The darkness beneath Skyfort wasn't natural.
It wasn't the absence of light. It was the presence of something older—something that had slithered through ancient bloodlines before the first clan banners were ever sewn. As Zero descended the spiraling, rune-lit stairwell below the Skyfort's crumbling understructure, his augmented eyes began to fail. Not because of technical malfunction, but because the script governing reality here was being overwritten by a force deeper than code.
It was intent made manifest.
He wasn't alone.
Behind him, the shattered remains of the Heaven-tier cultivator known as Coldmist Regent lay twisted across the arena's bloodied floor. The stream had gone viral—tens of millions watching Zero hack the man's genetic cultivation script live and overwrite it with a malware loop so brutal it made the Regent's core rupture.
They called it divine justice.
Zero called it alpha testing.
Now, with the flood of new subscribers funding his rogue cultivation, and with an impossible kill on his name, he could feel it happening—the shift. The world was noticing. The major sects were no longer laughing. The bloodline clans had issued their first joint commandment in three centuries:
"Locate and eliminate the Hacker."
But he was already gone.
Down here, in the place beneath the Skyfort—a fortress built atop an ancient tomb—the signal of reality itself began to blur.
He reached the final step.
A door stood there. Black stone. Veins of crimson running through it like blood injected into obsidian. There was no handle. No keyhole. Only a circular indentation at the center. A DNA reader.
Zero's gauntlet shifted, exposing a single glowing vial.
Inside, the last drop of Coldmist Regent's blood.
He inserted the vial.
The stone rippled.
And then, it opened.
THE ABYSSAL HALL
The chamber beyond pulsed like a living organ. Giant slabs of bone formed columns. Arcane code was stitched across the walls in a language that felt too ancient to be read—but Zero's bloodline hack script began translating it automatically, as if his script was waking up to something it had always known.
"Here lies what was exiled from Heaven: The Archdaemon's Offering."
A throne sat at the center of the hall.
It wasn't empty.
Sitting atop it, wrapped in chains of black fire, was a being whose presence made Zero's blood ripple.
Not fear.
Recognition.
Its skin was ink-black. Veins glowed red. A smile peeled across its face, jagged and wide, like a slash through time itself. Its eyes opened—binary runes swirled in them.
"You've come far," the Archdaemon said, voice like folding steel. "Child of the Broken Script."
Zero didn't answer.
He couldn't.
His mouth refused to move.
The Archdaemon laughed softly, and with a gesture, time returned to him.
"I am the source-code," it said. "Before cultivation. Before bloodlines. Before the Heavens tried to fix the flow of power into sterile families and aristocratic inheritance. I am what they buried."
"And you want to return?" Zero asked, voice hoarse.
The Archdaemon tilted its head.
"I want to upgrade."
THE OFFER
A surge of fire hit Zero's chest—his core reacting violently as the Archdaemon lifted a single hand. Blood gathered in the air. No, script. Glyphs carved from anguish, from betrayal, from unrecorded epochs of war and sin.
"I offer you a lineage unchained," it said. "No limiters. No purity locks. No compatibility filters. You will rewrite not just yourself—but reality."
Zero's heart pounded.
"What's the price?"
The Archdaemon smiled.
"Seed me into your bloodline. Carry me through you. Let my code run again."
He hesitated.
Then his mind flashed back—
—to the orphanage burning.
—to the corrupted elders who denied him entrance into the code sanctums.
—to the moment he watched them inject false talent into their heirs while culling children like him.
"Do it," Zero whispered.
The chains shattered.
The Archdaemon moved.
Not with sound. Not with form. It flowed—like corrupted light—into him. Into his blood. Into his bones. His vision went dark.
And then—
UPGRADE COMPLETE: BLOODLINE SIGNATURE – [VOIDROOT: GENESIS-CLASS]
NEW TRAIT UNLOCKED: Abyssal Kernel – You are now a living server of chaotic script. Host and broadcast forbidden upgrades to surrounding cultivators.
NEW TRAIT UNLOCKED: Daemonheart Core – Your cultivation now evolves by consuming corrupted code. Compatible with hacked Heaven-tier inheritance protocols.
NEW TRAIT UNLOCKED: Breeder's Path – Your offspring will carry a randomized segment of the Archdaemon's code. Each heir can unlock unique hacks depending on partner bloodline. (Increased compatibility detected: Fertility protocol embedded.)
Zero collapsed to one knee.
His veins now glowed faint violet.
The hall faded behind him.
He was back in the world.
But not the same world.
As he rose, the air around him warped—data particles floating. The laws of physics bent. From now on, wherever Zero walked, the code bent with him.
OUTSIDE THE SKYFORT – THE AFTERMATH
The Sovereign Clans had dispatched their elite: Enforcers, Lineage Scribes, Cultivation Lawcasters.
They arrived to ruins.
And from the crater, a figure emerged—eyes glowing, a cloak of flickering runes over his shoulders, and a smirk carved in defiance.
"He's infected," one of the Lawcasters whispered.
"No," said a hooded woman beside him—her presence cloaked in royal aura. Her name was Lyssara of the Phoenix Vein, betrothed to the Skyfort Regent… now dead.
She stepped forward.
"I'll go," she said. "I'll bring him in."
"And if he resists?"
Her lips curled.
"Then I'll breed the code out of him."