The "Survival on the Train" game has bugs, it's really laggy!

The chessboard floats between the two players.

The black and white squares alternate in light and dark, each square enacting its own independent cosmic drama. Stars collapse in the black squares, nebulae are born in the white squares; two diametrically opposed fates unfold simultaneously on the palm-sized chessboard, a precision so exquisite it's breathtaking.

Su Yuan leaned back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest.

The face opposite him, identical to his, wore a gentle smile that sent chills down one's spine. Its pure black eyes had no pupils, no irises, like two bottomless wells.

"The rules are simple."

The chess player spoke.

It was Su Yuan's voice, but the tone was incredibly gentle, and every word was pronounced with elegance, like the top student in a private aristocratic school giving a classroom presentation.

"You are the white piece. I am the black piece."

His fingers lightly traced the edge of the chessboard, his long, slender knuckles so pale that the black veins flowing beneath his skin were visible.

"Each piece corresponds to a real, higher-dimensional being. The big guy you just captured, the Star Destroyer, was my Black 'Rook'."

He tilted his head and smiled very gently.

"Thank you for helping me clear out a discarded piece."

Wang Hu squatted in the corner, his knees weak, his eyes bobbing back and forth between Su Yuan and "Su Yuan". He opened his mouth several times, but no sound came out.

Xiao Huo gripped the edge of the control panel tightly, his ten fingers digging into the metal, golden blood seeping from between them. His golden vertical pupils darted wildly between two identical faces, his mind filled with only one thought—which one is real?

The money-guarding spirit huddled in the farthest corner, clutching the treasure chest, two lines of snot bubbles hanging from its chubby face, not daring to utter a single word.

Su Yuan didn't look at them.

He stared at the chess player.

The left eye was dark gold, the right eye pure white; two distinctly different lights swirled slowly deep within the pupil.

"A discarded pawn?"

Su Yuan grinned, revealing a row of neat white teeth.

"You call a 12th-order high-dimensional behemoth a discarded pawn. Fine, you're something else."

The chess player's smile remained completely unchanged.

"It was indeed a discarded pawn."

He gently tapped the missing "chariot" position on the black side of the chessboard with his index finger.

"An appetizer to feed you. The more you eat, the heavier you become. The heavier you become, the harder it is to get off the chessboard."

His voice remained gentle, but every word carried an undeniable certainty.

"You think you're hunting, but you're actually being fed the whole time."

"You think you're breaking the deadlock, but actually you're stepping into the squares I've drawn every time you take a step."

His pure black eyes curved into a smile, so wide it was almost overflowing.

"My Shiroko, you are really obedient."

The temperature inside the carriage is dropping.

It wasn't a physical cold, but a deeper, more penetrating chill that seeped from the very marrow of my bones.

Su Yuan's expression remained unchanged.

His lips still held that signature smile, but his right index finger tapped the armrest twice.

It's very light.

Only Xiao Huo noticed the gesture. Having followed Su Yuan for so long, he knew what that little action meant.

The eldest brother is thinking.

"So?" Su Yuan's voice was casual, as if they were chatting. "You came all this way just to tell me this?"

"No."

The chess player shook his head.

He raised his right hand, his slender fingers pinching a black piece in the front row of the chessboard.

A pure black pawn.

So small as to be insignificant.

"I'm here to play chess."

Loosen your fingers.

The black pawn slid forward one space.

There was no sound, no special effects, and no flashy visual impact.

It's just a chess piece that has moved one square.

Then all the lights went out.

It wasn't a power outage; the light itself disappeared.

The lighting inside the carriage, the backlight of the instrument panel, the gold in Xiao Huo's pupils, and the dark gold light in Su Yuan's left eye—everything that could emit light lost its ability to "glow" at the same moment.

dark.

Absolute darkness, without any levels of complexity.

The only source of light is the chessboard.

The black and white checkered pattern emitted a faint, cold light, illuminating two identical faces. One was indifferent, the other gentle.

Immediately afterwards, the feeling of weightlessness came.

Wang Hu's body suddenly left the ground. His broken mechanical arm swung wildly in the air, and he was thrown around like a sock into a washing machine, crashing into the car wall, bouncing off, hitting the ceiling, and bouncing off again.

"Hold!"

He swore, and the back of his head hit something.

wrong.

It's not weightlessness.

The concept of "gravity" has disappeared.

It's not that gravity has become zero.

It means that the meaning of the word "gravity" no longer exists in this space.

Xiao Huo's body also floated up. He desperately grabbed the edge of the control panel, his legs kicking wildly in the air. His first reaction was to activate the emergency stabilization system.

My fingers traced across the panel.

No response.

Draw again.

There was still no response.

He attempted to access the train's neural network and activate the backup lighting using mental commands.

The command was issued, but it was like a stone thrown into a pile of cotton, silently swallowed up by something.

"Master!" Little Fire's voice boomed in the darkness, filled with barely suppressed panic, "The train has been locked by unknown rules! All physical parameters are fluctuating randomly! All commands are ineffective!"

He hadn't finished speaking.

The car wall on his left suddenly turned into a liquid, collapsing inward like melted wax, almost swallowing half of his body. He screamed and pulled his hand back, but the liquid metal solidified in the next second, returning to its original state.

But the floor on the right disappeared.

It's not broken, it's not collapsed.

It's as if that floorboard suddenly "forgot" that it is a floorboard.

Then I remembered.

The flooring reappeared, with the exact same texture, color, and grain.

It was as if nothing had happened.

But everyone knows what happened.

All the physical rules in this space are being stirred up into a mess by some force.

random.

Completely random and unpredictable.

Wang Hu floated in mid-air, watching his mechanical arm begin to twitch.

First, the fingers. The five alloy fingers suddenly became six, then three, and then the entire palm twisted into an irregular geometric shape.

Next is the forearm. The color of the metal casing changes from black to red, then to transparent, revealing the internal wiring disappearing and reappearing out of thin air.

Then the entire robotic arm disappeared with a "poof".

Wang Hu looked down at his empty right shoulder, not having time to react.

The robotic arm has reappeared.

But the location is wrong.

It grew on his left rib.

"ah!!"

Wang Hu let out a sound that was hard to categorize as either a scream or a cry of alarm, and frantically tried to pry at the mechanical arm that had grown into the wrong place with his only remaining left hand.

The money-guarding spirit is no longer viable.

It rolled around in the darkness, clutching the treasure chest, tears and snot mingling on its chubby face and splashing everywhere. It felt the treasure chest in its arms getting bigger, smaller, squarer, rounder, and even for a moment transforming into a lively, wriggling fish.

It cried so hard it could barely breathe, its voice cracking: "My lord, save me! Waaaaah! My treasure chest turned into a fish!"

Inside the carriage, the tables, chairs, walls, floors, ceilings—all the physical structures—were constantly flashing, twisting, deforming, disappearing, and reappearing.

There is no pattern.

There is no rhythm.

Pure chaos.

Xiao Huo's golden vertical pupils had lost focus. He gripped the control panel tightly, three fingernails broken, his voice trembling and off-key: "Master! The main structure is probabilistically disintegrating! I cannot predict where, when, or in what form the next change will occur!"

He swallowed a mouthful of bloody saliva.

"There are no physical laws in this space! Even 'existence' itself is fluctuating randomly!"

The chess player sits opposite the chessboard, unaffected by anything.

The chaotic space was tearing everything apart inside the train, but within a half-meter radius in front of him, all was calm. He crossed his legs, tilted his head, and looked at Su Yuan, who was surrounded by chaos, with his pure black eyes.

The smile remained unchanged.

Gentle. Proper. Elegant.

"This is a 'discarding pawn dilemma'."

His voice pierced through all the noise and landed clearly in everyone's ears.

"I have cast you into a subspace composed of 'random probabilities'."

He looked down at the chessboard.

The black pawn that had moved forward one square was slowly pulsating, and with each pulsation, the chaos in the carriage intensified.

"Here, physical laws do not exist. Mathematical rules do not exist. Causality does not exist. The only thing that exists is probability. And probability itself is random."

He raised his eyes and looked at Su Yuan.

"My pawn will continue to advance. With each step, your living space will be compressed by one layer. First, the physical rules will collapse, then the logical rules will collapse, and finally even the 'concept' will dissipate."

His smile deepened slightly.

"Your ability to devour cannot consume 'randomness'. Because 'randomness' has no fixed rules or structure for you to analyze. Your 'nothingness' cannot erase it either. Because 'randomness' contains all possibilities, including the possibility of 'failure to erase'."

He spread his hands, his posture gentle.

"You're trapped, my white piece."

The carriage was in chaos.

Wang Hu spun in mid-air, his mechanical arm moving from his left side to his back. The treasure chest of the guardian spirit transformed into an octopus, its tentacles wrapping around its face. Half of Xiao Huo's control panel became transparent, while the other half bubbled.

Only Su Yuan.

Su Yuan sat in the driver's seat.

Not moving.

The chaotic spatial distortion automatically avoided him within a radius of less than thirty centimeters, not because of any protective force field, but because the underlying layer of laws composed of imperial authority and creation and evolution on his body was too intense. The random probability hesitated briefly when it approached him.

He tilted his head, his left eye was dark gold, and his right eye was pure white.

Looking at the chess player.

A slight smile played at the corners of his lips.

It's not fear. It's not anxiety.

It was an expression that made the chess player frown slightly.

Playful.

The way Su Yuan observed the chess player was exactly the same as the expression of an old hunter when he saw prey he had never seen before.

"Random probability".

Su Yuan spoke, his voice not loud, but unusually clear amidst the chaos.

"Everything is random, right?"

He didn't wait for the chess player to answer.

He closed his eyes.

The One Who Unites All Things is Initiated.

It's not an analysis that extends outwards, but rather one that looks inwards.

His consciousness sank into the bottom layer of this subspace, beginning to touch those wildly pulsating probability streams.

Normal physical space has rules. It has formulas. It has a structure that can be quantified, expressed, and understood.

But it's not here.

The state of every particle here is determined every second by a completely random die.

There is no cause and effect. There is no logic. There is no repetition.

One second it's iron, the next it's water, and the next second it could be a poem, a color, or an abstract concept that doesn't exist in any language.

Ordinary analysis methods are indeed useless.

You can't parse something that has no structure.

But Su Yuan was not analyzing "structure".

He is analyzing "randomness" itself.

The core of the concept of "unifying all things" is not "disassembly," but "unification."

All the differences can be attributed to the same essence.

What is randomness?

Random is "uncertain".

But "uncertainty" itself is a definite concept.

The very concept of "unpredictability" can be defined.

Su Yuan's lips twitched slightly.

He opened his eyes.

The dark gold of his left eye and the pure white of his right eye shone brightly at the same time. The two lights collided, merged, and overlapped deep within his iris, forming a third color that did not belong to any spectrum.

"Small fire," he said.

The sound was so calm it was frightening.

Amidst the chaos, Little Fire struggled to raise its head: "Here!"

"Never mind the rest, just listen to me."

Su Yuan raised his right hand.

The cracked "elephant" mark on his palm was throbbing violently. What seeped from the crack was not blood, but strands of pure white and dark gold intertwined.

He placed his palm on the metal panel of the control panel.

Dark gold imperial scepter patterns spread from his fingertips, seeping into the panel, passing through the wiring, and piercing into every nerve cord of the train.

At the same time, another force was released from his palm.

Creation and evolution.

Two forces converge in the train's underlying structure.

Su Yuan spoke in a low voice, each word seemingly etched into the air.

"The One Who Unifies All Things".

"Conceptual reshaping".

"To give 'randomness' 'order'."

The words fell.

The objects in the carriage that were flashing wildly and changing randomly suddenly paused.

It hasn't stopped.

The frequency of change has developed a rhythm.

What was originally a completely unpredictable random fluctuation began to exhibit an extremely subtle, almost imperceptible regularity.

It flashes once every three seconds.

It deforms once every five seconds.

It disappears and reappears every seven seconds.

A sequence of prime numbers.

Su Yuan redefined the concept of "uncertainty" itself.

He didn't eliminate randomness—that's impossible and unnecessary.

He simply put a box around "random".

A box called "order".

Randomness still exists. But it is no longer unlimited chaos.

It has become a kind of "regular randomness".

An uncertainty that can be predicted.

Does that sound contradictory?

The key point is the contradiction.

Because the "elephant" mark on Su Yuan's hand, as well as the concept of "nothingness" and the authority of "creation and evolution" integrated into his body, are inherently contradictory coexistences. What he is best at is to combine things that should not coexist.

The chess player's smile froze.

A fleeting moment.

It's so fast that ordinary people can't even catch it.

But Su Yuan saw it.

He saw clearly.

The chess player lowered his head and looked at the chessboard.

The black pawn in the black square, which had moved forward one square, was trembling at an abnormal frequency.

It's not moving forward.

It's "stuck".

It should have continued to compress the space of the white side under the drive of random probability, but the "order" that Su Yuan endowed with randomness changed the way the probability was distributed.

Each random jump results in a move that is most unfavorable to the black pawn.

It's not entirely disadvantageous.

It is 51%.

A deviation so slight that it can be ignored under normal circumstances.

However, in an infinite number of probability events, 51% is an absolute advantage.

The law of large numbers.

This is not supernatural power.

This is mathematics.

The mathematics was written into the deepest code of this subspace by Su Yuan using extraordinary methods.

"Your pawn."

Su Yuan's voice rang out.

Smiling.

"Passively choosing the worst path."

He stood up from the driver's seat.

"And I've added a new rule to your 'randomness'."

He raised his right hand from the dashboard, and the "elephant" brand on his palm burst forth with dazzling light. Pure white and dark gold intertwined and swirled above his palm like two snakes chasing each other.

He didn't touch any of the white pieces on the board.

He disdains to "move" the existing pieces.

Creation and evolution.

Fully exercised power.

Su Yuan pressed down with his right hand in mid-air, his palm facing the empty space in front of the black pawn on the chessboard.

There was nothing in the empty space.

According to the rules, nothing should be there.

But Su Yuan didn't care how the rules were written.

He himself is the rule.

The dark golden light fell from his palm and, the instant it entered the empty space, the miniature universe running inside the space underwent a dramatic change.

The stars are spinning faster.

Matter condenses out of thin air.

The chain of laws weaves itself.

From nothing.

From the virtual to the real.

From concept to concrete form.

Less than a second.

A chess piece has appeared.

White pawn.

Its shape, texture, and density of laws are exactly the same as the black pawn opposite.

No.

Not exactly the same.

The white pawn that Su Yuan created out of thin air was larger than the player's black pawn.

It stood firmly in the square in front of the black pawn, blocking the only path for the black pawn to move forward.

It's not just blocked.

The white pawn's surface emitted an extremely subtle vibration of law, which directly affected the very foundation of the black pawn's existence.

The black pawn began to tremble.

Visible, uncontrollable, violent tremors.

It's like a person walking at night who suddenly discovers a wild beast three times their size crouching in front of them.

The chaos in the carriage stopped.

It's not the kind of cessation that gradually subsides.

It came to an abrupt end.

The subspace of random probability still exists, but all random fluctuations are locked within an extremely stable low-frequency oscillation by the "order" bestowed upon them by Su Yuan. The lights haven't returned, but the objects no longer deform. Gravity hasn't returned, but everyone has stopped drifting aimlessly.

Wang Hu lay on the ceiling—or rather, floating near it—his robotic arm finally returning to the correct position on his right shoulder. He held his breath, his eyes fixed on the white chess piece that had appeared out of nowhere on the board.

The octopus in the treasure-guarding spirit's arms transformed back into a treasure chest. Clutching the chest, snot bubbles still clinging to its face, it was completely dazed, its brain utterly shut down.

Xiao Huo braced himself on the control panel, the blood on his ten fingers already dried. He looked at the chessboard, at Su Yuan's right hand, and at the white pawn.

His golden vertical pupils reflected a light that was a mixture of dark gold and pure white.

He didn't speak.

But his lips were moving silently.

Two words.

"Awesome."

The chess player's smile vanished.

It has completely disappeared.

On that face that looked exactly like Su Yuan's, the gentle smile faded, revealing neither anger nor panic.

It is blank.

An absolute blank, devoid of any emotional coloring.

Something flashed deep within those pure black eyes.

That was astonishment.

It was genuine, instinctive, and undisguised astonishment.

He lowered his head and stared at the chessboard.

Staring at the white pawn that shouldn't exist.

His fingers moved.

Attempting to move the black pawn.

Go around the white pawn. Move diagonally.

The black pawn remained completely still.

The law-based tremors emanating from the white pawn created a conceptual-level sealing field around it. It was neither a physical barrier nor an energy barrier.

It's the phrase "You can't get through this" itself.

Su Yuan wrote it down as a set of rules and embedded it into the underlying code of the chessboard.

The player tried again.

It still doesn't move.

the third time.

A fine crack appeared on the surface of the black pawn.

It was slightly broken.

The chess player's fingers hovered in mid-air.

There was a three-second silence.

He withdrew his hand.

She sighed softly.

The sigh was short and soft, but it contained so much information that it caused the space itself to ripple slightly.

The chess player waved his hand.

The black and white squares on the chessboard began to fade. One by one, the miniature universes went out. The subspace composed of random probabilities was disintegrating from the edges towards the center.

The lights are back.

Gravity has returned.

Wang Hu fell from the ceiling, landing hard on the floor with a muffled groan. The Treasure Guardian Spirit also fell, the treasure chest hitting the ground first, then it bounced twice on top of the chest.

The train carriages have returned to normal.

All the laws of physics have returned to where they belong.

The chess player stood up from the chair that had appeared out of nowhere.

His expression returned to calm.

But his eyes changed.

The condescending scrutiny that once lingered in those deep, black eyes was gone. In its place lay something deeper, something more complex.

The review is still ongoing.

But the object of scrutiny has changed.

He was no longer looking at a chess piece.

He was observing an opponent.

"interesting."

The chess player's voice dropped half a octave.

His gaze moved from Su Yuan's face to Su Yuan's right hand, and then to the still glowing "elephant" character brand.

"You have created an absolute concept in reverse, based on the concept I presupposed."

He paused for a moment.

"Your absorption is no longer on the material level. You are absorbing the rules themselves. You are absorbing 'possibility' itself."

He took a step back.

The skin began to fade.

Starting from the toes, it's like ink dripping into clear water, spreading, diluting, and dissolving little by little.

But he paused before disappearing completely.

He tilted his head.

He spoke the last sentence in that gentle tone that sent chills down your spine.

"You have made good use of the power of the 'elephant'."

His gaze passed through Su Yuan's eyes and looked into something deeper.

"But don't forget."

"The king is always on the board."

"It is my core."

His body was reduced to a semi-transparent outline, his pure black eyes flashing for a final moment.

"And you, you have only just acquired the power of the 'elephant'."

"Next game."

"I'll personally take to the field."

"Let's see how you devour a 'king'."

The sound dissipated.

The chair disappeared.

The last glimmer of light on the chessboard went out.

The only sound in the carriage was breathing.

Wang Hu's. Heavy and rough, like a bellows.

A small fire. A rapid, intermittent fire.

A money-guarding spirit. (With the popping sound of snot bubbles bursting.)

There's also Su Yuan's.

Stable. Uniform.

It was as if nothing had happened.

Su Yuan lowered his head.

The crack on the "elephant" character brand on the palm of his right hand was slowly healing. The edges of the crack were red and hot as if they had been scorched, and then new lines grew from both sides, interlocking and filling the crack.

The mark was deeper after healing than before.

The color also changed from light gray to almost pitch black.

It's as if a new layer of something has settled at the bottom of some unseen container.

Su Yuan could sense it.

A new "weight" has been added to the depths of the imprint.

That was a fragment torn from the underlying laws of the subspace when he created the white pawn out of thin air. He created a concept-level chess piece. The price was that the imprint swallowed a portion of the remnants of the law of "random probability".

It was swallowed.

It's digested.

It became part of the "elephant".

The patterns on the core of the brand became more complex, with more layers and denser lines. Faint points of light could be seen slowly moving deep within the patterns, like bioluminescent creatures in the deep sea.

Su Yuan clenched his fist.

The brand on his palm contracted slightly, like a tightly closed eye.

Then the train shook.

A violent, continuous resonance emanating from deep within the skeleton.

It was not an attack.

It is evolution.

The massive amount of high-dimensional energy obtained by the Devouring Star Remains Devourer, which was temporarily suppressed and stored by the pitcher plant engine during the previous standoff, was now released as the player's subspace dissipated.

The hull of the Emperor's Path Devourer emitted a deafening roar.

Obsidian scales rose and fell off, regenerated, fell off again, and regenerated again on the train's surface. Each time the scales were regenerated, they were thicker and denser than before, and the high-dimensional law patterns on the surface changed from a single layer to a double layer, and then from a double layer to a triple layer.

A dark golden glaze of law covered each newborn scale, refracting strange and beautiful light patterns in the void.

The interior of the carriage is also changing.

Fine, dark gold veins sprouted from the metallic floor, spreading throughout the carriage structure like blood vessels. Faint, embossed patterns appeared on the walls, not as decoration, but as functional conduits of laws.

The roar of the pitcher plant's engine came from the rear of the vehicle, wave after wave, like a heart beating faster and faster.

Xiao Huo frantically fiddled with the control panel, and the numbers on the panel continued to skyrocket.

"Level eight!" His voice snapped, his throat hoarse. "The train is breaking through the level eight threshold! The energy infusion rate exceeds the safety threshold by three hundred times!"

Before he could finish speaking, a new system notification popped up beside him.

He paused for a second.

Then, with a blank tone, as if he no longer knew what emotion to use to express it, he read it out.

"Train Class - Level 8. Category... 'Starfield Predator'."

The car's silhouette stretches, expands, and is reshaped in the void.

The entire train has completely transformed from its original streamlined shape into a form full of primal violence. Intertwined dark golden bone spikes have grown from the front of the train, scales on the sides of the carriages have stood up, forming a structure similar to a dorsal fin, and the propulsion port at the rear of the train has expanded three times, spewing out dark golden residual flames of law.

Looking from afar.

That was no longer a train.

It was an ancient behemoth that had been asleep for hundreds of millions of years and was finally opening its eyes. It was stretching its body in the void and letting out its first deep roar.

Su Yuan sat in the driver's seat, listening to the rumbling sound coming from deep within the train's frame.

He didn't look at the system panel.

He was looking out the window.

The void was very quiet.

The newborn nebula is still spinning in the distance.

But further away, at the edge of the perception of the One Who Unifies All Things, some extremely faint, almost imperceptible fluctuations are approaching.

a lot of.

It's very far.

But it is indeed getting closer.

The frequency of those fluctuations had an inexplicable connection with the aura emanating from the chess player just now.

Su Yuan narrowed his eyes.

The left eye is dark gold.

The right eye is pure white.

Two distinct lights settled deep within his pupils, no longer spinning, no longer colliding.

They coexist quietly and harmoniously.

It's like they've finally found a balance.

Su Yuan's lips curled up again.

It's not a playful curve.

It's not an arrogant curve.

It's hunger.

An uncontrollable, intense appetite for higher-dimensional beings wells up from the depths of the soul.

"'King'."

He murmured to himself, his fingers unconsciously stroking the "elephant" character brand on his palm, which had become even more profound after healing.

His lips moved.

No one else in the carriage heard what he said next.

But Xiao Huo saw his lip movements.

Four words.

"It sounds delicious."