You are looking at the HTML representation of the XML format.
HTML is good for debugging, but is unsuitable for application use.
Specify the format parameter to change the output format.
To see the non HTML representation of the XML format, set format=xml.
See the complete documentation, or API help for more information. 
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<api>
  <query-continue>
    <links plcontinue="1|0|Benchmarking_and_Load_Testing_with_Apache_Bench(AB)" />
  </query-continue>
  <query>
    <pages>
      <page pageid="1" ns="0" title="Main Page">
        <links>
          <pl ns="0" title="403 Forbidden Error Nginx - How to Solve" />
          <pl ns="0" title="APF Firewall -Advanced Policy Firewall - Basics" />
          <pl ns="0" title="Access mysql/mysqldump without password entry each time - Using .my.cnf" />
          <pl ns="0" title="Adding a New Disk Drive with Centos" />
          <pl ns="0" title="Apache mod speling case insensitive urls issue" />
          <pl ns="0" title="Bash Script to Check Memory with Email Alert when Low" />
          <pl ns="0" title="Bash Script to Check Site Code Status with Email Alert" />
          <pl ns="0" title="Basic HTTP Authentication with Nginx" />
          <pl ns="0" title="Basic Redis commands - Cheat Sheet" />
          <pl ns="0" title="Batch jpeg Image Optimization" />
        </links>
      </page>
    </pages>
  </query>
</api>