Weird Game: I brought an old version bug

At dawn, simulated sunlight streamed into New Dawn City through the broken windows, casting a long, slanted patch of light on the ground.

When Jiang Chen opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was that light.

He lay on the ground for about five seconds, then sat up to make sure he was still alive.

They spent the night on the fourth floor of an abandoned residential building.

Shiyu fell asleep against the corner of the wall, her canvas bag clutched in her arms, her breathing even and slow.

She looked different when she was asleep than when she was awake. Her defensive posture relaxed a bit, her brows weren't furrowed, and she finally looked like a normal, tired young person.

Jiang Chen did not wake her up.

He took out the three rule fragments, lined them up on the ground, then opened the system panel and flipped to the skills page.

His skill panel was completely empty, with only one basic skill:

【Reconnaissance Skill (LV.1)】

[Basic reconnaissance skill: Allows you to view basic information about monsters or players up to 5 levels higher than yourself.]

This is the initial skill that all players automatically receive when they enter the game. It has no attack power and its only use is to check the monster's level and name.

Most players never open it again after reaching level 5 because its potential is too limited.

But Jiang Chen was concerned with the underlying logic of this skill—it is an "information acquisition" skill.

Of his three rule fragments, two are related to information acquisition: the pale gold "Ignore Environmental Restrictions" and the silver-gray "Shared Vision".

The dark red "damage reversal" is combat-oriented and doesn't quite match the positioning of the reconnaissance skill. However, if we follow the principle that "the order of stacking affects the final effect," we can put the combat-oriented rules last and let the reconnaissance skill serve as a carrier to carry three completely different abilities.

He needs to verify something—whether the logic of the rules being stacked is related to the attributes of the skill itself.

If a skill is a non-combat skill like reconnaissance, will it cause a conflict if a combat-oriented rule is added to it?

The only way is to try.

He held the three fragments in his palm, closed his eyes, and used his mental energy to perceive the resonance between the fragments.

The flowchart shows the operation sequence as "parse first, then write, and activate in sequence during writing".

But now he has two more rules, and the parsing is complete. What he needs to do is plan the order before writing.

Pale gold – disregarding environmental limitations.

This is the earliest rule fragment he obtained; it's already bound but can be rewritten. If placed first, the effects of the subsequent two rules will take effect on top of this base rule.

Silver-gray – Shared field of vision.

If placed in the second position, the effect is to synchronize vision information with teammates while ignoring environmental limitations.

Dark red – damage reversal.

If placed last, the effect is that the damage received can only be partially reversed if the preceding two rules are in effect.

He rearranged the order: light gold → silver-gray → dark red.

Confirm write.

The fragments lit up at the same time.

It wasn't a violent flash, but a restrained light that flowed only internally, like three different colored light bands circling each other in his palm before converging and merging into the back of his right hand.

A notification popped up on the system panel:

[Skill upgrade complete]

[Original Skill: Scouting (LV.1)]

[New Effect - Rule Chain: When triggered, ignores environmental limitations to acquire information within a 30-meter radius and can share vision with designated teammates. After being attacked, 30% of the damage dealt will be returned to the attacker.]

[Note: The three rules have formed a rule chain. When triggered simultaneously, all three rules share the same cooldown time—180 seconds.]

Jiang Chen stared at the notification and remained silent for a few seconds.

The effect is reversed by 380 degrees.

A basic reconnaissance skill that everyone looked down upon was transformed by three fragments of rules into a composite skill that integrates reconnaissance, sharing, and damage reflection.

Although the cooldown time is as long as three minutes, the benefits far outweigh the cost.

He moved his right hand to make sure he felt no abnormal sensation.

The three fragments of energy on the back of my hand left a very faint mark where they converged, the kind that you can't see at all unless you look closely—like a metallic sheen faintly shining through the skin.

Shiyu woke up while he was doing the verification.

She didn't speak immediately, but quietly watched him put away the three fragments before asking, "Did you succeed?"

"It's done."

Jiang Chen said, "A modified version of reconnaissance techniques. Three-in-one."

"Reconnaissance techniques?"

A subtle expression appeared on Shi Yu's face. "You didn't choose combat skills as your medium?"

"The upper limit of combat skills is too clear—how much damage to deal, how much critical hit rate, how much penetration, every attribute is regulated by the system. Nobody values ​​reconnaissance skills, and the system doesn't restrict them. The less used something is, the easier it is for loopholes to be exploited."

Shi Yu did not refute.

She stood up from the corner, stretched her shoulders, then took the portable file folder out of her canvas bag, placed it on the ground, and opened it.

Besides Lao Shen's hand-drawn map, there were also several notes she brought out from Lab 07, and a drawing in a transparent folder—a coordinate grid-style cross-section of the underground structure.

She unfolded the drawings and laid them on the ground.

"The watchmaker's map was too simplistic—it only showed the route, not the terrain details. But the 07 team's files contain complete data on the underground structure."

Shi Yu pointed to a mark on the map, "We're currently in this location—the northwest corner of New Dawn City, an abandoned residential area. The main entrance to the Seventh Administrative District is in the southeast, but the actual path to the core data layer..."

Her finger moved along the dotted lines on the drawing, from the main entrance down, through the archives and the rules laboratory, and then turned at the fork in the ventilation duct onto a side path that Jiang Chen had never taken.

"Here."

She pointed to a circle at the very bottom of the drawing, "The core terminal of Team 07. The watchmaker started his program here."

Jiang Chen bent down and carefully examined the markings around the circle.

Next to the circle were a few lines of small text—not coordinates, but a string of numbers and letters.

"What is this?" he asked.

"I don't know either."

Shi Yu said, "It's a habit of the 07 team—important information isn't written down directly; they use an internally agreed-upon encoding. This string of characters needs to be decoded to understand, but I can't remember what the key is right now."

Jiang Chen took out the watchmaker's notebook, turned to the page with the map, and compared it with the cross-sectional diagram that Shi Yu had unfolded.

The endpoint coordinates of both diagrams are exactly the same, both on the fourth floor. However, the clockmaker's notebook contains an extra line of information not found on the Shiyu diagram:

"There was no lock on that door, but the system left a listening program on it."

Before you use the core to open the door, a system projection will proactively communicate with you.

Don't believe a word it says—that projection isn't the system itself, it's something trapped within the system.

After reading the line of text, Jiang Chen closed the notebook and put it back in his backpack.

"The watchmaker gave you a warning before you opened the door."

He said, "There's a system projector on the door that will try to prevent you from opening it."

"Should we open the gates first and then fight, or fight first and then open the gates?"

"Let's turn it on first. If the projection can be operated, it won't just be stopped by 'dialogue'."

The two picked up their belongings from the ground and checked their backpacks.

The core was decompiled, along with crystal fragments, Lao Shen's notebook, the watchmaker's notebook, the 07 team's map archives, and three rule fragments (two already parsed and awaiting binding, and one already modified). Equipment and supplies were all in order.

Shiyu zipped up the canvas bag, slung it over her shoulder, and glanced at the sky outside the window.

The simulated sunlight has fully illuminated the city, and New Dawn City has entered daytime mode.

A few players started moving around on the streets, most of them had just gotten up and were getting ready to run dungeons, while others were setting up stalls on the street to trade.

No one noticed that there were two people packing their belongings on the fourth floor of the abandoned residential building.

Jiang Chen stood by the window, observing the situation outside through the hole for a while. There were no patrol units, no abnormal energy fluctuations, and the players on the street were all acting normally.

"Let's go."

The two exited through the back door of the abandoned residential building and walked along the alleys on the edge of New Dawn City.

Instead of taking the main roads, they took the side streets that weren't marked on the map.

Most of these roads are from the old version. The system has not updated the map data in the new version, so walking on these roads will not generate any movement trajectory records.

After walking for about twenty minutes, they stood at the entrance of the pumping station again.

When they climbed out of here yesterday, the dust inside the pump station was still intact. But today—when Jiang Chen pushed open the door, he saw new footprints on the ground.

It wasn't left by them, nor by the patrol unit. It was the footprints of five people who came in through the side door of the pump station, paused at the pipe opening, and then turned and left.

It hadn't been more than two hours; the dust around the footprints hadn't completely settled.

Someone came by, and they weren't there to chase after them.

If you were to chase them, the footprints should spread outwards from the pipe opening, not come in from the outside and then leave.

"They know this exit."

Shiyu squatted on the ground, looking at the footprints, and said, "But they didn't go down; they just checked. It was like they were confirming whether we had come out of here."

"Now there are two possibilities."

Jiang Chen said, "Either someone followed the watchmaker's map to this place and discovered that we had been here; or the system locked this exit in some way and sent people to stake it out."

"If it were a system, it wouldn't just send five people to take a quick look and leave."

"So it's the former."

Jiang Chen stood up. "Someone is following the same path as us."

He didn't say anything more. The two exchanged a glance, then walked towards the pipe opening simultaneously.

Jiang Chen went inside first.

The dust overhead was stirred up again, swirling in the cramped space. He climbed for a while following the direction he remembered, then stopped at the first fork in the road.

Yesterday he took the branch that led to the ground; today he will take the other one.

The watchmaker's map is marked "three layers down", and the cross-section of Shigure is marked in the same direction.

He turned onto the narrower passage.

The pipe makes a sharp bend here and then begins to descend vertically.

It's not a gentle slope like stairs; it's a real vertical drop, like an abandoned mine shaft that hasn't been filled in.

Jiang Chen grabbed the welding point on the inner wall of the pipe and moved down step by step.

When his foot landed on a flat surface, a muffled thud came from below.

It wasn't the sound of stone, it was the sound of metal.

He looked down and saw that he wasn't standing on the ground, but on a metal plate covered in dust.

The surface of the metal plate is engraved with a pattern—an octagonal gear with a tiny groove at its center.

Octagonal gear, watchmaker.

Jiang Chen squatted down and wiped the dust off the metal plate with his hand, revealing the text next to the groove:

"If you've made it this far, it means you've understood the way. Keep going, I'll be waiting for you on the fourth floor."

But if someone from the system has come here—then they'll stay here forever.

Jiang Chen chuckled after hearing this.

"I've never even met the watchmaker, yet I've already figured out his speaking style."

He turned around and called out to the top of the pipe, "Shiyu, there's a metal plate left by a clockmaker down there. We need something to open it. Take a look at the shape of the groove on it."

Shiyu slid down from above the pipe, squatted in front of the metal plate, and took a close look at the groove.

Then she pulled something out of her canvas bag—the metal stand on the back of the small terminal she had brought from Lab 07, with a protrusion that matched perfectly.

She aligned the bracket with the groove and inserted it.

Click.

The metal plate sank down about half a centimeter, then slid to the side, revealing a downward-extending metal staircase.

The stairs are spiral-shaped, made of metal, and have that dark gray coating characteristic of older versions.

The steps are narrow, each only wide enough for one person to squeeze through sideways, but the spiral staircase offers a very open view.

Standing at the entrance, you can see the spiral staircase extending downwards in three loops, with a closed metal door at the end of each loop.

Three rings, three layers.

"This isn't a door."

Jiang Chen said, "This is called a checkpoint."