System Downtime

The gates of Nuoding Primary Soul Master Academy stood wide open.

Two guards dragged Yu Xiaogang all the way to the entrance, then tossed him out with force, as if discarding a bag of foul-smelling slop.

"Get lost! If you dare come within half a step of this academy again, I'll beat you every time I see you!" The guard spat out a vicious threat before slamming the heavy gates shut with a loud bang.

Yu Xiaogang traced a pathetic arc through the air, crashing heavily onto the dust-covered street.

The rough gravel scraped the skin off his cheeks and arms, causing beads of blood to seep out.

The dust on the street instantly coated his sodden body, mixing with the dried soap suds to form a thick layer of mud.

In his current state, even the beggars on the roadside would shake their heads at him.

The street was bustling with people, and this sudden commotion immediately drew the attention of passersby.

"Oh my, where did this beggar get thrown out from? How did he get beaten up so badly?" A middle-aged woman carrying a vegetable basket was startled and quickly scurried aside.

"Are you blind? He was clearly thrown out of the Soul Master Academy. Look at his shifty, rat-like appearance; he must have been caught stealing something inside," a passing burly man said with a look of utter disdain.

The passersby pointed at Yu Xiaogang, who lay on the ground like a dead dog, their voices filled with mockery and disgust reaching his ears.

Everyone avoided him as if he were a plague, giving him a wide berth for fear of catching his bad luck.

Yu Xiaogang lay in the dirt, gritting his teeth as he tried to crawl up.

Just then, the dark red system panel hovering above his head—visible only to Su Yu—suddenly underwent a violent transformation.

The panel, which had been relatively stable, began to flicker with blinding red light like a short-circuited screen.

That red light carried an aura of destruction and despair, casting a deathly pallor over Yu Xiaogang's face.

Immediately after, a cold, mechanical, and emotionless system prompt exploded in Yu Xiaogang's mind.

The voice was no longer the flat tone used for issuing missions, but one filled with the finality of a death sentence:

[Judgment: Host has suffered social death; Luck Plunder System mission has failed completely! Penalty program countdown initiated: 3, 2, 1!]

Hearing this series of pronouncements, Yu Xiaogang's pupils shrank to the size of pinpricks.

A massive wave of terror instantly gripped his heart.

No! System! You can't do this to me! I am your host! Give me another chance! Yu Xiaogang roared and pleaded frantically in his mind, trying to stop the impending punishment.

However, the system offered no response, and the countdown ruthlessly hit zero.

The moment the countdown ended, an unbearable, excruciating pain swept through Yu Xiaogang's entire body.

This was not ordinary physical pain, but a destructive blow originating from the depths of his soul.

He felt as if every meridian and every blood vessel in his body were being frantically sliced by countless rusted steel blades simultaneously.

The agony of his flesh being shredded inch by inch made his very breathing stall.

Even more terrifying was the sensation of his soul being torn in two by an invisible giant hand.

"Ah!"

Yu Xiaogang lay on the dusty street, letting out a shrill, beast-like roar of agony.

His body instantly curled into the shape of a shrimp as he rolled wildly on the ground.

His hands clawed desperately at the dirt and stones, the force so great that his fingernails flipped back and broke, dripping with blood, yet he seemed unable to feel the pain in his fingers.

He slammed his head against the ground with all his might, trying to alleviate the unbearable torture within his body.

The surrounding passersby were so frightened by his sudden madness that they retreated repeatedly; a chorus of gasps rose from the crowd, and no one dared to approach him again.

The system's punishment was not merely physical torture; it was forcibly draining his own vitality to compensate for the massive deficit caused by the mission failure and logical corruption.

At a speed visible to the naked eye, Yu Xiaogang's body underwent a horrific transformation.

His face, which had appeared relatively young due to his possession of the body, now looked like withered wood stripped of all moisture.

The hair on his head, which had only been slightly gray, lost all its black pigment in a matter of a few breaths, turning into the color of withered grass.

The skin on his face sagged and drooped rapidly, and deep wrinkles crawled across his forehead and the corners of his eyes like knife carvings.

His once sturdy frame shriveled up like a punctured ball, and his spine hunched over high.

It was as if his entire spirit and essence had been drained in that instant, aging him by ten years in a heartbeat.

He no longer looked like a soul master in his prime, but a shriveled old man with one foot already in the Kitsuchi, exuding an aura of decay and death.

At this moment, by a window on the second floor of Nuoding Academy.

Su Yu stood quietly on the windowsill, looking down from above at Yu Xiaogang, who was rolling on the ground like a stray dog outside the gates.

Deep within Su Yu's eyes, golden light flowed slowly.

The Eye of Truth was fully activated, fixed firmly on the red panel above Yu Xiaogang's head that was on the verge of collapse.

Through the Eye of Truth, the data on the panel had turned into complete gibberish, the red light flickering at an extreme frequency, and fine cracks had even begun to appear on the edges of the panel.

Su Yu crossed his arms over his chest, his gaze profound.

He knew that after the series of events—the underlying logic tampering by the Conceptual Eraser, the total failure of the mission, and now the forced extraction of the host's vitality—this Luck Plunder System had reached the end of its rope.

The system's core code was completely corrupted, and it would soon collapse entirely due to a logical crash.

Once the system collapses, it will drop precious origin fragments.

This is exactly the result Su Yu wanted: to resolve a body-snatcher without shedding a drop of blood, while also reaping the spoils of war.

Out on the street beyond the gate, the agonizing pain of the punishment finally began to recede like a tide.

Yu Xiaogang lay slumped on the ground like a pile of mud, gasping for air, each breath ragged and wheezing like a broken bellows.

He scrambled and crawled, struggling to push himself up from the ground.

At this moment, amidst the extreme pain and terror, his mind was a complete blank.

He could no longer even distinguish directions, only turning around and stumbling away based on the primal instinct to survive.

He dared not stay in Nuoding City for another second; he feared the gazes of the passersby and feared that people from the academy might rush out to beat him again.

Like a headless fly, he dragged his withered, aged body toward the wilderness outside Nuoding City.

All he wanted now was to escape, to flee this place that had ruined his reputation, as far away as possible.

His hunched, wretched figure soon vanished at the end of the street amidst the pointing fingers of the onlookers.

Watching the direction in which Yu Xiaogang had disappeared, Su Yu slowly withdrew his gaze.

His eyes were as calm as water, without the slightest ripple.

Eliminating a parasite that attempted to drain the fortune of others was, to him, no more than wiping away a speck of dust.

Su Yu turned around and looked into the room.

Tang Wu and Xiao Wu were staying obediently in the room, busy packing their bags.

Tang Wu folded a few changes of clothes neatly and carefully placed them into a bundle.

Xiao Wu was helping to count the dry rations and the waterskin filled with fresh water, her rabbit ears swaying as she moved.

Watching the vibrant figures of the two girls, a faint smile curled the corners of Su Yu's mouth.

The pass for the Soul Hunting Forest had been obtained, and the journey to acquire their first soul rings officially began.