Chapter 22

Earth Glitch Cafe, afternoon. Sunlight poured through the floor-to-ceiling windows, casting the light spots of spirit butterflies onto the counter. Chen Mo was using his "Recursive Latte Art" skill to draw fractal patterns on the coffee when he suddenly heard a sharp alarm from the glass door—the defense system specifically set for "abnormal glitch frequencies." The cultivator who walked in was wrapped in a faded quantum cloak, a Mechanical Prosthetic Eye visible beneath the brim of his hood, with garbled code dancing across the lenses. Lin Xiaoman's code wings automatically raised in alert: "His spiritual root fluctuation is a negative entropy value... That's impossible!" The one-eyed cultivator removed his hood, revealing the "glitch smuggler" tattoo on the back of his neck: "Long time no see, Vulnerability Symbiote. I need your 'glitch immunity serum'." He pushed across a blood crystal, inside of which was sealed a black virus: "This is a remnant 'entropy-reduction virus' from a high-level civilization, and it's eating the spiritual root glitches in my hometown."