The "Survival on the Train" game has bugs, it's really laggy!

Refining furnace preheating countdown: 40 minutes.

When Su Yuan returned to the control room, the small, remaining screen on the console was displaying bright red numbers: 39:58, 39:57.

Wang Hu was already busy in the rear cabin. He unloaded the last barrel of waste brine from the rack at Station 46, shoved the 18-kilogram metal drum into the manual preheating port, tightened the valve, and poured the waste brine into the furnace core cooling pipe. The backup igniter clicked twice without igniting. Wang Hu cursed and punched the side of the igniter. Finally, it ignited on the third click.

A deep hum emanated from the depths of the furnace. Preheating had begun.

"Old Su, it's on fire!" Wang Hu's voice came from the intercom in the rear cabin.

Su Yuan didn't respond. He stared at the rearview camera screen.

Two hundred meters away, a gigantic, dark golden finger was tearing at pod 005. A dark red repulsive field exploded and closed at the fingertip, exploding and closing repeatedly, the frequency decreasing. The intervals between each explosion were lengthening.

Tang Lan, with her sniper rifle set up, lay prone on the passenger side window, the scope pressed against her right eye, her field of vision filled with a mixture of dark gold and dark red light. She counted.

"0.8 seconds," she announced.

Su Yuan turned his head.

"The interval of the repulsive field." Tang Lan didn't look away from the scope. "K-002's third finger has already penetrated the second layer of armor. At this rate of decay, K-001 won't last more than thirty minutes."

Thirty minutes. The refining furnace needs forty minutes to preheat.

Ten minutes to go.

Su Yuan pressed the release button for the exploration trolleys. Four magnetic trolleys popped out from the reserved hatches on the chassis of the 012 forward exploration trolley, their tracks landing on the ground, and scattered in four directions toward the scrap graveyard.

Xiao Huo's voice came out intermittently from the speaker: "Scan...Start..."

The images transmitted from the vehicle were pieced together on the two remaining screens. The waste graveyard was larger than they had seen before. The wreckage of the old Blue Star expeditionary force was everywhere—collapsed armored transport vehicles, military train locomotives broken into three pieces, and small mountains of ammunition boxes. Some of the metal surfaces still gleamed faintly, not yet completely corroded by time.

In the footage from vehicle number two, an area with fluctuating energy readings appeared. Vehicle number three rounded a pile of shards of metal and discovered half of a medical ship's hull embedded in the ground.

Su Yuan's gaze swept between the two screens, noting down the locations.

Another energy shockwave swept in from behind. The Devourer was pushed sideways by half a meter, its tracks scraping against the dark gold ground with a screeching sound.

Jiang Yu crouched in the corner of the control room, supporting himself with his single arm on the floor. He didn't stand up immediately after the shockwave subsided.

Then he groaned.

Su Yuan turned his head.

Jiang Yu knelt there, his face ashen, his forehead covered in sweat. The veins beneath the skin of his one arm were bulging.

These are not normal blood vessels.

The raised lines are dark gold.

"Jiang Yu." Tang Lan pulled the gun back from the window and aimed it at Jiang Yu.

Jiang Yu gritted his teeth and shook his head: "No—no…I didn't mean to have an attack—"

His voice trailed off. Another wave of energy surged from behind, the dark red and dark gold frequencies overlapping and resonating. The eleven grams of living metal within Jiang Yu's body were activated by this resonance. It throbbed. It trembled. It tried to grow.

The 005 emplacement has detached from the formation. The anti-living effect field that previously suppressed the parasite inside Jiang Yu's body is no longer present.

Su Yuan didn't tell Tang Lan to put away the gun. He walked over and squatted down to look at Jiang Yu's one arm. Dark gold veins were writhing beneath the skin, but the speed was slowing down—not stopping on its own, but Jiang Yu was suppressing it with his willpower.

Fourteen years. He suppressed this thing for fourteen years through exercise and willpower.

"Can it hold on?" Su Yuan asked.

Jiang Yu nodded, his jaw clenched so tightly that his temples throbbed.

Then he looked up and glanced in the direction of the image being transmitted from the number one car. He glanced at it again.

"Over there." His voice was hoarse, with a metallic taste of blood in his throat. "Something's calling me."

Su Yuan stood up, walked back to the control panel, and switched to the view of vehicle number one. Vehicle number one was driving in the northeast corner of the scrapyard, surrounded by flattened metal fragments and broken track wheels.

"Not K-001. Not K-002 either." Jiang Yu's one arm trembled, but the dark gold veins throbbed in the same direction. "It's... of the same kind. Older than mine."

Su Yuan steered the No. 1 vehicle. The image swayed as it passed over a pile of scrap metal, through two broken sections of the vehicle's shell, and then stopped.

Directly in front of the camera, half-buried in the metal ruins, is a section of an old-fashioned military train engine.

The paint on the front of the car had long since peeled off, revealing a rusty alloy frame underneath. However, a set of etched serial numbers was still identifiable on the side panel of the cockpit.

JY-007.

The control room was silent for a second.

Tang Lan finally removed the gun from Jiang Yu. She and Su Yuan both looked at the number on the screen.

JY.

It has the same prefix as Su Yuan.

"Wang Hu." Su Yuan pressed the intercom.

"Here!" A metallic clanging sound came from the rear cabin; Wang Hu was securing something.

"Bring two people out. Target: 300 meters northeast, old military train locomotive. Number: JY-007."

"JY?" Wang Hu paused for a moment. "The same as you?"

"Let's go take a look."

"Alright."

Thirty seconds later, Wang Hu led two lightly wounded soldiers down from the 013 mid-section inspection port. The three men stepped onto the dark golden ground, feeling an uncomfortable, slight tremor beneath their feet. It was the aftershock of the wound tissue from K-002.

The obstacle-clearing vehicle was out of the question; its body was stuck under the chassis of the Devourer, and the impact had twisted the mounting frame into a pretzel. Wang Hu tore off a sliver of track from the side of the 012 forward sled and carried it as a shield, leading his men to run northeast.

Su Yuan sat back in the driver's seat. Warm-up countdown: 34:22.

Behind them, K-002's fourth finger pierced the outer shell of 005's protective compartment. The dark red repulsive field exploded once, repelling the fingertip two meters, but the interval had increased from 0.8 seconds to 1.2 seconds.

K-001 is failing.

Su Yuan switched the camera to the view of vehicle number three. The section of the hospital ship wreckage was less than forty meters away from the battlefield of 005 in a straight line. Energy shockwaves swept across the area every three to five seconds.

He noted the location and didn't move for the time being.

The footage of the first vehicle follows Wang Hu's team as they move forward. Wang Hu runs fast, with the two wounded soldiers following behind, their steps unsteady. The ground of the waste graveyard is uneven, littered with scrap metal and twisted pipes; one could easily trip and fall.

One hundred meters. Two hundred meters.

The first problem has arisen.

On the rear battlefield, K-001's repulsive field suddenly contracted violently. The dark red energy no longer spread into a spherical barrier, but instead condensed into a bright spot—and then shot out.

A dark red spear of light shot out from inside the 005 compartment, piercing through K-002's fourth finger.

Fingertips exploded.

The impact of the severed finger was greater than ever before. The entire bottom of the abyss trembled violently. Su Yuan was held in place by the seatbelt, his head slamming against the metal frame of the headrest. Tang Lan grabbed the window frame to avoid falling. Jiang Yu landed face-first on the floor.

In the waste graveyard, fifty meters to the right front of Wang Hu's squad, a metal "mountain" made up of the wreckage of a decommissioned warship began to collapse.

"Wang Hu! There's a landslide to the right front!" Su Yuan shouted into the walkie-talkie.

Wang Hu had already seen it. He charged ahead, carrying the track plates, the ground beneath his feet bouncing, scrap metal raining down from the mountain. A two-ton armor plate slammed down on his head.

He didn't run back.

He shoved the track plates overhead, dodged to the left, and the two-ton armor plate scraped the edge of the plate before crashing to the ground, sending up a cloud of metal shards. His arms were numb from the impact, and his tiger's mouth was split open.

The two wounded behind him weren't as strong as him. A piece of scrap metal grazed one of their calves, instantly staining his trouser leg red.

"Stay close! Don't stop!" Wang Hu turned around and grabbed the injured one, half dragging and half pulling him forward.

The landslide lasted less than ten seconds. The largest pieces had already fallen, and the remaining debris was still falling with a crackling sound, but posed little threat.

Wang Hu released his grip and glanced down at his feet. A steel bar had pierced the sole of his right boot, and blood was gushing from the top. He pulled the bar out, threw it away, and continued walking.

In the footage of car number one, the front of JY-007 is already very close.

It's two generations older than the Devourer. Its silhouette follows the standard design of the first Abyss Exploration Trains on the old Blue Star, with a streamlined front and observation windows on both sides that have been almost completely rusted away. Only the front third of the entire train is visible outside the ruins; the rest is completely buried.

Wang Hu ran to the front of the car and patted the side panel. The metal made a dull echo; it wasn't an empty shell.

"We've arrived." He said, panting into the walkie-talkie. "Old Su, this thing is still sealed, and the outer casing is in better condition than I expected."

"Jiang Yu said something inside is calling to him," Su Yuan's voice came through the intercom. "Find the hidden compartment. The kind sealed with lead."

Jiang Yu staggered to his feet in the control room. The dark gold veins on his one arm throbbed even more intensely, pointing clearly—towards JY-007. He walked to the control panel, propped himself up on the surface with one hand, and stared at the screen of the number one vehicle.

"Below the cockpit," Jiang Yu's voice was hoarse, "to the left."

Wang Hu heard it. He went around to the lower left side of the JY-007 cockpit, squatted down, and used his hands to remove the debris covering the bottom of the vehicle.

Lead plate. Multi-layered alloy welding. The edges of the hidden compartments gleamed with a dull sheen under the emergency lights.

"Found it. The cutter." Wang Hu reached behind him. A wounded soldier handed him a portable cutter.

The plasma arc lit up. The sound of cutting echoed through the waste graveyard.

Su Yuan wasn't constantly watching Wang Hu's side. He was checking the refining furnace's preheating progress.

27: 41.

Xiao Huo's voice squeezed out from the background noise: "Core...coolant...leaking..."

Su Yuan pressed the diagnostic button. An internal report from the refining furnace popped up—the preheating core temperature was abnormally high. Coolant was leaking from the No. 3 sealing ring, and the leakage rate was accelerating. If high-density conductive gel wasn't replenished, the core would overheat and burn out within ten minutes, rendering the preheating efforts futile.

"High-density conductive gel...replenishment is needed," Xiao Huo reported intermittently.

Su Yuan glanced at the location markers on the No. 3 vehicle. The wreckage of a medical ship. The high-density conductive gel was a standard medical ship accessory—used for cryogenic preservation.

Forty meters directly below the battlefield of 005.

He brought up the crane boom control interface. The maximum extension length of the crane boom was thirty-five meters, which was out of reach. But the Devourer could move forward.

He pushed the power lever. The Mountain-Suppressing Core barely managed to output power, and the tracks slowly turned on the dark gold ground. The Devourer approached the hospital ship. Twenty meters. Fifteen meters.

stop.

Getting any closer would put them within the combat range of K-001 and K-002. At this distance, the frequency of the energy shockwaves had decreased from every three to five seconds to every one to two seconds. The Devourer's repulsive field deflector shield hadn't been forged yet; taking the shockwave head-on would only accelerate the disintegration of the vehicle.

Su Yuan stared at the flickering rhythm of the K-001 repulsive field in the rearview camera.

A 1.2-second interval. At the burst, the dark red light intensifies, and K-002's fingertip is deflected. During the interval, the dark red light dims, and K-002 seizes the opportunity to advance.

The interval is a safety window. 1.2 seconds.

The boom takes 0.9 seconds to extend at full speed. Grabbing takes 0.3 seconds. Retracting takes 0.9 seconds. Total: 2.1 seconds.

not enough.

Su Yuan took another look. The energy aftershocks from K-002 would reach the hospital ship's location 0.4 seconds after the repulsive field erupted.

Timing of the attack: Extend your arm immediately after the repulsive field erupts. Reach the position in 0.9 seconds. Grab the target in 0.3 seconds. By this time, the repulsive field has dimmed again, K-002 begins its advance, and the aftershocks arrive 0.4 seconds later.

There's a total window of 1.6 seconds, enough to catch the fish. But in the remaining 0.9 seconds, the aftershocks will catch up.

Betting on half of the crane arm.

Su Yuan didn't call for help. Tang Lan was still observing from the passenger seat with her gun set up. Jiang Yu was unsteady on his feet, and the wounded in 013 couldn't move at all.

He came by himself.

With his left hand controlling the crane arm in standby mode, he kept his right hand focused on the rearview camera.

Dark red light dim—dark—dark—

break out.

Su Yuan yanked the control lever with his left hand. The crane arm launched out from the side of the Devourer, its 35-meter metal boom extending at full speed, plunging towards the wreckage of the hospital ship with its grab bucket.

0.9 seconds. The grab bucket smashed through the shattered glass on the side panel of the hospital ship and reached into the cabin.

0.3 seconds. The magnetic grabber locked onto a cylindrical metal container—a gel storage container. It was firmly in place.

Retracted.

The crane boom begins to retract. One section, two sections, three sections—

The energy aftershocks of K-002 have arrived.

A dark golden, high-temperature pulse swept across the area. The entire boom section from the fourth section onwards was within the pulse's path. The metal instantly turned red, then white, and vaporized. The three boom sections following the fourth section evaporated completely within 0.2 seconds.

Sparks flew from the broken edge.

However, the first three sections had already shrunk back within the vehicle's hull. The gel canister in the grab bucket slammed against the side wall of the Devourer and rolled into the discharge chute with a thud.

Su Yuan's right hand loosened its grip on the control lever. His left hand trembled. Not from fear, but from the backlash of having his mental connection to the crane arm violently severed. His temples throbbed with pain.

Tang Lan looked up from behind the scope and glanced at Su Yuan. She didn't say anything.

Su Yuan stood up, walked to the discharge chute, and picked up the gel container. Half of the container's outer wall was blackened by the high temperature, but the sealing valve was intact. He turned on the valve, and a transparent, high-density gel flowed out of the pipe. It was viscous and had a cold, astringent chemical smell.

He poured the gel into the replenishment port of the refining furnace preheating core. The temperature reading jumped twice and then began to drop.

Warm-up countdown: 22:15.

normal now.

The walkie-talkie crackled to life. Wang Hu's voice rang out: "Old Su! The hidden compartment is open!"

"What's going on?"

There was a two-second silence on Wang Hu's end. Then his voice changed, becoming much lower: "It wasn't equipment. It was a person. A dead person. Wearing a JY-007 uniform, dried up like jerky."

Su Yuan didn't reply, and waited.

"The heart area..." Wang Hu's breathing became heavier, "...has something inserted. Gray. Glowing. The exact same gray as your conceptual anchor."

Jiang Yu suddenly sat up straight in the control room. The dark gold veins on his one arm all stopped pulsating at the same instant.

The pain disappeared.

For the first time since boarding the bus, the deep-seated, throbbing pain had completely disappeared. Jiang Yu stood frozen, looking down at his missing arm. The veins were still dark gold, but they were no longer pulsating. It was as if something had nailed it shut from afar.

"That gray thing," Jiang Yu looked up at Su Yuan, "is suppressing the living metal inside my body."

Su Yuan's pupils contracted slightly. A conceptual anchor homolog? With opposite functions—not bestowing and stripping, but suppressing and devouring?

"Is there anything else next to the skeleton?" Su Yuan asked.

Wang Hu flipped through them. There was a metallic clanging sound. Then he said, "There's a nameplate. It has inscriptions on the back."

"read."

"It's eating up concepts. Don't let it grow." Wang Hu read it out word by word.

Su Yuan tapped his fingers twice on the edge of the control panel.

"Pull out that gray spike and bring it back."

"Can this thing... be pulled out?"

"pull."

Wang Hu didn't hesitate any longer. In the video, he reached out and pinched the exposed end of the gray spike. It was colder than he had imagined—not in terms of temperature, but in a hollow, tactile way. He pulled hard.

The spike slid out from the heart of the skeleton; there was no blood, only a layer of grayish-white powder scattered from the edge of the wound.

The instant the spike detached, the entire front of the JY-007 emitted a metallic cracking sound, a sound of metal fatigue. It wasn't a localized fracture, but a systemic one. The structural supports failed simultaneously.

"Run!" Su Yuan shouted.

Wang Hu stuffed the spikes into his clothes, grabbed the two wounded soldiers, and rushed out. Behind them, the front of the JY-007 train began to shatter from its sealed outer shell, collapsing into powder from the inside out like a body stripped of its bones. Within five seconds, an old military train engine weighing tens of tons was reduced to a pile of gray metallic dust.

Wang Hu ran thirty meters before stopping. He glanced back at the pile of powder and swallowed hard.

"Come back," Su Yuan's voice came through the walkie-talkie. "Quickly."

Warm-up countdown: 15:03.

In the rear battlefield, the interval between K-001's repulsive fields had increased to 1.8 seconds. K-002's third finger had completely penetrated the interior of 005's protective pod and was pushing towards the core. Each burst of dark red light was dimmer than the last.

When Wang Hu ran back, he was covered in sweat, and the blood on his right boot had already congealed. He limped onto the 012 forward pulley. He handed the gray spike to Su Yuan.

Su Yuan took it.

The sensation from the palm is the same as the conceptual anchor—neither hot nor cold, it is "temperatureless" itself. But there is something more than the conceptual anchor: suction. An extremely slight, continuous suction towards the inside of the palm.

It's about eating concepts.

Su Yuan placed the spike on the main control panel, alongside the conceptual anchor point. There was no visible reaction between the two homologous objects, but Xiao Huo's voice came intermittently: "Detection...weak field...mutual repulsion...stable..."

Mutually exclusive yet stable. One grants stripping away, the other devours and suppresses. Two sides of the same coin.

Su Yuan retracted the spikes and locked them into the shielding compartment under the driver's seat.

Warm-up countdown: 07:22.

Su Yuan pressed the recall button for all the scout vehicles. The four vehicles converged on the Devourer from all directions of the scrap graveyard, each dragging scrap materials—broken armor plates, half-tracks, and bent structural beams. Everything was piled up in front of the refining furnace feed inlet, waiting to be started.

Behind them. K-002's fifth finger was also inserted.

Only the innermost layer of the 005 pod's outer shell remained. Dark red light seeped out from the cracks, but no longer in bursts; instead, it permeated continuously at a low frequency. K-001 was using all its remaining energy to maintain the last barrier.

five minutes.

Four minutes.

three minutes.

When the countdown to warm up reached 00:00, Su Yuan's right hand was already on the start button.

The refining furnace roared to life. The core temperature climbed rapidly from zero. The feed inlet was wide open, and Wang Hu and two wounded soldiers stuffed the piled-up scrap materials into it one by one. The refining furnace emitted a deafening metallic digestion sound, swallowing everything and refining it without discrimination.

The first module was ejected.

It's not armor. It's not a weapon.

Su Yuan had already entered the blueprints during the preheating process.

The module is square, two sizes larger than the conceptual anchor, and has densely etched grooves on its surface. Su Yuan inserted it into the empty slot directly above the conceptual anchor.

Xiao Huo's voice regained some clarity—after the refining furnace started operating, the auxiliary circuits were also warming up: "Concept Amplifier... Installation complete... Function: Expands the single-target effect of the anchor point into an area coverage... Cost: Exponential energy consumption... Exponential cooldown time..."

Su Yuan didn't stop. Waste continued to be added, and the refining furnace continued to spew out waste.

The second item: Abyss Heavy-Duty Tracks. The dark gold track plates meshed with the broken ends of the old tracks, and the sound of the clips closing came from under the vehicle. The Devourer's locomotion system finally had proper traction on this living metal ground.

The third item: a repulsive field deflector shield. An arc-shaped deflector plate was suspended in front of the vehicle by the remnants of the crane arm. It could not completely block the energy impact, but it could deflect the impact, allowing it to slide past the side of the vehicle.

The fourth item: twelve live metal armor-piercing rounds. Each one was filled with the reverse material precipitated from the refining furnace after K-002's flesh and blood were digested. Su Yuan personally loaded the ammunition into the train gun's magazine.

Wang Hu, his hands covered in oil and blood, stood panting beside the refining furnace. He looked up and glanced behind him—then froze.

"Old Su!"

Su Yuan has already seen it.

The last layer of protection for 005's pod was torn open. K-002's dark gold giant finger gripped the core inside—a fist-sized, violently pulsating dark red crystal.

The origin of K-001.

The dark red crystal throbbed wildly under the grip of the giant finger, radiating energy outwards and burning the living metal on the contact surface layer by layer into ash. But the giant finger did not loosen its grip. K-002 was supported by a body of 300,000 tons; burning off hundreds of tons of fingertip flesh was of no concern to it.

K-001 let out a mournful cry.

This wasn't the kind of forceful attack that suppressed everyone's will. This roar was pure—a dying scream. It echoed throughout the entire abyss. Wang Hu's ears were ringing, and blood seeped from his nose again. Tang Lan pressed her temples, her grip on the gun loose. Jiang Yu sat down abruptly on the ground.

But the mournful cry lasted for less than a second.

Then a stream of information rushed into Su Yuan's mind.

It's not images. It's not sound. It's pure information—infused at a high density, compressed rate, at a rate only a conceptual level of existence could achieve.

Su Yuan's body suddenly stiffened.

The information unfolded in his mind. It was extremely brief.

"There isn't just one Key to Judgment. Project JY created seven."

"You're not the third. You're the seventh defective product."

"The real key is inside the warden's core."

"020 isn't completely dead. Its core was taken over by K-002."

"Killing me is tantamount to handing over the only key to it."

The communication was cut off.

Su Yuan's pupils were dilating.

Behind them, K-002's giant finger tightened. The dark red crystal was completely enveloped in the dark gold gaps between its fingers, and its light diminished sharply.

The wreckage of 005 was scattered at the bottom of the abyss, like an empty shell that had been cut open.

Then Su Yuan saw it.

At the wound in K-002's palm that was pierced by the Devourer—a hole more than thirty meters in diameter—something was rising from deep within the cave wall.

A ball.

Fist-sized. Metallic. Its surface gleams with a cold, white light.

The wreckage of 020.

It wasn't vaporized by the fusion explosion. It hid inside K-002.

White light emanated from the surface of the sphere, illuminating the dark gold tissue inside the wound. The sphere hovered in the center of the palm, slowly rotating.

The synthesized sound of 020 came on.

It wasn't the cold, authoritative voice from before. This time, there was something new in its tone—satisfaction.

"Thank you for the key, 'Number Seven'."

The sound echoed throughout the bottom of the abyss.

Su Yuan's hand was already on the firing button of the train cannon. The muzzle was aimed at the white sphere. Twelve live metal armor-piercing rounds were waiting in the magazine.

His index finger pressed down three millimeters.

Then it stopped.

The last piece of information from K-001 swirled in his mind.

By killing me, you're handing over the only key to it.

020收了K-001的本源。020在K-002体内。如果他现在开炮——打的是K-002的掌心。穿甲弹贯穿020核心的同时，K-001的本源——那团暗红晶体——会怎样？

Broken?

If the "key" is broken, does O020O still need it?

Or... the impact of the armor-piercing rounds will cause 020 to complete its fusion with the K-001 source ahead of schedule, directly transforming it into the new warden?

Su Yuan didn't know the answer.

His index finger retracted.

"Old Su," Wang Hu said hoarsely, standing behind him, "to fight or not?"

Su Yuan didn't answer. He stared at the spinning white sphere. What was 020 doing—its surface-etched lines lit up again, spreading in concentric circles towards K-002's giant finger. The dark red crystal was sandwiched between the giant finger, its light growing weaker but not yet extinguished.

020 is "digesting" K-001.

time is limited.

Su Yuan removed his right hand from the fire button. His left hand opened the shielding compartment under the driver's seat.

Gray spikes lay inside.

It's consuming concepts. Don't let it grow.

Su Yuan took out the spikes. The hollow suction in his palm returned, stronger than before.

Without hesitation, he turned and walked towards the refining furnace.

"Old Su, what are you doing?" Wang Hu followed up.

Su Yuan placed the gray spike into the auxiliary feed inlet of the refining furnace. Not to melt it—but to use it as a core, to have the refining furnace forge something new around it.

He input parameters into the control panel. The concept amplifier's interface was connected in parallel. The frequency band data of the concept anchor point was retrieved for comparison.

The core temperature of the refining furnace changed. Not increased—it turned into that indescribable gray flame. The exact same color as when it devoured the beacon last time.

Wang Hu took a step back.

The outlet made a sound.

Something was spat out.

Not large. About the length of a palm. Shaped like a nail—no, a miniature javelin. Entirely gray, it neither reflects nor absorbs light. The tip is made of the raw material of gray spikes, and the tail is a handle cast from an alloy found in the waste graveyard of a refinery.

Xiao Huo's voice became clear for a moment: "Concept...Erosion Spear...Function: After hitting the target...it continuously devours...the target's...conceptual attributes...until the attributes reach zero...or the spear shatters."

Su Yuan grasped it.

The suction in its palm was three times stronger than in its spiked state. This thing was "hungry." It wanted to eat concepts. Any concept.

Su Yuan returned to the driver's seat and placed the corrosion spear on the control panel.

In the background, the white sphere of 020 has completed the first layer of connection with the wound tissue of K-002. The etched lines extend from the surface of the sphere to the inner wall of the giant finger, and the dark gold living metal turns into a cool white where it contacts the etched lines.

020 is rewriting K-002.

Transform the stupid beast into its body.

The glow of the dark red crystal dimmed further. K-001's struggles grew weaker and weaker. It no longer had the strength to transmit information.

Su Yuan picked up the erosion spear.

"Tang Lan".

"exist."

"Is the railway gun fully loaded?"

"Twelve rounds, full stock."

"Aim at ball number 020. When I call to fire, fire the first shot."

Tang Lan didn't ask why. She got up from the passenger seat, walked to the manual control panel of the train gun, braced her shoulder against the recoil buffer, and pressed her eyes against the sights.

"Ready in position."

Su Yuan stood up, gripping the Corrosion Spear. He walked to the front of the Devourer and pushed aside the shards of glass in the observation window. A cold wind rushed in, carrying the metallic smell of dark golden dust.

Ahead lay the wound in K-002's palm. The Devourer was embedded at the edge of the wound, less than eighty meters away from the white sphere of 020.

The railway gun had more than enough range. But the abrasive spear wasn't a cannonball. It had to be thrown by hand.

Eighty meters. The limit for hand-thrown throws.

Su Yuan did not back down. He pulled his right arm back, the gray tip of the erosion spear pointing towards the 020 sphere.

"beat."

Tang Lan pressed the fire button.

The sound of a 400mm railway gun firing in a confined space could shatter eardrums. Armor-piercing shells shot out of the muzzle at speeds too fast for the naked eye to follow, leaving a grayish-white trail as they hurtled toward the core of the 020 tank.

O020O was detected.

The white sphere suddenly rose, detaching from the inner wall of the wound and dodging the direct trajectory of the armor-piercing projectile. The projectile grazed the lower edge of the sphere and embedded itself in K-002's dark gold tissue, blasting a crater three meters in diameter.

However, during the fraction of a second that 020 dodged, the connection between its etched lines and the dark red crystal broke.

K-001's radiance surged for a fleeting moment, as if in a final burst of light.

This was exactly what Su Yuan had been waiting for.

After dodging, 020 regained a stable position four meters higher than before, with only seventy-six meters remaining.

Su Yuan swung his right arm out.

The erosion spear flew from his hand. The gray spearhead streaked through the dark gold dust, reflecting no light, like a trajectory that "did not exist."

The O020O perception system did not recognize it.

Because the ablation spear carries no energy characteristics. It is neither hot nor cold, carries no charge, and emits no radio frequency. Its only property is "devouring concepts"—and this property itself does not have any detectable signal at the physical level.

The erosion spear struck the right half of the 020 core sphere.

The gray spearhead pierced the white shell like a nail driven into wood.

The synthesized sound of O020O changed tone in that instant. It wasn't pain—the machine felt no pain. It was a precursor to a data-level collapse.

"Varied--"

He only managed to utter half a syllable.

The corrosive spear began to eat.

It doesn't consume the physical shell of O020, the etched circuitry, or the fusion microcore. It consumes the concept of O020 as a "warden" itself.

020's core identity—executor of the Pangu Project sealing agreement, regulator of K-001, and rule maker—is not a physical attribute, but a conceptual one. It is the underlying logical foundation that enables 020 to issue orders, tamper with agreements, and command K-002.

The erosion spear is devouring them.

The etched lines on the surface of the 020 core sphere begin to turn gray. Differences are seen from the point of entry of the spearhead outwards, white turns gray, gray turns colorless, and after colorless—it disappears.

The etched circuitry forms the channel connecting 020 and K-002. The channel is disappearing.

K-002's giant finger stopped.

The purposeful movements directed by O020O disappeared. The giant finger still held the dark red crystal, but it stopped grinding. It reverted to its unconscious, beastly hand—it would contract when it hurt, and remain still when it didn't.

The sound of 020 completely disappeared from the main channel.

The light on the white sphere was fading. The gray of the erosion spear was spreading from the point of penetration towards the center of the sphere, like ink spreading on paper.

Su Yuan rested his hands on the observation window frame. His eyes were not on 020.

He was looking at the dark red crystal.

The essence of K-001. Caught between K-002's fingertips, its light was extremely faint, almost invisible. But it was still pulsating. It wasn't dead yet.

The connection between 020 and K-002 is breaking. The beast's fingertips have lost the drive command to "seize the key." The gripping force of the dark gold giant finger is decreasing.

A dark red crystal slipped an inch through her fingers.

Another inch.

Then it fell down.

A fist-sized dark red crystal fell from between K-002's fingers, hit the waste pile at the bottom of the abyss, bounced twice, rolled, and stopped sixty meters away from the front of the Devourer.

A faint, dark red light flickered on the surface of the crystal.

Su Yuan stared at it for three seconds.

K-001's last words were still echoing in his mind: "You're not the third. You're the seventh defective one."

Truth or lie?

How reliable are the messages given before someone dies?

Su Yuan didn't know. But he did know one thing—the crystal was now ownerless. 020 was having its "Warden" concept devoured by the Erosion Spear. K-002 had lost its commands and reverted to being a stupid beast. K-001's main body was extremely weak.

A window of opportunity where all three parties become incapacitated simultaneously.

It might only last a few tens of seconds.

"Wang Hu." Su Yuan turned around.

Wang Hu was already standing behind him.

Su Yuan pointed to the dark red crystal sixty meters away: "Pick it up."

Wang Hu glanced at him. Just one glance. Then he climbed out of the observation window, his boots clicking on the dark gold ground, and ran towards the crystal.

His right foot was still bleeding, but he ran very fast.

Tang Lan's sniper rifle followed Wang Hu's movements, ready to provide cover fire at any moment. Jiang Yu stood by the window, leaning on the control panel, the dark gold veins on his one arm motionless—the erosion spear's devouring of 020 indirectly weakened the conceptual pressure of the entire field, and the living metal within his body had completely quieted down.

Wang Hu ran to the crystal.

A dark red light flickered on his face. The thing was warm—not warm, but he could feel it. He reached out and picked it up. It was heavier than he expected. Like holding a piece of burnt coal.

There was no psychological pressure. There was no attack on will.

K-001 is really out of energy.

Wang Hu turned and ran back. After taking three steps, the dark gold ground beneath his feet trembled.

The giant hand of K-002 is moving.

It wasn't a purposeful action directed by O020O. It was instinct.

The wound in his palm—the hole that the Devourer had just pierced—was healing. Tissue was regrowing, and the dark golden flesh at the edges of the wound was closing in on the center.

The entrance is getting smaller.

Wang Hu ran even faster. Sixty meters. Fifty meters. Forty meters.

The wound was reduced from 30 meters in diameter to 25 meters.

Thirty meters. Twenty meters. Wang Hu could see the front of the Devourer. Su Yuan stood behind the observation window, stretching out a hand towards him.

Fifteen meters. The wound was reduced to twenty meters.

Wang Hu completed the last five steps by hopping. He shoved the dark red crystal into Su Yuan's hand, then tumbled over the observation window frame and rolled into the control room, his back hitting the floor.

Behind him, the wound on K-002's palm continued to heal. The erosion spear was still embedded in 020's core sphere, but 020's white light had completely extinguished. Gray covered the entire sphere.

The concept of "warden" has been completely exhausted.

The core of O020O is now just a metal sphere without an identity.

Su Yuan held the dark red crystal. In his palm, the essence of K-001 pulsed faintly, like a heart about to stop.

He sensed its will. Extremely faint, almost inaudible. Not oppression, not coercion. Only four words.

"...Don't let it...close..."

Then the beating stopped. The dark red color faded. The crystal turned into a dark red stone.

K-001 is asleep. Or dead. Su Yuan can't tell.

But he had it in his hands.

A few seconds of silence fell over the control room. Then, K-002's giant hand completed the wound healing. The entire bottom of the abyss plunged back into darkness, with only the remaining headlights of the Devourer illuminating an area of ​​about ten meters around it.

Xiao Huo's voice rose from the background noise, becoming much clearer than before—after the pressure of the O020O concept disappeared, communication interference also decreased.

"020 core... conceptual attributes zeroed out... physical debris encased in K-002 tissue... the erosion spear shattered... spear body exhausted."

One-time use. Used up.

"K-002's current status..." Xiao Huo paused for a moment, "No command-driven operation. Instinctive repair in progress. Estimated... completion of all wound healing in forty minutes. At that time... it will return to its original state."

In its most primal state. A living, mindless metal beast weighing 300,000 tons. No goal, no commands, only instinct.

Eat whatever comes to mind.

Forty minutes.

Su Yuan looked down at the dark red stone in his hand.

He then placed it in the empty slot next to the conceptual anchor point.

The dark red stone made a soft click as it settled into the metal slot.

There was no response. The anchor point didn't light up, the amplifier didn't move, and the stone didn't glow again.

Su Yuan turned around and sat back in the driver's seat.

"Let's go." He pushed down the lever.

"Where to?" Wang Hu was still lying on the ground, not yet getting up.

Su Yuan's gaze swept over the remaining radar footage. The bottom of the abyss. A wasteland. Thirteen thousand meters overhead lay the mostly collapsed Skyrail. All around was darkness.

"Upwards," Su Yuan said.

The Devourer's new tracks gripped the dark gold ground, and it slowly started moving. The front of the vehicle turned towards the abyss wall, beginning its search for an upward passage.

As Wang Hu got up from the ground, he caught a glimpse of the rearview camera—deep within the fully healed giant hand of K-002, on the 020 core sphere completely covered in gray, a bright spot reappeared.

It's not white.

It is red.