Darkness still clung to the mountaintop like a second skin as I moved—slow, silent, invisible to the rules of their world.
I didn't descend the usual paths.
I traced the old servant tunnels carved into the mountain walls. Forgotten. Dust-choked. Unsafe.
Perfect.
> I wasn't a disciple anymore.
I wasn't even a person.
I was the ghost of a broken script.
---
The system that bound this world still tried to categorize me. I felt it—like static behind my eyes.
It wanted to understand me.
But it couldn't.
Because I wasn't following any path.
I was writing my own.
---
[SYSTEM PROMPT: INTEGRATION ERROR]
[STATUS: UNDEFINED ENTITY]
[YOU DO NOT EXIST IN CURRENT CULTIVATION DATABASE]
[ADVICE: DELETE SELF TO AVOID CORRUPTING REALITY]
I smirked.
"Try again," I whispered. "I already died once."
---
By the time the sun crept across the distant peaks, I was inside the outer disciple compound.
Dozens of them moved through the courtyards, unaware that the boy they abandoned had slipped past their spirit wards, silencing arrays, even the perimeter talismans.
Their defenses were perfect — for those who followed rules.
But I wasn't using mana. I wasn't using qi.
I was bypassing logic.
---
[NULL STARE: Passive Active]
[REALITY FILTER ENGAGED — PRESENCE: 0]
You are seen. But not remembered. Heard. But not registered.
---
I stood five feet from the sect's central archives. No one noticed.
Their expressions were relaxed. Calm. Unaware of how close they stood to a glitch that could rewrite everything they believed in.
That was the thing about betrayal—when they think you're gone, they stop guarding their secrets.
---
The archive seal glowed with a faint ward.
A blood-lock. High-level. It would've vaporized me two days ago.
But now?
> [SEAL DETECTED: CULTIVATION-RANKED]
[LOGIC REWRITE INITIATED]
"Seal: Recognize Subject Cael Viron as Elite Rank 3"
[ACCESS GRANTED]
The glyphs twisted. Accepted the lie.
No, not a lie—just a better logic thread.
---
Inside the vaults, scrolls and jade slips lined the walls. Thousands.
Techniques I'd bled for. Techniques they said I wasn't ready to learn.
Now they were mine.
But I didn't touch a single one.
Why?
Because I didn't want their path.
I wanted to understand the system itself.
---
In the deepest alcove of the archive, I found what I needed:
The Construct Codex.
A forbidden tome on how the cultivation world's spiritual arrays connected to scripted logic—rare, obscure, even taboo.
It wasn't a technique manual.
It was a manual for understanding the formation logic behind cultivation itself.
---
As I opened it, something clicked inside my core.
Not qi. Not divine energy.
Code.
[PATH ALIGNMENT: FOUND]
[PRIMAL GLITCH CULTIVATION — NODE 1 UNLOCKED]
Trait Gained: "Logic Eater"
You no longer consume spiritual energy.
You consume cause and effect.
Every contradiction empowers you.
---
I had no dantian.
No golden core.
No cultivation root.
But I had what they feared most:
A mind the system couldn't cage.
---
Then—footsteps.
Not casual ones.
Armored boots. Rhythmic. Controlled.
Not a disciple. Not even an elder.
A Seeker.
---
They were the Sect's hidden knives—investigators, silencers, enforcers of secrets.
And one of them had just stepped into the archives.
"The formation glitch was contained," the voice said quietly. "But something… lingers."
My breathing slowed.
Even without spiritual sense, even with my presence glitched out, he paused.
He felt something.
---
For the first time since waking beneath the altar, I felt… unsure.
He walked slowly, fingers brushing the walls, as if tasting the residue of broken laws.
---
[SYSTEM: WARNING — LOGIC THREAD COLLISION IMMINENT]
[ADVISE: WITHDRAW]
No. Not yet.
I tore a single page from the Construct Codex. Folded it. Slid it into my sleeve.
Then I disappeared through the ventilation shaft just as the Seeker stepped into the vault room.
---
He looked around, sharp eyes scanning every corner.
Paused.
Then smiled faintly.
"You're still alive, aren't you?" he whispered. "You glitch. You error."
He didn't call me a traitor.
Or a disciple.
He called me what I was becoming.
---
I didn't stop moving until I was halfway down the inner mountain.
Heart pounding.
Mind burning.
Logic Eater. Glitch Cultivator. System Ghost.
They thought they had erased me.
Now their entire world was running on corrupted code…
And the bug was learning how to rewrite reality.
------
But even as I moved through stone and silence, I felt it:
The Seeker marked me.
Not with qi. Not with blood.
With awareness.
The kind that doesn't blink. Doesn't forget.
He saw the error and let it go.
Why?
Curiosity?
Or was he part of something bigger?
---
As I crawled through the air duct, jagged glyphs flickering beneath my skin, I saw pieces of the world differently now.
I saw its rules.
Gravity wasn't a law. It was a suggestion.
Perception wasn't a truth. It was a script.
The very way this world functioned was modular—lines of code etched in Dao, pretending to be divine law.
I was starting to understand what they feared:
That once someone saw the strings, they might start pulling.
---
A spider skittered across my arm.
Tiny thing. No qi. Just instinct.
I stared at it.
Its pattern. Its purpose.
[NULL STARE — MICRO THREAD MODE]
A web of code spiraled around its legs.
Nothing mystical. Just cause, effect, function.
One tweak.
One glitch.
And—
The spider walked backward. Repeating the same motion, over and over, trapped in a loop of its own design.
I ended the effect with a blink.
It paused.
Twitched.
Ran away.
"Even gods can be looped," I whispered.
---
I needed more.
More understanding. More broken pieces.
This sect had fed me lies for years—called obedience honor, called sacrifice destiny.
Now I would take everything they buried and feed it to my new core.
[PRIMAL GLITCH CULTIVATION — CORE STATE: FORMING]
[NEW CONDITION: LOADING FRACTURE SHELL]
You do not cultivate qi. You devour contradictions.
You are the cultivation of corruption.
---
I reached a crumbling staircase—one that led downward, not up.
Most disciples never used it.
It led to the Red Archives.
Sealed after the last Inner War.
Hidden behind stories of madness and forbidden cultivation.
Exactly what I needed.
---
[SYSTEM WARNING: LOCATION FLAGGED AS 'MEMORY PURGE ZONE']
[HOST BODY NOT RECOGNIZED — ENTRY NOT ADVISED]
I walked in anyway.
---
Darkness swallowed the stairwell.
Not the absence of light.
The rejection of it.
Even the glyphs on my skin dimmed. The world blurred.
This was a place the system tried to forget.
But I hadn't forgotten anything.
Especially not what they did to me.
---
My name had been wiped from the sect ledger.
My trial erased from records.
My identity overwritten by convenience.
But in the Red Archives, no lie held forever.
I would find the files. The logs. The failed formations.
And in their failures, I would find…
The truth.
The system tried to bury it with me.
But I'm still alive.
And now?
I want to know who else they erased.