A bizarre and terrifying experience; I messed up the dungeon world.

The two jumped onto the iron platform at the base of the control tower. The platform's edges were rusty. The sheet metal was rolled up. The door at the base of the tower was open. There was no lock. Inside was a spiral iron staircase leading upwards.

Lin Qi's waist wound was bleeding. The bleeding wasn't heavy; it was a ruptured capillary. She hadn't bandaged it. Blood dripped onto the floor, forming circular red spots. Her boots clattered on the stair treads, producing a hollow, metallic sound. The sound waves traveled upwards along the tower wall.

There were no monsters inside the tower. No traps. Only the sound of wind blowing through the air.

Lu Chen walked behind, maintaining a two-meter distance. His gaze was fixed on the screen, monitoring the surrounding data fluctuations.

Reaching the top of the tower. Four hundred steps in total. Pushing open a double door at the top floor. The hinges were lacking lubrication, emitting a harsh creaking sound.

Inside was a circular room, 200 square meters in size. The walls were covered by hundreds of electronic screens, each displaying surveillance footage. The footage showed the ten people who had just fallen into the abyss and their bodies being shredded. It played on a loop, with very high color saturation.

In the center of the room sat a genuine leather armchair. A man in a floral shirt sat on the sofa, his legs crossed. In his right hand, he held a clear stemmed glass filled with red liquid. The liquid clung to the glass as he swirled his wrist.

The man looked at Lin Qi, his eye muscles twitching. He flashed a smile, revealing his teeth. "We meet again. You cleared the level five minutes faster than last time. Your movement path has been optimized very well."

Lin Qi didn't speak. He gripped the short knife tightly in his right hand, tip pointing downwards. He pushed off with his left foot, leaned forward, and sprinted towards the sofa at top speed. Ten meters away. He arrived in 2.5 seconds.

The dagger pierced upwards, aiming for the man's Adam's apple.

The man raised his left hand. His palm opened. A semi-transparent hexagonal energy barrier appeared in the air. The tip of the short knife pierced the barrier, producing a screeching sound like fingernails scraping glass. The blade bent. It couldn't penetrate.

"Don't waste your energy. The physics of this sandbox have been modified. Kinetic weapons deal zero damage." The man placed the glass on the round table beside him. The bottom of the glass made a dull thud as it struck the wooden tabletop. "Those people died so quickly. Human weaknesses were laid bare. Greed breeds betrayal. Fear leads to mistakes. Lust distracts. It's all redundant code."

Lu Chen walked to the terminal on the right side of the room. He unplugged the data cable and plugged it into the host interface. His ten fingers tapped on the virtual keyboard, leaving afterimages. The green background and white text on the screen scrolled rapidly.

"Physical rules can be overridden by underlying instructions," Lu Chen said without looking up.

"Are you tampering with my sandbox logic?" The man turned to look at Lu Chen, standing up from the sofa. "Interesting data entity. Good computing power. But insufficient computing nodes."

The man's right hand underwent a transformation. Skin and muscle tissue dissolved, turning into a black, polymer-based blade, one meter long with sharp edges. He swung his arm, the blade slicing horizontally towards Lin Qi's neck.

Lin Qi leaned back. The sharp blade grazed the tip of her nose, slicing through the air in front of her. The high-pressure airflow cut her left cheek, leaving a thin, five-centimeter-long bloodstain. Blood seeped out.

The man pressed closer, his steps shifting rapidly. His blade slashed repeatedly. Lin Qi could only parry with her longsword. The longsword clashed with the blade, sparks flying. Hot metal shards splattered onto the back of Lin Qi's hands, burning red spots. Lin Qi gripped the sword with both hands. The force of the repeated impacts split open at the base of her thumb, blood trickling down the hilt. She tightened her grip, her knuckles turning white.

"Lu Chen. Quick!" Lin Qi shouted. She knelt on one knee, holding the knife horizontally above her head to block the man's heavy blow. Her knee slammed into the metal floor, creating a dent.

"Two seconds." Lu Chen's fingers moved without stopping. More than a dozen red warning pop-ups appeared on the main screen, indicating that the system firewall was blocking the connection.

The man gripped the blade with both hands and pressed down. Lin Qi's longsword curved. The metal reached its yield limit. The back of the blade was only three centimeters away from Lin Qi's forehead.

"One second." Lu Chen typed the last line of code.

"Overwrite complete." Lu Chen pressed the Enter key heavily with his right thumb. The key made a crisp sound.

Hundreds of screens on the surrounding walls simultaneously went black. Glass panels shattered. Shards scattered everywhere. The blade in the man's right hand faded, transforming back into an arm made of skin and muscle. The translucent energy barrier flickered twice. Then it vanished. The physical rules had been reset.

Lin Qi used his waist to push upwards, lifting his arms to deflect the man's hands. He rolled forward, and in the instant he rose, his right hand thrust the short knife upwards, precisely piercing the man's throat. The tip of the knife avoided the tracheal cartilage, piercing through the gap in the cervical vertebrae and exiting from the back of the neck.

The man stopped moving. His hands fell to his sides. He looked at Lin Qi, the muscles around his eyes relaxing.

"Well done. But the game isn't over." The man's vocal cords were damaged. His voice became a hissing, leaky noise.

The man's body began to disintegrate, turning into a pile of rusty metal gears that clattered onto the floor, forming a small hill.

The system announcement sounded in the room.

"SSS-rank dungeon: Mechanical City. Cleared."

"Survivors: 2. Granted permanent survival rights. Entering the next off-season."

Lin Qi drew his short knife. He flicked his wrist, splattering the mixture of engine oil and blood from the blade onto the ground. He then sheathed the knife back into the leather sheath on his thigh.

"Matryoshka dolls," Lin Qi said, looking at the gears on the ground.

Lu Chen unplugged the data cable, put away the virtual keyboard, and walked to Lin Qi's side.

"The data model is complete. There are 10,000 similar independent sandboxes outside. We've just jumped out of the second one," Lu Chen said.

Lin Qi reached out and touched the wound on her right waist. Her fingers were covered in red blood. She wiped the blood dry on her trouser leg and walked to the broken window. She looked out at the gray sky and the stagnant gears of the machine.

"Ten thousand," Lin Qi said, turning to look at Lu Chen. "Then kill them ten thousand times."

Lu Chen didn't reply. He stood beside Lin Qi, his gaze fixed straight ahead. The terminal screen went into sleep mode. The screen went black, reflecting the shadows of the two people. The shadows fell on the shards of glass and rusty gears scattered on the floor. There was no movement. The wind blew in through the broken window, drying the red liquid on the floor, turning it into brown solid residue. Chapter 62

At the top of the tower. The wind stopped. The mechanical gears ceased turning.

Lin Qi looked away and turned to look at Lu Chen. Lu Chen was still typing on the keyboard. The keyboard projection was in the air.

The code on the screen is gold. It's not the green it used to be.

Lin Qi walked over and stood beside him. "It's changed color."

"We've found the underlying logic gate," Lu Chen said, stopping what he was doing.

He looked up. Golden characters flickered in his pupils.