The Origins Dungeon Hall had ceased to be a place of business. It was now a command center.
Outside, the moon hung like a jagged silver hook over the slums. Inside, the air was stifling — thick with the acrid scent of cheap tea and the electric tang of adrenaline. Every stool was occupied. Those who couldn't find a seat balanced on crates or leaned against soot-stained pillars, their gazes fixed upward. No one was playing in the "Undead Hall" anymore. Every eye was locked onto the Spectator Array, held captive by the flickering, blood-red glow of the Forsaken Fortress.
In the center of the hall, the eight "pioneers" were deadlocked in strategy.
"The joints are a lure!" Wu Feng barked, his palm slamming a table littered with charcoal sketches of the Titan's anatomy. "The bone-plating overlaps the moment it shifts its weight. Aim for the knee during a charge and the seams will swallow your blade whole. You'll be anchored to a mountain that's about to flatten you."
Liang Shi, the scarred mercenary, spat on the floor. His voice was a low, grinding rasp. "That's the aristocrat in you talking, Wu Feng. You want a surgical kill — clean and dignified. Against that thing, 'clean' gets you buried. We need to force a blunder. Someone has to plant a shield and absorb the impact to carve a path up its spine for the others."
"Absorb the impact?" Zhao Tianlong looked up, a thin sheen of sweat catching the guttering candlelight. "Liang Shi, even with your veteran guards at your back, that overhead swing carries the weight of a falling temple. Direct contact won't just shatter the shield — the shockwave alone will turn your vitals to pulp before the simulation can even register the kill."
Frustration settled over the room like a low fog. They had been at it for hours, rotating through the thrones in groups of four, bound by the array's strict laws of entry.
Min Luan, his face a bloated shade of purple from his last failed run, wheezed from the edge of the group. "What if I just... drew its eye again? It seemed genuinely bothered by me last time."
"It wasn't bothered, Min Luan," Bai Fan said, methodically cleaning his glasses. "You were a nuisance. A loud, slow-moving snack. It swatted you so it could concentrate on the real threats. We need a diversion that can actually stay on its feet for ten breaths."
The crowd fell deathly quiet. This was no longer entertainment — it was a lecture. Whenever Wu Feng traced a footwork pattern in the dust or Liang Shi demonstrated a shield-slanting angle, younger cultivators in the back rows mirrored the movements, their hands twitching in phantom practice. They erupted at every narrow escape and felt a collective, hollow ache each time the silver helmets rose to signal another wipe.
The candles had burned down to stubs. Behind the counter, Yuan Bi sat in the gloom, his dark-gold aura a slow, measured pulse. He watched them with the cold, detached interest of a scientist. They were finally stripping away their egos, distilling their movements into something singular and lethal.
"One last run," Liang Shi said. His chair scraped against the stone as he rose. The room went silent. "We've mapped the spawns. We know the reach. Now we find out if we have the stomach for it."
The formation was set: Liang Shi as the iron anchor, Zhao Tianlong on the counter-strike, Wu Feng as the blade, and Bai Fan to call the timing.
The four men took their seats. The silver helmets descended with a heavy, pressurized hiss.
On the screen, the courtyard materialized in shades of bruised crimson. The four warriors moved in a tight diamond, weapons held low, their breathing synchronized. When they reached the inner sanctum, the Bone-Crusher Titan didn't bother with a roar. It simply lunged — its executioner's sword carving a devastating horizontal arc through the air.
"DROP!" Bai Fan's voice cracked like a whip.
They hit the stone as one. The blade whistled inches above them, the displacement of air alone nearly pinning them to the floor.
Liang Shi moved first. He carried no sword — only a jagged slab of stone scavenged from a ruined gate. He drove it into the Titan's shin — not to wound, but to plant a momentary hitch in its stride. The beast stumbled, its massive weight shifting just a fraction.
"Go!"
Zhao Tianlong and Wu Feng moved like twin shadows. With the Titan's attention pulled downward, Zhao Tianlong used the monster's knee as a fulcrum, driving a rusted spear into the thigh to forge a temporary handhold.
Wu Feng followed, defying the Fortress's crushing gravity and sprinting up the Titan's back with reckless speed. The hall erupted. "He's on the plating! Look at his balance!" someone in the crowed hissed. "Finish it!"
Wu Feng reached the base of the skull. He reversed his grip on the dagger, his vision narrowing to the single, pulsing red eye of the behemoth. It was the closest they had ever come.
But the Titan is not a mindless script.
Rather than swatting at the intruder, the monster buckled its knees and hurled its weight backward — slamming its ten-foot frame into the jagged stone wall with the force of a landslide.
CRUNCH.
The sound was sickeningly wet. Wu Feng was pulverized between the Titan's armor and the unforgiving rock. The projection blurred as his digital form dissolved into red static.
"WAVE TWO!" Bai Fan screamed, fighting to hold the momentum. He shattered a jar of oil against the Titan's face, momentarily blinding the beast.
Liang Shi and Zhao Tianlong threw themselves at the remaining eye. They fought with an ugly, visceral desperation — hacking at the joints, clawing at the bone-seams. For one breathless heartbeat, it seemed the mountain might actually tip. The eye was cracked. The movements were sluggish.
Then, with an earth-shaking shudder, the Titan swept its broken blade in a blind, full-circle frenzy.
The screen went black.
The helmets lifted with a long, mournful hiss of steam.
The four men sat in their thrones, drenched in sweat, chests heaving in the sudden, leaden silence of the shop. The spectators didn't move. They didn't cheer. They simply watched, waiting for the warriors to breathe again.
Wu Feng rose first. His hands were trembling — not from the fear of death, but from the phantom sensation of stone crushing his ribs. He looked at the common mercenary beside him and the rival noble across the table; the gulf between their stations had been quietly erased by shared suffering.
"Half a breath," Wu Feng rasped, his voice stripped thin. "If I had leaped the instant its weight shifted..."
"No." Liang Shi grunted, wiping real grit from his forehead. "If I had angled the shield another two inches, I could have dragged its center of gravity further forward. It wouldn't have had the leverage to reach the wall."
Zhao Tianlong stared at his hands. In the real world, he was unmarked. But his mind was altered. He saw the room now in lines of force and distance — not as a collection of objects, but as a geometry of angles and strike-paths.
"We failed," Bai Fan whispered, adjusting his glasses. "But... look at them."
The onlookers weren't mocking them. They were speaking in low, reverent tones, dissecting the wall-slam and debating how to bait it. The shop had quietly, irrevocably transformed — no longer a rowdy tavern, but a genuine academy of war.
They hadn't claimed the trophy. But they had walked away with something far more dangerous: the muscle memory of a hundred deaths.
Behind the counter, Yuan Bi closed his ledger. He look at the massive XP filling the progression level. He allowed a shadow of smile.
"The Hall is closed," he announced, his voice severing the trance. "The Titan isn't going anywhere. Neither should you."
As the eight pioneers filed out into the cool midnight air, the bickering was gone. They walked as a unit — Wu Feng and Liang Shi shoulder-to-shoulder, already murmuring about a new formation for dawn.
The dungeon hadn't been conquered. But it had claimed their lives all the same — and in return, it had given them a purpose. In the dark, Yuan Bi sat down to begin his own training. He had to stay ahead, after all.
Tomorrow, his players would be even stronger.