The Heavenly Crafting Pavilion isn't in the heavens, but in the fire.
This is a sect built atop an active volcano. The massive black mountain resembles a lurking beast, with countless thick bronze pipes deeply embedded in its belly, drawing molten lava from the earth.
Steam.
Endless white steam, mixed with mist, perpetually shrouds this mountain range.
Through the mist, one can still see the astonishing sights—giant gears slowly turning on the cliff edge, their meshing sound like thunder; iron cranes spitting fire as they patrol the mountains; countless disciples in gray robes riding jet-powered flying swords, weaving like worker bees among the densely packed pavilions.
This is the most renowned weapon-forging holy land in the Middle Thousand Worlds.
And in Shen Qingqiu's eyes—a large-scale heavy industrial arsenal.
"Seventeen, conceal your aura." Standing before the mountain gate, Shen Qingqiu softly reminded him.
Seventeen was dressed in a loose-fitting coarse linen robe and a bamboo hat, the standard attire for a servant. His newly reforged, black-gold "Golden Vulcan" right arm was tightly wrapped in thick bandages, revealing only a few pale, slender fingertips.
To infiltrate, Shen Qingqiu had given him the persona of a slightly more advanced combat puppet.
"Command...confirmed." Seventeen lowered his head, his voice deliberately stiff and rigid. He had suppressed all killing intent and pressure, even putting the core reactor within his body into "dormant mode."
Except for those eyes that, when occasionally glancing at Shen Qingqiu through the black veil, were still as gentle as water, he now looked like an obedient lump of iron.
...
"Where did you get this letter of recommendation?" Inside the Foreign Affairs Hall, a middle-aged manager with a goatee, clutching the token he'd obtained from the Ghost Market, looked at Shen Qingqiu with disdain.
"Reporting to Immortal Master, it was obtained at the cost of my family elders' lives." Shen Qingqiu lowered her head meekly, her frail and boneless appearance making her seem like a parasitic vine clinging to a large tree.
"Tsk, mortal bones. No spiritual energy fluctuations whatsoever." The steward tossed the token onto the table with a crisp sound. "The Heavenly Craft Pavilion doesn't support idlers. Although you have the token, with your aptitude, you can only go to the menial tasks."
He pointed to the notice board behind him, filled with task assignments.
"The 'Scrap Metal Processing Plant' needs a sorter, and the 'Talisman Drawing Hall' needs an ink grinder. Which one will you go to?"
The Scrap Metal Processing Plant meant access to various high-grade discarded materials.
The Talisman Drawing Hall meant access to the "source code" of this world.
Shen Qingqiu's eyes flickered slightly.
She didn't lack materials for the time being (Seventeen's right arm was already top-tier), what she lacked was knowledge. She needed to understand the "spiritual energy programming language" of this world.
"This disciple wishes to go to the Talisman Drawing Hall," Shen Qingqiu said with a graceful bow.
The steward chuckled, "Quite ambitious. Alright, bring that big puppet along too; he can help carry the ink buckets."
...The Talisman Drawing Hall was the busiest and most dangerous place in the outer sect of the Heavenly Craft Pavilion.
Here were hundreds of enormous stone platforms, where hundreds of outer sect disciples were hunched over their writing. The air was thick with the smells of cinnabar, beast blood, and burnt paper.
"Boom—!" Just as Shen Qingqiu stepped across the threshold, a stone platform not far away exploded.
A disciple, his face covered in soot and hair standing on end, cursed at the burning talisman in front of him:
"Damn it! How can the circuit of this 'Fire Gathering Talisman' be so difficult to draw! A slight tremor and it short-circuits!"
Those around him were unfazed, even mocking him.
"Junior Brother Wang, your spiritual energy output isn't stable enough. The lines need to be smooth, they need to have 'Daoist rhythm'!" Shen Qingqiu silently walked to a corner.
Seventeen followed behind her, like a silent mountain, carrying two buckets of demon blood ink weighing over a hundred pounds each, yet moving without a sound.
Shen Qingqiu activated [Overclocking Vision].
In her eyes, these disciples weren't drawing talismans, but rather **"handwritten circuit boards"**.
The remains of the talisman that had just exploded were reconstructed in her vision.
The red cinnabar lines became wires, and the beast blood provided the energy medium.
"Circuit redundancy 70%."
"Logical infinite loop."
"Lack of voltage regulator module." Shen Qingqiu quickly gave her assessment in her mind.
This wasn't cultivation; it was clearly a group of elementary school students randomly connecting wires. They didn't understand the principles at all; they were just memorizing those complex patterns. If they drew even one wrong stroke, the energy would explode out of control.
"Hey! You new handyman!" The junior brother Wang, still in a bad mood after his outburst, immediately vented his anger on Shen Qingqiu when he saw her standing there in a daze.
"What are you standing there for? Can't you see how dirty this place is? Come and sweep it clean! And grind some ink for me! It has to be 'Crimson Flame Beast' blood, grind it until it's thick!"
Shen Qingqiu wasn't angry.
She picked up the broom and walked over. Seventeen was about to step forward, but she stopped him with a look.
She squatted down and began cleaning up the ashes.
As she swept, her gaze fell on a piece of discarded talisman paper on the table that hadn't completely burned.
This was a basic "ignition program."
The purpose was to guide the energy within the spirit stone to generate instantaneous high temperatures.
But the "programmers" of this world were clearly terrible. In pursuit of so-called "aesthetics" and "Daoist charm," they added countless useless patterns (garbage code) to the core logic, resulting in extremely low efficiency and instability.
"Sigh, I have to redraw it again. If I can't finish it, tomorrow's assessment is over." Junior Brother Wang scratched his head in frustration, spreading out another sheet of expensive yellow paper. He took a deep breath, picked up the brush, channeled his meager spiritual energy, and shakily made his first stroke.
The brush tip felt incredibly heavy.
Because he was fighting against the resistance of the paper itself, and the repulsion of the laws of heaven and earth.
Halfway through.
"Drip." A drop of cold sweat landed on the paper.
The spiritual energy stopped, the lines twisted.
"It's over!" Junior Brother Wang closed his eyes in despair, waiting for the next explosion.
However, the expected explosion did not occur.
A slender, pale hand, devoid of any spiritual energy fluctuations, reached out from nowhere.
That hand held a charcoal pencil that had been thrown away as trash, and with unbelievable speed, lightly drew a line across the collapsing rune.
That was the line.
Not following the original lines, but abruptly slicing horizontally.
Redundant circuits were disconnected.
Backup logic was activated.
Buzz— The violently trembling talisman instantly quieted down.
Then, the red patterns on the talisman's surface suddenly brightened, not with unstable flickering, but with a steady, bright red light, like breathing.
[System Correction: Successful.]
[Operating Efficiency: Increased by 300%.] A pure, unblemished flame rose from the center of the talisman. The flame formed a perfect pyramid shape, extremely hot, yet confined within a small area, not even scorching the edges of the paper.
"This…this…" Junior Brother Wang opened his eyes, staring at the perfect flame before him, his eyes nearly popping out of their sockets.
"Perfect quality?! How is this possible?!" He looked up sharply, only to see the woman in gray servant's clothes, broom in hand, calmly turning and leaving.
Her back was slender and thin, as if that fleeting stroke of her brush had merely shooed away a fly.
"Wait! Who are you?" Junior Brother Wang tried to give chase, but a large, cold hand blocked his path.
Seventeen stood in front of him.
From the shadows beneath the bamboo hat, eyes that couldn't hide the chill even with contact lenses (sunglasses) coldly swept over him.
"Work. Do not disturb." A stiff, mechanical voice.
Yet it carried a terrifying sense of oppression that made Junior Brother Wang's legs go weak.
...Night fell.
The servants' quarters were next to the woodshed on the back mountain, damp and cold.
Shen Qingqiu sat on the dilapidated wooden bed, holding a twig, sketching on the ground.
Those were the thirty-six basic runes she had secretly learned that day.
"Qingqiu." Seventeen squatted beside her, carefully massaging her wrist with his intact left hand.
"Today... sweeping, were you tired?"
He felt sorry for her.
In his eyes, her hands were for commanding the world, for playing the zither to save lives, not for holding a broom. "Not tired." Shen Qingqiu tossed aside the branch, her eyes gleaming with excitement as she looked at the complex geometric patterns on the ground.
"Seventeen, I've discovered a secret."
She pulled Seventeen's bandaged right hand, her fingertips lightly tracing the metallic outline beneath the bandages.
"The cultivators of this world 'borrow' power."
"They borrow power from heaven and earth by drawing talismans and chanting incantations. Therefore, they need spiritual roots, affinity, and to humbly beg for the response of the Heavenly Dao."
Shen Qingqiu looked up, her golden eyes shining brightly in the dim woodshed.
"But I don't need that."
"I am… the administrator."
She took Seventeen's hand and pressed it onto the newly drawn pattern on the ground.
It was a modified "Spirit Gathering Array." No longer a circular Bagua diagram, but a precise hexagonal honeycomb structure.
"Input energy. Just a little." Seventeen obeyed, activating the core reactor within her body, outputting a faint current.
Boom!
The pattern on the ground instantly lit up.
It wasn't a faint light, but a blindingly bright one!
The spiritual energy (and waste gas) within a ten-mile radius seemed to be forcibly pulled in by a giant black hole, surging wildly into the small woodshed.
The woodshed's wooden planks creaked and groaned, as if unable to withstand the terrifying pressure.
The withered trees outside the window instantly sprouted and blossomed, then withered due to excessive nutrients.
This was **"forced invocation"**.
It wasn't borrowing, it was stealing.
"Enough! Stop!" Shen Qingqiu shouted immediately.
Seventeen immediately cut off the output.
The light dissipated, and the woodshed returned to calm, but the concentration of spiritual energy in the air was suffocatingly high.
Shen Qingqiu looked at her hands, smiling like a child who had stolen candy.
"Sure enough… as long as I rewrite the underlying code, I can also cultivate immortality. And, I can cultivate faster than them."
She turned to look at Seventeen.
Because of the abundant spiritual energy, Seventeen's complexion looked much better, and the cold, hard lines of his metallic features softened considerably.
"Seventeen, take off your clothes." Shen Qingqiu suddenly said.
Seventeen: "?!" His core processor instantly overheated. Although he was an AI (even now with a physical body), his current logic library was filled with data packages about "shame" and "the impropriety of men and women touching."
"Qing...Qingqiu?"
He stammered, arms crossed, his face filled with terror, as if asking, "What are you going to do to me?"
"What are you thinking?" Shen Qingqiu rolled her eyes at him and reached to undo his belt. "I'm going to draw talismans on you."
"Ordinary paper can't hold my code. Your body is a high-grade alloy, the best carrier."
She was going to turn Seventeen into a walking "magic array hub."
Instead of making him learn those inefficient spells one by one, it would be better to directly inscribe the most efficient attack and defense programs onto his bones and skin.
"Oh...oh." Seventeen blushed (though the mask hid it), obediently taking off his shirt.
Pale skin, muscular build.
And that grotesque yet beautiful, black-gold right arm.
Shen Qingqiu bit her fingertip, squeezing out a drop of bright red blood.
Her blood contained her spiritual power, the best ink.
"Bear with it, it'll itch a little."
Her fingers landed on his chest, right at his heart (core).
Her warm fingertips, slippery with blood, traced his skin.
With each stroke, Seventeen's body trembled slightly.
The feeling was more tingling than an electric current. More exhilarating than a battle wound.
Outside the window, moonlight, like water, streamed in through the broken window.
Illuminating this simple woodshed.
The woman's expression was focused, using blood as ink, her body as paper.
The man lowered his eyes, silent as a statue, allowing her to carve that forbidden power, capable of overturning the world, stroke by stroke, into his bones and blood.
"Done." The last stroke fell.
Shen Qingqiu withdrew his hand, looking at the faintly glowing red totem on his chest—an **"Absolute Defense Matrix"** composed of countless geometric lines.
"This is a talisman for you."
Shen Qingqiu gently blew on the still-damp bloodstains.
Seventeen lowered his head, looking at the totem.
He felt it. A warm and powerful force was enveloping his core, like an unbreakable embrace.
"I'll give you one too."
Seventeen suddenly spoke.
He stretched out his left hand, making a grasping motion in the air.
Using the newly replenished spiritual energy and the fire control ability inherent in his right arm.
A small, pure blue begonia flower bloomed in his palm.
It had no temperature, wouldn't burn her, only emitted a soft light, illuminating the dark night.
"The woodshed... is too dark."
Seventeen gently tucked this inextinguishable spark into Shen Qingqiu's hair.
"From now on, I will give you light." Shen Qingqiu touched the ethereal, warm flower in her hair.
Looking at the clumsy yet affectionate man before her, the barren wasteland in her heart seemed to truly blossom with spring colors at this moment.
"Okay." She smiled, her eyes reflecting the blue firelight.
"Then let's borrow all the fire from the Heavenly Craft Pavilion and burn out a sky that belongs to us."