The Origins Dungeon Hall had officially lost whatever dignity it once possessed.
If a traveling cultivator stumbled through the heavy double doors today, they wouldn't see a quiet, mysterious sanctuary for high-level martial arts tempering. They would see a rowdy, overcrowded tavern at midnight—a chaotic room completely packed with sweating bodies, loud shouting, and people with bloodshot eyes who looked like they had forgotten how to blink.
"Move your foot! It's my turn! I've been smelling your unwashed robes for two hours!"
"You died in three breaths yesterday, Liu! That wasn't a 'training run'; that was a suicide! It doesn't count!"
"Shameless! You're so bad with a sword, even the zombies would feel awkward biting your neck!"
Inside the humid chaos of the lobby, Min Luan was standing on an overturned wooden crate. The fat merchant's son had a face so red it suggested his meridians might actually explode from the high blood pressure. He was waving his chubby arms like a madman trying to direct traffic.
"I'm telling you! Today is the day!" Min Luan yelled over the noise of the crowd, pointing toward the ominous crimson runes carved into the armrests of the obsidian thrones. "Ten breaths! I'm going to hold off the Elite Hunter in the Fortress for ten breaths flat!"
Bai Fan didn't even look up. The young scholar was calmly polishing his silver-rimmed glasses with a piece of silk. "You said that yesterday, Min Luan. And the day before. Actually, you've said that every single day since Shopkeeper Yuan unlocked the higher difficulty."
Min Luan choked on his own words, his double chin quivering. "This time… the strategy is different! I can feel it in my bones! The Forsaken Fortress isn't going to break me!"
Wu Feng, leaning against a stone pillar with his arms crossed, let out a short, dry laugh. "Oh? Did the obsidian-scaled monster promise to stand still and let you hit it this time?"
The lobby erupted into laughter. Behind the dark ironwood counter, Yuan Bi quietly set his teacup down and let a small, tired sigh escape his lips.
Hopeless.
In the center of the room, the ten black obsidian thrones sat in a perfect half-circle. They pulsed with a calm, silver light, looking far too elegant and ancient for the desperate people currently fighting over who got to sit in them next.
"Time is up," Yuan Bi's voice cut through the noise. It wasn't a shout, but as a newly advanced first-rate fighter, his voice carried a heavy, invisible pressure that made everyone in the room instinctively shut their mouths.
The previous group of exhausted cultivators pulled off their silver helmets, groaning as they rubbed their sore necks, and staggered out of the chairs.
"Next group, pay your stones," Yuan Bi ordered.
Wu Feng, Min Luan, Bai Fan, and Lu Dong quickly stepped up. They didn't pull out the standard eleven stones for the Undead Hall. Today, their eyes were filled with a grim, burning determination. They slapped heavy pouches onto the counter—twenty spiritual stones each. The premium toll.
They were going into the Forsaken Fortress. Hard Mode.
They sat down in the first four thrones. Without hesitation, Wu Feng reached down and channeled a trace of Qi into the blood-red rune on the armrest. The heavy metal helmets lowered over their eyes with a soft hiss, and their four consciousnesses were violently pulled into the array.
The transition into the illusionary realm was always a harsh slap in the face. One moment, they were sitting in a loud, brightly lit shop; the next, they were standing under a bruised, blood-red sky.
The gravity of the Forsaken Fortress hit them instantly, pressing down on their shoulders like physical weights. The air was freezing and tasted sharply of ozone and dried blood.
"Formation!" Wu Feng snapped, drawing his scavenged iron spear. The playful banter of the lobby was instantly gone. In here, their internal Qi was completely sealed by the laws of the array. They had only their physical muscles, and the phantom pain was entirely too real to joke about.
"Relax, Wu Feng!" Min Luan grunted, hefting a heavy wooden club he had found in the rubble. "I'm the bait, remember? I'll carry the team's defense."
"You'll carry your own teeth home in a bag if you break the line," Bai Fan muttered, his eyes scanning the jagged, ruined walls of the fortress courtyard.
"Lu Dong, stay on my right. Do not try to do a spinning sword trick. These aren't the slow undead from the outer pavilion."
CRACK.
The sound of shifting rubble echoed from the dark archway ahead. It wasn't a horde of mindless corpses. It was an ambush.
Three heavily armored Undead Disciples stepped out of the gloom, their rusted swords raised. But the true nightmare was the shadow moving silently behind them. The Elite Hunter—an obsidian-scaled predator built for pure slaughter—skittered up the vertical wall of the courtyard and hung from the ceiling like a massive, lethal spider.
"ABOVE!" Bai Fan shouted.
Wu Feng moved like a cold winter breeze—precise and deadly. His spear darted out, piercing the knee of the first heavily armored zombie to drop its guard. Bai Fan stayed behind him, using short, calculated strikes to keep the other two back.
Min Luan, playing his role as the distraction, ran forward. He was a whirlwind of completely wasted energy, swinging his heavy club wildly and shouting at the top of his lungs to draw the Elite Hunter's attention.
"COME GET ME, YOU UGLY LIZARD!" Min Luan roared.
The Hunter detached from the ceiling. It didn't drop straight down. It used the falling momentum to launch itself off a broken pillar, ricocheting in mid-air at an impossible angle.
It completely bypassed Min Luan.
The beast's illusionary sentience had adapted. Recognizing that the fat merchant was just a noisy shield, the Hunter flanked the group entirely and landed directly behind Lu Dong.
"LU DONG, BEHIND YOU!" Wu Feng yelled, trying to pivot his spear.
It was too late. Lu Dong turned around just in time to see a blur of black claws. The Hunter severed his simulated spine in a single, surgical swipe.
With their formation broken, the fight instantly collapsed. The remaining zombies surged forward. The Hunter vanished back into the shadows, picking them off one by one. Bai Fan was impaled against a wall. Wu Feng managed to block two strikes before his spear shaft shattered, and the beast's jaws closed around his throat.
Min Luan was left entirely alone, swinging his club at empty air until the Hunter dropped from above and ended his run.
In the real world, the four silver helmets lifted simultaneously.
Min Luan sat up in his throne, gasping for air, clutching his uninjured neck. "It ignored me! The bait strategy didn't work! That thing is too smart!"
"You lasted exactly eight breaths," Bai Fan said, taking his glasses off to rub his tired eyes. His voice was completely flat. "The enemy arrays in the Forsaken Fortress adapt to repeated tactics. We are fighting an evolving array."
The heavy front doors of the hall groaned open, bringing a gust of smoggy, real-world air into the stuffy room. The laughter of the crowd died down a notch.
Liang Shi walked in. The heavily scarred mercenary carried his massive broadsword across his back. Trailing closely behind him were two of his toughest, most disciplined caravan guards.
But it was the fourth member of their group that made the crowd go quiet. Walking beside the rough, unwashed mercenaries was Zhao Tianlong.
Zhao Tianlong was a wealthy noble. Just a week ago, he wouldn't have been caught dead standing within ten feet of a slum mercenary like Liang Shi. But the dungeon did not care about your clan's treasury. It did not care about your family name or your expensive silk robes. The trial only respected survival.
After dying dozens of times to the Hard Mode Hunters, Zhao Tianlong had swallowed his massive pride. He had approached Liang Shi and offered a truce. They were going to combine mercenary discipline with aristocratic resources.
Liang Shi didn't even look at the whispering crowd. He walked straight to the counter, dropped four heavy pouches containing eighty spiritual stones, and stepped toward the next block of four thrones. He didn't wait for the black stone to cool off. He just sat down. His men, and the noble Zhao, followed without a word.
They all activated the crimson runes on their armrests.
"Watch," Zhao Tianlong said quietly to Min Luan as he pulled the helmet down.
The difference between the two groups was like night and day.
Where the first group had screamed and panicked, Liang Shi's squad was completely, terrifyingly silent. When they manifested within the high-gravity courtyard of the Forsaken Fortress, they didn't run around looking for the enemy. They instantly backed themselves into a tight corner, forming a solid, interlocking wall of scavenged shields and blades.
Where Min Luan flailed wildly as bait, Liang Shi's team carved a deliberate, unbreakable defensive perimeter. They didn't move like rogue cultivators navigating a mere trial; they moved like veteran soldiers holding a siege line. The two guards held the front with heavy stone slabs they used as tower shields. Liang Shi commanded the center with his broadsword, and Zhao Tianlong acted as the precision striker from the protected flank.
The crowd in the real world went dead silent, watching the crimson Spectator Array hovering above the counter. The rowdy tavern atmosphere vanished. This was a masterclass in military survival.
When the terrifying Elite Hunter dropped from the ceiling, accompanied by its undead infantry, Zhao Tianlong didn't break formation. He didn't try to be a hero. He stayed firmly behind the shield wall.
'CLANG!
The Hunter struck the shields with the force of a cannonball. The two mercenary guards were blown backward by the sheer kinetic energy, their simulated boots screaming against the stone floor, but their footing was perfect. They stayed upright, absorbing the blow exactly as Liang Shi had trained them to do in the real world.
"Now. Pin the flank," Liang Shi commanded calmly.
Zhao Tianlong thrust his sword out from the safety of the shields, catching the Hunter in its exposed shoulder joint. The beast shrieked, black blood spilling onto the stones.
They didn't win. They simply weren't fast or strong enough yet to kill the elite beast while their internal Qi was sealed. But they didn't die in eight breaths. They stayed alive for four agonizing, brutal minutes, fighting tooth and nail, making the Hunter bleed and work for every single inch of ground.
When Liang Shi's group finally succumbed to the array's overwhelming numbers, the four silver helmets lifted with a sharp hiss. They sat in their chairs, drenched in real sweat, their hands shaking violently from the adrenaline crash.
Zhao Tianlong stood up first. His knuckles were white as he gripped the armrest. "…Not enough," the noble said, his voice completely stripped of its usual arrogance. "We need more speed on the pivot. The Hunter's recovery time is faster than our shield bash."
Wu Feng stepped away from his own empty throne and approached Zhao Tianlong. The two young men had been bitter rivals since childhood, constantly bickering over clan politics. But inside the Origins Dungeon Hall, clan politics meant absolutely nothing.
"Your shield wall formation holds against the initial ambush," Wu Feng noted, his analytical mind working furiously. "But you lack the offensive might to finish the beast before its stamina outlasts yours."
Zhao Tianlong wiped the sweat from his forehead, looking at his rival. "And your squad has incredible killing power, but you break formation the second the enemy changes its attack pattern."
The two heirs stared at each other for a long moment, the tension in the room thickening. The crowd held its breath, wondering if a fight was about to break out right there in the lobby.
Instead, Wu Feng extended his hand.
"We need to cooperate," Wu Feng said firmly. "This is no longer a competition of who can clear it first. The Hard Mode array is too complex. If we want to reach the Fortress Boss, we need to share our tactical insights. My team will map the enemy manifestation patterns and test their agility limits. Your team tests defensive formations and environmental traps."
Zhao Tianlong looked at the extended hand, then firmly grasped it. "Agreed. We coordinate our runs. We build a comprehensive map of the inner courtyard together. Tomorrow, we start combining our strategies."
Min Luan cheered weakly from his chair. "Does this mean I don't have to be the bait anymore?"
"No," Bai Fan and Liang Shi said at the exact same time. "You are still the bait."