Location: The Imperial Balcony – The Skies Above the Capital
The arrival of the Celestial Agent didn't just break the silence; it broke the sky.
The clouds above the capital had parted in a perfect circle, revealing a void of white static. The Agent floated ten meters above the balcony, her wings of hard-light twitching with the mechanical precision of a ticking clock.
She was beautiful in the way a scalpel is beautiful—cold, sharp, and sterile.
[Target Analysis]
[Entity: Agent 009 (The Moderator)]
[Level: 60 (Nascent Soul - Peak)]
[Attribute: True Order / Erasure]
[Passive: 'System Authority' – Can negate any Qi attack below Level 55.]
Inside the War Room, the Emperor and the Marshals were paralyzed. The pressure radiating from the Agent wasn't "Killing Intent"—it was "Null Intent." It was the feeling of being a file that was about to be dragged into the recycle bin.
"Aris Thorne," the Agent spoke again. Her voice didn't vibrate the air; it vibrated the mind directly. "You are an unauthorized variable. You have corrupted the local server (Qin Empire). You have illegally accessed Root Admin privileges."
She pointed her spear at him. The tip glowed with a blinding, binary white light.
"Surrender your System. Submit to Deletion. And perhaps your soul will be recycled into a lower lifeform."
Aris laughed.
It wasn't a hero's laugh. It was a dry, jagged sound that grated against the Agent's perfection. He stepped onto the railing of the balcony, balancing effortlessly.
"Recycled?" Aris smirked beneath his mask. "I worked 60-hour weeks in my last life for minimum wage. I've already been recycled, honey. Now, I'm the one doing the scrapping."
The Glitch vs. The Antivirus
"Protocol: PURGE," the Agent stated.
She thrust her spear.
A beam of White Erasure shot toward Aris. It moved at the speed of light. To the Generals watching, Aris was already dead.
But Aris didn't move.
[Ultimate Skill Activated: The Black Sun.]
Behind Aris, a sphere of absolute darkness—his external Nascent Soul—expanded instantly. It didn't block the white beam; it swallowed it.
The Erasure beam hit the Black Sun and vanished, converted instantly into raw mana.
"What?" The Agent paused, her silver eyes flickering. [Error: Attack Value Nullified.]
"My turn," Aris whispered.
He raised his hand. Nox, the Eclipse Hound, howled—a sound that shattered the windows of the palace.
[Ability: Eclipse Howl.]
The sonic wave hit the Agent. Her hard-light wings flickered, destabilized by the anti-light frequency.
Aris launched himself off the balcony. He didn't fly on a sword; he walked on steps of solid air created by his Void Domain.
He appeared in front of the Agent, his fist coated in Abyssal Steel.
BOOM.
He punched her in the face.
The impact created a shockwave that blew the roof off the War Room. The Agent was sent hurtling backward, crashing through three layers of the Palace's defensive barriers before stabilizing in mid-air.
She wiped a streak of glowing blue blood (liquid data) from her lip. Her expression shifted from robotic detachment to genuine irritation.
"Physical interaction validated," she said coldly. "Combat Mode: Unrestricted."
The Key to the Underworld
The sky turned white. The Agent raised her arms, and thousands of spears of light manifested around her. This was a Heaven-Rank Array: Rain of Judgment.
"Delete," she commanded.
The rain fell. Each spear was capable of killing a Core Formation cultivator instantly.
Aris looked at the incoming storm. "You want to play with numbers? Let's bring in some old friends."
He pulled the Key to the Underworld from his inventory. It was a heavy, rusted iron key that felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.
"Unlock," Aris commanded, twisting the key in the empty air.
Click.
The fabric of reality tore open. A massive, vertical slit appeared in the sky behind Aris—a wound in the world.
Green, necrotic fog poured out. And with it, came the hands.
Thousands of spectral, rotting hands reached out from the rift. These were the "Deleted Files" of the universe—souls that had been erased but refused to fade.
[Item Effect: Door of the Damned.]
[Summoning: The Grasp of the Forgotten.]
"Grab them," Aris ordered.
The spectral hands surged forward like a tidal wave. They didn't target the Agent; they targeted her attacks.
The hands grabbed the spears of light. The spears hissed and sizzled, fighting the necrotic grip, but the sheer volume of the dead overwhelmed the precision of the light. The "Rain of Judgment" was caught in mid-air, held by the desperate grasp of the underworld.
"Impossible," the Agent gasped. "Necromancy cannot stop Divine Law!"
"It's not Necromancy," Aris said, appearing directly behind her via Shadow-Walk. "It's a DDoS attack."
The Hack
Aris grabbed the Agent's wings with his bare hands. His grip strength, enhanced by Level 50 stats, was enough to crush diamond.
[Skill: Reverse Refinement - Contact Established.]
[Target: Celestial Construct.]
[Action: Breakdown.]
"No!" The Agent screamed as she felt her very code being unraveled. "You cannot refine me! I am made of Heaven's Will!"
"Everything has a source code," Aris whispered into her ear. "And I'm rewriting yours."
He pulled.
CRACK.
He ripped the wings of hard-light from her back.
The Agent shrieked—a digital, glitching sound. She fell from the sky, crashing onto the balcony where the terrified Generals were watching.
She tried to crawl away, leaking blue data-blood, but Nox landed on her chest, pinning her down with 50 tons of gravity.
Aris landed softly beside her. He held the glowing, severed wings in his hand.
[Item Acquired: Wings of the Moderator.]
[Material: Solidified Light / Divine Code.]
[Can be used to upgrade 'Ghost-Step' to 'Light-Speed Flash'.]
He looked down at the defeated Agent. She looked at him with terror.
"You... you will be purged," she stuttered. "The High Admins... they will send the Archangels..."
"Let them come," Aris said.
He placed his hand on her forehead.
"But you won't be there to see it."
[Skill: Abyssal Cannibalism.]
He didn't just drain her Qi. He drained her Data.
The Agent dissolved. She turned into streams of binary blue light that flowed into Aris's eyes. He gasped as a headache split his skull—knowledge of the cosmos, of the "System," of the world beyond this one, flooded his brain.
[System Alert: Celestial Data Integrated.]
[Understanding of 'World Laws' increased by 10%.]
[New Feature Unlocked: The World Map (fog of war removed).]
The Order
Aris stood up. The balcony was a ruin. The sky was clearing. The rift to the Underworld slowly zipped itself shut.
He turned to the War Room.
General Thorne, the Emperor, and the Marshals were huddled in the corner, staring at Aris as if he were the devil himself.
"She... she was an Angel," Marshal Wu whispered. "And you... you ate her."
Aris adjusted his mask. He felt powerful. The gap between him and the world had just widened.
"She was an obstacle," Aris corrected.
He walked back to the tactical map, which was miraculously untouched. He pointed to the borders where the enemy armies were gathering.
"The Heavens have tried to stop us," Aris announced, his voice projecting strength he didn't even need to fake anymore. "And the Heavens failed."
He looked at General Thorne.
"Father. Deploy the troops. Send the Trojan Golems to the Iron-Thunder Empire."
He looked at Lin Chen.
"Lin Chen. Take the Black Jade Guards to the Frost-Blood Kingdom. Corrupt their Necromancers."
Aris clenched his fist, feeling the new power of the Wings of the Moderator integrating into his soul.
"This world thinks it is playing a game of war," Aris said, his violet eyes glowing. "I'm about to show them how to speed-run it."
[Abyssal Nexus: End of Chapter Status]
Host: Aris Thorne
Level: 52 (Mid-Stage Nascent Soul)
Title: The God-Eater (New!)
[Loot]
* Wings of the Moderator: (Passive: Flight speed +300%. Active: 'Light-Shift' teleportation).
* ** celestial Data Fragment:** (Contains coordinates to the 'Dao Source').
[World Status]
* Heavenly Dao: ERROR. Connection Lost with Agent 009. Re-calculating Threat Level...
* The War: The Trojan Horses are en route. The enemy has 3 days before detonation.