The bottom level of the Abyssal Clocktower was so quiet it felt like the world had forgotten it existed.
After the Shadow vanished, only cold wind rose from the abyss, climbing up along the rail and the grooves of old clauses, circling the hall again and again.
The erroneous clauses on the wall were a ring of dim scars: characters crossed out, scrubbed off, crammed full of annotations, layered one over another.
Qi Luo's hand was still pressed against the stone.
Under his fingertips, the worn-down carvings still had a faint bite.
On the inside of his sternum, the line the Shadow had just written into him was slowly cooling:
[New Covenant cost node: carrier · Qi Luo.]
Ruan Ji stood slightly behind him, fingers still locked around his wrist, as if afraid some unseen force might yank him into the abyss again.
The hunter badge on her chest felt heavy; her chains were drawn tight.
"Qi Luo," she broke the silence. "You've already said 'I refuse rollback'."
"What now?"
Qi Luo slowly drew his hand away from the wall. His palm was rubbed almost raw.
He tilted his head back and glanced up.
There was no dome above, only the dark stone of the tower spiraling upward, and higher still, the trembling after-image of chains the Night Bell had struck.
The world's voice came down from there—not the speech of any god, but the monotone hum of a system in operation.
[World Recovery Contingency: suspended.]
[Major violation handling: in consolidation.]
[Roster anomaly: carrier · Qi Luo——pending recovery (suspended).]
The world was tidying up its mess.
Qi Luo could hear it up there, flipping scrolls, shifting chains—yet still unable to stop its thinking from circling back to that "recovery" pathway, looking for ways to resume it.
"It's not going to give up on rollback that easily," Ruan Ji said.
"You refuse once, it can ask again next time."
"Change the Key, change the batch of Fallen Knights, change the ritual."
"How are you going to stop that?"
Qi Luo was quiet for a moment.
"I can't," he said.
Ruan Ji blinked.
"Then you—"
"I can't stop it from wanting recovery," Qi Luo said, turning around and leaning his back against the stone, eyes on the darkness above.
"But I can write the other road."
"Write it on its paper."
He lifted a hand and tapped his chest.
"From today on, the world's already opened an account in my bones."
"'New Covenant cost,' 'this name may be deleted.'"
"As long as that account isn't on paper, it's just a piece of meat that hurts."
"I'm going to write it out."
"Turn it into clauses."
"Write it into the master covenant."
"You planning to—what, meddle with the master covenant from down here?" Ruan Ji frowned.
She looked up. In her spiritual vision, that immense "sheet" hovered faintly into view—every stone slab in Skycast City, every chain, every toll of the bell, all strokes on that page.
"You've only ever inserted pins into branches," she said.
"You've never pried at the master covenant itself. That's not something you can flip with one little busted pen."
"It wasn't," Qi Luo said.
"Now it's torn itself a hole."
He lowered his gaze.
The patch inside the rail where the slab should have been was empty—but in the chain-world, a dashed frame glowed there:
[Master covenant · abyssal interface]
[Original purpose: carrier recovery ritual.]
[Current status: suspended (violation handling in progress).]
A port originally reserved for "recovery" was sitting idle.
This was the gap the Fallen Knights had burned their atonement years to buy.
Qi Luo walked over and stepped into the center of the dashed frame.
There was no stone slab there, only a slightly darker ring on the floor.
Cold climbed from the soles of his feet upward.
He looked up, drew in a long breath to the faint, thinning reminders of the bell.
World, Qi Luo said inwardly.
He didn't use his mouth.
At this tier, conversations were written on the roster, not spoken.
[Initiating operation request to the World Base-Covenant:]
[Request type: master covenant revision · draft submission.]
The self-check module seemed startled by that line.
[Warning: unauthorized master covenant revision.]
[Recommendation: reject.]
Immediately after, another, finer note shimmered into view:
[Current operation source: abyssal interface.]
[Associated states: carrier recovery contingency suspended / New Covenant cost node activated.]
Some human-written footnotes that normally never surfaced flickered along the lowest chains—little "remarks" the Shadow had just left behind.
[Note: when the Recovery Contingency is suspended and a New Covenant cost node exists, allow trial submission of a master-covenant-level 'third option' draft in order to evaluate its impact on overall load.]
The world hesitated.
The lock on the self-check module loosened by a hair.
[Temporary judgment: carrier may submit draft; adoption to be determined separately.]
Qi Luo felt the ground beneath his feet give a small tremor.
It wasn't the tower shaking. It was the world's vast sheet of paper making room for a sliver of blank.
"Good," he murmured. "Then I'll write."
He lifted his right hand.
His fingertips were smeared with his own blood—skin split on the way down the tower, dried on his fingers, now deliberately pressed open again.
The Key-Sigil burned under his sternum. A thread of light slid along bone, along vessels, along the co-hunter chain, gathering at his fingertip.
He raised his hand and drew in the air.
There was no slab, no ink.
But in the chain-world, a huge blank page slowly unfurled before him——
[Master covenant · supplemental clauses:]
[Number: pending.]
[Drafted by: carrier Key · Qi Luo (temporary administrator).]
Temporary administrator—those four words he'd added himself.
"You really gave yourself a title," Ruan Ji said, looking at the line, the corner of her mouth twitching.
"Makes it easier to settle accounts," Qi Luo said.
"Someone has to be the signatory."
He took up the "pen"—or rather, raised his finger.
The first line came very slowly.
So slowly even the cold wind of the abyss felt like it was waiting.
[1. Errors committed in the future operation of this world shall not be erased by means of 'rollback' or 'reset'.]
[All errors must be recorded in an 'error ledger' and corrected by subsequent clauses.]
The moment that line landed, the world's self-check module spat out a burst of frantic prompts:
[Detected: fundamental conflict between draft and existing "World Recovery Contingency".]
[Recovery Contingency: resolves errors by resetting to zero.]
[Draft: forbids resolving errors via reset.]
[Conflict level: fundamental.]
Normally, that kind of conflict would be enough for the world to torch the draft on the spot.
But the tiny footnote left by the Shadow lit up again at the base:
[Note: long-term reliance on the Recovery Contingency to handle errors leads to low structural learning capacity, increased probability of repeated errors, and higher overall load.]
[Recommendation: evaluate whether a "record-and-correct" model may reduce long-term load.]
As a giant system, the world wavered between laziness and long-term efficiency.
It loved the thrill of one-click reset, but it also knew infinite resets would eventually pull it apart.
In that heartbeat of hesitation, Qi Luo had time to write the second line.
[2. Harm caused by prior rollbacks and test-runs shall not be treated as 'never having occurred'.]
[Though it is not mandatory to roll the old reality back again, their existence must be acknowledged in new clauses, with "compensation" and "correction" positions reserved accordingly.]
[Names sacrificed by the Old Covenant shall have the right "to be remembered" in the New Covenant.]
When those words settled, the ring of masterless covenants wrapped around the tower's outer wall shuddered softly.
The name-remnants hanging in the mist-sea seemed to suddenly hear someone rewriting "we existed" on their behalf.
The whispers rose a little.
Not crying, not laughter—just a loosening that came when a name was finally read aloud.
Qi Luo's hand trembled.
Every "shall not" and "must" he wrote felt like something inside his bones was being scraped outward—like the world was carving more "cost" into him.
The "New Covenant cost node" beneath his sternum flared again and again, like a tab being incremented.
[New Covenant cost accrual: 1...2...]
The self-check module counted, cool and clinical.
Watching his knuckles go white, Ruan Ji couldn't help whispering, "Enough."
"You just got torn out of the recovery array."
"That line on your bones… you trying to carve it right through now?"
Qi Luo still didn't stop.
He lifted his hand for the third line.
This time, he didn't start with "this world." He started with his own name.
[3. To ensure transition between old and new clauses, a temporary administrator is required to bear the cost of the Old Covenant's errors and coordinate implementation of the New Covenant.]
[Temporary administrator: carrier Key · Qi Luo.]
[Authority: under the premise of not violating the previous two articles, may suitably rewrite existing clauses to reduce repeated errors.]
He paused.
Ruan Ji stared at the word "temporary".
"You leaving yourself a way out?" she asked.
Qi Luo shook his head.
"I'm leaving one for the world," he said.
"It'll never accept a permanent mortal administrator."
"It'll feel like being usurped."
"I have to tell it—'you can delete me when you have to.'"
He lifted his hand again and wrote the true core of this section.
This time he carved it as if in stone, every character deliberate.
[4. The temporary administrator's name shall not be entered into the permanent Basic Covenant.]
[When the world's overall structure has largely stabilized, when the debts between old and new errors roughly offset, or when the existence of this name itself increases errors——]
[——then, invoking the rights of the many, the world may delete this name at any necessary time.]
[Upon deletion, rollback is prohibited; the act shall be recorded only as "cost paid".]
As that line went in, Ruan Ji's face changed outright.
Her hunter badge flared hot. A string of red alerts jumped across her chains:
[Warning: co-hunter has unilaterally registered self as "deletable name".]
[Risk: when the world judges the structure unstable, it may prioritize deleting this name to seek balance.]
[Recommendation: intervene.]
She reached out, grabbing for Qi Luo's writing hand.
Qi Luo turned his head and looked at her.
She had never seen his eyes so calm—not the backtalk in the temple hall, not the street-rat defiance in Rust Street, but the acceptance of someone signing their name at the bottom of a clause.
"What are you doing?" Ruan Ji asked softly, fingers tightening until her knuckles went pale.
"Writing yourself dead into the text?"
"I'm just putting on paper what the world was going to write on my back anyway," Qi Luo said.
"It always meant to use me like this."
"I'm just getting ahead of it—phrasing it myself."
"At least you'll have one less 'passive-aggressive world' to curse me over."
The characters along the stone wall suddenly froze.
The world's self-check module rang as if struck.
[Detected: "may delete this name at any time" phrase in master covenant draft.]
[Matching: "carrier may be consumed" field in Recovery Contingency.]
[Differences:]
[Recovery Contingency——after deleting the carrier, error records are reset.]
[Draft——after deleting the temporary administrator, the act is only recorded as "cost paid"; errors are not reset.]
[Assessment: this design favors retention of "error memory", preventing repeated mistakes.]
[Also provides a method for the structure to release part of the load when necessary.]
[Overall impact: complex.]
The world lingered longer over this one.
To it, this was a strange proposal:
—It gained a "safety valve" to delete someone,
—but it lost the right to wipe out the errors that had led there.
It couldn't press the button and forget anymore.
If it wanted to delete Qi Luo, it would have to record:
"Deleted temporary administrator to pay Old Covenant cost."
That line would sit on the page forever, an indelible stain.
This was the only protection Qi Luo had carved out for himself——
——before the world erased him, it would have to look at the bill.
The pain under his sternum surged.
Qi Luo almost couldn't stand; he had to lean more heavily on the wall.
The Key-Sigil blazed under his skin like a shard of heated iron.
The self-check module kept tallying, unmoved:
[New Covenant cost accrual: 3...4...]
"One more line and I'm knocking you out and dragging you out of here," Ruan Ji said through her teeth.
Qi Luo let out a small laugh.
"Just one last sentence," he said.
"If I don't finish, everything so far is just me talking to myself."
"The world can pretend it never saw a thing."
His fingers were visibly shaking now.
Blood seeped between them, mixing with the light rising from his bones, becoming a strange color—neither pure red nor pure white, but something between, tinged toward dark gold.
That dim glow fell onto the blank, slowly tracing the heading of this final section:
[General addendum: convening the New Covenant Council]
[5. Any who acknowledge the existence of the preceding three articles——]
[be they god, mortal, or any other named existence——]
[shall have the right, under their own name, to participate in the "New Covenant Council", to jointly discuss the recording of errors, their compensation, and the revision of future clauses.]
[The world shall not deny their right to speak on the grounds of "rank," "divinity," or "bloodline".]
[When the council is convened, its spirit-chain structure shall appear above the world as proof that all names may participate.]
The instant he finished that line, every chain in the tower quivered.
Not a dizzying lurch, but a shiver that carried… response.
Qi Luo raised his head.
In his inner vision, he saw the colossal sheet of the world's text lift slightly in the sky over Skycast City.
Ropes that had once hung straight down—the god-chains, roster lines, threads of prayer—met at a new height, knitting into a fresh node.
[Detected: prototype of new chain structure forming.]
[Name suggestion: ——]
The world hesitated.
Then, for once, it accepted a name proposed from outside:
[Name: New Covenant Council spirit-chain.]
The spirit-chain slowly took shape above the Clocktower.
It wasn't a single chain but a woven field:
Thick god-chains stretched down from the main temple, side shrines, minor sanctuaries;
fine prayer-threads rose from Rust Street's shabby churches, from the middle-tier workshops' prayer kiosks, from private oratories in noble towers;
deeper still, neglected strands trembled—from weak gods like disease-reminder gods, from fringe wind-spirits, from old-age hearth sprites—hesitating at the edge of joining.
In the old structure, these lines didn't recognize each other, each hanging from the High Gods' towering "pantheon tree."
Now, on the world's paper, they were being pulled together, arranging themselves above the Clocktower into a new pattern——
Like a translucent ring of seats.
Most of the seats were empty.
Only a few faint lights had blinked on.
Qi Luo recognized some of them:
—a thin glow from some battered minor idol in the lower levels;
—a pale reflection from the high god atop the wind-tower he'd once forced to sign Human Clauses;
—a wavering gaze from an elderly deity in the Covenant Council, shining from far away.
They probably didn't yet realize what they were part of, just reacted instinctively to the sudden appearance of this "new chain structure."
The self-check module logged the moment:
[New Covenant Council spirit-chain:]
[Current participating nodes——various mortal prayer nodes × several, minor god nodes ×3, chief god node ×1, council god node ×1...]
[Status: prototype activated.]
[Impact on overall load: currently negligible.]
[Future fluctuations: incalculable.]
Qi Luo stared up at the spirit-chain, his breath catching for a beat.
He could almost see a transparent "round hall" added above the city—
Not the temple's great hall, but a ring of seats built out of the lines between names.
"New Covenant Council," he murmured. "Do you see it?"
Ruan Ji followed his gaze.
She didn't have his direct access to the master covenant, but she could see a pale halo in the sky.
Like a vast, unlit crown hanging over the Night Bell.
"…I see it," she whispered. "But it's blurry."
"Most of the seats are empty."
"They'll fill up," Qi Luo said.
He slid down the wall into a sitting position, legs weak.
"When the minor gods realize they don't have to talk through a chief god."
"When the names prayed at the bottom are written into the chain directly."
"When those high-seat deities in the Covenant Council discover——"
"——that 'never convene council' is now legally 'breach of clause'."
He raised his right hand and looked at his fingers, stained with blood and light.
"The world's already given them seats," Qi Luo said.
"If they don't show, it's on them."
"That guilt—won't be ours anymore."
The pain in his chest finally broke through.
He coughed, spitting out a mouthful of blood shot through with faint dark-gold light.
The blood scattered in the air, becoming fine dust that fell onto the unfinished draft before him.
[Master covenant · supplemental clauses (draft)]
[1. Errors shall not be erased by rollback; they must be recorded and corrected.]
[2. Old errors must be acknowledged, with spaces reserved for their compensation and remembrance.]
[3. A single temporary administrator is established: Qi Luo, to bear cost and coordinate revisions.]
[4. This name may be deleted when necessary; such deletion counts only as cost paid and must not reset errors.]
[5. The New Covenant Council is to be convened; all named beings may participate in the discussion of future clauses.]
The self-check module ran a slow, thorough evaluation of the draft.
[Pros:]
[——Improves error learning and prevention.]
[——Provides a new route to long-term stability.]
[Cons:]
[——Short-term noise and contention increase.]
[——Requires the establishment of a cost node (temporary administrator), who may trigger deletion at any time.]
[综合评估:]
[Mark draft as "trial-run mode"; do not fully engrave yet, and observe the subsequent behavior of the "New Covenant Council spirit-chain".]
[Temporary conclusion: draft accepted for trial operation.]
The moment that line appeared, the spirit-chain above the tower brightened once.
As if someone in that empty ring of seats had struck a gavel:
—The council is in session.
Qi Luo let out a long breath.
He knew this wasn't victory.
It was just another way the world soothed itself with "trial runs"—it could still rescind approval, still quietly shut that chain down some night.
But just as the Recovery Contingency had become more than rumor the moment it was written,
once the New Covenant Council was in the master covenant, it was no longer just a street-rat's half-joke in Rust Street's nights.
"Qi Luo."
Ruan Ji crouched beside him, hand on his shoulder.
Looking at his pale face, gleaming with that eerie light, she bit down hard.
"You wrote yourself as 'temporary administrator', 'may be deleted at any time'," she said.
"You really understand what that means?"
"It means—" Qi Luo panted, still smiling, "that one day, when you catch a god using mortals as test-run samples, you can point at the master covenant and say—"
"'You're in breach.'"
"You can slam his name into a seat in the New Covenant Council and make him read out every person he's burned."
"If he refuses, the world won't delete you."
"It'll think about deleting me first."
"Aren't you afraid?" Ruan Ji asked.
"I am," Qi Luo admitted.
He touched his chest. The pain there had settled into a slow, steady burn.
"But Keys are meant to turn things."
"I was designed as a button from the start."
"Now I've just——"
"——turned myself into an administrator you can yank out whenever."
"Administrators can be deleted at any time," Ruan Ji said coldly.
"What about me? What's a Hunter supposed to do in all this?"
Qi Luo looked at her.
"Watch the world for me," he said.
"When the day comes that it really reaches to erase me——"
"at least ask it: 'Have the errors been corrected? Has the compensation been paid? Is the New Covenant finished?'"
"If it can't answer, take that knife of yours and smack it down on the master covenant."
"I have to still be around to do that," Ruan Ji replied.
"I wrote something into those chains as well."
She lifted her hand, showing the hunter sigil on the back.
Next to it, a fine note had appeared:
[Co-hunter · Ruan Ji: permanent recorder of the New Covenant Council.]
"You put yourself down as temporary administrator," she said.
"I put myself down as permanent recorder."
"Someone has to read your clauses aloud after you're gone."
"So the world remembers who it deleted."
Qi Luo stared for a beat, then laughed.
The laugh was weak, but real.
"Deal then," he said.
"The Key—temporary."
"The Hunter—permanent."
Above the Abyssal Clocktower, the newborn spirit-chain glowed faintly with their words.
In some unnoticed corner of Rust Street, an old priest in a tiny church suddenly added a line after his usual prayers:
"…and may the one who rewrites our covenants keep his name in this world, until the New Covenant is complete."
He didn't know why he said it; he only felt a stone in his heart lighten.
At a mid-tier workshop's prayer kiosk, a worker glanced up at the grey sky and thought silently:
"If there really is some new council, I'd like to talk there about how they've kept our pay."
In a study high in a noble tower, a young noble shut the window and murmured to his god-statue:
"If someone has to be deleted—"
"Then before that happens, you lot should go sit in those seats too."
These scattered thoughts rose as fine threads of light, curling toward the half-empty ring above the tower.
The New Covenant Council spirit-chain lit section by section.
The self-check module, far off, recorded each new connection.
[New Covenant Council spirit-chain: active nodes +1... +1...]
[Overall noise: increasing.]
[Potential stability: not yet declining.]
[Note: system entering unknown territory.]
At the bottom of the abyss, Qi Luo leaned against the stone and slowly steadied his breath.
His fingertips were still glowing faintly. The line "this name may be deleted at any time" carved into his sternum throbbed like a fresh wound, reminding him—
The path to the New Covenant was being paved with lifespan and names.
He closed his eyes.
In his mind, the names tangled in the masterless covenants around the tower flashed by, one after another.
Those whispers, that "don't be afraid" from his infancy, the Shadow's laugh as it called itself "error," Cen Duo burning his atonement years with that, "Watch carefully—this is violation."
—Old Covenant backlash.
—New Covenant unfinished.
—Recovery refused.
At the bottom of the world, he had written out a third road.
Not "reset the world,"
not "do nothing,"
but: force the world to admit its mistakes, to be recorded, to be written into clauses of future redress.
Using the Key as a pen.
Using himself as collateral.
Qi Luo opened his eyes and looked up at the slowly brightening spirit-chain.
"The council is in session," he said quietly.
"Gods, come if you want."
"I've already written your seats in."