Night blanketed Pyradine City, smothering the frantic, ozone-heavy energy of the day. The bustling main streets of the upper tiers fell quiet; spirit-lanterns flickered in the damp, cooling breeze, and shadows stretched like spilled ink across empty alleyways. Most merchants had long since bolted their doors, surrendering to the twin exhaustions of commerce and cultivation.
But in the neglected slums of the West District, one place remained stubbornly, vibrantly awake.
Inside the Origins Dungeon Hall, a different kind of battle was raging. The air was unnaturally still, yet it felt heavy—charged with a thick, coiled tension that moved beneath the calm like a predator navigating deep water.
Yuan Bi sat upon the fourth black obsidian seat, tucked slightly into the shadows of the room. He was motionless, his posture relaxed, his face completely obscured by the dark, pulsing silver helm. To any casual observer passing the window, he looked no different from the desperate cultivators who had been throwing their spiritual stones at him all day—just another broken man seeking a shortcut to strength in a world of ghosts.
But tonight, people were watching.
A tightly packed crowd had gathered inside the shop and spilled out into the street. They weren't noisy or chaotic. In fact, they were eerily, suffocatingly still, every eye fixed on the shimmering, translucent projection of the Spectator Array floating above Yuan Bi's head.
"Is the owner actually going in?" a young, sword-bearing cultivator whispered, afraid to break the silence.
"Why is he entering his artifact? I thought he only sold the experience," another muttered, clutching a half-empty pouch of spiritual stones.
A middle-aged rogue cultivator in travel-worn robes — the same man who had followed Min Luan into the dungeon earlier that day — narrowed his scarred eyes. "He's testing his inheritance? Or perhaps..." He trailed off, his gaze sharpening as it swept the haughty youths in the room. "He's demonstrating absolute confidence. He wants to show us what true mastery of this artifact looks like."
Min Luan stood near the counter, arms crossed tightly over his chest. He had reached his eleven-stone daily limit hours ago, but he had refused to go home. "He finally went in," the young merchant muttered, his eyes fixed on the screen. "Now we'll see if he's a true hidden master—or just a lucky vulture who stumbled upon a supreme treasure."
Nearby, Wu Feng—the arrogant young heir of the Wu Clan—stood with a stiff, frozen expression. Despite the absolute humiliation of his earlier runs, he had refused to leave. His expensive jade robes were wrinkled, his knuckles white around the hilt of his spiritual sword, his gaze locked intensely onto the projection.
"Let me see," Wu Feng murmured bitterly, "what you really are, shopkeeper."
Before donning the helm, Yuan Bi had done something that sent a shockwave through the crowd: he had reached down and struck four specific pressure points on his abdomen. The experienced martial artists in the room had gasped aloud. It was a meridian-locking technique. Yuan Bi had willingly and completely sealed his own internal force—entering the nightmare as a frail, unenhanced mortal, just like everyone else.
Inside the hall, no one spoke another word. Every eye turned upward toward the shimmering distortion.
Inside the Dungeon
Darkness. Then the world violently reconstructed itself. The Undead Hall materialized—a monument to ancient decay. Rotting timber pillars carved with forgotten dragons. Bloodstained stone corridors. A freezing, stagnant silence so thick it pressed against the eardrums like physical weight.
Yuan Bi stood in the center of the grand entrance hallway, his faded gray robes stirring in the artificial wind. His expression was terrifyingly calm. He didn't draw a weapon. He simply stood with his hands resting loosely at his sides, eyes closed, listening.
Shuffle. Drag. Shuffle.
Three Undead Novice Disciples lurched out from the shadows of a shattered weapon rack. Their milky, sightless eyes locked onto him. Their jaws unhinged, and they lunged in unison—their movements possessing that horrifying, unnatural martial precision that had butchered Wu Feng and Min Luan dozens of times throughout the day.
Yuan Bi didn't retreat. He opened his eyes. "...Too slow." He stepped forward. Not a sprint — a casual, gliding slide that slipped cleanly between the grasping claws of the first two corpses. He pivoted his hips—a textbook demonstration of kinetic transfer—and drove his elbow backward, directly into the throat of the first undead.
CRACK
The corpse's cervical spine shattered. It collapsed at his feet, twitching once before going still.
Without pausing to assess, Yuan Bi dropped his center of gravity, ducking under a wild swing from the second creature. He swept his leg out, catching the undead behind the knee and sending it crashing down onto the stone floor. Before it could even land, he drove the heel of his boot straight down like a falling meteor, crushing the brittle skull with a sound like a dry melon splitting open.
The third corpse lunged, rotting teeth snapping at Yuan Bi's face.
Yuan Bi sidestepped casually, shooting out a hand to seize the creature's wrist. He used no brute strength — he had none. Instead, he used the corpse's own forward momentum against it, wrenching its arm into a brutal joint lock and hurling it headfirst into a solid stone pillar. The skull caved in with a sickening, hollow thud.
Three seconds. Three clean, economical, effortless kills. The bodies lay scattered around him like broken dolls, dismantled with a clinical, unfeeling efficiency that made the spectators outside shiver where they stood. No hesitation. No wasted movement. No panic. Each strike was mathematically precise and absolutely final.
[Enemies Slain: 3x Undead Novice Disciples.]
As each creature fell, a faint golden warmth spread through Yuan Bi's muscles—subtle, steady, and nourishing. The system was engraving the technique even deeper into his physical form.
Back in the shop, murmurs swelled into a frantic buzz. "He's already cleared the hallway," a mercenary gasped, his jaw nearly hitting the floorboards. "That fast? It shouldn't be possible without internal force. I watched Wu Feng swing his sword twenty times and fail to kill a single one of those things!"
Wu Feng's pupils contracted to pinpricks. A dark, furious crimson flooded his face at the mercenary's words, but he couldn't tear his eyes from the screen. "He's different," the young master whispered, his arrogance dissolving into something closer to dread. "He isn't just fighting them. He's... dismantling them."
On the projection, Yuan Bi moved deeper into the pavilion, his steps light and perfectly controlled. Another corpse wandered into view, dragging a rusted, broken spear. Yuan Bi didn't rush. He circled it slowly, dark eyes tracking every twitch of the creature's rotting muscles. He reached down and picked up a rusted iron dagger from the floor, testing its weight and balance.
"...Slow reaction," Yuan Bi murmured, his voice carrying clearly through the Spectator Array. "Limited perception. Relies entirely on instinct and residual muscle memory. Predictable."
The corpse turned—far too late.
Slash. Yuan Bi moved like a phantom. The rusted dagger pierced the undead's temple. He didn't pull back immediately—he rotated his wrist with precise control, driving the blade deeper to sever the brain stem entirely. The creature dropped instantly, severed from whatever dark magic had animated it.
"...Confirmed."
The middle-aged rogue cultivator outside exhaled a long, unsteady breath. "He's studying them," he said, his voice soaked in awe. "He isn't just killing for survival the way we did. He's conducting an analysis. He's treating this hellish dungeon like a lethal laboratory."
Then the air inside the Undead Hall changed.
From the deeper, impenetrable shadows of the pavilion's inner courtyard came a new sound — and it was nothing like the shuffling drag of dead disciples or their hollow, mindless moaning.
It was sharp. Fast. The deliberate clicking of heavy talons against stone.
Predatory.
Yuan Bi stopped walking. The rusted dagger ceased its idle spinning in his fingers. "...Something new."
Outside, the projection flickered and distorted violently, reflecting the sudden, massive surge of killing intent erupting within the trial space. The crowd inside the shop stepped back from the screen as one, as though the danger might reach through the image and touch them.
"Why does the air look different?" Min Luan whispered, rubbing his arms as goosebumps swept across his skin. "That presence..." Wu Feng swallowed hard, his hand flying to his sword hilt as a shadow shifted on the screen. "It's malicious. It isn't mindless."
It emerged from the absolute darkness of the courtyard. A Corrupted Iron-Scale Guardian Beast. Once a majestic hound bred to protect an ancient sect, centuries of death and stagnant Qi had warped it into something nightmarish. It was tall and lean, with rotting muscle coiled like steel springs beneath hardened, obsidian-black scales. Its limbs were elongated, each one ending in jagged claws curved like forged scimitars. It raised its massive head to reveal a maw filled with rows of needle-like teeth—and eyes that were cold, focused, and frightfully alive with predatory intelligence.
A low, vibrating growl shook the dust from the rotting rafters. Min Luan's face went ash-white. "I never encountered that thing. It's not an undead—it's a martial beast. A real one."
The creature moved. It didn't run. It vanished into a terrifying blur of obsidian motion.
CLANG!
Yuan Bi raised his rusted dagger just in time, bracing his off-hand against the flat of the blade. The impact was colossal. Sparks flew as the creature's scimitar-claws crashed against the iron.
Yuan Bi was launched backward, his boots carving deep furrows into the rotted floorboards before he caught himself. His arms trembled violently from the sheer kinetic force, the rusted blade groaning under the strain.
"...Fast," Yuan Bi noted, eyes narrowing.
Before he could even reset his footing, the creature was on him again. Claws slashed downward in a shimmering, deadly arc. Yuan Bi dropped his weight and rolled clear—the floor cracking violently where he had stood a heartbeat before. Splinters of wood exploded into the air, slicing across his cheek and drawing a thin line of bright red blood.
"He almost died," someone in the crowd whispered hoarsely. "The shopkeeper is going to die."
But Yuan Bi didn't panic. He retreated, his mind filled with cold, detached calculations.
Speed exceeds mine by a factor of three. Strength is vastly superior. A direct, prolonged confrontation without internal force is a death sentence.
He exhaled a slow, measured breath—and to the absolute shock of everyone watching the projection, a faint, genuinely thrilled smile crossed his lips.
"...Good."
He turned his back on the beast and ran.
The creature gave chase instantly, a relentless, roaring shadow of death. But Yuan Bi wasn't fleeing in blind panic the way the young master had. He was navigating. He led the monster through a series of sharp turns, weaving between shattered pillars and broken statues, memorizing the layout of every narrow passage. He drove his mortal stamina to its absolute limit until he reached a tight, constricted stone corridor leading to the sect's ruined archives.
He stopped. He turned. He waited, dagger held low. The Guardian Beast lunged around the corner, its momentum far too powerful to arrest within the confined space. At the last possible instant, Yuan Bi stepped smoothly into the shadow of the stone archway, executing a flawless evasion.
The creature slammed headfirst into the solid wall with a deafening, skull-rattling crack. Dust and debris rained from the ceiling. That single split-second of disorientation was all he needed. Yuan Bi struck, driving his dagger with perfect leverage directly into the creature's exposed neck. The blade bounced off the obsidian scales in a harsh shower of sparks.
"...It's too hard," Yuan Bi grunted, feeling the reverberation shudder up through his numbed wrist. The monster roared in fury, shaking off the impact. Its claws lashed out in a blind, sweeping frenzy. A shallow wound opened across Yuan Bi's chest, shredding his gray tunic and drawing a splash of hot blood.
Outside, several spectators flinched instinctively, as if feeling the phantom sting themselves. Min Luan stood rigid, both hands clamped over his mouth. Yuan Bi ignored the pain. His dark eyes sharpened to razor points.
Not the surface. The scales are impenetrable. The kill must be internal. The creature recovered its footing and charged again, its massive maw yawning open in a silent scream of rage—preparing to bite Yuan Bi clean in half.
This time, Yuan Bi didn't retreat. He didn't dodge.
He stepped forward, directly into the jaws of death. As the beast's mouth drove downward past his head, he dropped to his knees, sliding on the slick stone floor. He thrust his arms upward with every ounce of strength and leverage his mortal body possessed.
The rusted iron dagger sank deep into the soft, unarmored roof of the creature's open mouth.
"...Now."
Yuan Bi drove the blade upward with explosive force, pivoting his hips and throwing his entire body weight behind the hilt.
CRACK
The rusted steel punched straight through the roof of the mouth and buried itself deep into the creature's brain cavity. The Guardian Beast froze in mid-lunge. Its massive frame shuddered violently for one suspended second — and then every trace of dark energy abandoned it at once. It collapsed in a heavy, lifeless heap of dead obsidian scales.
[Elite Enemy Slain: Corrupted Iron-Scale Guardian.]
[Converting Experience... Reward: Beginner Dagger Mastery — Comprehension Achieved.]
[Host EXP Gained: +50 Shop EXP.]
Absolute, stunned silence fell over the Origins Dungeon Hall. On the screen, Yuan Bi stood over the massive corpse, chest heaving with controlled, measured breaths. A surge of golden energy — far more intense than anything Min Luan had ever received — flooded into Yuan Bi's muscles. It was sharp, refined, and permanent. The System had taken the brutal, high-stakes encounter and engraved mastery of dagger combat directly into his flesh.
Then the crowd remembered how to breathe, and the room erupted. "He killed it! By the heavens, he actually killed that creature without a single ounce of Qi!"
"Did you see that footwork? He adapted! He read its attack pattern faster than the trial could finish him!" Inside the trial, Yuan Bi looked down at the fallen beast. The rotting disciples from before had been nothing — mere warm-up obstacles. This hunter is a true test. A real opponent capable of tempering a martial artist's will into something unbreakable.
He calmly wiped the dark blood from his rusted dagger, his face an unreadable mask of total focus. Then he turned toward the deeper, uncharted shadows of the Undead Hall and walked — not like prey surviving a nightmare, but like a man who owned the darkness.
"System. Exit," Yuan Bi murmured. The crimson light of the projection faded instantly, dissolving into wisps of ambient Qi. Yuan Bi reached up and removed the silver helm with deliberate care, setting it on the obsidian armrest. He pressed a hand to his abdomen, unsealing his meridians, and allowed the rich, familiar warmth of his internal force to flood back through his veins.
The shop was dead silent.
Dozens of wide, awestruck, faintly terrified eyes stared at him—filled with a new and unmistakably heavy respect. No one laughed. No one mocked the crippled shopkeeper. They had seen the absolute control. The calculated lethality. The sheer, iron willpower required to face a martial beast as a mortal and walk away the victor.
Min Luan swallowed hard, his throat dry. "...You killed that thing. Without Qi."
Wu Feng stared at Yuan Bi, jaw tight, hands trembling at his sides. His arrogance had not merely been wounded—it had been razed to the ground. He had considered himself a genius. But set against the flawless, blood-earned technique he had just witnessed, his swordplay was the flailing of an infant.
"You've done this befoact beforeu Feng rasped, barely above a whisper. "No one fights like that for the first time. You aren't a cripple." Yuan Bi glanced at them briefly, expression thoroughly unbothered. He flexed his fingers, feeling the permanent refinements of the trial etched into his muscle memory—the heightened sharpness, the subtly elevated senses. Even outside the dungeon, the growth endured.
He picked up his frayed paper fan, snapped it open with a practiced flick, and leaned back into his bamboo chair. The lazy, indifferent shopkeeper persona settled over him like a well-worn cloak.
"The Origins Dungeon Hall is closed for the night," Yuan Bi announced, his voice smooth and clean as a blade drawn from its sheath. "But as you have all seen... the enlightenment is quite real."
A dark, knowing smile curved at the corner of his lips. "I suggest you go home and gather your spiritual stones. Tomorrow morning, the price for failure goes up."