Weird Game: I brought an old version bug

The moment the door was fully opened, Jiang Chen's first thought was...

cold.

It wasn't a cold in terms of temperature, but a penetrating cold that seemed to seep into your bones.

He stood at the doorway, not going in immediately, but first shining his flashlight into the space inside.

It is completely different from the structure of the previous three layers.

Before him was a huge, almost circular space, at least thirty meters in diameter, with no visible top. The beam of his flashlight was swallowed up by the darkness.

The walls are dark gray natural rock, rough and bearing traces of natural erosion, like the interior walls of a cave formed by water flowing over countless centuries.

But in the very center of the cave stood something that didn't belong in this environment.

A data tower.

It is about five meters tall and made of a deep blue crystalline material, the same material as the crystals in the energy hub tower, but this tower is intact.

The tower is hexagonal in shape, with each side inlaid with dense, flowing light patterns.

It's not decoration, but a constantly flowing stream of data that circulates inside the crystal like blood, rising from the base to the top and then sinking back into the base, forming a never-ending closed loop.

The base of the tower is a black metal disc with a diameter of three meters, the surface of which is covered with dense symbols.

It wasn't any script he'd ever seen before; it was a more primitive, hand-carved mark.

The surface of the disc had a dull luster, as if it had been touched by countless people, or as if it had been polished by time.

The edge of the disc is inlaid with a light blue crystal at intervals, a total of twelve crystals, evenly distributed around the circumference, like the markings on a clock.

"The clockmaker turned the data tower into a clock," Jiang Chen said.

Shi Yu stood behind him, looking at the tower, without saying a word.

Jiang Chen walked to the tower, but instead of touching it immediately, he first walked around the disc.

When he reached the back of the disc, he saw something.

A paper document bag was attached to the inside of a disc with transparent tape, its opening facing upwards and not sealed. The edges of the bag were yellowed, but the outlines of the papers inside were still clearly visible.

He took it down, opened it, and pulled out the letter inside.

The handwriting is consistent with the handwriting in the watchmaker's notebook—casual, powerful, and every stroke is very precise.

The letter began: "To whoever you are, congratulations on getting here."

Those who can pass through three layers of screening at least prove that you brought the right things and made the right choices.

But what follows—I hope you read it sitting down; standing might make your legs weak.

Jiang Chen did not sit down. He leaned against the edge of the disc and began to read the letter.

The core content of the letter can be summarized into several facts—

First, Abyss Game is not an ordinary game.

It is a "closed testing environment" designed to test human behavior patterns under extreme rules.

The purpose of the test is not entertainment or a survival challenge, but data collection.

Each player's behavior, decision-making patterns, and emotional reactions are recorded by the system and used as training data for a larger project.

Second, the old version was not "updated".

The old version was "abandoned" because the testing rules in the old version were too lenient. Players discovered too many system limitations in the old version, and more and more people began to realize that this was not a normal game.

The system developers decided to terminate the old version and replace it with a new version that has stricter rules and more hidden boundaries.

Third, players from the old version were not "cleared".

Most of them were digitized—their consciousness was converted into a data stream and stored in this data tower.

The watchmaker used the word "archiving." Not death, but archiving. Most of the 07 team members are here.

Fourth, the watchmaker devised a method to "awaken" people from archived states.

However, the method was incomplete—the last few lines were deliberately crossed out, leaving only four characters:

"The key has been found."

After reading the letter, Jiang Chen remained silent for a few seconds, then folded the letter and put it back into the file bag.

There was too much information; he needed some time to process it.

Closed testing environment, data collection, archiving... each of these words signifies that the nature of the game is completely different from what he previously understood.

He looked up at the five-meter-tall data tower, its blue light shimmering faintly in the darkness of the cave, as if waiting for him to make a decision.

The last page has no text, only one line:

"If you've read this line, it means I'm no longer here. Not dead, just no longer in this game."

I found the key, but I can't guarantee it will be able to take everyone away.

If you're willing to continue down this path, go to the top of the tower and activate the underlying protocols of the data tower.

The tower will tell you what the key is.

Jiang Chen folded the letter, put it back in the file folder, and handed it to Shi Yu. She took it, read it quietly, and then said four words:

"Then wake him up."

Jiang Chen looked at her. Her eyes were calm, not impulsive, but showing that she had already made a decision.

He took off his backpack and handed it to Shiyu, keeping only the decompiled core and rule fragments on his person. Then he walked to the tower and looked up at the five-meter-high tower.

In the darkness of the cave, the blue light from the top of the tower resembled the light of some kind of signal tower, guiding the way.

He took a deep breath, grabbed the edge of the first groove, and began to climb up.

At a height of five meters, with grooves on the surface of the six-sided pillars for leverage, he climbed to the top of the tower in about three minutes.

The top of the tower is a circular platform with a diameter of forty centimeters. In the very center of the platform is a groove about two centimeters deep—an irregular shape, like a missing piece of a puzzle.

He took out the decompiled core and compared it; the shape was wrong.

The key is not the decompiled core.

He crouched on top of the tower, running his fingers along the edge of the groove until he found a tiny protrusion at the deepest part of the groove—an artificially implanted trigger sensor.

He pressed his fingers firmly on it.

The tower emitted a deep, resonant sound.

It wasn't an alarm, nor a warning; it was a very restrained sound, like a mechanical verification sound confirming identity.

Immediately afterwards, a hexagonal facet in the middle of the tower began to glow, changing from a translucent light blue to a bright amber color, forming a suspended holographic image.

The hologram was of a man around forty years old, with short hair, wearing thin-rimmed glasses, and dressed in the clothes of an ordinary player from Old Dawn City.

He looked relaxed, as if he had finally met the person he was waiting for, or as if he were simply saying his last words to a stranger. His expression was calm, even smiling.

"Hello, junior whose name I don't know."

His voice came from a hidden speaker on the tower, with a slightly electronic quality, but his tone was calm, as if he were chatting with someone he had known for a long time.

"There's not much left for you, but everything important is here. The fact that you've made it this far means you've gone through at least seven or eight rounds of selection: the system's, Lao Shen's, 07's, and the little hurdles I set up."

"You're the watchmaker?"

"I am part of the watchmaking process."

The hologram said, "I recorded this projection before activating the tower. I believe you saw it, and you even climbed the tower, so you must have noticed—the core can't fit inside."

"What is a key?"

"The key is not a physical object; the key is yourself."

The clockmaker's projection said, "The underlying protocol of this data tower uses the player's mental signature as the unlocking credential—not an ID, not data, but your mental magnetic field in the game."

The fact that you've made it this far means that your mental signature has already generated enough conflict records with the system.

The system is tracking you, but that precisely proves you're a qualified key.

"What do I need to do?"

"Place your hands on the tower, close your eyes, and think about what you most want to get from this tower."

The watchmaker said, "The tower will read your mental signature. If it matches, the underlying protocol will be activated."

If it doesn't match—you'll be ejected, and you won't get a second chance.

Jiang Chen reached his hand towards the tower.

The crystal surface was cool, much cooler than he had expected.

He closed his eyes, thinking of Shi Yu. Thinking of Lao Shen. Thinking of the members of Team 07 who were archived by the Data Tower.

Thinking of the watchmaker's last words—"I've found the key, but I can't guarantee it can take everyone away"—I'm reminded of those words.

A stream of information flowed down his arm and into his brain.

It's not a feeling of pain, but a feeling of being overwhelmed by information, like every corner of the brain is being crammed with data at the same time, like the CPU being stretched to its limit.

The images flooded his brain like a tidal wave, frame after frame, so fast that he couldn't react in time.

The streets of Old Dawn City under the setting sun, the emergency lights in the underground corridor of the Seventh District, the back of a person staring blankly at a screen full of code in a laboratory, a group of people arguing fiercely around a metal table, a woman accurately placing a crystal into a groove, and a man standing in front of a holographic screen saying to the people behind him, "We don't have much time left."

Those images were not his memories, but the collective memories of Team 07 stored in the data tower.

After the image flashed, his consciousness was pulled into a completely black space.

A gear—octagonal, silver-white, exactly the same as the gear pattern on all the watchmakers' markings—suspended in the very center of the space.

The gears rotated slowly, and with each rotation, a new line of text appeared on the surface.

First lap: "You are the key."

Second lap: "The door is at the bottom of the data tower."

Third lap: "But the door isn't the finish line."

Fourth lap: "The finish line is outside the system."

Jiang Chen opened his eyes.

He withdrew his hand, and the blue light on the tower became twice as bright as before, as if the entire tower had been reactivated.

The speed of light flowing on each side of the six-sided pillars was increasing, and the twelve crystals on the disk at the bottom of the tower lit up in turn, as if they were performing some kind of self-check.

A dull mechanical sound came from the bottom of the tower.

A crack appeared in the ground directly beneath the disc, revealing a stone staircase extending downwards.

Several old-fashioned oil lamps hung on the walls on both sides of the stairs. The wicks had burned out, leaving only black residue stuck to the lamp bases.

The steps are narrow, each step carved from a single block of stone, its surface covered with fine chisel marks, as if the clockmaker had carved them by hand when building the tower.

Jiang Chen slid down from the top of the tower. His legs were slightly numb when he landed, but he did not stop to rest.

He walked to the steps and shone his flashlight into the depths—there were about twenty steps, at the end of which was a door.

The walls on both sides of the staircase are engraved with more gear patterns of varying sizes, like some kind of signature left by the clockmaker when he built the tower.

Each step was worn smooth by countless footsteps, indicating that the watchmaker had climbed and descended these steps countless times.

There was no lock, no handle, no verification device on the door; only a minimalist pattern was engraved in the center of the door.

Octagonal gear.

There is a door at the bottom of the tower.

The door is not the end.

The destination is outside the system.