403: Welcome to the "Mechanical Kingdom"

"Fatty Zhang, keep the home safe."

This was the last thing Lin Fan left for Fatty Zhang.

He did not look back.

He clutched that cold coordinate light talisman and walked to the edge of the massive hull breach of the Epoch Ark.

Outside was the deep, deathly silent Void Realm, a lawless zone known as the "Scarlet Expansion Belt."

There was no farewell.

There was no hesitation.

He took a step, his body like a falling stone, blending into the boundless darkness.

The light talisman in his palm was activated by the last remaining trace of his Divine Power.

Hum.

An ice-blue beam of light shot out from the talisman, precisely tearing through the space ahead.

That was not a jump channel.

It was a cold and precise tunnel entrance constructed from countless glowing geometric lines.

Lin Fan's figure was instantly swallowed by this entrance.

The next moment.

His world was completely overturned.

No stars, no meteorites, no energy storms.

Here, it was a Universe constructed of light and data.

Countless light paths of varying thicknesses crisscrossed, extending to the end of his vision, forming a three-dimensional network whose boundaries could not be imagined.

Flowing over the light paths were waterfall-like data streams composed of countless tiny symbols.

They emitted a low, monotonous humming sound.

That was the resonance produced by massive amounts of information being processed at high speed.

Lin Fan floated in this ocean of data, feeling like a water droplet that had accidentally fallen into hot oil.

Everything around him was filled with extreme rejection towards him.

An invisible pressure squeezed in from all directions.

"Damn... is this the Mechanical God Kingdom?"

"The art style changed way too fast..."

He looked down at his hands.

The edges of his palms were undergoing a strange change.

The skin was no longer a continuous whole but was beginning to decompose into tiny, flickering cubic pixels.

A sense of "formatting" decomposition spread rapidly from the extremities of his body toward his core.

This world was treating him, the only "Physical Body," as an invading virus.

It wanted to decompose him directly from the physical level into the most basic data.

[Warning: Unknown World Law intrusion detected!]

[Suffering high-intensity "Data Decomposition" attack!]

[divinity rank Lv.5 cannot resist this Law erosion!]

Scarlet System warnings flashed crazily in his vision.

Lin Fan's heart sank to the bottom.

He tried to mobilize the pitiful amount of Divine Power in his body, only to find that the moment those golden powers touched the Laws of this world, they were directly "translated" into a string of meaningless garbled code and then dissipated without a trace.

Here, the power of the cultivation System was ineffective.

"Sending a dimension-reduction strike right at the start?"

"Not even giving me a hot meal."

Just then.

In the light-path network in the distance, several nodes suddenly lit up with blinding red light.

Beep—beep—beep—

Sharp sounds, like System alarms, rang out in this humming sea of data.

Several humanoid outlines, constructed purely of white light, sped toward his position along the straight light paths at a speed that defied physical logic.

They had no facial features, no limb details, only a smooth body constructed of geometric shapes.

[Purifier].

The "immune System" of this world.

Their "head" position was a single-eye structure emitting red light.

At this moment, those red lights had locked onto Lin Fan, this "abnormal data entity."

Lin Fan's scalp tightened instantly.

He wanted to run.

But in this strange data space, he didn't even know how to move.

He could only watch helplessly as those few "Purifiers" stopped about a hundred meters away.

They raised their "arms" in unison.

At the tips of their arms, there were no cannon barrels, no weapons.

Just a smooth port gathering light.

A "formatting" force, a hundred times stronger than before, locked onto Lin Fan's body.

No words.

No judgment.

Only a cold, absolute, deletion command.

"Dying again..."

"This time, it's really frustrating to die."

The last thought flashed through Lin Fan's mind.

The next second.

A beam of light, indescribable in color, shot out from the ports of those Purifiers.

The beam brought no sound, nor did it cause any explosion.

It simply, gently, enveloped Lin Fan's body.

Under the irradiation of that beam, the speed at which Lin Fan's body disintegrated into pixels accelerated by billions of times.

Arms, legs, torso...

In an instant, his Physical Body completely decomposed into tiny, glowing data particles filling the sky.

Then, even those data particles were completely erased.

In place, only an absolute "cleanliness" remained.

As if he had never existed.

[You have died.]

[Method of death: Executed "Data Deletion" command by "Purifier".]

[Death rating: Cross-Rank · World Law conflict · First-encounter kill.]

[Extracting death rewards...]

[Congratulations, you have obtained the passive skill — Elementary Data Affinity.]

In the dark space of consciousness, the System prompt was as cold as ever.

[Resurrection protocol complete.]

[Body reconstruction finished.]

[Current divinity rank: Lv.5.]

Lin Fan's consciousness condensed once again.

He opened his eyes.

Once again, he was floating in this Universe composed of light paths and data streams.

Unscathed.

Those few "Purifiers" were still hovering quietly a hundred meters away.

The red single eyes on their heads were flashing crazily at an extremely high frequency.

It seemed they were processing a situation that their underlying logic could not understand.

Why would a file that was completely "deleted" instantly "recover"?

Lin Fan did not look at them immediately.

His attention was completely drawn to this vastly different world in his eyes.

The previous world was chaotic, incomprehensible light and shadow.

But now.

Possessing [Elementary Data Affinity], he could "understand" it.

He could see annotations that he could understand labeled beside the light paths under his feet: [Main Road · T734 · Energy Transmission Protocol].

He could see that the data streams flowing endlessly beside him were actually lines of instructions: [...Uploading block data... Verifying... Executing...].

He could even see their "status bars" floating on the surfaces of the "Purifiers" opposite him.

[Unit: Purifier - 071]

[Status: Logic conflict... Requesting main brain arbitration...]

[Command: Standby.]

The corners of Lin Fan's mouth slowly curled into a familiar arc, mixed with realization and madness.

So that was it.

So the attack method of this world was "Data Deletion."

And his resurrection was the biggest "Bug" to the rules of this world.

A virus that could not be deleted.

He raised his head, meeting the flickering red single eyes of those Purifiers.

He even waved at them in a friendly manner.

"Hi."

"I'm back again."

Beep! Beep! Beep!

Responding to him were even sharper, more urgent alarm sounds.

The red single eyes of those Purifiers suddenly flared with intense light.

Their logic conflict seemed to have been overwritten by a new, higher-priority command.

[Unknown "Logic Paradox" unit detected.]

[Threat level increased: Maximum.]

[Executing final command: Format Area.]