Lu Ze's Little Ingenuity

This was Zhou Yue's fifth attempt at climbing the tower.

The Iron Armor Sect Cultivators specialized in fire techniques and blades, and Zhou Yue felt they suited him well. He played four rounds in a row and got his head handed to him each time.

This round, he chose the Silent Hunter.

To Zhong Yi's surprise, Zhou Yue's luck wasn't as terrible as usual.

[Genius Cultivator: Take Blade Dance! This card is insane—turns single-target attacks into AoE!]

[Genius Cultivator: Escape Plan! A zero-energy draw card—how could you pass that up?]

[Genius Cultivator: Grab the Tactician... The Oddities are amazing, trust me!]

...

Zhong Yi guided him the whole way, growing more amazed at how unusual this run was.

It wasn't as smooth as his own run earlier, but it was definitely a decent start—nothing like Zhou Yue's usual experience.

Under Zhong Yi's guidance, Zhou Yue's Blade Dance deck was taking shape, and he easily crushed the floor-one boss.

By floor two, even the normally tough minions were being mowed down like cutting melons and vegetables.

[Genius Cultivator: Holy crap, Lao Zhou, did you get Junior Sister Qiaoling to draw for you? This luck doesn't belong to you at all!]

Zhou Yue scoffed at Zhong Yi's barrage of comments.

"What kind of talk is that? I train hard in the illusions every day! If I could break this fate once, I can break it again!"

Hearing this, Zhong Yi sincerely felt proud of his good brother.

[Genius Cultivator: Keep it up, Lao Zhou! Your deck is complete. You're unstoppable in the Immortal Tower now... Kick down that Elite room door! No Elite will even dare to look at you twice!]

"Pfft—!!"

Lu Ze, watching the livestream of Zhong Yi's channel, spat out a mouthful of tea.

Zhou Yue's "good luck" was actually just the pity mechanic kicking in on his fifth run, ensuring the game fed him cards that fit his chosen archetype.

His African bloodline remained unchanged.

And now, with Zhong Yi's cursed mouth landing a blow...

Lu Ze didn't even need to check the back-end code to guess what monster would be in the next Elite room.

"Nice!"

In the past, whenever Zhong Yi said something like that, Zhou Yue would curse him for jinxing it.

But not this time. With Zhong Yi's deck, he had sliced through monsters one after another, and even the floor-one boss hadn't given him any trouble. He was riding high.

On his previous climbs, he'd always sneak past Elite rooms.

And if he had no choice but to enter, he'd push the door open carefully and tiptoe inside.

But today was different!

"What garbage Elite? Taste the power of my Blade Hunter!"

Zhou Yue laughed, kicked open the Elite room door with a bang.

Inside, a sinister cultivator, surrounded by a swarm of demonic bees, bent down to look at Zhou Yue. The swarm buzzed madly, as if they'd caught the scent of honey.

"Hahaha, a Bee Swarm Cultivator? Let's see how sinister you really are!"

"Blade, stab! Stab! Stab again!"

"Uh... why am I getting so many Daze cards?"

"What do you mean, one Daze per attack???"

"??? Why are there more and more of them???"

"Dammit!! My deck is full of Daze now!!!"

"Zhong Yiiii!!!"

...

...

The pity mechanic that Lu Ze had set up for difficulty-zero runs was clearly working well.

Sure, getting the right cards didn't guarantee victory—players might not realize they'd already got a good build, they might draw too many cards, run into a monster that hard-countered them (like Zhou Yue did), or get a bad card sequence.

But at least it gave them a taste of that satisfying feeling when their build clicked.

That was the motivation that kept players climbing the tower.

As time passed, two hours after Slay the Immortal Tower launched, more and more cultivators reached floor three and saw the Architect at the top.

The forum posts gradually became more diverse.

[Hahaha! The Iron Armor Sect Cultivator is so satisfying! I just used Panic Escape + Hellraiser and played endless cards—couldn't stop!]

[Pfft, not even half as fun as Blade Hunter.]

[Blade Hunter? Nah—can't take on Elites on floor one without the deck built, can't take on Elites on floor two because of the Bee Swarm Cultivator, can't take on Elites on floor three if you skipped them earlier. It's ridiculous.]

[Fellow cultivators! Go play a Spirit Cultivator! Spirit cards both draw more cards and deal damage—it's amazing!]

[You're all too weak. Just let me, the Crown Prince, forge my blade for a while, and I'll come out strong...]

[Forge your blade? What's the point if you run into a Cockroach?]

[No one talking about the Faulty Spirit Puppet? That little thing is adorable!]

[Faulty Spirit Puppet? Ha.]

[Ha.]

...

...

Zhong Yi's livestream.

"Man, this Crown Prince is so hard to play!"

Zhong Yi scowled in frustration at the powerful but unwieldy royal cards.

After clearing difficulty zero for the first time, he didn't rush into the newly unlocked higher difficulties. Instead, he chose to experiment with the other characters.

After trying them all out, he quickly got a general sense of the five characters.

The starting character, Iron Armor Sect Cultivator, had the simplest mechanics and a strong, straightforward damage output system.

The Silent Hunter had lots of builds and flexible playstyles, but she was prone to dying suddenly.

The Spirit Cultivator's summons were interesting—they could either deal damage themselves or let the cultivator do the work, and there was even a unique Doom mechanic for finishing off opponents...

The playstyle was a bit chaotic, and Zhong Yi hadn't fully figured it out yet, but he felt it wasn't weak.

As for the Faulty Spirit Puppet—many forum users complained it was weak. Zhong Yi played one round and cleared it, so he thought it was actually fine.

Nothing a single card of Lightning Harmony couldn't solve. If not, just draw another.

As for the Outer Realm Demon—the Crown Prince...

His royal cards were powerful, but aside from the universal energy system, the Crown Prince had a separate Starlight mechanic—essentially two resource bars.

Even Zhong Yi couldn't figure it out right away.

He'd cleared difficulty zero with all the other characters, but he was still stuck with the Crown Prince.

"Damn it! I played that card wrong back there. If only I could undo the move..."

Zhong Yi fumed, slapped his thigh in frustration.

Just then, Lu Ze's comment popped up.

[Realm Master Lu Ze: You can undo it... Try Soul Rewind?]

Soul Rewind—the save-and-load (SL) mechanic—was an essential part of any Slay the Spire-like game.

Even in various unofficial win-streak challenges, players drew a clear line between "SL" and "NOSL" playstyles.

Without SL, Slay the Spire was just too hard.

On top of that, SL greatly increased the potential of each run.

And potential was exactly what would keep players engaged for longer, so Lu Ze had chosen to keep the SL mechanic as an option.

But he'd added a little twist of his own.

"What? I can rewind?! Junior Brother Lu is on the path to sainthood—he's become merciful!"

Zhong Yi was surprised.

In earlier tough illusions, like Four Together or Getting Over It, there was no save-and-load.

One mistake, and you started from the beginning!

Zhong Yi happily selected Time Rewind.

The next moment, as an enormous pupil stared down, Zhong Yi's ghostly form shattered into pieces.

"..."

"Fine, you can rewind—but did you really have to kill me first?"

In response to Zhong Yi's complaints, Lu Ze smiled without saying a word.

If he let players save and reload infinitely, a single game session would drag on for an hour, and he would only gain a single point of demonic path value—wouldn't that be a total loss?

So he deliberately set up the rules: players would first die and then be reborn, ensuring that every ounce of profit was squeezed out.

Lu Ze couldn't help but chuckle to himself, thinking:

"Such clever tricks... Could it be that I'm really born to walk the demonic path?"