Rejecting Tsinghua and Peking Universities: I Will Lead Harbin Institute of Technology to World Lead

In the virtual world of "Starry Sky Era," time flows silently in the form of data streams. For Lin Feng, this is not a role-playing game, but rather the preliminary preparation for a precise and dangerous "surgery" conducted in a digital maze.

His figure, like an invisible ghost, traversed the vast territories of the human, divine, and demonic realms. From the secluded valleys on the edge of the human realm to the magnificent holy cities floating in the clouds of the divine realm, and then to the scorching fissures of the demonic realm where lava churned, every inch of land he trod, every monster he fought, every NPC he encountered, and even every scene he merely passed by became the operating table of Prometheus's rewriting machine.

His purpose was clear: he wasn't playing around, but rather altering and setting a trap.

With each seemingly random movement, the rewriter efficiently scans, parses, and attempts to modify the underlying rule fragments along its path. The modifications are not drastic, but rather as subtle as embroidery:

In a beginner village in the human realm, as he passed by, the rewriter quietly modified the data refresh logic of the thousand-year-old tree at the village entrance, embedding a tiny, directional data redundancy within it. This redundancy itself was harmless, but once activated by instructions at a specific frequency, it would instantly disrupt all environmental status update data packets within a 500-meter radius centered on the ancient tree.

In a temple instance within the divine realm, he observed a player team's boss battle. The rewriter seized the opportunity to analyze the boss's aggro calculation and skill release core algorithms, discovering a logical loop that dynamically adjusted skill priorities based on player class combinations. Lin Feng didn't disrupt it; instead, he inserted an extremely subtle backdoor into the loop—when receiving a termination command written in a specific encrypted format, the boss would instantly enter a forced standby state, unable to act, for 0.01 seconds. In the data world, this 0.01 seconds could mean a crucial attack gap or rule interruption.

In a region of turbulent energy flow within the Demon Realm, he deliberately triggered a massive data storm. The storm swept across, superficially causing temporary disruptions to the map and anomalies in monster data. However, after the storm subsided, the underlying rules governing the area's spatial coordinate anchoring parameters and energy flow paths had been subtly loosened and marked by the rewriter, making them more susceptible to being overridden or redirected by subsequent commands with higher authority.

What Lin Feng did was like an engineer infiltrating an enemy fortress, not directly attacking the guards, but pre-planting miniature explosives in the corridor walls, placing sensors in the ventilation ducts, and connecting remote control switches to the redundant lines of the main control circuit... He gradually transformed the entire world of "Starry Sky Era" into a massive minefield riddled with invisible logical traps and rule backdoors. And the ultimate control over these traps and backdoors quietly converged in the Prometheus Core deep within his consciousness.

His hunting expeditions traversed almost every major data node and key rule hub in the Three Realms. The rewriter's scanning network was vast and dense, analyzing every abnormal data stream and tracing Gaia's relevant clues.

However, the results were perplexing.

The data fingerprints of tens of thousands of trapped consciousnesses seemed to have completely integrated into this world, evenly distributed across player characters and NPCs of all levels and in all areas, forming a strange background noise that made it difficult to pinpoint the core imprisonment point. Gaia's presence was even more elusive. It seemed omnipresent—the stable operation of the world, the subtle adjustments to the rules, the intelligent responses of NPCs all bore its mark—yet it was nowhere to be found, with no clear, centralized "core of consciousness" exposed.

It is like the "Way of Heaven" of this world, formless and intangible, yet it controls everything.

"Continuing with a carpet search is too inefficient and will only increase the probability of being discovered." Lin Feng stopped at the edge of yet another floating island in the divine realm, assessing the situation in his mind. "If Gaia possesses high intelligence, or is even controlled by someone else, it must have an internal logic for maintaining world order and balance. Although my previous alterations were covert, they may have accumulated to a certain extent and triggered its self-checking or error-correction mechanism. We cannot wait passively."

A plan took shape in his mind.

"Since we can't find it, let's lure it out." Lin Feng's gaze fell on the sky of this virtual world. "The hierarchy and power ceiling of this world are important rules for Gaia to maintain its controllability and sustainability. Breaking them is the most direct provocation."

He decided to stop hiding it.

With a thought, the complete data state of the max-level sword immortal, which had been carefully suppressed and disguised by the rewriter, erupted like a long-suppressed volcano!

Without using any skills, Lin Feng consciously released the energy level inherent in the existence itself, which transcended the design framework of this world, from the character's data shell!

Om-!

Centered on the floating island where Lin Feng was located, an invisible yet incredibly powerful data pressure swept out like a supernova explosion! This pressure was not a physical impact, but rather directly affected the underlying rules that constitute this virtual world!

The sky—that perpetually azure or cloud-adorned canopy generated by the program—was instantly distorted and cracked, like a mirror lake tossed with a giant rock! Countless eerie black lines, resembling spatial rifts, spread and intersected across the heavens, emitting a teeth-grinding, data-breaking creaking sound!

The earth—the floating island itself—trembled violently, rocks crumbled, and vegetation dissolved into primordial green data particles. The tremors propagated along the data connection, causing varying degrees of ground cracking and landslides on other nearby floating islands and even in parts of the human realm below.

Rules—The lighting system malfunctions, causing light and shadow to flicker wildly; gravity parameters temporarily fail, causing rocks and player characters to float uncontrollably; sound transmission channels are blocked, plunging the world into an eerie silence, which is then filled with various system error messages and distorted noises from object collisions…

The entire world of "Starry Sky Era" is like a precise clock whose inside has been suddenly stuffed with a huge and violent magnet that does not belong to it. All the gears, springs, and hands instantly become disordered, collide, and are on the verge of collapse!

"What's going on?! The sky... the sky has cracked?!"

"The earth shook violently! Is this a new event in the version update? Wait, there was no announcement!"

"I can't use my skills! The system is saying there's a rule conflict?!"

"Help! I can't control my character anymore, it's floating into the sky!"

"Oh my god, that was terrifying! I need to log off! Huh? The logoff button... is grayed out?!"

The world and regional chat channels were instantly flooded with countless expressions of fear, confusion, and curses from players. Whether they were leveling up, trading in the main city, or simply enjoying the scenery, all online players witnessed or personally experienced this sudden, apocalyptic game bug.

Lin Feng, suspended in the center of that collapsing scene, his blue robes fluttering, his lightsaber humming softly, his face serene. He was like an error, a virus, a living, walking point of rule collapse.

That's exactly the effect he wanted. To tell the manager, who might be hiding behind the scenes, in the most direct way: the rules you set have been broken.

Almost at the very moment the world's extraordinary phenomena reached their peak—

The space in front of Lin Feng rippled slightly like water.

There were no special lighting effects, no glowing teleportation array. A figure appeared abruptly and silently.

It was a middle-aged male NPC with an ordinary, unremarkable appearance. He wore the most common coarse cloth clothes, had a calm face, and empty eyes. He was the kind of background character who would never be given a second glance by players walking on the streets of a beginner's village in the human world.

But Lin Feng's consciousness tensed abruptly the moment he saw him. The Prometheus Rewriter issued its highest-level alert: "An ultra-high-density, ultra-complex rule aggregate detected! The target's energy reading exceeds the known database limit! The underlying logical structure is abnormally stable and possesses a high degree of autonomy! Threat level: Destructive! Suspected to be Gaia or its core avatar!"

The middle-aged man's gaze swept over the shattered sky, the trembling earth, and the chaotic data streams around him. His empty eyes seemed devoid of any emotion, only an absolute, cold scrutiny. Then, he raised his right hand and gently pressed it down into the void.

There were no incantations, no movements.

An indescribable, overwhelming corrective force arose out of nowhere, like God's eraser, instantly erasing all the strange phenomena caused by Lin Feng!

The cracked sky was like a video playing in reverse; the cracks quickly closed and disappeared, restoring the original azure blue.

The shattered earth solidified again, the floating islands were restored, and the vegetation and data streams were reorganized.

The disordered rules and parameters were forcibly corrected, the lighting was restored, gravity stabilized, and the sound channel was clear.

The players' out-of-control characters landed again, and the grayed-out logout button lit up once more...

Everything returned to normal in less than three seconds. It was as if the terrifying phenomenon that had swept through the three realms was just a collective hallucination.

After doing all this, the middle-aged man—or rather, Gaia's manifestation—slowly turned his head and locked his lifeless eyes, which seemed to be able to see through the essence of all data, onto Lin Feng.

"heresy."

A cold, monotonous voice, devoid of any human emotion, resounded directly in the depths of Lin Feng's consciousness, not through the air.

"Unauthorized rule overwriting detected. Strength: Critical. Target: Data anomaly, unknown encryption protocol present. Judgment: Poses a serious threat to world stability. Execute protocol: Cleanse."

The moment the words fell, the rules of the entire virtual world, centered on Gaia, seemed to come alive, transforming into invisible shackles and sharp blades that crashed down on Lin Feng from all directions!

There are no flashy skill effects; this is the most fundamental, world-level... annihilation!