Weird Game: I brought an old version bug

Lin Bei lives on the top floor of an old residential building.

The stairwell was cluttered with debris, and large patches of plaster had peeled off the walls, exposing the cement underneath. The motion-sensor lights were broken, and only a window at the corner of the stairs let in a dim sliver of light.

Jiang Chen followed Lin Bei up the narrow staircase to the sixth floor. Lin Bei stopped in front of an iron door, took out his key, and opened it.

"Come in, it's a bit messy here."

Jiang Chen walked in and found that the room was larger than he had imagined. It had a two-bedroom, one-living room layout, and the living room was filled with various electronic devices—three monitors were placed side by side on the table, several computer towers were piled up next to them, several printed code snippets were pasted on the wall, and several technical books on data structures and network protocols were scattered on the coffee table.

This isn't your average player. This is someone who truly understands the game.

"Sit down." Lin Bei pointed to the sofa, walked to the computer, and plugged in the USB drive.

"When was that recording you mentioned made?" Jiang Chen didn't sit down, but stood behind the monitor, watching the data scroll on the screen.

"The night before last, before you went up to the rooftop of that office building," Lin Bei typed a few lines of commands on the keyboard, and an audio editing software interface popped up on the screen, "I recorded this from the rooftop of the building across the street using a directional microphone. The distance was a bit far, so the sound quality wasn't great, but it was enough to make out the content."

He pressed the play button.

A burst of static came from the speaker, followed by a female voice. It was very soft and ethereal, as if it came from a very far place, with a faint echo.

"...You've arrived."

"I've been waiting for you for a long time."

"You're a little later than I expected."

The voice paused for a few seconds, then continued:

"You have a lot of questions, right? But you don't need to know all the answers right now. What you need to know is—the door is open and can't be closed. It wasn't me who opened it, it was you."

"When you reset the system, you did some things that you yourself were unaware of."

"You have activated something... that was sealed away."

The recording ends here.

Jiang Chen remained silent for a long time.

He had already heard those words on the rooftop: "When you reset the system." But hearing them again still had the same impact on him.

"What do you think she meant by 'the sealed thing'?" Lin Bei asked.

"I don't know," Jiang Chen said, "but I think it's related to those cracks."

"I think so too." Lin Bei leaned back in his chair and adjusted his glasses. "I've been analyzing the data of these cracks for the past three days and discovered a very interesting pattern—they don't appear randomly, but rather form along a specific path."

He tapped a few keys on the keyboard, and a city map popped up on the monitor, marking the locations of seven fissures and connecting them with red lines.

"Look, if you connect the seven cracks together, what do you find?"

Jiang Chen looked at the screen, his brows furrowing slightly.

The shape formed by connecting the seven fissures is not a circle, but rather a hexagon with a point in the middle.

"A hexagon with a center point?" Jiang Chen asked.

"To be precise, it's a six-pointed star." Lin Bei zoomed in on the map, overlaying a grid line next to it. "The locations of the seven fissures correspond exactly to the six vertices and the center point of the six-pointed star. This is no coincidence."

"A six-pointed star..." Jiang Chen stared at the pattern on the screen, his mind racing. He had seen a similar layout during the game test—the teleportation arrays in some hidden maps were arranged according to this geometric structure. A six-pointed star is typically used for spatial teleportation or sealing barriers.

"If this is a six-pointed star, what does it represent?"

"It represents a teleportation array," Lin Bei said. "Or rather, a sealing array."

"seal?"

"Yes." Lin Bei switched to another set of data. "I checked the underlying code of the Abyss game and found a module marked as 'archived' with the number 07-02. Access to this module is blocked, but the data has not been deleted; it has just been hidden."

He pulled a printed sheet of paper from the drawer; it contained a code snippet:

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//Module 07-02: Deep Data Layer in Older Versions

//Status: Archived (Inaccessible)

//Warning: This module contains unverified spatial coordinate data.

//Recommendation: Do not attempt to reactivate this module before a stability assessment is completed.

//Last visit: Year 47 of the lunar calendar, Frost's Descent

//Visitor: Administrator [Data deleted]

"07-02." Jiang Chen repeated the number in a low voice. He remembered this number—the end point of the hand-drawn map in Old Shen's notebook was marked as 07-02.

"Have you seen this number before?" Lin Bei noticed his reaction.

"I saw it in a notebook," Jiang Chen said. "07 is the seventh administrative district, and 02 is the second floor."

"The Seventh Administrative District?" Lin Bei frowned. "Official maps only show the first to sixth administrative districts. The seventh administrative district is never mentioned in any public information."

"Because it wasn't part of the official plan," Jiang Chen said. "It was a part that the system automatically removed from the map after the old version was deleted."

Lin Bei was silent for a few seconds, then laughed: "Interesting. Very interesting."

He rubbed his hands together, turned around, and typed a few more commands on the keyboard. A 3D model popped up on the screen, looking like a huge underground space structure.

"This is a model of the old Dawn City that I reconstructed based on remnants of data from an older version," Lin Bei said. "The locations of the first to sixth administrative districts basically match the official map. But the location of the seventh administrative district—is in this direction."

He drew a circle on the model.

Jiang Chen stared at that spot, his pupils slightly contracting.

That location was exactly the center point of the six-pointed star—the location of that office building.

"The Seventh Administrative District is right beneath our feet," Lin Bei said. "That office building is directly above the Seventh Administrative District. And that door on the rooftop is the entrance to the Seventh Administrative District."

Jiang Chen leaned back in his chair and remained silent for a long time.

He suddenly remembered what Shi Yu had said—Old Shen had written in his notes: "Go east. Pass through the ruins of the old square and the Fourth Administrative District, and walk to the bottom of the Energy Hub Tower. Something is buried there. Something that was archived during the version update."

That thing was on July 2nd.

And he will walk through that door tomorrow evening.

"Are you planning to go in?" Lin Bei asked.

"right."

"Count me in then."

Jiang Chen looked at him: "Why are you going?"

"Because I'm a data hunter," Lin Bei said. "For the past three years, I've been searching for data hidden by the system. 07-02 is the largest and deepest part. If I can get the data there, I can piece together the whole picture of the old version and figure out what's really going on with this game."

He paused, then said:

"Moreover, I always felt that the system was afraid of something. It deleted the old version not because of the version update, but because there was something in the old version that scared it."

Jiang Chen looked at him, remained silent for a few seconds, and then extended his hand:

"Okay. See you on the rooftop tomorrow evening."

Lin Bei grasped his hand and smiled, "Okay."

Jiang Chen turned around, walked out of the room, down the stairs, and onto the street.

As darkness fell and the streetlights came on, the crowds on the streets gradually thinned out. He stood on the street corner, looking up at the silhouette of the office building in the distance—in the darkness, it looked no different from the other buildings around it.

But he knew that beneath that building lay an administrative district that was archived by the system.

And tomorrow, he will go inside.

My phone vibrated. Shi Yu had sent me a message:

"Gear is ready. See you tomorrow."

Jiang Chen glanced at it, didn't reply, and put his phone back in his pocket.

He took one last look in the direction of the office building, then turned and disappeared into the night.