I'm doing engineering in the instance.

Chapter 9 Project Report

This place is called Yuan City.

He only learned of the name later, from someone passing by him—"The price of props in Yuan City has gone up again recently," and then that person left, leaving behind this word standing on the same ground as Xie Chengzhou.

Yuan City was not the transit space he had imagined. During the eight minutes he waited for the factory supervisor's route to change, he briefly thought about "what this space outside the realm should be like." He envisioned a standardized, functional area, like an airport waiting hall or a material storage yard on a construction site, with clear zoning, a signage system, and easy access to what he needed.

Yuan City is not like that.

It's more like a spontaneously formed market—not designed, but grown out of thin air. It's formed gradually by many people doing their own things on the same open space, creating a certain pattern and structure. But this structure is organic, not planned, so some places are crowded, some places are empty, some things are placed in strange locations, and some things are placed in very reasonable locations. It's like a construction site with its own logic, but you need time to figure out that logic.

He stood at the entrance to Yuan City and did what he was used to doing first: a global scan, not focusing on any particular area, to see the overall situation.

It was larger than he had expected. Judging by its appearance, it was at least two hundred meters in diameter, with no clear boundaries on any side. It was a kind of convergence where "you would feel something was wrong when you reached the edge and would naturally turn back." It wasn't a wall or a fence, but some kind of boundary that he couldn't quite put his finger on.

There were many people, more than he had imagined. When he was in the factory, he only encountered the one player who had followed him. He thought the number of participants in this adventure was not large, but the density of people in Source City showed that the situation was completely different. He estimated that there were at least eighty to one hundred people in his field of vision. Some were walking around, some were standing in front of the stalls, some were talking in twos and threes, and some were sitting alone in a corner, facing the void. Their expressions were the kind of expressions he had seen on people who had just come out of somewhere. They were fresh, with a little bit of wariness that had not yet been completely withdrawn.

He stood there for about two minutes, then skillfully opened the memo with his mind and began to take notes.

Player Behavior: He categorized the people he observed into several types based on their behavioral patterns. These were quick, preliminary observations, not research, but sketches. One type was those moving around looking for stalls, probably searching for something; another type was those talking in groups, probably acquaintances, or those who had just walked through the same area together; another type was those sitting alone in a daze, probably because something had just happened, or because nothing had happened but they hadn't yet adapted to the unfamiliar place; and then there was another type he couldn't categorize, those who were just watching people, standing, not buying anything, not talking, just observing, like him.

"Like him," he wrote in his memo, "he's not the only one."

He walked around Source City, not buying anything, just strolling and looking. He noticed a few things: information had prices. He stopped in front of a stall and looked at the price list the stall owner had written on a whiteboard—a compilation of explicit rules for a certain historical realm, a safe route map for a certain copy, a verification report for a certain implicit rule. Each item had a price tag, and the unit of the price was Source Coins. He didn't have a reference point yet, so he didn't know if it was cheap or expensive.

He stood in front of that stall for about a minute, didn't buy anything, and then turned and left.

In his memo, he wrote: "Information market: Existing, price system established. Prices for information vary greatly across different locations (for the same type, prices differ by about 3-5 times between different stalls). Predicted pattern: The value of information is determined by its scarcity, not by the quality of its content. Strategy: Build our own database, neither buy nor sell (at this stage)."

He walked to a relatively quiet corner in Yuan City and found a structure he could lean against—a pillar. He didn't know what it supported, but the pillar was made of concrete. When he leaned against it, he habitually touched it with the back of his hand first to confirm that the surface temperature was normal and there was no abnormal heat source before he leaned against it completely.

Then he opened his memo and began writing down what he wanted to write this time he came in.

While waiting in the newly cleared realm, he had already decided what he would do first after emerging: organize all the rules of #001 and create a fixed-format record, not fragmented real-time notes, but a complete, systematic record that could be consulted later.

He flipped to a clean page in his memo, wrote a line in the header: "Historical Realm Database · Entry #001 · On-site 'Wilderness'", and then thought about the following format for about thirty seconds before deciding on it.

The format is as follows:

"Trial ID: #001 Location Name: Wasteland Trial Type: Beginner Level - Solo Completion Time: 18 minutes 47 seconds Number of Participants: 2/N (Number of Participants Unknown)"

Then comes the rules section.

He encountered five explicit rules, which he had already scanned when he entered the first chapter. He wrote down each of them in neat handwriting, and then added his comments to the right of each rule—whether he had verified the rule, what the verification method was, whether there were any boundary conditions, and whether there was any possibility of misjudgment.

He discovered four implicit rules, listed in the order of discovery:

"Hidden Rule A: The factory monitoring system uses auditory (acoustic) perception, lacking visual perception capabilities and relying on sound localization. Verification status: Verified (n=6, method: active testing, comparison of the perceived/unperceived boundary). Boundary condition: Within the acoustic amplification area of ​​the chemical zone, the perception radius is doubled."

"Hidden Rule C: Acoustic Amplification in Chemical Zones—Sound pressure amplification of 2.1-2.3 times in the core area and 1.2-1.4 times in the edge area, with an amplification radius of approximately 11 meters. Verification Status: Verified (n=3, Method: Samples from another player, including indirect verification). To be improved: Precise boundary map."

"Hidden Rule D: Vibration Prediction—The sound of footsteps monitored in the factory is transmitted through ground vibration. The detection hammer cone head can sense the impact of the footsteps, leading the actual footsteps by approximately 0.31 seconds (mean, standard deviation <0.05s). Verification Status: Verified (n=17, error <20cm). Application Value: High."

"Hidden Rule E: Thermal Shrinkage - After activating the main switch, the plant monitoring system will track the thermal shrinkage. The safe radius is approximately 22 meters (electric arc heat source ≠ biological heat source; tracking will be abandoned after approximately 20 seconds). Verification Status: Verified (this practical exercise, single instance). To be verified: the precise value of the shrinkage radius, and the response characteristics of other types of heat sources."

Then came what he considered the most important part, which he titled below: "Cross-Historical Hypothesis (Pending Verification in the Second Horizon)".

He wrote under this title: "#001 All rules have a physical logic basis: the factory supervisor's perception method (acoustic perception), the acoustic characteristics of the chemical zone (sound pressure amplification), ground vibration transmission (medium physical characteristics), thermal induction response (heat source identification) - each rule is a direct extension of real physical laws in the environment, and there is no pure randomness."

Then below: "Assumption: The rules of the realm are not arbitrarily designed, but follow a unified physical logic system. If this assumption is true, then the rules of the realm can be derived from physical principles, and do not need to be discovered entirely through trial and error."

He wrote two words after this hypothesis: "To be verified".

Then he closed the memo and went over the hypothesis in his mind again.

If this assumption holds true, it is very important. It means that the twelve years he accumulated on construction sites—his experience with material properties, structural behavior, and environmental mechanics—were not useless in this system, but rather have systematic value; his background knowledge contains a pre-installed rule decoder.

He wasn't too excited about the idea because "to be verified" is just that—to be verified. One data point can't prove any pattern. That's what he did on the construction site—one set of data isn't enough, two sets are just for reference, and only three or more sets are needed to start believing.

He needs the next realm.

He stood beside the pillar, flipped to the last page of the memo, and wrote at the top: "Site #001 - Completion Report," followed by: "Completion Date: (see timestamp)", "Trial Type: Beginner Solo", "Completion Method: Main Switch Activated in Main Power Distribution Room", "Time: 18 minutes 47 seconds", "Number of Rules Discovered: 4 Hidden Rules", "Database Records: Updated", "Personnel Status: Fellow Player L - Completed"

Then, in the bottom column, which he called "Remarks" in the construction site completion report, he wrote the following:

"Control Room Archive Note: An analysis report suspected to be left behind by the designer has been discovered. The report's content is completely consistent with the current clearance operation, and its accuracy exceeds the current level of the historical realm. The signature code is G, which is not a character from this world, and its origin is unknown. The report existed before I entered the historical realm."

He underlined this passage, and then wrote below it: "This report is not something this realm should have. Someone knew what was going to happen here before I did."

He finished writing the line, then paused, screwed the pen cap back on, and closed the memo.

This was his first time entering the system, his first experience, and his first time clearing the game. He recorded everything he could in an engineer's way, including things he didn't yet know how to categorize.

At the end of the project report, he wrote four words: "Project Status: Completed".

Below those four words, he wrote half a line: "Next scene: To be confirmed."

The sounds of Yuan City came from all directions, a complex noise produced when many people are doing different things at the same time: conversations, footsteps, the sound of something being put down somewhere, someone laughing somewhere, but the laughter was short and quickly drowned out.

He put the memo into his inner pocket, put his hands in his trouser pockets, and continued to lean against the concrete pillar, standing in Yuan City, looking at this place.

He's not here to survive.

He has taken on the next project.