Descent into the Verdant Dream
The descent was a passage into the earth's silent heart. For three long minutes, the elevator plunged with a velvety, relentless smoothness, the only sound a faint hum of colossal spirit guidance arrays working beyond the walls. The air grew cooler, carrying a sterile, ozone-clean scent—processed and powerful. The depth was a tangible pressure on the ears, a physical testament to the undertaking. To house the Spirit Ascension Platform nearly a kilometer below the city wasn't just construction; it was an act of architectural defiance, a statement of the Spirit Pagoda's reach that extended as deep as it did high.
When the doors finally parted, they revealed not a cavern, but a cathedral of security. A vast, circular hall of polished gunmetal grey stretched before them, illuminated by soft, omnipresent panels in the ceiling. A dozen Pagoda attendants in sleek, grey-and-white uniforms moved with silent efficiency. Radiating from the hall were several armored corridors, their ends lost in shadow.
But it was the guardians that commanded immediate attention. Two dozen figures stood at perfect intervals around the chamber's perimeter. They were not mere guards; they were statues of vigilant power. Clad in form-fitting tactical gear that hinted at reinforced alloys, they held weapons that were masterpieces of soul guidance engineering—rifles with barrels that glowed with a contained blue energy, and handheld devices humming with disruption fields. Their faces were set, eyes scanning with a detached, professional lethality.
Yao Xuan's Eye of Observation activated almost reflexively, parsing the data his normal senses could only gape at.
His gaze settled on the figure by the central console, a woman with iron-grey hair cropped close to her scalp.
Vice Dean Long Hengxu, looking uncharacteristically small in this fortress, produced a crystalline card from an inner pocket. It caught the light, fracturing it into prismatic shards. An attendant approached with a reader. The soft beep of verification was loud in the hushed space.
"Confirmed. Six allocations for the Elementary Platform. This way, please."
They were led into one of the armored corridors, which fed into yet another, smaller elevator. Another descent, shorter this time, but no less profound in its finality.
The chamber they finally entered was a stark, technological womb. Circular, lined with seamless panels of a dark, non-reflective metal. Dominating the curved walls were massive soul guide screens, their surfaces alive with hyper-realistic vistas of a primeval jungle. Canopies of emerald and jade stretched to a digital horizon, dappled with simulated sunlight. The air hummed with a low-frequency vibration, the sound of unimaginable processing power lying in wait.
A senior attendant, her demeanor a blend of academic poise and procedural solemnity, stepped forward. "Records indicate this is the inaugural entry for all six of you. You will now receive the mandatory briefing. Your attention is not a courtesy; it is a requirement for safety."
Her voice was clear, devoid of warmth, each word measured. "The Spirit Ascension Platform is a thousand-year legacy. It is not a game. It is a synthesized reality, a hybrid dimension woven from spiritual energy and historical data-patterns. You will interface via direct neural induction."
She paused, ensuring their eyes were on her. "Inside, your capabilities are your own. Your mission is endurance. Survival duration correlates directly with spiritual consolidation rewards." Her tone hardened a fraction. "While physical death is not possible, neural trauma is. The mind can break where the body cannot. If you encounter a cognitive hazard—overwhelming fear, psychic feedback loops, predator illusions you cannot combat—you must activate the distress beacon. Failure to do so is an act of recklessness we do not condone."
She detailed the rules: the tiered structure of the Platforms mirroring the ancient Star Dou Forest's regions, the correlation between soul beast longevity and Soul Master rank. As she spoke, the eager light in the students' eyes tempered into focused understanding. This was not a field trip; it was a deployment.
"The experience will be personalized. You will enter separately. Good luck."
At her gesture, a section of the floor irised open. Six sleek, metallic capsules rose with a hydraulic sigh, their lids hinging back to reveal contoured beds lined with soft, nerve-reactive gel. They looked less like beds and more like chrysalides.
One by one, they climbed in. The gel was cool, conforming to their bodies with unsettling intimacy. Restraints, padded and firm, secured their limbs. Finally, a delicate, spider-like apparatus descended, fitting itself over their temples. A final glance passed between them—Tang Wulin's nervous grin, Xie Xie's thumbs-up, Zhang Yangzi and Wang Jinxi's synchronized nod of readiness. Gu Yue's silver-purple eyes found Yao Xuan's. In them, he saw no fear, only a profound, analytical curiosity, and a silent pact: See you on the other side.
Then the lids sealed with a soft hiss-clunk, plunging them into absolute darkness and silence.
Inside his capsule, Yao Xuan felt a tingling spread from the temples, a sensation like sparkling water fizzing along his synapses. His consciousness, that bright flame of self, seemed to loosen its anchor. Thoughts grew soft at the edges, blurring into impressions. It was not unconsciousness, but a guided drifting, as if he were being gently poured from one vessel into another.
A voice, synthesized yet clear, pierced the fog.
"You have entered the Elementary Spirit Ascension Platform. Ensure your safety. The distress beacon is your primary contingency."
Yao Xuan's eyes opened.
The sterile metal cocoon was gone. He was standing. The air was thick, humid, and rich with a symphony of smells—loam, decaying leaves, blooming nectar, and the distant, musky scent of animal life. Light filtered down in lazy, golden shafts through a canopy so dense it turned the sky into a mosaic of brilliant green and blue.
He stood in a cathedral of living wood. The trees were giants, their trunks wider than houses, their roots like great, petrified serpents breaching the forest floor. Ferns the size of small buildings unfurled nearby. The sound was a dense blanket of life—chittering insects, the melodic calls of unseen birds, the rustle of something moving through the undergrowth a hundred meters away.
On his wrist, a simple bracelet, a solid red button set into its face.
'It's not just visual… It's total,' Yao Xuan realized, a thrill of awe cutting through his disciplined calm. He knelt, pressing his fingers into the soil. It was cool, gritty, yielding. He plucked a blade of broad, tough grass. It tore with a fibrous sound, releasing a sharp, green scent. The simulation was an act of genius, a perfect illusion crafted from spiritual energy and data.
He recalled the briefing's schematics. The Primary Platform: the outer fringes of the ancient Star Dou. A training ground where the apex threats were three-thousand-year beasts, and the common fauna were mere decades or centuries old. For a Soul Master, perilous. For him, with his Ancestral Dragon bloodline humming at 17.4% and a physical strength north of five tons, it was a hunting ground. But the Pagoda's warning echoed—this place could mirror nightmares, not just forests. Caution was not optional; it was the first skill being tested.
He slipped into a state of hyper-awareness. His spiritual power, that vast 242-point reservoir, extended outwards in gentle, probing waves, mapping the energy signatures around him. He moved with the silence Wu Zhangkong had drilled into him, each footfall placed with deliberate care, his body a low, balanced shadow among the colossal roots.
Fifty meters into his advance, his spiritual probe brushed against a cluster of sharp, focused energy signatures. Not the warm, diffuse life of plants, but the coiled, predatory intent of soul beasts.
He melted behind the broad trunk of an ancient ironbark tree, peering around its mossy flank.
There were four of them. They moved with a disturbing, mechanical grace through a small clearing. Steel-Blade Mantises. Each was longer than Yao Xuan was tall, their bodies armored in segments of metallic, bluish-green chitin that glittered dully in the filtered light. Their heads were triangular, with large, compound eyes that refracted the world in a thousand fractured pieces. But it was their forelimbs that inspired a primal chill: elongated into twin scythes of pure, silver-grey bone, each edge serrated and wickedly sharp. They moved the blades in a constant, testing rhythm, snick-snick-snick, cutting the air with sounds like shearing metal.
A fierce, competitive smile touched Yao Xuan's lips. 'A perfect start.'
He focused, and the Eye of Observation superimposed its analysis over the magnificent, terrifying reality.
A plan formed in his mind, swift and clean. Four against one, but they were spread out, browsing. A direct charge was inelegant. He needed to control the engagement.
He didn't summon the Ancestral Dragon's full glory. Not yet. Instead, soul power circulated, and his first spirit ring glimmered into existence, unseen in the dappled light. Ancestral Dragon Sky-Splitting Strike—but he channeled the energy not into his hands, but downwards, into his legs.
He focused on the farthest mantis, which had turned slightly away, its blades snipping at a giant fern. Yao Xuan's body tensed. Then, he used the terrain. He pushed off not just with muscle, but with a concentrated burst of soul power against the massive root beneath him.
He became a projectile. Not a blur of speed like Xie Xie, but a force of directed impact. He crossed the twenty meters to the isolated mantis in the space of a breath. The creature's compound eyes registered movement almost too late. It began to pivot, its right blade rising in a defensive arc.
Yao Xuan didn't strike the blade. He dipped under the swinging arc, his body contorting with fluid precision. His right hand, fingers hardened by latent scales, shot forward not as a fist, but as a spear-hand. He aimed for the precise junction where the fearsome forelimb met the main body—a point of complex chitinous plating his Eye had highlighted.
The impact was a muted CRUNCH, like stepping on a thick shell. Spiritual energy, not blood, sparked from the breach. The mantis's limb went limp, the deadly blade dropping to hang uselessly. A shrill, chittering shriek of digital agony ripped from it.
The other three whirled as one, their movements a synchronized whirlwind of gleaming blades. The harmony of a pack. They didn't charge blindly; they fanned out, trying to encircle him.
Yao Xuan stood over the disabled first mantis, his breathing steady. He watched them come, his mind cold and clear, analyzing their coordination. The hunt was on, and the verdant dream of the Ascension Platform had just become very, very real.