Weird Game: I brought an old version bug

Jiang Chen woke up just as dawn was breaking.

The inn in the beginner village was much simpler than I had imagined—it was more like a wooden cabin with a few hard plank beds, the mattresses were as thin as a layer of cloth, and the pillows were just pieces of wood covered with cloth.

But considering this is a survival game, having a roof is already considered a luxury.

He sat up and glanced at the bed next to him.

The timely rain is gone.

Jiang Chen frowned, put on his coat, and left the room.

At the counter on the first floor of the inn, the waiter NPC was wiping cups. When he saw him come down, he mechanically said "Good morning".

Jiang Chen ignored him and went straight out into the street.

The morning in the starting village was quiet. There were few people on the streets; most players were still asleep. The eastern sky was just beginning to lighten, the tavern lanterns had just been extinguished, and smoke from breakfast was rising from the chimneys.

Jiang Chen looked around and saw Shi Yu by the well at the village entrance. She was squatting by the well, drawing water from a bucket and putting something into a cloth bag.

Jiang Chen walked over: "Up so early?"

"I can't sleep."

Shi Yu didn't even look up. "After being underground for so long, suddenly sleeping in a room with a window just doesn't feel right."

Jiang Chen leaned against the fence not far away and yawned.

"Where exactly is that entrance you mentioned last night?"

Shiyu stopped what she was doing and thought for a moment.

"Go northwest from the starting village, it's about a half-day's journey, and there's an abandoned mining area. The entrance is buried below the third shaft in the mining area—in the old version, that was the supply route for Dawn City."

"You've made it so clear, what have you remembered?"

Shiyu tied the bag shut, stood up, and patted the dust off her knees.

"Several images flashed through my mind while I was lying down last night."

she says.

"At the end of that passage is an iron gate with a number on it—A03. Not A01. A01 is the main entrance, facing Dawn Square. A03 is a side gate, a bit narrower, but there's no one guarding it."

Jiang Chen looked at her:

"Where was the guard for this door in the old version?"

Shiyu's expression froze slightly.

"There are no guards."

She said slowly, "In the old version, the entrance to Dawn City never needed guards. Because the underground city itself was a huge maze, and anyone who entered without an internal map would only end up getting lost."

"That's the new version now."

Jiang Chen said, "According to you, the system may have already changed the map." "That's why I need to go early."

Shi Yu said, "Before the system notices that someone is investigating this matter."

Jiang Chen nodded without asking any further questions.

He went back to the inn to tidy up, reorganizing the items in his backpack—a few bottles of recovery potions, a spare dagger, and the fire tumbler he had casually bought at the blacksmith's shop in the newbie village the night before.

He glanced at the fragment of the rule in the corner of his backpack.

The fragments are still there, but the binding status on the system panel has an additional line of small text.

[Rule Fragment - Already Bound]

Current fragment energy: 87%

[Note: Fragment energy will slowly decrease over time, so it is recommended to use it as soon as possible.]

He closed the panel.

Jiang Chen walked to the entrance of the inn and took a deep breath of the morning air.

The air in the beginner village has a fresh, grassy scent, completely different from the rusty smell of the underground mines.

He suddenly thought of a question—if the people in the old version were locked underground for so long, what were their feelings when they breathed this air above ground for the last time?

He didn't voice this idea.

Reasoning is one thing, substitution is another, and he doesn't need to know that feeling yet.

Shiyu was already waiting at the door.

She changed into a sturdier pair of boots, and her backpack was also a bit bulging than the night before.

"Let's go."

The two left the starting village and walked along the path in the northwest.

The area outside the starting village was quiet in the early morning, with few monsters. Occasionally, one or two lone mutated rabbits would be encountered, which would run away as soon as they saw people.

The road was paved with gravel, with sparse shrubs on both sides, and further away were gray rock walls—the terrain of this area looked as if it had been carved by a huge knife, with bare rocks and steep cliffs everywhere.

After walking for about two hours, the terrain began to change.

The vegetation is dwindling, the rocks are multiplying, and a faint metallic smell hangs in the air. The roadside bushes are gradually being replaced by low, gray moss, and traces of black mineral veins can occasionally be seen on the stone walls.

Jiang Chen noticed a detail—the road they were on was not labeled with a name on the system map.

Within the starting village's radius, all roads have names: East Village Road, South Ridge Trail, Maple Forest Path...

The path they took, however, was only shown as a gray dotted line on the map.

There was no name, no marker, not even a destination.

"Look," he said, sharing the map with Shiyu.

Shi Yu glanced at it and shook her head: "In the old version, this road was called the West Mine Road, one of the three supply lines from Dawn City to the surface. The new version of the system deliberately removed it—not wanting people to know that it's passable."

"So we're now walking on a map that doesn't exist?"

"right."

Jiang Chen didn't say anything more and turned off the map.

After walking for about an hour, they stopped in front of a cliff. The cliff was not high, only about ten meters high, but the cliff face was almost vertical, and the surface was covered with a layer of black mineral crystals.

At the bottom of the cliff, there is a narrow crack, less than a meter wide, with dark green moss growing along its edges.

Shiyu squatted down and touched the ore at the edge of the crack.

"This is it."

She said, "Beyond this crack lies an abandoned mining area."

Jiang Chen peeked into the crack.

The light was dim; the depths of the crack were almost completely dark, and nothing could be seen.

He shone his torch on it—and in the instant the light appeared, he saw what lay deep within the crack.

The crack was about seven or eight meters deep, ending at an iron gate. The gate was not tall, only a little over two meters, and its surface was covered with dark brown rust.

A line of blurry numbers—A03—is carved on the stone wall above the door frame.

A faint blue light shone through the crack in the door, as if something inside was glowing.

"The door is open," Jiang Chen said.

Shi Yu was stunned for a moment: "What?"

"Light was coming through the crack under the door."

Jiang Chen pointed to the bottom of the iron gate, "If it's a completely enclosed underground space, there couldn't be any light. Either there's someone inside, or—"

He paused for a moment, then said, "Someone opened this door before."

Shiyu's pupils contracted slightly.

They didn't go in immediately.

Jiang Chen stood at the entrance of the crevice, observed for a few minutes, and only after confirming that there were no ambushes or traps around him did he squeeze into the crevice.

The crevice was very narrow, and the two people could only walk one in front of the other, their shoulders almost touching the stone walls on both sides.

Jiang Chen walked ahead, the light from the tinderbox illuminating the outline of the iron gate.

The iron gate was old, but there were no obvious signs of damage on its surface.

The doorknob was a rusty iron bar. Jiang Chen reached out, grabbed it, and pressed down hard—with a click, the door lock popped open.

He pushed open the door.

There is a passageway behind the door.

The passage was about three meters wide, with dark gray stone on the ground and walls. Every few meters there was a lamp embedded in the wall—the lamps were not made of fire, but of a luminous crystal.

The crystal emits a pale blue, cool light.

The entire passageway was illuminated by a layer of soft blue light.

Jiang Chen glanced at the ground beneath his feet—there were footprints in the dust. Not just one person's. It was many people's. The footprints were messy, varying in size and depth, suggesting they had entered in batches.

The most recent footprints were covered with a thin layer of dust, indicating that they had been there for no more than one or two days.

Jiang Chen squatted down and gently touched the edge of the footprint with his finger.

"Someone got here before us."

Shiyu stood behind him, looking into the depths of the passage, without saying a word. But she gripped the bow in her hand tightly.

Jiang Chen stood up and dusted off his hands.

"Let's go, be careful."

The two walked along the passage for about two hundred meters before the passage began to branch off.

Shi Yu barely hesitated, pointing in the same direction at every fork in the road—as if she were walking a road she had walked thousands of times.

"Are you sure?" Jiang Chen asked.

"I'm sure."

Shi Yu's voice was soft, yet it carried an undeniable firmness.

After walking about a hundred meters, the passage suddenly opened up.

They were standing in a huge underground space.

The entire space is so high that you can't see the top, and the area within sight is at least half the size of a football field.

The ceiling and walls were scattered with glowing crystals, illuminating the outline of this underground world.

The ground was covered with flat stone slabs, and glowing moss grew in the gaps between the slabs.

At the center of the space is the entrance to a city.

The crumbling stone walls, the collapsed gatehouse, the road sign half-buried in the rubble—the old version of the characters on the wall are written in a distorted font, like some kind of handwriting.

Jiang Chen took a look and barely managed to make out the meaning of those words:

[Dawn City, Third Administrative District, Goods Distribution Center]

Shiyu stood in front of the entrance, looking at the sign, and remained silent for a long time.

"We've arrived," she said softly.

It was as if they were afraid of disturbing something.

It's as if I'm saying to someone who no longer exists: I'm back.

Jiang Chen did not interrupt her.

He knew what this moment meant for Shiyu—those images she thought were just fragments of memory had suddenly become the real walls, the real air, and the real streets in front of her.

She wasn't someone who dreamed; she was someone who truly came back.

After a long while, Shigure finally moved.

She took a deep breath and stepped into the city entrance.

She took two steps and then suddenly stopped.

"Jiang Chen".

"Um?"

"Can you smell anything?"

Jiang Chen sniffed.

There was a faint fishy smell in the air.

It wasn't the rusty smell of ore, nor the damp smell of soil—it was the smell of blood.

And it's not old blood, it's fresh.

Jiang Chen placed his hand on the dagger.

He didn't look back at the iron gate at the entrance, but he could already sense something approaching from the passage he had come from.

It wasn't footsteps; it was a lighter, softer sound.

Like a fingernail scratching across a stone wall.

One sound after another.

Getting closer.