I was just fishing, how did I become a Great Old One?

After bidding farewell to the newly established Deep Blue Cube Hotel, Jiang Li and his group packed their bags (although the cube people don't have backpacks, they absorb their belongings directly into their bodies) and embarked on their journey to the north.

As they gradually moved away from the peaceful starting village, the surrounding scenery began to change strangely.

The originally bright and highly saturated blue sky and white clouds were gradually covered with a layer of hazy filter.

The air was no longer filled with the fresh scent of grass and trees, but with a burnt smell, like electronic components burning, and the buzzing sound of an old graphics card overheating.

"Sizzle... sizzle..."

The sound wasn't loud, but it felt like fingernails scratching a blackboard, making you feel uncomfortable to the core.

"Boss, these blocks... they look a bit strange?"

Er Gou was walking in front when he suddenly stopped, raised one of his square paws, and hovered it in mid-air, not daring to bring it down.

On the ground in front of it, what should have been brown dirt blocks now presented a dizzying pattern of alternating purple and black squares.

[Missing Texture]

This is the most classic error message in the game.

Don't step on that.

Jiang Li frowned and reached out to pull Er Gou back.

"That's a 'void texture'."

"This means that the attribute data of this piece of land is lost. If you step on it, you may fall into the void or get stuck in place."

The group carefully navigated around the purplish-black area.

The deeper you go, the more common these scenes of collapse become.

The trees that should have been growing on the ground now only had their upper halves suspended in mid-air, while the lower halves of the trunks had vanished, revealing smooth cross-sections.

Some of the leaf-shaped blocks were even flashing and twitching wildly at a bizarre frequency.

The square sheep that were grazing on the grass stopped moving.

They seemed to have been paused, remaining in the position of grazing with their heads down, but spinning wildly in place, as fast as a spinning top.

"Is this sheep...crazy?" Odin asked curiously, poking the spinning sheep with the shaft of his spear.

"Don't touch it!"

Jiang Li tried to stop him, but it was too late.

The moment Odin's spear tip touched the sheep.

"Buzz—"

A tremendous repulsive force came.

The spinning sheep disappeared into the horizon in an instant, like a cannonball being launched.

"This is a physics engine error."

Jiang Li sighed.

"The code here is a complete mess."

"Collision volume, gravity parameters, and material textures are all reporting errors."

"Everyone stay close together, and don't touch anything or move around randomly."

"In this world full of bugs, walking is more dangerous than fighting monsters."

……

However, some troubles cannot be avoided just because you want to.

Just as everyone was carefully crossing a patch of floating sand.

Suddenly, blurry, static-like spots appeared in the air ahead.

These noises do not have a fixed shape.

They are constantly twisting, stretching, and changing color.

It turns into long strips, then into squares, and then into a tangled mess.

They emitted a piercing "sizzling" sound as they drifted towards Jiang Li and the others.

【Glitch Mob】

This is an electronic virus that has emerged after the collapse of the world's rules.

"What kind of monster is this? It looks disgusting!"

Abel drew the square-shaped knife from his back and stared warily at the mosaic.

"Be careful, they are not living beings."

Jiang Li's expression was serious.

"They are the 'errors' themselves."

"Don't let them touch your body!"

Before he could finish speaking, a garbled monster suddenly accelerated, rushing towards Odin, the largest of the group, like a bolt of lightning.

"Get out of here!"

Odin roared and thrust out his pixelated spear.

"puff!"

There was no tactile sensation of hitting a physical object.

The spear pierced straight through the jumbled mess of characters.

Immediately afterwards, the jumbled code spread along the gun barrel, instantly enveloping half of Odin's body.

"Ah! My leg!"

Odin exclaimed in surprise.

They were not harmed and did not lose any health.

But something even more terrible happened.

Odin's lower body suddenly became blurry the moment it came into contact with the garbled text.

then.

"Slurp—"

He sank down.

His legs actually pierced through the hard stone ground and sank in.

This is not getting bogged down.

This is... clipping.

Odin's legs overlapped with the stone, as if two models had been mistakenly and forcibly merged.

"I can't pull it out! I can't pull it out!"

Odin tried desperately to lift his leg.

But the stone seemed to have become a part of his body.

No matter how hard he tried, even using divine power, he couldn't budge it.

"Oh no, it's stuck."

Jiang Li rushed over and tried to pull Odin out.

However, a red warning box popped up in the system notification:

Error! The target object is stuck and cannot be moved.

"Damn it, the physics detection failed."

Jiang Li stared at the garbled code that was still jumping around on Odin's body.

"This thing is mixing up Odin's coordinates with the coordinates of the stone."

"If this problem isn't solved, Odin will forever remain a relief on this stone."

"What should we do? Blow it up with a bomb?" Er Gou pulled out the remaining gunpowder.

"No, the bomb will blow Odin away with it."

Jiang Li's brain was working at lightning speed.

Since it's a code error, it needs to be solved using "code".

or……

Use more advanced rules to override it.

"System! Genesis Pen!"

"Activate [Code Rewrite Mode]!"

Jiang Li pulled out a fountain pen.

In this pixelated world, the pen has become a pixelated paintbrush with a cursor.

"Since you let him clip through..."

"Then I'll delete this model!"

Jiang Li quickly drew a red "X" on the stone on Odin's leg.

"Delete command! Execute!"

"Buzz—"

That stone block that was originally incredibly hard and firmly stuck Odin.

The moment it was marked with a red cross.

It suddenly flickered twice.

Then, with a "pop" sound.

Disappeared.

The stone was forcibly deleted.

Odin's legs were freed, but he used too much force and sat down hard on the ground.

"Ouch! My back..."

"Stop talking nonsense and get up!"

Jiang Li pulled Odin up.

"The ink in this pen is running low; I can't keep using the delete command."

"Abel! Use ranged attacks!"

"Don't touch them! Smash them with stones! Shoot them with arrows!"

Abel understood immediately.

He picked up the pebbles from the ground with lightning speed.

"Whoosh whoosh-"

Stones flew out like bullets, slamming into the garbled monsters that were floating by.

Although physical attacks cannot kill them.

However, the collision detection of the stones will force a refresh of their coordinates and knock them back.

"Now's the time! Run!"

Jiang Li led the group, fleeing in disarray into the depths of the mountains amidst a chaotic sea of ​​bugs.

……

After a series of thrilling clipping and lag-filled moments.

The group finally arrived at the core area of ​​the Chaotic Code Mountains.

As they crossed the last ridge.

The sight before them made everyone gasp in shock.

In front.

There are no mountains.

There are no trees.

There isn't even... a place.

What appeared before them was an enormous, perfectly shaped rectangular abyss.

This abyss is several hundred meters wide and its bottom is unknown.

Its edges are as if they were vertically sliced ​​by a huge, sharp blade, so smooth it's outrageous.

On the side of the abyss, one can see exposed layers of soil, rocks, coal, and iron ore...

It's like a giant geological cross-section.

"Who...who dug this up?" Er Gou peeked out, then shrank back in fright.

"No."

Jiang Li stood on the edge of the cliff, looking at this void.

"This wasn't dug up."

"This is... a Chunk Error."

"The data in this area has been completely deleted."

"It's like... someone has ripped a chunk out of the hard drive in this world."

The group carefully descended to the bottom of the abyss along a narrow path along the cliff edge.

There is no lava here, and no monsters.

There was only a flat, hard surface with a blackish-gray granular sheen.

Bedrock.

This is the bottom layer of the world, and also an indestructible, absolute defense layer.

And on this desolate bedrock.

A lone wooden... [notice board] stood there.

The sign was crookedly stuck in a crevice in the bedrock, covered with a thick layer of dust.

Jiang Li walked over and brushed away the dust.

The sign had several lines of pixelated text engraved on it:

[To...the later...players/repairers:]

I am the Creator.

By the time you see this sign... I already... had to leave.

That thing... that virus... it's eating my code!

It's not an ordinary monster... it's an evil thought from... the depths of the source code.

I tried to fix it... but failed... my permissions are locked.

To protect the core... I hid in... the lower realm.

If you want to save this world... come find me in the mortal realm...

Bring along... the Golden Apple... and... (garbled text)...

[Don't... believe... that... H... (garbled text)...]

The text ends here.

The last few words were covered by a mass of black gibberish, as if the writer had been attacked at the last moment.

"H?"

Jiang Li stared at the incomplete letter.

A terrifying legend that has been circulating in this blocky world for a long time flashed through my mind.

That white-eyed guy... [Herobrine]?

"It seems things are more complicated than I thought."

Jiang Li stood up and dusted off his hands.

"The creator god has run away and hidden in hell (the lower realm)."

"And that virus is devouring the world."

"We have to go down to the mortal realm to find him."

……

"The lower realm?"

Odin scratched his blocky head.

"It sounds like a very hot place."

"How do we get there? By digging through the ground?"

"No."

Jiang Li shook his head.

"In this world, going to the lower realm requires a ritual."

"We need to build a... [portal]."

"The material used to build the portal is—obsidian."

Jiang Li looked around.

In a corner of the bedrock layer, there is a large, boiling lava lake.

In this world, lava turns into obsidian when it comes into contact with water.

The problem is...

Abel glanced at his empty backpack.

"We have no water."

"On the way here, the water in the bucket leaked out due to a bug."

"There's gibberish all around for several kilometers, and there's no water source."

Without water, the magma cannot be cooled.

Without cooling the magma, there is no obsidian.

Without obsidian, you cannot go to the Nether.

This is an endless loop.

"No water?"

Jiang Li looked at the churning lava, and a mysterious smile suddenly appeared on his lips.

He pulled a black bottle from his pocket, which exuded a strong smell of ink.

That was made in the comic dimension using that "Ink Demon"... [Abyssal Ink].

There is no water.

"But liquid... I have plenty."

"Moreover, this is not an ordinary liquid."

"This is abyssal ink with high-dimensional rules, capable of corrupting everything."

"If we used it to cool magma..."

"What will be synthesized?"

Jiang Li was filled with anticipation.

Just as cooking requires innovation, so does infrastructure development.

He walked to the edge of the lava lake.

Remove the bottle cork.

"Glug glug—"

The pitch-black ink of the abyss was poured into the orange-red lava.

"Sizzle—!!!"

A loud, explosive sound, like oil splattering, rang out.

The moment black ink comes into contact with red lava.

It did not evaporate into white steam like water.

Instead, a plume of... [purplish-black smoke] rose up.

Two completely different energies are in fierce conflict and merging.

At last.

The magma cooled down.

It solidified into hard chunks with dark purple runes flowing across their surface...

【Abyss Obsidian】

[Item: Mutant Obsidian]

Hardness: ∞ (Indestructible unless a god-tier pickaxe is used)

【Features: Maximum spatial affinity, extremely stable transmission medium.】

"It's done!"

Jiang Li was overjoyed.

This is even more premium than ordinary obsidian!

He immediately directed everyone to begin mining (using a divine pickaxe drawn with a creation pen).

Then, a large rectangular door frame was built on the bedrock.

4 base pieces, 5 height pieces.

A magnificent, dark purple doorway stands beneath the void.

"The final step."

"ignition."

Jiang Li took out a flint and steel (iron ingot + flint).

"Click!"

Sparks splashed inside the door frame.

"Buzz—"

A deep rumble resounded.

The usual purple teleportation light curtain did not appear.

The space inside the door frame looked as if it had been torn apart.

A dark red vortex appeared.

A hot, pungent smell, carrying a strong sulfurous odor and... [barbecue smell], wafted over from across the door.

"The barbecue smells so good!"

Tangyuan's nose twitched, and saliva (pixelated version) dripped down.

"That's the smell of the lower realm."

Jiang Li put away the flint and steel and raised the pixelated greatsword in his hand.

"That's... the taste of grilled pork chops."

"Let's go, boys."

"Go to hell...and eat barbecue!"

Jiang Li took a step forward, and his figure disappeared into the dark red vortex.

Odin, Abel, Er Gou, and Tangyuan followed closely behind.

As their figures disappeared.

The abyss portal, nestled in the desolate bedrock, emitted an eerie and dangerous light.

And in the shadows not far away.

A pair of white eyes without pupils.

They were quietly observing all of this.