Weird Game: I brought an old version bug

The passage was much longer than Jiang Chen had expected.

He originally thought that after passing through the horizontal passage at the bottom of the sewer well, he would soon see the entrance sign.

But after walking for nearly twenty minutes, the passage still stretched straight ahead, without branches or turns, and its width and height remained at the original two meters.

Jiang Chen felt something was wrong with this overly regular shape.

He had seen the sewers of New Dawn City before; they were built with bricks and stones, with pipes scattered about and obvious signs of construction. But the stone walls of this passage were too smooth, so smooth that they didn't look like they were built by hand, but rather like they were cast in one go using a mold.

He stopped and reached out to touch the wall.

The stone wall is smooth to the touch, without any brick seams or joints, and the surface is covered with a thin layer of oily deposits. Touching it with your finger will leave a clear fingerprint.

"This isn't a sewer," he said.

Shi Yu also touched it: "Hmm. The old version of the underground passage didn't use bricks, it used synthetic stone. It's a casting material that mixes crushed rock and adhesive, making it stronger and more waterproof than ordinary stone."

This material has a unique characteristic: it doesn't dry completely. Even after many years, a mineral oil will seep out from the surface to protect the structure from groundwater erosion.

If the channel is still leaking oil, it means it has not been completely abandoned.

Jiang Chen glanced at the oil stains on his fingers, which shimmered with a faint amber luster under the light of the luminous stick.

The process of synthetic stone, the waterproof mineral oil, and the property of not drying for twenty years—the technology tree of this world has diverged from the real world at a certain point, taking a completely different technological route.

He also absorbed this information into his mind, placing it alongside the time parameter discrepancies he discovered in the energy hub tower.

Keep going.

After walking for about ten more minutes, a door appeared on the stone wall ahead.

It was neither a metal door nor a stone door—a synthetic stone door made entirely of the same material as the wall. If it weren't for the lines at the door seams forming a long, thin shadow under the light of the luminous stick, he would have almost thought it was just a decorative pattern on the wall.

A symbol is engraved directly above the door frame: three curved lines and one straight line.

Shi Yu looked up at the symbol and said, "This is not a floor indicator, it's an access control indicator."

The three arcs plus a straight line represent the need for dual verification—one from the system and one from manual authorization.

System-level verification can be solved with data, but the manual authorization layer requires someone to grant you access before the system will record your access permissions.

Jiang Chen stared at the symbol for a few seconds, and suddenly understood.

Old Shen completed the manual authorization for him at this entrance. The notebook itself served as the credential; Old Shen transferred his access rights to the person who received it through this notebook.

He took the notebook out of his backpack and held it up to the door.

The moment the leather cover touched the door panel, a very thin blue light pattern appeared on the door surface, spreading downwards from the symbol position, like an awakened circuit gradually illuminating the entire door.

The light pattern moved across the door for about three seconds, and a low click came from the crack in the door.

The lock is open.

The door opened a crack inward, and what shone through the crack was not darkness, but a very faint pale blue light, as if it were refracted from a very deep place.

Jiang Chen pushed open the door, and on the other side was a narrow corridor less than a meter wide.

The walls on both sides are inlaid with slender, luminous crystal strips, one every half meter, extending along the corridor into the depths until they disappear into the distance.

The light emitted by these crystals is very faint; a single crystal can hardly illuminate anything, but when dozens of crystals light up at the same time, the entire corridor is enveloped in a uniform, pale blue light without any shadows.

"I've never seen this kind of lighting before."

Shiyu's tone carried a rare uncertainty.

"The ruins of New Dawn City and Old Dawn City both used crystal lamps, which relied on the natural light emitted by the crystals themselves. But these crystal strips are different—they are not light sources, but more like wires."

Jiang Chen squatted down and took a closer look at one of them.

The crystal surface is covered with an extremely thin, transparent outer shell, and the inside has fine, fiber-optic-like patterns.

The light does not originate from the crystal itself, but rather flows out from the internal textures—as if some energy leaks out during its transmission along the crystal and is converted into visible light.

"This is not a lighting device."

He stood up and said, "This is a leak in the energy pipeline. There may be an energy transmission network buried behind the walls of the entire corridor."

This corridor isn't for pedestrians—it's a maintenance access point. These types of passages should be closed or removed after the system officially goes live, but this one wasn't removed; it was just hidden, and it's still being maintained.

The two walked forward along the narrow corridor.

The anti-slip tread pattern on the feet completely drowns out the sound of footsteps, leaving only the sound of breathing and the faint hum of the crystal strips.

The crystal strips on both sides of the wall have a node at intervals, marked with numbers—D-07, D-09, D-12, D-17.

The numbering is not consecutive, with several numbers skipped in between, indicating that this corridor is only a small part of the entire energy network, with more branches buried behind the walls.

When he reached the fifth node, Jiang Chen suddenly stopped.

He heard something—a very faint, low-frequency hum coming from ahead, like some kind of mechanical device operating rhythmically.

The sound had been there before he entered the corridor, but because the frequency was so low, he had always thought it was his imagination.

Now that he was closer and the sound was becoming clearer, he was certain that it wasn't his imagination—there was something moving ahead, and it was constantly moving, never stopping.

After walking about fifty meters, a downward turn appeared at the end of the narrow corridor.

At the corner is a spiral staircase made of metal—dark gray metal with no rust on the surface, the same material as the door to the energy hub tower.

The staircase extends downwards, and the estimated depth is about four or five stories.

At the bottom is a circular space, in the center of which stands a luminous device—about the height of a person, wider at the top and narrower at the bottom, shaped like an inverted spinning top, its surface covered with the same patterns as energy pipes, emitting uniform pulsed blue light, bright and dim like a certain rhythm.

"That's the entrance to the second floor of the seventh administrative district."

Shiyu's tone was very confident.

Are you sure?

I'm not sure.

She paused.

"But I have a picture in my mind—standing at the top of this staircase and looking down, I see that thing glowing. This picture isn't the first time it's appeared. From the moment I walked into this corridor, I had a feeling—I've been here before. Not just before, but I've walked every single step of it."

Jiang Chen walked down the metal staircase. The staircase was very stable, without any shaking or unusual noises. Each step looked as if it had just been installed.

When you reach the bottom, the glowing device is less than three meters away.

Up close, he saw that the surface of the device was covered with fine patterns—not decorative patterns, but a network of paths that were exactly the same as the map routes in Lao Shen's notebook.

The lines on the map were engraved into a complete light path diagram, radiating outwards from the center and covering every inch of the device's surface.

The device has a groove at the bottom, exactly like the verification slot on the energy hub tower door. But this groove is empty.

Jiang Chen took out the crystal fragment left by Lao Shen from his backpack, glanced at Shi Yu, and Shi Yu nodded. He put the crystal fragment into the groove.

Click.

The moment the crystal is embedded, blue light diffuses along the edge of the groove to the entire surface of the device.

But this time the reaction was much more violent than that of the door in the energy center tower—all the patterns lit up in less than a second, the pulsed light changed from flickering to continuous illumination, the brightness changed from pale blue to bright white, and the entire circular space was flooded with white light.

Jiang Chen instinctively raised his hand to shield his eyes, and when the light dimmed, he lowered his hand to look—the upper part of the device had unfolded outward like flower petals, revealing a spherical cavity inside.

The cavity was about half a meter in diameter, with smooth, mirror-like inner walls that reflected the residual blue light. At the bottom of the cavity was a fist-sized, dark crystal with a line of small characters engraved on its surface.

He picked it up and held it up to the light to read the line of text: "Decompiling the core - Abyss Game · Old Version · Low-level Logic Layer".

Jiang Chen paused for a second. "The underlying logic layer."

Shiyu walked over and looked at the crystal in his hand: "What does this mean?"

"This is not a reward item in the game, nor is it a dungeon drop."

Jiang Chen's voice carried a tension that he himself was unaware of.

"This is a hardware tool that can directly read the game's underlying code."

If we could decipher it, we could see how the Abyss Game is written at its core—how the rules are defined, how the data operates, and how version updates overwrite old data.

He gripped the crystal tightly, feeling the temperature emanating from its surface—higher than room temperature, as if it were still operating inside.

Old Shen left behind more than just maps and notebooks; he left behind a key that could unlock the core of this game.

Shiyu stared at the crystal, her brows furrowed, as if she were desperately trying to recall something.

After a long silence, she spoke softly, as if afraid something would hear her: "I've seen this before. Not in this location—in another place, in the old version."

Someone was holding it in front of a large screen. The code on the screen was scrolling, each line refreshing rapidly, as if the system was generating something on its own. He said something... He said—"

She stopped, her expression suddenly turning painful, as if a needle had been pierced from the depths of her memory. She covered her forehead, her body swaying slightly.

Jiang Chen immediately supported her shoulders: "Shi Yu?"

He said, "Version updates aren't fixes, they're executions. The system is killing people."

Shiyu's voice trembled, but she said the sentence clearly, enunciating each word distinctly, as if afraid that if she forgot it, she would never remember it again.

"The person holding this thing... is Old Shen. But the person who said this wasn't Old Shen. At the time, Old Shen was standing next to him, holding this crystal in his hand."

The speaker was someone else—standing in front of the screen with his back to them. I couldn't see his face clearly, but I knew the voice didn't belong to Lao Shen.

She looked up at Jiang Chen, her eyes filled with a mixture of fear and confusion.

This wasn't the first time she'd triggered such fragmented memories, but this time the amount of information was significantly greater and more unsettling—because she not only remembered the images, but also the sounds and the emotions in those words.

The emotion wasn't anger or fear, but a kind of calm bordering on despair, as if the person who said it already knew what the outcome would be and was simply stating a fact that no one wanted to admit.

"There are others in the Seventh Administrative District."

Shi Yu said.

"Not a system, not a patrol unit—it's a living person. Or it used to be a living person."

Jiang Chen remained silent.

He put the decompiled core into his backpack, along with Lao Shen's notebook.

The moment the crystal and leather came into contact, he felt a slight vibration in his backpack—not a physical vibration, but more like some kind of interaction between the two pieces of data.

But he didn't delve into the details; now was not the time to conduct experiments.

"No matter who's inside, we're already here."

He said.

"Let's get to floor 02 first."