Chapter 1: Deep Mountain Ancient Temple

"Finally, all endings have been cleared."

As the boss fell, Xu Yuan leaned slowly against the back of his gaming chair, his eyes bloodshot and pulsing with exhaustion. On the screen before him, the victory cutscene began to roll, displaying the list of creators.

After more than a month of sleepless nights, *Cangyuan*—a game hailed as possessing the most intricate narrative among domestic titles—had finally been fully traversed, every world line and every ending completed across the entire global storyline.

As a 2.5D pixel-style game, *Cangyuan* carried an unusually dense narrative.

Over a thousand choices, twenty-five world lines, and dozens of dramatically different endings meant that each playthrough offered a completely new story experience.

"Given today's technology, it's probably only a 2.5D pixel game that could hold such a vast narrative scale," Xu thought, carefully reviewing every scene. Only then did he feel satisfied, turning off the power. With a lingering drowsiness, he made his way to the bathroom, rinsed his face, climbed into bed, and instinctively recalled the game's story:

"Finally, it's over. But that minister... such a pity. In all the endings where he becomes the final boss, every one is destroyed by a scriptwriter's cruel plot."

"And after playing a few times to master the mechanics, the difficulty just becomes trivial."

"Haah..."

"So tired... I'll stop thinking about it, tomorrow I still have to go help out at the old man's company, having slacked off for over a month, I'll probably be scolded to death by him tomorrow."

Muttering softly under his breath, drowsiness caused Xu Yuan to sink into a deep sleep........

...

...

...

"Boom—"

Amidst the flashes of lightning and rumbles of thunder, a torrential downpour came crashing down.

Accompanied by the intermittent crackling of flames consuming firewood, Xu Yuan, amidst a sea of chaos, opened his eyes in slight pain.

"Is it raining.. tsk, my head hurts so bad.... I think there's still some Fenbid at home."

The sensation of a splitting headache made Xu Yuan subconsciously want to get up in his daze to look for a painkiller in the medicine box, but when his pupils finally focused, the dim environment before his eyes caused him to freeze in spite of himself.

Where is this?

Where is my home?

The familiar ceiling is gone. In Xue Yuan’s eyes, a strange, abandoned Buddhist temple appears.

Rotten beams and splintered pillars.

A stone Buddha seated on a lotus pedestal, one arm severed.

The flickering fire, swaying with the cold wind.

And,

The woman in black, draped in thin silk, sitting quietly by the fire.

The sound of drizzling rain comes from outside the temple.

Everything is silent—too silent, too eerie.

Silence for two seconds, close the eyes, open them again.

No change.

"......"

Xu Yuan tried to comprehend what had happened to himself.

Yet after hours of thought, he remained utterly lost.

The only thing he could be certain of was that he had, somehow, crossed over.

But the headache earlier wasn't caused by residual symptoms of memory fusion—it was instead a physical lump, swollen high on the back of his skull.

A memoryless transition left Xu Yuan utterly unfamiliar with everything around him. His gaze swept the crumbling temple, taking in every broken beam and cracked tile.

Rain fell in torrents down the old roof tiles, cascading like a curtain of beads, splashing ripples in the puddles outside. Beyond the glow of the bonfire, the path beyond the temple was plunged into endless darkness.

Like most people, Xu Yuan had once dreamed of such a journey—yet that too had been nothing more than a fond illusion, a fondness for dragons.

He had always maintained a clear self-awareness: without any external advantages, in certain literary tales, he might not survive past the third chapter.

And this present eerie atmosphere clearly resembled one of those stories where he would perish before reaching the third chapter.

The winter rain was bitterly cold, waves of chills constantly rising within him.

By the flickering light of the campfire, Xu Yuan's gaze wandered repeatedly across the room.

The temple hall was vast, but when the bustling devotion had faded, the once-majestic Buddha now stood in the dim hall, appearing strangely ominous.

Surveying the space, his eyes finally settled upon the only living being in the temple besides himself.

A woman in black robes sat silently, eyes closed, by the fire. A sword lay gently beside her.

The firelight glistened upon her snow-white skin, the black veil covering her face, her long, cascading black hair flowing freely behind her, swaying gently with the cold wind—her black robe subtly outlining the graceful contours of her form.

Rainy night, a ruined temple in the deep mountains, a beautiful woman—when these elements were brought together, it was impossible for Xu Yuan not to conjure strange thoughts.

In the stillness, Xu Yuan slowly rose from the ground.

Over the years helping run the family business, the old man had taken him to meet countless people and witnessed countless things—both clean and corrupt.

Though the surroundings felt strangely eerie, once he accepted the reality, Xu Yuan knew clearly that he had to do something now.

His body seemed injured, and his clothes thin and inadequate. At the very least, he needed to sit by that pile of embers, for the cold damp of winter rain was already beginning to freeze him to the bone.

Xu Yuan stared at the woman before him, taking slow, deliberate steps forward.

The cloaked woman appeared not to hear his footsteps, still silently seated by the fire, eyes closed in stillness.

The thin veil covering her face could not conceal her aura—quiet, serene, and breathtakingly beautiful.

As soon as he stepped close, his pupils suddenly contracted.

On the ground beside the woman, a massive arm lay starkly visible.

His steps halted, his heartbeat surged sharply—then abruptly eased.

Though the arm was vividly lifelike, it was not human. It had the texture of stone.

He glanced back at the massive, one-armed Buddha statue he had just noticed.

It must have been the one that broke off, he reasoned.

Seating himself upon the stone arm as though it were a bench, Xu Yuan stared at the woman’s flawless profile, veiled in thin gauze.

Two seconds of silence drifted through the bleak, chilly wind,

Before the woman in black suddenly, slowly opened her ink-dark, frigid eyes, turning her gaze toward him.

All at once,

Rumble—

A flash of lightning and a crack of thunder tore through the pitch-black night sky, illuminating the ruined temple inside and out.

The light vanished in a fleeting instant, but as he held the woman’s gaze, Xu Yuan’s peripheral vision caught sight of something just outside the temple doors.

Corpses...

Through the fleeting flash of lightning during the thunderstorm, the water puddle on the empty ground outside the temple's main gate revealed scattered, broken corpses, their thick blood spreading and seeping into the rainwater like a slow, creeping tide...

Xu Yuan's still half-dreaming mind snapped into clarity, his heartbeat suddenly accelerating uncontrollably, his hand hidden in his sleeve trembling without his will.

His family wasn't involved in business in the Golden Triangle—this image of corpses scattered across the ground was beyond what he could bear.

With a sharp bite to the tip of his tongue, Xu Yuan forced himself to suppress the rising panic, attempting to reason through the situation with logic.

The sharp pain in his mouth brought him a moment of calm, and he forced himself to breathe steadily, fixing his gaze on the dark-clad woman before him.

The lightning faded, and the temple's outer gate was once again swallowed by utter blackness, dark and silent.

Yet the scene from moments before had been etched into Xu Yuan's mind with unyielding clarity.

Every corpse clutching weapons wore the same uniformed attire; their deaths varied, but all of them had their feet pointed toward the ancient temple at the moment of death.

They came from the same place. They had a shared, unknown purpose—to breach this ancient temple.

A fleeting glimpse had sparked a thousand thoughts in Xu Yuan's mind. He looked at the woman beside him, his body stiff with sudden realization.

He realized he had somehow sat beside an extraordinary woman.

Inside the temple, there were only he and her—his frail body, visible to the naked eye, betraying his weakness; the corpses attempting to breach the threshold could only be the work of this woman.

Outside, the sky was dark with thunderous roars, and the wind, relentless, seeped through the broken temple doors. The black-robed woman sat beside the nobleman in silk and splendor, around a flickering fire. Beyond the door, a scene of blood-stained chaos lay hidden in shadow.

In the silence,

"You... blocked me."

Her voice was light as ice, calm and detached.

"..."

At these words, Xu Yuan froze.

Had he blocked her?

Then, immediately, Xu Yuan noticed that the black-robed woman's gaze was not upon him—but upon the space behind him.

Behind him?

A flicker of doubt stirred within his mind.

Earlier, he had observed that though the temple was vast, from this angle, beyond the towering statue with its missing arm, there was nothing else.

That doubt caused Xu Yuan to instinctively turn his head back.

And with that single glance, a cold dread shot up from his tailbone to his forehead.

He saw a pair of legs.

Legs at the same height as when he had stood up.

His gaze slowly rose upward—

The massive stone Buddha, unseen until now, had silently moved from the lotus platform to stand behind him.

Its cracked, unnatural face was hidden in the shadow of the roof, as if smiling, gazing down upon him and the woman beside him with contempt.

"........"

A moment of neural failure—

The science he had always trusted could not account for what lay before him. Fear of the unknown erupted within Xu Yuan’s chest like a detonation, unstoppable and overwhelming.

His breath surged uncontrollably, his body stiffening as if plunged into an ice pit. A towering, grotesque Buddha, stretching nearly eight meters tall, loomed inches away.

For several seconds, he remained frozen—then, with great effort, he forced his rigid limbs to shift sideways.

He… he had to get out of the way.

His heart pounded violently, as though it would burst through his ribs. This surreal scene had shattered beyond his comprehension or endurance.

And then, in the corner of his vision, Xu Yuan caught sight of the black-robed woman.

As the colossal Buddha approached, the woman in the black robe remained seated, unmoving. She did not rise, did not reach for the sword at her side. Her face, veiled in sheer fabric, remained untouched by emotion—cold, still, unflinching, simply gazing at the statue.

Her calm, serene presence slowly instilled in Xu Yuan a sense of peace.

Crouching into the corner of the temple to calm his trembling fear, he peered cautiously at the single buddha and the lone woman at the center of the hall.

Well... well, she looked strong.

Xu Yuan recalled the bodies scattered outside the temple.

What had once frightened him now became a steadying anchor in his mind.

He could not imagine standing alone in this deep mountain temple, facing that eerie "living buddha" by himself.

For a moment, the woman and the buddha remained still—then a creeping chill of deadly stillness began to spread. Seizing the opportunity, Xu Yuan retreated with care to the far corner of the ruined temple.

Suddenly—

The strange "living buddha" moved.

Its immense form did not slow it at all. The massive palm descended with a speed nearly invisible to the eye.

"Boom—"

The temple and the ground both trembled violently. The massive palm struck the floor, extinguishing the lone source of light—the flickering fire inside.

Xu Yuan's vision plunged into absolute darkness.

Without light, sound became the sole protagonist of the void—waves of thunderous vibrations and roars surged and receded, one after another.

Hearing the distant commotion, Xu Yuan, crouched in the corner, felt his heart race. His clenched fist, fingers embedded into his palm, remained unaware.

Then—

"Whoosh—"

A sharp, resonant blade cry echoed throughout the temple and beyond.

A streak of blue light flashed through the darkness—brief, brilliant, and gone.

Silence fell instantly.

"Boom—"

A thunderclap split the sky, a flash of lightning illuminating every corner of the temple at that instant.

Xu Yuan, at last, caught sight of the scene beyond.

The woman’s black robes remained untouched by dust, her face calm as she sheathed her sword. Yet the colossal "living Buddha"’s head before her had vanished without a trace.

Just as Xu Yuan was caught in stunned silence—

"Boom—"

A shadow crashed down before him, sending up a storm of dust that made Xu Yuan furrow his brow and take a step back.

It was the great head of the "living Buddha."

And upon that head, two gentle eyes gleamed with a sinister, watchful light, fixed upon him.

Instinctively, Xu Yuan turned toward the black-robed woman beside him, seeking shelter—this thing was too unnatural, too dangerous.

After the thunder, all returned to darkness.

Xu Yuan silently weighed his words in his mind, stepping in the direction the woman had just gone, hoping to question her.

But at that moment,

a weak murmur drifted from the darkness ahead:

"Third Young Master...."

"Run."