Most players truly get addicted to Slay the Spire the first time they hit a perfect run.
Take Zhong Yi at this very moment, for example.
“I’ll hang [Precision] and [Endless Blades] together! Then play a block...”
“What?! [Blade Dance] and [Flying Sleeves] both showed up at once?! I’ll finish it in one shot!”
“Haha! What a sweet run... what a sweet run!”
Watching the countless flying blades devour the monsters, Zhong felt even more exhilarated than when he killed monsters with real weapons.
Not long ago, those four cockroaches had beaten him bloody. Now, in just two turns, he annihilated them—absolutely satisfying!
“Fellow cultivators, this Silent is way too powerful!”
Zhong Yi kept exclaiming in amazement.
After losing three times in a row as the Ironclad, he didn’t stubbornly keep trying. Instead, he switched to other characters.
And now, the moment he picked up the Silent, he immediately got a dream run.
Right at the start, he got a rare golden [Flying Sleeves]. The first monster dropped a [Precision].
[Precision] boosted the damage of the zero-cost Shivs, while [Flying Sleeves] turned them from single-target to area-of-effect. Then more and more cards that generated Shivs joined his deck...
The Shiv build came together perfectly, and Zhong Yi was having the time of his life.
Lu Ze wasn’t sure if the original developers had built any similar mechanism into Slay the Spire in his past life,
but when he designed Immortal Slay Tower, he added a special “seed of victory” system for new players playing on zero difficulty. Besides the teaching scenarios, there was a guaranteed lucky seed that would appear within at most five runs.
Because Lu Ze knew very well: once players successfully pulled off a coherent build, that rush of satisfaction would drive them to keep playing endlessly.
Lu Ze was watching this one-sided slaughter unfold in Zhong Yi’s livestream when he suddenly felt himself yanked out of the stream by an unknown force.
“Half an hour has passed... Why haven’t I, the Heavenly Dao, seen a single person?”
The remnant spirit of the Heavenly Dao spoke with an unreadable tone, but Lu Ze could somehow feel resentment in its words.
The remnant spirit stared at Lu Ze suspiciously.
It had sensed cultivators constantly dying inside this illusion realm, yet not a single one had fallen at its hand, which left it greatly displeased.
“Patience, patience... It won’t be long now.”
Lu Ze calculated Zhong Yi’s progress with a cheerful smirk. Given Zhong’s lucky hand and his wits, clearing the run should be no problem.
“Oh, and when someone comes to see you, remember to seal their mouth.”
...
...
Zhong Yi’s livestream.
The chat was far from the cold silence of when he first started streaming; it was buzzing with activity.
[Not taking Corpse Explosion? Playing a poisonless Hunter is pure troll.]
[Is slowly poisoning enemies half as fun as spamming flying knives?]
[Golden card! A GOLDEN CARD!!]
[Old Zhong said it—don’t try to grab everything. Sticking to one build is best.]
[Only 18 cards? That’s enough for a fight?]
[Already reached the third-floor boss? That fast?]
[Whoa, you can only play one of the first three cards drawn? That’s brutal?]
[The minion does crazy damage!]
[If he didn’t have AoE, his little minions would wreck him.]
...
The boss Zhong encountered at the end of the third floor was a female demon, flanked by a high-damaging minion.
Her special mechanic: out of the first three cards you drew each turn, you could only play one.
The difficulty in this fight lay in how the hand was limited, while he had to face pressure from two enemies at once.
Fortunately, Zhong Yi’s deck was wildly overpowered. His AoE blades sent both the queen and her minion reeling.
After several consecutive rounds of attacks, the minion collapsed, and the queen had fewer than 200 HP left.
Zhong Yi glanced at his hand and smiled with confidence.
“Fellow cultivators!”
“Behold—”
“A Thousand Swords Return to the Sect!!!”
With that, he played a card he’d held onto—[Blade Trap]. All the Shiv cards he’d played earlier surged up from the exhaust pile and gathered around the Silent before raining down on the queen!
Under the boost of various buffs, the spectacle was honestly dazzling.
The chat exploded again.
[Whoa!! He one-shot the queen??]
[What? Over 200 damage???]
[Aren’t those swords a bit... short?]
[And a bit few...]
[This combo is insane!! Post a guide fast!!!]
...
As the queen fell, the third-floor boss fight ended.
“Take it easy, guys... Immortal Slay Tower has too many variables. You can’t just get a perfect run whenever you want—it takes some luck.”
Zhong Yi smiled as he replied to the chat.
“Give me a few more days to study it, and I’ll definitely make a guide for everyone!”
He then tried, as usual, to draw Qi from the fallen boss’s corpse and claim a golden card.
But this time, no Qi brewed up from the queen’s remains.
“Strange, why isn’t there...”
Zhong Yi was puzzled, when, suddenly, his view was yanked inward.
He—still in spirit form—was violently pulled straight into the Silent’s body, and in an instant, the two merged.
The next moment, he stood as the Silent inside a strange, unfamiliar chamber.
The room was piled high with all kinds of treasures, scriptures, and scrolls.
A massive figure in a golden robe, holding a staff, stood with its back to him. Above the figure's head was a long health bar.
"Oh? I get it now!"
Zhong Yi understood in an instant.
"This is the top floor of the Immortal Tower... and that's the Master of the Tower!"
"The final challenge is for us to become warriors and defeat it with our own hands!"
"I've had enough of the card games... time to stretch my muscles..."
"Bring it on!"
Zhong Yi laughed loudly and summoned countless flying blades from the magic array behind him, all shooting toward the figure's back.
[-290]
[-360]
[-538]
...
A series of damage numbers appeared above the figure's head. Yet the long health bar seemed completely motionless.
The name above its head changed from a question mark to "Architect."
The Architect slowly turned around. Beneath the golden mask, its purple, ghostly eye gleamed faintly.
"Not even a self-introduction?" The Architect sneered. With a casual wave of its staff, a massive hand descended from the sky, and Zhong Yi's body instantly turned into a cloud of blood mist.
The live-stream chat exploded.
【That... looks familiar somehow?】
【It's the Heavenly Dao... the Heavenly Dao that rules the illusion!!】
【Damn! How is anyone supposed to beat that...】
【Is it possible Old Demon Lu never intended for us to leave the Immortal Tower alive?】
【Uh, maybe taking down the three-tier demon counts as clearing it...】
...
As a cultivator facing the remnant of the Heavenly Dao itself for the first time, Zhong Yi met the Architect, who was the manifestation of that very remnant.
A single slap from that hand gave him the terrifying sensation of teetering on the edge of life and death.
【Victory...?】
【You have dealt 1240 damage to the Architect... but that is barely a scratch...】
【You have dealt a total of 1240 damage to the Architect】
【Even after withstanding 1240 damage from all challengers combined, the Architect remains standing】
"Huh?"
Just recovering from the feeling of death, Zhong Yi stared at the data on the screen, the corners of his mouth curling up wildly.
"Total of 1240 damage... that means I'm the first to clear it?"
Zhong Yi was ecstatic, celebrating wildly, and happily changed his live-stream title to "Number One Little Knife Hunter in the Cultivation World."
The joy of clearing the challenge for the first time made him want to find someone to share (or show off) with.
"Oh? Lao Zhou is streaming?"
Seeing that Zhou Yue was not only online but actually streaming for once, Zhong Yi perked up.
"Haha! Let me see how Lao Zhou's clumsy hands handle this illusion!"
Zhong Yi cheerfully entered Zhou Yue's stream and caught Zhou Yue hesitating among three cards.
One of them was 【Precision】, a core card for the Little Knife Hunter deck Zhong Yi had just been playing.
Zhong Yi, forgetting to boast, quickly sent a message.
【Genius Cultivator: What are you thinking? Pick 【Precision】! 【Precision】!】
"Zhong? Why are you here? Why should I pick 【Precision】?"
Even as he said this, Zhou Yue followed Zhong Yi's advice and added 【Precision】 to his deck. After all, Zhong Yi's advice in these illusions was usually reliable.
【Genius Cultivator: How did you know I just cleared the Killing Immortal Tower with my 【Precision】-based Little Knife Hunter deck?】
Zhou Yue: "???"
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?!
y came from. The chests contained supplies, currency, class-change scrolls, skills, talents… and even godhood! The laws of the world were completely rewritten. This became a world where everyone gambled with their fate! Some people, despite having nothing, opened a divine artifact and rose to the top, eventually ruling the world. Others went bankrupt, opened nothing but worthless junk, and leaped from skyscrapers in despair. Lin Ye arrived in this world from another reality, utterly bewildered. “What is going on? Why is everyone a gambling addict?!” “Opening chests? No way. I refuse to gamble. I’ll start with myself!” Until— On his first chest, he obtained a Mythic Talent: Void Incarnation! He could become completely intangible, pass through all things, and reduce everything to nothingness! … On his fiftieth chest, he obtained a Mythic Weapon: Blade of Karma! With a single slash, karma shattered, twisting the universe and overturning the myriad phenomena of creation! … On his ninety-ninth chest, he obtained a Mythic Divine Treasure: Primordial Purple Energy! It could split open the heavens and earth, create all things, and evolve countless worlds with a single thought! Lin Ye: “Now that I think about it… shouldn’t someone have told me that every chest is guaranteed to contain something Mythic?!”
s the Eldest Princess, renowned for her cold and aloof detachment, became the most docile of lambs, obeying his every command without question. But when the final move was played on the chessboard, as Gu Chenghan seized everything and ascended on the verge of apotheosis, that very Princess suddenly embraced him from behind, her tone carrying a dependence never heard before: "Wait... you haven't yet... commanded me to love you forever." Gu Chenghan froze abruptly. She... hadn't been hypnotized?! ... [The Eldest Princess's Diary] [When my soul was extracted, becoming the sole spectator outside my own shell] [At first, there was overwhelming fury, until I saw] [How he used my sword to effortlessly shatter my inescapable doom] [How he wielded my authority to eradicate fatal conspiracies I had never even detected] [Like a deity, he rescued me from the deep mire I was trapped in] [If not for those annoying vixens, he and I would be a match made in heaven] [I think I am ill, gravely ill] [My deity should belong to me alone] ... "Hypnosis? Oh, it succeeded, my dear Master." "Only this time, it's my turn to hypnotize you."
nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.
