The scale of Slay the Spire 2 wasn’t very large.
Even with the heavily optimized graphics of Slay the Immortal Spire, if Lu Ze went all out on production, he could finish it in just a day.
Lu Ze deliberately slowed down the pace of development, spending an extra two days refining the details. His main intention was to give Zhong Yi some experience and build his confidence.
Otherwise, if both of them released their games around the same time, Zhong Yi probably wouldn’t even get a share of the pie...
“Junior Brother Lu, your illusion realm hasn’t been released yet?”
Zhong Yi refreshed the illusion realm several times but still couldn’t find Lu Ze’s new creation, so he asked anxiously.
“Take it easy... It’s probably under ‘review.’”
Lu Ze cracked open one eye and answered calmly.
In Slay the Immortal Spire, he had reserved a spot for the remnant spirit of the Heavenly Dao. Usually, he would stop by the remnant spirit’s illusion realm world to notify it, but since he was using the Illusion Alliance’s illusion tower this time, he didn’t want to reveal too much about the Heaven Dao remnant spirit and chose not to proactively inform it.
Right now, the remnant spirit was probably examining its position in the illusion realm and weighing whether to take on a role.
“Junior Brother Lu, don’t underestimate Han Xian. His Linglong Tower Wonderland...”
Before Zhong Yi could finish, Lu Ze cut him off.
“Relax, that illusion realm is no match for yours... It’s just a patchwork of shoddy materials.”
Lu Ze said with a smile.
In just a few moments, he had already roughly analyzed Linglong Tower Wonderland.
His conclusion was: It was an ordinary action game stuffed with too much content.
It relied on lengthy storytelling and endless levels to stretch out players’ online time. He could already guess that later stages would be filled with boring repetition.
The ten thousand players claiming involvement probably had a fair amount of padding.
“Junior Brother Lu, your illusion realm is online!”
Zhong Yi exclaimed in delight and eagerly immersed himself into the realm.
“Let me give it a try!”
With that, Zhong Yi immediately entered Slay the Immortal Spire and turned on his livestream at the same time.
“...There’s a trick like this?”
Lu Ze blinked.
The Illusion Alliance forbade self-promotion, but it didn’t say you couldn’t promote others, right?
With that thought, he cheerfully started his own livestream as well. The content was Zhong Yi’s Boldly Charge the Demon-Sealing Tower.
......
......
Zhong Yi’s livestream room.
“Let me see how you climb a tower with board games...”
Zhong Yi eagerly entered Slay the Immortal Spire.
A sinister, eerie tower appeared before him.
“Single-player mode? Multiplayer mode?”
Zhong Yi stared at the two options on the screen, momentarily stunned.
Combining board games with tower climbing was one thing, but could you really have multiple people climbing the tower together while playing cards?
No matter how hard he tried, Zhong Yi couldn’t picture such a scene, and his anticipation only grew.
“Once I get the hang of it, I’ll call Lao Zhou and Junior Brother Mu to climb the tower together!”
After a moment’s thought, Zhong Yi selected [Single Player Mode] and entered the illusion realm.
With a flash of the screen, five character options appeared before him.
On the far left was a white-haired sword-wielding cultivator wearing a golden mask with blood-red eyes.
[Iron Armor Sect Cultivator]
[HP: 80/80]
[Spirit Stones: 99]
[The last disciple of the ancient sect, the Iron Armor Sect]
[Here not by his own will; skilled in the way of sword, blade, and fire spells.]
[Divine Power: Golden Crow Bloodline (Restores 6 HP at the end of battle.)]
The connection between character selection and card-playing was easy enough to grasp; Zhong Yi was a veteran of Three Kingdoms.
Besides the Iron Armor Sect Cultivator, the other four characters were darkened and still locked.
“Three Kingdoms is about multiple people playing cards together. How is this going to work here? I can’t wait to find out!”
Zhong Yi carefully studied the description of the Iron Armor Sect Cultivator, his excitement growing.
After selecting his character, a sheepskin scroll appeared in his hand.
Strictly speaking, it was a map.
A long map of a tower with three distinct paths.
[Tip: Choose a room to proceed]
[Once you complete a room's challenge, you may proceed to the adjacent room above and continue climbing!]
“Oh? What kind of design is this?”
Zhong Yi’s interest was immediately piqued.
Lu Ze’s illusion realm was always extraordinary—right from the start, he introduced a brand-new map concept: a tower with multiple independent routes to reach the top.
Each route had overlapping paths that players could choose between as they went.
The rooms on the paths included [Monster Room], [Elite Monster Room], [Shop Room], [Treasure Room], [Campfire], and [Random Room].
“What’s the campfire and random room for?”
Zhong Yi’s curiosity only intensified.
Unlike other players, he keenly sensed that each route had a deep significance—choosing a path was a skill in itself!
After a moment’s deliberation, he carefully examined the map.
“I definitely gotta take on more elite monsters... Surely I can beat them, right?”
“What can a campfire do? Roast meat? Skip it!”
“Random? Let’s try my luck, I guess? Not like I’m Lao Zhou, hahaha!”
“Alright, I’m taking the middle path!”
ing gift was a patch of barren land, and disciples were all picked up along the way. He spent fifty years diligently building three "ramshackle little sects," thinking he could finally live a carefree life relying on his disciples. But right at the fifty-year mark, he was suddenly swept away by a spatial rift and exiled to the Chaos Desolation, the Disorderly Ruins. There was no spiritual energy there, only slaughter. Relying on the cultivation feedback from his disciples, Gu Changyuan hacked his way through a sea of blood for eleven hundred years. When the system finally fished him back out, he discovered the ramshackle little sects he'd built back then had developed a rather... unusual style. Hold on... I vanished for a thousand years, so how did my ramshackle little sects become holy lands?!
. As long as he maintains the villain image and follows the plot to the grand finale, he can obtain generous rewards and return to the real world. So Gu Chen'an entered the role and began to act as a scumbag villain, but who would have expected that the female leads could hear his inner thoughts. Miss Su from the Su family was shocked: "I originally thought Gu Chen'an was a scumbag, but I didn't expect he turned out to be a gentleman! What? You said I have to call off the engagement? I definitely won't, I'll piss you off!" Bai Yuan Tian was dumbfounded: "Young Master Gu is usually unreasonable and a complete brat, but he actually calls me little sweetie in his heart? What, Young Master Gu even said he likes me?" As the female leads' images collapsed more and more, the plot also collapsed with it. Gu Chen'an looked at all this chaos. "Ladies, don't aggro me, if you keep this up the male lead really will stab me, I still need to survive to the grand finale!"
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
transmigrates into the world as the sect master of the Heavenly Yan Sect, which is on the verge of being wiped out. He binds a system that grants him cultivation power based on the number of disciples he has: for each disciple, he automatically gains a year's worth of cultivation every single day! Take one disciple: every day he gains 1 year of cultivation power. While others struggle through a year of bitter training, he gets the same just by sleeping through a single night. Take ten disciples: every day he gains 10 years of cultivation power. Foundation Establishment, Core Formation, Nascent Soul—he breezes through all bottlenecks without lifting a finger. Take one hundred disciples: every day he gains 100 years of cultivation power. Even a Soul Transformation Venerable before him can’t survive a single blow. Take ten thousand disciples: every day he gains 10,000 years of cultivation power! With a wave of his hand, he topples empires. With a single step, he crushes the sacred grounds of the universe. ... While others fight tooth and nail for secret techniques, Lin Yan casually hands out Nascent Soul-level cultivation manuals as beginner textbooks. While others strain to find talented recruits, Lin Yan opens his doors to anyone—so long as they’re human. In just three short years, the Heavenly Yan Sect went from a backwater sect made up of three crumbling huts to a sacred land that every cultivator under heaven would kill to enter. ... One day, otherworldly demon gods invade, with a million demon soldiers pressing down upon the realm. Lin Yan, yawning, rises from his lounge chair and glances at the system panel: [Current Disciples: 1.28 million] [Daily Cultivation Increase: 1.28 million years] He waves his hand casually, and the countless demon soldiers are reduced to ashes in an instant. “So noisy… interrupting my fishing.”
