124: Chapter 125 When God came to take people away, I first broke His seal.

[Initial Class Registration: Rule Maintenance Seat Candidate]

[Sealer: Lin Shoushan]

[Reason for Sealing: God will come to claim]

The moment the black hand landed on Lin Jin's chest, he didn't feel any pain.

Only coldness.

Not the coldness of frost.

But a hollow sensation, as if his body was still there, but his name had been pulled from the deepest depths of the archives.

The F-Class Repairman school badge on his chest cracked completely.

The black patterns hidden inside for eighteen years lit up one by one, converging along Lin Jin's chest, shoulders, and arms toward that fingerless giant hand.

[Candidate Matching Initiated]

[Hand of Rules: Confirmed]

[Rule Correction Tool: Confirmed]

[Maintenance Authority Integrity: 61%]

[Personality Independence: Pending Overwrite]

When the last four words appeared, the Thirteenth Floor before Lin Jin's eyes vanished.

He saw a gray hall so vast it had no boundaries.

There were no divine statues in the hall.

Only rows of class icons suspended high above.

Warrior, Mage, Healer, Knight, Summoner...

Countless classes rotated endlessly like gears on a massive machine.

And above all the gears sat seven black chairs.

Vague figures already sat in six of them.

The last one was empty.

A single character was carved on the back of the chair.

[Repair]

The giant black hand pressed down on Lin Jin, dragging him toward the empty chair inch by inch.

"Lin Jin!"

Shen Tingxue's voice was like an ice blade, suddenly piercing through the illusion.

Lin Jin snapped back to his senses.

Inside the Thirteenth Floor, Shen Tingxue had already slashed her Ice Key down onto the wrist of the black hand.

Frost spread frantically along the black patterns, but it could not actually sever it.

The hand had no flesh and blood.

It didn't even have a physical form.

It was merely an approval stamp magnified countless times.

As long as the class system recognized Lin Jin as a candidate, it would keep pressing down.

Zhou Heng's Thunder Spear followed closely behind. Instead of clashing head-on, the tip of the spear traced a purple arc, pinning the black hand's shadow to the ground.

"No physical form, but there must be a shadow!"

The thunder nail fell.

The black hand paused slightly.

Chen Ye had already rushed behind Lin Jin, dragging his injured body.

He didn't use his shield to block the black hand.

Instead, he jammed the edge of his shield heavily between Lin Jin and the reinstatement document.

"Lu Chengyuan!"

"If you want to claim someone, you have to ask his classmates first!"

From the Director's Seat on the right, Lu Chengyuan watched this scene calmly.

"The Maintenance Seat's conscription belongs to a higher-order class procedure."

"Your team contract cannot interfere."

But the young Lu Chengyuan suddenly slammed his hand on the table.

"Don't listen to him!"

"That's not conscription, it's an overwrite!"

"The Rule Maintenance Seat will not preserve the candidate's original personality."

"It only needs a pair of hands that can repair rules!"

The black hand pressed down again.

The cracks on Lin Jin's chest grew deeper and deeper.

[Personality Independence: 73%]

[Preparing Overwrite]

The Hand of Rules frantically popped up notifications.

[Target: Initial Class Registration]

[Malfunction 1: Lin Shoushan's sealing layer ruptured]

[Malfunction 2: Rule Maintenance Seat candidate chain reactivated]

[Malfunction 3: Higher-order approval stamp is overwriting current class identity]

[Danger Level: Extremely High]

[Repair Plan 1: Accept the Maintenance Seat, complete missing authorities]

[Result: Unknown personality overwrite, survival rate below 7%]

[Repair Plan 2: Restore Lin Shoushan's original sealing]

[Required Materials: sealing tool, sealer's current will, independent identity anchor]

[Repair Plan 3: Sever class registration]

[Result: Permanently lose all class abilities]

Three plans.

None of them were easy.

The Lu Chengyuan on the right slowly stood up.

"Accept it."

"F-Class Repairman is merely a defective shell Lin Shoushan put on you."

"The Rule Maintenance Seat is your true class."

Lin Jin looked at him, his chest pressed so hard he could barely breathe.

"True?"

He forced a difficult smirk.

"A thing pieced together from dead people's archives like you is worthy of talking about 'true' with me?"

Lu Chengyuan's eyes turned cold.

The black hand suddenly grew heavier.

Lin Jin's knees suddenly sank, the soles of his shoes pressing two cracks into the ground.

Shen Tingxue's Ice Key was bent nearly to its limit.

Zhou Heng's Thunder Spear pinning the shadow also began to slide outward inch by inch.

The wound on Chen Ye's chest burst open, blood trickling down the face of his shield.

Yet he still wedged himself firmly behind Lin Jin.

"Lin Jin!"

"What is Plan 2 missing?"

Lin Jin gritted his teeth.

"sealing tool."

"Sealer's will."

"independent identity anchor."

Zhou Heng stared at the blood-stained nut in his hand.

"Isn't Uncle Lin's will right here?"

Lin Jin suddenly looked down.

The nut that Lin Shoushan had thrown up from the basement level was burning hot in his palm.

It was stained with his father's blood.

And it also recorded his father's clear refusal just now.

[Lin Shoushan does not agree to hand over maintenance duties]

No handover.

Which meant he did not allow Lin Jin to take over.

This was the sealer's current will.

But what about the sealing tool?

The young Lu Chengyuan suddenly pointed at the rusty wrench in Lin Jin's hand.

"That ordinary wrench of yours!"

"It's not a Rule Correction Tool."

"But Lin Shoushan used it for over a decade!"

"Sealing doesn't necessarily require a complete tool; it only needs to have retained the same maintenance habit!"

Lin Jin looked down at the rusty wrench.

This wrench was left behind by his father.

When he first awakened the Hand of Rules, he was holding it.

It didn't have a high rank.

It didn't have flashy attributes.

It was even often treated as junk by others.

But every single wear mark on it was left by Lin Shoushan's own hands.

The materials were there.

The will was there.

Only the last thing was missing.

The independent identity anchor.

Lu Chengyuan obviously realized this as well.

"He doesn't have one."

"Once a candidate is registered by the Maintenance Seat, all class relationships will lose priority."

"Teammates, students, sons."

"They are all merely subordinate identities of the candidate."

Before Lin Jin could speak,

Chen Ye cursed first.

"Subordinate my ass."

He wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth and roared at Lin Jin:

"Lin Jin!"

"You're the bastard who, when we first entered a dungeon, tapped my shield with a broken wrench and even complained that my shield made too much noise!"

A shield-shaped light pattern flew out of Chen Ye's chest and crashed into Lin Jin's school badge.

[Independent Testimony: Chen Ye]

Zhou Heng immediately pulled out his Thunder Spear and drove it down again.

"You are the Lin Jin who is clearly afraid of death, yet always dares to stand before the most dangerous rules to find loopholes."

"Not the Maintenance Seat."

"Not the candidate."

"And definitely not anyone's replacement part."

The lightning fell.

[Independent Testimony: Zhou Heng]

Shen Tingxue was still bracing the black hand with her Ice Key.

She was closest to Lin Jin.

Close enough to see the cold sweat on his forehead, and the struggle he couldn't hide in his eyes.

"Lin Jin."

She only said two words.

But the black hand violently shuddered.

Shen Tingxue looked into his eyes, her voice calm and firm.

"You promised me."

"No one can be redefined because of class, bloodline, archives, or sample number."

"Including yourself."

"So come back."

An icy blue light erupted from the Ice Key.

[Independent Testimony: Shen Tingxue]

The four-person contract lit up completely at this moment.

[All team members are independent individuals and shall not be redefined due to class, bloodline, archives, or sample number.]

[When an external force performs identity contamination on a single member, the remaining members are obligated to provide mutual testimony.]

[The contract does not bind obedience, only mutual testimony.]

The three testimonies, combined with Lin Jin's own name, jointly suppressed that line of [Personality Independence: Pending Overwrite].

The value suddenly stopped.

[Personality Independence: 100%]

[Overwrite Failed]

For the first time, Lu Chengyuan's expression truly changed.

"Impossible."

But the young Lu Chengyuan smiled.

His body was being repeatedly pierced by silver pens, yet his smile grew wider.

"Of course you don't understand."

"You don't even have personality materials."

Lin Jin gripped the blood-stained nut with his left hand and wedged it into the center of the cracked school badge.

Then, he raised the rusty wrench.

Not to smash.

But to repair.

The wrench bit onto the edge of the black approval stamp within the school badge.

Lin Jin could feel that something behind the approval stamp was watching him.

It wasn't Lu Chengyuan.

It wasn't the White Tower.

It was higher than all of them.

Farther.

And colder.

The figures on those six Maintenance Seats turned their heads at the same time.

A voice, so overlapped that its gender was indistinguishable, echoed from behind the black hand.

[Candidate Number Seven.]

[Return to your position.]

Lin Jin gritted his teeth and twisted the wrench violently.

"Return my ass."

Crack!

He didn't smash the approval stamp.

Instead, he pried it right off the class registration interface.

When a Repairman deals with broken things, they don't necessarily have to fix them.

Sometimes, they can just cut the power first.

The black hand suddenly froze.

[approval stamp Connection Interrupted]

[Candidate Chain Lost Contact Point]

[Sealing Restoring]

The blood-stained nut embedded into the school badge.

The wear marks of the old wrench left by his father realigned with the sealing patterns from eighteen years ago.

The black patterns gradually retreated into the depths of the school badge.

The words 'F-Class Repairman' lit up once more.

It didn't become S-rank.

It didn't become God-rank.

It was still just an inconspicuous F.

Yet for the first time, Lin Jin felt that these words looked so pleasing to the eye.

Because this was his own class.

The black hand began to retract.

Shen Tingxue backhanded a slash to sever the frozen part.

Zhou Heng pulled out the thunder nail, his spear sweeping upward along the cracked shadow.

Chen Ye roared, slamming his shield forward with immense force.

Three forces erupted simultaneously.

The giant black hand from the Rule Maintenance Seat was actually forced all the way back into the reinstatement document from the Thirteenth Floor!

The young Lu Chengyuan seized the final opportunity, grabbing the cover of the document.

"Close it!"

Lin Jin's wrench smashed down.

Bang!

Chen Ye pressed down with his shield.

Shen Tingxue sealed the edges with frost.

Zhou Heng locked the pages with thunder nails.

The entire reinstatement document slammed shut.

The black approval stamp was sandwiched inside, emitting a low, inhuman rumble.

All the silver pens in the Thirteenth Floor fell to the ground at once.

Lu Chengyuan's figure on the right Director's Seat flickered violently.

His face was young one moment, old the next, and completely blank in another.

"You've only disconnected temporarily."

His voice also began to overlap.

"The Maintenance Seat has already seen you."

"Next time, it won't need an approval stamp."

Lin Jin picked up the black stamp fragment he had pried from his school badge.

"Then let Him come."

"It just so happens that I also want to see who turned all the classes in the world into a machine."

Lu Chengyuan's proxy shell slowly retreated into the filing cabinet behind him.

Before disappearing completely, he looked at his younger self.

"You think they can save you?"

The young Lu Chengyuan said calmly:

"They don't need to save me."

"It is enough just to prove that you are not me."

The filing cabinet slammed shut.

The current Lu Chengyuan vanished.

The Thirteenth Floor finally fell silent.

The young Lu Chengyuan's phantom image, however, had already faded to the point of being nearly transparent.

He looked down at his body, which was riddled with holes.

"I can't hold on for much longer."

Lin Jin asked:

"Where is the 002 Wrench?"

The young Lu Chengyuan did not answer.

He reached out and flipped open the bottom compartment of the reinstatement document.

Hidden inside was a tool allocation slip torn in half.

[Rule Maintenance Tool 002]

[Purpose: Sever automatic position backfilling]

[Last Holder: Teacher Xu Wenzhou]

[Sealing Location: Jiangcheng First Combat Academy F-rank Class Training Cabin]

Lin Jin's pupils contracted slightly.

Teacher Xu Wenzhou.

No wonder his ownership of the testimony was taken by Lu Chengyuan.

He wasn't just a supporting witness back then.

He had also taken the other half of the tool that could sever the position backfilling.

Using the last of his strength, the young Lu Chengyuan pushed the allocation slip toward Lin Jin.

"Go back to the academy."

"002 is not meant to complete you."

"It is meant to kill the position."

As his voice faded, his phantom image completely dispersed.

Only an extremely faint original imprint remained on the Director's desk on the left.

[Lu Chengyuan Himself: Deceased]

Gu Changye immediately sealed the imprint.

Just then, Lin Jin's communication talisman vibrated frantically.

Qin Shanhe's voice came from the other end.

The background was filled with explosions and alarms.

"Lin Jin!"

"Something happened at the academy!"

"Teacher Xu Wenzhou has gone missing, and the F-rank Training Cabin was forced open!"

"The wrench sealed inside for twenty years—"

Qin Shanhe's voice suddenly cut off.

Immediately after, an unfamiliar yet aged voice patched into the communication.

"002 has been retrieved."

"Rule Maintenance Seat Number Seven."

"I will be waiting for you at the academy."

The communication cut off completely.

Lin Jin looked down at the tool allocation slip.

At the very bottom of the paper, a retrieval record that originally didn't exist was slowly emerging.

[Tool 002 current recipient: Teacher Xu Wenzhou]

[Retrieval Status: Confirmed by Owner]

[Remarks: Teacher Xu Wenzhou has restored his deprived ownership of the testimony]

A line of blood-red text immediately appeared below.

[But the person who restored his testimony was not Teacher Xu Wenzhou.]