[Time: The day after the birth of humanity in the Primordial Era]
[Location: At the foot of Buzhou Mountain, on the banks of the Wei River]
[Status: Heavenly Firewall - Inactive]
...If the night in the Primordial Era is a splashed-ink landscape painting, then dawn is a gentle wash of color.
The morning after Hongjun's departure, the banks of the Wei River returned to their former tranquility. The newly born humans, who had just learned the word "human," gathered around the still-burning campfire, curiously examining the pieces of charred meat in their hands.
The early morning breeze blew through Shen Qingqiu's hair, carrying a unique, ancient fragrance of grass and trees.
"Seventeen." Shen Qingqiu sat on a blue stone by the river, holding a twig, unconsciously drawing circles on the damp sand.
"Don't you feel... something's off about the sky?"
Seventeen stood not far away, using the **[Slaying Evil]** knife to whittle a wooden spear for Chu (the little girl) to use for self-defense. Hearing this, he stopped what he was doing.
He looked up, and in his purple electronic eyes, the previously calm data stream suddenly flickered with a erratic fluctuation.
"Color saturation decreased by 0.5%." Seventeen's voice was deep, carrying a hint of mechanical sharpness.
"Moreover, the noise in the air… has increased."
Noise?
Shen Qingqiu frowned.
In this primordial world brimming with spiritual energy and where all things possess a spirit, where did electronic noise come from?
She followed Seventeen's gaze.
The once clear blue sky now had an eerie, deathly white hue. That white wasn't the white of clouds, nor was it the white of nothingness; it was like the deathly white of an aging, failing CRT monitor…
Buzz—
Buzz—
A faint yet extremely piercing sound suddenly rang out between heaven and earth.
The sound wasn't like wind, nor was it like thunder.
It sounded more like… fingernails scraping a blackboard, or an electric current breaking through some kind of insulator. Then, everyone witnessed a scene they would never forget.
The sky cracked.
Not a crack like the one before Nuwa mended the sky, where the Milky Way overflowed.
But a jagged, pitch-black wound.
The edges of the wound were perfectly clean, forming an absolutely incongruous geometric right angle. It was as if an invisible pair of scissors had forcibly cut a rectangle from this scroll called "Primordial Chaos."
"What...is that?" Chu, clutching her wooden spear, pointed at the sky in terror.
From that pitch-black, jagged crack, no Milky Way water flowed out, nor did purple lightning descend.
But something fell...from it.
It was countless pitch-black, perfect, non-reflective cubes.
They varied in size, some the size of a fist, others the size of a mountain. Their falling speed was constant, neither fast nor slow, unaffected even by air resistance.
Silent, like a black rain.
[Warning! Higher-dimensional matter intrusion!] [Unknown algorithm detected... Logic cannot be parsed...] Seventeen's **[Abyss Soul Crystal]** flashed violently, and Ah Ling, who had just woken up, let out a sharp alarm.
"Mother! This rain is strange! Get out of the way!"
Unfortunately, it was too late.
A saber-toothed tiger, drinking water by the river, out of curiosity, reached out a paw to touch a black cube that had fallen in front of it.
No explosion.
No blood or gore.
The instant the tiger's paw touched the cube.
Buzz.
A strange fluctuation flashed.
The majestic saber-toothed tiger didn't even have time to scream. Its paw, its fur, its bones, instantly disintegrated into countless tiny, colorful pixel cubes.
It was like a tiger made of building blocks being kicked apart.
Crash— The colorful cubes scattered all over the ground, and then, within seconds, vanished completely like evaporating water vapor.
The tiger was physically… deleted.
"Ah—!!!" A scream of terror erupted from the crowd.
Those who had been trying to catch the "gift from the sky" scattered in panic.
"Don't touch those cubes!!" Shen Qingqiu shouted, her red dress billowing as she rushed into the most chaotic crowd.
But the black rain was too dense.
A black cube, the size of a millstone, was hurtling straight towards the little girl named "Chu."
Chu was stunned, standing there dumbfounded, watching the black hole representing "nothingness" magnify in her pupils.
"You're asking for death!"
A black figure, like a black lightning bolt, instantly sliced between Chu and the cube.
It was Seventeen.
Without hesitation, the **[Slaying Evil]** blade in his hand burst forth with dazzling starlight, slashing fiercely down at the black cube.
"Shatter…!"
Clang—!!! A strange, muffled thud, not the sound of metal clashing, rang out.
Seventeen's pupils contracted sharply.
He discovered that the indestructible nano-gold blade was stuck inside the cube.
Not trapped.
But the part of the blade that touched the cube was… disappearing.
Or rather, being assimilated.
The once streamlined blade had transformed into a jagged grid of pixels. That terrifying "low-poly" virus was spreading wildly along the blade towards his arm.
[Warning! Mech suffers dimensional reduction attack!]
[Warning! Right arm texture lost… Model polygon count reduced…]
On Seventeen's arm, the delicate magical runes began to blur, turning into rough blocks of color. His fingers were losing sensation, becoming stiff polygons.
"Seventeen! Let go!"
Shen Qingqiu noticed something was wrong and shouted anxiously.
But how could Seventeen let go?
If he released his grip, the cube would smash into Chu behind him.
The little girl would turn into a lifeless pile of building blocks, just like the tiger from before.
"I won't let her go." Seventeen gritted his teeth, veins bulging on his forehead.
The purple light in his eyes flashed wildly; it was the core computing power fighting against this bizarre "delete command."
"Ah Ling! Get to work!" Seventeen roared in the consciousness channel.
"Coming, Dad!"
"Analyzing enemy code... This is... Holy crap? This is too unreasonable!" Ah Ling's voice carried a hint of shock.
"This is a 'clean' command! They're treating us like junk files in the computer!"
"Reverse compile!!"
Buzz— Ah Ling's small figure instantly appeared on Seventeen's shoulder. His hands moved rapidly, manipulating the glowing abacus in his hands.
Countless streams of green data flowed down Seventeen's arm, rushing towards the black cube.
This was a battle between code and rules.
It was a game between hackers and administrators.
[Injected Virus: Logical Deadlock.]
[Modified Parameters: Hardness -99%] With a series of actions by Ah Ling,
the pitch-black cube, seemingly capable of swallowing even light, suddenly rippled across its surface.
The absolute right angles began to distort and round out.
"Now!" Shen Qingqiu seized the opportunity.
She didn't use magic, but instead took out the peach wood hairpin (containing Seventeen's sword intent and her emotions).
[Concept Overwrite.]
She softly recited a line of poetry to the cube:
"I fear not being shattered to pieces, but wish to leave my purity in the world."
(Concept Extraction: Shattered to pieces.) Boom!
Words became law.
The originally indestructible black cube, under the dual attack of Seventeen's blade and Shen Qingqiu's poem, finally succumbed to the collapse of logic.
Whoosh—
It exploded.
It didn't turn into pixels, but into a harmless cloud of black smoke, dissipating with the wind.
"Huff..." Seventeen knelt on one knee, panting heavily. His right arm was saved, but it was covered in unsightly "mosaic" spots—marks of permanent damage to the divine metal structure.
"Seventeen!" Shen Qingqiu rushed over, cradling his hand. Looking at the blemishes, her eyes reddened with heartache.
"Does it hurt?"
"No." Seventeen shook his head, taking her hand in his.
He looked at the little girl still trembling behind him.
"It's alright." Chu looked at the "god" injured to save her, tears streaming down her face.
She reached out her dirty little hand, wanting to touch Seventeen's arm, but hesitated.
"It hurts...it hurts..." She pointed to the mosaic-like marks, awkwardly expressing her concern.
"It's alright." Seventeen clumsily rubbed her head, even though his hand felt strange.
Rumble— The crack in the sky didn't heal.
On the contrary, it widened.
More and more black cubes fell densely, like hailstones. Distant mountains were sheared in half, becoming bare platforms; a section of the rushing Wei River abruptly stopped flowing, turning into still blue blocks.
The entire primordial world was crumbling bit by bit.
Like an old photograph being eaten away by worms.
"What is this?" Seventeen stood up, looking at this apocalyptic scene, his eyes filled with solemnity.
Even facing Donghuang Taiyi, facing Hongjun, he hadn't felt this powerless.
Because those enemies were understandable.
But these cubes… were unsolvable.
Shen Qingqiu raised her head, looking at the pitch-black rift in the sky.
Her golden eyes reflected the falling black cubes.
She remembered Hongjun's last words: "That 'wall'… is about to collapse."
She gripped the peach wood hairpin in her hand tightly, her knuckles turning white.
"That's not a meteorite, nor a magical artifact." Shen Qingqiu's voice was soft, yet carried a chilling undercurrent.
"Seventeen, have you ever seen…Tetris?"
Seventeen paused, startled.
In his database, it was an ancient Earth game.
"For us, this is a catastrophe."
"But for the 'thing' behind that crack…"
Shen Qingqiu stretched out her hand, pointing to the blocks that were erasing mountains and annihilating life.
"This is just a… elimination game."
"They are the players."
"And we…"
Shen Qingqiu lowered her head, looking at her still vibrant purple dress in this crumbling world, a bittersweet smile playing on her lips.
"We are the bugs."
"The… defects they have to remove." The wind grew stronger.
But this wind no longer carried the scent of flowers, only a nauseating, burnt electronic smell, like burning plastic.
Shen Qingqiu turned to face the panicked humans.
She didn't run away.
She knew that if even they fled, this newly born human civilization would be completely formatted, like a game with a corrupted save file.
"Everyone, listen to my command!"
Shen Qingqiu's voice pierced through the chaos.
"Run to the caves in Buzhou Mountain! There, the pressure of Pangu can temporarily block these things!"
She took Seventeen's hand.
The two stood in the rain of black cubes.
One red, one black, as insignificant as two specks of dust.
But even dust has its dignity.
"A-Ling, can you still fight?"
Shen Qingqiu asked.
A-Ling sat on Seventeen's shoulder, his little face serious. The small abacus in his hand had transformed into a quantum computer.
"Yes! As long as Daddy doesn't fall, I can hack into their server!"
"Seventeen, can you still wield your sword?"
Seventeen looked at his mottled arm.
He didn't answer.
He simply silently raised his sword, the tip pointing towards the crack in the sky.
"As long as you're here."
"My blade...will never break." From the crack in the sky, black magic rained down.
But in this "deletion" operation targeting the entire world,
two stubborn viruses, hand in hand, were preparing to give that high and mighty "player" a small...primordial shock.