Pyradine City never truly slept. Even in the quiet, bruised hours of dawn, when a thick, grey mist clung to the cobblestones like a heavy burial shroud, the city possessed a restless heartbeat.
In the upper tiers of the city, behind high walls and intricately carved spirit wards, pampered geniuses practiced flashy sword dances in temperature-controlled courtyards. They sipped dew-infused teas and debated the philosophy of the sword. But down in the neglected gutters of the West District, the movement was fundamentally different. Here, cultivators chased opportunity; merchants chased copper coins; and mercenaries chased another day of breathing.
Among the chaotic crowd gathering outside the Origins Dungeon Hall, a man named Liang Shi stood out like a jagged, weathered rock in a stream of soft silt.
He was tall and broad-shouldered, his bronze skin mapped with a chaotic web of white, puckered scars. Each pale line was a visceral story of a mission that had almost gone south, a blade he had dodged a fraction of a second too late, or a beast that had refused to die easily. Across his broad back rested a heavy, two-handed broadsword. Its edge was nicked and worn from years of violently cleaving through bone, armor, and chitin.
Liang Shi wasn't a noble scion. He wasn't a pampered prodigy born with a silver spoon in his mouth and a heaven-grade cultivation manual in his crib. He was an iron-blood mercenary who had clawed his way into becoming a respected First-Rate fighter through sheer, dogged diligence and a stubborn refusal to stay dead.
He belonged to the Iron Bone Caravan Guard, a loose collective of wanderers, exiles, and rogues who made their living dancing on the razor's edge of mortality. Their work was simple, brutally honest, and frequently lethal. They escorted high-value merchant goods through monster-infested mountain ridges, hunted demon beasts for their marrow and hide, and accepted the high-risk, low-glory commissions that the prestigious inner-city sects considered beneath their dignity.
In Liang Shi's gritty world, one successful mission could make a man rich enough to retire to a quiet vineyard in the south. However, one lapse in concentration, one heavy eyelid on the midnight watch, or one moment of unchecked arrogance could get him permanently buried in an unmarked, muddy ditch.
A few days prior, Liang Shi had been nursing a cup of sour, watered-down rice wine at a roadside noodle stall, trying to wash the dust of the road from his throat. Through the din of the street, he had overheard a frantic, hushed conversation between two young, silk-wearing cultivators.
"Have you heard? There's a place deep in the West District… some 'Origins Dungeon Hall.' …"
"Ah! That absolute scam of a shop? I heard the owner is a heartless vulture who charges eleven spiritual stones just to let you take a nap in a metal bucket!"
"Scam your ancestor! I went there yesterday. I died ten times in a single hour, and my sword arm felt like it was carved from solid iron when I woke up. The enlightenment is real!"
At first, Liang Shi had dismissed the chatter entirely. In a sprawling metropolis like Pyradine City, elaborate scams were far more common than rats.
Cultivators were always looking for a shortcut to the heavens, and con artists were always ready to sell them a map to nowhere.
But then, an older, veteran mercenary sitting a few tables down—a man known across the district for his ruthless coldness—leaned over and whispered a line that finally set the hook deep into Liang Shi's mind.
"You can experience the absolute, paralyzing terror of a life-and-death struggle… without the permanent consequence of a grave."
For a pampered sect disciple, that sounded like thrilling entertainment. But for a hardened mercenary whose life depended on split-second reactions, what was the point of this? isn't a game. That was a supreme golden opportunity for those who don't even have a backing.
The very next day, Liang Shi stepped through the heavy double doors of the shop. He was immediately surprised to find that it wasn't the rotting, cramped shack the street rumors had described. It was a wide, cleanly swept, obsidian-paved hall. Eight black thrones sat in a perfect crescent, pulsing with a faint, rhythmic silver light.
Behind a dark ironwood counter sat Yuan Bi—lazy, entirely unbothered, and seemingly indifferent to whether his customers lived, died, or ascended to godhood right in his lobby.
"You're the owner of this establishment?" Liang Shi asked, his voice sounding like two heavy gravel stones grinding together.
"I am," Yuan Bi replied smoothly, not even bothering to look up from his steaming cup of tea.
"Your shop… sounds like a high-end, elaborate scam designed to separate bored young masters from their allowances."
"Then don't play," Yuan Bi said flatly, casually flicking his paper fan open. "The door works both ways. Don't let the draft hit you on the way out."
Liang Shi's right eye twitched. He actually liked the brat's blunt honesty, even if the absolute apathy on his face made Liang Shi want to punch him. "Fine. Five stones for daily registration, six for the three-hour block. If I find out this is a fake illusion array, I'll smash your fancy ironwood counter to splinters and use the wood for my next campfire."
He unceremoniously slammed 11 Spiritual Stones onto the counter. He marched over to an empty black throne, sat his heavy frame down, and pulled the silver helm over his head.
As the darkness of the transition claimed him, Liang Shi laughed inwardly. A fake world. What a joke.
He laughed for exactly three seconds. Then, the digital world of the Undead Hall completely rendered around him.
Three seconds later, the overpowering stench of rotting meat hit his nose. A zombie disciple lunged from the impenetrable gloom of the decaying pavilion, its jaw unhinged.
Five seconds later, Liang Shi felt the visceral, agonizingly cold sensation of a rusted, jagged claw tearing straight through his throat, severing his windpipe.
Ten seconds later, he was violently ejected back into the real world.
He exploded out of the obsidian chair, his massive hands instinctively flying to his uninjured neck as he gasped desperately for air that he felt he had lost forever.
"WHAT KIND OF DEMONIC PLACE IS THIS?!" Liang Shi roared, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird trying to break free from a cage. The phantom pain in his throat was so real he could taste his own blood.
From the throne right next to him, the fat merchant Min Luan said, "WELCOME TO HELL, BROTHER! GET IN LINE; THE ZOMBIES ARE EXTRA HUNGRY TODAY! "
Unlike the proud, easily offended young masters who had first visited the shop, Liang Shi didn't complain to the manager. He didn't spend an hour lamenting his lost dignity or cursing the unfairness of the array.
He was a mercenary. He adapted.
He was entirely used to the world trying to kill him. He sat back down and analyzed the death with clinical detachment. He noted the exact, specific angle the zombie had used to bypass his standard mercenary guard. He realized quickly that without the explosive propulsion of his Internal Force—which the dungeon completely sealed—his heavy broadsword was simply too slow for sweeping, heroic arcs.
He adjusted his grip. He shortened his swing. He tightened his footwork.
While others in the shop screamed, cursed, and thrashed in their chairs, Liang Shi grew quiet. He grew cold. He grew utterly focused.
By the end of his agonizing three-hour session, he had died dozens of times, but he had progressed further than most did in a week. Yuan Bi glanced up from his tea just once, noting the profound, subtle shift in the scarred man's aura.
…This one's different, Yuan Bi mused to himself.
He's not fighting the dungeon. He's eating it.
Three days later, Liang Shi stood in the howling, biting winds of Blackwind Ridge.
The Iron Bone caravan was moving with agonizing slowness. Heavy, iron-reinforced wooden wagons creaked and groaned under the immense weight of refined spirit ores destined for the inner city. The mist clinging to the mountain pass was incredibly thick, tasting sharply of pine needles and wet earth.
"Listen up!" The caravan leader, a seasoned veteran named Captain Geng, barked, his face completely bisected by a jagged, red scar. "Visibility is less than ten paces out here. Formation stays tight! Shoulder to shoulder! If the Shadow-Wolves hit us today, protect the ore first! We don't get paid a single copper if the cargo is lost, and I'll kill you myself if you abandon the wagons!"
Liang Shi frowned, his calloused hand resting lightly on the leather-wrapped hilt of his broadsword. The air in the pass felt profoundly wrong. It felt heavy, suffocating, and charged with static—just like the stagnant air in the Undead Hall right before the Corrupted Guardian emerged from the shadows.
Suddenly, a blood-curdling howl shattered the absolute silence of the mountain, followed immediately by the terrifying, deafening sound of splintering wagon wood.
"AMBUSH! REAR GUARD, FORM UP!"
From the surrounding, mist-cloaked cliffs, shadow wolves—massive beasts with burning, jaundiced eyes and fangs like jagged pieces of obsidian—charged down the steep slopes in a coordinated wave. They were incredibly fast, organized, and starving.
The front line of the mercenary guard, comprised mostly of green recruits holding shaky spears, broke almost instantly. A young man to Liang Shi's immediate left screamed in pure agony as a plunging wolf tore a massive chunk out of his shoulder armor. Blood sprayed into the grey mist, hot, sticky, and metallic.
"Formation! Hold the damn line, you cowards!" Captain Geng roared, his sword flashing. But chaos had already taken deep root. Two heavy wolves lunged at Geng simultaneously, pinning the captain down beneath their collective weight.
Then, Liang Shi finally moved.
He didn't panic. His heart rate didn't even spike. He didn't freeze like the recruits. In his highly trained mind, the bloody, chaotic battlefield didn't look like a massacre; it simply looked like a structured dungeon scenario.
Left flank collapsing. Three beasts approachare approaching rapidly from apot. One injured ally at five o'clock. Optimal path of resistance identified.
His mind processed the chaotic battlefield like a flat grid map. A massive shadow wolf lunged directly at his exposed throat, its jaws snapping wide.
Liang Shi didn't retreat a single step. He sidestepped with a surgical, minimal four-inch shift of his hips—the exact, precise movement he had used to dodge the lunging zombie disciples in the dungeon a hundred times over.
'Slash.
His heavy broadsword, no longer swung like a slow, cumbersome hunk of iron, moved with terrifying, economic efficiency. He didn't use a flashy sect strike that required winding up. He used a short, perfectly leveraged thrust from his core that effortlessly severed the wolf's jugular vein.
As the beast fell, choking on its own blood, Liang Shi didn't wait to watch it die. He smoothly ducked, letting a second leaping wolf fly harmlessly over his head, and countered with a brutal, rising slash that split the beast's belly wide open from sternum to tail.
"HOW ARE YOU DOING THAT?!" a veteran mercenary screamed from a few feet away, struggling violently just to keep a single, snapping wolf at bay with his spear. "THEY'RE TOO FAST!"
Liang Shi didn't answer. He didn't have the breath or the concentration to spare.
Suddenly, the mist parted, and a massive alpha shadow wolf appeared. It was a beast the size of a small horse, its thick, dark fur matted with the dried blood of previous caravans. It bypassed the main line and lunged directly at a young, terrified mercenary recruit who had tripped and fallen in the bloody dirt.
The boy completely froze, his eyes wide with horror, his sword dropping from his trembling hands. It was an absolute death sentence. The Alpha was a blur of gnashing teeth and pure malice.
But Liang Shi moved first.
He didn't attempt to block the massive beast's trajectory with brute force. He stepped into the beast's guard, executing the exact same "inside-step" maneuver that The Hunter (The Corrupted Guardian) had taught him through brutal repetition when it lunged from the shadows of the Dungeon Pavilion.
Liang Shi let the Alpha's razor-sharp claws whistle mere millimeters past his ear, physically feeling the wind of the deadly strike ruffle his hair. In that millisecond window of overextension, Liang Shi drove his heavy blade violently upward. He bypassed the thick skull plate, driving the steel straight through the softer underside of the beast's lower jaw, piercing the soft palate, and sinking the blade straight into the Alpha's brain.
The Alpha's immense forward momentum carried its lifeless body directly over Liang Shi's shoulder. It hit the ground behind him with a wet, heavy thud, dead before its paws even touched the dirt.
The battlefield abruptly went silent, save for the crackling of a small, overturned lantern fire and the low, pained groans of the wounded men.
The surviving mercenaries stopped fighting and simply stared at Liang Shi. He stood perfectly still over the Alpha's massive carcass, breathing slowly and steadily. His face was an unreadable, emotionless mask of iron. Thick, dark blood dripped steadily from the edge of his steel blade, but his hands weren't shaking. Not even a little.
"…What the hell was that, Liang Shi?" Captain Geng gasped, pushing the dead wolves off his chest and pulling himself up from the bloody ground. "You moved like… like a damned ghost. I've known you for five years, and I've never seen you use those techniques before. Which high-tier sect did you steal those footwork manuals from?"
Liang Shi calmly reached down and wiped his blade clean on the thick fur of the dead Alpha wolf. "I didn't steal them from a sect, Captain."
"Then from where? That sidestep… that upward thrust… that wasn't sloppy mercenary brawling. That was high-level, flawless execution."
Liang Shi sheathed his sword with a sharp click. He looked away from the carnage, turning his gaze toward the distant, smog-covered silhouette of Pyradine City.
"…I just died a lot more times than the rest of you did this week."
"???"
The caravan survived the pass, but only because one single man had held the vanguard line with a cold, calculated calm that bordered on the supernatural. For the rest of the agonizing trip back to the city, the mercenaries spoke only in hushed, reverent tones, looking at Liang Shi as if he had been killed in the mist and replaced by a lethal, emotionless doppelganger.
That night, as soon as the bruised and battered caravan reached the city gates and the spirit ore was officially signed for, Liang Shi didn't collect his pay and head to the local tavern to celebrate his survival. He didn't head to the brothels to blow off steam.
He marched straight through the winding streets to the West District.
He pushed open the heavy wooden doors of the Origins Dungeon Hall. The newly expanded shop was glowing with that low, hypnotic obsidian light of a Level 2 establishment. Seven of the eight public thrones were currently occupied, with the players' physical faces contorted in deep concentration and agony as they relentlessly grinded through the normal mode of Undead Hall.
Lu Dong, wearing fresh green robes, was standing by the counter, nursing a cup of water. He was staring at the shimmering, ominous red button of the Forsaken Fortress with a potent mixture of intense longing and absolute dread.
"Going in, Lu Dong?" Liang Shi asked, his voice a low, gravelly growl that made the younger man jump.
"Gah! Mercenary, don't sneak up on me like that!" Lu Dong snapped, splashing water on his silk sleeve. He regained his composure, clearing his throat. "And... no. I'm staying in Normal today. I finally cleared The Hunter once with the squad, but the stress nearly gave me a heart attack. That Fortress... it's a nightmare. Three hunters ambushing at once? Advanced squad tactics? No thank you. I'm not paying twenty spiritual stones just to be used as a screaming toothpick."
Wu Feng nodded from his spot near the wall, his arms crossed. "Most sensible people are sticking to the Undead Hall for now. It's better for cementing the foundations. The difficulty spike in the Fortress is... mathematically unreasonable."
Liang Shi didn't reply to their excuses. He simply walked to the dark ironwood counter and placed a heavy, clinking pouch of exactly 11 Spiritual Stones on the polished wood.
Yuan Bi looked up from his ledger, his dark eyes flickering with a rare hint of genuine approval. "Back for more so soon? You're getting remarkably efficient, mercenary. The Hunter isn't a wall for you anymore, is it?"
"I've learned what I needed from the Hunter," Liang Shi replied, his voice unyielding. "The wolves today on the ridge... they felt too slow. I realized mid-fight that I was actually getting bored."
He glanced at the red portal, then back to the black one. "But I'm not ready for the Fortress yet. A sloppy warrior rushes to his death. I want to grind the Hunter in the Undead Hall until I can dismantle it without taking a single breath."
Lu Dong choked violently on his water, coughing into his fist. "Kill the Corrupted Guardian without taking a breath?! You're completely insane!"
Liang Shi completely ignored him. He took the eighth and final available throne, settled his broad shoulders into the groove, and pulled the silver helm over his scarred face.
As the absolute darkness of the transition claimed him, he found himself back in the decaying, rotting Pavilion of the Undead Hall. He didn't rush forward blindly. He moved with a cold, jagged, and terrifying efficiency. He didn't run. He didn't shout a battle cry. He simply stood in the center of the darkness, lowered his center of gravity, and waited for the monsters to come to him.
Outside in the physical shop, Yuan Bi leaned back comfortably in his chair, watching the Spectator Array flicker to life above Liang Shi's throne. The shopkeeper noticed with profound satisfaction that Liang Shi's virtual movements were becoming increasingly similar to his own—surgical, quiet, and absolutely final.
"The mercenaries are finally starting to understand the truth of it," Yuan Bi murmured to himself, a faint smile playing on his lips as the sounds of simulated combat filled the room. "If you want to survive the horrors of the real world, you have to become the apex monster in the dungeon first."