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

Su Yuan thought about it for a long time.

It's probably like reality.

The real, naked, unadorned, raw reality, devoid of any rules or conventions.

As the triangular serrations of the endogenous universe broke down that high-dimensional fingertip to the last molecular level, a drop of liquid was squeezed out between the serrations.

The liquid is transparent.

But that transparency isn't the transparency of water; it's a transparency that's "real" than any other substance.

The moment Su Yuan's consciousness touched the drop of liquid, his tricolor vertical pupils simultaneously contracted to pinpoints.

— "True Source Matter".

Three words popped out from his jumbled fragments of cognition.

This isn't a system notification. This isn't a talent analysis. This is instinct.

It is that kind of instinctive cognition engraved in the deepest part of the soul, more primitive than any acquired power.

He knew what this thing was.

He didn't know that before.

But now he knows.

Because he had seen it in a previous life.

On Blue Star.

In that place he thought he had left a very, very long time ago.

In those moldy rental rooms filled with the blue glow of movie screens.

Behind those monitors that are never turned off, 24/7.

Deep inside those computer cases that run countless lines of code and reek of burnt plastic.

Su Yuan's back stiffened for three seconds.

Then it loosened.

It was looser than ever before.

The astonishment in his eyes came quickly and went even faster. What replaced it made the hairs on Xiao Huo's back stand on end, as Xiao Huo had just climbed up from the control panel.

That was fanaticism.

Pure, irrational, and burning fervor from the depths of the pupils.

"I see."

Su Yuan's mouth split open, revealing a wide grin that exposed all his newly grown fangs.

"So you guys locked me in a simulator."

Before he finished speaking...

The view outside the car window has changed.

Little Fire was the first to discover it.

"Master! Outside—"

His words were cut short.

Because the star field outside the window, which had just regained its three-dimensional structure, was twinkling.

It's not the twinkling of stars.

It flickers like the flickering pattern that occurs when there is poor signal contact on an old-fashioned CRT monitor.

The entire void, along with all the stellar debris, shattered planets, and drifting space dust—was all flickering at the same frequency.

A brief flash is normal.

A flash, and the screen was filled with countless snowflakes.

Then it flashed again, and the snowflakes turned into a mosaic.

Huge, square-shaped mosaics.

The edges of each mosaic square are seeping out cold blue numbers.

0 and 1.

An endless number of 0s and 1s.

Like waterfalls, they cascade from the seams of the mosaic, converging into streams of cold data that meander through the void.

The physical rules of space are collapsing.

It's not a law-based attack. It's not a dimensional reduction attack.

It's something deeper that's disintegrating.

The rendering process that constitutes this "universe" itself is starting to break down in certain areas.

"What the hell is this?!"

Wang Hu propped himself up halfway from the carriage floor, and several blue data streams emerged from the metal joints of the robotic arm. He shook it forcefully, but couldn't shake them off. The data clung to the metal surface like leeches, writing characters he couldn't understand on it.

The treasure-guarding spirit peeked its head out from the crack in the treasure chest, saw the scene outside the window that looked like a "broken screen," and then retreated back inside.

"Sizzle—"

The static from the electric microphone once again flooded Su Yuan's mind.

That female voice.

It was a standard Mandarin broadcast voice that sounded so natural it was almost unnatural.

Emotionless. Cold. Every syllable has been precisely cut and polished, as if poured from a speech synthesizer.

"Subject 001 is behaving abnormally."

"The integrity of the physical isolation layer dropped to 37%."

"Initiate physical destruction and memory overwrite procedure."

"Countdown to execution—"

"ten."

The sky cracked.

It's not the kind of law-breaking crack that we saw before.

It's as if the entire starry sky was torn in two by an unseen hand, like peeling off a wallpaper pasted on the ceiling.

There is no emptiness behind the wallpaper.

It is not a higher-dimensional space.

It was not something Su Yuan knew.

It is one eye.

A gigantic mechanical prosthetic eye woven from countless cold blue data streams.

It has no whites in its eyes. No pupils. No structures of any biological significance.

Its "iris" is made up of countless rapidly spinning data rings.

Its "sclera" is a series of layers of ice-blue circuit board textures.

Deep within its core, a cold light source pulses at a constant speed, like an artificial heart without temperature.

This eye occupies half of the sky.

Its gaze fell down.

It's icy.

It was colder than the gaze of the Epoch Reaper.

Because the Era Reaper is, at least, still an "existence." It has operational logic, behavioral patterns, and information that can be interpreted.

But this eye doesn't have one.

The way it looks at you is exactly the same as how antivirus software scans a file that's been highlighted in red.

"Nine."

It emitted light.

A cold blue beam of light descended straight down from the core of the mechanical prosthetic eye.

There are no energy fluctuations.

It has no law attributes.

The light pierced through the Emperor's Path Devourer's three-colored shield as if it were passing through a layer of air. Dark gold, pure white, and pitch black—the three barriers provided not even a millisecond of resistance.

Because that light was not attacking "matter".

It is attacking "data".

The beam of light struck Su Yuan.

The right side of his body began to pixelate.

It's not a metaphor.

It really is turning into pixels.

The molecular structure of the flesh was forcibly analyzed into individual square-shaped colored pixels, like a bitmap being deleted line by line.

First, it was the fingertips of the right hand. The fingernails disappeared, turning into several flesh-colored squares. Then the squares flashed twice, turned gray, and then the gray turned transparent.

My fingertips are gone.

It's not a break. It's not dissolution.

It has been "deleted".

"eight."

"Owner!!"

Xiao Huo's scream came from the driver's seat.

But his voice also had a problem—the ending notes were cut off, like a corrupted audio file, with the last half turning into harsh electronic noise.

The core of his fruit is peeling off.

What peeled off wasn't fruit pulp.

It is 0 and 1.

One by one, ice-blue binary characters floated up from the core surface, like dandelion seeds.

Wang Hu's robotic arm fared even worse than Xiao Huo's.

The newly regenerated, barbed metal arm was now turning into gibberish at a visible speed.

The metallic texture is gone. The shape of the barbs is gone. The structure of the joints is gone.

His entire arm transformed into a dense, rapidly scrolling string of English characters and numbers, hanging from his shoulder.

Then the string of characters began to fade away.

It changed from a solid to a semi-transparent object.

It went from being semi-transparent to a projection.

"My hand! My fucking hand!"

Wang Hu's roar had changed tone.

The treasure chest from the guardian spirit instantly transformed into a rectangular error pop-up window floating in mid-air. The pop-up displayed a line of cold blue text:

"ERROR404: Object Not Found."

The money-guarding spirit was perched on the border of the pop-up window, its entire form pixelated, its round head turning into a collection of square mosaics.

"seven."

Far, deep in the universe.

Arbitration Tribunal Headquarters.

The surviving elders no longer need the light screen.

Because on every wall in front of them, the same set of data was being displayed spontaneously.

That represents the "cosmic source data" that represents the existence of Su Yuan.

It is that unique data chain that records all the information of an entity in the underlying code of the universe.

It is being erased.

It was not an external attack.

It is a deletion command executed from a higher-level system, from the underlying operating system of this universe itself, from top to bottom.

The Supreme Judge sat beside the shattered scepter.

He has stopped bleeding.

He is no longer afraid.

He had no expression at all.

"This is not an attack." His voice was like an echo from tens of thousands of light-years away, dry and hollow.

"This is an operations and maintenance procedure."

"It's the administrator deleting accounts."

The third seat holder knelt on the ground, head tilted back. His lips moved for a long time before he finally managed to squeeze out four words.

"Who is the administrator?"

No one answered.

Because the answer was terrifying.

It was so terrifying that no one dared to imagine it.

"six."

Su Yuan's right arm has been completely pixelated.

From shoulder to fingertips, the entire arm transformed into a constantly flashing phantom composed of colorful cubes.

The formatting beam continues.

It spread from the right arm to the right shoulder. From the right shoulder to the chest.

Su Yuan looked down at his body, which was being deleted frame by frame.

Blood oozed from between the fangs.

The three-colored blood of the laws, mixed with cold blue data fragments, flowed from the corner of his mouth, dripped onto his semi-transparent feet, passed through them, and fell into the train floor.

He smiled.

"five."

The broadcasting voice is still counting down.

Su Yuan laughed so hard his gums were showing. Some of those newly grown fangs had been erased.

But new things are growing.

It breaks and grows back. It formats and grows back. It deletes and regenerates.

His creative power and formatting beams engaged in a tug-of-war within his mouth.

It's absurd to the extreme.

"You want to reset to zero?"

Su Yuan's voice was hoarse, but every word was clear and distinct.

"Okay."

He touched his chest with his left hand, which hadn't yet been formatted.

The dark gold imprint of the imperial crown is still there.

The "elephant" mark on my palm is still there.

The core of the endogenous universe—still exists.

That endogenous cosmic core, which had just digested the higher-dimensional fingertip and was filled with "true source matter".

The formatting beam can delete his body.

The law that can delete him.

He can delete all data belonging to him in this universe.

But it can't delete anything.

The true source.

Because the true source does not belong to this "program".

It comes from outside the program.

From the machine that runs this program.

From the real world.

Su Yuan pressed his left hand against his chest.

The endogenous universe began to operate with a roar.

The Three Color Laws—Dark Gold Order, Pure White Creation, and Pitch Black Negation—were simultaneously poured into the drop of true essence that had just been decomposed.

The One Who Unifies All Things completed its ultimate analysis in this very second.

It is not an analytical rule.

It is not a concept to be analyzed.

It is analyzing "reality".

To analyze the underlying code language upon which this cosmic program runs.

Then compile.

Using the Three Color Laws as the framework, the True Source as the flesh and blood, and the ultimate analysis of the One Who Unifies All Things as the blueprint.

Compile something.

Something unprecedented, belonging neither to this universe nor to that so-called "real world".

A conceptual virus.

The brand on Su Yuan's chest burst forth with dazzling pulses of mixed colors.

"Four."

The formatting beam accelerated violently. Pixelation had spread to half of his body. He looked like a file icon dragged into the recycle bin, just a few clicks away from being permanently deleted.

Su Yuan grunted.

The vortex in the tricolored vertical pupils is reversing.

A concept-level virus surged from the brand on his chest, spreading wildly along every law conduit in his body, every bone gap, and every pixelated cube gap.

hiss hiss hiss hiss—

The sound was like hot oil dripping into ice water.

Pixelation stopped.

As the virus penetrated the muscle tissue that was turning into colored squares, tiny cracks appeared at the edges of the squares.

The color showing through the cracks wasn't blue.

It is a mixture of dark gold and pure white.

The cube broke.

It's not even more broken now.

It was shattered into pieces, and then the pieces reformed into flesh.

Real meat.

A real body with blood vessels, nerve endings, and the three-color law deeply embedded within it.

My right arm is back.

From shoulder to fingertips, it felt like the "undo" button had been pressed, and the deleted parts were forcibly restored.

"three."

For the first time, a slight noise, not belonging to the synthesized speech, appeared amidst the countdown in the announcer's voice.

very short.

It's so short that ordinary people can't even notice it.

But Su Yuan heard it.

That was confusion.

The machine's confusion.

An antivirus program discovered that it couldn't delete a virus file during the deletion process. Not only could it not be deleted, but the file was also writing new data to the system drive.

Above the sky.

On the surface of that enormous mechanical prosthetic eye, the rotation of several data rings paused for a fraction of a microsecond.

Then, a ring of red light flashed deep within the iris.

Crimson red.

It's not the cool color tone of a blue data stream.

It's the kind of red light that only illuminates as a system warning.

"Destruction is hindered."

The announcer's voice has changed.

Still no emotion.

But the speaking speed increased by 0.3 times.

"Source data write error. Reverse data injection detected. Initiating deep isolation—"

"Shut up."

Su Yuan spoke up.

The voice is soft. The teeth haven't fully grown in yet. There's a lisp when speaking.

But those two words, following the transmission path of the formatted beam, were like a venomous snake, flowing upstream and piercing deep into the data ring of the mechanical eye.

A burst of red light flashed.

The data ring on the surface of the prosthetic eye malfunctioned for a full three seconds.

three seconds.

For a supersystem that uses Planck time as its smallest unit of computation, a three-second disturbance is equivalent to a grand mal seizure in humans.

Those ancient beings lurking deep within the dimensional rifts of the void are currently doing something they have never done before in their long lives.

The connection was lost and the device was disconnected.

All observational reach extending into this region of stars were simultaneously severed.

It wasn't the slow, hesitant withdrawal we had before.

It was done with a knife.

With a "tsk," he chopped off his own sensory organs.

I'd rather be blind for ten thousand years than see it again.

Because they saw it.

That cold blue system firewall—

That absolute barrier separating "inside the program" and "outside the program"—

Dark gold stains appeared on it.

It has been contaminated by low-dimensional organisms.

Such things are not even listed in their cognitive databases, not even in error codes.

"two."

The countdown is still on. But the beam of light from the prosthetic eye has noticeably weakened.

Su Yuan sensed it.

The power of formatting was still washing over his body. But the cold, tactile sensation of being "selected and then deleted" was fading.

It went from sharp to blunt.

The dullness turned into an itch.

Su Yuan stopped defending.

He raised his head.

The three-colored vertical pupils were directly facing the huge prosthetic eye in the sky that occupied half of the field of vision.

The left eye is dark gold. The right eye is pure white. The vertical line in the center of the pupil is jet black.

Then he did something.

He unleashed a devouring power from the core of his inner universe within his chest.

It is not being released outwards.

It follows the data transmission path of the formatted beam.

countercurrent.

up.

Millions of dark golden vines burst forth from Su Yuan's skin. But this time, they were not vines in the physical sense.

They are data.

It is a malicious data stream that has been recompiled by a concept-level virus, disguised as a three-color law, and possesses physical penetration capabilities.

Each vine carries the system's underlying code language that Su Yuan just deciphered from the formatting beam.

They understood that light.

So they can follow the path of that light—back.

The vines pierced into the formatted beam of light.

The beam of light was distorted.

On the cold blue surface, dark golden veins appeared. These veins spread rapidly within the beam of light, like a school of salmon swimming upstream.

From Su Yuan's position, the mechanical prosthetic eye shot straight towards the sky.

Su Yuan looked up.

Its mouthful of fangs gleamed with a moist sheen under the cold blue light.

He opened his mouth.

The sound rolled out from the deepest part of his throat.

"You want to start from scratch?"

"I'll eat your motherboard first—!!"

The dark gold vines accelerated simultaneously with this roar.

The speed jumped from near the speed of light to an immeasurable level.

Because their way of moving is no longer "displacement in space".

It is transmitted in the data channel.

There is no speed limit for data transmission.

Within a fraction of a nanosecond.

Billions of dark golden vines burst forth from the source of the formatted beam—the core cold light source of the mechanical eye.

The internal structure of the prosthetic eye was exposed to Su Yuan's perception.

Countless layers of cold blue circuit boards.

A network of high-speed data channels.

And the one in the most central position—

server.

A core server node built entirely of digital code that maintains the entire "destruction process".

Su Yuan's vines saw it.

Then they did what they did best.

bite.

tear.

swallow.

"one."

The announcer's voice counted down to the last number.

But the sound cracked.

It's not the kind of tear that occurs when the vocal cords rupture.

It's the kind of damage where the audio file is corrupted.

The byte skipped a frame. The pitch was wrong. The trailing note was dragged out as an irregular electronic noise.

"——ī".

Then that unrealistically perfect broadcasting voice produced a sound it had never made before in its existence.

A stern system alarm.

"warn!"

"The underlying architecture of the isolation chamber suffered a backlash!"

It rose three octaves.

The synthesized speech timbre model was completely shattered in that instant. The meticulously calculated phoneme combinations collapsed, turning into a shrill, metallic scream filled with digital noise.

"The administrator's defenses have collapsed!"

"Core node data loss rate: 87% - 92% - 99%"

The sound stopped.

It's like someone unplugged a power cord.

Above the sky.

That mechanical prosthetic eye that occupied half the sky.

It cracked.

The crack started at the location of the core cold light source.

The crack is not a crack in the physical sense. It is the collapse of the data structure.

Within each crack, dark golden vines wriggled. Chewing. Swallowing.

They are eating away at the underlying structure of this eye.

"Crack—"

The prosthetic eye shattered.

It exploded in the middle.

It wasn't like glass. It was more like a giant ice sculpture made of frozen data, which was shattered by explosives placed from the inside.

Blue fragments flew in all directions.

Each fragment carries countless lines of rapidly scrolling code, tumbling and dissolving in the void.

The laws of the entire universe crashed in that one second.

two seconds.

For a full two seconds, from the nearest shattered star field to the farthest edge of the universe, all the laws of physics simultaneously stopped for two seconds.

The stars no longer burn.

The planets no longer rotate.

The photon stopped moving.

Gravity no longer propagates.

Two seconds later, the rules restarted.

But everyone sensed it.

Those two seconds of silence.

Those two seconds of complete blankness, a collective blue screen across the entire universe.

Arbitration Tribunal Headquarters.

Seven of the eleven highest elders had fainted.

The remaining four who were conscious were not in much better condition.

The Supreme Court judge leaned against the corner of the wall.

His eyes were open, but his pupils were no longer focused.

The fifth seat's mouth was opening and closing.

No sound.

His face bore an expression that sent chills down your spine.

That was the state of stagnation that emerged from the most intelligent entity of a civilization after its cognitive system was uprooted—a state of pure, instinctive dullness.

A long time passed.

So long that the third seat thought the fifth seat had become a statue.

The fifth seat finally uttered a sound.

It was very light. So light that only the air molecules close to his mouth could hear it.

"He is eating the Creator."

Four words.

Then the fifth seat also fainted.

A ravaged star field.

A huge hole was blown open in the sky.

Fragments of the prosthetic eye are still spreading outwards.

From that hole, a substance that Su Yuan had never seen before was being poured out.

The true source.

Massive.

Galaxy-level.

Like a dam made of "reality" bursting its banks, billions of tons of real source matter surged down from the crack in the sky, crashing down on Su Yuan's location.

At that moment, the Emperor's Path Devourer did something entirely out of instinct.

It opened its mouth.

The train's front armor flipped down like a jaw, revealing the abyss-like swallowing cavity inside, filled with tri-colored teeth.

Then it started eating.

Eat like crazy.

Dark golden vines emerged from every gap in the scales of the car body, spreading out in mid-air like a giant net woven from thousands of pythons.

The real source material rushed into the net.

It rushed into the swallowing cavity.

It rushed into the tri-colored sawtooth of the inner universe.

The train is changing.

The surface of the obsidian scales originally only had three-color pattern.

Now a fifth type of trace has appeared.

It's not a color.

It's about texture.

The scales have become more "solid".

A kind of absolutely real texture that you can see with the naked eye and feel to know "this is not virtual".

The train's lines are twisting.

The structure of the carriages is being reassembled.

It is no longer simply in the form of an ancient behemoth.

At the edges, some structures that do not belong to any known aesthetic system begin to grow—strange constructs that are half digital, half biological, and half mechanical.

Data flows between its scales.

What runs through the law conduit is no longer just energy, but also code.

The Emperor's Path: Devourer is undergoing a transformation into a completely new form that transcends the boundaries between "digital" and "reality".

The aftershocks of this collapse did not propagate in a specific direction.

It's like a tsunami.

It spreads outward from the center of the rift in the sky.

The first wave of impact swept across the entire ravaged star field.

Those star fragments that had just regained their three-dimensional structure briefly transformed into lines of code as the aftershocks passed, before reverting back to matter.

It flashed back and forth a few times.

It's as if it's reminding everyone who witnessed this scene—

You are code too.

The second wave of impact crossed the boundary of the star field.

All advanced life forms within dozens of star systems, whether dormant ancient beings or wandering interstellar civilizations, felt a chilling dread rising from the depths of their very bones at the same moment.

That kind of trembling is called "awakening from a deep dream".

A vague, indescribable unease seeping from the depths of the soul.

Am I real?

Is this world real?

Is the foundation of my existence real?

This problem is like poison; once it's injected into one's understanding, it can never be unearthed again.

Su Yuan stood at the front of the car.

His mouthful of fangs had finally grown in.

Whiter. Sharper. More realistic than before.

He chewed on the last bit of authentic essence residue remaining in his mouth.

He swallowed it.

Then he narrowed his tricolor vertical pupils.

look up.

Look up.

Passing through the enormous rift in the sky, torn to its extreme.

He saw the other side of the crack.

There is no sacred higher-dimensional kingdom.

There is no magnificent, golden palace of the Creator.

There was none of the magnificent scene of "higher level civilization" that Su Yuan had envisioned.

What he saw was a room.

Very small.

Very broken.

Two of the fluorescent tubes on the ceiling were broken, and the remaining one was flickering and making a buzzing electrical sound.

Exposed electrical wires and pipes covered the walls. The pipes were thick, and a murky, pale green liquid flowed through them. Nutrient solution.

Several dusty fast food containers and plastic bottles were piled up in the corner.

There was a puddle of liquid that had been spilled some time ago on the floor, which had dried and left an unsightly mark on the cement.

And in the very center of the room.

It is a life support capsule.

Old and outdated.

The model number is no longer identifiable. Most of the paint on the outer casing has peeled off, revealing the gray metal underneath.

Three characters were scribbled on the hatch with a red marker.

"001".

Su Yuan's tricolor vertical pupils stopped rotating completely at that moment.

Because he could see what was inside the cabin.

Liquid. Turbid.

And a human body floating in the liquid.

Skinny.

Each rib was clearly visible.

Her arms were as thin as two withered tree branches.

Its entire body was covered in tubes. They varied in thickness. Some were transparent, some were yellowish, and some had turned black.

Sunken eyes. Prominent cheekbones. Lips covered in dry, cracked skin.

That face—

Su Yuan knew him.

That's his face.