The Girl Beneath The Temple
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Chapter 2: The Girl Beneath the Temple
The core pulsed faintly in Shen Liang's palm. It was warm, but not with life—more like a dying coal, flickering between spiritual essence and corrupted data. He turned it slowly, studying the vein-like fractures that pulsed violet.
[Item Acquired: Corrupted Beast Core (F-rank)]
Use Options:
[Absorb] (Warning: Mutation Risk: High)
[Refine] (Requires Alchemy Station)
[Store] (Void Inventory Unavailable — Initialization incomplete)
"Tch." Shen Liang closed his hand around the core and stuffed it into a tattered pouch at his waist. "No storage, no healing function, half my interface grayed out—and they expect me to fight world-ending monsters?"
He looked around. The street was quiet again, the echo of his battle still lingering in the scorched air. Muted blue sparks from the beast's remains danced briefly before flickering out. Even the System had gone still—for now.
His side throbbed. The tail whip had cut deep. Blood ran down his robe in slow rivers, staining the ash-gray fabric dark crimson.
He walked on.
---
The temple was an old construct, buried half beneath the earth. He spotted it after descending a narrow alley behind the ruins of what might once have been a school. Its roof had caved in, and moss covered the lion statues guarding the front. Spirit glyphs etched along the stone steps still faintly glowed, pulsing in rhythm with the cracked ley lines beneath the city.
A temple that had once served a god.
Or something worse.
He stepped through the broken archway and into the ruin. Dust motes danced in the filtered light. Vines had crept through the walls and roof, wrapping around old prayer wheels and shattered incense burners.
And then, movement.
He stopped.
Beneath the raised dais where a shattered idol once stood, something shifted—a quiet rustle, a low cough. He approached slowly, pipe still in hand.
Then he saw her.
A girl.
She was no older than sixteen. Thin, pale, dressed in scavenged robes patched a dozen times over. Her long black hair was tangled, her lips cracked from dehydration. She held a rusted dagger in one hand and pointed it at him, though it trembled visibly.
"I'll scream," she rasped. "I'll—don't come closer—!"
Shen Liang didn't raise a weapon. He stopped a few paces away and lowered the pipe.
"You're hurt," he said evenly.
Her eyes flicked down. A makeshift bandage around her leg was soaked through. Infection. She wouldn't last more than a day without treatment.
"I won't touch you," he added. "Not unless you ask."
She blinked at that, startled. Her dagger wavered.
"You're... not one of the raiders?" she asked quietly.
"No," he replied. "I just killed something too ugly to be human."
She didn't smile, but her shoulders eased.
After a long silence, she lowered the dagger and slumped back against the stone.
"I'm Yue," she mumbled. "I used to live in a shelter under Sector 9. Before it collapsed."
Shen Liang walked past her carefully, knelt by a cracked offering bowl, and began rummaging through his pouch. He pulled out a cloth scrap, some spirit herb powder he'd found earlier, and a shard of beast bone sharpened into a blade.
"Lie back," he said.
Yue hesitated, then obeyed.
As he worked, silence stretched between them. The temple seemed to hold its breath.
"You're a cultivator," she said suddenly.
"Not yet," he muttered. "Still working on that part."
"But you have a System window."
Shen Liang paused.
"Not everyone gets one," Yue continued. "Some people awaken with nothing. Some get quests. Some get... punishments."
He resumed cleaning her wound. "And you?"
"I got a passive skill," she whispered. "It lets me hear... the dead."
He glanced at her sharply.
She wasn't lying.
"Useful," he said finally.
"Terrifying," she corrected.
He finished tying the bandage and stood. "You'll live. If you can walk, I'll help you reach safer ground."
"Where is that?" she asked. "There's nothing left out there but ruins, corrupted beasts, and ghost-code."
"I'll find something," he said. "There's always something."
Yue studied him. "You sound like you've done this before."
"Too many times."
---
They left the temple as night began to fall.
The sky darkened slowly, bleeding from gold to violet to black. High above, the cracks in the firmament pulsed faintly with spiritual interference. Data storms flickered in the distance like auroras, distorting time and space around the city's dead edges.
They traveled in silence for an hour, slipping through alleyways and overgrown rooftops. Yue limped but didn't complain. Shen Liang occasionally paused to study collapsed structures or pick through tech-wrecks for scraps. Most were useless—fried by ambient spiritual radiation or looted years ago.
Finally, they reached a shelter.
It wasn't much. Just an old sewer access point beneath a collapsed department store. But it had a sealed hatch, clean water from a cracked filtration pipe, and enough space to light a small fire without drawing attention.
They made camp.
---
Yue slept first, curled beneath an old coat. Shen Liang sat near the entrance, pipe across his lap, staring out into the gloom.
He should have rested too. But something gnawed at him.
[Status Update: Voidroot Integration – 4%]
[New Feature Unlocked: Passive Skill – Null Field I]
[Effect: Automatically erodes low-grade spiritual detection and weakens Heaven's perception radius by 12%.]
Interesting.
That explained the lack of heavenly response since the fight.
He stared at the interface a moment longer, then closed it.
His gaze drifted to the fire. Not real fire—just a flicker of thermal stones and chemical residue—but it still gave the illusion of warmth.
He leaned back against the wall, eyes half-lidded.
In the silence, memory rose unbidden. A voice he hadn't heard in centuries:
"All power is borrowed from the heavens, Liang. And every debt must be paid."
But what if he stole that power instead?
What if he rewrote the debt?
He looked at Yue again. Sleeping. Vulnerable. Human.
He could have walked past her. Left her. Let her die.
But he hadn't.
That scared him more than the corrupted beast ever did.
---
Outside, the wind shifted. Somewhere far beyond the city's border, a pillar of light erupted into the sky—cold blue and screaming with souls.
A dungeon had awakened.
And Heaven was watching.
Again.