I will burn books and slay gods.

The entrance to the hospital's third basement level was blocked by a heavy blast door covered with constantly changing runes.

The glowing guard footprints disappeared in front of the door, as if absorbed by it.

"It won't open." Instructor Ruler tried to use spatial cutting, but the runes on the door absorbed the cutting energy. "This is a conceptual lock; it requires a key of a specific frequency."

Chen Ye's shoulder was bleeding from the burns, and Lin Su was giving him emergency treatment.

The pain made his mind clearer. He stared at the runes on the door and put his cognitive enhancement glasses back on.

Under the glasses' analysis, the runes became a flowing stream of data.

It wasn't a random pattern, but a logic puzzle—a "concept lock" that requires multiple conditions to be met simultaneously to unlock.

"Six conditions," Chen Ye quickly analyzed. "These correspond to the basic fear types in the flow: darkness, loneliness, falling, suffocation, being swallowed, and the unknown. To open the door, these six fears must be simulated simultaneously, but they cannot interfere with each other."

"How is that even possible?" Wang Xiaoming said. "How can one person experience six different fears simultaneously and still maintain control?"

"One person can't do it," Chen Ye said, looking at Lin Su and Wang Xiaoming, "but the three of us can."

He explained the plan: "Lin Su, you are in charge of 'darkness' and 'suffocation.' Your flames can create absolute light, or they can create absolute darkness. And suffocation... you can simulate the feeling of flames consuming oxygen."

Lin Su nodded: "We can give it a try."

"Wang Xiaoming, you are responsible for 'loneliness' and 'being devoured.' Use causal lines to sever your connection with the outside world and simulate loneliness. Being devoured... Imagine you are disappearing, your sense of existence being stripped away."

Wang Xiaoming's face turned pale, but he still nodded.

"I'm in charge of 'falling' and 'the unknown,'" Chen Ye said. "The feeling of falling can be simulated using the memory of weightlessness. The unknown... I have too many unknowns."

The three people stood in front of the door, forming a triangle.

"Start simultaneously," Chen Ye said. "Count to three."

"one."

Lin Su closed her glasses and turned her palms up.

A pure white flame ignites in the left hand, while the right hand absorbs all light, forming an absolutely dark sphere.

At the same time, he held his breath, and the flames inside his body simulated burning, creating a suffocating feeling of lack of oxygen.

"two."

Wang Xiaoming severed all causal connections between himself and his surroundings.

In an instant, he felt disconnected from the world, as if he had been thrown into a vacuum.

Then he began to deliberately diminish his presence, imagining himself being swallowed by an invisible giant maw, disappearing little by little.

"three."

Chen Ye recalled the feeling of weightlessness when he fell from the ventilation duct and magnified it.

At the same time, he brought all questions about his origins, all uncertainties about the future, and all unknowns about the truth to the surface of his consciousness.

Six types of fear energies were simultaneously injected into the runes on the door.

Runes are being selected, picked up, and recombined.

The six conditions are lit up one by one: darkness, loneliness, falling, suffocation, being swallowed, and the unknown.

As the last "unknown" light illuminated, the door emitted a heavy mechanical turning sound and then slowly opened inward.

Behind the door was not a room, but a metal staircase that extended downwards into the darkness.

A damp, rusty, and putrid smell of air rushed out.

"Below is the sewer system." Instructor Gauge inspected the equipment. "The city's sewers are over five hundred kilometers long, a perfect network for concealment and dissemination. If the cult really has its core there..."

"Then this battle will be like catching mice in a maze," Lin Su replied.

The four people walked down the stairs.

The staircase was very long; it took about three floors to descend to reach the bottom.

The bottom is a huge circular space, more than fifty meters in diameter and ten meters high.

This is a key node in the main drainage system, where six massive pipes converge from different directions. In the center is a bottomless vertical shaft where sewage swirls and falls, making a roaring sound.

There was light in the space—not from electric lights, but from the glowing moss growing on the walls, emitting a faint green glow.

Bathed in green light, Chen Ye saw even more.

The walls of the pipes were covered with terrifying pinkish-purple tubes, thicker and denser than those in the hospital.

The catheters converge toward the central shaft, like blood vessels flowing into the heart.

A person stood at the edge of the shaft.

No, not entirely "human".

He was wearing simple gray overalls, his back to them, looking at the swirling sewage below.

His physique was ordinary, but he gave off a sense of disharmony—his movements were too precise, his posture too stable, like a machine rather than a living being.

"Short circuit," Chen Ye said in a low voice.

The man turned around.

This was the first time Chen Ye had seen his face clearly.

Around thirty years old, Asian face, with an unremarkable appearance that looks like it was generated using averages, lacking any distinctive features.

The eyes were dark gray, with tiny, circuit-like points of light moving within the pupils.

"Experimental Subject 07"

Short Circuit spoke, his voice a standard baritone, devoid of any accent or emotional fluctuation, "And the Night Watch. You're four minutes slower than expected."

"Are you waiting for us?" the instructor asked.

"Yes. The test needs a control group," Short Circuit said, his expression unchanged.

"The Nightmare is Test One: the efficiency of cultivating fear energy. Your response is Test Two: the effectiveness of the Night's Watch's existing tactics. Now, Test Three begins."

He raised his hand and snapped his fingers.

The six surrounding pipes vibrated simultaneously.

Emerging from the darkness of the pipes... something.

It's not Nightmare, nor is it a Guardian of the Order.

He is a "person", but a person who has been modified.

They wore tattered clothes and had mechanized parts of their bodies—some had metal arms, some had mechanical legs, and some had half their heads exposed computer boards.

Their eyes were all cloudy yellow, and their movements were stiff but precise.

"The cult's 'volunteers,'" Short Circuit explained, "considered their physical bodies flawed and voluntarily underwent mechanization to achieve a 'more efficient form.' I helped them complete the upgrade."

"You turned living people into machines?" Lin Su's voice was filled with suppressed anger.

"Correction: It's about helping them evolve," Short Circuit said. "The human body is inefficient, fragile, and full of irrational demands. Mechanical structures are stable, durable, and optimizable. I'm doing good."

Six cyborgs surrounded them, their mechanical parts beginning to deform, extending blades, drills, and electric shock devices.

"Combat configuration loaded," they said in unison, their voices electronically processed and monotonous.

The instructor immediately took action.

Spatial rifts unfolded in her hands, attempting to separate the cyborgs.

But when the crack hit the cyborgs, a pale blue light membrane appeared on their bodies—a conceptual protective layer.

"They implanted a concept resistance module," Short Circuit explained from the side, as if describing an experiment.

"They can withstand most direct conceptual attacks. Physical attacks are more effective, but their mechanical structure is stronger than flesh and blood."

Lin Su's flames erupted, but the cyborg didn't dodge at all.

Flames scorched their bodies, metal glowed red, and circuits short-circuited, but they continued forward until they were completely burned to ashes.

When the first cyborg fell, his body exploded.

It wasn't a bomb; it was the rupture of a conceptual storage tank within the body, releasing a chaotic flow of energy.

"Watch out for an explosion!"

The instructor erected a spatial barrier to block the shockwave.

The battle became difficult.

These cyborgs are not afraid of children or death; their sole purpose is to deplete their physical strength and abilities.

The second short circuit operator stood by the shaft, quietly observing and recording data.

While dodging the attacks, Chen Ye observed the short circuit.

In our cognitive view, the short-circuited body structure is very strange—the exterior is flesh and blood, but the interior... is a whole city of mechanical and energy circuits.

His "heart" is a rotating crystalline core, and his brain is an unknown, glowing processor.

He is not human.

At least not purely human.

"Wang Xiaoming!" Chen Ye shouted, "Can you interfere with his processor?"

Wang Xiaoming was tripping a cyborg with causal threads when he heard this and looked at Short Circuit: "I'll try... but it requires contact, or at least a medium connection."

The medium… Chen Ye looked at those fear conduits.

The conduit connects the short circuit to the entire sewer system.

If a causal connection is established through a conduit...

"Cover me!"

Chen Ye rushed toward the wall of a pipe and reached out to grab a thick tube.

The duct was cold and slippery, like the intestines of a living organism.

He pulled hard, the tube broke, and a pinkish-purple energy liquid sprayed out.

The short circuit finally triggered a response.

He turned his head, his gray eyes locking onto Chen Ye: "Sabotage of experimental facilities. Record: Aggressive behavior."

Chen Ye ignored him and threw the broken conduit to Wang Xiaoming: "Use this! It's part of the short circuit and system connection."

Short circuit and frown—this was the first time Chen Ye had seen him show any expression.

Even though it was just a slight furrowing of the brow.

"Unauthorized data access. Activate defense protocol."

His eyes suddenly flashed with a blinding white light. Wang Xiaoming screamed, released the catheter, and smoke rose from his hands, revealing burn marks on his skin.

"Cause and effect backlash..." he gasped, "The processor has... a firewall... that's too powerful..."

This is the last cyborg that Lin Su burned.

However, all four were injured: Chen Ye had blood on his shoulder, Lin Su had burns on her arm, Wang Xiaoming had injuries to both hands, and Instructor Guichi had exhausted his spatial abilities.

The short circuit remained intact.

"Test 3 data collection complete," Short Circuit said. "Conclusion: The Night Watch's current tactics have limited effectiveness against mechanized units. Recommendation: Adjust the direction of future evolutions."

He walked to the edge of the shaft and looked down: "Now, we enter the final stage of testing."

The sewage vortex in the shaft suddenly accelerated.

The water level began to rise; it wasn't sewage, but a pinkish-purple, viscous liquid—a highly concentrated liquid of fear energy.

The liquid quickly filled the bottom of the space, up to ankle level, and was still rising.

"He's initiating the final ritual!" the drill instructor shouted. "These liquids will flow throughout the city via the sewer system, plunging anyone who comes into contact with them into a state of profound terror."