Strongest Scammer: Scamming The World, One Death At A Time-Chapter 780: Energy Fluctuation

Inside the Inheritance Hall, the blaring warnings continued to echo without pause.

"ERROR! ERROR!"

The voice was neither loud nor soft, neither angry nor alarmed, yet the repetition itself carried an oppressive weight. It reverberated through the stone walls, through the pillars, through the blood flames that flickered erratically in midair.

Tens of thousands of Blood Script runes flew in wild, intersecting trajectories, colliding with one another like schools of panicked fish.

Yet outside the hall, nothing changed.

The world beyond the Inheritance Peak remained calm, orderly, and eerily ignorant of what was unfolding at the very heart of the sect. The jiangshi lining the mountain paths stood unmoving, their lifeless eyes fixed forward, weapons resting in skeletal hands.

Their formations did not waver. Their postures did not shift. Even the cold wind sweeping across the peak moved as it always had.

No alarm was raised.

No warning bell rang.

The ancient safeguards that had stood for countless generations continued to function exactly as intended, sealing the chaos neatly within the hall.

Inside, however, order was rapidly unraveling.

The runes surged closer to Han Yu’s unconscious body, forming spiraling networks of crimson symbols that attempted to interface with him directly. Several of them made contact, slipping through skin and bone without resistance, sinking into his body as though it were water rather than flesh.

For a heartbeat, the hall fell almost silent.

WHOOSH

Then, violently, the runes were expelled.

CRACK

They shot back out of Han Yu’s body, fragmenting midair into shards of fading red light before dissolving completely.

"Error! Soul Strength excessive!" the voice announced, its tone unchanged. "Data injection impossible!"

The blood flames flared in response, their steady glow turning unstable as shadows stretched and twisted across the floor. More runes attempted to reorganize, condensing into denser, more refined formations, clearly adjusting their approach.

A second wave descended.

Again, runes entered Han Yu’s body, this time fewer, more selective, each one glowing brighter than the last.

Again, they were rejected.

This time, the backlash was stronger. A shockwave rippled through the hall, cracking the stone floor beneath Han Yu in thin spiderweb patterns.

"Secondary Soul assessment failed!"

The voice continued without pause, moving on to new processes with relentless persistence. It probed deeper, abandoning direct implantation in favor of deeper analysis. Runes hovered near Han Yu’s head, chest, and dantian, scanning, measuring, recalibrating.

Minutes turned into tens of minutes.

Then into an hour.

The storm of runes slowly thinned.

Some dissolved entirely, their purpose rendered obsolete. Others retreated back into the Stelae, sinking into its surface like embers being swallowed by black stone. The once-chaotic air began to clear, though the tension within the hall only deepened.

At last, less than half of the original runes remained.

They circled more slowly now, each movement deliberate, cautious, as though the ancient system governing the Stelae had finally recognized that brute force would not suffice.

"Array Spirit capabilities exceeded!" the voice declared.

The pillars trembled faintly. Hairline fractures appeared along the edges of the hexagonal roof, glowing dimly with residual blood light before stabilizing again.

"Conditions for Founding Will to be awakened met."

For the first time since the errors had begun, the voice paused.

The silence that followed was far heavier than the chaos that preceded it. The remaining runes halted midair, frozen in place. Even the blood flames steadied, their flickering reduced to a gentle sway.

Several seconds passed.

Then more runes emerged from the Stelae.

These were different.

They were older, their glow darker, deeper, as if stained by immeasurable time. Their movements were slower, but each carried a weight that dwarfed the others, distorting the air around them as they drifted outward.

"Attempting..." the voice said.

A pulse of energy surged from the Stelae, rippling outward.

"Failed."

The runes shuddered, several cracking apart under the strain.

"Attempting..."

Another pulse, stronger this time. 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

"Failed."

The hall groaned audibly, the sound of stone protesting under forces it had not been meant to endure.

Again and again the process repeated.

Each attempt lasted longer than the last. Each failure drained more power from the surrounding formations. The runes grew fewer still, their patterns increasingly complex as the Stelae refined its approach.

Nearly two hours passed in this manner.

Time lost all meaning within the hall.

Then, finally, the voice spoke again.

"Connection with the Founding Will established!"

The declaration reverberated outward, not just through the hall, but far beyond it.

"Rerouting power."

In the same instant, the entire Slaughtered Moon Divine Blood Sect reacted.

At the Alchemy Peaks, elders in the midst of delicate refinements felt their control arrays stutter. Flames flickered out of sequence, temperatures spiked and dropped unpredictably. In the span of a single breath, carefully balanced concoctions destabilized. Pills cracked, blackened, or collapsed into useless residue.

Curses were shouted.

At the Formation Peaks, several elders overseeing complex arrays felt a sudden, inexplicable drain. Lines of light flickered, then shattered entirely, formation plates cracking apart as if struck by an invisible hammer.

Reports flew out in all directions.

Across the sect, array supervisors hurried to check nodes and conduits, only to find them intact. Stable. Perfectly functional. Whatever disturbance had occurred was already gone.

After hurried deliberation, the conclusion was reached.

An energy fluctuation.

Rare, but not unprecedented.

Annoying, costly, but ultimately acceptable.

With no lingering instability detected, the elders returned to their work, grumbling but unconcerned.

What they did not notice was the Blood River.

The massive artery that wound through the sect, carrying rich blood qi and dense energy, slowed imperceptibly. The change was subtle, far too subtle for most to detect.

A few disciples fishing from the bridges frowned as their lines drifted less than usual.

An elder collecting river water for refinement paused, brow furrowing as the current pressed against his palm with slightly less force.

Others dismissed the sensation entirely. The Blood River was ancient and temperamental. Variations happened.

None of them realized that, for a brief moment, the river itself had been siphoned.

A lot of it.