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

A cold, energy hand gripped the back of Su Yuan's neck tightly. A chilling, piercing pain shot through his very bones. Behind him, a translucent, pale blue female figure stood, its outline identical to Ji Yun's fourteen years ago. She lowered her head, her synthesized female voice filled with sorrow.

"I'm sorry, Number Seven. Please become the new lock cylinder."

On the black background of the main control screen, two lines of blood-red characters flashed wildly.

The remains of the key

[The New Warden]

The air in the entire control room felt heavy as lead. An invisible, irreversible force of rule, traveling along the contact point on his neck, forcibly instilled a protocol into Su Yuan's brain. The system was forcing him to choose between two options immediately: die or become a prisoner.

Su Yuan didn't turn around, his hands gripping the control panel, his knuckles turning white from the force. He felt his consciousness being torn apart.

Wang Hu's eyes were bloodshot.

"Let go of Lao Su!"

He let out a beastly roar, turned and pushed aside the chair in front of the control panel, lunging at the secondary control panel of the 012 forward probe trolley. Blinding sparks erupted from the tens-of-tons-heavy 012 forward probe trolley's outer shell, and the massive mechanical crane arm shot up with a vengeance. Regardless of how cramped the space inside the carriage was, Wang Hu pushed the power directly to the red line.

boom.

The alloy crane arm tore through the top panel of the control room and slammed down with tremendous force towards the blue phantom behind Su Yuan. He disregarded the consequences; even if this arm injured Su Yuan as well, he couldn't let that thing control the lead vehicle.

"A meaningless struggle."

The phantom didn't even turn its head; its voice remained calm.

The crane arm got stuck half a meter from the phantom image. No sound of physical impact was heard. The heavy-duty alloy-cast robotic arm began to weather away inch by inch from the point of contact. The extremely hard, high-density metal turned into fine black powder within half a second, falling down in a flurry.

boom.

A piercing gunshot exploded in their ears. Tang Lan knelt on one knee, a specially made heavy sniper rifle slung over her shoulder, the muzzle smoke still rising. A large-caliber armor-piercing round accurately struck the afterimage's face. The bullet vanished into thin air the instant it entered a half-meter radius, leaving not even a speck of iron dust.

Absolute rule suppression.

This was a level of firepower that conventional firepower couldn't reach. The control room fell into a deathly silence; even breathing seemed a luxury. Wang Hu bit his lip until it bled, the taste of blood spreading in his mouth. Tang Lan's finger froze on the trigger.

The force pulling at his consciousness grew stronger. Su Yuan's vision began to darken at the edges. The blood-red characters on the main control screen flashed at a dizzying speed.

"Countdown to be enforced. Five, four..." The ghostly voice counted down.

Su Yuan's left hand, which was resting on the table, suddenly emitted a contradictory light. It was the Paradox Armor Gauntlet. This piece of equipment, which had just been fused from liquid metal, was triggered under the suppression of this absolute rule. It was the "paradox" left behind by JY-003, whose characteristic was to create a logical deadlock between the virtual and the real, existence and non-existence.

The light spread along Su Yuan's left arm, reaching his neck.

The illusory energy hand gripping the back of his neck produced a strange, high-frequency flicker. A double image appeared on Su Yuan's neck. One half was in a controlled physical state; the other half was in an untouched, illusory state. These two contradictory concepts were clashing violently at the same point in space.

It's sizzling!

A piercing static crackled. The control logic was forcibly ripped open. Su Yuan's neck jerked forward, his entire body rolling to the right in the flickering gap. The back of his neck felt empty, and the soul-crushing chill vanished instantly. He rolled once on the ground and landed steadily, the Paradox Armor on his left arm dimming slightly, several small cracks appearing on its surface.

He straightened up and looked directly at the blurry face.

"You are not her." Su Yuan's voice was icy cold. "You are just a substandard program bound by the concept of 'protection'."

The phantom's body trembled violently and uncontrollably. A flicker of human pain and shock crossed her previously calm face. Those words pierced her very core logic.

A nauseating vibration emanated from the depths of the JY-01 maintenance depot. There was no sound, only frequency. It was the power of the ancient being, the entity from the abyss, that had just been awakened. This force bypassed all electronic devices and slammed into the brainstem of everyone in the carriage.

Jiang Yu screamed in agony, clutching his missing arm and collapsing to his knees. The remaining metallic remnants within his body attempted to burst forth, to pay homage to the being lurking beneath the earth. Qin Yan's transponder emitted a plume of black smoke and burned completely.

The grand will spoke, its tone thick with mockery and seduction.

"Child...look, she wants to turn you into a cage."

The alloy armor plates on the ground were twisting, and the pitch-black energy transformed into a dozen tentacles, which snaked and climbed up along the cracks in the maintenance station, staring at the Devourer like venomous snakes through the vehicle window.

"Accept my power. Tear her apart. You will be free, no longer anyone's pawn. This lock can no longer hold me."

Deep within the ruins below, the once invincible JY-001 and the dark gold giant claw K-001 lay sprawled on the ground. On Xiao Huo's radar screen, the signal sources representing these two monsters trembled violently, actively compressing their energy to a minimum, not daring to even entertain the intention to resist. They were filled with fear.

The seductive whispers still echoed in Su Yuan's mind. Su Yuan stood in front of the control panel, looking at the menacing dark tentacles outside the car window, then at the two flashing blood-red options on the screen, and finally staring at the undulating blue phantom opposite him.

He laughed. His laugh was full of violence and mockery.

"Prisoner or pawn, it doesn't matter." Su Yuan raised his hand, flicking the dust off the back of it. "My path has never been dictated by others!"

He whirled around and slammed his hands down on the physical buttons on the control panel. His fingers flew across the keyboard, leaving afterimages. A series of rapid, piercing keystrokes erupted from the keys.

The bloody words on the screen were still flashing. The two multiple-choice questions were a fixed framework given by the underlying rules. But Su Yuan now had leverage. A minute ago, he had forcibly pieced together the complete permissions for JY-01 maintenance station 6/6: bio-fusion, logic center, weapon system, cooling system, energy matrix, and formatted master control.

He is the person with the highest authority over this "lock".

"Since the system likes to give multiple-choice questions." Su Yuan's input speed soared to the limit, and hundreds of complex protocol instructions were forcibly injected into the underlying logical judgment.

Logical central authority activated. Local rules rewritten.

Format the master control permissions and unlock them.

"Then I'll add a third option myself!"

Snapped!

He slammed down the rightmost confirmation button, and the keycap cracked.

The blood-red image on the main control screen suddenly froze. The entire system crashed for two seconds. The "blue" phantom raised its head, its face showing an expression of extreme horror.

"What did you do?!" she screamed shrilly.

A blinding white slit suddenly tore open between the black background and red text on the screen. A set of eerie blue code forcefully pushed aside the surrounding blood-red text, domineeringly occupying the very center of the screen, forming a brand new option with its borders flashing with dazzling white light.

Destroy the chessboard

"You're insane!" "Blue" lunged at Su Yuan recklessly. Her previously icy body suddenly became burning hot, a sign of energy overload. "Once the lock is destroyed, what's underneath will be completely free! It will devour the entire universe!"

Su Yuan dodged her lunge by sidestepping, and slammed his left elbow into the [Global Execution] lever on the main control panel, pushing it all the way down.

"Then let it out." Su Yuan's voice boomed over the roar of the engine and the sound of the outside world cracking. "I want to see what it has left without its cage."

Instruction locked. Execute.

The option to "Destroy the chessboard" was activated. The formatting protocol, which had been in standby mode, suddenly erupted. Its target was not living beings, nor any train, but the maintenance station itself—the massive "lock" of the JY-01 maintenance station.

Hundreds of thousands of eerie blue data chains suddenly lit up from the depths of the earth, the alloy dome, and the surrounding walls. They were like countless ultra-thin, ten-thousand-meter-long blades intertwined into a net, beginning to dissect the underlying structure of this space prison without leaving any blind spots.

"No--!"

"Blue" let out a piercing scream. A ghostly blue blade pierced through her body. Her purpose in existence was to guard this "lock," her life bound to this space. With the lock broken, she was uprooted. Her legs were the first to disintegrate. Cold energy transformed into scattered blue specks of light, dissipating in all directions.

The immense dark will deep beneath the earth roared in a distorted voice. The entire abyss trembled violently. Huge chunks of rock and metal debris were hurled upwards against gravity. The indiscriminate cutting chains of the formatting protocol sliced ​​through the dark entities clinging to the cage.

As the cage was destroyed, the repressive essence imprinted on it was forcibly detonated. The dark entity was severely damaged. Before it could fully regain its freedom, it was stripped bare by the suicidal destruction of the building.

"Hold on tight!"

Su Yuan roared. The maintenance station completely collapsed. Space was like a piece of tempered glass struck by a heavy hammer, riddled with countless cracks. Gravity, sense of direction, and air pressure were completely out of control. The Devourer tilted violently to the right at a forty-five-degree angle, its tracks frantically slipping and creating walls of fire on the cracked armor plates.

"Blue Flame Core! Overload Output! Full Power!"

As the command was given, the eerie blue flames inside the refining furnace suddenly expanded, the intense heat scorching dark red patterns onto the furnace's outer walls. The Devourer spewed a violent jet of energy from its stern, its hundred-ton hull forcefully lifting itself off the ground amidst the rippled spatial storm, smashing through the collapsed maze of wreckage above, and hurtling towards the relatively stable exit of the fissure on the radar.

The control room shook like a washing machine. Wang Hu clung tightly to the anchor post, while Tang Lan strapped herself to her sniper position. Only the chest and upper body of "Blue's" body remained. As she watched the Devourer emerge from the ruins, the fear in her eyes faded, and her blurred face became exceptionally clear.

That was Ji Yun's face. No longer a fake simulation, but a fragment of a deeply buried memory.

A split second before her head completely disintegrated into specks of light, a wisp of extremely pure, blindingly blue primal energy shot out from between her brows. This energy landed precisely on the Paradox Armor on Su Yuan's left arm. The cracked and nearly shattered armor instantly healed upon contact with this energy. A blurry mark appeared on the gray-black metallic surface.

The character "云" (cloud).

The moment the mark took shape, the phantom completely dissipated. Not a single word was left behind.

A tremendous sense of weightlessness enveloped the Devourer. The flames spewing from the tail of the vehicle twisted and deformed in the collapsing spatial turbulence. The JY-01 maintenance station behind it was like a black hole collapsing inward, sucking in tons of scrap metal and rocks, which were then pulverized by the formatted light chain.

In the center of that collapsing void, the side wall of the mobile refining furnace suddenly sprang open. A dark golden metal conduit, taking advantage of the half-second gap before the space was completely annihilated, forcefully plunged into it. The mechanical claw at the end of the conduit ripped out an inconspicuous piece of black metal from the void.

"drop--"

"Unknown anomalous substance detected." Xiao Huo's voice pierced through the roar in the control room, tinged with an unusual stutter. "Unable to match the periodic table. Contains a large number of undeciphered rule runes. Tentative level: Conceptual."

"Seal it into isolation chamber zero." Su Yuan didn't turn his head, gripping the rudder tightly with both hands and pushing the power to the limit.

boom!

The Devourer crashed through the last barrier of space and burst out of the collapsed singularity. Its heavy tracks slammed into the metallic debris-strewn rock formations of the deep abyss. The immense recoil caused the shock absorption system to emit a groaning groan.

The vehicle slid for over a hundred meters due to its immense inertia before finally coming to a stop, leaving two deep, smoking, charred ruts.

Quiet. Absolutely quiet.

The sounds that had previously shattered people's brains—whether it was K-001, JY-001, or that dark entity—had all vanished without a trace.

A long time passed.

"roar--!"

A furious roar erupted from the depths of the void singularity behind them, causing large chunks of rock above the abyss to crumble. The voice was filled with the venom of someone who had been toyed with and the murderous intent of someone who had been severely wounded. But the roar faded into the distance, and the dark entity was left behind in this collapsing space.

It escaped. But it paid an extremely heavy price.

The emergency red light in the control room flashed twice before finally turning into a steady green light. All alarms were deactivated.

"Inspect the damage to the vehicle. Take a headcount of the passengers in each carriage." Su Yuan loosened his grip on the steering wheel, which had almost crushed it, and leaned back in his seat.

Wang Hu slumped to the ground, panting heavily, his back soaked with sweat. Tang Lan rubbed her numb shoulder and silently removed the magazine from the specially made heavy sniper rifle. Jiang Yu, who had been convulsing in the corner, finally stopped and got up, supporting himself on the floor with his single arm.

After flickering a few times, the main control screen lit up again.

The crimson options and eerie blue data streams that had filled the screen vanished. In the center of the screen, a vast and boundless map of an unknown star system appeared. It was a coordinate system far larger and deeper than the Pangu solar system.

In a remote corner of the star map, a tiny point of light, no bigger than a pinhead, appeared. It was a coordinate they had never seen before.

The light continued to flicker, faint but persistent.

Two glaring white characters were automatically generated next to it, without any additional explanation, threat, or options.

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