The night wind over Misty Marsh carried the rank, fermented stench of stagnant water.
Su Ming parted the knee-deep humus; his eight thick walking legs slapped through rotten mud with teeth-gnashing squelches. Black carapace plastered with slick moss, cold moisture seeped between the plates and crept inward.
Something stirred ahead.
Three leather-clad players peered out from the reeds, their strong flashlights trembling and making the world spin.
"Holy shit, it really is that lobster! The forums weren't lying!" The lead warrior, calling himself SwordWanderer, gulped and hoisted his cheap-steel longsword that pulsed with shoddy enchantment light. "Brothers, blow this bug up. We split the five thousand gold server bounty!"
Su Ming didn't move.
Five thousand gold.
Newbies with dull blades were willing to throw their lives away for five thousand gold.
"Master, can I take these guys for a warm-up?" the Sprite hovered above, its face lit with excitement, clutching a random reed it had plucked from nowhere.
"Don't soil my eyes," Su Ming replied, exhaling a string of murky bubbles as his massive right pincer shot upward.
He swung.
The scythe-like claw ripped through the air with a crack. The warrior hadn't even registered motion before he was plummeted face-first into the mud. A red-and-white damage number, "-1240," floated skyward, and his health bar vanished in an instant.
One-shot.
"G-ghost...!" The remaining two crumpled onto their butts in the sludge, crawling backward in panic. One of them lost a cheap starter cloth shoe in the mud, looking utterly pathetic.
"Why run?" Su Ming drew them out at a leisurely pace, his pincers carving two deep furrows in the muck. "Weren't you trying to cash me in for money just a moment ago?"
Tonight, Misty Marsh was extra lively. The server-wide bounty plus the temporary guild leaderboards pulled every greedy fly in the area. Su Ming didn't even have to hunt; just following those flickering flashlight beams guaranteed he'd stumble into another suicidal party.
First wave: a five-man assassin squad.
Second wave: three rangers trying to box him in with physical traps.
Third wave: this one here.
Not even worth mentioning.
Su Ming flicked his antennae. The [Dark Energy] progress bar on his system panel kept surging upward. The more people cursed him on the forums, the more the values under [Absolute Reflection] and [Ironclad] went through the roof. That warrior's blade had scraped his back—not even a bite from the marsh leeches yet—and the bar still crawled forward.
He ignored the screams and followed the faint dark current deeper into the marsh. His memories from the past life were like a yellowed map; every landmark was etched in his mind. Once he pushed through this poison fog zone, he'd reach the abandoned altar at the center.
11:55 PM.
Marsh center.
Dead silence.
This place should've been the entrance to a low-level dungeon, but it was now shrouded in an eerie mist. Deep inside the fog stood a huge black broken stele.
Someone stood before it.
A figure in a wide black hooded robe, blending almost perfectly with the night. No staff in hand—just an old-fashioned windproof lantern. The dim flame swung wildly in the wind, casting light on a pale jawbone with not a drop of blood.
Su Ming halted.
His eight legs dug into the mud, assuming an aggressively defensive stance. The right pincer lifted high. Any sudden move from that person, and he'd crush the head instantly.
"Still that wary, huh?" Su Ming thought.
The figure turned, the hood sliding away to reveal a cold, stunning face. Not a grotesque abyssal monster. Not some clichéd villain archetype. Merely a living human girl.
But her eyes—neither human black nor white. They shifted like a flowing star river, deep enough to make anyone lose their bearings with a single glance.
Lu Yao.
Former Sky Team's chief strategist, codename Chessmaster.
Su Ming's right pincer froze mid-air.
Impossible.
In the last life, Lu Yao had been torn apart by monsters on the tenth abyssal layer while covering the main force's retreat. He had watched that torn robe sink in blood. How could she show up here? On the very first day of a new server?
"Surprised?" Lu Yao tossed the lantern onto the stele, pulled a set of Tarot cards from her robe, and casually riffled them with long fingers. "I didn't expect that so-called sword cultivator idiot to reincarnate as a sideways-walking crustacean, either."
Su Ming retracted his pincer, flattening his massive body against the mud, the tense muscles slowly easing.
"You're a reborn soul too," he said.
That was not a question.
"More precisely, a candidate selected by the system."
Lu Yao paused, drawing a card. Under the faint light, she glanced at it. Hidden Class: SSR-tier Abyssal Diviner.
She flipped it toward Su Ming.
It was the Fool. On the card was a clownish figure, and that face—was unmistakably Su Ming from his previous life.
Su Ming stared at her coldly. "Sending that email was just to see if I was another one of those missed fish, huh?"
"Part of it." Lu Yao sighed, gathering the cards. "The Abyssal invasion was never an accident, Su Ming. It's a grand selection staged by the Divine Realm system itself. Any soul who survives under the Abyssal rules and is reborn—that's the seed it wants."
Su Ming thought it absurd.
A system.
Candidates.
He had clawed his way into reincarnation thinking he'd gained the upper hand, only to discover he was still a puppet toyed with by a higher-dimensional force.
So what?
His voice stayed flat, rough as sandpaper. "Even if I'm a piece on the board, I can flip it. Last life, I lost everything. This life, even the heavens can't stop me if I claw it open."
Lu Yao smiled—for the first time tonight—with an edge of bitterness.
"Flip the board? Take a look at your system panel, big lobster."
Su Ming stiffened.
He instinctively summoned the OpenClaw Lobster System.
The once quiet red interface was now flashing a vicious blood-red warning.
[System Notification: Warning! Extremely high concentration of hostility detected!]
[System Notification: Warning! The Destiny Guild is activating an SS-tier clearing formation!]
[System Notification: Coordinates locked: Misty Marsh center!]
He spun around.
The fog had thinned without him noticing. Countless blue-white headlamps flickered like ghost lights, pressing toward them. Chaotic footfalls, the scrape of armor plates, and frantic shouts over guild channels combined into a suffocating roar.
Three hundred.
Five hundred.
One thousand.
The Destiny Guild's elite force. The remnants of that idiot Broken Army who hadn't been wiped out, plus Destiny's new recruits, had completed a perfect encirclement at this hour. These people weren't here for the bounty—they were here to erase that humiliation.
"Understand now?" Lu Yao's gaze cut toward the approaching lights. Her voice was ice. "The system is forcing us to fight. Only by standing atop the corpses of every server player can we truly unlock the Abyssal privileges."
Su Ming straightened slowly.
Eight legs braced in the muck, supporting a carapace the size of a small mountain. His two enormous pincers clacked together, producing a metallic boom that hurt the ears.
If that was the case...
He looked at Lu Yao. In his multifaceted eyes there was no fear—only madness suppressed to the limit.
Then we tear through them.
"Perfect," Lu Yao said.
She flicked her wrist and five Tarot cards spread across her fingertips. A massive astral dial phantom rose behind her, instantly purifying the ten meters around them.
In the distance, the first wave of arrows already darkened the sky.