Echoes in the Woods
The last of the Steel-Blade Mantises dissolved into motes of light, its spiritual energy a cool sip that merged with the simmering river of power within Yao Xuan. The forest around him was a cacophony of life—chittering insects, distant birdcalls, the rustle of unseen creatures in the undergrowth. It was a masterpiece of simulation, indistinguishable from reality to the five senses.
Yet, to Yao Xuan's heightened perception, subtly refined by the primordial essence he'd just absorbed, there was a faint, digital static at the very edge of feeling, a reminder of the construct he inhabited. 'The level of immersion is staggering,' he mused, flexing his dragon-clawed hand. 'No wonder it can temper battle instinct so effectively.'
Elsewhere in the vast digital forest, Gu Yue moved with a grace that seemed to still the very air around her. Sunlight dappled through the canopy, catching in her long silver hair like scattered starlight. To an observer, she would have appeared an ethereal spirit, a vision of serene beauty amidst the wilderness.
But her heart was a tempest of quiet emotion.
The scent of damp earth and decaying leaves, the texture of moss underfoot, the chorus of the forest—it was a symphony she knew in her bones. Not from this human life, but from echoes deep within her bloodline, memories of an age when dragons roamed primordial woods vaster than continents. A profound, aching nostalgia welled up, threatening to crack the icy veneer of 'Gu Yue.'
'Such beauty…' she thought, her usual analytical restraint softening. For a moment, she wasn't the calculating sovereign or the academy's ice queen. She was simply a being connected to the wild, ancient heart of the world. Na'er's innocent love for simple, natural joys—the feel of grass, the taste of rain—merged with Gu Yue's deeper, more solemn appreciation.
A low growl interrupted her reverie. A Thorned Vine Panther, sleek and deadly, emerged from the ferns. Its eyes glowed with simulated malice.
Gu Yue's expression did not change. A flicker of disappointment passed through her eyes—not at the beast, but at the interruption of her peace. With a motion almost too swift to follow, she raised a hand. The air in front of the panther's paw crystallized instantly into a pane of flawless, diamond-hard ice. The beast stumbled, and before it could recover, a single, needle-sharp icicle shot from her fingertip, piercing its core.
The panther vanished into data-streams. A wisp of spiritual energy, cool and sharp, flowed into her. It was meager, but the mechanism fascinated her.
'To distill the concept of a soul beast's cultivated energy into a transferable form…' her intellect re-engaged, marveling at the human ingenuity. 'Their technology seeks to mimic the laws we once took for granted.' It was a thought layered with both respect and a trace of ancient, sovereign melancholy.
Xie Xie moved like a shadow, his dagger finding the gaps in the armor of a Rock-Armored Lizard with lethal precision. He was learning caution, his earlier brashness tempered by the very real, if digital, threat of pain. Tang Wulin sat cross-legged in a sunlit clearing, his Blue Silver Grass martial soul spread around him like delicate sensing threads, communing with the simulated life force of the forest in a deep, wordless meditation.
Wang Jinxi, however, was learning a different lesson.
Flush with the success of routing a pack of Azure Wind Wolves, his confidence had soared. The Bone Dragon King's power thrummed within him, a thrilling song of defense and strength. He leaned against a broad tree trunk, catching his breath, a grin on his face. 'This isn't so hard! It's just like a super-realistic game!'
His guard was down. His senses, dulled by fatigue and exhilaration, failed to register the absolute silence that had fallen over his section of the woods. The insects had stopped buzzing. The birds had fled.
The first he knew of his error was a sudden blotting out of the dappled sun. A chilling, fetid odor washed over him—the smell of old blood and stale malice.
"Huh?"
He looked up.
His blood froze.
A face stared down at him. A grotesque, twisted human face, locked in a silent scream, set into the swollen, pulsating abdomen of a monstrous spider. Eight purple, multifaceted eyes glinted with a horrid intelligence above it.
The Human-Faced Demon Spider.
Pure, primal terror seized Wang Jinxi's throat. His mind screamed one word: Death. His hand shot towards the distress beacon on his wrist, a spasm of desperate hope.
It was too slow.
The spider was a blur of nightmare efficiency. A single, spear-like foreleg descended, not to impale, but to pin his wrist to the ground with a sickening crunch of simulated bone. The grotesque face on its abdomen seemed to leer. Then, the massive, fanged maw beneath the cephalothorax lunged.
Agony, white-hot and absolute, erupted as fangs sheathed in paralytic venom pierced his shoulder. The world dissolved into a haze of pain and gathering darkness. The last thing he heard was the wet, horrific sound of his own digital body being wrenched apart.
In the observation room, alarms chimed with soft urgency.
Wang Jinxi's pod hissed open. The boy within was convulsing, his face a mask of utter terror, skin waxy and pale. Foam flecked his lips. The psychological feedback from a truly traumatic "death" in the Ascension Platform was severe.
"Emergency protocol!" Long Xuheng barked.
White-robed medics swarmed. A sedative was administered, followed by neural stabilizers. The convulsions slowly subsided, leaving Wang Jinxi breathing in shallow, ragged gasps, his eyes shut tight against a horror only he could see.
Zhang Yangzi watched, his own face ashen. "He… he looked like he was being eaten alive…"
"The platform simulates death with 92% sensory fidelity," Wu Changkong stated, his voice grave. "It is a danger. It is also the point. To face true fear, and either overcome it or learn from its bite. His spirit was not shattered. He will recover, and he will be stronger for the lesson."
But the lesson felt cruel, etched in phantom pain.
Back in the forest, Yao Xuan's head snapped up.
A scream had torn through the digital twilight—cut short, horrifically abrupt. It was layered with data, but the core of the terror was human.
'Wang Jinxi.'
The memory of the original timeline flickered in Yao Xuan's mind. The Human-Faced Demon Spider. It was here. His analytical calm was instantly overlaid with a surge of protective responsibility. These were his teammates. His classmates. However this trial was meant to work, he would not let that monster pick them off one by one.
He didn't hesitate. The Ancestral Dragon's power surged through his legs. With a ground-shaking crunch of displaced soil, he became a blur of motion, following the fading echo of the scream, his senses extended, hunting for the unique, vile signature of a predator that enjoyed torment.
Five minutes of silent, high-speed traversal brought him to a clearing that felt wrong. The air was colder. The light seemed dimmer, absorbed by the darkness at its center.
There it stood.
A monument to evolutionary horror. A body of polished, armored chitin the color of a starless night. Eight spindly, razor-tipped legs anchored it to the earth and trees like living spears. And on its bulbous abdomen, the pale, mournful human face seemed to weep silent tears of agony. The eight purple eyes swiveled, locking onto Yao Xuan with instant, hungry recognition of a new threat.
Yao Xuan's eyes narrowed, the nine-colored light within them glinting. The camaraderie of Class Zero, the bond of shared struggle—it was all platonic, but it was real. This thing had attacked one of theirs.
"Alright," he whispered, the dragon scales on his arms glittering as his claws extended fully. "Let's see what a legendary killer is made of."
He didn't charge. He took a single, solid stance, his gaze unwavering. This was no longer practice. This was a promise. The Ancestral Dragon's aura, a whisper of primordial authority, began to emanate from him, pushing back against the spider's cloying aura of fear. The trial of unity was over. Now came the duty of protection.