"Haaah... haah... Ugh." A girl with fiery red hair in a ponytail was resting against a wall after running for her life. The drops of her sweat fell slowly over her face, landing on the floor.
"A Foundation Establishment... Zombie? Why is there a zombie there?" Xiao Shan said, confused. If one of the other two companions of hers were there, they would also be confused by her word "Zombie," because that wasn't a word that belonged here.
"Usually Jiangshis have talismans on their heads, but the Jiangshis here don't. They look like the typical zombies of my world...." Xiao Shan began to remember the design of the dark ruins she was in.
It all started with her only friend, Zou Yuan, who convinced her to go on an easy mission with one senior, a disciple of an Elder. She said it was going to be easy, just escorting her. But during the travel, they found a sudden Qi gathering. When they went there, they found a rare Jiangshi with no talisman there. He attacked them but was easily neutralized. Then, upon further investigating, they found a hidden passage leading to the dark ruins they were now in.
Inside, the architecture was strange, dissonant. The senior disciple, Yao Yu, suspected that this belonged to ancient times or was made by a weird cultivator. Everyone agreed with the latter. The colors and the atmosphere were made to feel a constant pressure, like something was going to happen, with dark, muted colors. Intricate stonework was presented to them. Something that Xiao Shan found familiar. There, they found threats. At first, they were small, like those strange Jiangshis of the early stage of Qi Refining, but they also found resources: Qi Gathering Pills, rare herbs. And those Jiangshis had strange cores that would sell well as items for investigation. But as they went deeper, the threats got higher, to the point of finding a big Jiangshi—a Foundation Establishment Jiangshi. Fortunately for the three, they managed to escape, but now they were on their own.
Xiao Shan, now rested and feeling good, finally remembered why it was so familiar. "It's like those dungeons in JRPGs." Xiao Shan frowned, her sharp eyes narrowing. "Are there others like me?... Or is this just a coincidence?"
Then, looking more at the architecture, she saw she was in a long corridor. The dark bricks were illuminated by torches, and there was a wooden door at the end of the corridor. She found it really similar to those dungeons she played in her infancy. "If this is like those, then at the end there should be a chest. A treasure." Xiao Shan's golden eyes lit up with greed. A treasure. All her suspicious thoughts stopped at the single mention of treasure.
She slowly began to walk towards the door, carefully inspecting the walls in case a zombie or a trap came from them, but nothing happened. As she opened the door slowly, she saw inside: a typical treasure room, lots of gold coins—mortal money that meant nothing to cultivators—and a path that led her to a chest.
"There it is. It's really there. A chest. A fucking chest. No way." Then, carefully and looking at her surroundings, she opened the chest with her sword.
