5: Chapter 5 Points All-in

The old wooden door closed.

Su Chen's back hit the door panel, and he slid down halfway, eventually ending up in a seated position on the floor.

He took off the mask, revealing the face underneath.

Twenty-five years old, dark circles under his eyes, and stubble on his chin that he hadn't had time to shave.

His lips were dry and cracked, a sign that he hadn't drunk enough water last night.

He rested the mask on his knees, the verdigris-covered half-face pointing upward.

The object that had just carried all the dignity of a "millennial Flame Keeper" now looked like a thirty-yuan cosplay prop.

Su Chen knocked the back of his head against the door panel and stared blankly at the rafters.

Just now, at the moment when Liu Yuyan had tried to force money on him for the second time,

One billion, plus ten percent of the shares.

He had almost cracked.

Fortunately, he had held back.

The mask on his face had shielded that 0.3 seconds of wavering for him.

"My acting still needs work."

Su Chen rubbed his face and muttered to himself,

"My palms were sweating when I was projecting that sense of oppression. Luckily, she kept looking at my eyes and didn't notice my hands."

That sigh before closing the door had been a decent addition, though.

It hadn't been in the plan; it was an impromptu decision when he saw her still standing at the door without leaving.

It was a breathing technique he'd practiced for two days to master, mimicking an old man's rhythm of breathing, with his voice dropped to the lowest register.

Whether she heard it or not was up to luck; if she heard it, it was a bonus, and if not, he didn't lose anything.

He stood up and brushed the dust off his backside.

The scene in the main room looked even more desolate in the daylight.

A withered bird's nest hung from the rafters, with two tiny feathers still inside.

Five or six of the bluestone bricks on the floor were shattered, sunken into the soil beneath.

In the corner piled a grand armchair of unknown age, its back covered in a layer of dust thick enough to write on with a finger.

The air smelled like a mix of moldy old books and rotting wood.

Su Chen walked a full circle around the room.

An online novelist who had failed three books looked at this pile of ruins, his brain automatically beginning to model it.

Two million words, over a hundred dungeons; the secret realms, ancient tombs, ruins, and underground palaces he had designed could circle the earth twice if pieced together.

Not a single reader had ever seen them, because the combined subscription count of those three books wasn't even as high as the number of spiders in this main room.

But the designs themselves were good.

Su Chen squatted down and drew a circle in the dust on the floor with his finger.

Then he drew a tree in the center of the circle.

"System."

"Present."

"I want to go all-in."

His voice echoed twice in the empty main room.

"Seven hundred points, invest it all."

The system paused for a beat.

"The scale of physical entities that can be manifested with seven hundred points is limited. It is recommended that the host plan reasonably and reserve some sur—"

"I know."

Su Chen interrupted it,

"I don't need an entire base."

He quickly drew and wrote in the dust with his finger, line after line, like he was rushing to finish an outline three hours before a submission deadline.

"For a secret organization passed down for thousands of years, the base cannot be an office building. It must be in a hidden space. From the outside, it looks like an ordinary old house, but push open a certain door, walk down a certain path, and you enter another world."

He paused.

"In games, it's called a dungeon entrance. In web novels, it's called a blessed paradise. The essence is the same—the shabbier the entrance, the more awesome the interior, maximizing the contrast."

This was the most solid creative rule he had summarized from writing three books: contrast equals satisfaction.

"So I only need three things."

Su Chen held up three fingers.

"First, behind the door in the innermost room, open up an independent dimensional space entrance. This is the core; spend whatever it takes."

"Second, inside the space, only create two physical scenes—the entrance stone corridor and the central altar plaza. Fill the rest with virtual imaging. It will look stunning from afar, and you can touch the texture up close, but essentially, it's just background mapping. It won't consume points."

"Third, infuse the stone corridor murals and the altar's ancient tree with a trace of extraordinary aura. It doesn't need to have any actual function, as long as whoever enters can feel that this place is not of the mortal world. Visuals shatter perception, physical sensation shatters reason; use both tactics."

The system calculated for three seconds.

"Plan feasible. The quote is as follows—"

"Dimensional space entrance creation: 300 points."

"Core area physical manifestation: 250 points."

"Extraordinary aura infusion: 100 points."

"Virtual imaging fill: 50 points."

"Total: 700 points."

"Balance after execution: 0."

Su Chen stared at that zero.

Zero.

If Liu Yuyan didn't come—

No.

She would come.

He had seen her fingers when she received the bronze piece at the hospital room door.

He had seen the back of her neck when she bowed ninety degrees in the living room.

He had seen her eyes when she heard that line, "Can you bear it?" at the courtyard gate.

There was a fire burning in those eyes.

No smaller than his own.

"Confirm."

The bluestone bricks beneath his feet began to tremble.

It wasn't the shaking of an earthquake, but a rhythmic pulse of life surging up from deep within the earth,

as if the skeleton of the entire old house was being reconnected under the infusion of some power.

The entire space began to ripple.

Only light.

Pale golden light seeped out, shining on Su Chen's face.

Warm, soft, like the color that leaks from the bottom of the clouds in the last minute of an August twilight, just before the sun dips below the horizon.

Su Chen walked over.

Upon taking the first step into the space, his feet were nailed to the stone bricks.

Above his head was a stagnant, pale golden firmament.

There was no sun, no moon; light spilled down evenly from every direction, as if the sky itself were glowing.

Beneath his feet were dark gray ancient stone bricks.

Rough, flat, the texture of the stone surface looked as if it had been worn down by centuries of footsteps.

Golden threads flowed in the gaps, extremely slow, like a pulse.

In front was a straight stone corridor.

Five meters wide, over twenty meters long, the stone walls on both sides were polished to near smoothness, and at the corners were runes he didn't recognize.

Of course he didn't recognize them; they were system-generated, and he hadn't defined their specific meanings himself.

Su Chen took his first step.

His footsteps landed on the stone bricks, the echoes spreading layer upon layer through the corridor and being collected back by the stone walls, forming a deep resonance.

Like the tolling of a bell, like the beat of a drum, like the prelude to some ritual.

This wasn't an effect he had acted out.

It was the rhythm of the space itself.

Su Chen walked to the middle of the stone corridor and stopped in front of the mural on the left.

The image was automatically generated by the system based on the "History of Kindling" he had written in his notebook.

He had only written one sentence— "The Paladin wields a light blade to slay demons in the wilderness,"

and the system had turned this sentence into a giant relief mural that covered the entire stone wall.

A wilderness shrouded in night.

In the distance were collapsing mountain ridges and churning black clouds.

In the center of the image, a knight clad in silver-white holy armor held a light blade high.

Holy light burst from the blade, the arc it struck illuminating half the sky.

The cross pattern on the chest of the armor looked as if it were glowing on its own.

And in front of the knight was a group of eerie creatures with blurry outlines and twisted forms,

frozen as part of the relief in the moment they were torn apart by the holy light, baring fangs and brandishing claws, forever fixed in the last second before their annihilation.

Su Chen reached out, his fingertips touching the surface of the mural.

Rough stone texture.

And a hint of warmth.

Extremely faint, like the residual warmth remaining in your palm after holding a hand warmer all day in winter.

Extraordinary aura.

He had written millions of words of battle scenes.

He had constructed countless images in his mind—meteors falling, mountains and rivers shattering, ten thousand swords launching simultaneously, light versus dark duels.

But all of them combined were not as good as this real heat at his fingertips right now.

The history he had fabricated had become something he could touch.

Su Chen withdrew his hand and continued walking forward.

With the last step through the stone corridor, his field of vision suddenly tore open.

A circular altar plaza.

Three layers of ancient stone steps rose up, supporting the main altar in the center.

In the very center of the altar stood an ancient tree.

No leaves.

The branches were gnarled and twisted, and the dark gray bark was covered in dense patterns, like tree rings turned inside out.

In every pattern, a faint golden light flowed, very slowly, in sync with the golden light in the gaps of the stone bricks,

as if this tree were connected to the earth beneath its feet, sharing the same heartbeat.

It was breathing.

Not a metaphor; he could actually see the rise and fall of the bark.

Around the altar, in the distance, outlines of rows of grand stone buildings emerged,

the circular stands of a training ground, the layered eaves of a library, the heavy columns of an armory,

looming in the pale golden sky light, carrying a sense of real distance as if "you could walk over and push the door open."

Those were all virtual imaging. Background mapping from a 3D game. The kind that would clip through models if you got too close.

But standing here, wrapped in that layer of golden light, breathing in the calm scent of a mixture of metal and ancient wood, with only the sound of his own heartbeat and the ancient tree's "breathing" in his ears—

He was silent for five seconds.

"...Awesome."

Heartfelt.

Even he, the one who wrote the script, almost believed it,

that this place had really been buried for thousands of years and was only reopened today.

That was enough.

When Liu Yuyan stepped in, she wouldn't analyze what was physical and what was mapping.

She would only be struck by this whole combo of sensory assaults, piercing her last line of rational defense, and then a seed would be planted in her heart:

Kindling is real.

Su Chen walked back to the entrance of the stone corridor and pressed his palm against the wall.

The last bit of the system's residual energy seeped from his fingertips into the stone wall, carving a line of ancient seal script—

"Civilization does not extinguish; Kindling burns forever."

Eight characters.

The slogan he had made up, the symbol of faith he had designed.

Now it was carved into stone, possessing the same weight as oracle bone script.

Su Chen retreated to the courtyard side.

The main room was still the same main room, the dust was still the same dust, and the bird's nest was still hanging from the rafters.

Only the wooden door in the innermost room was half-ajar, and a line of pale golden light shone through the crack, as thin as a hair.

He found an old rattan chair in the corner that hadn't collapsed yet, patted off the dust, and sat down.

He took out his notebook and turned to the page "Act 2: Entering the World."

He wrote a line of small text at the bottom:

"The stage is set. Waiting for you to walk into the trap."

The system panel popped up in the corner of his vision, with two lines of data hanging quietly.

Points balance: 0.

Authenticity: 15.

Su Chen closed the notebook, placed the mask on his knees, and leaned the back of his head against the rattan chair.

Would Liu Yuyan come?

She would come.

Su Chen closed his eyes.

The rattan chair let out a "creak" of a groan under his weight.

The main room returned to silence.