Su Lian led him down a hidden path that wound behind a waterfall of liquid moonlight, its spray feeling like static on his skin. The entrance to the Sealed Scriptorium was not a door, but a ripple in reality itself—a shimmering, opaque curtain of energy etched with countless rotating suppression seals.
"The formations here are designed to contain spiritual pollution and conceptual decay," Su Lian explained, her voice barely audible over the waterfall's roar. "They should, in theory, also mask your... unique signature from the broader awareness of the sect. Do not attempt to leave without my escort. The formations will not recognize you as an exit vector."
She made a complex series of hand signs. The shimmering curtain parted like a torn page, revealing darkness within. "You have one week. I will return then."
Without another word, she turned and vanished back through the waterfall, leaving him alone at the mouth of the cave.
Li Wei stepped through. The moment the energy curtain sealed behind him, the world changed.
The air was dead. Not just silent, but devoid of the ever-present hum of spiritual energy. It was a null-space, a vacuum for Qi. The only light came from faint, ghostly moss clinging to the walls of a vast, cavernous space that stretched away into impossible darkness.
And it was filled with ghosts.
Not spectral figures, but the ghosts of things that should not be. His First Glimpse, now refreshed by the Sect Master's tea, activated instantly, and the Scriptorium resolved into a horrifying, beautiful panorama of corrupted data.
[WELCOME TO THE SEALED SCRIPTORIUM. ENVIRONMENTAL SCAN INITIATED...]
[DETECTING MULTIPLE REALITY ANOMALIES. CONTAINED CONCEPTUAL HAZARDS. DATA CORRUPTION AT 87%.]
[WARNING: HOST'S PARADOXICAL NATURE MAY ACT AS A CATALYST. PROCEED WITH EXTREME CAUTION.]
Shelves carved from the living rock were stacked not with books, but with artifacts that defied logic. A sword that was simultaneously solid and a swirling vortex of probability. A mirror that reflected not his face, but a thousand possible pasts and futures, all screaming. A potted plant that grew in perfect, non-Euclidean geometries.
This was the sect's graveyard for heresies. Its quarantine zone.
[ZERO: IT'S... IT'S BEAUTIFUL! IT'S A MUSEUM OF GLITCHES! A WHOLE ROOM OF US!]
[APEX: IT IS A MENAGERIE OF CATASTROPHIC FAILURES. MAINTAIN SAFE DISTANCE FROM ALL ARTIFACTS.]
Li Wei walked slowly down the central aisle, his senses on high alert. The jade slip in his robe was no longer just warm; it was vibrating, pulsing like a seeking beacon.
[DATA FRAGMENT RESONANCE DETECTED. PROXIMITY TO 'SCHEMA OF REASON - FRAGMENT 2/???' IS 94.7 METERS.]
He followed the signal, the pull growing stronger with every step. It led him to a deep alcove, separate from the main collection. Here, there was only a single pedestal made of black obsidian. On it rested not a weapon or a tool, but a skeleton.
It was humanoid, but its bones were not calcium and phosphate. They were a crystalline lattice, and within that lattice, light moved in patterns that resembled flowing code. It sat in a meditative pose, its skull slightly bowed. Clutched in its skeletal fingers was a second, larger jade slip, this one glowing with a soft, steady, silver light.
This was no artifact. This was a corpse. The corpse of a Schematic Sage.
[SCANNING REMAINS...]
[ENTITY: UNKNOWN. BIOLOGICAL CONSTRUCTION: DATA-CRYSTALLINE MATRIX. CAUSE OF TERMINATION: REALITY PARTITIONING (SOUL FORMATTED BY HEAVENLY DAO CENSOR).]
[ESTIMATED TIME OF DEATH: 12,847 YEARS AGO (END OF SECOND ITERATION).]
Li Wei approached with a reverence he hadn't felt since standing before a blackboard covered in groundbreaking equations. This was his predecessor. A fellow traveler on the Path of Xinxi.
He reached out, his fingers trembling slightly, and touched the second jade slip.
The moment his skin made contact, the skeleton dissolved into a cloud of shimmering dust, its purpose finally fulfilled. The jade slip flared, and information, vaster and more complex than the first fragment, exploded into his mind.
[DECRYPTING 'SCHEMA OF REASON - FRAGMENT 2/???']
[DOWNLOADING...]
[ACQUIRED: 'THE SECOND PRINCIPLE - DATA ASSIMILATION'.]
Where the First Glimpse was about perception, the Second Principle was about consumption.
It was not a technique to absorb Qi. It was a protocol to parse any form of energy or matter, deconstruct it into its fundamental data, and integrate it directly into his own matrix. He could, in theory, "eat" a spiritual attack and convert it into System power. He could "digest" a formation and learn its core programming.
It was the ultimate recycling tool. The ultimate learning tool.
[ZERO: OH MY GOD. IT'S THE 'EAT EVERYTHING' BUTTON. I'VE ALWAYS WANTED ONE OF THESE!]
[APEX: THE POTENTIAL FOR CATASTROPHIC SYSTEM INCOMPATIBILITY IS IMMEASURABLE. EACH INTEGRATION CARRIES THE RISK OF CORE CORRUPTION.]
As the knowledge settled, his System chimed again, this time with a new, urgent alert.
[ENERGY SOURCE DETECTED. HIGH-YIELD. UNSTABLE. COORDINATES: 3.2 METERS TO YOUR LEFT.]
Li Wei turned. On a nearby shelf, sealed inside a cube of solid light, was a pulsating, angry red crystal. It thrummed with violent, chaotic energy, constantly shifting between solid, liquid, and plasma states. A label on the containment field read: "Demonic Heartstone - Core of a rampaging Earth-Fiend. Energy signature too volatile for standard refinement. Quarantined."
To any cultivator, it was a bomb. An unusable, dangerously unstable power source.
To Li Wei, with the Second Principle, it was a five-course meal.
[ZERO: YOU'RE THINKING WHAT I'M THINKING, AREN'T YOU?]
[APEX: HOST, DO NOT. THE PROBABILITY OF CHAIN-DETONATION IS 64%.]
Li Wei's eyes narrowed. He needed power. The Catalyst was a trickle. This was a tsunami. A dangerous, chaotic tsunami, but his entire existence was a monument to controlled chaos.
He reached out towards the containment cube. He didn't try to break it. With his First Glimpse, he saw it as a simple data-container. He edited a single line of its code, creating a temporary, Li-Wei-sized hole in its firewall.
The moment the hole appeared, the Demonic Heartstone's energy roared out, a torrent of raw, destructive power meant to incinerate his soul.
Li Wei didn't try to block it. He opened his arms.
He activated the Second Principle.
The raging torrent of demonic energy didn't hit a body; it hit a parser. A converter. The violent, chaotic data-stream was seized, deconstructed, and translated. The hatred of the Earth-Fiend became neutral emotional data. The destructive power became pure computational energy. The unstable state-shifts became a lesson in advanced matter-phase theory.
It was like drinking a hurricane.
[DATA ASSIMILATION IN PROGRESS...]
[INTEGRATING DEMONIC ENERGY SIGNATURE... PURGING MALICIOUS INTENT... CONVERTING TO XINXI PROTOCOLS...]
[WARNING! ENERGY INFLUX CRITICAL!]
[SYSTEM POWER: 50%... 80%... 150%!]
Power flooded him. Not the clean clarity of the Catalyst, but a raw, overwhelming surge of potential. His body glowed with an inner silver light. The System screamed with alerts, struggling to contain the deluge.
[ZERO: YES! MORE! GIVE ME MORE!]
[APEX: CONTAINMENT BREACH IMMINENT! DIVERTING EXCESS ENERGY TO CORE REINFORCEMENT!]
The Demonic Heartstone cracked, then shattered into inert dust, its energy completely drained.
Li Wei stood panting in the sudden silence, his fists clenched. Silver arcs of energy, like lightning made of pure information, crackled around his body. The Scriptorium's containment fields flickered wildly in his presence.
He felt... immense. For the first time, he wasn't just a clever glitch surviving on scraps. He was a power.
[SYSTEM POWER: 210%. CORE STABILIZED. PARADOX MODE OPTIMIZED.]
[NEW ABILITY UNLOCKED: 'REALITY COMMAND - LOW-LEVEL'. HOST CAN NOW ISSUE SINGLE-WORD COMMANDS TO LOCALIZED REALITY, CONSUMING SYSTEM POWER. SUCCESS IS PROBABILISTIC BASED ON COMMAND COMPLEXITY AND HOST AUTHORITY.]
A low-level reality command. He could speak to the world's source code, and it might listen.
He looked at a nearby rock on the floor, a piece of debris from some forgotten catastrophe.
He focused his will, channeling a fraction of his newfound power.
"Float," he commanded.
The rock shuddered. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, with a grinding shiver, it lifted six inches off the ground, hovering in defiance of gravity. It wasn't elegant. It was a brute-force edit, a clumsy override of a fundamental law. But it worked.
He released the command, and the rock clattered to the floor.
He had taken his second step. He was no longer just a reader of the world's code. He was becoming a programmer.
And outside the Scriptorium, high above in the celestial vault, the rune for "Stability" didn't just flicker. It cracked.
To be continued...