Chapter 48: Guide

The ground suddenly collapsed half a foot. Zhang Jun yanked Lin Xue by the back of the neck, rolling to the right, and three bronze spears sprang up from where they had been standing. "Did Wang Laotou moonlight as a tomb raider back then?" he brushed the mud off his face, and the sword hilt struck a protruding rune.

The entire cave wall suddenly flipped, revealing a jade plate inlaid with a star map. Zhang Jun stared at the recessed jade pendant shape in the center, instinctively reaching for his chest— the ornament he had worn for years fit the pattern perfectly.

"Step back!" Lin Xue suddenly grabbed his belt. As the jade plate turned, the airflow sheared a few strands of hair, and twenty‑seven seal characters lit up one by one, projecting a rotating Twenty‑Eight Mansions diagram onto the cavern ceiling.

Zhang Jun suddenly laughed aloud: "Lao Touzi's twisted taste." He pulled out the jade pendant, pressed it into the groove, and kicked the resonant stone pillar. The star map abruptly collapsed into a torrent of light points, enveloping the two as they slammed into a suddenly appearing passage.

A dull pain at the back of his head where it struck the bronze beast head made Zhang Jun see black. Lin Xue ignited an ice‑crystal light, and under the glow the altar's surface was covered with a viscous slime that writhed and contracted. The ancient runic symbols flickered unpredictably, as if breathing.

When a phantom materialized, Zhang Jun instinctively swung his sword horizontally, but noticed the patterns on the blade resonating with the altar. A hoarse voice, tinged with electrical static, said: "Ice Soul and Primordial Bloodline detected… initiating Purification Protocol."

Lin Xue suddenly pressed her temple and staggered back; the ice‑crystal armor on her left shoulder burst into fine cracks. Zhang Jun caught sight of the purple veins appearing on her neck, recalling the crystal in the secret room— the corrosion had already begun.

The slime on the altar suddenly boiled, erupting a blinding violet light. Zhang Jun instinctively blocked with his sword; the blade's runes clashed with the violet light, producing a harsh metallic scraping sound.

"These days even ruins try to pull a fast one?" he stepped back half a pace, the sword tip sparking on the ground, "Lao Tou, your after‑sales service is terrible."

The phantom flickered twice, shaping into a white‑haired elder. Lin Xue again pressed her temple and staggered back, the ice‑crystal armor on her shoulder blooming into spider‑web cracks. Zhang Jun saw the purple veins on her neck— the crystal's corrosion in the secret room was accelerating.

"Ice Soul and Primordial Bloodline detected," a mechanical voice, mixed with electrical static, said, "initiating Purification Protocol."

A sudden gale rose, fragments of stone levitated halfway and formed a Twenty‑Eight Mansions diagram. Zhang Jun hauled Lin Xue onto the altar, and the Heavenly Man Sword pierced the formation's eye in an instant, the surrounding scenery shattering like broken mirrors.

The smell of gunpowder stung the nasal passages. The two stood amid the collapsed office building ruins, a charred billboard jutting into the ground, the words "New World Tower" still smoking.

"Welcome to reality," a synthetic voice echoed in the void, "Survival rate 0.03%."

Lin Xue's fingertips formed ice shards: "Electromagnetic radiation exceeds standards by seventeen times, air pollutant concentration…"

"There's something even more thrilling," Zhang Jun kicked aside the blocking rebar, revealing half a charred corpse behind. A child's electronic watch on the wrist still flickered, playing a pre‑accident video: "Mom, I'm on the 32nd floor…"

Lin Xue turned her head away, her ice‑crystal mask hiding her expression. Zhang Jun picked up a piece of rubble and hurled it into the void: "Using corpses as backdrop walls, is that the extent of your extraterrestrial insight's taste?"

"This is the future you chose yourself," the synthetic voice said evenly, "when the Dimensional Gate fully opens…"

Engine roars came from afar. Five modified off‑road vehicles burst through the smoke, machine‑gun turrets on their roofs spitting flames. Zhang Jun hauled Lin Xue into a bullet crater, bullets exploding behind them, sending concrete shards flying.

"Electronic interference source at three o'clock to the left!" Lin Xue hurled an ice spear, pinning an assault trooper's bullet‑proof vest, "These are standard military gear from twenty years ago."

Zhang Jun rolled onto his back behind the cover, his sword light slicing through two machine guns: "What choice did the old man mean—whack‑a‑mole or…"

The explosion swallowed the latter half of the sentence. Tank tracks rolled over the ruins, the muzzle glowing with stored blue energy. Lin Xue suddenly leapt onto the turret, her palm pressed to the armor, injecting cold; the precision components shattered one by one in the low temperature.

"When my father taught me the Ice Soul power, he said…" she spun to dodge the sweeping machine gun fire, "Absolute zero can silence any machine."

Zhang Jun seized the chance to leap onto the tank, his blade piercing the observation window slit. Inside the cockpit, the one operating the weapons was none other than the half‑cybernetic Zhao Wushuang.

"The lingering spirit, huh Lao Zhao!" he snapped a data‑link interface, "Even dead you still want to be an NPC?"

The virtual Zhao Wushuang's electronic eye suddenly glowed red: "Error… core protocol rewrite…" The mechanical body began convulsing uncontrollably, the barrel swiveling to aim at the sky.

As a mushroom cloud rose in the distance, the whole world began to warp. Zhang Jun felt someone grab his back of the neck, a familiar tobacco scent mixed with tar flooding his nostrils— it was a clone of Zhang Tiangang.

"Those two little bunnies sure know how to cause trouble," the man said, chewing an e‑cigarette, his radiation‑proof suit riddled with bullet holes, "I've hacked this broken program three times, come with me."

Lin Xue suddenly pressed against the clone's barrel: "Prove you are the original."

"Last month at the base, you added half a tube of coolant to my coffee," the clone rolled his eyes, "Ice crystal coalescence speed increased by 0.7 seconds, as if I didn't know?"

Shockwaves followed in succession, hurling the three into the subway station entrance. The clone exhaled a blood‑stained e‑cigarette: "Listen, this cursed program will read your memories to generate traps. To clear it…"

He suddenly froze, a purple crystal jutting from his temple. The real Zhao Wushuang emerged from the shadows, clutching a bleeding neural connector in his hand.

"The game should end now," Zhao Wushuang licked machine oil from the corner of his mouth, "but this time, the audience has changed."

The sound of metal grinding exploded in his ears, and Zhang Jun reflexively hauled Lin Xue, rolling into a cover made of concrete debris. A half‑exposed rebar scraped his back of the neck, tearing a gash in the radiation‑proof suit.

"Southeast at two o'clock, three heat sources," Lin Xue leaned against a broken vending machine, panting, ice crystals on her fingertips forming a prism. Through the refracted light spots, three pieces of mechanical debris staggered toward them, dragging arcs.

Zhang Jun fished out the last half of a compressed biscuit from his pocket, breaking it in two; the package bore a production date of five days ago— this holographic game replicated even the nauseating details. As the sour taste spread in his mouth, he suddenly kicked the cover over, the Heavenly Man Sword thrust into the ground, raising a circular shockwave. When the mechanical debris were flipped, Lin Xue's ice spear precisely pierced their power cores.

"The seventeenth trap," the girl ripped off her gas mask to breathe, oil smearing her cheek, "Xiao Lin's program is more boring than your dad's lame jokes."

"At least lame jokes don't kill," Zhang Jun pricked a data chip out of the debris with his sword tip; the purple code ignited on contact with air. A distant propeller roared, and the two crouched simultaneously into the sewer.

Putrid sewage rose to their knees, and Lin Xue suddenly grabbed his wrist. Ice crystal in her palm glowed faintly, reflecting a carving in a wall crack—a crooked "Wang" character, still stained with dried blood.