Life at the Sword Washing Pavilion was as still as a stagnant pool.
The shattered jade scattered on the Sword Testing Platform that day ultimately kept Shen Qingqiu there in an extremely strange manner. The sect looked at her with complex emotions—disdain for a mortal without spiritual power, yet deep fear of the man who always wore a silver mask and stood behind her like a shadow.
Thus, she was placed in the most remote "Listening to the Waves Cliff," given the status of a nominal disciple, with no one to teach her and no one to care for her.
This suited her perfectly.
At dawn, before the mist had fully dissipated, Shen Qingqiu brought Seventeen to the "Scripture Pavilion."
This was a nine-story ebony tower, with copper bells hanging from the eaves. When the wind blew, the bells didn't ring out clearly, but rather with a dull murmur like an old man's whisper. Inside, bookshelves stood tall, millions of scrolls piled up like mountains, exuding an old, musty smell of pine and ink.
"You stand guard outside," Shen Qingqiu instructed Seventeen.
Seventeen stood in the shadows of the tower entrance, his silver mask gleaming coldly. He didn't speak, only nodded extremely slowly, his body instantly entering a state of near-standby stillness, even the rise and fall of his breath barely perceptible.
Shen Qingqiu entered alone.
Sunlight streamed in through the carved window lattices, forming beams of light in the air. Dust motes danced within these beams, rising and falling.
Shen Qingqiu casually pulled out a basic swordsmanship manual—*The Flowing Cloud Sword Manual*.
This was a common book given to every introductory disciple of the Sword Washing Pavilion.
She opened to the first page.
On the yellowed paper, a small figure stood holding a sword, accompanied by lines of vigorous small regular script: "Qi flows through the dantian, intention guards the spirit platform, the sword flows like clouds, leaving no trace."
To an outsider, this would be a profound mantra.
But within Shen Qingqiu's activated [Overclocked Vision], this page changed.
The ink-black characters began to distort and float, transforming into lines of code emitting a ghostly blue light. The little figure wielding a sword was no longer a static drawing, but had decomposed into countless geometric coordinate points.
"An error in human anatomy." Shen Qingqiu frowned slightly, her fingers lightly tracing the little figure's arm. "If the sword were struck at this angle, the biceps would be injured, and the wrist bone would experience three times the shear force. This is completely contrary to biomechanics."
However, the blue light on the page flickered, as if mocking her common sense about physics.
[System Correction: Ignore physical collision volume. Force damage assessment.]
Shen Qingqiu's pupils dilated slightly.
She understood.
The so-called cultivation techniques were actually just a series of "cheat codes." They didn't need to conform to logic; they only needed to invoke the world's underlying permissions. As long as the incantation was recited correctly and the posture was correct, the system would automatically play the "sword energy injuring people" effect.
"So that's how it is… It's all fake." A sarcastic sneer curled at the corner of Shen Qingqiu's lips, but her eyes gleamed with fanatical light.
Since it's code, it can be modified.
She began frantically flipping through the pages. One book, two books, ten books…
*Blazing Palm*, *Wind Control Technique*, *Mountain Moving Technique*…
Countless streams of information flooded her brain like a tidal wave. In her vision, the entire library transformed into a gigantic matrix of green 0s and 1s. Each scroll was a packaged function.
Headache.
A sharp headache struck without warning. Her brain felt like it was being branded with a red-hot iron—a warning of computational overload.
"Ugh…" Shen Qingqiu groaned, the scroll falling from her hands. She collapsed backward, sliding against the cold bookshelf and settling on the floor.
Cold sweat instantly soaked her back, her face ashen.
Just as she was about to lose consciousness, a cold hand touched her forehead.
The coolness was like a spring of water, instantly extinguishing the boiling flames in her mind.
Shen Qingqiu struggled to open her eyes.
Seventeen had entered sometime earlier. He knelt before her, his eyes, hidden behind a silver mask, fixed on her, the blue light in them flashing rapidly, revealing a rare panic.
He knew nothing of medicine. His database contained only methods of killing, not ways to heal.
Seeing her in pain, his instinct was to draw his sword and kill the source of her suffering, but he found no enemies here.
So, he could only use his own extremely cold body to physically cool her.
"...Hot." He uttered a single word stiffly, his hand clumsily pressing against her cheek, trying to absorb the heat that was causing her pain.
Shen Qingqiu gasped for breath, her gaze gradually focusing on the silver mask so close to hers.
His fingers were cold, even calloused, not soft, yet in this false world of data, they gave her the only sense of reality.
"I'm alright, Seventeen." Shen Qingqiu smiled weakly, raising her hand to cover the back of his hand pressed against her cheek. "It's just… I saw some filth clearly."
With his help, she slowly stood up.
At that moment, the midday sun shone directly on them.
After that extreme "overload," Shen Qingqiu realized her world had changed.
She looked at the dust particles dancing in the air.
Before, she could only see the trajectory of the dust, but now, she saw faint red lines trailing behind them—the **"prediction lines"**.
She saw which floor the dust would land on next.
"Seventeen, draw your sword." Shen Qingqiu suddenly spoke, her voice soft but carrying an undeniable excitement.
Seventeen didn't hesitate, drawing the longsword from his back. The blade was like autumn water, reflecting the dappled light and shadows of the Sutra Repository.
"Use the third move of the Flowing Cloud Sword Technique to stab me." Seventeen's hand trembled violently.
He looked at her, the blue light in his eyes freezing instantly.
[Command conflict. First rule: Absolute protection.]
"This is an order." Shen Qingqiu stared into his eyes, her gaze intense. "Trust me. You can't hurt me."
Seventeen remained silent for a long time.
Finally, he chose to obey. But he deliberately avoided vital points, the tip of his sword trembling as it pointed at her shoulder, moving as slowly as a beginner.
"Too slow! Go all out!" Shen Qingqiu shouted. "Kill me like you killed those paper figures of the Lin family!"
The struggle in Seventeen's eyes vanished instantly, replaced by mechanical indifference.
Since it was an order, he would obey.
Clang—!
The sword rang out.
The sword transformed into a chilling flash of light, so fast it left afterimages in the air, aiming straight for Shen Qingqiu's throat. This sword strike was as fast as lightning, as powerful as thunder.
If it were an ordinary person, they would already be dead.
But in Shen Qingqiu's eyes, the world slowed down.
She saw a red line.
The red line extended from Seventeen's sword tip, heading straight for her throat. It was the system's pre-set "guaranteed hit trajectory."
Beside that red line, she saw countless tiny, blue-glowing nodes—the "breakpoints" in the sword's logic.
Just as the sword tip was three inches from her throat,
Shen Qingqiu moved.
She didn't retreat; instead, she took a half-step forward. Her body tilted slightly at an extremely strange angle, the movement almost negligible.
But it was this tiny step.
*Swoosh—* The sword blade grazed her neck, severing a strand of her hair.
The supposedly guaranteed hit missed.
Not because she was faster than Seventeen, but because she stood in the system's "blind spot." Like a character in a game getting stuck in a wall, she was caught in a gap in the judgment.
Seventeen's pupils contracted sharply.
His sword stopped in mid-air, the blade still humming from the sudden stop. He didn't understand. He'd clearly locked onto the target, the data showed a 100% hit rate—why had he missed?
Shen Qingqiu raised her hand and gently caught a stray lock of hair.
Looking at Seventeen's confused expression, a breathtaking smile played on her lips.
"Did you understand, Seventeen?"
She walked behind him and took his sword-wielding hand from behind.
Her chest pressed against his back, her warm breath brushing against his cold nape. Seventeen's body tensed instantly, like a fully drawn bow.
"The martial arts of this world are all pre-written scripts." Shen Qingqiu, holding his hand, slowly raised the sword, pointing it at the empty bookshelf ahead.
"The 'Flowing Cloud Sword Technique' is called 'Flowing Cloud' not because it resembles a cloud, but because it exploits a bug in the refractive index of air."
"Press your wrist down three degrees. Don't use spiritual power, use vibration."
"Look at that vase."
"Slash." With her command, Seventeen's arm, guided by her, swung the sword.
This sword strike was utterly unremarkable. There was no sword energy, no dazzling light, not even a sound of wind being cut.
However,
three zhang away, the blue-and-white porcelain vase atop the bookshelf suddenly and silently split in two.
The cut was as smooth as a mirror.
Only two seconds later, with a crisp "crack," did the vase fall to the ground and shatter.
It wasn't severed by sword energy.
It was erased by "logic."
Seventeen looked at the sword in his hand, then at the shards in the distance, and for the first time, a truly shocked expression of a "living being" appeared on his face.
"What's this called...?" he asked.
Shen Qingqiu released her grip, walked to the window, and looked out at the seemingly ethereal, yet actually riddled with texturing errors, Sword Washing Pavilion.
The wind ruffled her long hair; at that moment, her silhouette appeared both incredibly lonely and incredibly powerful.
"This is called the first move of the *Godslayer* chapter."
She turned around, backlit, and held up a finger to her lips, gesturing for silence.
In that instant, the light in her eyes shone brighter than the myriad scriptures in the library.
"Shh…this is our secret."
Seventeen looked at her.
Sunlight fell upon her, gilding her with a golden edge.
He silently sheathed his sword, deeply etching the newly learned technique—the ability to erase matter—into the deepest recesses of his core hard drive. He added a lock that only she could unlock.
[New skill acquired. Named: Her Secret.]
Outside the window, several tireless cranes continued to fly along their predetermined paths.
And within this pile of old papers, stained with the ink of illusion, a quiet alteration of the entire world had already begun.