Rule Horror: I Can See the Rules

In the third year since the Rulebound Tales outbreak, the whole world is suffocating under the iron law: "Break the rules and die."

Lin Jue is a game-rules tester. He's been at it for four years, doing one thing: picking holes in the rules and finding bugs.

The elevator stops on the thirteenth floor. The rule says, "Do not leave." He leaves anyway.

Locker seven in the morgue. The rule says, "Turn over whenever you encounter the number seven." He turns the corpse back the other way.

Everyone else follows the rules. He takes them apart. Everyone else waits to die. He searches for loopholes.

Seven violations, seven times surviving. The rules say violators die, but he refuses to.

It isn't until he dismantles the deepest rule that he discovers the truth: the people who wrote these rules were themselves among the first to break them.

This time, he's going to tear the heavens open.