The Thirteenth Step, an Inescapable Loop

Venomous Bee stood on the gray-black wasteland. Beneath his feet was no longer hard asphalt, but a kind of soft earth that gave off a pungent, putrid stench.

He looked around, and stormy seas surged in his heart.

"He forcibly dragged me and my followers into his divine kingdom?! How is that possible?!"

The hand gripping Venomous Bee's poisoned blade trembled slightly.

Forcibly dragging an enemy into one's divine kingdom was "domain suppression," something a high-tier true god could normally only do against a low-tier false god.

A high school student, no matter how bizarre his divine kingdom was, couldn't possibly possess such an overwhelmingly powerful spatial pull!

Unless...

Venomous Bee abruptly raised his head and stared fixedly at the ruined staircase lying across the middle of the wasteland, blocking the way forward.

Unless some extremely advanced spatial law existed in this kid's divine kingdom!

"Putting on a supernatural act!"

Venomous Bee forcibly suppressed his fear and bit the tip of his tongue, using the sharp pain to keep himself clearheaded.

"Do you think dragging me in here means I can't kill you?"

A fierce light flared in Venomous Bee's eyes. "My fifty shadow assassins will only be stronger in this dark environment! No matter how big your divine kingdom is, can it be bigger than my killing intent?"

"All assassins, hide! Lock onto that brat up high and take his head!"

At Venomous Bee's command,

the fifty shadow assassins, their bodies shrouded in black mist, instantly blended into the gray-black wasteland.

Their movements were exceptionally light, like a pack of weightless ghosts as they sped toward the abandoned school building where Su Bai stood.

And on the only path to the school building lay that ordinary-looking staircase.

"Jump straight over it!" Venomous Bee ordered.

The shadow assassins leaped up, attempting to clear the staircase in one bound.

But just as they were about to pass over it,

something strange happened.

An extremely bizarre, irresistible force of attraction suddenly erupted from the moss-covered staircase!

The shadow assassins gliding through the air dropped uncontrollably like flies struck by a flyswatter, crashing hard onto the steps.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

All fifty assassins, without exception, were forced down onto the first step.

"What's going on?!" Venomous Bee's expression changed drastically.

He tried to command the assassins to leave the staircase through his divine kingdom's core, but was shocked to discover that their feet seemed to have taken root, sticking firmly to the steps. They couldn't move to either side at all and could only climb the stairs!

"This is a forced-path rule!"

Venomous Bee was knowledgeable, after all, and realized what was happening at once.

"Whatever trick you're playing, it's just a broken staircase with a dozen or so steps. Once they climb it, they can still kill you!"

"Charge up!"

Upon receiving the order, the shadow assassins immediately raised their twin blades and sprinted up the bloodstained steps.

One step, two steps, three steps...

Ten steps, eleven steps, twelve steps.

A mere twelve steps took only a fraction of a second for second-tier assassins.

The assassin commander at the front had already crossed the twelfth step and raised his poisoned blade, ready to leap toward the school building where Su Bai stood.

But the instant his foot left the twelfth step,

he did not land on solid ground.

At some point, a step that had never existed before had appeared beneath his foot.

The Thirteenth Step.

The instant the assassin commander set foot on it,

Buzz-!

The surrounding scenery instantly folded in a grotesque distortion.

The gray-black sky vanished, the distant school building vanished, and even Venomous Bee and his companions behind him vanished.

The assassin commander found himself in an enclosed stairwell made entirely of gray-white concrete walls.

The stairwell was narrow and dim, and the walls were covered in countless bloody handprints.

Looking up, he saw a spiral staircase with no end in sight.

Looking down, he saw a bottomless black abyss.

Most chilling of all, even sound was swallowed up in this enclosed space. He swung his twin blades against the wall, but they made no sound at all.

Immediately afterward, the second, the third... until the fiftieth shadow assassin, all vanished into thin air the instant they stepped onto the Thirteenth Step.

Venomous Bee stood at the foot of the staircase, his eyes nearly bulging out of their sockets.

"Where are they?! Where are my followers?!"

He frantically communicated with his divine kingdom's core, trying to contact the assassins.

But all that came back was endless confusion and disorientation.

His assassins seemed to be trapped in an endless Spatial Labyrinth, running wildly in circles while their divine power drained away at a terrifying rate.

"What the hell did you do?!" Venomous Bee snapped his head up and roared at Su Bai on the rooftop.

Su Bai unwrapped his lollipop, put it in his mouth, and said indistinctly, "Nothing. This is the welcome ceremony I prepared for you—an 'endless staircase experience pass.'"

"Mister, your assassins are having a lot of fun in there. Want to come in and give it a try too?"

Su Bai pointed at the first step and gestured for him to go ahead.

Venomous Bee clenched his teeth, cold sweat rolling down his forehead in great drops.

He knew he had kicked an iron plate today.

This seemingly harmless high schooler had an extremely terrifying spatial-type rule-based horror story hidden in his divine kingdom!

Run!

I have to run right now!

As long as he left this divine kingdom and returned to the real world, he could save his life.

Venomous Bee made a snap decision and severed his connection to the fifty shadow assassins.

Cutting off one's own wrist and abandoning one's followers to save one's life was a basic skill for an assassin.

"Brat, I'll remember this! Once I find out what you really are, I'll make you wish you were dead!"

Venomous Bee hurled the threat at him, then quickly formed seals with both hands, preparing to forcibly tear open a spatial passage and escape.

But just after he finished forming the seals,

a faint sound of footsteps came from behind him.

"Slap... slap..."

It was the sound of someone stepping barefoot on wet earth.

Venomous Bee whirled around.

A woman in tattered red clothes, her long hair reaching her waist, had appeared behind him at some point, less than three meters away!

The woman had no face, and her entire body exuded an overwhelming resentment that made even his soul tremble.

"You think you can come and go as you please?"

Su Bai sneered from the rooftop. "What do you take my divine kingdom for? A public toilet?"

"Hongdou, keep him here."

Hongdou tilted her head slightly and slowly raised a deathly pale finger, pointing it at Venomous Bee.

An indescribable sense of mortal danger instantly enveloped Venomous Bee's entire body.

"Get away!!!"

Venomous Bee let out a roar like a cornered beast, drew a specially made high-explosive psychic energy gun from his waist, and fired frantically at Hongdou.

Bang bang bang bang!

Deep-blue psychic energy bullets poured down on Hongdou like a rainstorm.

But a bizarre scene unfolded.

The bullets passed through Hongdou's body as though she were an illusion, without causing so much as a ripple.

She isn't solid at all! Ordinary physical and energy attacks are completely useless against her!

Under Venomous Bee's despairing gaze, Hongdou instantly turned into a streak of red lightning and slammed straight into his arms.

"It hurts so much..."

A shrill murmur sounded by Venomous Bee's ear.

The next second.

Bang!

Venomous Bee felt as though he had been hit by a speeding heavy truck, his body flying backward out of control.

And he was flying straight toward the ruined, moss-covered staircase!

Thud!

Venomous Bee crashed heavily onto the first step.

The instant his skin touched it, the terrifying forced-path rule descended once more.

He couldn't move sideways and could only go up!

"No... no!!!"

Venomous Bee screamed in terror.

He knew that as soon as he reached the top, he would suffer the same fate as his followers.

He desperately dug his fingers into the edge of the step, trying to crawl down.

But he discovered in horror that his body would not obey him at all. An invisible force compelled his legs to advance upward, one step at a time.

Two steps.

Five steps.

Eight steps.

Eleven steps.

Venomous Bee's eyes were filled with utter despair as he watched his foot land on the twelfth step.

Then step beyond it.

Buzz-!

The scene before his eyes instantly changed.

Gray-white concrete walls, bloody handprints, stairs with no end in sight above, and a bottomless abyss below.

Venomous Bee had officially entered the hidden labyrinth of the Thirteenth Step!

On the rooftop, Su Bai bit down with a crunch, shattering the lollipop in his mouth, and clapped his hands in satisfaction.

"Time to close the net."

With a thought, Su Bai closed the entrance to the passage into his divine kingdom.

Now all he had to do was sit on the rooftop and enjoy the show of catching a turtle in a jar.

Inside the labyrinth.

Venomous Bee leaned against the cold concrete wall, gasping for breath.

He tried to summon his fifty assassins back, but found that although they were all in the labyrinth, they seemed to be in different parallel spaces and couldn't regroup at all.

"Calm down... I have to calm down."

Venomous Bee forced himself to regain his composure.

"No rule-based horror story can be absolutely invincible. It has to have a weakness, a way out!"

He began carefully examining his surroundings, recalling every detail from before he had entered the labyrinth.

"I got in by stepping onto the Thirteenth Step. This is a closed-loop space. If I keep going up or keep going down, it definitely won't work."

As expected of an experienced assassin, Venomous Bee quickly reached a conclusion.

He took out a dagger, carved a deep mark into the concrete wall beside him, then headed down the stairs.

After walking for about ten minutes and descending who knew how many flights,

he stopped.

There on the wall ahead was the very mark he had just made.

"Sure enough, it's a ghost-wall loop."

Venomous Bee gritted his teeth. "If physical movement is useless, where exactly is the deadly threat in this labyrinth?"

Just as he was thinking,

an extremely faint voice suddenly rang out in the deathly silent stairwell.

"Venomous Bee..."

Someone was calling his code name!

The voice was elusive, seeming to come from above the stairs and yet also to drift out of the abyss below.

The hairs all over Venomous Bee's body stood on end.

"Who?!"

He answered instinctively while turning to look up the stairwell.

The instant he answered and turned his head,

[Rule two: Roll-Call Response, trigger check successful.]

An extremely terrifying, formless, intangible force of rules instantly descended upon Venomous Bee!

"Aah-!!!"

Venomous Bee let out an utterly harrowing scream.

He discovered in horror that his left hand, along with his entire arm,

had vanished into thin air in an instant!

There was no spurting blood, no wound.

It was as if someone had taken an eraser and rubbed a chunk of his body away with all their might!

His missing arm, however, had eerily appeared on the concrete wall beside him, transformed into a tentacle made of flesh and concrete that was slowly writhing.

"My hand! My hand!!!"

Venomous Bee collapsed to the ground in pain, rolling and wailing.

Only at that moment did he finally understand what made this urban legend truly terrifying.

It wasn't the maze trapping people, but the rules erasing them!

As long as you were in this space, if you heard someone call you and responded, your body would be forcibly taken away and become part of the staircase!

On the rooftop.

Through the god's-eye view of his divine kingdom, Su Bai watched Venomous Bee, who had lost an arm in the maze, a cruel sneer curling his lips.

"Mister assassin, the game has only just begun."

"Now, guess which part of you this staircase will take away next?"