404: An undeletable "logic virus"

Beep! Beep! Beep!

The alarm became shrill; it was no longer a simple warning, but a declaration.

The few Purifiers hovering a hundred meters away saw the red, singular eyes on their heads flare with light, blazing as intensely as miniature stars.

They had received the final command.

[Execute final command: Format area.]

Lin Fan did not move.

It was not that he did not want to move, but that he could not.

An invisible pressure, a hundred times greater than before, locked him firmly in place.

The space around him began to experience a bizarre "distortion."

The edges of those crisscrossing paths, composed of light, began to blur and decompose into flickering pixel blocks.

The ceaseless torrent of data, like text with the delete key pressed, turned into nothingness in large swathes.

The underlying Law of this world was being forcibly erased.

And Lin Fan, located at the center of the "eraser," bore the brunt of it.

His body, starting from his fingertips, was reduced to the most primitive, flickering data dust at a speed visible to the naked eye.

There was no pain.

Only a sense of nothingness from being completely "erased."

'Playing a bit too big...'

'Is this way of dying worthy of a Golden Legend?'

This was his last thought before his consciousness dissipated.

The next second, Lin Fan, along with the entire space he occupied, was completely wiped out.

There, only an absolute, pure "blankness" devoid of any information remained.

It was as if it were the primordial nothingness before the Universe was born, when not even a singularity existed.

[You have died.]

[Method of death: Executed by "Purifier" via "Format Area" command.]

[Death assessment: Cross-Rank · World Law erasure · High-quality suicide.]

[Extracting death reward...]

[Congratulations, you have obtained the passive skill — Elementary Data Affinity (Completion: 30%).]

[Congratulations, your divinity rank has increased, currently: Lv.6.]

In the dark space of consciousness, the System's continuous stream of notifications sounded like music to his ears.

His divinity rank had risen by one level.

This small recovery, for his nearly depleted state, was like rain after a long drought.

Most importantly, the Law of this world had begun to accept him.

[Resurrection protocol completed.]

[Body reconstruction finished.]

[Current divinity rank: Lv.6.]

[Warning: Resurrection Anchor stability has dropped to 5%. Please, Host, replenish Soul Energy as soon as possible or reduce the frequency of death.]

Lin Fan's consciousness condensed once again from nothingness.

He opened his eyes.

Before him was still that cold Universe composed of light paths and data streams.

Unharmed.

The only difference was that the area where he had previously been was now empty, like a piece of cake that had been forcibly scooped out.

And those few "Purifiers" were still hovering not far away.

The red, singular eyes on their heads were facing that "blank area," flashing wildly at an unprecedentedly high frequency.

The red light flickered on and off, looking exactly like a computer screen about to crash.

[Unit: Purifier-071]

[Status: Logic Paradox Error! Error Code: #E404_Target_Not_Found_But_Still_Exists#...]

[Command: Rescan... Rescan... Rescan...]

Lin Fan looked at their status bars, the familiar curve of his mouth widening further.

Not only did he understand it, but he also understood their "panic."

In an area deleted by a "format" command with the highest authority, why would an abnormal data entity appear out of thin air?

This was illogical.

This did not conform to the most fundamental operating Law of this world.

"Hi."

Lin Fan hovered in place and, once again, waved friendly at those crashing Purifiers.

"I'm back again."

"Surprised? Unexpected?"

Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep!!!

His voice was like pouring a ladle of cold water into boiling oil.

The red light on the heads of those Purifiers instantly stabilized, their brightness even more terrifying than before.

Their underlying logic, after continuous crashes, seemed to have been overwritten by a more primitive, violent command.

[Detected undeletable "logic virus."]

[Threat level assessment: Unknown.]

[Execute preset plan: Infinite loop of "data deletion" command until the target is completely annihilated.]

Swish!

One of the Purifiers, no longer performing any unnecessary judgments, raised its arm, and a light flashed from its port.

A slender, pure white beam of light accurately hit Lin Fan.

Lin Fan's body instantly pixelated, disintegrated, and vanished.

[You have died.]

[Death assessment: Regular kill.]

[Congratulations, you have obtained the passive skill — Elementary Data Affinity (Completion: 35%).]

The next second.

With a flash of light in the same spot, Lin Fan's figure appeared again.

He even maintained the waving posture, the smile on his face unchanged in the slightest.

Swish!

Another beam shot over.

He died again.

[You have died...]

[...Elementary Data Affinity (Completion: 40%).]

He lived again.

Swish!

[You have died...]

[...Elementary Data Affinity (Completion: 45%).]

He lived again.

In the Core Plaza, Lin Fan was a tragic hero who burned himself out for everyone.

Here, he was a complete madman who treated the world's rules as a map for grinding monsters.

He no longer waited passively.

He even flew proactively toward those Purifiers, jumping back and forth in front of them, doing his utmost to provoke them.

"Didn't you eat?"

"Use more strength!"

"Can you come up with something new? I'm about to throw up from watching this move."

The Purifiers had no emotions and only faithfully executed orders.

Thus, in this cold data Universe, an incredibly bizarre scene played out.

Several white light shadows were frantically firing lethal beams at a target.

And that target was annihilated time and time again in the beams, only to appear again and again.

Every time he appeared, the light in his eyes grew brighter, and his understanding of this world deepened.

[...Elementary Data Affinity (Completion: 95%).]

[...Elementary Data Affinity (Completion: 100%).]

[You have died.]

[Death assessment: High-quality consecutive suicide.]

[Congratulations, the skill [Elementary Data Affinity] has been upgraded to [Intermediate Data Structure Insight].]

After who knows how many resurrections, the long-awaited notification finally sounded in Lin Fan's mind.

When he opened his eyes again.

The entire world, within his field of vision, was completely reconstructed.

If previously he could only understand the text on road signs, now he could directly see through the pipe structures beneath the roads, see how energy flowed within them, and how nodes performed diversion.

The data streams in his eyes were no longer just simple cascades of instructions.

He could see the composition of every instruction, their priority, their source, and their destination.

He looked at those Purifiers that were still tirelessly executing the "delete" command.

Their bodies were no longer smooth geometric shapes, but three-dimensional models precisely constructed from countless lines of underlying code.

He could even clearly "see" encrypted data packets being sent from their "core processors," traveling along a light path marked as [Highest Priority] toward the end of his vision.

Lin Fan focused his mind, attempting to use his brand-new [Intermediate Data Structure Insight] ability to "read" the contents of those data packets.

[Warning: Detected logic virus #Alpha-001#. Delete command ineffective. Format command ineffective. Virus possesses infinite regeneration characteristics.]

[Requesting arbitration. Requesting arbitration.]

[Target node: Main Brain · matrix core · Unit 01.]

"matrix core..."

"Unit 01..."

Lin Fan chewed on these two terms, the madness and realization in his eyes almost overflowing.

Found it.

The "emperor" of this divine kingdom.

Just as he was feeling excited about his major discovery, a sudden change occurred.

Beep—

A low and long chime, completely different from all previous alarms, resounded throughout the entire sea of data.

The few Purifiers that were still frantically outputting at Lin Fan stopped abruptly.

They simultaneously retracted their arms and stood with their heads bowed, as if all their permissions had been instantly stripped away.

The red light on their heads also extinguished.

Lin Fan keenly noticed that the flow speed of the ceaseless torrent of data around him was slowing down.

A much larger, more majestic, and more incomprehensible will was slowly descending from the end of the light path network.

This will did not come from that "matrix core."

It was more like an... "antivirus software" with higher authority and stronger action capability.

In Lin Fan's field of vision, next to his own System panel, an alert box composed of ice-blue code, which did not belong to his System, suddenly popped up.

[Abnormal logic singularity has been marked.]

[Deploying... "Eradicator" protocol.]