You take a deep breath and choose the most perilous leap on the tightrope of logic. You close your eyes and let darkness engulf your vision completely. You don't back down; instead, you take a step forward, protected by your worn-out slippers. You step steadily into the 'trap' called 'Floor 14' — or rather, the elevator's 'oesophagus'.
[Execution: Dimensional Infiltration]
'Click.'
The moment the lift doors close behind you, you feel gravity suddenly disappear as though you are falling into a viscous, cold liquid. Although Rule 1 warns against 'stepping out', it doesn't say you can't 'stay inside'.
You fumble with the cold elevator panel. The smooth metallic feel has gone, replaced by a texture similar to human ribs. Relying on your memory of the 'bottom' location, you press the empty button that should say 'G Floor' or 'B1'.
Sanity: 88
-> 80 (Stuck in the elevator's 'oesophagus', your spirit is being licked by an unknown entity).
Status: [Blind Navigation] — You are descending via an abnormal path. The lift begins to vibrate wildly, accompanied by a sickening metallic tearing sound. Your eyes are still closed, but the voice in your ears has changed; the eerie voice is no longer weak but extremely loud, as if it is inside the elevator.
'Mr Zhang, congratulations on finding the blind spot of the "oesophagus". This apartment building is not a ghost story, but a piece of 'redundant data' that was abandoned in the void when Chang Le Town was destroyed three years ago.'
[Rule Rewriting: Dark Perspective]
'Ding—' The lift doors open again, the strong smell of engine oil dissipating the fragrance of rotting azaleas. 'You can open your eyes now, but remember: don't look at the ceiling,' says the eerie spirit.
When you open your eyes, you find that you are not back on the surface, but in a vast underground workshop. It is constructed of countless enormous gears and luminous optical fibres, and its structure is identical to that of your old clock shop, only a thousand times larger.
In the centre of the workshop, you see the remains of the 'Dragon Heart', suppressed within a mortal body. It is suspended in mid-air by countless translucent red threads which originate from countless pairs of glowing orange cat's eyes in the darkness above.
'These threads are draining your "annihilation" divinity and transforming it into the "rules" that support this fantastical plane,' says a ghostly figure that appears before you. Only its upper body is present; its lower body has merged with the mechanical structure. 'If you want to reclaim your power, you must sever these threads. But with each one you cut, a piece of the truth about "Chang Le Town" will be completely erased.'
You watch calmly as the gleaming scissors approach your brow. To the untrained eye, it's a deadly trap, but to someone with a background in CEO-level decision-making, it's merely a logical flaw.
'In this watch shop, I decide on time, and I judge data.' You don't back down. Instead, you follow your instincts and your right hand plunges into a hidden compartment beneath the workbench. Your fingertips touch the cold brass and, instantly, thousands of possible combinations flash through your mind.
A clockwork gear as the frequency oscillator, a hairspring as the conductive medium, a leaking battery as the power source… Your hands move like a blur. Despite your physical strength being only 5, this ingrained mechanical intuition allows you to surpass the limits of human speed.
[System feedback: delete command confirmed.]
Sanity (san): 80 -> 70 (brain overheating due to intense logical calculations).
Operation successful: Simple frequency jammer assembled! Just as the scissors were about to pierce your skin, you pressed the red lever in the centre of the jammer and it emitted a hum.
An invisible wave of logic emanates from you and spreads instantly. This was no longer a physical attack, but a complete denial of this 'redundant data'. The 'roommate' hanging upside down from the ceiling let out a sharp electronic shriek, and her body began to flicker and shatter like pixels. Then, under the jammer's impact, the red threads suspending the Dragon Heart in the sky turned into grey, dead code.
'No… you can't…' The orange cat's eyes closed in terror in the darkness. Because the redundant data had been deleted, the model of the entire 'Riverside Apartment' began to crumble from the edges. The walls curled up like burning paper, revealing the deep void of God's Space beyond. As the jammer's power was turned up to maximum, the afterimage of the Dragon Heart plummeted and crashed into your chest. [Power returned: 25%; power unleashed] [Status update: sanity restored to 90%.][Obtained item: The Painter's Fragment, which records the true coordinates of Chang Le Town.] A ghostly figure watches you from within the crumbling mechanical structure. Its body was dissipating as the data was deleted, but a strange smile lingered on its lips.
'Boss Zhang, by deleting this memory, you have personally erased the existence of "Shen Qing" on this level, but you have obtained the coordinates. The next plane will no longer be a false trial, but true 'reality'."
In the dimensional rift, your body is pushed to its limits and the fragility of mortal life quickly dissipates, replaced by berserk power at its peak. However, this time, without the system's assistance or quantification of sanity, you can only experience the most primal pain.
[Power unleashed: 60%, 85%, 100% full power!]
[Status: Divine Return – Judge of Karma]
You crash down onto the scorched earth. The whispers of strange tales have stopped, and now you can only hear the distant sound of the wind and the crackling of wood exploding under the intense heat. Looking up, you realise that this isn't a low-quality data model like those in the riverside apartments, but the real world.
The once bustling 'Changle Town' is now nothing but ruins. Strangely, the sky is not black, but a dark, flowing purple — the result of high concentrations of etheric waste accumulating in the atmosphere.
Following the guidance of the 'Fragment of the Painter's Page', you head towards the 'Rebirth Bookstore' in the town centre. The bookstore is still standing, although half of one of its walls has collapsed. The red lanterns at the entrance are still glowing eerily.
In the lamplight, you see a figure that makes your pupils shrink instantly — a 'monster' with only its upper body made of flesh, its lower body entirely supported by countless scrolls and painting scrolls. Its face was covered in haphazardly applied seals inscribed with incantations and it held a golden-blood-stained brush, painting on a huge scroll. 'You've returned later than I expected, Chief Zhang.' The monster slowly tore off a seal from its mouth, revealing a twisted smile. This was the real-world Painter, not the AI fragment from the dungeon. 'Shen Qing isn't dead, but he's not alive either.' The Painter pointed to the tightly closed iron door behind him with the tip of his brush. It was engraved with forbidden runes.
"Three years ago, you thought you had destroyed all of Honglian's secrets, but in fact Shen Qing willingly transformed into the 'Karma Lock', sealing herself away on the ground floor of this bookstore to contain the 'Primordial Logic', a force capable of destroying the world."
The Painter displayed the scroll before Shen Qing. Rather than a landscape, the painting was a diagram of the entire world's structure. At its centre was a massive black hole, slowly devouring everything around it.
'Want to open the door and see her? You can, but the dragon heart you brought back is the only key and the only sealing artefact."
[A Fatal Choice]
Inserting the dragon heart into the iron door will awaken Shen Qing, but the 'Primordial Logic' will lose its suppression and sweep instantly across the globe, turning all life into mindless mechanical parts.
Alternatively, if you kill Shen Qing with your own hands, the 'Primordial Logic' will disappear completely with the death of its vessel. However, you will lose the truth you sought across three dimensions forever.
You let out a wild, piercing laugh. The mechanical dragon wings behind you tremble wildly against the dark purple sky, accompanied by the sound of thunderous, metallic scraping.
'The CEO doesn't talk about deals, only life and death.'
You abruptly raised your left hand, which transformed into a claw. You plunged it straight into your chest, tearing it apart at the core of your pulsating dragon heart. Since the scales could not be balanced, you used your own soul as a new weight, forcibly suppressing the heavens' cause and effect. The intense pain instantly shattered your consciousness.
The dragon heart, which had condensed the malevolent energy of three planes, split in two. Your divinity, logic and the ruthlessness of being the 'Chief' transformed into a semi-transparent, dark purple phantom. It was firmly nailed to the void before the iron gate and extended countless mechanical tentacles, gripping the 'Primordial Logic' tightly and imprisoning it within the ruins of the bookstore.
The last vestige of your humanity, belonging to 'Boss Zhang', carrying the other half of your core, transformed into a stream of light and crashed through the crack in the iron door, forced open by logic.
Behind the door, there was no light, only endless threads — the underlying structure of reality, constantly woven by 'Primordial Logic'. At the centre of these countless threads sat a slender girl with snow-white hair, sitting quietly cross-legged with a broken zither named 'Changle' resting across her lap.
"You still came..." Shen Qing slowly raised her head, her once withered eyes reflecting your shattered soul. 'But you are only half, too light, unable to carry this heavy karma away.'
'Shut up.' Your human-like afterimage lunged forward, ignoring the threads cutting your soul, and pulled her down from the forbidden altar. 'I told you, the score isn't settled yet; you're not going anywhere.'
The moment you embraced her, the 'Suppressor' outside the door let out a heart-wrenching roar. As your soul had been forcibly ripped away, you fell into a superposition state beyond death. You were both the cold deity sitting before the ruins, enduring the corrosive effects of logic day after day, and the mortal holding the girl and struggling through the void in search of a way home.
Your memories began to distort: one moment you felt like the watch repairman; the next, a world-destroying demon; and then, finally, just a broken string from Shen Qingqin's zither. An unknown amount of time had passed, perhaps centuries. A crack appeared in the dark purple sky above the ruins of Chang Le Town, letting in a long-awaited ray of pure sunlight.
The Skin Painter had vanished, reduced to a scrap of paper scattered by the wind. Before the iron gate of the bookstore sat a stone-like statue: the remnant of your suppression. It had become completely mechanised, the new 'anchor' of this world.
Beside the ancient bridge at the town's entrance, a man missing his left arm led a white-haired girl by the hand as they slowly walked out of the desolate ruins.
'Where are we going?' the girl asked softly.
The man glanced back at the statue, a complex look flashing in his eyes, and gave a self-deprecating laugh. 'To a place without rules, where there's no need for a leader, where you can survive simply by repairing watches.'