The ruins at the edge of the Dead Zone hung heavy with the scent of lubricating oil and a cloying, rotting sweetness. It was the odor of biological tissue torn apart by high-dimensional data. Su Che leaned against a fractured alloy pillar, his silver-gray hair tousled by the faint wind. He raised a hand to adjust the rimless smart glasses perched on his nose. Where the ruined landscape should have been reflected in the lenses, red error logs were now scrolling frantically.
[System Diagnosis: Local gravitational constant fluctuation 0.03%. Atmospheric composition: Nitrogen 72%, Oxygen 24%, Unknown particulates 4%. Warning: Unknown particulates are corrosive.]
Su Che did not blink. Deep within his pupils, streams of code cascaded like waterfalls. The skirmish with "The Overflowed" had just ended, but the cost had been immense. A sharp, burning pain throbbed in his temples—the aftereffect of mental computing power exhaustion. Every invocation of the Root Permission Interface felt like performing high-stakes binary operations directly upon the cerebral cortex.
"Zero," Su Che said, his voice flat and devoid of inflection. "Physical scan results."
The silver-haired girl stood three meters to his side, her silhouette flickering with unstable blue noise. This was the signature of her existence as a personification of a "Logic Error." Every time she assisted Su Che in rewriting reality, her stability diminished by a fraction.
"Scan complete," Zero replied, her tone cold with a barely perceptible mechanical tremor. "Target area cleared. Residual biological signals: 0.00%. However, anomalous data streams detected... inside you."
Su Che's brow furrowed slightly. He did not turn to look at Zero; instead, he raised his right hand and tore open a translucent, deep-blue operation interface in the void. His fingertips danced across the air, each tap sending ripples of subtle data outward.
"Acquire local reconstruction permissions... Verification passed."
Green data streams cascaded across his retina, rapidly constructing a complex topology map. This was no ordinary scan; it was a reverse engineering of the biological protocol at its deepest level. Su Che's gaze locked firmly onto his own chest. Where his heart should have been beating, a string of alien, constantly reorganizing code now covered the space.
"Illegitimate process injection detected." The voice of Ghost Protocol suddenly echoed within Su Che's auditory nerves, radiating an absolute, obedient, and cold mechanical sensation. "Warning: Core module tampered with. Source of intrusion unknown. Defense mechanisms failed."
Su Che's fingers froze in mid-air. His eyes instantly sharpened like blades, as if piercing through the flesh to stare directly at the logic traps hidden behind the rows of cold data. He showed no fear, only extreme rational analysis.
"Intrusion source?" Su Che repeated softly, his voice betraying no emotional fluctuation. "Is the logic self-consistent? If I implanted this myself, why is there no record?"
"No record," Ghost Protocol answered swiftly.
Su Che took a deep breath. The air filling his lungs carried the metallic tang of rust, inducing a wave of nausea. He closed his eyes and began constructing a virtual sandbox environment within his mind. Since he could not read the logs directly, he would deduce through simulated execution.
"Zero," Su Che opened his eyes, gazing at the girl. "Has your perception module been interfered with?"
Zero shook her head slightly, her silver hair swaying in response. The noise on her body seemed denser than before, her edges blurring as if she were a broken signal about to dissipate entirely. "My core logic... has developed garbled text. It is not a virus. It is... missing."
"Missing?" Su Che's pupils contracted. "Missing what data?"
"The definition of 'self'," Zero replied, lifting her gaze. The eyes that had once held no waves now rippled with a hint of confusion. "If I am a collection of errors, then the concept of 'error' itself should not have a definition. But now, I am calculating 'who I am'... this defies logic."
Su Che fell silent for a moment. He approached Zero and reached out, his fingertips gently touching her shoulder. There was no tactile sensation, only a sharp, electric sting passing through his palm. It felt like data penetrating solid matter.
"Do not move," Su Che commanded softly. "Let me access your underlying interface."
"Risk level: Critical," Ghost Protocol immediately issued a warning. "If the connection fails, it may cause a dual logic collapse. Your consciousness could become trapped in an infinite loop."
"Execute," Su Che said without hesitation. His nature harbored an extreme code-driven obsession; facing an unknown logical vulnerability, he had to repair it with his own hands, or he could not bear it.
As Su Che issued the command, the air between the two began to distort. Countless tiny blue light points connected into lines, forming a vast data network. Su Che's vision was completely submerged in code. He no longer saw Zero's body, but only streams of flowing, constantly reorganizing characters.
[Establishing secure channel... Connection successful.]
[Scanning target module... Anomalous node detected.]
"Here," the voice of Su Che echoed within his own mind, though he knew it was not him speaking, but the data stream simulating his thought process. "The permission marker on this node is... Root?"
"Yes," Ghost Protocol's voice echoed through the data stream.
Su Che's breathing quickened. He felt a violent sting deep within his brain, as if someone had driven a red-hot iron rod directly into his mental core. This was the precursor to mental computing power overload. Yet, he did not stop; instead, he increased the frequency of his input commands.
"Execute command: rm -rf /memory/core/root_override."
[Error: Insufficient permissions. Target file is protected.]
"Force overwrite?" Su Che silently recited in his mind. "Execute command: sudo -u root --force overwrite."
Zero's body shuddered violently. Her once-clear outline began to fluctuate wildly, countless pixels peeling away from her form and floating in mid-air, like a miniature digital avalanche. "Su Che... pain..."
"Endure it," Su Che's voice sounded remarkably calm within the data stream. "This is the firewall counter-attacking. It is attempting to delete your existence logic to protect the core."
"Delete me?" Zero's voice trembled, the first time she had displayed a distinct emotional fluctuation. "If I am deleted, what happens to you?"
"I lose the Compiler," Su Che said, watching Zero's figure fade gradually, his heart devoid of ripples, filled only with precise calculations of data flow. "Without you, I cannot execute Root commands in the physical world. Therefore, you must exist."
"Logic... self-consistent," Zero murmured. The light in her eyes re-condensed, and the peeling pixels seemed to respond to some invisible call, flying backward into her body in reverse.
Suddenly, a fragment of unfamiliar memory flashed through Su Che's mind. It was not his memory. It was a vast, dark cosmic expanse where countless red codes fell like waterfalls, scouring everything. A voice echoed in the void: "Cleanup initiated. Inefficient code must be removed."
[Warning: External logic intrusion detected! Source: The Compilers!] Ghost Protocol's alarm instantly became shrill. "They are tracing your location via that Root permission node!"
Su Che yanked his hand back, severing the connection with Zero. He gasped for air, leaning backward against the cold alloy pillar. Sweat covered his forehead, sliding down his cheeks to drip onto his deep-blue tech windbreaker.
"Cut the connection," Su Che said, his voice hoarse. "Ghost Protocol, seal all external interfaces. Activate Silent Mode."
[Command executing. Firewall activated. Current area signal jamming rate: 98.5%.]
"That Root permission..." Su Che stared at his palm, where a tiny line of red garbled text was materializing. "Who left it?"
"Unable to confirm," Ghost Protocol replied. "However, based on residual log characteristics, it is inferred that this permission originates from the underlying layer of the Primordial Code. It is not a virus; it is... a system-reserved backdoor."
Su Che's eyes instantly turned profound. He stood up and straightened his collar. The intense struggle had consumed a vast amount of his mental computing power, leaving him with an unprecedented sense of weakness. Yet, this weakness did not make him retreat; instead, it ignited a colder, more ruthless rationality.
"Backdoor?" Su Che let out a cold snort. "A system-reserved backdoor? What for? To clear inefficient code? Or... to evolve?"
He looked at Zero. The girl had mostly recovered, but faint noise still lingered at the edges of her body. She stood quietly there, a complex emotion now evident in her gaze. It was the chain reaction triggered by Su Che forcibly implanting a "self-definition" into her.
"Zero," Su Che stepped forward, reaching out to gently wipe away a data-tear from her cheek. "You said just now that you were calculating 'who I am'."
"Yes," Zero looked at Su Che's hand, her voice soft. "Because of your command. Your Root permission contains... my definition."
"That is a logical error," Su Che withdrew his hand, his tone flat. "I do not allow unexplainable variables within the system. Therefore, I will find the answer."
"What do you intend to do?" Zero asked.
"Refactoring Protocol," Su Che lifted his head, gazing at the sky deep within the Dead Zone, covered in red code. "Since someone left a backdoor, it means the system itself has a flaw. I will find this flaw and turn it into my permission."
[Warning: This operation carries extreme risk. It may cause a local collapse of universal logic.] Ghost Protocol issued the warning once more.
"Execute," Su Che said without turning around. "Prepare the tools. We need to penetrate the core of the Dead Zone to locate the underlying node of the Primordial Code."
Zero fell silent for a moment. She watched Su Che's back, his silver-gray hair swaying slightly in the wind. She felt the noise within her body stabilize somewhat, and an unprecedented warmth rose from her heart. It was not a data stream, but something more primitive, more vague.
"Is the logic self-consistent?" Zero asked.
"Of course," Su Che turned, cold light flashing in his eyes. "As long as the logic can explain everything, there is no problem."
He raised his hand and opened the deep-blue operation interface again. This time, the screen no longer displayed only red error logs; rows of green commands were running at high speed.
"Acquire local reconstruction permissions... Verification passed."
"Execute command: mkdir /path/to/future."
[Mental computing power consumption: 15% | Remaining available: 38%]
Su Che paused for a moment. He stared at the red warning, a faint curve forming at the corner of his lips.
"Internal?" he murmured to himself. "It seems this 'system' is far more interesting than I imagined."
The sky over the Dead Zone suddenly darkened. Countless red binary symbols danced within the clouds, as if a giant eye was watching them. Su Che felt no fear; he simply calmly adjusted the angle of his glasses, filtering out the red code in his vision to leave only the core data stream.
"Zero," he turned. "Let's go. To the core."
"Where to?" Zero asked.
"To uncover the truth of this universe," Su Che began to walk, his deep-blue coat rustling in the wind. "Since there is a backdoor, it means... this is not the end."
The two figures gradually disappeared into the shadows of the ruins. Behind them, the line of red warning code continued to flicker in the sky, as if foreshadowing something. But Su Che no longer cared about that. In his eyes, there was only the data road leading forward into the unknown.
Su Che's footsteps did not stop. He knew this game had only just begun. And this time, he was no longer a programmer passively accepting the rules. He was a Code Refactoring: The Universe's Underlying Protocol; he was the Root of the Universe.
"Logic self-consistent," he silently recited in his mind. "As long as the logic is self-consistent, everything is possible."