Forgotten Photo Studio

Chapter 98 The Abyss's First Awakening
"Energy reversal! It's... what kind of evil spirit is possessing it? It's devouring Soul Guide!"

The lamplight let out a desperate scream, and the bronze lamp in its arms exploded with a "crack," its green flame completely extinguished.

The judge's eyes widened in fury, and his body erupted with blinding golden lightning, which transformed into chains of electric arcs that coiled around the camera.

However, all the lightning bolts disappeared into the deep darkness the moment they approached the camera, as if they had vanished into thin air.

Absolute silence descended once more.

More thorough and more desperate than before.

The light of the Tower of Recall faded completely, the vortex at its core dissipated, leaving only the dilapidated tower body emitting blue smoke.

Inside the iron coffin area, only the ominous glow emanating from camera lenses pulsed faintly.

The judge staggered backward, his face ashen, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, and the golden light in his eyes dimming.

He stared intently at the camera, as if he were seeing the most terrifying thing in the world.

“It…is not resisting…” The judge’s voice was hoarse and dry, filled with incredulous fear, “It is…feeding.”

Inside the drill arm's shell, Xu Yan clearly felt an indescribable sense of "fullness" and "pleasure," not from himself, but from the camera, from the presence behind the lens...

He got it.

They wanted to summon back the spirit, hoping to find "Xu Yan" to stabilize "Yuan".

Little did they know that the "soul" they were trying to summon was already entangled with the tentacles of the "Abyss".

They thought they were repairing a cage.

In reality, they were personally feeding the monsters guarding the cage.

The judge struggled to lift his head, his eyes revealing a look of near collapse for the first time.

“We…we were all wrong…” he murmured to himself, his voice weak yet clear, echoing in the deathly silence, “Xu Yan…he was never a vessel, nor a cage…”

"He is... the key."

"The living key that unlocks the seal of the 'Abyss'."

As if to confirm his words, the camera lens emitted its shimmering light to its peak.

Immediately, a thin, black mark, as if space itself had been torn apart, silently spread from in front of the camera.

Beyond that ever-expanding rift in nothingness, in the depths of a soul-freezing, deathly silence,
A pale, long hand, with grime and dirt under its fingernails, slowly emerged from its fingertips.

"...It is absorbing energy."

The sounds of the lamplight were almost crushed by fear.

The copper lamp in his arms went out with a "poof" amidst a rapid and chaotic flow of spiritual energy. The remaining smoke inside the lampshade was drawn back by some invisible suction force, flowing into the lens of the old-fashioned camera.

"This is not a transformation reaction..."

The lamplight's voice trembled, "—It's awake."

The air suddenly fell into an eerie silence.

Even the magnetic patterns on the walls pulsate with a rhythm visible to the naked eye.

The judge's pupils contracted sharply, and a blinding arc of electricity lit up his golden vertical pupils.

He could sense that some ancient, vast consciousness, beyond human comprehension, was slowly "rising up" from the depths of the camera.

That wasn't an invasion by a foreign enemy, but rather the awakening of deep-seated memories that were stirring up trouble.

He could hear the space groaning.

The walls of the iron coffin area emitted a low, creaking sound, as if the entire building was being torn apart by an invisible hunger.

The judge's breathing was extremely light, but the lightning runes within his body were operating on their own.

Psychic energy surged upwards from the spine, forming an invisible golden defensive field.

The oppressive aura of the gold-level permeated the space, and every wisp of air was shredded into fragments by the electric arc.

"stop--"

He uttered a single word in a low voice, as deep as muffled thunder. But Yuan's pulse did not stop.

The camera lens rippled with layers of gray waves; the gray was not a color, but the light of collapsing memories.

The judge suddenly realized the essence of the problem.

—It wasn't a mistake in the ritual, but rather that the feeding was interrupted.

The Abyss is not simply a sealed object.

Its existence depends on the flow of the host's memories.

They maintain their composure by being "seen" and "recorded".

Every time Xu Yan presses the shutter, every time a dream flashes back, and even every memory pulse of his heartbeat, he is "feeding" that sealed consciousness.

It was an abyss that fed on "human memories".

It finds peace in being understood, and refrains from arrogance in being remembered.

Now, Xu Yan's soul has been separated from his body for three hours, feeding has been interrupted, and the sealed law field has lost its only anchor point.

Yuan awoke from hunger.

The judge's fingertips gripped the table tightly, and lightning climbed up his metacarpal bones, only to be swallowed by a deeper, more ancient darkness the moment it touched the air.

“Oh no…” His Adam’s apple bobbed, his voice low and hoarse, “If we don’t summon its spirit, it might still be asleep.”

"It was us... who woke it up."

The air vibrated violently.

One by one, the psionic lighting tubes above the iron coffin area burst, and the fragments were swept into an invisible whirlwind, turning into a reversed stream of psionic energy that was swallowed by the camera lens.

The mirror now resembles an inverted well.

All light, all sound, all spiritual pressure were falling toward that well.

The judge looked up, his golden eyes flashing with lightning. His voice deepened, each word like a judgment.

“The soul departs from the three realms, and we… at this most dangerous moment, cried out to the abyss, ‘Wake up!’”

After he finished speaking, he raised his hand, and a burst of inspiration struck. Lightning coiled around his fingers like a snake, illuminating half of his ashen face.

At that moment, he wasn't defending himself, but rather suppressing his fear.

Because he understood that once Yuanruo fully awakened, even he, the "judge," was merely one of the first names it "recorded."

Xu Yan looked at the body enveloped in water from inside the drill arm's shell.

The spiritual veins flowed backward like ink lines beneath his skin, each pulsation like wiping a dusty pane of glass, revealing the inhuman contours beneath.

Just then, a glimmer of light flashed in the depths of his mind—not fear, not scheming, but a forgotten summer night.

His father, Xu Haoyu, covered in blood, shoved a cold camera into his arms. In those eyes that were about to be "archived," there was no fear, only a kind of resolute determination that Xu Haoyu still couldn't understand, almost like "expectation."

“See it clearly…” The father’s voice then strangely overlapped with the judge’s fear and the Tower of Recall’s wails now, “and then, remember me.”

Xu Yan's nerves tensed abruptly. He suddenly understood.

The center wanted "cleaning up," while his father's instruction to him was "recording."

And “Yuan”... it wants to be “seen”.

"Then let's do it." His inner voice echoed within the metal skull of the drill arm, a calmness tinged for the first time with the obsession that belonged to "Xu Yan." "Let me see what it is that is worth risking your life for me to remember."

Xu Yan's nerves were on edge.

The psionic energy fluctuations were so familiar they were nauseating; it was the sealed power within his own body.

"The Soul-Suppressing Iron Brand is currently unable to suppress Yuan..."

He murmured softly, his voice rasping from the vibrations inside the metal prosthetic body.

"The jade cicada's talisman threads have also completely stopped, and even the vibration frequency has stopped responding."

(End of this chapter)