"Hahaha! I'm rich!"
With the spatial ring now on his finger and ten million Demon Spirit Coins at his disposal, Long Chen felt like a king disguised as a beggar.
Nightfall deepened, making the moon shine ever brighter in the sky, and his figure, cloaked in his newly acquired mantle, moved with supernatural agility across the rooftops. Playing with his new abilities.
He was no longer the boy from the modern world; at that moment, he was like a shadow, just beginning to understand that world better. From beneath the hood that concealed his face, only his purple eyes could be seen, glowing with a brilliant light and a newfound confidence.
"Hm? Someone's following me?"
He stopped abruptly atop a warehouse, his cloak fluttering gently in the night breeze. He didn't need to look back to know. He could feel someone approaching fast. They seemed to be trying to hide their presence, but Long Chen could still sense them.
"So old Huyan Yanming couldn't resist his greed and curiosity. As expected," thought Long Chen, a mocking smile forming on his lips, invisible beneath the cloak. "He wants to know the source of my new treasures. But trying to follow me now is a terrible idea."
Instead of simply vanishing, he decided to leave a farewell gift. He turned slowly, the hood still hiding everything except the gleam of his eyes. He focused his soul force, channeling a large part of his cultivation into the ability he received from the Black Tiger. At that moment, the world seemed to fall silent.
A few dozen meters away, the Huyan family spy—a One-Star Gold Rank expert—froze as if he had collided with an invisible wall.
The air turned heavy, cold, and the distant gaze of the hooded figure seemed to pierce into his soul. His muscles stiffened, his heart skipped and halted, and a primal fear—the sensation of prey before an apex predator—completely paralyzed him.
"What... what was that?" The thought barely formed in his terrified mind. He couldn't move, couldn't breathe. It was as if his very soul was being crushed by that gaze.
"Tsk!" On the distant rooftop, Long Chen clicked his tongue. The fun was over. With a thought, he used half his strength and activated [Shadow Steps].
His figure dissolved into the darkness right after, leaving behind not even a ripple in the air.
The Huyan spy finally managed to breathe again, as if waking from a nightmare, cold sweat dripping down his forehead. "Impossible... That gaze... he saw me. He struck my soul from that distance?" he stammered into the emptiness.
He stood up, legs slightly trembling. "I'd better return and report this to the master. That person is not an ordinary expert. He's a monster—probably at the peak of Gold Rank, or... or even Black Gold. That's not someone our family can investigate just because we feel like it."
With that thought, the man vanished as well, heading back to report his discovery.
Meanwhile, Long Chen had already circled the city and silently entered through the second-floor window of his house. He threw the dark cloak into a corner, the sound of the fabric muffled in the silent room. He slid the silver spatial ring onto his left ring finger, feeling a wave of satisfaction. "Now I'm ready to hunt for some treasures."
He then sat on the bed in a lotus position. The anger from old Huyan's boldness still burned in his chest. Their audacity in trying to track him was an insult. But he quickly suppressed the emotion. "That's exactly why caution is necessary. Money and resources attract unwanted attention like blood attracts sharks."
He took a deep breath, clearing his mind of all anger and planning. His focus was in one place only. He entered a state of calm and once again submerged his consciousness into the Ancestral Spiritual World.
The transition was instant.
But the scene that greeted him was not the familiar green forest. The air filling his lungs wasn't fresh—it was the breath of a furnace, burning and reeking of sulfur and molten rock.
"What the hell..." Long Chen whispered, jaw dropping in shock. "Where did I end up? What are the chances, in an entire world, of appearing directly in the mouth of hell?" He looked around, the feeling of being a skilled hunter evaporating, replaced by the raw sensation of being just a slab of meat on a grill.
He was in a place that could only be described as hell. The sky above wasn't blue, but a suffocating ceiling of smoke and soot, tinged a sickly red by the light emanating from below.
The very ground was an archipelago of floating black obsidian islands, cracked and unstable, drifting over incandescent rivers of magma that bubbled and spat like an open wound in the earth.
In the distance, a colossal volcano dominated the landscape, a monstrous sentinel that every few moments expelled columns of smoke and lava, its low, constant roar the heartbeat of that agonizing world. From within the mountain of fire, guttural cries of demonic beasts echoed—a chorus of agony and rage.
He had to use his own cultivation to shield himself from the infernal heat emanating from that wretched place.
But before he could fully process the scale of his misfortune, a cold shiver—an odd sensation amid the suffocating heat—ran down his spine. A sharp wind-like sound came from behind.
His instincts, honed through countless battles, screamed. He activated [Shadow Steps] without a second of hesitation. His body became a shadow, slipping sideways at the exact instant a dark shape whizzed past the spot he had just been.
He turned, heart pounding, and faced his attacker.
It was a serpent, maybe sixty centimeters long, its scaly skin resembling cracked obsidian. Between the black plates, threads of glowing light pulsed like veins of living lava. Its triangular, flat head bore two tiny eyes, no bigger than pinheads, glowing with the intensity of burning amber.
"Heh, a lava demonic serpent? Doesn't look that scary up close," thought Long Chen, a spark of his confidence returning. He focused his will, and the [Soul-Paralyzing Eye] struck the small creature, which froze mid-movement.
"Now let me see what color your demon core is, since your skin doesn't look very appetizing." Long Chen sneered.
He stepped forward, the Glory Staff materializing in his hand, ready to crush the creature and claim his first core from this new biome.
But he never took the second step.
Sizzle!
Tssss!
A horrible sound, like flesh thrown onto an overheated griddle, echoed from his own chest. He looked down, confused. A hole the size of a man's arm had appeared in his torso, right where his heart should have been. Smoke rose from the cauterized edges of his clothes and flesh.
His final thought, tinged with disbelief and a trace of grim admiration, was: "Ah, so that's it... the damn bait."
His body collapsed onto the obsidian ground, lifeless. In front of him, beside the small serpent now recovering from paralysis, stood another—much larger.
Nearly two and a half meters long and as thick as his thigh, it raised its head triumphantly. In its mouth, crushed between venom-dripping fangs, was Long Chen's still-warm heart.
It had ripped it from his chest with such absurd speed that he hadn't even felt the pain—let alone seen it move.
Long Chen woke in his room with a choked scream, clutching the chest where a phantom pain still burned. He took a deep breath, the cold air of his room a welcome relief after the infernal heat.
"This... this is ridiculous!" he grumbled into the empty room, frustration bubbling inside him. "This game isn't on hard mode—it's on hell mode! I was dropped into a monster nest!"
He remembered his reflexes, the speed that made him nearly untouchable against the Horned Rams, the agility that placed him at Silver Rank. All useless. The larger serpent didn't just outmatch him in speed; it operated in a completely different dimension of combat.
"That trip was a complete waste," he said, punching the bed. Rage consumed him for a moment. He had been tricked, outclassed, and killed before even being able to assess the situation. It was a brutal lesson in that world's power hierarchy. His newfound strength was nothing in the face of true predators.
But as the anger subsided, another emotion took its place: a stubborn, fierce determination. He took a deep breath, calming his racing heart. He wouldn't be intimidated by a measly death. He had only entered once that day. He still had another chance.
"Alright," he told himself, a furious gleam in his eyes. "If this world wants to kill me the second I enter, let's see if it can keep doing that forever."
Closing his eyes, he focused his mind and, to his surprise and relief, felt the familiar sensation of his consciousness being pulled away once more.
Woosh!
In the next moment, he found himself in a new setting. The air was cool and thin. He stood atop a high, solitary mountain under a clear blue sky. Ahead of him, a majestic mountain range stretched as far as the eye could see, its snow-covered peaks gleaming in the sun. The world was vast, silent, and full of promise.
A slow smile spread across his lips.
"Alright, world. Round three. Show me what you've got."