The First Level of the World Tower

The entry process for the World Tower is simple.

Aside from the first time, when you must provide your name, subsequent entries only require a quick scan.

Wang Wen, who has garnered attention from many sides, is currently at the entrance of the World Tower, familiarly "communicating" with a miniature scanning drone hovering in mid-air.

Mechanical voice: [Please provide your name for registration upon your first entry.]

Wang Wen: "Wang Wen."

[Name already taken, please provide another.]

Wang Wen: "???"

"Are you kidding me? It's Wang Wen as in 'jade-like stone,' not Wang Min as in 'common people'!"

[Name already taken, please provide another.]

Wang Wen thought helplessly for a moment and reported a single letter: "A."

[Name already taken, please provide another.]

Wang Wen: "BCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ."

[Name already taken, please provide another.]

"..."

Is this thing broken? The thought flashed through Wang Wen's mind, and he reported with a deadpan expression: "Jia, Yi, Bing, Ding, Wu, Ji, Geng, Xin, Ren, Gui, Zi, Chou, Yin, Mao, Chen, Si, Wu, Wei, Shen, You, Xu, Hai."

Mechanical voice: [Registration successful.]

A beam of light fell from the bottom of the drone, enveloping his entire body for a fleeting moment before the mechanical voice sounded again: [Personal belongings have been stored. If you have teammates, please apply together; if not, please enter the tower. Mr. Jia, I wish you safety.]

Wang Wen's eyelid twitched as he lifted his leg and stepped into the light curtain at the entrance of the World Tower.

The scenery before his eyes shifted.

Once the image stabilized, he saw himself standing in a square stone room. It wasn't very large, maybe eighty or a hundred square meters, but the ceiling was quite high, visually estimated at around ten meters.

In the center of the stone room stood a burly mechanical monster, resembling a bull walking on its hands. The moment it saw someone, it charged over with its hips raised in a fury.

Seeing the giant hammer gripped in the bull's hooves, Wang Wen understood the situation immediately.

Just in case, he ran to the side first.

As expected, the giant hammer landed exactly where he had been standing a second ago.

The first floor of the World Tower—no surprises, just a simple delayed attack.

Even the textbooks provide a detailed introduction to it.

The monster attacks continuously without pause, but every strike only lands on the position where the climber was one second prior.

As long as you don't stand still, there is basically no danger.

The main difficulty of this mode is its lack of friendliness toward newcomers.

Inexperienced newcomers who run around constantly to avoid attacks not only exhaust their stamina quickly but also find it hard to calm down and search for the entrance to the next floor.

When encountering a level like this, bringing more people to lure the monster or explore through division of labor is useless.

Wang Wen knew very well that for every person present, there would be an equal number of hammers.

To clear this level, the primary requirement is to maintain a steady mindset and not panic.

The mechanical rhythm is one strike per second; by walking just a little faster, one can easily avoid the lethal range of the giant hammer.

Show-offs can even dodge at the very moment the hammer falls—the giant hammer's target is always where two-thirds of the body was, and those who like to show off always have ways to ensure two-thirds of their body is exactly where it needs to be.

Wang Wen was already past the age of wanting to show off.

Besides, his mood upon entering the tower this time wasn't exactly light.

Therefore, he chose to walk, avoiding the giant hammer in the most stamina-efficient way while observing the stone walls.

The methods for clearing the basic skill floors are essentially mechanisms.

Since the main difficulty has already been revealed as a delayed attack, and this is only the first floor, the mechanism to "open the door" shouldn't be too complex.

Wang Wen's main purpose for entering the tower this time was to practice and warm up, to adapt to a body that still felt somewhat unfamiliar compared to his previous life.

If not for the people and matters outside the tower that still weighed on his heart, he could have used his experience to stay inside the World Tower indefinitely without ever leaving.

He knew clearly which floor had food, which floor allowed for rest, and even which floor had facilities to bathe and change clothes.

His preliminary goal for this week was to reach around the one-hundredth floor.

As for whether to wait for the tower floors to refresh or leave the tower to visit The Academy, he would decide when the time came.

For a floor like the first one, which he had climbed nearly a thousand times in his past life, he wouldn't dare boast about clearing it with his eyes closed, but he certainly couldn't afford to waste too much time.

He decided to play it safe.

Resolve it within a minute!

Having made up his mind, Wang Wen walked briskly along the wall.

With the rhythmic, heavy thuds of the giant hammer providing a lively accompaniment behind him, he quickly circled the room while hugging the wall.

Standing once again at the spot where he had first entered the stone chamber, his eyelids twitched.

No mechanism!

Unwilling to give up, he walked another lap, this time inspecting every inch of the floorboards with meticulous care.

Still, there were no signs of any mechanism.

Everything consisted of perfectly uniform stone blocks.

He had tested all six major categories—color variation, size, thickness, texture, material quality, and hollow sounds—and found no special sections.

Why?

It was only the first floor; how complex could it possibly be?

Wang Wen's brain raced at high speed, combing through his past memories bit by bit.

Among the vast amount of data, he found an extremely rare possibility.

That one-in-a-million chance made his movements pause for a split second.

"No way? Could it be... Oh no!"

A climber might get distracted, but the giant hammer would never falter, slamming down toward Wang Wen's head without a hint of mercy.

"BOOM!!"

The loud impact echoed repeatedly throughout the stone chamber, shaking loose grit from the wall crevices until it trickled down.

Wang Wen carefully shifted his head away.

He watched as eerie cracks began to appear from the tip of the giant hammer.

They spread with a sizzling sound across the monster's entire body.

Before long, the entire mechanical monster, along with the bull and the hammer, collapsed into a pile of debris.

He sat down on the floor, leaning against the wall, his heart filled with a complex mix of emotions.

"This situation again."

"A floor that is clearly meant for technique, yet it forced me to use brute force."

"Wang Wen, have you truly grown old?"

Amidst the splitting pain in his brain, Wang Wen silently introspected.

Years of struggling between life and death had cultivated good habits.

The more dangerous the situation, the calmer one must be; the more critical the moment, the more composed one must remain.

He realized that his mindset had been flawed from the moment he entered the World Tower.

In his past life, with an achievement of reaching the 929th floor of the World Tower, it was no exaggeration to call him the world's number one in a certain sense.

In terms of the ability to push through the World Tower alone, he was undoubtedly the strongest climber in the world.

But in this life, he was not yet that person.

His abilities in all aspects could not keep up with his memories.

Even as a student, he was far below the average standard at The Academy.

Wang Wen.

Even though he had prepared himself as much as possible to start over as a newcomer...

He had still uncontrollably made mistakes after entering the tower.

His eyes were higher than his hands, and he was careless and underestimated the enemy.

On top of that, the events that occurred at The Academy had affected his mood to some extent.

It had made him impatient.

Since its inception, the World Tower had swallowed countless lives.

In such a man-eating purgatory, no floor was something to be underestimated.

Clear it in a minute?

Thinking of this notion, he couldn't help but slap himself, and his nose, which had barely shown signs of stopping, began to gush blood again.

How ignorant must one be to show off in a place of life and death?

Even worse, besides underestimating the enemy, there was an even more serious mistake.

Distraction!

He could hardly believe it; after all these years, such a rookie mistake had actually happened to him!

The lesson of dying once clearly hadn't been profound enough.

Carelessness? Underestimating the enemy? A lapse in focus?

A series of questions struck his blood-covered face like a barrage of resounding slaps.

Wang Wen tilted his head back.

He opened his mouth and took a deep breath.

He filled his entire chest cavity and held it, waiting until his heart rate accelerated and his lungs ached before finally exhaling in a sharp rush.

With that breath, it felt as though he had expelled the clutter in his mind along with the metallic tang of blood in his throat.

As his breathing steadied, his expression and spirit finally returned to a state of calm.

He knew this moment of introspection had come at the perfect time.

By correcting his mindset right at the start of the climb, he had avoided the potential for even greater blunders that might have stemmed from such negligence.

Wang Wen wiped his nose, opened his hand to look at the blood covering it, and gave a self-deprecating laugh. "If I keep bleeding like this, I might just be the first person in the World Tower to bleed to death from a nosebleed."