90: Chapter 90 Your network connection is unstable, please check your router.

Cultivation World, Northern Territory, Garbled Zone.

The sky displayed an unsettling purple-black color, as if a broken graphics card was struggling to render the final frame. That massive red progress bar floating in the sky had been stuck at [99%] for three whole hours.

[Version 2.1: Abyss DLC (Downloading... 99%... Remaining Time: Calculating)]

"As expected." In the Scripture Pavilion's second floor, Li Mo looked at the motionless progress bar and shook his head helplessly. "No matter which world's downloader it is, that last 1% is always a mystery."

Beside him, Xiao Hei (that indescribable black shadow) was acting unusually anxious. It expanded and contracted, turning into a sphere one moment and a Tentacle Monster the next, spinning in circles on the desk like a phone searching for a signal.

"Stop spinning, you're making me dizzy." Li Mo held down Xiao Hei. "It's just that your relatives back home are too fat and have clogged the bandwidth."

At this moment, the entire Cultivation World could hear an eerie sound. It wasn't thunder, nor was it the wailing of ghosts. Instead, it was a sharp, intermittent, electronic-sounding noise: "Zzzt... beep... boop—ga ga ga... zzzt—"

Daoist Qingxu stood on the newly paved cement road, looking up at the sky with a pale face: "Is this... the mourning of the Great Dao? Is the sky about to collapse again?" Beside him, Butcher Xiao (the former Divine Marquis Who Guards the Nation) put down his trowel, wiped his sweat, and said with a solemn expression: "No, this sound seems like... some ancient mechanism is starting up, but it's stuck."

Only Li Mo knew that it was the sound of dial-up internet. The Heavenly Dao server was trying to establish a handshake protocol with the Abyss server, but this ancient "Spiritual Qi network" clearly couldn't handle the Abyss's massive data stream.

...

[Warning: Network congestion.] [High packet loss detected.] [Attempting to reconnect... Reconnection failed.]

Above the Northern Territory, space suddenly tore open a massive gap—it was the legendary "Abyssal Gate." According to ancient records, billions of demons would pour out from here to devour the mortal realm. However, now...

A giant black-furred demonic claw, carrying an Aura that could destroy heaven and earth, suddenly thrust out from the crack! "Roar! I am the Abyssal Lord, I shall..."

Sloop. Before it could finish its threat, that hand was violently yanked back into the crack as if by an invisible rubber band. [Lag: Rollback.]

A moment later, the hand reached out again, refusing to believe its luck. "I shall rule..." Sloop. Retracted again.

"I shall..." Sloop. "I..." Sloop.

This scene played on a loop in the sky, looking like a giant demon performing some sort of glitchy stretching exercise.

The Cultivators below were dumbfounded. "This... this is the Abyssal Demon God?" "Its attack method... has quite a rhythm to it."

Inside the Scripture Pavilion, Li Mo couldn't watch any longer. "How embarrassing. This is the famous 'rubber band effect'." He sighed and flipped open the book in front of him, Principles of Computer Networking: From Introduction to Giving Up.

"Since the physical connection is unstable, let's downgrade the processing for now." Li Mo picked up his pen and wrote a line of code in the void, directly overwriting the original "Transmission Protocol." Set Quality = "LOW" (Image Quality: Low) Enable Video_Conference_Mode (Enable Video Conference Mode)

"Instead of letting them get stuck at the door, it's better to meet and chat first."

As Li Mo finished writing, the anomaly in the sky changed abruptly. The twitching crack suddenly stabilized, transforming into a massive, rectangular... light screen. It was as if the sky had become a giant monitor.

After two static sounds, the light screen lit up. A terrifying face, so massive it occupied half the sky, appeared on the screen. It was the Abyssal Lord; its face was covered in eyes and tentacles, emitting a maddening mental pollution.

However, because Li Mo had just set it to "low quality," this face appeared to the Cultivators as a pile of... blurry mosaics. Forget mental pollution; they couldn't even count how many eyes it had.

"Hello? Hello?" On the screen, the pixelated Abyssal Lord opened its mouth. Its voice, after "network transmission," became distorted and sluggish. "...Can... you... hear... me?... I... am... the... Lord..."

The entire Cultivation World fell into a dead silence. Everyone looked up at this absurd scene, not knowing whether to kneel and beg for mercy or to laugh.

"I can hear you." Li Mo's voice echoed clearly throughout the world via the Scripture Pavilion's Amplification Formation. He acted like the moderator of this cross-realm meeting. "Mr. Mosaic-Face, please move the microphone away from your mouth. You're clipping."

The Abyssal Lord on the screen froze (though its expression was unclear, that mass of pixels definitely stiffened). It clearly hadn't expected that invading a lower plane would start in such a manner.

"Who... are... you?" The Abyssal Lord's voice was filled with rage as it tried to release pressure through the screen, "I... will... come... over... and... eat... you..."

Before it could finish, the screen suddenly froze. The Abyssal Lord's image was stuck on a ferocious open-mouthed expression, and a spinning white circle appeared in the middle. [Buffering...]

"Want to eat me?" Li Mo took a sip of tea and said unhurriedly, "Then you might need to sign up for a broadband speed-up package first."

He glanced at Xiao Hei beside him. "Go, send a private message to your relative. Tell him that it's currently peak traffic time. If he wants to come over, he'll have to wait in line." "Furthermore, to maintain the ecological balance of this world, all incoming monsters must undergo 'compression' processing."

Xiao Hei understood and jumped onto the desk, using its claws to draw a string of strange symbols (Abyssal language) on a talisman paper, then stuffed it into the spinning buffering circle.

A moment later, the screen in the sky smoothed out. The Abyssal Lord seemed to have received the message and fell silent. Through the screen, its countless (pixelated) eyes stared fixedly at the Scripture Pavilion before finally letting out an unwilling roar: "...Wait... I... will... be... back..."

Ding. Call ended. The massive light screen in the sky instantly went black, then shrank into a tiny icon hanging in a corner of the horizon. The icon was named: [Abyss (Not Connected)].

[System Notification: Due to network fluctuations, the Abyss invasion event has been postponed.] [Compensation Rewards: Abyss Specialty · Roasted Tentacle Squid (Void Version) x 10,000 units.]

Pitter-patter. Rain began to fall from the sky again. But this time, it wasn't Spirit Stones falling, but fresh, still-wiggling purple tentacles.

"Ouch!" Butcher Xiao, who was repairing the road, caught a tentacle and sniffed it. "Smells good! It has a Void Realm barbecue flavor!"

Inside the Scripture Pavilion, Li Mo closed his book and let out a long breath. "Stabilized for now." "However..." He looked at the progress bar still stuck at 99%, his gaze deepening. "This is only temporary. Once that progress bar actually reaches 100%, the real trouble will have just begun."

"It seems I need to install a stronger 'Firewall' for the Scripture Pavilion." Li Mo stood up and walked to the deepest part of the bookshelf. There lay a forbidden book he didn't even dare touch lightly. The title: Principles of Antivirus Software and Trojan Horse Implantation in Practice.

"Since you want to come in, I'll prepare some 'Trojan Horses' for you at the door." Li Mo's mouth curled into a smile that looked more villainous than any villain.