The sun had barely crested the jagged horizon over Pyradine City, casting long, pale, creeping shadows across the dew-kissed cobblestones of the upper tiers. Normally, this was the hour of heavy, undisturbed silence, broken only by the occasional, exhausted yawn of a patrolling city guard or the distant chirp of a morning sparrow.
But today, that tranquil silence was thoroughly shattered by the frantic, echoing thud of expensive leather boots.
"Slow down, Wu Feng!" Lu Dong shouted, his vibrant, emerald-green silk robes fluttering wildly as he wheezed. His usually immaculate, jade-pinned hair was rapidly becoming a bird's nest. "Are we being chased by blood-debt collectors? Or did you finally offend the wrong jealous husband?!"
Beside him, Bai Fan struggled to keep pace, his measured breathing sounding more like that of a dying ox. "Lu Dong is right… what is the meaning of this absolute madness? It's not even breakfast time! The ambient Qi in the air hasn't even settled yet!"
Wu Feng didn't bother looking back, his hand gripping the hilt of his sword as he practically sprinted down the winding stone stairs toward the slums of the West District. "Stop talking nonsense. If we're late, we'll have to wait in line!"
"Wait in line for what?!" Lu Dong snapped his painted folding fan open dramatically, furiously fanning his sweating face despite his severe lack of oxygen. "A miracle from the heavens? A celestial maiden bathing in a spirit spring?"
Wu Feng skidded to a sudden halt, his boots scraping loudly against the stone. He turned to face his two oldest friends. His eyes weren't tired; they were manic, heavily bloodshot, and burning with an intensity that made the other two instinctively take a step back.
"Better. A world, Lu Dong. An entirely different world where true enlightenment is handed out like cheap rice."
Lu Dong and Bai Fan exchanged a long, deeply concerned look.
"Ah," Lu Dong nodded solemnly, tapping his closed fan against his chin. "He's finally gone mad. The pressure of being the heir to the Wu Clan has broken his fragile mind."
"En," Bai Fan agreed, pushing his silver-rimmed spectacles up the bridge of his nose. "Cultivation deviation. A tragic end, really. We should immediately inform his father to prepare the high-grade healing pills."
Wu Feng's face darkened, a prominent vein pulsing visibly in his forehead. "You insufferable idiots. If I didn't consider you sworn brothers, I wouldn't even share this golden opportunity with you. Stop complaining. You'll understand in five minutes."
Inside a certain dilapidated, sun-starved shop, Yuan Bi had just slid the heavy iron bolts back from his double doors, letting out a long, bone-cracking yawn.
"Too early," Yuan Bi muttered, scratching his messy hair and adjusting his faded gray robes. "Even the slaughterhouse chickens aren't this hardworking."
He had barely pulled the doors open when three large shadows aggressively loomed over the threshold, blocking the morning light. Yuan Bi paused, blinking away the last remnants of sleep, and raised a single, unamused eyebrow.
"You again?"
Wu Feng stood there, chest heaving, wearing a stiff, wildly determined smile. "Shopkeeper. We are here. Can we go in?"
Yuan Bi glanced at the bruised sky, then back at the three young masters adorned in silks worth more than the entire street they were standing on. "Did you camp outside in the alley all night till now?"
"…Maybe," Wu Feng coughed, looking away.
Lu Dong immediately pointed an accusing finger at his friend. "Don't look at me, I was sleeping in a warm silk bed! He's the crazy one! He kicked my courtyard door down before dawn. I thought the city was under siege by beast tides!"
Yuan Bi sighed, the picture of aggrieved exhaustion, and stepped aside. "Come in. Don't break anything."
The moment the three young masters entered, Lu Dong and Bai Fan's eyes immediately landed on the stark wooden blackboard resting near the entrance. They read the calligraphy. Then, squinting, they read it again.
"Registration: Five spiritual stones? Two stones per hour?" Lu Dong's arrogant smirk froze entirely on his face. He turned to Yuan Bi in pure disbelief. "Are you secretly selling immortality elixirs in the back room? Or are you just a brazen bandit?"
"Even maintaining high-grade, heaven-tier spiritual artifacts doesn't cost this much raw energy," Bai Fan added, his voice regaining its usual cool, analytical composure as he scanned the rotting timber of the walls. "This building looks like a stiff breeze would turn it to dust."
Yuan Bi walked slowly behind his wooden counter and slumped heavily into his bamboo chair. His expression was as flat and unbothered as a stagnant pond. "Then don't play. The door is right behind you."
The blunt, utterly fearless dismissal caught the two aristocrats completely off guard. In Pyradine City, merchants groveled before them. Lu Dong's eyebrow twitched with severe irritation. "What kind of shopkeeper are you? Shouldn't you at least attempt to trick us into a sale?"
Yuan Bi shrugged lazily, picking up his frayed paper fan. "You two don't look easy to trick. Why would I waste the breath?"
Bai Fan nodded thoughtfully, adjusting his spectacles. "He has a point. An honest scammer."
Wu Feng didn't wait for the debate to end. He slammed a heavy, bulging brocade pouch onto the wooden counter. It clinked with the undeniable, heavy sound of high-grade wealth. "I'll pay for all of us. The absolute daily maximum. Eleven stones each. Three hours."
Lu Dong's jaw literally dropped. "Thirty-three spiritual stones?! Are you serious?!"
Bai Fan peeked into the open pouch, seeing the glowing, crystalline stones within, and nearly choked on his own saliva. "Wu Feng, are you actively attempting to bankrupt your clan's treasury?"
Wu Feng completely ignored them. He marched straight toward the four sleek, light-absorbing obsidian chairs, his eyes locked onto them with pure reverence. "You have no idea what you're buying. Thirty-three stones is a beggar's price for this golden opportunity."
Yuan Bi's dark eyes lit up for a split second as the stones hit the wood. With a casual wave of his hand, the thirty-three spiritual stones vanished into his spatial ring. Thirty-three stones before breakfast, Yuan Bi thought, a warm, immensely satisfied feeling blooming in his chest. If this keeps up, I could buy out this entire dead-end street and expand the shop by the end of the month.
Lu Dong and Bai Fan watched warily as Wu Feng threw himself into the first obsidian seat.
"What's so special about a heavy black chair and a metal bucket?" Lu Dong scoffed, snapping his fan open.
Before Lu Dong could finish his sentence, Wu Feng shoved the silver helm over his head. Instantly, the young master's body went completely, terrifyingly rigid.
Simultaneously, the ambient Qi in the room shifted. The shimmering, translucent projection of the Spectator Array flared to life directly above Wu Feng's head. The visual resolved, displaying the interior of the Undead Hall—the massive, blood-stained, decaying martial arts pavilion.
The freezing howl of digital wind filled the small shop.
"What is this array?" Bai Fan whispered, leaning in so close his nose almost touched the projection. "The detail… it isn't a standard illusion formation. I can see the dust motes in the air. I can see the rust flaking off those broken swords."
"This is dangerous," Bai Fan murmured, his pupils shrinking as he watched Wu Feng's avatar draw his sword inside the projection. "This isn't magic. It feels too raw. It feels like… a living memory of a battlefield."
"Go try it yourselves," Yuan Bi smirked from behind his counter. "There are three empty seats."
A few moments later, a piercing, blood-curdling scream echoed loudly through the physical shop.
"AHHHHH—!!!"
Wu Feng violently tore the helm off his head, stumbling backward out of the chair and crashing onto the floorboards. His face was as pale as a sheet, his chest heaving as he frantically patted his ribs. "That… thing… it ambushed me from the rafters!"
Lu Dong blinked in shock. "What thing? You were only asleep for two minutes!"
Wu Feng pointed at the helm with trembling fingers. "It ripped my liver out! I could literally feel the coldness of its rotting teeth grinding against my spine!"
"You're joking," Bai Fan frowned, though his analytical eyes noted the genuine, cold sweat drenching his friend's robes.
"Do I look like I'm joking?!" Wu Feng snapped, his voice cracking.
"…Yes," Lu Dong said immediately, regaining his bravado. He scoffed, stepping confidently toward the second obsidian seat. "I refuse to believe something in this shabby, leaky shop can genuinely scare a direct disciple of the Lu family. You've always had a weak stomach, Feng."
Lu Dong sat down smoothly, his vibrant green robes draped elegantly over the armrests. He put on the helm.
Silence.
Ten seconds passed. Lu Dong's body remained perfectly still.
"See?" Bai Fan observed. "He's fine. It's just a mental endurance te—"
"WHAT IN THE HEAVENS IS THAT!?"
BANG! Lu Dong didn't just take the helm off; he practically launched himself out of the chair, falling flat on his back and scrambling backward across the floor like a terrified crab. His painted folding fan was thrown wildly into a corner, completely forgotten.
"That thing has no face!!" Lu Dong shrieked, pointing a trembling finger at the empty air, his impeccable manners entirely destroyed. "IT HAS NO FACE! And it moves like lightning!"
Above his empty chair, the Spectator Array briefly lingered on the creature that had killed him. It was a Faceless Zombie Disciple—a mutated abomination of the Undead Hall whose flesh had melted over its eyes, relying entirely on sound and vibration to hunt.
Bai Fan and Yuan Bi watched the terrified aristocrat in silence. Wu Feng crossed his arms, leaning against the wall, looking incredibly vindicated. "Told you."
"My mind... my mind went completely blank!" Lu Dong gasped, clutching his chest where phantom claws had just shredded his heart. "I've practiced the Jade Wind Sword Art for ten years! Ten years of daily training! But the moment that zombie lunged at me... the moment I realized my Internal Force was sealed... I forgot everything!"
Lu Dong looked at his hands, his face burning with a mixture of terror and profound shame. "I didn't just panic. I literally couldn't remember how to hold my sword. The stances vanished from my brain! I swung wildly, like a drunken tavern brawler! Where did my martial arts go?!"
Wu Feng grimaced, looking away. "The same thing happened to me yesterday. Without my Qi to make me feel safe, I forgot every foundational stance my clan elders ever beat into me."
"Ah," Bai Fan said softly. His eyes lit up with a sudden, deeply disturbing realization. "Of course. It isn't just fear."
Unlike the other two, Bai Fan didn't immediately rush to the chair. He walked up to the Spectator Array, analyzing the psychology of the environment. He recalled Lu Dong's wild, terrified flailing and Wu Feng's shameful admission.
"It's a passive suppression," Bai Fan theorized aloud, adjusting his spectacles with a trembling hand. "The Dungeon doesn't just seal our Internal Force. It possesses a passive array that actively clouds our superficial memories."
Lu Dong looked up from the floor, wiping sweat from his brow. "What do you mean?"
"Our martial techniques," Bai Fan explained, his voice filled with a heavy, dawning horror. "We've relied on our Qi for so long to power our movements. Because of that, our understanding of the sword is shallow. It's built on magic, not physical reality. The moment we enter the Dungeon, the system actively suppresses any martial art we haven't truly, physically mastered with our bones and muscles."
Bai Fan looked at the obsidian chairs with a newfound, terrifying reverence. "If you don't know a technique in your very marrow, the Dungeon makes you forget it. It forces you to build true, foundational muscle memory from absolute scratch, under the pressure of life and death."
Yuan Bi paused his fanning, a genuine smile touching his lips. A very smart one, he thought.
Bai Fan approached the third obsidian chair with a terrifyingly calm, absolute focus. He sat. He donned the helm.
He didn't scream.
He stayed under for five minutes. Then ten. Then fifteen.
Wu Feng and Lu Dong, having recovered their wits, crowded around Bai Fan's Spectator Array, watching in stunned silence. Inside the projection, Bai Fan's avatar wasn't running blindly in terror. He wasn't flailing like a street thug.
He was breathing.
When a Zombie Disciple lunged at him, Bai Fan's virtual body visibly trembled as the Dungeon's passive suppression tried to wipe his mind of his sword forms. The primal urge to run away and scream was obvious. But through sheer willpower, Bai Fan fought back the mental fog. He forced his legs into a low, foundational horse stance. He didn't try to block the zombie's claws with a sword he couldn't empower. Instead, remembering a basic mortal deflection technique he had drilled as a child, he stepped off the center line, used the zombie's momentum, and drove a mundane iron spike directly into the base of its skull.
The zombie dropped.
When Bai Fan finally removed the helm twenty minutes later, he didn't fall out of the chair. He exhaled a long, measured breath, removing the helm with trembling hands. His face was pale, and a heavy sweat coated his brow, but his eyes were shining with the blinding brilliance of absolute enlightenment.
"This place," Bai Fan said quietly, looking directly into Yuan Bi's eyes. "This is not just a shop. It is a crucible for martial gods."
Within the hour, all three young masters were fully immersed, side-by-side in the obsidian chairs. The normally quiet, somber shop was now filled with the overlapping, chaotic shouts of Pyradine City's elite as they fought a desperate battle against the Dungeon's mind-suppression array.
"WHY DID I FORGET MY FOOTWORK?!" Lu Dong roared, thrashing in his seat as he fought a virtual battle.
"Fight the suppression, you flashy idiot!" Wu Feng yelled back, his own face contorted in concentration in the next seat. "Breathe! Force your muscles to remember the First Stance! Stop swinging like a drunken uncle!"
"I CAN'T REMEMBER THE FIRST STANCE WHEN THIS ZOMBIE IS CHEWING ON MY LIVER!"
"THEN DIE AND TRY AGAIN!"
Meanwhile, in the projection above Bai Fan, the calm genius stepped back, allowing a rotting Zombie Disciple to overextend its strike. He observed the creature's balance, timed his mortal breath perfectly, forced his terrified muscles to pierce through the Dungeon's memory fog, and struck the exact vertebrae linking the neck to the spine. The zombie collapsed like a puppet with cut strings.
A golden flash of light hit Bai Fan's virtual body.
"…So that is how the mortal body executes kinetic transfer," Bai Fan murmured in the real world, a serene smile spreading across his face as the System permanently engraved the perfected technique into his real-world muscles, rendering it immune to future suppression.
Wu Feng, having just barely survived his own skirmish against two Zombie Disciples, pulled his helm up slightly and grinned a bloody, wild grin at Lu Dong. "Now you understand, brother. You don't just sit in a safe meditation cave and cycle Qi to grow stronger. You forge your combat efficiency in the fires of actual death. You relearn what it means to hold a sword."
Behind the counter, Yuan Bi leaned back, fanning himself slowly as he watched his three wealthy, dedicated 'test subjects' repeatedly die and resurrect.
[Host EXP Gained: +60 Shop EXP.]
[Shop Level Progress: 140/5000 to Level 3.]
[Converting Experience... Origin Internal Force increased.]
He could feel the rich, dense waves of pure Internal Force cascading into his dantian with every single Zombie Disciple the young masters managed to kill. The sheer terror of the passive memory suppression, combined with the agonizing pain of death and the intoxicating thrill of sudden, permanent enlightenment—it was the perfect, inescapable cocktail for addiction.
He chuckled softly to himself, the sound drowned out by Lu Dong screaming as he was virtually eaten alive once again.
"This is just the beginning."
Outside the dilapidated wooden walls, Pyradine City continued its daily, cutthroat hustle. Arrogant elders boasted in teahouses, merchants haggled over coppers, and pampered disciples engaged in flashy, safe spars in dusty training yards. They were all entirely oblivious to the fact that inside this broken, unremarkable shop, a new, heaven-defying path to power was being forged.
Not through expensive high-grade healing pills or decaying ancient scrolls, but through facing the absolute terror of death, stripping away the crutch of Internal Force, and fighting to remember how to truly be a warrior again.