In the Bag

That screenshot.

Like a fuse, it instantly ignited the entire thread. Within just a few minutes, the obscure post with its bland title, previously ignored by everyone, saw its reply count surge wildly from a few dozen... to over ten thousand.

The post was instantly bumped to the front page, where even more people saw it.

And everyone who saw it was completely dumbfounded.

A player-made dungeon.

S-rank.

The impact of those two words together was no less shocking than running into the chef of a state banquet at a roadside stall.

Because in everyone's general understanding, player-made dungeons were basically synonymous with garbage.

There was a widely circulated saying on the forum—out of ten player-made dungeons, nine were bottomless pits, and the last one was still digging.

As for why their reputation was so terrible.

The reason was simple: there was no barrier to becoming a dungeon builder... but the invisible barrier was incredibly high.

The vast majority of ordinary people simply lacked the ability to design a truly deep dungeon.

Back when the world had just become gamified, the player-made dungeons created by dungeon builders were mostly so atrocious they were unbearable to look at, all so their creators could clear them themselves...

As the hotheaded old guys on the forum put it—being bad is one thing, but you're insulting my intelligence. Insulting my intelligence is one thing, but your rewards are a pile of shit too. Your mom's dead!

But in a way, that was proof of how deeply they cared.

Because in the beginning, everyone had genuinely held hopes for player-made dungeons! System dungeons had countless advantages, but the fact that most high-difficulty dungeons with good rewards required players to go offline... was something many people couldn't accept.

Wherever there were people, there was conflict.

It was only because the Coordination Bureau had suppressed plenty of monsters and demons over the past two years. Two years ago, many people wouldn't even have dared approach offline dungeon entrances.

...For fear of being killed.

So many people had once looked forward to player-made dungeons that could be entered directly online.

But as stated above, the early player-made dungeons had truly been too terrible to look at.

And just when some dungeon builders had finally improved... well, those damned builder guilds showed up.

Some dungeon builders actually began banding together and exploiting their advantage as dungeon creators, constantly pulling tricks with ticket prices and clear conditions—there was one player-made dungeon whose clear condition required players to hand over ninety percent of their Survival Points. Would you believe that?

Its theme was even "Only after losing everything will you understand how strong you are."

Your mom's dead!!!

At first, everyone had looked forward to player-made dungeons. Then came disappointment, until eventually they would spit on the ground whenever they saw one and walk away.

Player-made dungeons became deeply unpopular.

And then even fewer people were willing to put in the effort to build dungeons for little reward.

It was only recently, with the Coordination Bureau deliberately providing support and many dungeon builders finding a new approach—imitating the mechanics of system dungeons—

that player-made dungeons had reentered people's view and recovered some of their reputation.

Although the rewards from these imitation dungeons were mostly inferior versions of system dungeon rewards, they were still useful to most ordinary people.

Still, while they had recovered some of their reputation, not much time had passed, and player-made dungeons still had a terrible name. Aside from those builder guilds, few people were willing to become dungeon builders and do all that work for little gain.

That was even less likely to produce any truly good player-made dungeons.

That was precisely why the appearance of [Resident Evil] had shocked everyone.

Because under such circumstances, a high-rated player-made dungeon had actually appeared!

And it was S-rank!

No one had even seen an A-rank! Let alone an S-rank!

So when the screenshot was posted, the forum practically exploded in an instant.

"Is this screenshot real?"

"An S-rank player-made dungeon??? It's actually S-rank? How did they do that?"

"Did the system review bug out?"

"Could this be a dungeon made by the Coordination Bureau?"

"Did some builder guild find a bug or something? 666, you found a bug and didn't tell your brothers! You treating us like outsiders now?"

"That can't be possible."

"???"

"Holy shit, it really is S-rank!"

"Who's Lu Xiu? Sounds like a girl's name. How did she do this?"

"..."

All sorts of speculation sprang up beneath the post.

Some suspected a system error.

Some suspected the Central Coordination Bureau had done it in secret.

Others asked whether some dungeon-building club had found a bug.

The discussion beneath the post kept gaining momentum.

Just as the replies were about to surpass fifty thousand, a new comment appeared. The account belonged to an old acquaintance on the forum—Zhao Heng.

Obviously, everyone was curious about an S-rank privately made dungeon like this, including many top players in the eyes of ordinary people.

The moment Zhao Heng appeared, people recognized him.

After all, he had just made a big show of announcing in another post that he had cleared an S-rank dungeon.

[It's not impossible for a privately made dungeon to receive a high rating. The Central Coordination Bureau has opened up quite a few high-difficulty system dungeons lately. Someone probably cleared one of them, was deeply impressed by it, and then built their own version based on that dungeon's structure.

I see this builder hasn't released any dungeons before. They probably spent a long time polishing it. Pretty determined... But if you really want good rewards, don't touch privately made dungeons. Just enter a system dungeon. It's not like you can't beat them.]

Zhao Heng's reply immediately drew countless people in.

"So that's how it is."

"I knew there was no way someone could just make one out of thin air."

"Imitating a system dungeon? That makes sense."

"But this is still amazing—the first S-rank privately made dungeon!!"

"It's still outrageous to reach S-rank through imitation!"

"I wonder whether it's a scam. I'm kind of interested now."

"Me too."

"Brother Heng, Brother Heng, is it hard to clear?"

"..."

Although Zhao Heng seemed to look down on the rewards from this privately made dungeon, not everyone could participate in high-difficulty dungeons offline.

The rewards from imitation dungeons were inferior versions?

It was still S-rank. Even weakened rewards had to be useful, right?

So, people soon began asking Zhao Heng about the dungeon's clear difficulty.

Meanwhile, the post's reply count continued to rise.

At first, everyone had merely been shocked by an S-rank privately made dungeon, but the tide quickly shifted... Almost everyone was asking about the clear difficulty and which dungeon it had been based on.

Clearly, an enormous number of people were interested.

Under such circumstances, plenty of people were watching Zhao Heng's replies as well.

They did not have to wait long.

Zhao Heng's response came quickly, in his usual style.

[I don't know how difficult it is for you people, but if you're asking about me, let me put it this way: after I cleared Mist City Corridor, no S-rank dungeon can stop me anymore, let alone some privately made dungeon... It'll be easy as pie!]

[I'll check it out later when I have time. Wait for my good news.]

On the forum, the replies beneath that post were still skyrocketing.

Zhao Heng's comments were like adding fuel to the fire. Players began calling out for Brother Heng's good news.

But Zhao Heng did not reply again.

At the same time.

Chen Capital.

Inside a high-rise apartment.

A man around thirty leaned against the back of a sofa chair, his right hand continuously swiping across the translucent screen before him.

He was not tall and had an unremarkable appearance. Though lean and solidly built, his proportions were not particularly good, and his cheeks were somewhat hollow. He could hardly be called handsome, nor was there anything distinctive about his bearing. He was utterly ordinary... except for his eyes, which could barely be called special. They were sharp as a hawk's, carrying a faint, casual edge even in the most offhand glance.

It was the habitual gaze of scrutiny, a habit cultivated through spending years immersed in dungeons.

He was Zhao Heng.

At that moment.

After staring at the translucent screen before him and scrolling through the replies for quite a while, he returned to the beginning of the post. Looking again at the dungeon information for [Resident Evil], he fell silent for a moment before finally muttering, unable to hold it in any longer, "...Fuck, how the hell did they do this?"

Although he had made it sound casual on the forum just now.

In reality.

When he first saw an S-rank privately made dungeon, he had been no different from any ordinary player. There had been only one thought left in his mind—

Holy shit? What the hell is this?!

Zhao Heng had cleared an S-rank system dungeon before, and he had once considered building a dungeon of his own.

So he understood something far better than the ordinary people on the forums—an S rating really wasn't that easy to earn.

Those S-rank instances were exceptionally strong in every respect, whether it was their themes, structure, mechanics, logic, or the precision with which the overall narrative and rules were woven together.

Zhao Heng also knew several upper-ranking members of construction societies. As far as he knew, even when imitating system instances... none of those major construction societies had builders capable of creating an S-rank instance. Even A-rank was a struggle.

So he was genuinely curious—just how had Lu Xiu managed it? Which system instance had she imitated?

Could it be... an SSS-rank instance?

Zhao Heng's eyelid suddenly twitched.

But he quickly shook his head. Impossible. Nearly all top players capable of clearing 3S instances were in the Coordination Bureau, and there weren't even enough of them to count on one hand.

There was no way they would go become builders.

Then how exactly had she done it?

The more Zhao Heng thought about it, the less he understood... In the end, he simply stopped thinking, sat up, and slapped his forehead. "Hell! Won't I find out if I just go in and take a look?"

As for the difficulty.

Zhao Heng wasn't worried about it at all.

This was just a privately made instance. He could clear even official S-rank system instances.

Could he really stumble in some privately made instance?

The only thing that concerned him even a little was—the clear conditions.

He had seen far too many underhanded tricks in privately made instances.

At that thought.

Zhao Heng hesitated for a moment, reopened the system interface, and deposited his nearly sixty thousand Survival Points into the bank.

That's right.

The system had a savings bank function, and Survival Points deposited there generally wouldn't be deducted. It was a form of insurance.

As for why he said they generally wouldn't be deducted... Well, put it this way: many of the ways privately made instances screwed people over had been learned from system instances.

Zhao Heng was confident, but not reckless.

After making all his pre-battle preparations.

"Let's see."

"Just what level this S-rank privately made instance is at."

Zhao Heng rolled his wrists, opened the instance library, quickly found the [Resident Evil] instance, and clicked into it.

Paid the entry fee.

Entered the instance.

The next second.

White light flared.

Zhao Heng vanished.

And as time passed, more and more people on the forums noticed the [Resident Evil] instance.

At the same time, more and more people took action.

For a time, in every corner of the land, behind countless closed doors.

One cold beam of system-white light after another lit up.

And among them... were two members of the Coordination Bureau's Strategy Group.