Weird Game: I brought an old version bug

After the device was deployed, the bottom of the spherical cavity sank down a bit more, revealing a new channel.

It was not carved by hand, but rather unfolded automatically by some kind of mechanical structure after verification.

The entrance has a perfect circular cross-section, just big enough for a person to bend over and pass through. The inner wall is smooth as a mirror and has a dull metallic luster.

Jiang Chen carefully put away the decompilation core, then bent down and crawled inside.

The passage sloped downwards, at a small angle but enough to make him feel as he continued to descend deeper into the earth.

After climbing for about three or four minutes, the slope gradually became gentler, and the light coming in from the exit ahead was not the dim yellow light of a flare stick.

It is a stable, cool white light source, uniform and soft, like the light emitted by a fluorescent tube.

He poked his head out of the exit and froze.

Outside is a vast underground space—not a cave, not ruins, but a meticulously maintained indoor space.

It was rectangular, about the size of a standard basketball court, and at least five meters high. The ceiling was a flat metal plate with rows of fluorescent tubes emitting a cold white light embedded at intervals.

The floor was paved with light gray synthetic stone, without any damage or cracks, and was as clean as if someone had cleaned it regularly.

A dozen or so metal cabinets, each taller than a person, are arranged against the wall. They have a dark gray brushed metal surface and numbered labels on the front—A-01 to A-17.

The space doesn't feel like an underground ruin; it's more like the underground archives of a tech company—clean, tidy, and orderly.

"This is……"

Shiyu emerged from the exit, stood beside him, and looked at everything before her with disbelief in her voice.

"Is this the Seventh Administrative District?"

Jiang Chen did not answer.

He walked to the nearest cabinet, A-01, and opened the cabinet door.

The cabinet's interior was divided into dozens of compartments, each containing a dark gray metal box with a number and date printed on the lid.

He picked one up and opened it—inside was a stack of paper documents, printed in a very formal style, with neat font and layout, like a formal report or record.

He flipped through a few pages.

The document header reads:

Abyss Game - Seventh Version Update - Data Filtering and Cleaning Execution Report.

The report was dated the last month before the old version was shut down. It detailed the "data categories that needed to be cleared" and the "clearance execution plan" in a very calm, official tone.

Data clearing falls into three categories:

The first category is "abnormal behavior data"—player records of abnormal actions taken by exploiting rule loopholes;

The second category is "unauthorized information records"—private data created by players within the game that is not part of the system's default content;

The third category is "version conflict data"—residual code in the old version system that is inconsistent with the underlying logic of the new version.

Each item is listed clearly, like an action checklist.

Jiang Chen rummaged through a few more cabinets.

A-01 to A-03 all contained similar data wipe reports, spanning from six months before the old version was shut down to the last week before its shutdown.

A-04 to A-07 contained the personal files of "removed players"—each file included the player's game ID, level, class, last login time, and the reason for removal. He roughly estimated that cabinet A-04 alone contained at least two hundred files.

Two hundred players. Deleted. Not data, but players.

He closed the file and moved it to cabinet A-08.

The type of documents in this cabinet is clearly different—technical documents.

The title is:

Analysis of the underlying logic of the old version and its compatibility with the new version.

It details the old version of the game engine architecture, data flow structure, rule triggering mechanism, and the technical conflicts encountered in the new version when replacing these mechanisms.

The document contained a large number of architecture diagrams and code snippets, which he read through, although not all of them were immediately understandable to him.

However, one thing is very clear—the old and new versions are fundamentally incompatible at the underlying architecture level. Forcing an update results in a large number of "data remnants," which are gray areas that the system cannot fully control.

He turned to the last page of the document and saw a line of handwritten annotations, the handwriting messy but forceful:

"They say compatibility issues are technical problems, not human problems."

But who wrote the technical code? Humans. Human-written code has flaws, flaws are cracks, and cracks are the way out.

I can't take the things from the archives with me, but I've written down all the important information here—once you understand this, you'll know what the system is afraid of.

There was no signature, but Jiang Chen knew it was Lao Shen's handwriting.

"Old Shen has been here before," he said.

Shi Yu was looking through cabinet A-11 without looking up: "He not only came here—he lived here."

Jiang Chen went over to take a look.

The bottom shelves of cabinet A-11 didn't hold documents, but rather personal items: a neatly folded blanket, two empty kettles, a small bag of dried food scraps, and an empty crystal energy block.

They were neatly stacked at the bottom, covered with a piece of paper that read: "Don't throw them away, they can still be used."

Jiang Chen stared at those four words and fell silent.

Old Shen's writing style is exactly the same as his notebook entries—concise, pragmatic, and with a calm "I've seen it all" attitude.

But how long did he stay here? How could the head of a supplies registration station have the authority and time to reside in an underground archive?

"There's another door here," Shiyu's voice came from the other end of the archives.

Jiang Chen walked over and saw a metal door on the innermost wall of the archives room that was completely integrated with the wall and could not be noticed unless you looked closely.

The door had no handle, no keyhole, only a recess similar to the verification slot in the energy hub tower. Next to the recess was an inscription:

"If you've made it this far, it means you've already gotten Old Shen's stuff."

Behind the door is a complete backup of the old version's data—not a version filtered by the system, but the complete, unmodified original data.

But I must remind you: once the door is opened, the system will immediately detect abnormal data traffic in this area.

You have about ten minutes to read this, then you must leave, or you will be locked here and permanently deleted along with this data.

—The signature is still 07.

After reading the line of text, Jiang Chen reached into his backpack and touched the decompilation core.

The key left by Lao Shen, the door left by 07—all the clues point in the same direction—the truth they are looking for lies behind the door.

"Shall we open it?" Shigure asked.

He didn't hesitate for long, took out the decompilation core, aligned it with the slot, and put it in.

This time there were no light effects, no sound, no vibration—after the decompiled core was embedded, the metal door slid open silently, like a door that had been waiting for a long time, just waiting for the right key.

Behind the door is a room of about ten square meters.

In the center of the room was a metal table with a terminal on it—the screen was dark, but the indicator light below was flashing slightly, indicating that it was still powered on.

Next to the terminal was a metal box with two words written on the lid: "Shigure".

The moment Shigure saw her name, she froze.

Jiang Chen picked up the box and opened it. Inside were a folded piece of paper and a sealed syringe—the syringe contained a pale blue liquid that fluoresced slightly under the light. The paper contained only a few lines of text:

"Shigure, if you see this paper, it means you've started to remember the old version of things."

The reagent in the lower tube is a memory stabilizer—a backup measure used by survivors of older versions to ward off system data erasure.

After the injection, you will regain some of your overwritten memories, but the process will be painful and irreversible. Whether or not to use it is your decision.

— Signed: 07.

Shiyu took the paper and gently stroked its surface with her fingers, as if checking its texture.

She read the text twice, then looked up at Jiang Chen and said something that sounded unusually calm: "I want to fight."

"Shigure, it says on there that the process will be very painful—"

"I know."

She interrupted him, her voice devoid of hesitation.

"But I want to know who I am. Not the Shigure who knows nothing in the new version, but the real Shigure in the old version."

Old Shen left you his notebook, and 07 left me this reagent. They knew we would come to this point when they did these things; they were betting that we would choose this path.

Jiang Chen looked at her, wanting to say something, but ultimately remained silent.

Everything she said was true—if it were him, and there was a test tube that could tell him the true trump card of the Abyss Game, he would also not hesitate to use it, no matter how painful it was.

Shiyu picked up the syringe, removed the needle cap, and glanced at the pale blue liquid. Her hand holding the syringe was very steady, without the slightest tremor.

She pressed the needle tip against her arm, paused for a second, and then plunged it in without hesitation.

The moment the pale blue liquid was injected into her veins, Shigure's body tensed up abruptly—as if an electric current had surged through her from head to toe.

She didn't scream, but she clenched her teeth, and a fine layer of cold sweat instantly seeped out from her forehead.

Her pupils contracted sharply, her breathing became rapid and shallow, and she felt as if she were being immersed in some inescapable torrent of perception.

Jiang Chen held her shoulders to prevent her from falling.

Her body was trembling, but not from the cold—it was because her brain was flooded with a large amount of long-suppressed memory data in a short period of time, and the neural network was undergoing a forced reconnection and reorganization.

The pain wasn't physical, but rather informational—like a computer running hundreds of programs simultaneously, causing the CPU to be instantly pushed to its limit, resulting in lag and stuttering.

After about ten seconds, Shigure's breathing began to return to normal.

Her pupils gradually stabilized, and the trembling in her body subsided. She slowly raised her head and looked at Jiang Chen, her gaze different from before—not more unfamiliar, but clearer, as if a thin mist that had previously clouded her eyes had been wiped away.

"I remember now."

She said her voice was still a little weak, but her tone was firm.

"What happened before the old version was shut down—I remember part of it."

She paused, as if sorting through the information that had just flooded her brain, and then said something that made Jiang Chen's heart tighten: "In the old version of the Abyss game, there was a hidden system module."

It's not in the player's interface, nor in the management backend—it's at the very bottom of the game engine, attached to the core code like a parasitic program.

This module's function is to record—it records every line of code deleted, every player ID, and every rule modification during each system update.

"Who wrote this module?" Jiang Chen asked.

Shi Yu looked at him, remained silent for a few seconds, and then gave the answer that connected all the clues: "It's 07. 07 isn't a person—it's a team codename."

In the old version, a group of players discovered that the system was quietly deleting data, so they joined forces to write an anti-monitoring module and embedded it into the game engine's underlying layer.

Old Shen was in charge of material and information relay, while Team 07 was responsible for technology and data security. I... I was a member of Team 07 at the time.

We did three things:

First, back up core data before each system update;

Second, build safe houses underground in Dawn City;

Third, find people who share our ideas.

Shi Yu's voice grew increasingly steady, and the fragments of memory were rapidly returning to their places. "Old Shen's notebook, the crystals in the energy hub tower, the map of the Seventh Administrative District—these are all escape routes that we had laid out in advance."

However, the update came faster than expected, and many people were wiped out before they could evacuate underground.

Old Shen persevered to the end; he cleared the passage, allowing us to find this place again.

She looked at the terminal on the table with its screen off, and reached out to press the power button.

The screen lit up, but instead of the system login screen, it displayed an open text file—only two lines of text:

"Shigure, welcome back. The system has detected you. You have seven minutes left."