NABC Chapter 27 - Journey Through Realms #003
Chapter 27 - Journey Through Realms #003
The client's representative arrived at 9:03.
The two men were a project manager from the client, surnamed Lin, whom Xie Chengzhou had met twice. He was direct and didn't mince words. The other was a newly arrived supervisor representative, in his twenties, carrying a new notebook with the pen cap still on.
Xie Chengzhou waited at the entrance of the construction area, picked up the two people, and first led them through the main structure, then the waterproofing layer of the basement, and then the rebar tying joints on the third floor. Manager Lin squatted down in front of the rebar joints, pushed them with his hand, and said, "The stirrup spacing is off here."
"The rectification is already underway," Xie Chengzhou said. "It will be completed this afternoon."
Manager Lin stood up and wrote a line in his notebook: "Give me the rectification order this afternoon," he said. "I'll see the results next time I come."
"Okay," Xie Chengzhou said.
The entire on-site inspection took one hour and forty minutes. Xie Chengzhou followed along, answered questions, noted down three matters that needed follow-up, and then escorted the two men to the door, watching the car drive away.
He stood at the entrance of the project department for a moment, took out his phone, sent the three items to the heads of each work team, and then put the phone back.
At nine o'clock, Party A finished the work.
The afternoon meeting was for subcontractor settlement. Before the meeting, he reviewed last month's bill of quantities and found two measurement discrepancies: one over-counted and one under-counted, with a positive net difference. He marked these two discrepancies and brought them into the meeting room. The meeting lasted two hours, and the settlement figures were finally confirmed and signed by both parties.
He came out at 4:30 pm.
The construction area was still operational, the shadows of tower cranes turning on the ground. Workers were conducting a final check before wrapping up, and the clanging of steel pipes came from somewhere before stopping. Xie Chengzhou stood in the corridor, mentally reviewing the day's events: the client, three rectification orders issued; subcontractor settlement, signed, completed.
I've finished my work for today.
He went back to his dormitory, changed out of his construction site clothes, sat down at his desk, and opened his memo.
He left this page unwritten before leaving home that morning. On it, he wrote: "Reality · 2026 · Today's Tasks: Client Inspection (Completed) / Subcontract Settlement (Completed) / Rectification Follow-up (Tomorrow's Acceptance)."
Then he turned to a new page and wrote: "#003·Evaluation Preparation Framework·v1.0".
He spent about forty minutes writing on this page.
He integrated the core experiences from the first two instances: #001 is a single-player instance, a chemical plant scenario, where threat entities are sensitive to vibration, there are four explicit rules and four implicit rules, and the key node is the main switch; #002 is a group instance, an underground pipe network scenario, where threat entities are sensitive to light sources, fluid anomalies have a periodicity, the key node is valve C-7, and the key variable is Lao Zhao.
He wrote four entries in the "#003 Prediction" column:
"First, scenario type: unknown, but based on the growth system, #003 is a Tier 1 adventure, which is more difficult than #001 and #002, and may introduce a larger-scale group variable."
"Second, threat entity: unknown. The threat entities in the first two copies both have exploitable blind spots in perception, and the threat entity in #003 may also have analyzable behavioral patterns."
"Third, artificially implanted information: #001 There is a drawing G, #002 There is a note, #003 Has it appeared again? If it has appeared, the implanter's information chain is further confirmed, and the confidence level is increased."
"Fourth, the acceptance team contacted players: Did any player in #003 engage in information gathering behavior? Observation criteria: actively inquiring about rules/actively recording/showing a clear interest in information related to 'cross-dungeon patterns'."
He read through the four points and then added a line at the top of the page: "#003 Evaluation framework established. To be updated after entry."
He closed the memo and placed his hands on the table.
The construction area outside the window had quieted down; work had ended. Occasionally, the sound of voices drifted from the corridor and then disappeared. The dormitory lights were white. Xie Chengzhou sat in this light, feeling the temperature of the space—dry, warm, the kind of warmth that comes from central heating, unlike any temperature in the previous world.
He mentally reviewed the "to be verified" section.
Source of the note, size of the acceptance team, Qian Xuesen's position, missing worker JG-0471, precise value of fluid anomaly cycle, third data point of cross-copy regularity.
All six questions remain unanswered.
He turned his hand over on the table and glanced at the inside of his wrist—the number C-0047 was still there, light gray and stable, almost invisible in the white light of the dormitory; you had to turn your wrist to the angle directly in front of the light to see it.
He didn't know when #003 would arrive.
#001 arrived approximately 48 hours after he returned to reality, and #002 arrived approximately 72 hours after he returned to reality. If this interval is extended, then #003 may arrive after 96 hours, or even longer.
他在备忘录里把这条加进去：「入场间隔：#001→#002，约72小时；#002→#003，待记录。是否有规律？待第三数据点验证。」
Then he closed the memo and prepared to wash up.
He stood up, walked to the table, and picked up his phone.
The phone screen lit up, displaying the time: 21:47.
Then there was a slight temperature change in my wrist.
It wasn't heat, but a temperature a fraction of a degree higher than the surrounding skin, a uniform temperature seeping outwards from under the skin, as if something beneath the skin had been activated. Xie Chengzhou put down his phone and turned his wrist over.
Below the number C-0047, blue text appeared.
It wasn't the "Experience, Pipeline, Settlement Completed" message he'd seen before; it was a new line of text:
"Trials #003 Summon Confirmed. Entry Window: 72 hours."
Then comes the second line.
This was the first time he had seen the second line in the summoning message.
"Evaluation Record: Realm #001·SS / Realm #002·S. This realm is an advanced evaluation realm."
He went through those two lines in his mind.
He knew what the first line meant—summoning confirmation, entry window, the same as the previous two. He didn't know what the second line meant—"advanced assessment experience"—but he knew its condition: SS plus S. He mentally reviewed the relationship between this condition and the result, but couldn't deduce any further information.
He added a note to his phone's memo: "#003 Summoning time: 21:47. Advanced evaluation experience: Definition unclear, to be verified after entry."
After finishing this note, he paused, looked over the words "definition unclear," and added a line of parentheses: "(Are the two high ratings a trigger condition, or just a record? Does advancing mean higher difficulty, or different rules? To be observed.)"
He put his phone in his pocket and mentally reviewed the tasks for the evening: no urgent matters, the rectification order had been issued, the subcontractor settlement had been signed, and there was a team meeting tomorrow morning. He could send the outline of the meeting minutes to the recorder before entering the site so that the recorder could organize it first, and he could confirm it when he returned.
He finished handling the matter on his phone, then stood in his dorm room for a while, going over the #003 assessment framework in his mind one last time.
Four predictions, six to be verified, and a new unknown variable: the advanced evaluation process.
enough.
He focused his attention on the wrist number, feeling the sensation of that "confirmation and acceptance point," and then the space shifted.
Personal space.
The worktable, memo pad, and consciousness archive area were all there. He stood in front of the worktable for a moment without sitting down—he didn't intend to stay there for long. He was only here to do one thing: retrieve the #003 assessment framework from the memo pad, save it to the consciousness archive area, and label it "#003·Pre-entry·v1.0".
Then he shifted his attention from the worktable and pressed it into the line of blue lettering on his wrist.
"Experience #003 - Summoning Confirmed"
He felt that familiar "sinking"—not his body sinking, but his senses sinking, as if something had moved his entire consciousness from one coordinate system to another. The process was smooth, without vibration or sound, only that uniform, continuous sense of displacement, which lasted for about three seconds.
Then he landed.
It's not the ground, it's a steel plate.
The first signal he received from his feet was the vibration of the steel plate—not a tremor, but a low-frequency, continuous micro-vibration produced by the combined action of wind and waves on a large structure, with a frequency of about 0.5 to 1 Hz, much lower and more regular than the plant monitoring vibrations he had felt in the #001 chemical plant.
He felt the cycle of the vibration under his feet, then looked up.
sea.
It wasn't the enclosed space he expected, not underground, not indoors—it was open, it was the sea.
He stood on a steel platform, about twenty meters by thirty meters in size, with a low guardrail around the edge. The paint on the guardrail had peeled off, revealing a rusted base layer, its orange-red color standing out against the grayish-white daylight. A thin layer of salt deposits, left by long-term sea wind erosion, covered the surface of the platform's steel plates, giving his boots a slight friction when he walked on it.
He scanned the area.
The platform has four sides: To the north is an unfinished main building with a steel frame already erected, but only two floors have been poured, and the formwork for the third floor is still there, with no concrete yet poured; To the east is a trestle connecting to another platform, about two meters wide, made of steel plates with anti-slip texture, with a slight subsidence in the middle section, indicating insufficient load-bearing capacity at a certain support node; To the west is the sea, directly above the water without any obstruction, with the sea surface about eight meters from the edge of the platform, and the swell period is about six to eight seconds, with wave heights of about half a meter; To the south is the base of a tower crane, whose boom has broken, showing obvious signs of fatigue fracture, not due to external force, but metal fatigue caused by long-term vibration.
He mentally processed the information: offshore steel structure platform, construction interrupted, multiple platforms connected by trestle bridges, main building unfinished, tower crane damaged, no personnel visible.
Then he noticed something.
On the south side of the tower crane base, there are several irregular scratches on the steel plate surface. These are not tool marks or marks made by people stepping on them. They are the kind of curved, uniform scratches that push outward from the inside of the steel plate. Each scratch is about two centimeters wide and about one millimeter deep.
He crouched down, placed his hand on the steel plate closest to the scratch, and felt it.
The steel plate was cold, the kind of bone-chilling cold you get at sea, but at the edge of the scratch, there was a slight warmth, a little warmer than the surrounding steel plate, as if something had stayed there and left its heat in the metal.
He mentally marked the information as: "Unknown trace, thermal residue, source: to be verified."
Then he stood up, looked away from the steel plate, and waited.
He did not experience the game alone.
Footsteps came from the direction of the east pier. There was more than one person walking. It was the sound of walking on steel plates, rhythmic but not uniform, indicating that multiple people were walking at different paces.
The first person to approach was a young man, around twenty-five or twenty-six years old, wearing a typical orange reflective vest found on construction sites. He carried a notebook and scanned his surroundings as he walked, his eyes darting around in a way that suggested he was taking notes, not searching for a way out. He reached the platform, glanced at Xie Chengzhou, and then continued scanning his surroundings, muttering something under his breath. Xie Chengzhou listened for a moment; he was counting—counting the nodes of the trestle bridge.
My hands weren't shaking, but my shoulders were tense.
The second was a woman, around forty years old, with her hair tied up and carrying a tool bag. After walking onto the platform, she went directly to the main building on the north side, squatted down at the edge of the floor slab, tapped the concrete surface with her fingers, listened to the sound, then stood up and wiped her hands on her trouser leg. She didn't look at Xie Chengzhou; her attention was entirely on that piece of concrete.
The third person was an elderly man, over fifty-five years old, who walked with a slight hunchback, the kind of gait that only someone who had worked on construction sites for decades would have—a gait where he shifted his weight forward. He walked to the platform, stopped, looked down at the steel plate beneath his feet, then squatted down, placed his palms on the steel plate, and paused for about three seconds.
"This rusting method is wrong," he said, not to anyone, but just saying it out loud, "Normal sea erosion goes from the surface inwards, but this one pushes outwards from the inside."
No one answered him, and he didn't wait for an answer. He stood up and wiped his hands on his vest.
When the fourth person approached, Xie Chengzhou noticed his movement—after reaching the platform, he didn't walk towards the center, but instead took a few steps towards the base of the tower crane, leaned against it, faced the trestle bridge, and then stopped. This was an instinct to find cover, not an engineer's instinct, but something else entirely. He was around thirty-five years old, and his steps were very light, almost disproportionate to his size.
The fifth person was a bespectacled man, around twenty-eight or twenty-nine years old. After walking onto the platform, he looked around, took out his phone, held it up, checked the signal, and asked, "Is there internet here?"
No one answered him.
He put his phone back and stepped aside, as if realizing that the question was inappropriate.
The sixth person was a middle-aged man in his forties. The first thing he did after stepping onto the platform was look down—not at the ground, but at his wrist. He pushed up his sleeve to check the number, then pulled it down and scanned his surroundings. He found Xie Chengzhou, then the woman carrying the tool bag, then the man leaning against the crane base. He stopped, and Xie Chengzhou didn't know what kind of assessment he was making in his mind, but there was a professional sense of categorization in his eyes, as if he were dividing people into several categories.
Doctor, Xie Chengzhou mentally noted, or someone with similar professional habits.
As the seventh person approached, Xie Chengzhou felt the pier vibrate—it was the sound of hurried footsteps, not from a large crowd, but from a single person walking quickly. Upon reaching the platform, he walked directly to the western edge, stopped by the railing, glanced into the sea, then turned and scanned the platform with an expression that said, "I've memorized this space." He was in his thirties, broad-shouldered, and walked with a large swing of his arms—the kind of gait that suggested abundant stamina.
The eighth person was a man in his fifties. The first thing he did after getting onto the platform was to look for safety signs. He took a few steps to the north and a few steps to the east, looking for the green safety passage signs, but there weren't any on this platform. He looked around, stopped, frowned, and then stood still, putting his hands in his pockets.
The ninth person was a young woman, about twenty-three or twenty-four years old. She walked onto the platform and didn't move, standing at the entrance of the pier. Her face was pale, but she didn't say a word. She looked down at her feet, then raised her head, glanced around, and then lowered her head again. She wasn't carrying anything; her hands were at her sides, her fingers slightly bent, as if she didn't know what to do.
When the tenth person walked over, Xie Chengzhou noticed his hands—after he walked onto the platform, he squatted down, placed his hands on the surface of the steel plate, paused for about five seconds, then stood up, turned his hands over, and looked at his palms. There was a light layer of rust on his palms. He looked at the color and frowned.
"This corrosion is alive," he said, his voice not loud, but Xie Chengzhou heard him. "It's not static; it's continuing to develop."
He was in his forties, with broad, thick hands bearing scars from welding—the hands of a welder.
Then the platform fell silent for a moment.
Xie Chengzhou counted: including himself, there are now eleven people on the platform.
He mentally went through the eleven people: a young man taking notes, a female engineer inspecting the concrete, an old worker saying "the rusting is wrong," a man leaning against the tower crane base, a programmer asking about the network signal, a middle-aged man checking the numbers first, a physically strong man going straight to the sea, a safety officer looking for the safety passage, a young woman standing motionless at the entrance of the pier, a welder saying "corrosion is alive," and himself.
Eleven people.
This was the first time he had ever seen so many people in the realm.
He mentally noted the number: "Group size: To be confirmed, currently 11 people. The group size for the advanced assessment mission may differ from the previous two."
Then the twelfth person appeared.
He came from the pier, the last one, walking at a moderate pace. He paused when he reached the platform entrance.
It was just a moment, less than two seconds, but Xie Chengzhou noticed—he was scanning.
It wasn't a random scan; it was the kind of scan that took in everyone's position, actions, and state. Starting with the young man holding the notebook, then the young woman standing motionless at the entrance of the pier, then the man leaning against the tower crane base, then the welder squatting on the steel plate, it went through everyone one by one, and then stopped on Xie Chengzhou, glancing down at his wrist.
"Your clearance efficiency is very high," he said, then looked away from Xie Chengzhou's wrist and glanced at the platform, "but at least three of them are pure debts this time."
His tone was declarative, not critical; it was the calmness of reading a statistic aloud.
Xie Chengzhou went over the sentence in his mind.
"Three." He had counted all eleven people before stepping onto the platform and arrived at the exact number. This wasn't a deduction, but an assessment—the kind of assessment where there were already established classification standards, and conclusions could be drawn simply by fitting them into those standards.
Then he scanned the man: around thirty-five years old, with an uncovered number on the inside of his wrist, C-0019. The serial number was very low, meaning he entered very early or had a high social standing upon entry. He carried no tools, no notebook, no backpack, his hands were empty, and he stood on the platform in a way that said, "I have already assessed this space."
"You know me," Xie Chengzhou said.
"The speedrun record is public," the man said. "C-0047, two instances, SS and S, entered later than your serial number, but cleared faster than most lower-ranked players." He paused. "You have an engineering background."
This is not a question.
Xie Chengzhou did not answer. He shifted his attention away from the person and glanced around the platform.
Twelve people stood on a steel platform at sea, waiting for the rule text to appear.
Xie Chengzhou mentally reviewed the scenario, then added a new entry to the "Pending Verification" column: "#003·New Variable·C-0019. Evaluation: In Progress."
The rule text appears in a different way than the previous two times.
The first two times, the text appeared alone after he landed, and he was the only one who saw it; it felt like a "private notification from the entity." This time, the text of the rules appeared in the air above the platform—not as a physical entity, but as semi-transparent words that floated about two meters in front of his line of sight, visible to everyone.
Xie Chengzhou glanced around to confirm: everyone was looking in the same direction, the young man had stopped taking notes, the female engineer had walked over from the main building on the north side, and even the young woman who had been standing still at the entrance of the pier had looked up.
It is public and available to everyone.
He focused his attention on the rule text and began to read.
"Experience #003 - Rule Text"
"Article 1: All construction equipment on the platform must be in standby mode and must not be started manually."
Article 2: When crossing the pier, the number of people crossing at one time shall not exceed three.
Article 3: The third floor slab of the main building is a construction restricted area and entry is prohibited.
Article 4: No one shall stay on the outer edge of the platform for more than five minutes at night.
Four rules, the same number as the previous two sets of explicit rules.
Xie Chengzhou went through these four points in his mind, noting the wording and logic of each one: The first point restricts proactive behavior; there is a gap between "standby state" and "active activation"—is "passive activation" considered a violation? The second point restricts the number of people allowed to pass; "single" is a concept of a time window, but the length of the window is not defined. The third point is a restricted area, but the reason is not explained; the term "construction restricted area" is an engineering term, implying physical danger rather than rule-based danger. The fourth point introduces a time dimension; "nighttime" is not defined, and the boundary of the "outer edge of the platform" is not defined.
There are gaps in each one.
This is not accidental; it is design.
"Four rules," said the man named C-0019. His voice wasn't loud, but on this open sea platform, the wind muffled his voice, making it even clearer. "Same as the previous two times: four explicit rules, and the implicit rules are yet to be discovered."
Xie Chengzhou shifted his attention from the rule text and glanced at him.
"You've done the statistics," Xie Chengzhou said.
"Information has a price," the man said, "but statistics are public; you can see them on the bulletin board." He paused. "My name is Xu Kai, C-0019. What's your name?"
"Xie Chengzhou," Xie Chengzhou said, "C-0047."
"I know," Xu Kai said. "I just looked at your wrist."
The young man who had been taking notes walked over, opened his notebook, and said, "I've written down the rules," his voice a little tense. "I've written down the first four rules." He paused for a moment. "My name is Wu Ming. I don't know much about engineering, but I can take notes."
Xie Chengzhou glanced at him, then looked at the notebook. The handwriting was very neat, the kind of neatness that comes from training, but there was a slight ink stain on the edge of the wrist, left when the hand was shaking.
His hands were shaking, but he still finished writing the words.
"The record is useful," Xie Chengzhou said.
The old worker who had said the "rusting method was wrong" walked over and stood next to Xie Chengzhou. He glanced down at the rule text. "Rule number three," he said, "Three-story slab, no construction allowed." He looked up at the main building on the north side. "I just checked. There's a problem with the formwork on the third floor. It's a problem with the formwork support system, not the concrete itself. The spacing between the support rods is too large, and the load-bearing capacity is insufficient. There's a risk of collapse if you walk on it." He paused. "This rule isn't just written casually."
Xie Chengzhou mentally marked this information: "Old Chen, worker background, high precision in structural observation, the physical basis of the third rule has been confirmed."
Xu Kai took a few steps toward the edge of the platform, glanced at the sea, then turned around. "I have an idea," he said. "You may disagree." He paused. "The main quest for this instance should be on the east platform, not here. This is Phase 1, the entry point, not the objective. We need to go east via the pier. The second rule limits the number of people passing through at one time, indicating that the pier is a critical path and also a risk point."
He speaks in declarative sentences, without "I think" or "maybe," only "yes."
“You’ve been to similar instances,” said the female engineer carrying a tool bag, who was walking over from the north side. “Or you have a source of information.”
"Yes, I have both," Xu Kai said, without elaborating further.
Xie Chengzhou mentally reviewed Xu Kai's analysis: P1 is the entry point, the east platform is the target point, and the trestle is the critical path. The analysis itself wasn't flawed, but it was too fast, as if he already knew certain information rather than deducing it on-site.
He added this to "Under Verification": "C-0019 Information Source: Already available or obtained through other channels. Observation: In progress."
The other people on the platform started to move. The safety officer who was looking for the safety passage walked to the north side, the man who was leaning against the tower crane base got off the base and walked towards the center of the platform, and the old electrician who only looked at the platform and not at people took his hand off the guardrail and glanced towards the east trestle bridge.
Xie Chengzhou mentally reviewed the twelve people on the platform, then took a few steps toward the east side of the pier, squatted down, and placed his hand on the steel plate at the pier entrance.
The cycle of the surge is six to eight seconds. He felt it, and this time it was seven seconds. The wave was half a meter high. The impact force produced a periodic stress change on the supporting structure of the pier. Each time a surge came, the vibration amplitude of the pier would increase and then recover.
He memorized this cycle in his mind.
Then he noticed something.
The heat around the scratches disappeared the instant the wave arrived—the instant the wave crashed against the bottom of the steel structure and the entire platform vibrated to its maximum amplitude.
It didn't disappear, it just moved.
He placed his hand on the edge of the scratch and waited for the next surge.
The surge came, the platform vibrated, and the heat disappeared.
The surge receded, and the heat returned, though slightly weaker than before.
He mentally reviewed the data and then added a new entry to the "Unverified" column: "Residual heat in steel plate - vibration correlation: The heat sensation disappears instantly upon impact of the surge and recovers after the surge recedes. Mechanism: Unverified."
He stood up and rubbed his hands on his trouser leg.
Just then, a low-frequency hum came from the direction of P2—the direction of the platform connected by the east pier.
It wasn't the sound of wind, waves, or the vibration of the steel structure; it was a uniform, continuous hum emanating from within the metal, with a frequency between 20 and 30 hertz, higher than normal structural vibrations but lower than those of mechanical equipment.
Xie Chengzhou focused his attention on the sound and sensed its direction: east, P2 direction, coming from the other end of the pier.
Then the sound stopped.
The platform fell silent for a moment.
Wu Ming picked up the notebook, and another ink stain appeared on the edge of his wrist.
Xie Chengzhou mentally reviewed the frequency of the sound, then added a final entry to the "Unverified" column: "Low-frequency humming in the P2 direction, approximately 20-30Hz, lasting about 4 seconds. Source: Unknown. Whether it is related to residual heat in the steel plate: Unverified."
After he finished writing this down, he stood up straight and glanced at the pier on the east side.
The slight subsidence in the middle section of the pier became more noticeable after the surge of waves. It was the kind of support node that slowly yielded under repeated loads, not breaking immediately, but accumulating gradually.
He mentally estimated the time window but couldn't figure it out—he needed more data.
He shifted his attention away from the pier, took a few steps toward the center of the platform, and stood among the twelve people.
"We need to confirm P2 first," he said, "before deciding on the route."