The center of existence was not, as one might expect, some grand celestial throne or shimmering nexus of cosmic power.
No—it was a dingy backroom.
A metaphysical backroom, sure, tucked between the folds of spacetime like an afterthought in the universe's source code, but a backroom nonetheless. The walls flickered between solid matter and raw data, the floor was littered with half-finished universes shoved into the digital equivalent of a junk drawer, and the air smelled like overheated servers and divine neglect.
Luo Feng stepped inside, his Eclipse Core pulsing in time with the hum of the cosmos's underlying architecture. The System—now more of a flickering, half-corrupted ghost of its former self—projected a single, trembling prompt into the air:
[LOCATION: CORE_TERMINAL]
[WARNING: ADMIN ACCESS REQUIRED]
[SUGGESTED ACTION: TURN BACK BEFORE YOU BREAK EVERYTHING (AGAIN)]
The Death Queen, already poking at the walls with a dagger that left glowing scratches in reality's base code, snorted. "Darling, if I had a copper coin for every time a man ignored that warning, I'd own the celestial treasury."
Li Qing, meanwhile, had frozen a portion of the flickering terminal into solidity, her frost etching command lines into the ice. "The Wife's backdoor is here. Somewhere."
The Fox Spirit, draped over Luo Feng's shoulders like a living stole, grinned. "Oh, this'll be fun."
Then—
"Check-In."
The word left Luo Feng's lips and the room shuddered, the walls peeling back like layers of an onion made of pure logic. The System's interface dissolved, then reformed—not as the sterile, mission-driven display he was used to, but as something far more raw.
Developer Mode.
Lines of primordial code scrolled past, glowing gold and deep blue, the foundational scripts of existence itself. Here, the command to enforce gravity. There, the subroutine that dictated mortal free will (currently set to "eh, mostly"). And tucked away in a corner, half-deleted but still lingering—the Wife of Ashes' original admin credentials.
The Death Queen didn't hesitate. She snatched a floating line of divine syntax and, with the flair of someone who had spent centuries perfecting her signature on poison contracts, scrawled:
XOXO - DQ <3
The universe hiccuped. Somewhere, a god screamed as their holy weapon turned into a bouquet of very confused daisies.
Li Qing, ever the pragmatist, located the "TERMINATE_ALL_DIVINITY" function and froze it mid-execution. "Not yet," she murmured.
And the Fox Spirit?
She found the "MIRACLE" subroutine, examined it for half a second, then deleted the entire comment block that read "DO NOT TOUCH UNLESS YOU WANT TO BREAK EVERYTHING."
"There," she said, dusting off her claws. "Optimized."
Somewhere in the background, a plush demon was already selling "I HACKED REALITY AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT" merch.
END OF CHAPTER 91