Noontime arrived, and the sun rose to its punishing zenith, beating down on Pyradine City until the very air seemed to sweat. The ambient smog of the West District hung low and thick, trapping the suffocating heat in the narrow, winding alleys. Stray dogs sought refuge in the deepest shadows, and even the usually boisterous street vendors had fallen into a lethargic silence.
But inside the Origins Dungeon Hall, there was no such thing as warmth. There was only the chilling, rhythmic resonance of human terror.
Wu Feng stood near the entrance of the shop, his arms crossed tightly over his silk-clad chest. For once, the arrogant swagger of the Wu Clan heir was entirely absent, replaced by a tense, nervous energy. Beside him stood a young woman who seemed to exist in complete defiance of the slum's oppressive heat.
She wore pale blue robes woven from high-grade cloud-silk, a fabric that shimmered faintly with internal cooling arrays. Her posture was elegant, rigid, and disciplined, her long black hair tied neatly back with a simple, unadorned silver ribbon.
Her name was Wu Xueyin. She was cold, sharp, and, currently, deeply unimpressed.
"Brother," Wu Xueyin said. Her voice was like the sound of cracking ice on a frozen lake, cutting cleanly through the muggy, ozone-scented air of the shop. "Is this the 'sacred forge of enlightenment' you've been wasting the family's spiritual stones on? Is this a dilapidated shack?
Right on cue—"AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH—!!!"
A soul-shattering scream erupted from Seat Three, where a burly, scar-faced mercenary was currently thrashing against the confines of his obsidian chair. His large hands clawed uselessly at his own throat, his legs kicking out as if trying to escape a phantom predator.
Wu Feng coughed awkwardly into his fist, refusing to meet her judgmental eyes. "…Correction. This is where I refine my martial soul. The screaming is just a visceral byproduct of the forge."
Wu Xueyin slowly turned her gaze toward him, one perfectly sculpted eyebrow arching upward. "…You refine your soul by screaming like a butchered pig in a slaughterhouse?"
Wu Feng straightened his back, instantly switching into his practiced, serious-elder-brother mode. He pointed toward the eight pulsating black thrones arrayed across the polished stone floor.
"Xueyin, do not let the exterior fool you. This is not some cheap parlor trick or a low-tier illusion array designed for entertainment. You enter a digital purgatory. You fight actual monsters. You experience the absolute, unvarnished threshold of life and death."
He lowered his voice, stepping closer to her so the queuing mercenaries wouldn't overhear. "And every battle… it stays with you. Your muscles physically remember the strikes. Your mind remembers the fear. When I spar in the clan halls now, the movements of our elders look sluggish to me. I don't see a spar anymore, Xueyin. I see a kill zone."
Wu Xueyin frowned, her aristocratic nose wrinkling slightly as she took in the peeling paint near the ceiling and the smell of stale sweat. "…So you pay eleven spiritual stones just to suffer?"
Wu Feng paused, holding up a finger. "…You're focusing on the wrong part of the transaction, Xueyin. Besides, I timed this perfectly. It is exactly noon. The second morning shift is about to be forcibly ejected by the system. A seat will open up in exactly two minutes."
Before she could dissect his logic any further, Min Luan rushed past them like a panicked bull. The merchant's son was drenched in sweat, his expensive robes clinging to his rotund frame. He had clearly been waiting outside since dawn.
"MOVE! OUT OF THE WAY! I'M ABOUT TO BREAK MY RECORD TODAY!"
BANG! A heavy leather pouch of spiritual stones hit the dark ironwood counter. Min Luan didn't even wait for a receipt. He leaped into Seat Five the exact second the previous occupant staggered out of it, jammed the silver helm over his head, and vanished into the simulation.
Wu Xueyin blinked, her icy composure wavering for a fraction of a second. "…Is that man mentally stable?"
Wu Feng nodded grimly. "…No. None of us are anymore."
Wu Xueyin sighed, a delicate sound of utter exhaustion, and let her gaze drift toward the main counter.
"If this place is so profoundly transformative," she murmured, "why is half the room staring at the ceiling instead of fighting for a chair?"
Wu Feng followed her gaze. Behind the counter, a secondary spectator array was projecting a massive, shimmering crimson screen into the air. A small, captivated crowd of players had gathered beneath it—not to wait for a public throne, but to watch.
Wu Xueyin narrowed her eyes, a flicker of genuine curiosity breaking through her frost. "…People are spectating the shopkeeper? I don't even see him wearing a helmet. He's just sitting behind the counter drinking tea."
Wu Feng smirked, a dark, knowing glint in his eye. "…He has his own methods. He records his own high-level runs after hours and broadcasts the projections to the main lobby to mock the rest of us. It's a ruthless marketing tactic to goad us into paying the premium for Hard Mode. He's the real monster of this hall, Xueyin.
He suddenly leaned closer, lowering his voice. "…What do you think of him?"
Wu Xueyin appraised Yuan Bi with a clinical, entirely detached eye. She took in his faded gray robes, his relaxed posture, and the complete absence of any flashy clan accessories. "…Cold. Taciturn. Looks financially unstable. His aura is suppressed, but he sits like a man who knows unequivocally that no one in this room can kill him."
Wu Feng nodded vigorously. "Perfect."
"…What?"
Before she could process his bizarre reaction, Wu Feng grabbed her wrist and dragged her forward to the counter. "Shopkeeper Yuan! A moment of your time!"
Yuan Bi didn't look up from his ledger. He didn't even stop fanning himself. "Pay first. Talk later. Five stones for registration, six for the Undead Hall."
The watching players in the lobby burst into quiet, stifled laughter.
"Told you…" a scarred rogue whispered to his friend. "He only recognizes the sparkle of spiritual stones. He doesn't care if a celestial maiden descends from the heavens; she still has to pay the entry fee."
Wu Feng's face twitched with profound annoyance, his pride stinging.
"… Yuan Bi, can you at least pretend to recognize a regular customer? I've spent a small fortune in this establishment!"
"No," Yuan Bi said flatly, turning a page in his ledger.
Wu Feng took a deep, steadying breath, fighting the urge to draw his sword. "I brought my sister. Wu Xueyin. The jewel of the Wu Clan."
There was a heavy beat of silence in the shop. The rhythmic clicking of Yuan Bi's fan stopped. He slowly glanced up.
Their eyes met—his, a calm, bottomless, abyssal dark; hers, a sharp, unyielding, pristine frost. For two long seconds, the ambient temperature in the shop seemed to physically drop ten degrees. The air grew thick, charged with the invisible, heavy friction of two entirely uncompromising wills colliding.
Yuan Bi casually broke the stare, looking back down at his ledger. "…Eleven spiritual stones. Seat Eight is open."
Wu Feng: "…"
Wu Xueyin: "…"
From the back of the spectator crowd, a player whispered, "…That's the most romantic line I've ever heard him say to anyone."
Wu Xueyin turned her head very, very slowly toward her brother. The killing intent radiating from her small frame was palpable. "…Wu Feng. Was this your pathetic attempt at matchmaking?"
Wu Feng panicked, waving his hands defensively. "No! I mean—yes—no! Look, the clan elders want you to marry a strong cultivator, right? Who cares about city politics? Just... just try the dungeon first! I promise, you will understand."
Sighing in a way that promised future violence, Wu Xueyin pulled a silken pouch from her sash and placed eleven glowing stones onto the ironwood counter. "Fine. I will see what kind of cheap parlor tricks have entirely captivated the supposed 'future' of the Wu family."
She walked to Seat Eight, sat down with impeccable posture, smoothed her robes, and allowed the heavy silver helm to lower over her face.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH—!!!"
She tore the helmet off instantly, throwing it back on its hinge. Her chest was heaving violently, her flawless complexion drained of all color, and her eyes were wide with primal, unfiltered terror.
"There was a corpse!" she gasped, her hands trembling as she gripped the obsidian armrests so hard her knuckles turned white.
Wu Feng nodded sympathetically, leaning against the wall. "Yes, a zombie disciple."
"…It was rotting. And it moved."
"Yes. It tends to do that."
"…It tried to eat my face! It leaped from the shadows and sank its teeth directly into my jugular!"
"Yes," Wu Feng said softly. "Welcome to the dungeon."
The watching players in the lobby all nodded in warm, communal agreement. "Classic first-run reaction," Liang Shi, the scarred mercenary, said with a fond, rumbling chuckle. "The first bite is always the hardest to swallow. Takes the arrogance right out of your blood."
Wu Xueyin stared at the crowd of sweating, bloodshot-eyed addicts. "…You people are deeply, fundamentally unwell. You should all see a physician."
Then, without another word, she set her jaw, swallowed her fear, and aggressively jammed the helm back onto her head.
Wu Feng smiled. "…Hooked."
Meanwhile, at the back of the hall, the spectators pressed closer to the secondary monitor displaying Yuan Bi's broadcasted run.
"Watch closely…" Bai Fan whispered, adjusting his glasses. "He's in the forbidden zone. The Hard Mode expansion."
"He's not like us…" Liang Shi muttered, his veteran eyes tracking the shopkeeper's avatar. "We fight with desperation. He doesn't waste a single breath."
Inside the digital reality of the Forsaken Fortress, Yuan Bi knew the air had changed. It was heavier, colder, and profoundly oppressive, filtered through a permanent cloud of dark red Qi that tasted of ozone and dried blood.
Three elite Hunters—the obsidian-scaled Stalkers of the Void—lunged from the gloom of a ruined archway, their claws clicking in deadly synchronization.
Yuan Bi didn't panic. He moved. A half-step back to control the distance, a sharp pivot on his heel to alter the angle of engagement, and a precise, leveraged strike with a scavenged iron broadsword.
CRACK. THUD. DROP. Three bodies fell into the bloody dirt in under four seconds. He had utilized the high-gravity environment of the fortress to accelerate his downward cleaves, turning the dungeon's own oppressive mechanics into a weapon.
Outside in the real world, a player whispered, "...Did you see that? No wasted movement. No flashy sect techniques. He's essentially an assassin and a meat-grinding machine."
But inside the simulation, Yuan Bi's eyes remained wary. He flicked the black blood from his blade, his ears twitching.
A sound echoed through the rotted, colossal ruins of the fortress courtyard.
THUMP.
It wasn't the dragging, wet shuffle of a zombie or the light, skittering speed of a Hunter. It was heavy. It was intentional. The ground itself shuddered under the weight of it, sending loose pebbles dancing across the stone floor.
The wide corridor darkened as a massive shadow stretched across the blood-soaked floorboards. Then, it stepped into the dim, red light.
It was the Bone-Crusher Titan.
It was massive, towering ten feet tall—more than twice the height of a mortal man. Its body was a horrific, fused lattice of bleached human bone and rusted, spiked plate armor, bound tightly together by the pulsing, necrotic Qi of the Dungeon. Muscles that looked like thick cables of forged iron bulged beneath its hardened, dark flesh. Its arms were elongated, dragging a massive, two-handed executioner's greatsword that looked heavy enough to cleave a siege wall. Its head was a distorted, half-human nightmare, and its single eye glowed a predatory, burning red.
Yuan Bi tightened his grip on the hilt of his broadsword, dropping his center of gravity. "…The main event."
Outside, a player swallowed hard, his throat clicking audibly in the quiet shop. "…Shopkeeper Yuan… is actually going to fight that thing head-on? Without his internal force?"
Inside, the Titan stepped forward. BOOM.
The ground trembled.
Yuan Bi didn't retreat. He stood his ground, mathematically measuring the distance, the angle of the beast's shoulders, and the lethal reach of that colossal sword.
Suddenly, the massive Titan closed the gap. It didn't vanish with the agile, ninja-like blur of a Hunter; it exploded forward with a terrifying, ground-shattering burst of kinetic energy. The stone floor actually cracked beneath its iron-shod boots as it launched its massive frame forward like a runaway siege boulder.
CLANG!!!
An impact like a falling mountain exploded against Yuan Bi's raised guard. The rusted greatsword met the iron broadsword. The sheer physical mass and momentum of the blow was overwhelming. The greatsword shattered into three jagged pieces instantly, and Yuan Bi was thrown twenty feet backward through the air like a discarded ragdoll, smashing violently through a rotted wooden door and tumbling into a pile of stone debris.
Outside in the real world, the crowd gasped as one. "OH SH*T! He got hit! He's dead!"
Inside, Yuan Bi rolled through the jagged debris, coughing up a bright, sickening spray of digital blood. The phantom pain registered across his nervous system like a localized fire. His ribs felt like they had been pulverized into powder. But he didn't stay down. He stood up immediately, spitting blood onto the stone, his eyes burning with an intense, calculated focus.
"…It's super strong, I thought my arms gonna broke," Yuan Bi muttered, wiping his chin. "And incredibly heavy."
The Titan turned slowly, dragging its greatsword across the stone floor. It advanced with an unstoppable, lumbering momentum, its glowing red eye fixed entirely on Yuan Bi.
Yuan Bi exhaled a long, measured breath. Through the pain, his gaze remained terrifyingly calm. He wasn't looking at a monster; he was looking at a puzzle of biomechanics and physics.
"…Not yet," he whispered to the dark.
Then—to the absolute shock of everyone watching—he turned and ran.
The crowd outside erupted into a chorus of confusion and dismay. "He's running?! The Shopkeeper is retreating?! I thought he was a god!"
Liang Shi, the veteran mercenary, crossed his scarred arms over his chest, scowling at the panicking youths. "…No. Look and observe his movement." Liang Shi's own gaze sharpened, recognizing the cold professionalism of the maneuver. "He's not running in fear. He's killing the mobs in the soroundings. He's taking control of the engagement zone."
Inside, Yuan Bi led the hulking beast deeper into the labyrinthine ruins of the fortress. It wasn't a blind sprint. Every step, every sharp turn around a pillar, every measured breath was a precise calculation. He was testing the beast's turning radius, its stamina, and the recovery time of its massive horizontal swings.
Behind him, the Titan followed like an inevitable, walking natural disaster, smashing blindly through stone walls and iron gates to reach its prey.
And yet, as he vaulted over a collapsed statue, Yuan Bi smiled faintly.
Because now—he had seen the rhythm. He had felt the weight. And in the brutal mathematics of combat, anything that possessed a rhythm could be predicted.
And anything that could be predicted… could be killed.
The entire Hall began to echo with a low, rhythmic whisper from the spellbound spectators: "Shopkeeper Yuan… Shopkeeper Yuan…"
At the center of it all, Yuan Bi disappeared into the deeper, suffocating darkness of the fortress's inner sanctum, the Titan's furious, echoing roar shaking the very foundations of the dungeon world.