I'm doing engineering in the instance.

Chapter 56 Completed

Xie Chengzhou was unsure where the export route would be.

The exit at #001 is the factory gate, #002 is the pipeline control room, and #003 is the temporary dock at the construction site on the isolated island at sea. These three places have one thing in common—they are the "most complete structures" in this space and the nodes with the highest degree of completion in the entire scene.

The dam itself is intact, but there is one of the ancillary facilities that they haven't looked at closely yet.

"Management room," Xie Chengzhou said, "go that way."

Old Zhao didn't ask why. He shook the thermos. There was a sound of water inside, but it was much quieter. Most of the hot water had been used up, and there was about a cupful left. He twisted the lid to make sure it was sealed, and then continued.

Li Gong was behind him. His left ring and little fingers had been repaired, and his stride was a little longer than before. However, his right shoulder was still lower than his left. It was the kind of posture where the muscles hadn't fully relaxed after maintaining unilateral exertion for a long time. It wasn't an injury, but fatigue. It was the kind of fatigue where you could keep walking but you knew you hadn't rested for a long time.

They walked downstream along the top of the dam.

The wind at the top of the dam is stronger than that at the dam face; it's a crosswind, coming from the side, not blowing upwards along the dam face. It's a wind from a truly open area, carrying the moisture from above the reservoir and a grassy smell of indescribable origin. It could be from the vegetation around the dam area, or something floating on the reservoir surface. In short, it's not the pure smell of concrete; it's mixed, it's alive, the kind of smell you can only detect when you're standing on top of the dam.

Xie Chengzhou's two fingers on his right hand were still numb.

It wasn't that he felt nothing at all; it was a state somewhere between numbness and pain, like the insulation of a wire was slightly damaged. The signal could still be transmitted, but there was noise and loss. It wasn't an open circuit, but the impedance had increased. He put his right hand into his work clothes pocket, letting his fingers bend naturally inside, without applying any force, just letting it rest, and felt it—the temperature was normal, the skin was dry, only the tips of those two fingers were emitting a fine, tingling pain, as if something was moving under the skin, not intense, but continuous.

He took his hand out and continued walking.

The path from the top of the dam to its foot isn't long. Following the maintenance steps along the downstream slope, each step is about twenty centimeters high and thirty meters wide. The surface of the steps has an anti-slip treatment, with exposed aggregate, giving a solid, resistant feel underfoot. Unlike the roughness of the dam's slope protection, this step has a more regular roughness, a surface that has been artificially treated. Xie Chengzhou shifted his weight to the balls of his feet, taking one step at a time. His right ankle would feel slightly weak when descending the steps; it wasn't serious, but he could feel it every time.

He counted the steps: forty-two.

At the foot of the dam, there is a gravel area, and further ahead is a flat area. The windows of the management building still have a warm yellow light, which has not been turned off.

Feng Bo stood at the entrance of the management office.

He wasn't waiting for them; he was looking at a stone on the ground by the door. He was squatting, headlamp pointing downwards, pencil already put away, just staring at it, as if checking some numbers or wondering what the stone's location signified. He heard footsteps, looked up, glanced at Xie Chengzhou, and then stood up.

"Is the repair complete?" he asked.

"It's done," Xie Chengzhou said. "The large individuals have been withdrawn, the frequency of the small individuals has decreased, and the rate of increase has returned to zero."

Feng Bo nodded, closed the notebook in his hand, wrapped the rubber band around it twice, put it in his inside pocket, and pressed it down.

"Do you want to complete the game?" Xie Chengzhou asked, "or stay and continue watching?"

Feng Bo did not answer immediately.

He glanced toward the management office, and the warm yellow light from the window swept across his profile, illuminating a fine line on his cheekbone—the kind of line that only people who work outdoors for long periods have, not deep, but real.

"There are two more places I want to see," he said. "You guys go ahead."

Xie Chengzhou did not try to persuade him.

He wrote a line in his memo: "Feng Bo - chose to stay - purpose: to continue recording - judgment: he knows what he is doing."

Then he walked toward the administration office.

The door was ajar. Xie Chengzhou pushed it open and went inside.

The management room was small, about thirty square meters, with a cement floor and whitewashed walls. Several sections of the walls were peeling, exposing the underlying bricks. Moss grew in the cracks between the bricks—the kind that grows in chronically damp environments; it was dark in color, moist, and you could feel the water if you touched it. In the center of the room was a wooden table with a cracked surface filled with dust. On the table was a lamp, an incandescent bulb without a shade, casting a warm, yellowish light that illuminated the tabletop and an area about one meter around it; beyond that, it was dark.

There is something on the table.

It's not a tool, not a material, it's a notebook.

Unlike Feng Bo's, this wasn't a kraft paper cover; it was a regular black hardcover notebook with no markings on it. The edges of the pages were yellowed, the kind of yellow that comes from being stored for a long time—not stains, but the yellow of time. The notebook lay open on the table, flipped to a page in the middle, held down by a pencil. The pencil was sharpened, the tip was still sharp, and the lead was intact.

Xie Chengzhou walked over and shone his flashlight on the object.

That page was blank.

It's not that it wasn't written, it was erased. The pencil marks were wiped clean by the eraser, but the marks left by the heavy pressure are visible under the sidelight of the flashlight. It's the shape of a line of words, but I can't make out what it says. I can only tell that it's in horizontal lines, about fifteen to twenty characters, and the handwriting is neat, not messy.

Xie Chengzhou noted this detail in his memo: "Management room, notebook on the desk, blank page, erasure marks, approximately 15-20 words, neat handwriting, pencil under, light on, pending verification: who left it, what was written, and why it was erased."

Old Zhao was next to him. He wasn't looking down at his notebook; he was looking around the room, at the corners of the walls, the ceiling, and the corners behind the doors. It was the kind of instinctive safety scan one gets when entering a new space—a habit from thirty years of plumbing work. It wasn't deliberate; it was automatic.

"Here," Old Zhao said, pointing to the wall on the left side of the room.

There is something on the wall.

It wasn't a window or a door, but an iron frame embedded in the wall, about 40 by 60 centimeters. Inside the iron frame was a piece of frosted glass, and behind the frosted glass was light. It wasn't light coming in from the outside, but light emanating from within. It was a cool white light, not the warm yellow of an incandescent bulb, but a different kind of light source.

Xie Chengzhou walked over and placed his hand on the iron frame.

The iron frame was cold, at room temperature, not hot, not the temperature of running equipment; it was lifeless, a piece of iron embedded in the wall. But the light behind the glass was alive, moving, with subtle changes in brightness, not flickering, but a breathing-like fluctuation, as if something was breathing evenly behind the glass.

"Exports," Xie Chengzhou said.

He wasn't asking.

He placed his hand on the frosted glass. The glass was cold, with a fine layer of moisture on its surface. When he pressed his palm against it, he could feel the water film forming between his palm and the glass, like pressing on something that had just been taken out of the refrigerator—cold, damp, and with a slight adsorption sensation.

The light moved slightly behind the glass.

It didn't get brighter, it got closer. It was as if it was far away and then took a step closer. The moisture on the glass surface disappeared at that moment, as if it had been evaporated from the inside by something. My palm felt a slight heat, not scalding, but just enough to feel, as if there was a heat source moving closer to me through the glass.

Li Gong stood next to Xie Chengzhou, his left ring and little fingers outstretched, resting against the side of his work clothes. He wasn't applying pressure, just letting them rest. It was the kind of movement you make when your fingers have just been repaired, and you need to repeatedly confirm that they're still there. It wasn't a lack of trust, but a need to feel it, a need to make the matter feel real.

"Ready?" Xie Chengzhou said. "Put your hands on top."

Old Zhao tucked the thermos under his arm and placed his right hand on it.

Li placed his left hand on the glass, pressing his two repaired fingers against the surface. He paused, felt the heat, and then said, "It's warm."

"Yes," Xie Chengzhou said.

The light behind the glass continued to approach.

Xie Chengzhou felt the vibration under his feet disappear—not gradually, but all at once, as if someone had turned off a running machine. It was that kind of vibration that you don't usually feel, but only realizes has been there after it's gone, and then it suddenly disappeared. The ground became very quiet, so quiet that he could hear his own heartbeat, Old Zhao's breathing, and the very soft sound of Engineer Li's left hand touching the glass.

Then the light filled the entire pane of glass.

It's not an explosive burst of light, but a uniform, bright white that spreads from the edges to the center, like a blank sheet of paper being slowly illuminated from behind. It's not dazzling, just bright, the kind of bright that you don't need to close your eyes when you look at it.

Xie Chengzhou felt the direction of gravity change slightly.

It's not weightlessness, but the feeling you get when you're standing in an elevator and the elevator starts moving, and the downward force from the ground suddenly increases for a moment, then returns to normal. It's a moment, a very short moment, so short that you're unsure if it's real or if your perception is distorted.

Then his foot touched the ground.

It wasn't gravel or concrete in the dam area; it was soil, dry and slightly loose soil. When you stepped on it, there was a very soft sandy sound, like stepping on sun-dried yellow earth. The particles were fine and the density was uniform. It wasn't soil from a construction site; it was soil from the wild, the kind of soil you wouldn't find in the city.

He raised his head.

The sky was bright, not the brightness of daytime, but the kind of brightness that comes before dawn when the sky is just beginning to change color—a deep blue with a hint of dark red at the edges, the color of light accumulating on the horizon before the sun has risen. The air was cold, drier than the air in the dam area, devoid of moisture and that fishy smell; it was a clean cold, the kind of dry cold found only in high-altitude or mountainous regions, leaving a slightly tingling sensation in the throat when inhaled.

They stood in an open field.

In the center of the open space is a structure, not large, about three by three meters, a square concrete platform. There is nothing on the platform, only the platform itself, the surface is gray, the edges are right angles, the shape of a standard building construction platform, not naturally formed, but artificially cast.

There is a line of text engraved into the concrete on the platform, with neat characters:

"Site #004 - Completed".

Xie Chengzhou stood in front of the platform and looked at the words for a while.

Then he looked down at the two fingers on his right hand, bent them slightly, and found that they could bend. The numbness was still there, but it was a little less than in the dam area, as if the environment had changed and the source of the signal interference was weaker, and the impedance had dropped a little.

Old Zhao was next to him. He took the thermos out from under his arm, shook it, and the sound of water inside was very faint. There was really only a little bit left. He unscrewed the lid, glanced inside, and then screwed the lid back on without saying anything.

Engineer Li squatted down, placed two fingers on the concrete surface of the foundation, felt it, and then stood up.

"It's normal concrete," he said, "not the copy."

Xie Chengzhou didn't ask him how he made the judgment. He trusted Engineer Li's judgment. In twenty years of water conservancy projects, what kind of concrete hadn't he handled?

They stood there for a while, but no one spoke.

The dark red on the horizon began to spread, slowly seeping into the blue sky, like someone dripping a drop of red ink onto a wet blue sheet of paper. The color moved slowly in the water, but it was moving.

Then Engineer Li said:

"You know what? I've been working on water conservancy projects for twenty years, and I never thought I'd use this skill to save lives one day."

He wasn't expressing his feelings, not with emotion. He was stating a fact, the kind of statement you make after you've said something and then realize it's bigger than you thought, but you don't know how to react to it, so you just say it.

Xie Chengzhou thought for a moment.

"All skills are learned in a specific setting," he said. "Dungeons are also a specific setting."

Engineer Li did not speak immediately.

He went over the sentence in his mind. Xie Chengzhou could tell that he looked into the distance, not at the horizon, but at some non-existent place, as if he were thinking.

Then he said, "Hmm."

It's just one word, but it carries a lot of weight.

Old Zhao patted the thermos in his palm. "So what's my skill?" he said. "Thirty years as a plumber."

"Your skill," Xie Chengzhou said, "is knowing when to use hot water."

Old Zhao glanced at him, didn't smile, but the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes twitched slightly—it was the kind of expression that showed approval even without a smile.

"Okay," he said, "then my skill is valuable."

The dark red hue on the horizon continued to spread.

Xie Chengzhou glanced at the numbers on his wrist—the water level numbers were gone, there was nothing on his wrist, his skin was clean, it was real skin, without any numbers or markings, only the texture and color of the skin itself, exactly the same as what he saw every day in reality.

He wrote in his memo:

"#004 Dam - Cleared. Construction changes rules - Verification complete - Mechanism confirmed. Engineer Li: Twenty years of water conservancy engineering experience. Old Zhao: Thirty years of plumbing experience. All skills were learned on-site. Dungeons are also on-site."

He paused, then added a line at the end:

Feng Bo: He chose to stay. He's still inside.

It was getting a little brighter.

The wind in the open field was weaker than the wind in the dam area, but it was colder. It was a dry cold, the kind of cold without moisture. When you breathed it in, you could feel a little coolness in your lungs. It wasn't uncomfortable, it was just real, the kind of real feeling that you know you are in a real place.

Xie Chengzhou clenched two fingers of his right hand. He could still clench them, and the numbness was still there, but it was a little lighter than before.

He took a step forward, his foot landing on the dry earth. That soft, rustling sound came again—the soil was fine-grained and uniformly dense, the kind of soil he couldn't find in the city.

He looked up and glanced at the color of the sky.

It was almost dawn.