I threw myself backwards as reality itself slipped sideways, the world tilting beneath my feet. Something grabbed me and pulled. With a pop, the room dissolved. Forces larger than my comprehension shifted around me.

  Then I hit the ground. I gasped, my lungs burning like I just surfaced from underwater, desperate for air. My legs took a moment to agree that they could hold me upright.

  A second ago, Wen was ready to sever my arm.

  Now the room was empty. Empty of people, and empty of sand.

  My heart beat in my ears with a warm rush. Out of years of ingrained habit, I pulled qi in along my skin, then winced when it bled from my core like an open wound.

  This wasn’t Sandgrave. There was no place in Sandgrave that the sand didn’t touch; no place where it didn’t build up steadily in dusty corners and darkened rooms. And the artifact at the center of the room — the Anti-Light Scepter, it had called itself — it was gone.

  I calmed slowly, hand resting on the handle of my sword.

  This room had never been opened. The doors were still sealed shut. But the imprint of where the Scepter had stood was visible; there was a six sided depression on the ground where it once rested; years or decades had warped and discolored the floor.

  “What is this?” I asked the empty room, staring up at a ceiling that held the exact same relief as the dungeon beneath Sandgrave. I crouched, gripping my sword, a grimace twisting my face.

  “The artifact promised to heal my core.” I said, looking in the direction of the hexagonal depression on the ground. That was ridiculous. I had tried for years to find an answer with the weight of an empire behind me. To find one in the heart of a desert was an insane proposition. But… “I’ve actually been teleported.”

  If it had actually teleported me, would it actually heal my core?

  I stared up at the unnerving relief carved into the ceiling again. I wasn’t willing to believe it so easily.

  “Wen? Fang?” I shouted. My voice echoed in the barely lit room. The only light source was the glowing reliefs on the ceiling.

  I turned back to the entrance of the chamber. I needed to head out of here — to climb to the surface. This room was a perfect mirror of the dark heart of the labyrinth beneath Sandgrave.

  “If this room is mirrored to the finest and smallest detail of the ceiling’s art, then the labyrinth above is surely mirrored as well.” I spoke aloud to an empty room. Then I sighed. For years, Wen had stood by my side. It was so rare that I was ever so alone. “I should have taken more care to memorize the labyrinth.”

  There was no sense in regretting it now. I needed to get to the surface and discover how far from home I was. I took a single step toward the door, ready to begin my ascent through another empty labyrinth.

  Something rattled against the doors. I crouched and moved forward still, freeing my sword a few inches from the sheath at my waist. I had no idea what was out here, no idea where I was, alone and scattered.

  The doors swung inward after a cacophony of pounding and scratching.

  Five misshapen beasts in a mockery of man stumbled inside, covered with expressions of panic and grunting. My face contorted in involuntary disgust.

  Any spiritbeast that bent themselves into the shape of a man were exterminated with prejudice. At the higher realms, spiritbeasts could shift their bodies and appearance, and their kin could inherent those changes. Wherever I was, it was far from civilization. Not only that, I was far from Sandgrave; that qi barren desert couldn’t support any spiritbeast’s life.

  So it fell onto me to exterminate them, if I was able. And I was. The qi in the air barely shifted at their arrival. My senses were still sharp enough to know that. At best, they would have opened meridians, enough to enhance their speed, strength, and durability. Not enough to stand against me.

  I freed my blade and stared the monsters down; it took them a moment to notice me, grunting angrily and aiming their weapons. Their skin was a dark, sickly green, and they stumbled, bleeding from fresh cuts and staggering forward. They carried a mix of rusted, jagged daggers, slings and spears.

  With one step forward, I swung, dancing through the first form of the Feng Family Sword Style. The style pulled me in an agile motion across the ground, a strong glide that ended with my blade passing through the first spiritbeast’s neck.

  Even its spine barely provided any feedback as the blade effortlessly beheaded the monster.

  I targeted the healthiest of them first; one carrying a sling. Then I landed behind them, between the monsters and the exit.

  My sword was already drawn back for a thrust. But before I could stab forward, I was interrupted. I flinched back, dodging away from the box that appeared in front of me in midair.

  It followed me. I continued pacing backward until I hit the wall. Then I read it.

  [You reached level 1! Status screen enabled.]

  “Status? Get rid of this!”

  Another box appeared, this time blocking the entire view in front of me.

  There was an explosion as a rock launched from a sling ahead of me impacted the wall at my side, shattering stone and bombarding me with rock shrapnel.

  I rolled to the left as another rock came whistling, again exploding on the stone. The box followed me. I stepped forward experimentally. It maintained the same distance from me, blocking off all of my view. I needed to make a decision — try to investigate this strange illusory formation to disable it, or fight without seeing.

  [Damaged Spirit Repair Progress: 2%]

  “End report! Dismiss! Close!”

  I had fought blindfolded before. I could do it again. Hours of training in the dark paid off; fighting against cultivators double my height and strength, listening for the whistle of wooden weapons in the air, where failing to hear them meant bruises piling up against me taught me lessons I could never forget.

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  A spear stabbed through the illusory status wall in front of me; I met it with the edge of my blade, a ringing noise echoing in the cavernous room as I leaned forward and stabbed into the monster’s neck. With a step forward, the monster was revealed, my status box behind it.

  It clutched at the blade in its neck. I ripped it out and kicked the monster away before stepping backward, avoiding a monster at the edge of my awareness and countering with a wide swing. It screamed and fell to the ground.

  With two more swings, the remaining spiritbeasts died.

  [You reached level 2! 2 attribute points available!]

  My chest calmed. I tried to reach out and touch the status sheet, but my fingers passed through it. Instead of a vocal command, I focused on it.

  In truly high caliber formations, some of the controls were embedded into qi and willpower. But without my core, I could barely thread qi, let alone will. I tried anyway to reach out and shut the projection off.

  To my surprise, it closed. With a focused burst of Willpower, I opened it again.

  [Congratulations on surviving your first combat! You have 2 attribute points available.]

  [Feng Sai][Level 2][Class Unlocked at Level 10]

  [Health: 97%][Mana: 0%]

  [Attributes]

  [Unallocated: 2]

  [Strength 30][Constitution 30]

  [Intelligence 20][Willpower 20]

  [Agility 20][Perception 20]

  [Body Constitution]

  [Storm/Lightning Major Attribute Spirit Roots]

  [Storm/Wind Dantian: Shattered][Repair Progress: 5%][Accumulate additional ??? to accelerate repair]

  [Cultivation]

  [Path of the Grim Tempest Scion]

  [0% Third Realm, Core Formation]

  [+10 STR, +10 CON, +10 INT, +10 WIL, +10 AGI, +10 PER]

  [Darkwind Sword Art X] [+10 STR, +10 CON]

  [Skills]

  [NONE]

  I took in the screen. I read it once. Then I read it again.

  “This is wrong.”

  I trained in the Feng Family Sword Arts. The Grim Tempest and their Scions were the premier clan of the continent — the ruling sect who only accepted the greatest young masters across the world. Whatever the System was, it couldn’t be trusted to be accurate.

  Unless my father — the Patriarch of the Iron Mountain — had secretly stolen and trained his sons in this technique. But that was only a small thing; the bigger thing was that the system stated my repair progress had increased all the way to 5%.

  I frowned and focused inward, channeling qi along my meridians and into my core. I was very familiar with the extent of the damage; my dantian sat like scarred over flesh, a dull ache that bled away qi. But as it leaked out the power I accumulated, I noticed there was the smallest difference; a tiny, practically nonexistence decrease in the amount of power that was bleeding away into the air.

  My heart raced.

  The system really could repair it.

  I looked back up to the attribute points. The numbers and stats seemed to measure my Strength and Speed directly. I was familiar with the concept; I had assisted my mortal scholars in demonstrating the exact lifting power of different cultivators. They made a novel system of standardizing weights and testing how much each cultivator could lift. The System attested that I gained Strength from my martial arts. I couldn’t disagree.

  But it also said that I had two unallocated points. I focused hard on the word, trying to bring up a description.

  [New Skill: Appraisal 1(Common)][+1 Perception]

  [Focus Willpower and Perception to appraise an object, revealing information from the System. A higher level reveals more information.]

  [Allocate attribute points to increase your attribute pool.]

  I gained a skill from focusing. And the skill raised my attributes farther.

  It couldn’t actually be that easy. The attributes I did have came from my cultivation — years of effort and training spent to enhance my body. I cautiously reached out and pointed toward Intelligence. It was the lowest of my attributes. With a mental switch, I pushed one of the unallocated points into it, and then focused inward.

  I could feel the change. It was tiny, nearly imperceptible. But my thoughts sped up the tiniest amount. I put the second point into Intelligence as well; the increase was there, but seemed smaller.

  Finally, I looked toward what I cared about the most in this entire stat sheet.

  [Storm/Wind Dantian: Shattered][Repairing: 5%][Accumulate additional ??? to accelerate repair]

  I [Appraised] the question marks. It was like pressing a button in my mind, not unlike shaping a technique from qi.

  [???]

  [Error: You do not have the requisite Authority to be aware of ???]

  [Accumulate additional Authority]

  [Accumulate ??? through Advancement]

  [Advancement of the Ludus Arbor: Level 2]

  [Advancement of the Heavenly Pillar: Third Realm, Shattered core]

  I read the words over and over before dismissing the window entirely and sitting in the dim light cast by the ceiling’s glowing relief.

  There was only one part of the words that mattered to me.

  I ‘leveled up’ by killing spiritbeasts. Killing spiritbeasts helped me accumulate something. And accumulating whatever that was accelerated my healing.

  I would kill as many spiritbeasts as it took to be whole again. A small slaughter like this was a tiny price to pay for salvation. And if I was lucky, I could do it on my way out of the labyrinth.

  The chamber I teleported into had remained untouched for centuries; that much was obvious. The passage outside glowed with dim, smooth light that poured across the floor, illuminating the pile of dirt and muck that had built up against the door.

  Perhaps the center chamber had been sealed by a formation that dissipated once I absorbed the Anti-Light Scepter. Damage and scratches had accumulated over what must have been years against the complex, filigreed doors.

  Water rushed through the floors of the lowest hallways, disappearing into drains at the side of the halls. I didn’t know to where from there, but I heard the noise of rushing water beneath me.

  I had emerged into a labyrinthine maze marked with the remnants of what must have been hundreds of occupants across centuries. Piles of dirt mounted so high they blocked off hallways; elsewhere, they had been carved through. Trash and detritus and bones piled up in the room’s edges, and mud and dirt sloshed around my feet.

  The hallways ran red with blood where the fresh corpses of monsters cooled. After a moment of hesitation, I focused on one of the corpses, trying to use [Appraisal] on something outside of the system.

  [Corpse, Goblin Warrior, Level 11]

  “I’ve never heard of a goblin before…” I said, kicking the corpse over. It was a cruel and twisted rendition of a human. The cultivators who governed this land had slacked in their obligations.

  Like the others, it bore the marks of combat; the half broken shaft of an arrow protruded from its stomach where it turned the sloshing water in the labrinthe red with its blood. Elsewhere, there were clear marks of cutting from swords. Not the ragged, broken kind the goblins had been using, either; sophisticated, sharp blades had lacerated this corpse, and every one like it in the hall. The five that reached the central chamber weren’t alone. And whatever had fought them was up ahead.

  But I heard nothing else in the halls; and it was impossible to be quiet here where the water rose around my feet and splashed with each step. The glowing lights embedded in the ceiling were reflected in the surface of the rushing water. It was clear that this place was not a perfect mirror of the labyrinth beneath Sandgrave.

  Doors sat broken or rusted open in sections of the hall, the insides plundered. Chunks of metal and broken tools sat around many of the open doors. Someone — maybe hundreds of someones — had looted this place. Unlike the doors of that central chamber, these smaller doors had given way to the efforts of looters — much of the work seeming to be recent.

  I gripped my sword tighter. There could be other cultivators here. And they guarded their looted tombs with jealousy.

  The halls turned suddenly, bent and spiraled and ramped upwards and away from that room at the heart of them. As I passed sealed doors with complex signs, they attempted to open, many of them broken or in pieces. They grinded with the noise of rattling and stone, crashing against rubble that held them open or fizzling and sparking.

  I moved upward, twisting through dimly lit corridors. It didnt feel like I was making any progress; it felt like the walls were closing in.

  A door glowed with swirling light as I passed it. I flinched back, freeing my blade and pointing it at the door as it erupted in the noise of grinding stone… and slid open.

  [Anti-Light Reinforced Door, Level ???][Access Granted]

  The door slid open. On the other side, there was a thin layer of oscillating, wavy black, like liquid standing straight up and rippling, interspersed with a white grid and dotted with what looked like stars. It looked like someone had carved out a piece of the night sky.

  [Level 15 Challenge Room Portal]

  [Accept?]

  [yes/yes]

  Before I could react, the wall of black slammed forward and over me.