you along with the remaining Resonator fragments, but from now on, you cannot touch any cross-dimensional permissions or core logistics links, and your position will be demoted to peripheral logistics support.

Second, you continue to stay in your core position, but I will immediately use the Ultimate Decay Debuff to lock down any energy seeds inside you that could be reused by the Abyss Council.

After being locked down, for the rest of your life in any plane—game, reality, cross-dimensional—whenever there is any abnormal movement of Abyss energy inside you, the debuff will automatically trigger, resetting your attributes to zero, causing all-plane NPC hostility, and continuous health drain. This debuff is permanent. Choose for yourself."

Qin Wentian did not hesitate. He propped himself up against the stone wall of the cover and sat straight, with uncleaned blood foam still hanging on the corner of his mouth, but a little color had already returned to his face.

He said: "I choose the second option. Ever since the day you crushed the Heavenly Temple, I have never finished paying back the debts I owed.

Opposing you before was a debt owed to all the freelance players on the server, and this time, being implanted with a Resonator and nearly causing the death of the entire logistics line is a debt owed to the Alliance. I would rather be locked by your debuff for the rest of my life than be used as a remote-controlled bomb by the Abyss Council again."

Lin Ye nodded and raised his right hand, a thread of extremely thin black-gold Decay energy shooting from the tip of his index finger, passing through the smoke of the battlefield and the residual fluctuations of Abyss energy, landing precisely on Qin Wentian's chest.

The moment the thread touched his skin, it transformed into countless finer threads of light, spreading like blood vessels along Qin Wentian's energy circulation system to every corner of his body, including those residual Abyss energy fragments inside him.

Wherever the light threads passed, the Abyss energy fragments were like ice shavings touched by a red-hot iron, instantly vaporizing and dissipating without leaving a trace.

The threads themselves wove into an extremely thin energy net inside him, completely merging with his biological characteristics, impossible to peel off or bypass.

At the same time, a circle of pale gold inscriptions appeared on the edge of Qin Wentian's character panel—that was the exclusive seal mark of Lin Ye's evolved Cross-dimensional Decay Domain, with a few lines of text describing the effect: Continuous health drain, reducing a small percentage of current HP per second, can be slowly recovered in safe zones; Attributes reset to zero, character attributes, equipment attributes, and skill attributes in any plane are permanently reduced to zero, cannot be recovered or reset by any means; All-plane NPC hostility, all non-player characters in all planes automatically enter a hostile state, unaffected by any faction favorability or reputation value; Trigger condition is any abnormal movement of Abyss energy inside the body, or any active malicious violation by the individual. This debuff is permanent, cannot be cleared, cannot be overwritten, and has no effect if not triggered.

Qin Wentian looked down at the pale gold inscriptions on his arm with a complex expression. A moment later, he looked up, his eyes red but a smile on his face: "I've had debuffs hung on me by you countless times in the game, and every time I wanted to smash my keyboard. This one, I accept."

He pulled his sleeve down to cover the inscriptions on his arm, lay back down behind the cover, closed his eyes, and began to cooperate with Su Qinghan's healing, saying nothing more.

Lin Ye turned back to face the Lord of the Abyss. The time window he had spent distracted by handling Qin Wentian hadn't been long—the dark red energy ball in front of the Lord of the Abyss had been repeatedly bombarded by Sword Venerable Qingming's myriad sword qi and the Interstellar Behemoth's missile clusters, the surface of the sphere already covered in cracks, and the surging Abyss energy inside began to uncontrollably leak out.

The Abyss Rage move it had just released required continuous consumption of the energy ball to maintain, but after the structure of the energy ball itself was damaged, the amplification effect of the Rage state began to plummet. The power that had originally surged to three times its level fell back to normal levels within less than half an incense stick of time, and was even continuing to drop.

The Lord of the Abyss's base form had also changed. More than half of those twisted faces that had previously covered its body surface had been directly melted away by the domain, and the exposed internal structure was not flesh and blood, but a kind of dark purple translucent energy crystal, with countless fine golden seal runes embedded in the cracks of the crystal.

Those runes looked very familiar; the first line on the cover of the contract the Cultivation God of Creation signed back then read— "Inherit Ancient Interstellar Civilization Sealing Techniques," and these runes inside the Lord of the Abyss were completely homologous to the sealing techniques on that contract.

Ghost subsequently confirmed with the assistance of a cross-dimensional energy scanner that these runes were not possessed by the Lord of the Abyss itself, but were "the final built-in seal left to it by the Ancient Interstellar Civilization before being devoured by the Abyss Council," and it was the continuous effect of this seal fragment that prevented the Lord of the Abyss from releasing all its power at once.

Lin Ye took a step forward, and the black-gold domain erupted again with him at the center. The dark red energy ball in front of the Lord of the Abyss shattered in response, countless fragments swept up by the Decay Domain and shot back into its own body, exploding into a dense array of light spots on the surface of the crystal.

The massive body of the Lord of the Abyss tilted backward, smashing several long-overburdened ruin stone pillars behind it, causing the entire Abyss Core to tremble violently.