The Sound of a Door in the Small Hours

Lu Yuan said his goodbyes to Zhuo Ming and the others and pressed on, heading deeper into the dungeon.

He moved with care. Every shadow, every scatter of rubble — he watched them all, half-expecting three cat-kin Hunters to come pouring out at any moment.

Somewhere in the dungeon, Lu Yuan rounded a corner with deliberate, quiet steps.

*Clang!*

A thin sliver of darkness shot out from the shadows to his left. It struck his forearm with a metallic ring before he could fully react. He absorbed the impact — no light force, that — and stepped back.

A piercing shriek split the air. A black shape dropped from the shadows along the wall and landed in a crouch.

*So this is a Black Scorpion.*

The creature was jet-black from head to tail, its shell nearly the same shade as the dungeon stone. Away from the torchlight, in the deeper shadow zones, it would be almost completely invisible. Its two claws each stretched close to half a meter. Behind them, its stinger curved upward, glinting with a cold, faint light.

*That thin shadow — that was its stinger.*

The scorpion didn't pause after missing its first strike. It hit the ground and charged again immediately, oversized claws spread wide, tail curled high.

Lu Yuan stepped back, ducking the claw snapping at his head.

As it closed in, it grabbed at his legs with both claws while driving its stinger at him again.

He shifted his footing, cleared the claws, and brought his sword across in a clean slash. The blade caught the stinger and sheared it off.

Ink-dark blood sprayed from the stump. The scorpion let out an agonized shriek and threw itself at him in a rage.

Lu Yuan sidestepped easily and drove his sword straight through its head.

The scorpion dropped.

*Sandy Rock Black Scorpion's Venomous Tail: common-rank material, highly toxic, can be refined into gene potions.*

*Sandy Rock Black Scorpion's Giant Claw: common-rank material, can be forged into Gene Armaments.*

Cold sweat prickled down Lu Yuan's neck.

He remembered now — before entering the dungeon, he'd heard a vendor near the entrance shouting about antidotes for Black Scorpion venom. He hadn't thought much of it at the time.

*Highly toxic.*

His defense had held. The stinger never broke his skin. But if it had...

He exhaled slowly. *Good thing I chose the Guardian type Transcendent Gene. If I'd gone with Assault type, I'd probably be dead.*

He collected the three Spirit Crystals the scorpion dropped, along with the tail and claw, and filed away a conclusion: every beast in this dungeon was a sneaky, underhanded ambusher. Stone Men lurked inside rubble piles. Black Scorpions lurked in the walls. A normal Gene Warrior would have a very hard time defending against this kind of attack.

Next time, he'd come in better informed about the specific habits of Sandy Rock Palace's creatures.

Meanwhile, deep in a secluded dead-end corner of the dungeon...

Xiye and the cat-kin elementalist had stopped, carrying the badly wounded Moli between them. Xiye gently set her down on the ground.

Moli was unconscious. The savage sword wound across her abdomen had stopped bleeding, leaving a gnarled, crooked scar.

The elementalist studied the wound. His expression was not good.

"How is she?" he asked.

Xiye frowned slightly. "She's already taken a healing potion. Out of immediate danger, at least." He paused. "But it's a serious wound. Common-rank potions aren't going to close something like this quickly. A few days, at least."

The elementalist's expression darkened further.

"Hmph." He clicked his tongue. "Didn't think we'd run into someone that hard to crack. What rotten luck."

Xiye said nothing. He sat down on the dungeon floor, pulled a strip of dried fish from his pack, and began chewing.

The elementalist watched him, swallowed against his will, and dropped down beside him.

"Is that your aunt's cooking? Give me a piece."

Xiye gave him a long, unimpressed look, then reached in and produced another strip, holding it out wordlessly.

The elementalist took it with evident satisfaction and bit down. A moment later his expression shifted — cool and calculating:

"That human warrior is genuinely strong. His strength isn't weak, and his defense stopped Moli's arrows cold — he's probably even tougher than that implies. His speed was average, though. He must have engraved a Guardian type Transcendent Gene."

Xiye's eyes narrowed. A faint gleam of killing intent flickered in them.

"If we had him in open ground," the elementalist muttered, "we could have done whatever we wanted with him. The dungeon just gives that kind of Guardian type too much of an advantage."

"A loss is a loss," Xiye said. "Stay in this business long enough and eventually the hunter becomes the prey. Once Moli's back on her feet, we find new targets."

His gaze settled somewhere ahead of him, voice quiet and flat: "That human warrior doesn't look like he'll be leaving the dungeon anytime soon. There'll be another chance to cross paths with him. When that happens — we settle the score."

Back in the dungeon, Lu Yuan kept Black Iron Body running without interruption and pushed deeper.

As he went further in, Black Scorpions appeared in greater numbers — much like the Stone Men had, distributed throughout the tunnels, lying in wait wherever shadow pooled thickly against the stone walls. He remained on high alert, wary at every turn.

The kills accumulated. So did the Spirit Crystals, and so did the materials.

He was careful with the Spirit Crystals: a portion held back for spirit power replenishment; the rest fed into the Evolution Cube to charge Black Iron Body's evolution. Alongside that, he continued tempering his Gene Chain at a measured pace.

By the time he tallied it up, he'd collected six to seven hundred Spirit Crystals this run. More than five hundred went to the Evolution Cube. Nearly a hundred more went into Gene Chain tempering.

He brought his tempering to around ten percent. His strength climbed again.

He breathed out slowly and let himself smile.

*At this rate, it won't be long before I hit a hundred percent. Then I can break the Gene Lock and start working toward ranking up.*

Two paths running in parallel — tempering the Gene Chain was one front; evolving his Transcendent Gene was the other. Once Black Iron Body reached the boss tier, his combat power among Trainee Rank Gene Warriors would be nearly unmatched. Only the most exceptional talents at the Trainee stage could even engrave boss-tier genes.

After that, he wondered, who wouldn't be able to get into a solid Gene Warrior Academy?

*Strange that so many people spend ten, fifteen years and still can't reach First-Rank Warrior*, he reflected idly. Looking at his own progress, the whole thing seemed hard to fathom. Maybe he could reach First-Rank before the college entrance exams. That was an interesting thought.

The prospect filled him with anticipation.

At some point — the dungeon offered no reliable way to track time, nothing down here ever changed — Lu Yuan ran into a practical problem.

His supplies were nearly depleted. And his battle-mark space, roughly a three-meter cube, was packed to capacity with materials.

Even if he kept hunting, there was nowhere to put anything.

He'd need to make a trip out. The small market at the dungeon entrance bought materials in exchange for Spirit Crystals. That was the move.

*Should I squeeze in a bit more cultivation first?*

Just then, white mist surged in the region of his Gene Chain. The light gate materialized.

Lu Yuan didn't hesitate. He reached out with his mind and connected.

*The time spent inside was always the Land of Origin's call, not his.*

His vision went dark.

He came back to himself in a haze, opened his eyes, and found himself lying in his small, bare room.

He picked up his phone.

4 a.m.

He'd entered the Land of Origin at ten the night before. Six hours had passed outside.

Two real-world hours equaled one day inside the Land of Origin.

*Three days?*

He'd expected to stay for about a week. Shorter than that. But not a bad result — the duration wasn't his to control.

He did the rough math. At this rate, ten or eleven more visits, maybe twelve at most. A hundred percent tempering was within reach. Definitely less than a month.

He was still turning the thought over, looking forward to it, when a sound reached him.

A door opening.

Lu Yuan paused, genuinely puzzled.

*Who opens a door at four in the morning?*

He ran through the tenants in his head. Qinghe had come home with him last night — she was almost certainly asleep. The other two households both worked day jobs. At this hour, they should be dead to the world.

*So who—?*

He frowned, listening to the silence that followed, and couldn't work it out.