[Reward: Legacy Authority Three]

  [You may now freely enter and exit all rooms, including the Third Grade of the sealed chambers of the inner legacy. Complete more scenarios and be deemed worthy to have your authority elevated.]

  [Access to the Third Grade sealed chambers granted]

  [You reached level 4!]

  [Dantian Repair Progress Accelerated Using Consumed Change]

  [Storm/Wind Dantian: Shattered][Repairing: 10%]

  My heart raced. Instantly, reflexively, my qi coiled. My dantian was shattered, the top of it suffering a blown open hole that constantly bled away my cultivation base. But now the edges were rounded instead of jagged. They were smooth, no longer forcing me to recoil in spiritual pain at the touch.

  And they were growing steadily, moving upwards, sealing the wound.

  This place really could heal me.

  But there was something wrong with it. The world around me faded away, pitch black replacing it until nothing remained, but my focus was consistently inward, prodding and feeling. The dantian I had inside of the scenario felt different from my own, sharp and silver and constantly changing.

  The new growth around my spiritual core felt different from either. This place was healing me, but I was changing, too.

  But we were always changing.

  I blinked. The black shifted.

  Jian Yi’s body was on the ground in front of me, half dissolved into black motes. Blood was leaking from his mouth. His head turned to look at me. I felt a sadness inside of me.

  Jian Yi likely died centuries ago. All that would remain of him would be the memory I now held.

  [ERROR]

  A dozen system prompts appeared and disappeared without warning. Jian Yi’s mouth was moving. I spoke back, asking what he was saying, but I couldn’t hear the words. There was no sound. Jian Yi’s mouth moved faster and faster.

  He shot half way up, gasping for air like a drowning man. His face started to warp, bend and change. I stepped back in alarm. The ground felt solid beneath my feet.

  “Feng Sai.” Jian Yi turned to look at me. The voice that exited his throat was deep, old, and imperious. Jian Yi smiled, blood pouring over his teeth. “Feng Sai. Feng Sai!” He spoke the name like he was testing it, each word causing blood to fall from his open mouth. It splattered, drops of red dissolving against perfect black.

  “After all these years, a worthy heir has found and inherited my legacy!”

  I froze, staring at the talking corpse. Something had gone horribly wrong. The system was breaking apart. Jian Yi was still melting into the black around us.

  “This place… is your Legacy, Yi?”

  Jian Yi laughed.

  “No, boy. And no… I am not Jian Yi. This poor peasant has probably reincarnated hundreds of times since this memory was recorded — the scenarios are built of moments that changed a cultivator’s Fate — places in time where their impression on the world and how they Changed is strongest. When you broke the path from the cultivators memory, the Legacy here adjusted the Scenario to match. I am able to reach you because of the excess Change you created — hence why I am puppeting this rotting vessel. But we do not have much time.”

  “So it was a memory.” I said. “It all… felt so real. Pardon… what are you?”

  Jian Yi’s eyes were growing milky white, but the blood dribbling from him began to fade away.

  “I am… my name no longer matters. It has been burned from the records of your world, struck from the annals of history. Your ancestor's ancestor would not recall my name, though your very continent has been shaped by my hands. This fragment of my soul is bound to the scepter — the System you’ve inherited.”

  As the voice continued to speak through Jian Yi, more and more of its body dissolved.

  “What is the System?” I asked, more hurriedly.

  “It is magic from another world. Every great tree hosts many worlds and many powers — paths to reach immortality without cultivation. But we are special. I’m using that magic to heal your broken core — though it would have been best if a mortal discovered this legacy. Regardless… there is another who is attempting to harvest what remains of the Legacy here. Graverobbers. Insects. Parasites. You cannot allow them to take this Legacy from you. By any means. You need every scrap of power you can get. Time is already running out.”

  “Whoever killed those… goblins? In the halls?” I ventured.

  “In a sense. I am only able to see them loosely through this place’s decaying structure. Another few centuries and the Legacy here would have imploded. Not only that, but the rats who dare plunder this Legacy are not weak compared to you now. In fact, if you were to try to fight them today, you would die. And they will not allow you to leave alive. Not without restoring your core do you have any chance. I — ”

  Stolen story; please report.

  “Pardon, senior!” I said, as respectfully as I could. The change in address was one of respect that many cultivators were too arrogant to give — but this disembodied voice was clearly ancient, and I was running out of time. I could physically see the time we had to talk fading as his chest dissolved. “How do I return home?”

  Jian Yi’s corpse smiled. His eyes began to glow green.

  “Interrupting me is bold. You will return to your world in time, boy. But first, scrape every last level out of this place. While you’re at it, clean out the rats who are plundering this Legacy.”

  “Apologies, Senior. But you said this Legacy isn’t yours. Whose is it?”

  His eyes glowed brighter and brighter as the dissolving black reached his neck.

  “It belongs to… you can think of them as a sect. A sect that stretched across multiple worlds, to which I once belonged. Once, aeons ago, they lived both upon your world… and this one.” The wave of encroaching darkness consumed Jian Yi’s face, but he continued talking. “The Anti-Light Order. But they have been all but purged from the upper branches of reality.”

  “Sorry, Senior.” I said. “I do not follow. When you say… this world, and my own, you do not mean…”

  The voice laughed as Jian Yi’s head fully disappeared.

  White cracks fissured out almost instantly, like glass breaking, before a thousand pieces of black shattered fell to the floor. They boiled away, and I was out of the Scenario.

  Instead, I was in a perfectly square room carved from stone. Stones in the ceiling shone light onto the ground. I was rooted in place, processing.

  “Senior? You do not mean that this is another world entirely?” I asked. But there was no reply. The scenario was gone, and with it, so were any more answers. Instead I had new questions.

  [Quest Assigned: Reach the center of the Legacy]

  [At the center of this legacy is a treasure to aid you in your journey. Reach it before the parasites infesting this tomb claw their way through the walls and rip it from you.]

  [Reward: Teleportation Token to return to the Bloodstone Continent. Completion of spiritual repair. Divine Grade Cultivation Technique.]

  [On failure you will be unable to leave this realm until you progress far enough to travel the Deep Black Sea on your own.]

  Poppy, Thane and Anna dropped a bloodied leather sack at the desk of a man who looked like he was looking straight through them.

  “Kill count.”

  “Fourteen for the night. All goblins.” Poppy said.

  With a grimace, the man nodded to the bag and spoke.

  “Count them out.”

  He didn’t perform the dirty work of actually checking each of the ears. He made Thane do that instead, counting them before adding them to a pile of extremely foul smelling trash. With a nod of satisfaction, the manager of the ledger pushed forward three wooden chips; the three of them exchanged them for food at a central fire of the camp.

  Food that wasn’t made of goblin meat; it might have still been made of monster, yes, but it was far more appetizing monsters than the bipedal kind. The three of them huddled together in a corner of the ramshackle camp. The mess had accumulated in the weeks they were spending looting the labyrinth. What was more was the number of tents now empty.

  “Three whole teams missing.” Thane quietly stated.

  “Think they tried the challenge rooms?” Poppy asked.

  “Or they just ran away.” Anna said. “Still an option.”

  “We need a better plan to get rid of these rings.” Poppy said.

  “Solder will die eventually. We shouldn’t be here with him when it happens.”

  As if summoned by the mention of his name, there was a shouting for attention. Almost a hundred people remained in this camp, but Solder was among the most imposing. He strode through the center of the dimly lit area, his armor a mix of metal and fur. He towered a head taller than everyone around him.

  “Oh great. What is this about?” Thane whispered.

  One of Solder’s lieutenants prowled by their camp, leering, before stepping by and slapping someone who was still talking on the back of the head.

  “We’ve been bleeding this hole in the earth dry for almost three weeks now.” Solder said. His voice boomed across the tiny cave, amplified by his attributes. Poppy knew that Solder was approaching the threshold of the first tier — level 49.

  “But we’ve failed to reach into the place’s heart.” Solder reahed out with a fist and made a grabbing motion in the air. On cue, a lieutenant behind him pulled up and unfurled a map. It showed a crude rendition of the dungeon and the camps location. He spun it around, pointing it at the members of Solder’s inner circle at the gathering. It showed clearly that the rooms they had cleared all surrounded the actual center of the labyrinth. None of them penetrated the inner rooms.

  “I’m sure you’re wondering why we haven’t punched a hole straight through the walls. And the answer is we have. But in doing so, we activated the labyrinths defenses. In a few days, we intend to finish what we started, and loot the labyrinth’s heart. Then, and only then, we can return to Spearpoint victorious. Every survivor will receive their cut.”

  A half hearted cheer answered Solder’s proclamation. He frowned.

  “Rest and recover. We are going to be distributing any spare equipment. From now until our return to Spearpoint, I’m ending the food quota! Eat your fill!\ Soon we will empty this Labyrinth of every last treasure!”

  This time, the cheer that answered was less forced.

  The dissolution of the scenario had left me standing in a plain stone room. When I walked forward, the doors to the inside of the labyrinth once again parted autonomously, clearing way for me. But this time, I was not in the decaying and trash filled halls that had been occupied by beasts and looted by men.

  The System had mentioned an inner legacy — something not uncommon in cultivation legacies, either; a place where those deemed more worthy than the outer disciples could enter.

  “The Scenario likely tested not just my combat ability, but my character.” I said outloud, turning to my left where Feng Wen was ever present. He wasn’t with me, though, so I was talking to myself in an empty hall. I sighed. I was on my own with nothing but the ghost of an ancient and powerful mad man to guide me.

  “I need to assess the threat of the graverobbers and see how much time I have left.”

  It shouldn’t have been short. If the Legacy tested both character and power, then they likely couldn’t force their way through the challenges. I frowned. Unless they were stupid enough to dig through the walls of a strange magical labyrinth.

  After a moment, I opened the System, putting both unallocated attribute points into Willpower.

  Then I took another look around at the perfectly clean and well lit hallway I was in. This place wasn’t right, spatially speaking. There shouldn’t be an entire deeper section of the labyrinth in this place, based on the halls I crossed to get here. I wasn’t familiar with whatever formations created this place, but I could tell that digging through the walls would be a terrible idea.

  The doors in this hallway all opened for me one at at time, revealing a pool of warping darkness that promised me power. There was only one small issue with most of them. [Appraisal] revealed each of their levels in order.

  [Level 45 Challenge Room Portal]

  [Level 65 Challenge Room Portal]

  [Level 20 Challenge Room Portal(Party of Four Recommended)]

  Almost all of the challenge rooms promised a difficulty far beyond what felt safe.

  As I neared the end of the hallway, the trials lowered in level. I went to the very last door, stopping in front of it and [Appraising] it.

  [Level 5 Challenge Room Portal]

  [Accept?]

  [yes/no]

  I accepted.

  A wave of black reached out, rolling over me, and the world changed.