Survival in an apartment, starting with a stroke of luck on a plane

Inside the Xuandu Purple Mansion, wisps of purple mist flowed slowly in the air, carrying a warm sandalwood scent.

Lin Yu examined the Azure Rose several times, turning it over and over, and only after confirming that the runes on the gun were all normal did he put it into his storage space.

He was about to get up and go to the small world to check on the two prisoners when the communication talisman lit up again.

This time it wasn't a text message, but a voice communication request. The silvery-white light of the communication symbol was a few shades brighter than usual, carrying an unusually rapid pulsating frequency.

Lin Yu's brow twitched slightly. Old Chen rarely used voice communication, let alone at this frequency—unless something serious had happened.

He connected the call.

Old Chen's voice came through the talisman, much lower than during the last call, carrying an unusual gravity: "Lin Yu, something terrible has happened?"

"you say."

"I'm downstairs at your apartment building. Let's talk in person."

The call ended quickly, giving Lin Yu no chance to ask further questions. Old Chen's tone was brief, as if he didn't have time to explain much over the phone.

Lin Yu stood up from the futon, walked out of the Xuandu Purple Mansion, passed through the living room, and opened the apartment door.

The motion-activated lights in the corridor cast a dim yellow glow. Old Chen was standing at the top of the stairs, his white coat wrinkled and collar open, gold-rimmed glasses perched on his nose, the lenses covered with a fine layer of dust.

When he saw Lin Yu come out, he didn't exchange pleasantries and walked straight over.

"Come inside and talk." Old Chen's voice was even hoarser than it was on the message string, as if he hadn't slept in a long time.

Lin Yu stepped aside to clear the doorway.

Old Chen walked into the living room, but instead of heading to the sofa, he stood still and quickly scanned the room before finally fixing his gaze on the half-closed door of the Xuandu Purple Mansion.

"Your place is quite peaceful," Old Chen said, his tone ambiguous, whether it was envy or感慨 (a feeling of mixed emotions, including admiration or regret).

"Sit down." Lin Yu sat down on the sofa. Jin Ling wasn't there, and his little world was more comfortable than the living room, so he didn't plan to come out for the time being.

Old Chen sat down opposite him, the hem of his white coat stained with several dark red marks, like dried blood or the sap of some kind of plant.

He pulled a cigarette case from his pocket, took one out, and put it in his mouth. Then, as if remembering something, he paused and looked at Lin Yu: "Mind?"

"Go ahead and smoke."

Old Chen lit a cigarette, took a deep drag, and the smoke slowly drifted away under the dim light.

He leaned back in his chair, his tense shoulders finally relaxing a bit, but the seriousness between his brows did not disappear.

"Things are bad," Old Chen said, getting straight to the point without any preamble. "That Ice Nightmare you encountered, and that assassin—do you know why they were able to get right up to your apartment door?"

Lin Yu leaned back on the sofa: "A spatial passage?"

"Yes." Old Chen flicked his cigarette ash, his tone becoming more serious. "Just now, the system experienced a large-scale fluctuation. It wasn't an update, nor maintenance; it was a fluctuation in the underlying rules. All community administrators lost contact at the same time."

Lin Yu frowned.

all?

"It was a complete disappearance; the connection between all community administrators and the command system above was interrupted, lasting for about ten minutes."

When it was restored, all administrator privileges were compromised.

Most noticeably—the boundary barrier between the community world and the void has thinned.

He paused, then added, "It's not just a little thin. It's so thin that it can be punched right through."

Lin Yu's expression remained unchanged, but he was quickly processing the meaning of those words.

The barrier between the Void and the Community World is thinning, meaning that things from the Void can more easily enter the Community.

The reason why Ice Nightmare and the assassin were able to get directly to his apartment door was not because they were highly skilled, but because they no longer needed to be highly skilled.

"Can things from the void come in directly now?"

"It's not just the void." Old Chen stubbed out his cigarette on the edge of the coffee table, then took another one from the pack, not lighting it immediately, but holding it between his fingers. "The boundaries between all game worlds are also thinning."

From yesterday to today, three neighborhoods have reported detecting energy signatures from other game worlds in the vicinity.

He lit a cigarette and took a deep drag: "It's not cross-dimensional teleportation, it's direct connection."

It's like two adjacent rooms separated by a thin sheet of paper; the paper thins, and you can hear what's happening next door.

Lin Yu paused for a moment.

The situation he had encountered before—fragments of the Old Gods' power and Abyssal energy appearing near the real world—now appears to be not an isolated event, but rather a loosening of boundaries on a larger scale.

The fact that the timing of the administrator's disappearance coincides with the timing of the thinning of the void barrier indicates a causal relationship between the two events.

"Is the disappearance of the administrator related to the thinning of boundaries?"

"That's most likely the case." Old Chen flicked his cigarette ash. "I'm still investigating the specific mechanism, but currently, it seems that the boundary between the administrator and the community world is deeply intertwined."

When the administrator is present, the barriers are continuously reinforced by system rules.

Once the administrator disconnects, the reinforcement disappears, and the barrier naturally thins.

He moved the ashtray onto the coffee table and continued, "And it doesn't get thinner evenly; there are gaps. Some places get thinner faster, and some places get thinner slower."

Before you encountered Ice Nightmare, his passage came through a relatively thin crack.

"What about other residential communities? Are there similar situations?"

"Not just similar." Old Chen looked at Lin Yu, his eyes behind his gold-rimmed glasses carrying a rare expression. "So far, eleven neighborhoods have reported being attacked by void creatures."

Most were ordinary void distorters, but two reports indicated an organized attack—not a scattered mob, but a line of soldiers entering.

Lined up. The word itself says a lot.

Lin Yu tapped his fingers lightly on his knee. The organized entry of void creatures into the community world meant that there were indeed organized forces in the void taking advantage of the thinning barrier to infiltrate.

"The Council of Eternal Night? The Hand of Ashes?"

"Both are possible. Both are also possible. The Hand of Ashes has a motive; you just killed one of their high-ranking members, so revenge is readily available. The Council of Eternal Night has been operating in the Void for so long; their understanding of the Void paths is certainly deeper than that of the Hand of Ashes."

Old Chen took another drag of his cigarette, smoke spilling from the corner of his mouth: "And there's an even worse possibility—they're not all doing their own thing, but rather someone is coordinating everything."

The living room was silent for a few seconds. Jin Ling peeked her head out from the crack in the door of Xuandu Purple Mansion, glanced at the two people sitting in the living room, and then withdrew.

Lin Yu incorporated this information into his assessment. "Do you have enough manpower on your end?"

"Not enough. The Balance Organization doesn't have many legendary-level units on staff to begin with, and now that every neighborhood is having problems, they can't spare the manpower to be stationed at a single point full-time." Old Chen stubbed out his half-smoked cigarette in the ashtray. "So I came here, firstly to tell you the situation, and secondly to remind you—don't rely too much on the neighborhood's defense system."

It's unreliable now, and it may become increasingly unreliable; today's gaps at the boundary could lead to a complete crack tomorrow.

Old Chen put away the cigarette pack, stood up, and said, "That's the situation. Just keep that in mind."

I still need to go to other neighborhoods to make sure the message gets through. You over there…”

"I'll see how it goes," Lin Yu said.

Old Chen nodded, said no more pleasantries, and turned to walk towards the door.

He paused at the door, turned back to look at Lin Yu as if he wanted to say something, but in the end he just sighed, pushed the door open and walked out.

Footsteps echoed in the corridor, gradually fading away and soon disappearing in the direction of the stairs.

Lin Yu sat on the sofa, not getting up immediately. He reviewed the information Old Chen had brought in his mind, then brought up the system panel.

Administrators disconnected, boundary barriers thinning, the Void and the game world connected—what are the root causes of these changes? How did the fluctuations in the underlying rules of the system occur? No one can answer these questions, but one trend is clear: if the Void is truly under unified control, this infiltration won't be a one-off event. The Nightmare's attack was just the beginning; more will follow.

He rose and entered the Xuandu Purple Mansion, pausing briefly before the entrance to the small world before stepping inside. A dark golden fungal carpet spread out beneath his feet, the air filled with the warm, moist scent unique to biomass. The main nest stood silently not far away, its surface covered by a thick chitinous carapace, the energy patterns on the carapace flickering slowly in the dim light.

He walked along the fungal carpet passage toward the main nest.

At the entrance to the small world, three worker bees were lined up carrying something. Upon seeing him approach, they immediately stopped, their antennae drooping slightly as if in greeting. Lin Yu walked past them without stopping.

The interior of the main hive appears more spacious than the exterior. Hatching chambers are distributed across different levels, each with different functional zones—the top level is the queen's command center, the middle level is the hatching area for regular combat units, and the bottom level is the breeding area for special units.

As soon as Lin Yu reached the entrance of the central passage, he heard a sound coming from a corner deep within the main nest.

"...I told you, I don't know! Even if you dissect me and analyze me, I still won't know! I'm just a gofer; the boss tells me to come, so I come!"

The voice belonged to a young man, with a slightly resigned tone, and surprisingly, he had quite a bit of energy, not like someone who had just been captured.

In the corner, a cell had spontaneously grown from the dark golden chitinous carapace.

The cell walls were thick and smooth, with several insect-like eyes embedded in the inner walls, locking onto the scene inside the cell from different angles.

At the cell door, two larger beetles crouched on either side, guarding the entrance.

There were two people locked in the cell.

A tall, thin man wrapped in black bandages sat motionless against the wall at the far end of the cell, his gloomy eyes staring at the cell door.

Another woman with silver hair and a ponytail sat on the other side, facing the doorway, her tone clearly impatient.

The worker bees had already wrapped her in several layers of reinforced spider silk, binding her tightly from her shoulders to her ankles.

She tried to break free, but the spider silk was specially prepared by the queen insect for targets with high energy resistance, and the more she struggled, the tighter it became.

Lin Yu walked to the cell door and stood there, looking inside through the transparent observation hole in the chitinous wall.

The woman with silver hair and a ponytail seemed to sense someone outside. She raised her head, her phoenix eyes looking towards the observation port, her gaze filled with vigilance and a hint of suppressed anger.

"What exactly do you want?" she asked, her voice not loud, but exceptionally clear in the quiet cell. "Kill me or torture me, just give me a quick death. What's the point of locking me up here?"

Lin Yu didn't answer her question, only saying, "Ice Nightmare is dead."

The woman's expression froze for a moment. She clearly knew the weight of the name Ice Nightmare, and also knew Ice Nightmare's strength.

The death of a legendary, peak-level powerhouse meant something she understood better than anyone else.

The bandaged man raised his eyelids slightly, but quickly lowered them again, as if he had expected this outcome.

"You killed him." The woman repeated the sentence, her tone not one of surprise, but rather of confirmation.

"So do you think someone will come to rescue you?" Lin Yu asked, looking at her through the observation window.

The woman was silent.

Lin Yu didn't rush to wait for her answer, nor did he continue asking. He glanced at the bandaged man beside him, who remained leaning against the wall, motionless, as if he had locked himself away in a place no one could reach.

Lin Yu withdrew his gaze, turned around, and left the prison area.

At the central command platform of the main hive, the Queen's projection floated in mid-air, with dark golden light flowing rapidly across its surface, presenting the newly integrated data one by one.

"How well do their energy characteristics match the information we gathered about the Hand of Ashes?" Lin Yu asked.

The bandaged man has a 98% match rate, confirming that he is a core member of the Hand of Ashes.

The female units showed a 72% match rate, with some energy characteristics similar to those recorded in the Eternal Night Council's archives. However, due to the limited sample size, complete confirmation is not yet possible.

"A collaboration between two organizations? Or was that woman on loan from the Eternal Night Council?"

Based on her behavior and equipment at the time of her arrest, it is highly likely that she was temporarily transferred.

Her methods leaned towards independent infiltration, rather than the Ash Hand's usual direct assault style. If she was seconded, it suggests this attack by the Ash Hand was a cross-organizational operation.

Cross-organizational collaboration—this aligns with what Lao Chen called "unified scheduling."

Lin Yu stood at the edge of the command platform for a while, his gaze falling on the dark golden fungal carpet outside the main nest.

"Queen, raise the main hive's defense alert level by one level over the next few days. Report any new spatial rifts that appear around the neighborhood immediately."

[Understood. Defense level has been upgraded. The alert zone has been expanded to a five-kilometer radius around the community, and 300 new crack monitoring nodes have been added.]

Lin Yu then had the Zerg in the small world slowly increase in number. The newly hatched guardian Zerg soldiers from the Void Mother Nest Order had gradually arrived, and he had scattered them throughout the streets of the community, where they waited in some hidden, shadowy corners.

Over the next two days, the atmosphere in the neighborhood world became noticeably different.

There are far fewer players patrolling than before, and some low-level players have even stopped doing their daily quests, hiding in their apartments and afraid to come out. From time to time, there are rumors that spatial distortions have occurred near a certain building, and that some things that shouldn't be in the neighborhood have been seen.

Brother Long found Lin Yu, his face grim, and asked if something serious was about to happen again. Lin Yu told him to calm everyone down, double the patrol frequency of the management office, and for all players who didn't need to go out to avoid leaving the community for a few days, to see how the situation developed. Brother Long nodded repeatedly, wiped his sweat, and left.

On the evening of the third day, Lin Yu used the Void Nest Order to deploy a batch of newly hatched Void Mutant Insect Soldiers, which were then laid out along the underground passage at the edge of the community.

Then he put on his cloak and walked around the streets of the neighborhood at a moderate pace.

He encountered several players hurrying by along the way. Upon seeing him, they immediately moved aside, lowered their heads, and walked away quickly.

By the time he returned to the apartment entrance, it was already quite dark. The motion-activated lights in the hallway came on, casting a dim, yellowish light that cast slanted shadows on the walls.

He paused slightly as he reached the doorway—there was something new on the ground beneath the door.

It was a folded strip of paper. The paper was thin, slightly yellowed, and the edges were folded neatly. He bent down, picked it up, and unfolded it. There was a line of writing on it, the handwriting neat and restrained:

"Find the answer outside the third wall on the north side of the city."

No signature.

Lin Yu flipped the note over and looked at the back; there was nothing more. The handwriting on the note was neat and crisp, as if it had been written hastily, but the pauses at the ends of the strokes were steady, conveying a sense of composure as if the person was very familiar with the way information was conveyed.

He put the note away, pushed open the door, and went back to his apartment.

Jin Ling was dozing off on the back of the sofa when she heard the door open. She opened her eyes, saw it was him, and closed them again.

Instead of rushing out, he first entered the small world and retrieved the overall energy map of the area surrounding the community on the main nest command platform.

Outside the third wall on the north side of the city lies an abandoned old warehouse area, rarely visited by anyone. The energy distribution in that area on the map shows no abnormalities—no spatial rifts, no high-energy reactions, and it is no different from other areas in the surrounding region.

But the note was indeed placed on his apartment door through some means. The fact that this was done without triggering any warnings suggests that the person who left the note at least had some understanding of how the area's defenses operated.

"Queen, have there been any unusual energy fluctuations recorded outside the north wall in the last two days?"

[Records being retrieved... The records show no abnormal energy fluctuations detected outside the north wall. However, the monitoring node outside the third wall experienced a weak signal interference lasting approximately 0.3 seconds, the source of which cannot be traced.]

When did this happen?

[Yesterday afternoon at 4:17 PM.]

The timing matches up. The note was probably placed there shortly after that.

Lin Yu turned away from the edge of the command platform, beginning to consider whether he should go. The note read, "Come and find the answer," not a threat, but an invitation. The other party hadn't barged into the apartment while he was away, nor had they left anything provocative, only a brief message and address, indicating that they wanted to exchange information.

He stepped out of the small world and stood in the living room for a moment. Jinling flew from the back of the sofa to his shoulder and landed, tilting its head to look at him, as if asking if he wanted to take it with him.

"You're home," Lin Yu said.

Jinling shook its feathers and did not persist.

He put on his all-over cloak and went out the door.

The neighborhood streets were quieter at night than during the day. The streetlights were spaced far apart, and some were broken, with only a few still lit, casting dim yellow light. Footsteps echoed through the empty streets, and most of the windows of the residential buildings on both sides of the street were dark, with only a sliver of light occasionally peeking through the gaps in the curtains before quickly going out.

As he passed the third wall, there was a section of rusted iron railing beside it, with a gap large enough for a person to squeeze through sideways. The rust on the edge of the gap had been recently rubbed off, indicating that someone had passed through there.

He squeezed through a gap in the fence, beyond which lay an abandoned warehouse area.

Several low brick houses stood crookedly, with most of the roof tiles broken and the walls covered with withered vines.

Moonlight shone on the open ground, casting uneven shadows.

He stood there and waited for a while.

About a minute later, there was movement in the shadows of a warehouse on the west side, and a figure emerged.

It wasn't a furtive gait, but rather a confident walk that stopped at the boundary between moonlight and shadow.

He was a middle-aged man wearing a dark gray trench coat. He was rather thin, but his shoulders and back were ramrod straight. He had an ordinary, clean face with a sharp jawline, and his eyes shone brightly in the moonlight.

His trench coat collar was turned up halfway, obscuring half of his face, but he stood there without the slightest hint of dodging or probing.

"My surname is Fang," the other person spoke first, their voice neither loud nor soft, carrying a calmness that suggested they weren't in a hurry to prove anything. "You can call me Mr. Fang."

Lin Yu didn't reply, he just looked at him.

Mr. Fang understood what Lin Yu meant by not responding. He took half a step forward, exposing himself completely to the moonlight, as if to show that he had no ill intentions: "I put the note there."

I'm sending you this message because you handled the last two incidents cleanly and efficiently, and you didn't proactively follow up on the aftermath.

How did you know the location of my apartment?

Mr. Fang made a vague gesture: "After the barrier became thinner, many roads that were originally impassable became accessible."

The energy field around your apartment is quite unique; by making a few small adjustments at a few key points, it's not difficult to find it.

You said you had an answer for me. What answer?

Mr. Fang did not answer immediately. He turned to the side and gestured with his chin towards a certain direction deep in the warehouse area: "There's a place over there where you can see some of the ins and outs of the current situation."

I can take you to see it, but afterwards you'll have to make your own choice.

"What to choose?"

Mr. Fang turned back to look at him, his eyes calm in the moonlight: "Choose which side to stand on next."

After saying this, he didn't offer any further explanation, as if he had completely handed over the decision-making power to Lin Yu.

The night breeze from the warehouse area passed between the two, rustling the dry vines.

Lin Yu did not answer immediately.

He first surveyed Mr. Fang's position and the surrounding environment—the distribution of shadows in the warehouse area, possible evacuation routes, and any signs of an ambush nearby. Everything was within normal limits; it didn't seem like a meticulously planned trap.

"Lead the way," Lin Yu said.

Mr. Fang nodded, said nothing more, and turned to walk deeper into the warehouse area.

Lin Yu followed behind him, keeping a distance of about three or four steps.

The two walked through several crooked brick houses, around a half-collapsed warehouse, and finally stopped in front of a brick house that looked much older than the others at the deepest part of the warehouse area.

Mr. Fang stopped at the door and reached out to push open the rusted iron door.

The door hinges made a sharp scraping sound, as if it hadn't been opened in a long time.

Behind the door was a downward staircase, and at the end of the staircase, dim light shone up, carrying a hint of warmth.