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

Su Yuan's fangs still bore remnants of the "King's" laws.

The three-colored vertical pupils stared into the depths of the void, where nothing could be seen, the sharp white teeth bared out, like a madman baring his teeth at the darkness in a dark alley at night.

There was no response to him.

That gaze remained fixed on the back of his head.

It's icy.

Quiet.

It contains no information that can be interpreted.

Just watch.

Su Yuan waited for three seconds.

Five seconds.

ten seconds.

"Not going to say anything?"

He tilted his head, a few fragments of the three-colored laws still stuck between his teeth, and his words carried a lazy air of someone who had just eaten.

"Then I'll say it for you—"

He didn't finish speaking.

Because the universe has changed.

It wasn't a change in a single star. It wasn't an anomaly in a particular star field. It was the physical constants of the entire shattered star field being forcibly rewritten in an instant.

The void beneath Su Yuan's feet began to thin.

It's not a collapse.

It's not folded.

The concept of "depth" itself is being stripped away.

The three-dimensional space, like a watercolor painting laid out to dry in the sun, begins to fade at the edges, its layers disappearing. The distant, remaining nebulae lose their depth, becoming a blur of light painted on a flat surface. The shattered remnants of war lose their volume, becoming patterns printed on wallpaper.

Two-dimensionalization.

The entire star field is collapsing madly into two dimensions.

It's as if an invisible hand is forcefully slamming a pop-up book shut. The space between the pages is disappearing, and everything that exists in this space—matter, energy, laws, concepts—is being crushed into thin sheets with an infinitesimal thickness approaching zero.

Inside the Emperor's Path: Devourer.

The alarm didn't actually sound.

It was fried.

At the same time, the law conduits on each wall emitted blinding red pulses, and the holographic panel on the control panel flashed wildly with codes that Su Yuan had never seen before—these codes were not preset warning messages, but the instinctive, disorderly panic generated by the train's underlying system when faced with a disaster beyond its comprehension.

Xiao Huo knelt in front of the control panel.

His youthful form endured extreme pressure in that instant. His golden vertical pupils were bloodshot, and the sun rune on his forehead shone so brightly it almost burned through his skin. He gripped the control panel tightly, pouring all the energy of the Level 9 train into the shield system without reservation.

The shield has been raised.

Three floors.

A dark golden barrier of order, a pure white membrane of creation, and a jet-black barrier of negation. All three layers activated simultaneously, completely enveloping the entire train.

Then the three shields shattered one after another within 0.3 seconds.

It shattered silently.

It's not that the shields were breached. It's that the three-dimensional space on which the shields depend is disappearing. They've lost the dimensional basis for their "existence," like a shield painted on a wall—if the wall is gone, what's the use of a well-painted shield?

"Master! All shields have failed! Three-dimensional space is being stripped away—"

Xiao Huo's shout was cut off halfway through.

Because the vibration of his vocal cords requires air molecules to move in three-dimensional space.

Space is thinning. The trajectories of air molecules are being compressed from three dimensions into two dimensions. Sound waves can no longer travel through it.

Wang Hu lay prone on the carriage floor, his newly regenerated, barbed mechanical arm visibly flattening. The metal lost its thickness, the barbs were flattened, the joints were squeezed together, and the entire arm became a thin sheet of metal painted with the mechanical arm's design.

He wanted to shout. His mouth opened. He couldn't close it.

Because the upper and lower lips lose the concept of "distance".

The treasure-guarding spirit, along with its treasure chest, had now been transformed into a sticker affixed to the floor. The outline of the chest remained, and the dark gold runes still emitted a faint glow, but the entire entity had been compressed into a completely two-dimensional pattern.

It's just posted there.

Like a sticker forgotten on the ground.

An absolute power gap.

There were no fancy attack methods. There was no clash of laws. There was no collision of concepts.

It simply, plainly, and irresistibly—compresses you from three dimensions into two dimensions.

Just like a human crushing an ant.

No skill required. No tools required. Just two fingers together.

The ants were gone.

Billions of light-years away.

Arbitration Tribunal Headquarters.

Cracks have appeared in the ceiling of the council chamber. Not because the building structure is damaged, but because the space in which this room is located is also being slightly affected by the aftershocks of that dimensional reduction force.

The third backup light screen, which had just been repaired, lit up for less than ten seconds before the image turned grayish-white.

Dead ashes.

fully.

There wasn't even a single pixel of data fluctuation.

The projection of that shattered star field onto the light screen was no longer a three-dimensional star field. It had become a plane. A rapidly shrinking, thin, grayish-white plane.

The Supreme Judge looked at the plane.

His hands were shaking again.

This time it wasn't because of Su Yuan.

It's because of that being that's carrying out a dimensional reduction attack.

His pupils shrank to pinpoints.

The old man in the fifth seat got up from the floor, walked to the light screen, and looked at it for two seconds.

Then, within two seconds, his face underwent a three-stage transformation from gray to white to blue.

"Epoch Reaper".

Four words were squeezed out from his chapped lips.

The sound wasn't loud.

But all the elders in the council chamber heard it.

Including the Chief Justice.

"What did you say?" The third seatman suddenly turned his head.

"The Epoch Reaper," the Fifth Seat repeated. This time, his voice was even softer, as if he were reciting a name that was forbidden to be spoken.

"Are you sure?" The Supreme Judge's voice changed. It became dry, like two pieces of sandpaper being rubbed together.

"Confirmed." The Fifth Seat pointed to the disappearing gray-white plane on the light screen. "The dimensional reduction coefficients match the records in the top-secret files perfectly. The deviation is zero."

His hand fell to his side.

"That's not a life form from any dimension. It's a higher-dimensional program. A cleanup program. A garbage disposal unit specifically designed to recycle abandoned universes."

The temperature in the council chamber dropped ten degrees.

It wasn't the influence of laws. It was the eleven supreme elders standing here who simultaneously stopped the energy circulation on their skin, driven by a biological instinct stemming from fear. They conserved energy, closed their pores, and reduced their sense of presence.

It's like a rabbit playing dead in the shadow of an eagle.

"It's here—why?" The third seat's voice trembled.

"Because of that human." The Fifth Seat gave a bitter laugh. "He devoured 'King.' 'King' existed for nine eras and was deeply bound to the underlying code of this universe. By absorbing 'King,' he essentially created an unfixable bug in the universe's underlying operating system."

"The trigger condition for the Era Reapers has always been only one—when the corruption rate of the universe's underlying code exceeds a threshold."

"The threshold has now been breached."

"The Reapers have determined this star system to be a damaged area and are performing the most basic cleanup procedure—dimensional reduction and compression—before packing it up and throwing it into the cosmic trash can."

No one spoke.

The chief arbitrator closed his eyes.

He suddenly felt very tired.

It's more tiring than living through so many eras.

The ancient beings deep within those dimensional rifts were reacting ten thousand times more violently than the tribunal.

They are not afraid.

He is on the run.

They fled for their lives.

One by one, observational connections were frantically severed. Those perceptual tentacles that extended into the shattered star field retracted rapidly like snakes that had been burned, wishing they could curl themselves into a point of no volume, burrow into the deepest crevice of the universe, and never come out again.

Epoch Reaper.

That is a higher level of existence than "King".

The "King" is a predator in the universe. No matter how powerful he is, he is still a product of the universe.

But the Era Reapers are not.

It is the management program of the universe itself. It is a higher-dimensional operation and maintenance tool.

Just like a server administrator doesn't care how powerful an NPC is on the server—no matter how many levels you've cleared, no matter how luxurious your equipment is, the administrator only needs to click the "delete" button.

You're gone.

"He's finished."

The fifth seat was leaning against the wall.

His voice was devoid of emotion. Pure statement.

"Even the 'King' wouldn't dare touch it, but he attracted it with just one meal. That freak is finished."

It paused for a second.

He added another sentence.

"We'll be buried with them."

"Once dimensional reduction begins to spread, the three-dimensional structure of our universe will be irreversibly contaminated. At that time, it won't just be his star field that collapses—it will be all star fields."

The council chamber was so quiet that one could hear the faint sound of the chains of law slowly breaking in the air.

Eleven statues.

Now there are eleven statues.

Waiting for a corner of the universe to be erased.

Waiting for the end of the world.

A ravaged star field.

The epicenter of the dimensional reduction storm.

Su Yuan's body had been crushed into a sheet of paper.

It's not a metaphor.

It is a real, physical piece of paper.

The thickness approaches zero infinitely.

His facial features flattened into a portrait drawn on paper. The three-dimensional structure of his limbs disappeared, becoming a combination of lines and blocks of color. The internal organs lost the distinction between "internal" and "external" because the dimension of "depth" no longer existed.

The same applies to the Emperor's Path: Devourer.

The level 9 abyssal behemoth train has now transformed into a giant mural depicting the train's side profile. Obsidian scales have become the textures on the canvas. Vines have become winding lines. The pitcher plant engine has become a circular block of color.

All three-dimensional attributes have been stripped away.

Attack power? None. Attacks require the transmission of force in three-dimensional space.

Defense? None. Defense requires matter to form a barrier in three-dimensional space.

Speed? No. Motion requires an object to change position in three-dimensional space.

All capabilities based on the laws of three-dimensional physics—reset to zero.

The gaze from the higher dimension remained fixed on Su Yuan.

It's icy.

But this time there's something extra.

Extremely faint.

This can be understood as "confirmation".

It was confirmed that the prey had been flattened.

The cleanup work is confirmed to be nearing completion.

This paradox, which has created a bug in the universe's underlying code, is about to be completely reduced to a lifeless negative, and then recycled. Deleted.

Like erasing a misspelled word from a blackboard.

But that gaze was unaware of one thing.

Or rather, its program does not pre-define this possibility.

Su Yuan's face was pressed into a paper-like shape.

Those three-colored vertical pupils had become flat patterns.

It's moving.

The three-colored vortex deep within the pupils was spinning.

Direction—inward.

They weren't looking outside.

I'm looking inside.

Su Yuan's body was compressed into two dimensions, but the thing inside him—was gone.

Endogenous universe.

The embryonic endogenous universe that had just devoured the will of the "King" across nine eras, woven from the three laws of Dark Gold Order, Pure White Creation, and Pitch Black Negation, was a self-consistent, closed system of laws independent of external space.

Its dimensions are not dependent on the dimensions of the external universe to maintain.

It has its own depth.

One's own breadth.

Its own foundation of laws.

When external space collapses from three dimensions to two dimensions, the endogenous universe is like a balloon being compressed into an envelope—the envelope is flat, but the air inside the balloon remains.

It was being squeezed.

It is being compressed to the extreme.

But it was not destroyed.

Su Yuan didn't waste a single second.

From the very first second his body began to be reduced in dimensionality, he did not focus his attention on "resistance".

resistance?

Resistance my ass.

You're a novice driver who just passed your driving test (Part 2), and you're trying to outpace an F1 driver? Are you out of your mind?

He was doing something else.

The one to whom all things return to oneness.

The core talent that had never disappointed him from beginning to end was now operating at an unprecedented speed.

It is parsing.

Analyzing the underlying logic code of dimensionality reduction power.

The moment each dimension is stripped away, it leaves an extremely faint trace of the law at the boundary of space—like the cut left by a knife when it cuts through butter.

Su Yuan was reading about those knife marks.

One. Two. One hundred. Ten thousand.

He doesn't need to understand the whole picture of the dimensionality reduction process.

He just needs to find one thing.

A crack.

Every process has its gaps.

Even high-dimensional cleanup programs are no exception.

Because the essence of dimensional reduction is "dimensional stripping"—it requires continuous energy consumption to maintain this "stripping" action. Maintaining this action implies a process. A process implies a time window. A time window implies—

Sewing.

Su Yuan has been found.

At the boundary where the force of dimensional reduction compresses space from three dimensions to two dimensions, there is an extremely brief gap, so brief that even Planck time seems too long.

Within that gap, space is neither entirely three-dimensional nor entirely two-dimensional.

It is a superposition state.

A superposition state in which no "choice" has been made yet.

Su Yuan's three-color closed loop suddenly erupted at that moment.

The dark gold order—provides the structural framework.

The pure white creation—provided the seed of dimensions.

The pitch-black negation—negates the result of "two dimensions".

The three forces are not released outwards.

It contracts inwards.

They all poured into the core of the endogenous universe, taking that extremely compressed independent system of laws as the anchor point of absolute mass.

Then--

Using the power of negation, Su Yuan condensed a conceptual "knife" on this two-dimensional scroll that had been compressed into a thin sheet.

That knife doesn't cut matter.

Do not cut off energy.

The rule of not cutting.

It cuts the dimension itself.

It denies the established fact that "there are only two dimensions here".

laugh--

A voice.

It didn't come from the air. Because the air was also compressed.

It emanates from the underlying narrative of the space.

Like a piece of cloth being torn open.

Like a curtain being torn.

A three-dimensional tear was abruptly ripped out in the very center of the two-dimensional painting.

The crack is very small.

It is so narrow that it can only hold the thickness of a single molecule.

But it is three-dimensional.

In a completely two-dimensional region, a three-dimensional crack appeared.

It's like you flatten a photo completely and stick it on a table, and then suddenly a small bump appears in the middle of the photo—not a wrinkle, but the person in the photo trying to stand up.

The crack is widening.

Su Yuan's creative power surged out from the crack, like a seed that had taken root in the flat soil, growing wildly upwards.

The concept of "depth" has been reintroduced.

The crack changed from a line to a surface.

It transformed from a surface into a space.

From one space to—

A bubble.

A vibrant, three-dimensional bubble, interwoven with the laws of color, slowly rising on a gray-white two-dimensional plane.

Billions of light-years away.

On the gray-white light screen at the headquarters of the arbitration tribunal.

The third elder was the first to notice the anomaly.

"etc."

His finger stopped at a certain point on the screen.

In that completely two-dimensional gray-white area, there's one spot that's not quite right.

That point is on the drum.

It looks like a blister has formed from a burn.

The third person rubbed his eyes. He rubbed them hard. His eyes were red from rubbing.

The blisters are still there.

It's not a hallucination.

It is growing.

"Look—look at that!"

The third seat's voice cracked. Given his cultivation and temperament, the fact that his voice cracked like this indicated that his mental state had been pushed to the limit of his cognition.

All the elders' eyes turned to that direction.

The Supreme Judge opened his eyes, which had been closed and were awaiting death.

He saw it.

A three-dimensional bubble that is expanding.

In a two-dimensional ruin that has been completely reduced to a lower dimension by the Epoch Reapers.

A three-dimensional bubble that shouldn't exist, that violates all known physical laws, and that is full of life.

"impossible."

The fifth person rushed from the wall to the light screen.

His face was pressed against the light screen.

The tip of his nose is almost poking into the screen.

"Impossible, impossible, impossible—"

He said "Impossible" three times.

I didn't say it the fourth time.

Because the bubble appeared to grow larger on the light screen.

His lips opened and closed a few times.

Then he lunged at the table.

"He is breaking down the barriers of dimensional reduction."

The voice didn't sound like it was coming from the throat. It sounded like it was being forced out of the lungs.

"He's rebelling against the rules of harvesting!"

"That's the dimensional compression program of the Era Reapers! A high-dimensional cleanup protocol! It's not some kind of law attack! It's a forced overwrite at the dimensional level! How do you cut it? What do you use to cut it? Your head?!"

No one could answer him.

Because within the cognitive framework of everyone present, this possibility did not exist.

The fact that they survived the dimensional reduction attack of the Era Reapers is itself beyond the entire knowledge reserves of their civilization.

But whether you believe it or not, the images on the screen are real or not.

The bubbles continue to expand.

Three-dimensional space is regenerating.

Like a flower emerging from a crack in the cement floor.

They stubbornly and unreasonablely crawled out.

A ravaged star field.

On a two-dimensional scroll.

The three-dimensional bubble had expanded to a size large enough to contain the Emperor's Path Devourer.

The surface of the bubble shimmered with a luminous sheen of three colors. Dark gold, pure white, and jet black intertwined and swirled, completely isolating the bubble's interior from its external two-dimensional space.

Su Yuan's body regained "depth" inside the bubble.

The flat facial features were restored to three-dimensionality.

The flattened bones regained their volume.

The obsidian scales of the Emperor's Path Devourer have transformed from the textures on the screen back into real, hard, three-dimensional armor with golden skeletal joints.

Xiao Huo climbed up from the control panel. Extreme panic still lingered in his golden vertical pupils, but even more so in the loss of control after surviving a catastrophe.

"Master...Master..."

Wang Hu's mechanical arm, which had been crushed into a sheet of metal, regained its three-dimensional structure. The barbs stood up again from the metal surface. But he was slumped on the ground, panting heavily, like a fish thrown back into the water.

The treasure-guarding spirit has returned to three dimensions from its sticker form, curled up in its treasure chest, motionless, looking just like a dead mushroom.

Su Yuan stood on the roof of the car.

The tricolor vertical pupils lit up again.

He moved his flattened neck, and his joints made a series of crisp cracking sounds.

"That's interesting."

The corners of his mouth turned up.

look up.

That gaze from the higher dimension is still there.

It's icy.

But this time—there's something extra.

Extremely faint. Almost imperceptible.

But Su Yuan caught it.

The extra emotional fluctuation in that gaze, translated into language that humans can understand, is roughly as follows:

"what?"

Correct.

It's like, "Huh?"

A garbage collector, while performing garbage collection, discovered a piece of code that refused to be deleted.

Its reaction wasn't anger, nor fear, but simply—

Huh?

then.

The void cracked.

It's not the kind of crack at the level of laws that existed before.

It's on a physical level. It's as if space itself has been torn open by an indescribable force, creating an abyss-like opening.

The opening is quite large.

So vast that even Su Yuan's entire perception could not measure where its edge was.

From that opening.

Extend a finger.

A finger as pale as a galaxy.

No fingerprints were found.

No pores.

There are no details.

It's so smooth it looks unreal.

The size of that finger cannot be described using conventional units of measurement. If one had to find a frame of reference, its width would be roughly equal to the diameter of three standard star systems.

It's slow.

It's as slow as squeezing toothpaste.

It peeked out little by little from the crack.

Then face down.

Press down on that 3D bubble that shouldn't exist.

There are no flashy special effects or rules.

There was no energy burst.

There is no dimensional attack.

It means to press.

A press in a purely physical sense.

Just like a human swatting a mosquito.

Su Yuan looked up at the pale finger that was slowly pressing down.

There was no fear in his tricolored vertical pupils.

Some of them are things that make everyone on the train feel a chill down their spine.

hunger.

"You've finally shown yourself."

His voice echoed within the three-dimensional bubble.

Not big.

But every word seemed to have been chewed before being spat out.

"I thought you were going to watch from behind for the rest of your life."

The pale fingers continued to press down.

The surface of the bubble began to deform. The tricolor barrier caved inward under the pressure of the finger, emitting an extremely piercing, sharp wail, like glass vibrating when squeezed to its limit.

The bubble is shrinking.

The internal space is being compressed.

The scales of the Emperor's Path Devourer began to crack again. The law conduits were breaking. The core fruit of Little Fire emitted a blinding golden pulse—its final struggle as it poured all its energy into the shield.

But it didn't work.

One finger.

A finger from a higher dimension, part of a cleansing process.

What's the point of talking to it about laws? What's the point of talking about shields? What's the point of talking about level 9 trains?

I'll shatter you with my reduced dimensionality.

What's the point?

Then I'll just press you to death with my finger.

The most basic.

The simplest.

Su Yuan did not back down.

He not only refused to back down.

He smiled.

He laughed even more maniacally than when he devoured the "King".

"Emperor's Path: Devourer of the Wasteland"

His voice was squeezed out from between his teeth.

"All vehicle modes are merged."

"The only territory—"

"With the Inner Universe—"

"overlapping."

The engine of the Emperor's Path Devourer roared, shaking the entire bubble.

It wasn't the roar of machinery.

It is the roar of a living being.

It was a colossal abyss beast cornered, unleashing its full—beastly—desperate nature before being crushed.

Unique Territory: The interior of the vehicle is the owner's absolute domain, and no external laws can apply there.

Endogenous Universe: A conceptual digestive cavity with an independent system of laws, born after devouring the "King".

The two systems overlap.

At this moment, the Emperor's Path Devourer was no longer a train.

The obsidian scales burst open, revealing the clearly defined skeletal system woven from the three-colored laws within. The dark gold skeleton, like the spine of an ancient dragon, stretched from the front to the rear of the vehicle, with each skeletal segment engraved with swirling law patterns.

Pure white flesh and blood tissue grows out from the gaps in the skeleton, tightly wrapping the bones like tendons, providing the resilient power for continuous regeneration.

The jet-black power of negation transformed into an outer shell, covering the flesh and bones, forming an absolute protection that was even denser than obsidian and impenetrable even by concepts.

The structure of the six carriages has completely disappeared.

Instead, a colossal abyssal beast stretched across the star field.

It has four limbs. They are forged from dark golden law-based bones, with golden, rule-based gears rotating at the joints.

It has a spine. Pure white creative power forms rows of sword-like protrusions on its spine, each protrusion silently releasing energy pulses that reshape dimensions.

It has a head.

A massive head, imbued with the violent aesthetics of a primal predator.

It has two eyes on its head.

The left eye is dark gold.

The right eye is pure white.

A vertical line—pitch black—is drawn right in the center of the pupil.

Then--

The giant beast opened its mouth.

The three-color teeth are neatly arranged.

Each tooth emitted a faint hum, carrying with it the corrosive power of the law.

Su Yuan stood atop the giant beast's head.

He was like a knight standing on the head of his steed.

Wind—no, there is no wind here.

It is an energy turbulence caused by the disorder of the laws.

It blew his hair up.

He looked down at the colossal beast he had raised with his own hands, then looked up at the pale finger that was crushing down on him.

"go."

One word.

The giant beast suddenly exerted force with its limbs.

The dark golden law-based skeleton erupted with propulsive force that caused the three-dimensional bubble to tremble violently.

A pure white creative force formed an energy tail that stretched for hundreds of kilometers behind the behemoth.

As the pitch-black shell of negation moved at high speed, it rubbed against the remaining two-dimensional boundaries within the bubble, sparking countless three-colored sparks of the law.

The abyssal behemoth that Emperor's Path Devourer transformed into.

Facing that pale finger.

They rushed forward.

It's not defense.

It's not dodging.

It's not resistance.

Yes--

bite.

The tri-color toothed pattern is large.

The opening and closing angle of the mouth exceeds 170 degrees.

The giant beast's jawbone drew a perfect arc in space.

Then close it.

Harshly, unreasonably, and recklessly—

He bit down on the tip of that pale finger.

Click.

First word.

The pale finger, spanning the diameter of three star fields, trembled slightly between the giant beast's teeth.

It didn't shatter.

It's the feel.

It was the "owner" of that finger—that high-dimensional cleaning program—that, for the first time in its long history, received tangible tactile feedback from a low-dimensional, physical level.

Pain sensation.

It was bitten.

It was shrunk by a three-dimensional ant.

It bit me.

Click!

The second sound was louder.

The tri-colored teeth cut into the smooth, high-dimensional epidermis of the pale fingers, where the molecular structure was invisible.

That material is not a substance.

It's not energy.

It is not a rule.

It is a kind of ontological entity that transcends all cognition of the low-dimensional universe and is a higher-dimensional existence.

But in the face of the tri-colored teeth.

It broke.

It's not disintegration.

It's not ablation.

It was bitten to pieces alive.

Like chewing ice cubes.

Like biting glass.

A maddening, intense pain shot through Su Yuan's mouth. His tricolored fangs were being subjected to pressure far exceeding their design limits. His teeth were cracking. One. Two. Ten.

*Snap.* A fang shattered and flew into the void.

*Snap.* The second one.

Crack! Crack! Crack! More teeth are breaking.

The three-colored law shattered teeth, scattering like shrapnel.

Su Yuan's gums were bleeding. The mixed blood of three colors overflowed from the corner of his mouth and dripped onto the giant beast's head.

But he didn't back down.

When a tooth breaks, the power of creation grows a new one in the gums.

The new one broke again, and then it grew back.

Broken. Long. Broken. Long. Broken. Long.

Infinite loop.

Su Yuan's entire jaw trembled. His jaw muscles were bearing the force that seemed to tear his head apart. His temples throbbed. The capillaries in his eye sockets burst, and a tricolored liquid flowed from the corners of his eyes, indistinguishable as blood, tears, or remnants of the laws.

But he was smiling.

Biting a finger that transcends dimensions.

My teeth are broken all over my mouth.

Blood was streaming down his face.

He was laughing like a madman.

Then--

One last time.

Su Yuan used his newly grown, 173rd batch of fangs.

Along with the entire bite force of the behemoth.

Along with all the crushing energy released by the endogenous universe.

Close up.

Snap! Snap!

This sound of bones shattering was no longer a vibration of the laws.

It is the instinctive, tearing sound emanating from the underlying narrative of the universe itself, a stress response.

All the stars in the universe twinkled for a second at the same time.

It's not extinguished.

It shook slightly.

It felt like a chill ran down my spine.

The pale fingertips were broken.

It was bitten off.

A section.

It accounts for less than one percent of the length of the entire finger.

On a human scale, it's equivalent to biting off a piece the size of a fingernail.

But it broke.

The pale fingertip detached from its mother body, lost the maintenance of the higher-dimensional program, and began to "fade" in three-dimensional space in an indescribable way.

Its luster is fading.

Its texture is softening.

It transformed from a higher-dimensional substance beyond cognition into something that can be digested.

And that pale finger with the broken tip.

It convulsed violently.

The entire finger, from tip to base, conveyed a violent fluctuation that Su Yuan could not decipher but could clearly feel.

That's not pain.

High-dimensional programs do not cause "pain".

That's—an error message.

Fatal error.

A cleaning program had a piece of its finger bitten off by trash while performing garbage collection.

this kind of thing.

Throughout its entire operating cycle.

It was never predetermined.

there has never been.

The finger was pulled back.

Forced.

It's not because I'm afraid. It's because I have to go back and fix the underlying code leak caused by the loss of my fingertip.

The pale fingers retracted from the abyss-like void rift.

The crack is closing.

In the final moment before the gaze from the higher dimension closed, Su Yuan sensed a completely new emotional fluctuation within it.

It's no longer a "Huh?".

Translate into human languages.

It's probably—

"...?"

An emotion for which there is no corresponding vocabulary.

Because the database of higher-dimensional programs does not contain an entry for "what emotions should one feel after having their finger bitten off by a lower-dimensional being".

It was the first time.

The crack has closed.

The view disappeared.

The force of dimensional reduction ceased the moment the crack closed.

The gray-white area that had been compressed into a two-dimensional shape lost its source of power and began to slowly—very slowly—restore its three-dimensional structure.

Like a flattened sponge reabsorbing water and swelling up again.

Billions of light-years away.

Arbitration Tribunal Headquarters.

At the same time as the "crack" sound came, the fourth backup light screen exploded into dust with a "boom".

The explosion was not caused by data overload.

The physical substrate of the light curtain could not withstand the high-dimensional information density carried in the sound of shattered bones, and stress collapse occurred at the molecular level.

Fragments flew everywhere from the explosion.

A shard struck the Supreme Judge on the forehead, cutting a gash.

He didn't realize it.

Because he was vomiting blood.

It wasn't hit by fragments.

It was the shockwave of the laws carried within that sound of shattered bones that was transmitted directly to the very foundation of the laws of the entire arbitration tribunal through the signal link of the light curtain.

All eleven supreme elders, without exception.

They all coughed up blood.

They all knelt on the ground.

The Supreme Judge's scepter didn't even roll this time. It snapped in two.

He knelt on the ground. Blood flowed from the corner of his mouth to his chin, dripping onto the floor and forming a small puddle.

His lips were trembling.

It's not because of pain.

It was because he heard a message in the sound of bones shattering.

Information that made him feel no psychological burden about kneeling.

The higher dimension is bleeding.

Something seeped out from the gap in the void before the rift closed after that sound of bones shattering.

That thing has no color. No temperature. No mass.

But it exists.

It is a "fluid existing in a higher dimension".

Or to be more precise—

It's a leak of the cleanup program's runtime code.

Gaowei got bitten.

The higher dimension is bleeding.

By a three-dimensional being.

It drew blood.

The third seated man knelt on the ground, his face turned toward the ceiling. Blood was flowing from his nostrils.

He didn't wipe it.

His mouth was wide open, uttering a string of syllables that no one could understand.

The fifth seatman was slumped under the table. The veins on his forehead bulged like earthworms.

His eyes were ten times emptier than before.

Previously it was "cognitive framework obsolescence".

Now, cognitive frameworks don't even qualify for obsolescence. They simply evaporate on the spot.

The seventh female elder huddled in a corner. Her hands were no longer covering her ears; they were clutching her chest. Her heart felt like it was about to leap out of her chest.

All universe.

After that sound of bones shattering.

It's quiet now.

Complete silence fell.

It wasn't the brief silence that followed when the "King" was eaten.

It is a deeper silence, spreading from the bottom of the laws, where even the movement of particles is slowed down.

The universe is processing a message.

This is a message that is ten thousand times more absurd than "the king was eaten".

There is a three-dimensional being.

It bit off the finger of the higher-dimensional harvester.

A ravaged star field.

The void has begun to restore its three-dimensional structure.

The colossal form of the Emperor's Path Devourer slowly receded. Obsidian scales once again covered its bones. The carriage structure reformed from flesh and blood. It regained its train appearance.

However, on each scale, there was an additional layer of visible, glowing patterns of laws.

Those patterns weren't dark gold. They weren't pure white. They weren't pitch black.

It is the fourth color.

That unnamed color that was born after the "King" was digested.

Su Yuan stood at the front of the car.

His mouth was open.

My mouth was full of broken tricolor tooth fragments and indescribable high-dimensional liquid.

mixed together.

In his mouth.

He spat out a mouthful of tooth bits. His gums were exposed, and new fangs were growing out of them at a visible rate.

He held the severed, pale fingertip in his hand.

His fingertips trembled slightly in his palm. The higher-dimensional matter was rapidly decaying in the three-dimensional environment and would completely decompose in a few seconds.

Su Yuan didn't give it that chance.

He opened his mouth.

He threw that severed fingertip into his mouth.

It wasn't chewed.

I swallowed it whole.

It was sent into the intrinsic universe.

The three-color serrations close within 0.1 seconds.

"Gurgle."

A satisfied digestive sound came from deep within the giant beast's abdominal cavity.

Su Yuan wiped the corner of his mouth.

The substance that rubbed off the back of my hand had one more color than the previous residue from the Three Colors Rule.

I can't make out the color.

But it is glowing.

He shook the crumbs off his hands.

Then he looked up at the sky, which had regained its three-dimensional structure in the void.

His gaze swept over the distant fragments of the star system slowly reassembling. It swept over the still slightly trembling physical constants. It swept over the lonely stars whose orbits had been permanently derailed by this catastrophe.

He glanced back at the driver's cab.

Little Fire lay sprawled on the control panel. His golden vertical pupils were bloodshot, but the corners of his mouth were uncontrollably turned upwards.

Wang Hu lay sprawled on the carriage floor, his mechanical arm mostly shattered, but his still intact fleshy hand was clenched into a fist, his knuckles white and his nails digging into his flesh.

The treasure-guarding spirit poked its round head out from the crack in the treasure chest. Its eyes were practically popping out of its sockets. Its mouth was agape, and it had forgotten to wipe its drool.

Su Yuan turned around.

He didn't speak to them.

He did something else.

He walked to a spot at the front of the train and located the train's loudspeaker array.

That amplifier matrix can send broadcast signals to channels in all dimensions of the universe.

He reached out and pressed the switch.

"Click."

The channel is working.

Su Yuan moved closer to the speaker.

His mouth was still bleeding. His newly grown fangs weren't fully formed yet. He spoke with a slight lisp.

But he doesn't care.

He spoke.

With the sound of chewing.

The sound of high-dimensional residue still churning in the throat.

His voice was a little muffled because he had incomplete fangs.

"New menu".

"The first dish."

"It tastes very crispy."

Six characters.

Through amplification matrix.

Through the level 9 core of the Emperor's Path Devourer, which had just devoured the "King" and gnawed on a piece of a high-dimensional finger.

At a frequency that even the arbitration tribunal could not intercept.

Channels to every dimension of the entire universe.

It's been leaked.

The signal is carried by gravitational waves. It is encoded using the oscillation of laws. It is transmitted through the underlying code of the universe itself.

No attenuation.

No delay.

No blind spots.

From the nearest broken star system to the farthest edge of the universe.

From the lowest-dimensional material world to the highest-dimensional law-based space.

From the core of every star to the event horizon of every black hole.

From the communication networks of every civilization to the subconscious depths of every living being.

I received them all.

Six characters.

And a chewing sound.

Those surviving low-dimensional civilizations. Those nomadic races barely surviving on the wasteland. Those subterranean thugs hiding beneath the planet's crust.

They had no idea what had happened.

They didn't know who the "King" was.

I don't know what the Era Reaper is.

I don't know what pale fingers mean.

But they know one thing.

Something has changed at the fundamental level of the universe.

A variable has been reassigned.

The previous value of that variable was the "upper limit of fear".

Its value has now become—

"The first dish on the new menu is very crispy."

The first to kneel were the three dormant civilizations closest to the shattered star system. Their dormant state, maintained for tens of thousands of years, was shattered within two seconds of receiving the broadcast. They collectively emerged from interstellar space, releasing gravitational wave pulses of submission towards the signal's source.

The second group to kneel were the Wanderer Alliance and the Scavenger Legion scattered across various star systems. Tens of thousands of trains simultaneously turned around, deactivated their weapon systems, and played the same message on a loop across all channels—"We are not prey. We are not prey. We are not prey."

The third batch did not kneel.

Because they had already knelt down when the "king" was eaten.

Now they've lay down.

From kneeling to lying down.

This is a very important downgrade in posture.

This means that in their perception, Su Yuan has upgraded from "an existence they dare not provoke" to—

"Things that dare not appear in the same void."

The broadcast signal is still spreading.

It will continue to spread.

Until the edge of the universe.

Then it bounces off the boundary.

It continues to spread.

forever.

Because Su Yuan didn't know how to turn off the loop playback mode of the amplifier matrix.

Little Fire forgot to tell him.

So that broadcast of the "new menu" accompanied by chewing sounds will play endlessly and repeatedly in every corner of the universe.

It becomes a permanent, indelible, etched-into the white noise at the very bottom of the universe—background music.

Su Yuan stood at the front of the car.

The pale fingertip in its mouth had entered the inner universe. The tri-colored serrations were performing the most precise decomposition on it.

Digestion has begun.

But the first wave of information that flooded into Su Yuan's consciousness—

It's not some grand memory of a higher-dimensional deity.

It's not some ultimate secret that transcends dimensions.

It was not any fragment of knowledge from a higher level of existence that Su Yuan had anticipated.

It was a burst of static from an electric microphone.

"Sizzle... sizzle..."

Extremely abrupt.

It's extremely incongruous.

Like an old radio that suddenly turns on by itself in the dead of night.

then.

Amidst the noise.

A voice rang out.

It is not a high-dimensional law oscillation.

It is not a cross-dimensional transmission of will.

It is a human female voice.

Emotionless.

His pronunciation was clear and accurate.

It was so cold it seeped into my bones.

It carried a broadcasting voice that Su Yuan had only heard on certain occasions in his previous life, a voice so standard it was almost unreal.

The voice said—

Chinese.

Standard.

mandarin.

"warn."

Su Yuan's tricolor vertical pupils suddenly contracted.

"Blue Star Serial Number 001, Player Su Yuan".

His back stiffened.

This was the first time since he came into this world—

My back stiffened.

"It has been detected that you have broken through the 'Zeroing Project' boundary wall."

The voice continued speaking.

Without pauses. Without emotion. Without any tonal variations that could be interpreted as "goodwill" or "malice".

Pure information delivery.

"The real-world isolation chambers are breaking down."

Su Yuan stood at the front of the car.

His mouth was still dripping with high-dimensional liquid.

The newly grown fangs were neatly arranged behind the lips.

The strangely colored vortex within the tricolor vertical pupils stopped spinning.

His fingers curled slightly in the air.

"Blue Star?"

His voice was very soft.

So quiet that even the small fire next to it couldn't be heard.

He repeated the word.

"Blue Star".

The digestion of the high-dimensional fingertips in the mouth continued.

But something was churning deep within Su Yuan's pupils.

It's not power.

It is not a rule.

It is something older than power and laws.

It is memory.