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 the empty alleyways. Most merchants had long since bolted their doors, their owners surrendering to the 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 tension that stirred 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 walking past the street, 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, their eyes 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 own 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 bravely followed Min Luan into the dungeon earlier that day—narrowed his scarred eyes. "He's testing his own inheritance? Or perhaps..." He trailed off, his gaze sharpening as he looked at the haughty youths in the room. "He is demonstrating absolute confidence. He wants to show us what true mastery of this artifact looks like."
Min Luan stood near the counter, his 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 glued to 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 master of the Wu Clan—stood with a stiff, frozen expression. He had refused to leave the shop despite the absolute humiliation of his previous runs. His expensive jade robes were wrinkled, his knuckles were white as they gripped the hilt of his spiritual sword, and his gaze was locked intensely onto the projection.
"Let me see," Wu Feng murmured bitterly under his breath, "what you really are, shopkeeper."
Before putting on 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 own abdomen. The experienced martial artists in the room had gasped. It was a meridian-locking technique. Yuan Bi had willingly and completely sealed his own Internal Force. He was entering the nightmare as a frail, unenhanced mortal, just like the rest of them.
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. It was a monument to ancient decay—rotting timber pillars carved with forgotten dragons, bloodstained stone corridors, and a freezing, stagnant silence so thick it felt like physical pressure against the eardrums.
Yuan Bi stood in the center of the grand entrance hallway, his faded gray robes fluttering 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, his eyes closed, listening.
Shuffle. Drag. Shuffle.
Three Undead Novice Disciples stumbled 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 today.
Yuan Bi didn't retreat. He opened his eyes.
"…Too slow."
He stepped forward. It wasn't a sprint; it was a casual, gliding slide that perfectly slipped between the grasping claws of the first two corpses. He pivoted his hips—a textbook demonstration of kinetic transfer—and snapped 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 check his work, 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, bringing it crashing down to the stone floor. Before it could even hit the ground, Yuan Bi drove the heel of his boot straight down like a falling meteor, crushing the creature's brittle skull like a dry melon.
The third corpse lunged, its rotting teeth snapping at Yuan Bi's face.
Yuan Bi casually sidestepped, reaching out to grab the creature's wrist. He didn't use brute strength—he had none. Instead, he used the corpse's own forward momentum against it, twisting its arm into a brutal joint lock and hurling it headfirst into a solid stone pillar. The skull caved in with a sickening thud.
Three seconds. Three perfect, economical, effortless kills.
Around Yuan Bi, the bodies lay scattered like broken dolls, destroyed with a clinical, unfeeling efficiency that made the spectators outside shiver in their boots.
There had been no hesitation. No wasted movement. No panic. Each strike was clean, 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.
Outside in the shop, the murmurs began to grow into a frantic buzz.
"He's already cleared the hallway," a mercenary gasped, his jaw practically hitting the floorboards.
"So fast? That shouldn't be possible for someone without Internal Force. I watched Wu Feng swing his sword twenty times and fail to kill one of those things!"
Wu Feng's pupils shrank to pinpricks. His face flushed a dark, furious crimson at the mercenary's comment, but he couldn't tear his eyes away from the screen. "He's different," the young master whispered, his arrogance bleeding away into profound horror. "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, his 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 in his hand.
"…Slow reaction," Yuan Bi murmured to himself, his voice echoing out through the Spectator Array. "Limited perception. Relies entirely on instinct and muscle memory. Predictable."
The corpse turned—but it was far too late.
Slash. Yuan Bi moved like a phantom. The rusted dagger pierced the temple of the undead. He didn't pull back immediately; he twisted his wrist flawlessly, driving the blade deeper to sever the brain stem completely. The creature dropped instantly, severed from whatever dark magic animated it.
"…Confirmed."
The middle-aged rogue cultivator outside exhaled a long, shaky breath. "He's studying them," he said, his voice laced with absolute awe. "He isn't just killing for the sake of survival like we did. He's performing an analysis. He's treating this hellish dungeon like a lethal laboratory."
Then, the air in the Undead Hall changed.
Inside the dungeon, a new sound echoed from the deeper, impenetrable shadows of the pavilion's inner courtyard. It wasn't the dragging of feet or the mindless, hollow moaning of the dead disciples.
It was sharp. Fast. The clicking of heavy talons against stone. Predatory.
Yuan Bi stopped walking. The rusted dagger in his hand ceased its casual spinning. "…Something new."
Outside, the projection flickered and distorted heavily, reflecting the sudden, massive surge of killing intent within the trial. The crowd in the shop inhaled sharply, stepping back from the screen as if the danger could reach out and touch them.
"Why does the air looks different?" Min Luan whispered, rubbing his arms as goosebumps erupted across his skin.
"That presence..." Wu Feng swallowed hard, his hand gripping his sword after seeing a shadow. "It's malicious. It isn't a good."
From the absolute darkness of the courtyard, it emerged.
It was a Corrupted Iron-Scale Guardian Beast. Once a majestic hound meant to protect the ancient sect, death and centuries of stagnant Qi had mutated it into a nightmare. It was tall and lean, with rotting muscles coiled like steel springs beneath hardened, obsidian-black scales. Its limbs were elongated, ending in jagged claws curved like forged scimitars. It lifted its massive head, revealing a maw filled with rows of needle-like teeth and eyes that were cold, focused, and—frighteningly—alive with predatory intelligence.
A low, vibrating growl shook the dust from the rotting rafters.
Min Luan's face went completely pale. "I never saw that thing. It's a monster. A real martial beast."
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 massive. Sparks flew in the dim light as the creature's scimitar-claws crashed against the iron.
Yuan Bi was sent sliding violently backward, his boots carving deep furrows into the rotted wooden floorboards. His arms trembled violently from the sheer kinetic force, the rusted dagger groaning under the pressure.
"…Fast," Yuan Bi noted, his eyes narrowing.
Before he could even recover his stance, the creature was there again. Claws slashed downward in a shimmering, deadly arc. Yuan Bi dropped his weight and rolled aside, the ground cracking violently where he had stood a millisecond before. Splinters of wood exploded into the air, slicing across Yuan Bi's 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 whirring with cold, detached calculations.
Speed exceeds mine by a factor of three. Strength is vastly superior. A direct, prolonged confrontation is a death sentence without Internal Force.
He exhaled a slow, measured breath, and to the absolute shock of everyone watching the projection, a faint, genuinely thrilled smile appeared on 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 blindly in panic like the young master had. He was navigating. He led the monster through a series of sharp turns, weaving through the shattered pillars and broken statues, memorizing the layout of the narrow paths. He pushed his mortal stamina to the absolute breaking point until he reached a tight, constricted stone corridor leading to the sect's archives.
He stopped. He turned. He waited, his dagger held low.
The Guardian Beast lunged around the corner, its momentum far too great to check in the narrow space. At the last possible millisecond, Yuan Bi stepped smoothly into the shadow of the archway, executing a flawless evasion technique.
The creature slammed headfirst into the solid stone wall with a deafening, skull-rattling crack. Dust and debris rained down from the ceiling.
That split-second of physical disorientation was all Yuan Bi needed. He struck. He drove his dagger with perfect leverage directly into the creature's exposed neck—and the blade bounced off the obsidian scales with a harsh shower of sparks.
"…Too hard," Yuan Bi grunted, feeling the reverberation numb his 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 people in the shop flinched instinctively, feeling the phantom sting of the claws. Min Luan held his breath, his hands clamped over his mouth.
Yuan Bi ignored the pain. His dark eyes sharpened to razor pinpoints.
…Not the surface. The scales are impenetrable. The kill must be internal.
The creature recovered its footing and charged again, its massive maw opening 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, leaning directly into the jaws of death. As the beast's mouth snapped down, passing over his head, Yuan Bi dropped to his knees, sliding on the slick stone floor. He thrust his arms upward with every ounce of physical 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 violently upward, pivoting his hips and leaning his entire body weight into the hilt.
CRACK.
The rusted steel pierced straight through the roof of the mouth and buried itself deep into the creature's brain cavity. The Guardian Beast froze instantly in mid-air. Its massive body trembled violently for a single second before all the dark energy left it, and it collapsed into a heavy, lifeless heap of dead obsidian scales.
[Elite Enemy Slain: Corrupted Iron-Scale Guardian.]
[Converting Experience... Reward: Biggener Dagger Mastery — Comprehension Achieved.]
[Host EXP Gained: +50 Shop EXP.]
Absolute, stunned silence fell over the Origins Dungeon Hall in the real world.
On the screen, Yuan Bi stood over the massive corpse, his chest heaving, his breathing slow and perfectly controlled. A powerful surge of golden energy—far more intense than anything Min Luan had ever received—flooded into Yuan Bi's muscles. It was sharp. It was refined. The system had taken the brutal, high-stakes combat and permanently etched the mastery of dagger combat into his physical flesh.
Outside, the crowd finally remembered how to breathe, and the room erupted into pandemonium.
"He killed it! By the heavens, he actually killed that monster without using an ounce of Qi!"
"Did you see that footwork? He adapted! He learned its attack pattern faster than the trial could kill him!"
Inside the trial, Yuan Bi looked down at the dead hunter. The rotting corpses from before were nothing—mere warm-up obstacles. This, however, was a true test. A real opponent that could temper a martial artist's will into unbreakable steel.
He calmly wiped the black blood from his rusted dagger, his face an unreadable mask of absolute focus, and turned toward the deeper, uncharted shadows of the Undead Hall. He wasn't walking like prey trying to survive a horror attraction anymore. He was walking like a man who owned the darkness.
"System. Exit," Yuan Bi murmured.
The red light of the projection instantly faded, dissolving into wisps of ambient Qi.
Yuan Bi slowly reached up and removed the silver helm, placing it carefully on the obsidian armrest. He tapped his abdomen, unsealing his meridians, and allowed the rich, comforting warmth of his Internal Force to flood back into his veins.
The shop was dead silent.
Dozens of wide, terrified, and utterly awestruck eyes stared at him. They were filled with a new, incredibly heavy respect. No one laughed. No one mocked the crippled shopkeeper. They had seen the absolute control. The calculated lethality. The sheer, heaven-defying willpower required to face a monster as a mortal and win.
Min Luan swallowed hard, his throat dry. "…You… you killed that thing. You didn't even use Qi."
Wu Feng stared at Yuan Bi, his jaw tight, his hands trembling at his sides. The young master's arrogance had been completely, utterly shattered. He had thought himself a genius, but compared to the flawless, blood-soaked technique he had just witnessed, his swordplay was that of a flailing infant.
"You've done this before," Wu Feng rasped, his voice barely a whisper. "No one fights like that for the first time. You aren't a cripple."
Yuan Bi glanced at them briefly, his expression thoroughly unbothered. He flexed his fingers, feeling the lingering, permanent effects of the trial deeply ingrained in his muscle memory. His physical body felt sharper, his senses more refined. Even outside the dungeon, the brutal growth remained.
He picked up his frayed paper fan, snapped it open, and leaned back into his bamboo chair, the lazy, indifferent shopkeeper persona returning like a well-worn cloak.
"The Origins Dungeon Hall is currently closed for the night," Yuan Bi announced, his voice smooth and cutting through the silence like a blade. "But as you can all see... the enlightenment is quite real."
He smiled, a dark, knowing curve of his lips.
"I suggest you all go home and gather your spiritual stones. Tomorrow morning, the price for failure goes up."