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

Su Yuan looked down at the station chief who had just entered through the door.

The four-meter-tall, dark gold body didn't even adopt the slightest defensive stance. Its three-colored vertical pupils were extremely indifferent as it stared straight down at the thin man with his hair perfectly styled and his white coat buttoned up neatly.

Looking at a corpse is warmer than this gaze.

The station chief did not stop.

The broken glass crunched twice beneath his feet, but he didn't even glance at the ground. The eyes behind his gold-rimmed glasses remained fixed on Su Yuan's tricolored vertical pupils the entire time, without flinching, without trembling, and even his breathing was extremely even.

He raised his right hand very smoothly, his index and middle fingers joined together, and pressed them against the metal nameplate on his chest.

The surface of the nameplate has a slight reddish tinge.

hum-

A dull, low-frequency vibration emanated from deep within the ward floor.

It's not the suppression of concepts based on higher-dimensional laws. It's the most primitive, most brutal, and real-world-specific amplification of the gravitational field.

The plastic floor beneath Su Yuan's feet had sunk three centimeters.

It wasn't dented by being stepped on. It was dented by gravity.

The gravitational pull on the four-meter-tall, dark gold body doubled within a fraction of a second. Then it doubled again. Then it doubled again.

Each plate of the dark gold bone armor emitted an extremely dense creaking and friction simultaneously, the latches at the joints being brutally squeezed. Su Yuan's knees did not bend, nor did his back collapse. But the plastic floor beneath his feet had already been crushed into a terrifying network of cracks.

outside the ward.

The corridor echoed with the deafening sound of hydraulic joints operating.

Click. Click. Click, click, click, click.

Dozens of heavy, dark gray mechs, each over three meters tall, surged in from both sides of the corridor. They were unpainted and unnumbered. Their aluminum alloy shells were covered in welding marks and patches. The rough, industrial lines gave them a strong utilitarian feel.

Each mech had an extremely large caliber heavy annihilation gun welded to its right arm, with a barrel as thick as a sewer pipe. The gun body had no electronic components and showed no data fluctuations.

Purely physical.

Hydraulic firing. Gunpowder propulsion. Solid armor-piercing projectile.

Dozens of gun barrels were simultaneously aimed at the dark gold figure in the center of the ward. Infrared targeting lasers drew a dense array of red dots on Su Yuan's chest.

Su Yuan glanced at the red dots.

Didn't move.

The station manager took half a step back.

The hem of his white coat brushed against the shards of glass on the floor, producing an extremely slight friction. He adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses, the blood-red corridor light reflecting an arc of light off the lenses.

"001".

The station chief spoke, his tone extremely calm.

"You're really crazy."

He paused for a moment.

"With your drive to break through from the virtual to the real world, all seven thousand people at the observation station have to give you a thumbs up."

As he spoke, he even nodded slightly. His eyes revealed an extremely sincere appreciation, the kind that only a person in a high position would have when scrutinizing a masterpiece.

"but."

He tapped the metal nameplate on his chest lightly with his index finger.

"You shouldn't have swallowed that thing."

Su Yuan's tricolor vertical pupils twitched slightly.

The station manager didn't miss this extremely subtle reaction. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, not a laugh, but a precise, calculated smugness that was sure to make people uncomfortable.

"The nine-colored source code in the Earth's core server."

He took half a step to the side, avoiding the patch of grayish-white powder on the ground, as if he found it dirty.

"What kind of ultimate treasure do you think it is? What kind of key to the highest authority in the universe?"

He shook his head slightly. The movement was extremely slow.

"That was the physical anchor point that I designed myself."

Su Yuan didn't frown. But he rubbed his index finger very slightly with his right thumb.

The station manager continued.

"Including that photo you picked up from the rubble. The chemical developers in the paper fibers—your analytical skills can scan them out, right? Real lignin, real ink."

His voice lowered by two decibels.

"They're all anchor point components."

After saying this, he put both hands into the pockets of his white coat. His posture was extremely relaxed.

"As long as you bring these two things into the real world, the most basic 'real-world terminal illness' script will be automatically activated."

The corners of his mouth turned up slightly.

"This script doesn't follow higher-dimensional laws, doesn't rely on conceptual rewriting, and doesn't adhere to any of your rules. It follows the most basic physical execution procedures of the real dimension."

He raised his right hand, pulled it out of his pocket, and casually drew a circle in the air.

"Your gene sequence, your cell division cycle, your telomere length—all follow the death curve of a real terminally ill patient."

He tilted his head slightly.

"An absolute dimensional reduction lock specifically designed to destroy experimental subjects that exceed the limits."

At this point, his tone suddenly softened.

It wasn't a feigned gentleness. It was a more chilling, heartfelt "compassion."

It's like the tone a doctor uses when telling a patient, "We've done everything we can."

"001, ah 001."

He shook his head and sighed.

"You eat too much. You stuff everything into your mouth. It's a pity that this time, what you ate was poisoned."

The voice just fell.

He snapped his fingers.

Extremely casual.

It's as natural as turning off the lights in the dorm.

Click.

The dark gold bone armor on Su Yuan's chest suddenly emitted a very strange sound.

It's not a fracture caused by external impact. It's a spontaneous structural collapse that starts from within the material itself.

Wang Hu pressed himself against the car window, his eyes suddenly bulging forward.

A small, pale spot appeared on the bone armor in the center of Su Yuan's chest. It wasn't big, about the size of a fingernail.

But that color was terribly wrong.

A sickly, lifeless pallor. It formed a stark contrast with the surrounding dark gold armor. It looked as if something was growing outwards from within the armor.

Then the paleness spread rapidly.

It's not spreading. It's "growing".

Countless tiny tentacles split from the edges of the pale white patches, rapidly climbing along the patterns on the bone armor at a speed barely visible to the naked eye. Each inch of the dark gold armor that it traversed turned into a lifeless gray-white.

One piece. Two pieces. Five pieces.

The surface of more than a dozen dark gold scales was simultaneously covered with a pale white.

Then the leaf began to crack. Not violently, but through the extremely quiet natural weathering. The edges thinned and became brittle first, then the whole piece fell off, hitting the plastic floor with a very slight cracking sound.

The paleness wasn't just limited to the surface of the armor.

Looking through the gaps in the shattered nail plates, the same pale white patches appeared on Su Yuan's skin.

That was the most real and brutal physical reaction.

Cell necrosis.

The organization collapsed.

Physical signs of terminal illness.

Su Yuan's massive four-meter frame paused for a rare moment.

It wasn't caused by external forces. The problem lies internally.

The operation of the endogenous universe has experienced an extremely severe physical stagnation. This stagnation is not due to the blockage of higher-dimensional concepts, but rather because the "physical body" that carries the endogenous universe is rapidly decaying. The container is about to break, and what is inside is naturally shaking as well.

The station chief took two steps back and stood behind the mecha formation.

The blood-red corridor light shone on his profile, reflecting a cold light through his glasses.

"Under the laws of reality."

His voice wasn't loud.

"You do not have higher-dimensional access."

He put his hands behind his back.

"It can only be a terminally ill body that must die from genetic decay."

The verdict was announced.

An extremely decisive verdict.

They didn't even provide an appeal window.

Inside the Desolate Wasteland train carriage.

The alarm on the main control panel blared deafeningly. A red beam of light shone down from the ceiling, flashing intermittently, casting flickering light on and off Wang Hu and Xiao Huo's faces.

Xiao Huo leaned against the control panel, his ten fingers embedded in the edge of the keyboard, his nails turning white.

On the holographic screen, Su Yuan's vital signs were fluctuating wildly.

Heart rate. Blood oxygen saturation. Cell activity. Telomere attenuation index.

Everything is dropping.

It's not a conceptual weakening like in a higher-dimensional universe. It's a complete adherence to the medical trajectory of terminal illness in human reality, proceeding step by step, precisely down to the millisecond, towards the end.

Little Fire's golden pupils reflected a screen full of scarlet warning boxes.

"The master's cell division has stopped."

Her voice was trembling.

"Telomere attenuation rate is four thousand times the normal value."

Wang Hu yanked the weapon authorization panel next to him and slammed his fist on the start button.

A cold, gray dialog box popped up on the screen.

"The current environment does not support virtual weapon systems."

"Physical Dimension Armament Authorization: None"

The button doesn't do anything when pressed. There's not even any vibration feedback.

Wang Hu changed the button. The same gray pop-up window appeared.

Let's try another one.

still.

He tapped every single button on the control panel.

None of them responded.

The physical world does not authorize the Devourer's weapon systems. Not even a single bullet has been authorized.

Wang Hu's robotic arm hung limply at his side, the coolant in the hydraulic pipes condensing in the low temperature, and the gears whirring hoarsely. He leaned against the edge of the control panel, his legs trembling.

"Boss..."

Little Fire lay motionless on the table, its tail dragging on the floor.

"Master's vital signs..."

She didn't finish her sentence.

Needless to say.

The numbers were displayed on the screen.

Further away.

In the safe room on the seventh floor of Block B of the First Observation Station.

The researchers who escaped were crammed into a spare monitoring room of less than 30 square meters. Seven or eight people surrounded three old CRT monitors, the screens displaying live footage from the ward.

The image quality is not high. There is static.

However, the pale white patches spreading across Su Yuan's chest were still shockingly clear even in the low-resolution image.

The middle-aged female researcher stared at the screen and exhaled a very long breath.

The paper cup of coffee I was holding was finally brought to my lips. I took a sip.

It's bitter. It's instant. It doesn't contain sugar.

"Alright."

She leaned back in her chair, her shoulders relaxing.

"The terminal illness anchor has been triggered; all that's left is to follow the procedure."

The bald male researcher next to him also sat down. His legs were still shaking, but the expression on his face had relaxed.

He pulled a bent e-cigarette from his pocket, put it in his mouth but didn't light it.

"I knew it."

He gestured towards the screen with his lip.

"No matter how arrogant this data is in the petri dish, no matter how many dimensions it has absorbed, or how many chess players it has defeated."

He flicked the end of the e-cigarette.

"When faced with a real physical firewall, it is ultimately just a bunch of code."

He glanced back at the young researcher crouching on the ground in the corner, still trembling.

"Don't be afraid, get up and have a drink of water. The laws of physics are in charge; nothing can go wrong."

The young researcher stood up shakily, reaching for the kettle on the table.

Someone is knocking on the door of the safe house.

Three short and two long. A standard security password.

The door opened. A female technician in a white protective suit entered, carrying an aluminum tray.

There were six cups of instant coffee on the plate.

"As the station manager said, everyone has worked hard, have a hot drink."

She placed the plate on the table and picked up a glass for herself.

The middle-aged female researcher glanced at her.

"What's the situation with the station manager?"

The female technician lowered her head and blew on her coffee.

"It's almost over. The station chief has ordered the special forces to carry out the final cleanup."

She took a sip.

"It's just a matter of collecting garbage."

The atmosphere in the safe house relaxed considerably. Someone pushed their chair back and put their legs up on the edge of the table.

In the ward.

The station manager took a small step back.

He peered through the gaps in the mecha formation at the dark gold figure in the center of the ward, whose pale white patches were spreading over a large area.

Raise your hand.

He casually swung his arm forward half a circle.

"Clean up."

The hydraulic firing devices of dozens of special mechs simultaneously activated their safety mechanisms.

The metallic clanging of cartridge cases being chambered inside the barrel created an extremely heavy chorus of clicks.

Just at this time.

Su Yuan lowered his head.

He looked down at the white patches that were spreading rapidly across his chest.

Three large pieces on the left. Two large pieces on the right. Nearly a quarter of the dark gold bone armor in the middle has crumbled, revealing the gaunt, emaciated skin beneath, covered with dense, grayish-white necrotic lines.

He looked at it for two seconds.

Then a very low, breathy sound came out of his nasal cavity.

laugh.

It wasn't a bitter smile. It wasn't self-deprecation.

It's the kind of disdain that audiences have only when they've seen through a magician's tricks.

The station chief's waving gesture froze in mid-air.

Su Yuan did not use any higher-dimensional laws.

There is no three-colored divine fire. There is no power of denial. There is no creation or evolution.

He simply shifted his gaze from his chest, his tricolored vertical pupils quietly settling on the stationmaster's well-maintained face.

"A physical incurable disease?"

Su Yuan's voice was extremely calm.

"Terminal illness anchor?"

His right hand slowly rose.

Palms facing up.

An inner universe began to slowly rotate deep within the chest. Very slowly. Very gently. Not the frenzied rotation of a battle state, but an extremely composed, leisurely breathing.

The analytical perspective of the One Who Unifies All Things is fully opened.

He did not direct his analysis at external enemies.

He focused on himself.

The molecular structure of those pale patches on the chest was broken down to the finest level.

The membrane structure of each necrotic cell.

Each segment of the DNA double strand that breaks down.

Each protein fold that is denaturing.

Everything was analyzed clearly.

Su Yuan finished reading it.

"Your design is indeed quite good."

He actually complimented her.

"It really follows the pattern of a human terminal illness. Apoptosis pathway, telomere shortening mechanism, immune system collapse. Textbook level."

His tone suddenly changed.

"But you forgot one thing."

The nine-colored original code in the palm of his hand lit up silently.

"I came from the virtual world to the real world."

Su Yuan pressed his right hand against the pale white patch on his chest.

"My stomach is never picky about food."

The operating frequency of the endogenous universe suddenly increased.

It wasn't an unfolding of higher-dimensional laws. It was the internal universe that Su Yuan had forged in countless battles, with its digestive modules reconfigured from the ground up.

The new module is extremely crude.

Extremely direct.

It does not handle high-dimensional code.

It deals with the laws of physics.

Within Su Yuan's inner universe, a stomach capable of digesting the laws of real matter was forcibly grown.

The stomach wall has no high-dimensional patterns. It only has the most primitive gravitational field folds and the most violent physical energy compression layers.

"You think I didn't see through the trickery in that photo?"

Su Yuan raised his voice three octaves.

"I'm not only going to eat your raw code."

He pressed down hard with his right hand.

His palm embedded itself directly into the pale white patch on his chest.

"It even works perfectly with your physical execution environment."

Those deadly pale patches were sucked into the inner universe the moment Su Yuan pressed down.

They weren't expelled.

It wasn't cured.

It is digested.

After the pale, necrotic cells entered the inner universe, they were crushed and purified by the newly generated physical stomach. The physical laws of "terminal illness" contained within the necrotic structure were extracted and reacted extremely violently with Su Yuan's original dark gold source material.

The first pale white patch on Su Yuan's chest disappeared.

Instead, there are brighter, denser, and deeper dark gold fire patterns than before.

Rough. Violent. With an extremely realistic, physical metallic texture.

The second patch disappeared.

The third piece. The fourth piece.

All the pallor was devoured one by one in a very short time. With each piece of pallor that disappeared, a dark gold fire pattern appeared. These fire patterns were not conceptual lines, but real, physical reinforcement structures embedded in the muscle fibers.

After Su Yuan's four-meter-tall dark gold body had completely consumed the terminal illness in his chest, it became even harder than before.

It's gotten heavier.

It's more realistic now.

The station chief's hand was still raised in mid-air.

His complexion was beyond description.

"shot."

His voice cracked.

"shot!"

Dozens of special mechs opened fire simultaneously.

A solid armor-piercing projectile, propelled purely by physical force, shot out from the thick barrel. The orange-red muzzle flash from the gunpowder propelled the gun, filling the small ward with explosions.

The bullets are real.

Tungsten core armor penetration. Initial velocity: 3,000 meters per second.

It hit Su Yuan.

Thud. Thud thud thud thud.

Su Yuan remained completely still.

Not even a white mark was left on the dark gold bone armor.

The armor-piercing projectile was crushed into an extremely thin lead disc at the point of impact, and rolled on the ground with a clattering sound.

The second salvo.

Su Yuan didn't even blink.

The effect of a bullet hitting him was about the same as throwing beans at a wall.

Round three. Round four.

The barrel overheated, and the tip started to glow red.

Su Yuan stood amidst the hail of bullets, glancing down at the pile of spent shell casings that had rolled to his feet.

Then he looked up at the stationmaster.

Very far away. Inside the safe house.

The middle-aged female researcher's hand, holding the coffee cup, froze in mid-air.

The e-cigarette in the bald male researcher's mouth fell onto the table.

The young researcher's water glass slipped from his hand and shattered on the ground with a crash.

They were all crammed in front of the CRT monitor.

on the screen.

The dark golden figure stood in the very center of the barrage of bullet comments. Completely still. Not even changing its posture.

The middle-aged female researcher stared at the armor-piercing shell fragments that had been flattened into thin pancakes at the impact points on the screen.

Her eyes darted around. Her mouth opened and closed. Closed and opened again.

The bald researcher slowly straightened his upper body.

His voice was so dry it could spark.

"...Tungsten-core armor-piercing projectile."

"A tungsten-core armor-piercing projectile with a muzzle velocity of 3,000 meters."

"Can't be penetrated?"

No one answered him.

The young researcher's eyes were wide open. His hands gripped the edge of the monitor so tightly that his knuckles turned white.

"This is wrong. This is wrong. This is wrong."

He said it three times.

"The terminal illness anchor has clearly been triggered. His cells should be completely collapsing. His body should be in its most vulnerable state. Pure physical attacks should be most effective against him."

He suddenly turned his head to look at the middle-aged female researcher.

"How could he eat a terminal illness?!"

The middle-aged female researcher finally couldn't hold onto the coffee cup any longer. The paper cup slipped from her fingers, coffee spilled onto the table, and the brown liquid dripped down the edge of the table and onto the floor.

She stared at the dark golden monster on the screen, her lips trembling very slightly.

"What exactly is it?"

In the ward.

Su Yuan stopped wasting words.

His legs suddenly exerted force.

It was not displacement driven by higher-dimensional laws. It was a pure physical muscle burst belonging to the four-meter-tall dark gold body.

The floor exploded.

Su Yuan's foot pierced through the plastic floor, causing the cement base to crack and steel bars to emerge from the cross-section.

The four-meter-tall dark gold figure broke the sound barrier as it rushed out.

The air was torn apart. An extremely loud sonic boom exploded in the ward, and tiles on all four walls flew off in unison.

Not even a fleeting image remained.

The station chief's pupils suddenly contracted.

He didn't see the process.

He only saw the result.

A large, dark golden hand was already gripping his neck.

Bring your five fingers together. Lift them up.

The stationmaster's feet left the ground. The hem of his white coat fluttered helplessly in the air, and his gold-rimmed glasses were knocked askew by the blast wave, hanging on one ear.

Su Yuan carried him with one hand.

The station chief instinctively grabbed Su Yuan's wrist. His ten fingers dug into the dark gold bone armor, two of his nails snapping back.

His face flushed bright red. His legs were kicking aimlessly in the air.

Su Yuan used his free left hand to pull out the old photograph with yellowed edges from the inner universe of his chest.

Snapped.

The photo was taken right in the face of the station chief.

The back of the photo was facing outwards. The neatly written words "001, Happy Birthday" were right in front of the stationmaster's pale lips.

"You said this is a physical anchor point."

Su Yuan's voice was extremely calm.

Yes. It is.

The stationmaster's eyes rolled down halfway. His mouth opened and closed with great difficulty, squeezing out muffled breaths from deep in his throat.

"But you overlooked one thing."

In Su Yuan's left eye, the pure white of denial in the tricolor vertical pupil suddenly lit up.

It's not an overwhelming expansion. It's an extremely precise, surgical-level focus.

The three-colored divine fire surged from his left eye, but did not spread outwards.

They traveled down Su Yuan's arm, through the dark gold bone armor, across his palm, and directly into the hand that was stuck in Su Yuan's hand.

Then it burrowed through the skin on the stationmaster's neck.

The three-colored energy flowed rapidly through the stationmaster's body.

Along the carotid artery.

Along the cervical spine.

It reaches the brain directly.

Su Yuan's talent of unifying all things accurately detected an abnormally high-density metallic object inside the headmaster's skull.

Neural implants.

A standard communication chip for senior personnel at the first observation station. Directly connected to the physical local area network within the observation station.

Su Yuan smiled.

A cruel smile curled at the corners of his mouth.

He compressed the entire output of the Three-Colored Divine Fire, without resorting to a massive, overwhelming display. He compressed it into an extremely condensed "real-world electromagnetic pulse" powerful enough to penetrate any electronic component.

Then, this mass was forcibly injected into the physical network of the first observation station through a neural implant in the station chief's brain, acting as a springboard.

The station chief's pupils dilated to their maximum size at that moment.

His body convulsed violently.

It wasn't because of suffocation.

It was because his neural implant exploded.

A wisp of extremely thin white smoke drifted out of his left ear canal, carrying the smell of burnt plastic.

at the same time.

The entire first observation station.

A twelve-story building.

The lights went out.

It's not turning off. It's changing the color.

The standard white lighting on all floors turned dark gold and blood red, layer by layer, from the top floor to the basement, within three seconds.

The pale corridor had been transformed into a deep red slaughterhouse.

The excitation frequency of the gas inside the fluorescent tube was altered. The light emanating from the lampshade had an extremely strong metallic smell.

At the end of each corridor, the green emergency exit indicator lights had all turned dark gold, and the text on them had been forcibly rewritten.

It originally said "EXIT".

The code is "001".

Inside the safe house.

Three CRT monitors simultaneously went black.

Then restart.

The scene is no longer in a hospital ward.

The image is of a face.

Su Yuan's face.

The three-colored vertical pupils filled the entire CRT screen. The patterns on the dark gold bone armor appeared particularly crude in the low-resolution image.

Every pore on the face is clearly visible.

The middle-aged female researcher screamed in agony.

The chair lurched backward. Her back slammed against the wall.

The bald male researcher's legs went weak, and he slid off the chair and onto the floor.

The young researcher lay paralyzed on the spot, his mouth agape, unable to utter a sound.

The last remaining cup of coffee on the table, which hadn't broken, was knocked over. The brown liquid spread across the surface and seeped into the gaps between the keyboard keys.

In the ward.

The system motherboards of dozens of special mechs were simultaneously pierced by the dark gold pulse.

There was no struggle involved.

The operating system was completely overwritten in a fraction of a second. The original command code belonging to the observation station was completely erased. The new code was extremely concise and brutal, containing only one core instruction.

Loyalty to 001.

Dozens of three-meter-tall dark gray mechs simultaneously dropped their heavy annihilation guns.

The metallic clang of the gun hitting the floor echoed down the corridor for a long time.

then.

The hydraulic knee joints of dozens of mechs bent simultaneously.

One knee.

Kneel down.

The metal knee ground against the shattered glass, producing an extremely piercing sound as the glass broke.

Dozens of massive steel structures knelt neatly at Su Yuan's feet.

The head of the station was hanging in Su Yuan's hands.

His gold-rimmed glasses had completely fallen off. One temple was stuck inside his collar.

He wanted to speak.

The mouth opened. The muscles in the throat were moving.

However, his vocal cords had already been burned by the aftershocks of the dark gold pulse.

He couldn't make a sound.

Su Yuan looked down at him.

There was no anger in the tricolored vertical pupils. There was no pleasure.

Only the utter indifference of a judge.

The three-colored divine fire seeped from Su Yuan's palm.

not much.

Just enough.

The stationmaster's body turned gray starting from his toes.

It's not a conceptual dissolution at a higher dimension. It's the most realistic physical combustion. Molecular bonds break at extreme temperatures. Organic matter is oxidized and decomposed one by one at the microscopic level.

From feet to legs. From legs to waist. From waist to chest.

The entire process was extremely quiet.

There was no screaming, because the vocal cords were damaged.

There was only the faint rustling sound of ashes falling. It sounded like someone rubbing dry mud off their hands from afar.

The last wisp of grayish-white powder drifted out from between Su Yuan's fingers. The gold-rimmed glasses, having lost their grip, clattered to the ground and broke in two.

Station Chief.

Gone.

All that remained were a pair of leather shoe soles and a small pile of dust, lying quietly on the plastic floor.

Inside the Desolate Wasteland train carriage.

Wang Hu's mouth had been open for a long time. He couldn't close it.

Xiao Huo's golden pupils lit up. The holographic panel on the screen was mostly back online, with the highest administrator's permission icon prominently displayed in the upper left corner.

"The owner's vital signs have all improved."

She sprang up, her tail thrashing wildly.

"The physical systems of the train and the observation station have been successfully docked. Weapon authorization has been restored."

Wang Hu finally closed his mouth.

He swallowed hard; his throat was dry.

"Is there anything in this world that he can't handle?"

No one answered him.

Dark gold and blood red lights enveloped the entire First Observatory.

The pulse that Su Yuan took over did not stop.

The dark golden electromagnetic overwrite signal spread rapidly along the physical optical cables in the building's foundation.

The fiber optic cable is laid through the underground pipeline network of the entire building complex, extending from Area B to Area A, and from Area A to the surrounding substation.

The substation's high-voltage cables connect to the city-level power supply network further away.

The pulse burst through the wall of the first observation station.

It savagely poured into the power system of the massive, real wasteland city outside.

First, there was the row of streetlights outside the main gate of the observation station.

Six standard sodium lamps simultaneously changed their emission frequency. The warm orange light turned into a dark gold.

Then there was a whole wall of GG symbols across the street. A dozen or so electronic screens simultaneously went black and then lit up again, all displaying the same symbol.

001.

Dark gold. Extremely dazzling.

Then there are those further away.

The iconic skyscrapers in the wasteland city center. The LED light strips on the facade change color from the bottom up, the dark golden light climbing up layer by layer, forty floors, sixty floors, one hundred floors, all the way to the giant neon sign on the roof.

All the neon signs were dyed a dark gold color.

The originally colorful wasteland city night scene was unified into a single color within a few dozen seconds.

Dark gold.

Tens of thousands of signs, screens, streetlights, and traffic lights.

All of them are dark gold.

On the streets of the wasteland city, pedestrians stopped in their tracks.

look up.

All I see are 001s.

Inside the core monitoring hall of an underground fortress.

More than a dozen giant LCD screens are mounted on the curved wall. The screens originally displayed real-time surveillance footage of various districts.

It's all black now.

Then it all lit up.

A half-body portrait popped up on more than a dozen screens at the same time.

Dark gold bone armor. Three-colored vertical pupils. Four meters tall.

A line of large red text scrolls at the bottom of the screen.

"Subject 001 has taken over all authority at the first observation station."

The highest-ranking official in the monitoring hall sprang up from his swivel chair.

The cup broke. The documents scattered.

He stared at the face that filled more than a dozen screens, his back soaked with cold sweat through three layers of clothing.

The communications hub of another, more remote military base.

The officer on duty was dozing off in his chair.

The communication terminal suddenly emitted an extremely piercing forced broadcast signal.

He was woken up and looked at the screen with bleary eyes.

Then his pupils suddenly contracted.

The chair tipped over backward.

He fell to the ground, landing on his buttocks, and gasped in pain, but he didn't care at all.

The three-colored vertical pupils on the screen were staring at him.

Further away.

In the slums on the edge of the wasteland city, thousands of old public display screens simultaneously switched their images.

In the crowded shantytown passageway, everyone stopped and looked up at the dark gold face appearing on the dilapidated screen above them.

No one spoke.

It was so quiet that only the whistling of the wind through the gaps in the metal sheet could be heard.

Then someone knelt down.

I don't know why.

It might be that absolute, authoritative pressure that seeped into your very bones, transmitted through the broadcast signal.

It could also be purely instinct.

One, two, in a row, in a patch.

The Devourer hovered above the ward.

Su Yuan bent down and picked something up from next to the pile of ashes on the ground.

The administrator's access chip.

The thumb-sized, rhomboid, transparent crystal contained extremely precise nanoscale circuits. Its surface was still covered in dust, which Su Yuan rubbed clean with his thumb.

He walked back to the Devourer.

The car door closed behind me.

"Small fire."

"exist!"

Su Yuan tossed the chip over.

"Connect the projector."

Xiao Huo caught it with both hands, turned around and inserted the chip into the data interface on the side of the main control panel.

The projector is turned on.

A huge 3D holographic map suddenly unfolded in the center of the carriage.

Interstellar level.

Not a virtual universe. It's a real physical interstellar map.

Hundreds of star systems, resource planets, military bases, and colony coordinates are densely marked on the map.

Su Yuan stood directly in front of the map.

The cold light of the dark gold bone armor reflected the blue and white projection of the holographic map.

His tricolored vertical pupils scanned from the edge of the map, looking at it with extreme patience, coordinate by coordinate, towards the center.

When you scan the most central location on the map.

He stopped.

The three-colored vertical pupils suddenly focused.

The pupils contracted to their limit.

The coordinates at the very center of the map.

Those coordinates that should have been marked with geophysical location.

It doesn't say "Earth" on it.

It consists of six characters.

"Embryo culture dish number 000".

A progress bar is also attached next to the coordinates.

An extremely refined, flat UI design with beveled edges. The background color is gray. The fill color is scarlet.

The scarlet color almost filled the entire progress bar.

Only a trace of gray remained.

Su Yuan stared at the progress bar.

The progress numbers glowed with a scarlet light in the holographic projection.

99.97%.

99.98%.

99.99%.

100%.

The progress bar is full.

The entire interstellar map suddenly flashed.

Then the coordinate icon for "Embryo Culture Dish No. 000" changed from blue and white to an extremely glaring scarlet.

At the same second.

A dull jolt came from the undercarriage of the Devourer.

It did not originate from inside the train.

It comes from extremely distant deep space.

The tail of the small fire exploded.

Next to the scarlet coordinate on the holographic map, a line of automatically generated system prompts popped up.

The words are red.

It's flashing.

"Number 000 - Hatching complete."