The Origins Dungeon Hall continued its steady, rhythmic operation at the edge of the West District. To a casual observer walking past the grime-streaked windows, it had become a place of monotonous, grisly repetition. Every day brought the same warped wooden doors swinging open, the same black obsidian seats glowing in the dark, and the same daily symphony of bone-chilling screams.
But beneath the surface of this endless cycle, subtle tectonic shifts were beginning to move. The very foundations of Pyradine City's martial culture were cracking. For thousands of years, cultivation had always been a solitary path. It was a lonely, ruthless climb up a mountain of corpses, where a warrior's only true companions were personal greed and total silence. You trusted no one. You fought alone.
Bai Fan, however, was about to kick that mountain over.
The morning sun was still pale when Bai Fan arrived at the shop. He did not immediately head for a chair, nor did he join Lu Dong in a loud debate about which expensive hair oil best survived a simulated decapitation.
Instead, he stood quietly by the window. His calm, analytical eyes traced the flow of the shop like a grandmaster studying a Go board.
He watched the entry patterns of the customers. He timed their exits with a steady count in his head. He noted the exact millisecond between a cultivator losing their "life" in the game and the moment their trembling, sweat-slicked hand reached for their coin purse to pay for another hour.
"…Patterns exist," Bai Fan whispered to himself, pushing his silver-rimmed spectacles up his nose.
He wasn't merely watching individuals flail around; he was observing the rhythm of the Hall itself. It was like a giant, mechanical heart, beating in four-second intervals of sudden terror and ten-minute intervals of slow progress.
He realized that the Undead Hall was fundamentally designed to crush a lone wolf. The boss of the dungeon—the Corrupted Guardian beast they called the Hunter—was simply too fast for one pair of human eyes to track, and far too strong for one set of mortal arms to block.
Without saying another word, Bai Fan approached the counter. He laid down his eleven spiritual stones, gave Yuan Bi a short nod, and entered the dungeon.
The moment Bai Fan stepped inside the virtual world, his approach diverged from every other warrior in the empire.
While the merchant Min Luan focused on frantic speed, and the arrogant Lu Dong focused on "looking heroic" while delivering raw power, Bai Fan focused entirely on geometry.
He moved forward with the measured, cautious pace of a land surveyor. His eyes didn't dart around looking for enemies to fight; instead, they scanned the corners of the room, the rotting ceiling beams, and the mathematical intersections of the stone corridors. In his mind, the chaotic, blood-stained labyrinth of the pavilion began to flatten out into a logical, two-dimensional map.
"…Control the battlefield first," he murmured, his breath forming white clouds in the freezing digital air.
A Zombie Disciple emerged from the gloom ahead, its broken jaw clicking rhythmically. Bai Fan did not rush forward to engage it in a wild brawl. Instead, he shifted his weight three inches to the left, standing at a very specific angle near a fallen pillar. By doing this simple movement, he forced the zombie to approach him at an awkward, diagonal incline over the broken debris.
The zombie lunged, its rotting muscles snapping loudly.
Bai Fan did not step backward in a defensive retreat like most players did. He stepped diagonally forward.
This bold maneuver reduced the distance between them faster than the creature's stagnant, dead mind could calculate. At the exact moment the zombie's reach peaked and its forward momentum faltered, Bai Fan struck.
He didn't use a fancy sword or a glowing technique. He used a simple, heavy iron rod he had scavenged from the floor, driven by the perfect leverage of his entire skeletal frame.
*CRACK.*
The timing was surgical. The strike landed at the exact cervical vertebrae he had mapped out in his head. The zombie collapsed into a heap of useless meat. There was no wasted movement. There was no overextension. He didn't even breathe heavily.
As he moved deeper into the dungeon, he encountered a cluster of three zombies at once. Any other cultivator in the city would have been surrounded, panicked, and eaten alive.
Bai Fan simply stood in the center of a narrow doorway. He repositioned himself constantly, shifting left and right. He was herding the three creatures with his own physical presence, forcing them to bump into each other and overlap so they could only attack him one at a time through the choke point.
"…Roles," Bai Fan mused quietly as he watched the falling corpses. "Individual brilliance is a vanity. Structural roles improve efficiency."
He finally reached the inner courtyard. The Hunter emerged, its obsidian scales shimmering in the pale moonlight of the simulation.
Bai Fan didn't fight it. He knew he couldn't win alone. Instead, he spent his entire paid hour leading the beast in circles. He tested its turning radius. He measured the exact reach of its razor-sharp claws. He led it into narrow corridors just to see how its incredible agility was restricted by solid walls.
When he finally "died" and woke up in the shop, he didn't scream like the others. He didn't even sweat. He simply removed his helmet, pulled a piece of charcoal from his sleeve, and began drawing a complex diagram on the wooden floorboards.
Bai Fan looked up from his drawing. He spotted his three regular companions.
"Wu Feng. Min Luan. Lu Dong. Get over here," Bai Fan called out.
The three young men walked over and gathered around the charcoal drawing. To them, it just looked like a messy web of circles, squares, and arrows.
"Listen to me," Bai Fan said, his calm voice cutting right through Lu Dong's usual boasting. "The Hunter is a 'Wall' for us because it exploits our singular focus. It beats us because we fight it one-on-one."
He pointed the charcoal at a circle on the floor.
"Min Luan, you have the fastest reaction time out of all of us, but you completely lack finishing power. You are the Engagement Point. Your job is to scream, throw rocks, and be so incredibly annoying that the Hunter forgets anyone else in the room exists."
"Wait," Min Luan blinked, his double chin quivering. "My role is to be... bait?"
"In technical terms, yes," Bai Fan nodded seriously. "In merchant terms, you are the 'Loss Leader'."
Lu Dong snickered loudly. "Loss leader! I like it. It suits you, fatty."
"And you, Lu Dong," Bai Fan continued without missing a beat, pointing to a large square on the diagram. "You are the Sustained Pressure. Your massive ego demands that you stand your ground and look tough. Fine. Stand there. When the Hunter is distracted by Min Luan's screaming, you hit it. Hard. Don't worry about being elegant or pretty. Just be a boulder."
Lu Dong's smile vanished instantly. "A boulder? Boulders aren't flashy! Where is my 'Jade Wind' sword flourish? Where is my elegance?"
"The 'Jade Wind' flourish is exactly what gets you killed every single time," Wu Feng interrupted, his sharp eyes fixed intensely on the map. He saw the logic forming. "What about me, Bai Fan?"
"You are the Executioner," Bai Fan said, his gaze sharpening. "You move only when the Hunter is off-balance from Lu Dong's heavy pressure. You don't waste energy. One strike. The killing blow. I will be the Tactical Pivot, standing in the back and directing the movement so the Hunter is always trapped between the three of you."
Lu Dong crossed his arms, looking grumpy. "This sounds like a lot of work for a metal hat game."
"It's not a game," Wu Feng said. His voice dropped to a low, dangerous register. "It's the first time I've ever heard a martial strategy that doesn't involve one of us dying as a 'heroic sacrifice' to save the others."
Min Luan scratched his head, looking around the shop. "Okay, genius. The plan sounds great. But how exactly do we do that? We sit in different chairs. We play in different instances. If we can't play the Undead Hall together, this whole drawing is useless!"
Bai Fan paused. He hadn't considered the technological limits of the artifacts.
He slowly stood up and walked over to the main counter, where Yuan Bi was casually sipping his tea.
"Shopkeeper Yuan," Bai Fan asked politely. "Is it possible for us to run the exact same dungeon at the exact same time? Can we link the thrones?"
Yuan Bi lowered his teacup. He looked at the four young men standing together, their eyes full of hope and determination. A slow, knowing smile spread across his face.
"You lot finally figured it out," Yuan Bi said, his voice carrying clearly across the quiet shop. "Soloing the heavens is a path for legends and fools. I was wondering how long it would take you to realize you have friends."
Yuan Bi tapped the wooden counter.
"I can link you. I introduce to you the **Squad Dungeon Run**. It is the counterpart to solo play. The dungeon will allow up to four souls to synchronize into a single instance. You will share the same space, the same monsters, and the same pain. But be warned: the dungeon scales. The monsters will hit harder, and their health will increase. Teamwork is not a cheat code; it is a necessity."
"Link us," Wu Feng said immediately. "Take our stones."
They paid their fees and approached four empty chairs. They entered the dungeon again—individually sitting in their respective physical seats, but for the first time in the history of Pyradine City, their minds were a single, synchronized unit.
Yuan Bi watched them from behind the counter, leaning his chin on his hand. He noticed the change in their physical bodies immediately. They weren't just sitting randomly; their chests were rising and falling at the exact same time. They were breathing in unison.
Inside the **Undead Hall**, the digital world rendered around them. They stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the dark.
A **Zombie Disciple** appeared from the shadows.
Min Luan stepped forward first. He didn't wait for the zombie to lunge at him. He let out a piercing, high-pitched war cry and threw a heavy scavenged brick right at the creature's head. The zombie, completely offended by the sudden noise and the hit, focused entirely on the round merchant.
"Now!" Bai Fan's voice echoed in their shared combat instinct.
Lu Dong moved in immediately behind Min Luan, his feet planted wide and solid. He didn't try a fancy, spinning sword dance. He delivered a heavy, crushing, two-handed blow to the zombie's shoulder, forcing its entire rotting frame into a violent stagger.
The zombie's center of gravity shifted. Its neck was exposed for a fraction of a second.
Wu Feng moved. He didn't run; he blurred. His timing was a perfect, flawless mirror to the zombie's instability. His iron spear landed precisely on the weak point, severing the spine instantly.
The zombie collapsed three times faster than it ever had in any solo attempt.
"Holy ancestors," Min Luan whispered, wiping digital sweat from his brow. "It felt like... it felt like we were one single person with six arms."
They tore through the dark hallway like a harvesting machine. Zombies that used to take minutes of desperate, sweating struggle were now being dismantled in mere seconds. By the time they reached the inner clearing, they weren't even out of breath. They were a perfect unit.
The air in the courtyard tightened. The **Hunter**—the Corrupted Guardian—emerged from the inner sanctum. Its obsidian scales clicked loudly, and its killing intent flared like a dark, freezing sun.
It sensed the profound change in its prey immediately. Usually, it hunted four separate, panicked animals that tripped over their own feet. Now, it faced an organized pack of wolves.
"Corridor!" Bai Fan commanded from the rear.
They retreated as one smooth unit, guiding the Hunter toward the narrow stone walkway just as Bai Fan had planned. The beast lunged, its claws whistling through the air, but Min Luan was already there. He parried just enough to stay alive, acting as the frantic, bobbing anchor that kept the beast's attention locked forward.
The Hunter snapped its massive jaws at Min Luan, but Lu Dong's shadow loomed right over it.
*BAM!* A heavy shield bash—using a scavenged stone slab Lu Dong had found—slammed brutally into the Hunter's flank. The beast roared in shock. Its superior agility was completely restricted by the tight walls of the corridor. It tried to disengage, attempting to flip backward into the shadows to recover, but Bai Fan was positioned perfectly in its only escape route. He swung his iron rod, forcing the beast right back into the center of the trap.
The Hunter struck again, launching a desperate, sweeping claw attack that caught Min Luan in the chest and knocked him back ten feet.
"Now!" Bai Fan whispered.
Wu Feng didn't miss. He moved in the exact millisecond the Hunter's weight was fully committed to its follow-through. His spear pierced straight through the gaps in the iron scales of the neck, finding the soft tissue Bai Fan had mapped out during his sacrifice run.
The Hunter's posture completely broke. It stumbled to its knees.
Lu Dong followed up with a final, decisive, earth-shaking overhead blow right to the base of the skull.
The beast collapsed. A massive, brilliant golden surge of enlightenment flooded through the dungeon and through the Spectator Array in the real world. It was so bright it illuminated the entire dark shop.
Silence followed in the Origins Dungeon Hall in the real world. It was broken only by the ragged, triumphant breathing of the four youths as they slowly removed their silver helmets.
"…We did it," Min Luan muttered. He stared at his hands, feeling a surge of real, undeniable confidence so thick it was almost tangible. He wasn't just a soft merchant anymore.
Lu Dong smirked, though his face was extremely pale with exhaustion. "I was a very impressive boulder. Did the crowd see that? I looked solid, didn't I?"
Wu Feng gave a short, sharp nod, his eyes fixed on Yuan Bi. "Efficiency. That was true martial efficiency. We didn't waste a single drop of blood."
Bai Fan observed the image of the fallen Hunter fading on the monitor, a faint, satisfied smile touching his lips. "…Confirmed. The structure holds. Logic and teamwork beat raw instinct."
Behind the counter, Yuan Bi watched them exit their seats in unison. He didn't need the projection to tell him that his shop had just crossed a massive threshold. The System was already lighting up in his mind.
[Shop EXP Gained: +20 Shop EXP.]
[Milestone Reached: Elite Enemy Defeated by Squad Cooperation.]
[Shop Level Progress: 5010/5000 to Level 2.]
[Requirement Met: Initiating Shop Expansion]
Yuan Bi closed his eyes for a brief moment, absorbing the notification. *Five thousand points. Finally.*