6: Chapter 6: Unmoved by the wind, unshaken by the earth, behind me lie the lives of my people, ahead lies the hatred of my clan's annihilation.

The wind stopped.

Not even a tremor remained, as if the entire world had been vacuumed out.

In the rock crevices at the edge of the Dongshan Mineral Vein, that smear of silver-gray slime crawled slowly, like some dormant nerve ending quietly waking up.

The air solidified enough to crush one's breath, and even the sound of heartbeats was swallowed up.

Chen Wuwang stood on the black stone, his right hand still resting on the dagger hilt, but his fingertips had already begun to tap the stone surface—once, twice, the rhythm as stable as a code loop.

He couldn't wait for a response.

The Sea of Consciousness was silent, and the System was quiet. The clansmen had already retreated a hundred meters away; no one dared to approach. At this moment, he stood alone on the high platform, facing this mineral vein as silent as an abyss.

He knew the Broodmother had arrived.

Not a physical descent, but consciousness tentacles penetrating the ley lines, winding around this spiritual land like spider silk.

It was sensing, testing, waiting for him to show a flaw.

But he couldn't wait.

His mechanical prosthetic left eye vibrated slightly, switching to micro mode. In his field of vision, the slime deep in the rock crevice was spreading outward at an extremely slow speed, every bit of extension accompanied by a weak psionic fluctuation, its frequency perfectly consistent with the Gold-Eating Insect swarm's resonance.

—This wasn't larval molting.

It was signal transmission.

They were summoning.

He stomped his right foot down suddenly.

"Thump!"

A muffled sound exploded, and crisscrossing shimmering patterns suddenly appeared on the surface of the black stone—those were the Energy-conducting circuits he had secretly carved last night while no one was around; thirty pre-buried array foundations were buried deep in the rock layers like roots, now activated by the vibration, glowing with a faint blue fluorescence.

He pulled out his Titanium alloy dagger with a backhand motion, the runes on the back of the blade humming softly. Without hesitation, his left hand wiped across his right palm, blood flowing down from three old scars on his palm, precisely dripping into a hair-thin groove in the center of the stone platform.

The blood ignited as soon as it fell.

At that moment, the ground trembled slightly, as if something had opened its eyes underground.

The moment the blood seeped into the rock layer, dozens of faint blue light filaments spread in all directions from the black stone center, drilling into rock crevices, climbing up cliffs, and sinking into hollows—the two high points of the Northwest Cliff and the Southeast Hollow faintly resonated with shimmering light, the Spirit Array nodes automatically calibrated, and a semi-transparent spider-web-like light membrane slowly rose, enveloping the entire mineral vein.

No incantations, no Talismans, no infusion of spiritual power.

Only a drop of blood, a hidden line, and a setup laid seventy-two hours in advance.

The Spirit Array started.

And it was ridiculously fast.

He looked down at the wound on his palm; blood was still seeping, but the edges had been sealed by the micro-medical System in his body, forming a nearly invisible nano-membrane.

He suddenly grinned, leaning over to press his palm against a cold metal plate next to the Array Core.

A current vibrated slightly, and the edges of the wound immediately condensed into a hard shell; the bleeding was stopped.

He stuck out his tongue and lightly licked the not-yet-completely closed crack.

The smell of blood permeated the base of his tongue.

Rust mixed with saltiness, and a little bit... of the smell of a scorched circuit board.

He laughed.

The laughter was low, as if squeezed out of his chest, carrying a hint of madness.

"Come on." He stared at the still-pulsating rock crevice, his voice not high, yet every word smashed into this dead silence, "Don't you love eavesdropping the most? Don't you love peeping the most?"

He slowly raised his head, and deep in the pupil of his right eye, blood-colored spirit patterns quietly surfaced, like a Seal loosening, an evil fire about to burn.

"I, Chen Wuwang, stand here, using the scars you left, using the 'tricks' you look down on, to set up an array you don't understand."

The corners of his mouth curled up, like a hunter seeing prey step into a trap.

"Insect Race... come on!"

Pausing, his voice suddenly dropped lower but became clearer, like a blade scraping against bone:

"Let you witness... the defense of Cyber Cultivation!"

The moment the words fell, his mechanical prosthetic eye's thermal imaging mode turned on.

In his field of vision, dozens of high-temperature points were already moving rapidly underground, approaching in an encircling manner; their speed was extremely fast, their trajectories eerie, clearly not something a natural creature could possess.

They traveled along the ley line fissures with a clear goal—precisely the core of this Spirit Array that had just been activated.

He knew they had already locked onto him.

But he didn't move.

He stood like a nail, firmly driven into this black stone. Unmoved by the wind, unshaken by the earth; behind him was the lives of his kin, before him was the vengeance for a fallen clan.

He wasn't afraid of death.

What he feared was being told before even starting—'Look, that mad family head, as expected, he's no good.'

So he had to do it.

He had to use this drop of blood to light the first fire.

He stepped on the edge of the Array Core with his right foot, feeling the weak vibrations coming from beneath. The Spirit Array had started, energy flow was normal, and feedback was stable.

This System was a hybrid architecture he had designed himself: a traditional Spirit Array as the shell, technological energy conduction as the core, using nano-grade Rune chips to replace Spirit Stones for power, and relying on pre-buried circuits to achieve zero-latency response.

Others took three hours to set up an array; he only needed three breaths.

Others relied on spiritual power to activate it; he relied on logical closed loops.

Others sought the protection of the Heavenly Dao; he directly rewrote the rules.

This was Cyber Cultivation.

It wasn't about turning a sword into a laser, nor was it about plugging a Pill Furnace into a power source.

It was treating 'cultivation' as an operating System that could be reverse-engineered, and then—reinstalling it.

He licked his lips, his gaze fixed on that rock crevice.

"Want to destroy my mineral vein?"

"Want to kill my kin?"

"Want to make me kneel and beg for mercy?"

He sneered, his right hand spreading its five fingers, pressing onto the black stone surface again to inject the final encrypted command into the array foundation—this was a backdoor program he had secretly added last night, named "Buzz," which, once triggered, could forge three hundred fake psionic signals within ten breaths to lure the enemy deep.

"Then come on."

"Let's see if your Broodmother's brain is faster, or if my code runs faster."

The ground vibration became more and more obvious.

Not just in one place, but from all directions. Those high-temperature points had approached fifty zhang from the surface, their speed not decreasing but rather increasing.

They were no longer hiding, as if they had already confirmed the target and were preparing for a forceful attack.

He knew the real test had only just begun.

But he didn't care anymore.

He had completed what he needed to do.

The Spirit Array was active, the defensive line established, and the challenge issued.

All that remained was to wait.

Wait for them to rush out.

Wait for him to personally tear apart this group of 'Remnants of the Past' who thought they controlled everything.

He stood on the high platform, his long silver-white hair lifted by an invisible airflow, his mechanical prosthetic left eye glowing with cold light, and the claw marks on the right side of his face turning red in the dawn.

Beneath his feet, the light net flowed; above his head, the sky was cloudless; the wind still hadn't risen, and all things remained silent.

Only he stood alone between heaven and earth, like an unsheathed blade.

He murmured in a low voice, as if speaking to himself, yet also as if declaring to that mass of consciousness underground:

"In this game, I'm not betting my life."

"I'm betting on the future."

He raised his right hand, looking at the newly healed wound on his palm.

The blood had already dried.

The array was already lit.

The man was already mad.

He grinned, revealing pearly white teeth.

"Come on."