69novels Chapter 15 Pipeline
Chapter 15 Pipeline
He opened his eyes.
It wasn't the light that came first, it was the sound.
The sound of water. Not rain, not a river, but the sound of water flowing in a closed pipe—deep, continuous, and resonant, as if the sound had bounced off the concrete walls more than once before reaching his ears. He had dealt with many underground pipe network problems on construction sites, and he recognized this sound. It came from a pipe with a considerable diameter, a small but steady flow, and no turbulence.
Then there is light.
It wasn't natural light, but emergency lighting, an orange-yellow hue emanating from the fixtures above his head. The fixtures were standard industrial explosion-proof lights, their surfaces damp with water. One of them was flickering slightly, about once every three seconds. It wasn't about to break; it was just a poor connection. Xie Chengzhou had seen many of these lights on construction sites. He knew that this flickering frequency usually didn't affect their use, but if it completely failed at a critical moment, it would be a problem.
He wrote a line in his memo: "Light source: emergency lighting: one lamp with poor contact: frequency 3 seconds/time".
Then he looked up and scanned the entire space.
He stood in a circular space, about five meters in diameter and level with the pipes. It was lined with concrete, and the surface bore the marks of formwork left during construction. There were traces of water seepage at the joints, now dried, indicating the seepage was not continuous but a historical remnant. There was about twenty centimeters of water on the ground, flowing slowly from the pipe opening to his left and out the opening to his right, at a rate of less than five centimeters per second. He gently kicked the surface, and the ripples spread as quickly as he had estimated.
This is a maintenance room.
He had seen similar structures on construction sites—maintenance nodes for underground pipelines, set up at intervals for maintenance personnel to enter and inspect equipment. The emergency lighting in this maintenance room was still working, and the supply box was on the wall to his right. It was a metal box with intact latches and the word "EMERGENCY" on its surface. The lettering had faded but was still legible.
He did not open the supply crate immediately.
He looked at everything else in the space first.
Left pipe opening: The pipe diameter is about two and a half meters, allowing him to walk upright. The inside of the pipe is dark, and he can see to a depth of about fifteen meters before it becomes completely dark again. Water flows from here, indicating that this is the upstream direction. Right pipe opening: The same pipe diameter, but the water flows outwards on this side, indicating that this is the downstream direction, the direction he needs to go.
In his memo, he wrote: "#002 Pipeline Entry Confirmation. Maintenance room, 5 meters in diameter, emergency lighting, water depth 20 centimeters, flow velocity <5 cm/s. Left side = upstream, right side = downstream (target direction). Supply tank: intact, not opened."
Then he looked down at the inside of his wrist.
The serial number was C-0047; the handwriting was consistent, and there was no new information. He rolled up his sleeves, put his hands in his pockets, and stood in the maintenance room for about thirty seconds.
For thirty seconds, he listened.
The sound of running water, the faint hum of the emergency lights, and the occasional drip of water from the pipe wall. No other sounds. No footsteps, no breathing, none of the "factory supervisor's presence" he was familiar with in #001.
This does not mean there are no threats here. It means that the way threats are perceived may be different from that in #001.
In his memo, he wrote: "Threat: Unconfirmed. Perception method: To be assessed. DB-001 assumption applies—rules have a physical basis, and the perception mechanism of threat entities should have corresponding physical logic. First priority: Find the rules, not the exit strategy."
The heat on the inside of my wrist throbbed slightly.
He looked down and saw three lines of text below the number:
"Rule Number 1: When there is a fluid anomaly in the pipe and the flow rate suddenly increases, the player must reach the nearest maintenance room within 60 seconds, otherwise the adventure will fail."
"Rule 2: End of the journey condition: Reach the main control room at the end of the pipeline and close the flow control valve."
"Rule No. 3: There are emergency supply boxes in the maintenance room, each of which can only be used once."
Xie Chengzhou went through those three lines in his mind, then wrote them down one by one in his memo, adding his own analysis in parentheses after each rule.
"Rule 1: Fluid anomaly, 60-second window." He wrote in parentheses: "(Trigger condition not specified—'sudden increase' implies a trigger mechanism, random or regular? Physical basis: Increased flow in a pipeline system is usually controlled by valves or released from upstream storage, not random. To be verified.)"
"Rule Two: In the terminal control room, close the control valve." (Parentheses: "(Distance not specified, total pipeline length unknown. A sense of distance needs to be established during the journey.)")
"Rule Three: Supply boxes are for single use only." (Three maintenance rooms correspond to three uses. Contents unknown; assessment required before use.)
He closed the memo, walked to the supply box, unlocked it, and checked the contents: one spare light source (a flashlight, battery level unknown; he turned it on to test it, it lit up, then turned it off), one emergency rope (about ten meters long, woven nylon, the load-bearing markings were blurred, but he estimated the diameter to be able to withstand about two hundred kilograms), and nothing else.
He put the flashlight in his pocket, hung the rope on his waist, and fastened the supply box back up.
Then he heard a sound.
It wasn't the sound of water. It was the sound of footsteps, coming from the pipe opening on the right. It was the sound of footsteps in the water, each step accompanied by a slight splash of water. The rhythm was slow; it was someone walking, not running.
Xie Chengzhou didn't move. He leaned against the side wall of the maintenance room, holding the flashlight in his hand, but didn't turn it on, and waited.
When that person walked into the maintenance room, Xie Chengzhou scanned him from head to toe.
A man around sixty years old, of medium build, with a slightly hunched back—the kind of hunchback one would develop from years of bending over at work—not a hunchback, but a professional one. He wore dark blue work clothes with worn cuffs and a patch on his right knee; the patch was sewn by himself, not a factory-issue. His hands had calluses, distributed between his thumb and forefinger and at the base of his fingers—calluses from manual labor, not from holding a pen or steering wheel.
He was holding a thermos in his right hand.
Xie Chengzhou paused for a moment at this detail. The thermos was orange, made of stainless steel, with scratches on the outside, and the lid was screwed on tightly. He brought a thermos with him into the construction site. Xie Chengzhou had seen many people like this on the construction site—old workers who habitually brought thermoses, usually filled with tea. They would take a sip and continue working; it was a sense of stability they established on the construction site, a signal that "this is my place, I work here."
This person entered the realm carrying a thermos.
Xie Chengzhou didn't say anything; he just wrote a line in his memo: "Variable: Male, around 60 years old, retired worker characteristics, thermos (orange, tightly screwed on, possibly containing hot tea)."
The man stopped when he saw Xie Chengzhou. He didn't speak, but first scanned the maintenance room before fixing his gaze on Xie Chengzhou. His eyes weren't filled with fear or wariness; they were the kind of eyes Xie Chengzhou recognized—the kind of eyes one gets when encountering a stranger on an unfamiliar construction site, sizing them up, assessing them, and then deciding whether they are someone to talk to.
"How many times have you done this?" the man asked.
Xie Chengzhou thought for a moment, "The first time," he said.
The man nodded. "Me too," he said. "First time here, don't know where this place is." He paused. "Do you know?"
"I know part of it," Xie Chengzhou said. "There's a control valve at the end of the pipe that you need to turn off."
The man switched the thermos to his other hand. "Turn off the valve," he repeated, his tone calm, as if to say, "I understand the task." "Okay, then go turn it off."
Xie Chengzhou paused for a moment on this answer.
He had heard many people's reactions to entering the Realm for the first time in Source City—fear, confusion, bewilderment, or excessive excitement and an urge to act immediately. This person's reaction was different. When he heard "go shut off the valve," he said, "Okay, I'll go shut it off," in the same tone he used when he received a new assignment at the construction site—not "I need to think about it," but "I've accepted this assignment; tell me what to do."
Xie Chengzhou changed the parentheses after "variables" in his memo, adding a line: "(Reaction: Task-oriented, not fear-oriented. May have construction site experience; the way to handle unknown situations is to accept the task rather than analyze the threat.)"
"What's your name?" Xie Chengzhou asked.
"Old Zhao," the man said, "is retired. He used to be a plumber."
Xie Chengzhou paused on the word "plumber".
He had handled many piping problems on construction sites, but he wasn't a piping specialist; he was a structural engineer. Piping was a field he could assess but couldn't deeply understand. The man before him, a retired plumber, probably knew more about piping than Xie Chengzhou.
This is not a variable that needs to be disposed of.
This is a potentially useful variable.
Xie Chengzhou closed the memo, picked up the flashlight, and said, "Old Zhao," he said, "come with me."
Old Zhao didn't ask why. He gripped the thermos tightly, nodded, and said, "Okay."
Xie Chengzhou stood in front of the pipe opening on the right, turned on his flashlight, and shone the beam of light into the pipe.
The light reached a distance of about twenty meters; beyond that, it was darkness. He surveyed the visible areas within the beam of light: the pipe walls, the concrete lining, the formwork marks on the surface, and the material matching that of the maintenance room. Water flowed beneath his feet as he walked forward, into the darkness.
He didn't step inside immediately.
Before starting construction on a new section of the site, he would stand at the starting point, look at everything he could see, and then look at things he couldn't see but could infer, before walking in.
What he can see: pipes, water, and twenty meters of light.
What he can deduce is that DB-001's assumptions—the rules have a physical basis, and the perception mechanisms of threat entities have corresponding physical logic—are valid. In a conduit environment, line of sight is limited, sound reverberates, and light is the only active perception tool. If a threat entity exists, what is its perception mechanism most likely to rely on?
Sound. Or light. Or both.
In his memo, he wrote: "#002 Threat Entity Perception Mechanism Hypothesis: Sound/Light Source/Other. Acoustic characteristics of the pipe environment: strong echo, any sound will be amplified. Light Source: the player's only active perception tool, and also the signal that reveals the player's position. Priority Verification: whether the light source will reveal the position. Method: after entering the pipe, briefly turn off the light source at a safe distance and observe whether it triggers a reaction."
He closed the memo and stepped into the pipeline.
The water was ankle-deep, and the soles of his shoes felt slightly gritty on the concrete, providing good grip. He held the flashlight in his hand, shone the beam forward, and followed the beam.
Old Zhao followed behind him, his footsteps slightly heavier than Xie Chengzhou's, but steady and unhurried—the walking style of someone accustomed to working in pipelines.
Xie Chengzhou didn't turn back. He kept walking forward, into the darkness, using the beam of his flashlight as his first measuring stick at the scene—measuring distance, direction, and the direction from which the threat, whose name he didn't yet know, would come.
The pipe slowly closed behind him. The orange-yellow emergency light in the maintenance room grew farther and farther away, smaller and smaller, until it became a single point of light and then disappeared at the bend in the pipe.
It was dark in front of him, except for the light in his hand.
He tightened his grip on the flashlight.