Invincible: I Level Up In My Sleep

The Birth Of A Legend

Up on the high stone ramparts, a collective gasp rippled through the ranks of the Ironcliff guards.

Fan Changyu leaned heavily over the battlements, her fingers digging into the stone until they bled. Her heart, usually steady as a veteran warrior's, pounded violently against her ribs. She had seen Yan Zheng shatter a sword barehanded, but leaping from a thirty-meter wall and stepping out of the resulting crater completely unblemished went beyond anything written in the manuals of mortal body-tempering.

Down below, the silence stretching across the vanguard line was heavy and suffocating.

Ba Tu’s sneer completely vanished, replaced by a dark, ugly scowl. His massive war beast snorted nervously, taking two steps back as its primal instincts picked up an unidentifiable, suffocating pressure radiating from the lone man in front of them.

"Trickery!" Ba Tu roared, his voice cracking with a mixture of rage and sudden disbelief. "You used a high-tier defensive talisman! Do you think a flashy entrance can save your failing kingdom, trash prince? In the face of absolute cultivation, your royal blood is nothing but trash!"

Ba Tu slammed his heavy iron boots into the flanks of his mount. The massive beast let out a bloodcurdling shriek and lunged forward, kicking up massive clods of frozen dirt.

"Die!"

Ba Tu leveled his massive, dual-bladed bronze axe. The muddy brown energy coating the weapon flared aggressively, expanding into a three-meter-wide phantom blade of compressed Qi. This was the signature technique of a peak Bronze Meridian master—the World-Shattering Cleave. A single strike was powerful enough to tear a heavy iron gate right off its hinges.

Yan Zheng stood completely still as the terrifying mass of iron and muscle bore down on him. To the soldiers watching from above, it looked as though he was frozen in terror.

In reality, Yan Zheng was staring at a completely different screen.

[Warning: Target Ba Tu is executing a High-Tier Qi-Strike.]

[Analyzing trajectory... Counter-strategy calculated.]

[Unlocking Crucible Passive Ability: Dread Pressure (Level 1).]

[Effect: Emits a brief aura of primordial fear, reducing the target's physical coordination and reaction speed by 15% for 3 seconds.]

"Activate," Yan Zheng whispered.

Just as Ba Tu entered a ten-meter radius, about to bring his devastating axe down upon Yan Zheng’s head, a sudden, invisible wave of absolute, freezing terror erupted from Yan Zheng’s body. It didn't manifest as light or sound, but as an overwhelming weight that violently compressed the air.

The charging war beast screamed, its front legs buckling instantly as its mind was flooded with images of a towering, apocalyptic Dread Knight stepping out of a mountain of corpses.

"What?!" Ba Tu screamed as his mount violently collapsed beneath him, sending him flying forward through the air. His perfect, Qi-infused posture was shattered in an instant, the phantom bronze blade flickering out of existence as he scrambled to regain his balance mid-air.

Using the absolute physical velocity of his Level 1 Agility, Yan Zheng didn't dodge backward. He burst forward.

He moved so fast his body practically left a blur in the snow. He closed the distance in the blink of an eye, appearing directly underneath the falling Ba Tu.

Yan Zheng’s right hand shot out like a striking viper, his fingers bypassing the swinging haft of the bronze axe completely and clamping tightly around Ba Tu’s throat.

The heavy, bronze-plated vanguard commander was stopped dead in his tracks mid-air, hung completely suspended by Yan Zheng’s single bare arm.

"Ugh... gah..." Ba Tu’s eyes dilated to the size of saucers. He tried to channel his peak Bronze Meridian Qi to burst his way out of the grip, but the moment his energy surged, Yan Zheng squeezed his fingers.

CRACK.

The brute physical strength of a Level 1 Dread Knight squeezed through Ba Tu's bronze neck-guards, crushing his windpipe and cutting off his internal Qi flow instantly. The terrifying commander was reduced to a gasping, flailing fish, his legs kicking uselessly in the air.

"You're right about one thing, Ba Tu," Yan Zheng said, his voice a cold, quiet whisper that only the dying commander could hear. "In the face of absolute power, everything else is trash. But you got the roles reversed."

Yan Zheng raised his left hand, gripping the hilt of Ba Tu’s own massive bronze axe while the commander was still held aloft. With a single, casual yank, he ripped the weapon away from Ba Tu's fading grip.

With a brutal twist of his torso, Yan Zheng swung the heavy axe in a clean, upward arc.

Puff!

A spray of hot, crimson blood painted the white snow. Ba Tu’s head flew high into the air, his lifeless, armored body slumping heavily onto the dirt as Yan Zheng released his grip.

[Target: Vanguard Commander Ba Tu successfully executed!]

[Gained 500 EXP!]

[You have leveled up!]

[Current Level: 2 (410/500 EXP)]

[Gained +2 Unallocated Stat Points.]

[You have received: 1x Rare Tier 1 Equipment Box.]

[Main Quest Phase 1 Completed. Unlocking Faction Feature: The Shadow-Guard Legion Summoning System.]

Yan Zheng didn't even look at the floating blue notifications. He stepped onto the chest of Ba Tu’s headless corpse, catching the falling bronze axe by its shaft, and slammed the heavy butt of the weapon into the ground.

BOOM!

The sound resonated across the entire valley.

"Your commander is dead!" Yan Zheng’s voice, now amplified by his Level 2 breakthrough, thundered across the plains, striking the five hundred heavy cavalry like a physical blow. "Drop your weapons and kneel, or become fertilizer for my winter crops!"

The five hundred elite cavalrymen looked at the headless corpse of the strongest warrior in their tribe, then at the young prince who stood over him like an unyielding god of war. Panic, infectious and absolute, tore through their ranks.

"Monster! He's a monster!"

"Run! Return to the main army!"

The vanguard completely broke. The formidable cavalry line shattered into a chaotic mess as soldiers frantically turned their war beasts around, trampling each other in a desperate bid to escape the valley.

Up on the walls, the three hundred Ironcliff soldiers stood frozen for three long seconds before a deafening, reality-shattering roar of triumph erupted from their throats.

"Long live Prince Yan Zheng!"

"The King is invincible! Ironcliff is saved!"

Soldiers banged their spears against their shields, tears streaming down the faces of veteran captains. They had expected a massacre; instead, they had witnessed the birth of a legend.

Fan Changyu let out a breath she felt she had been holding for days, her knees trembling slightly from the sheer relief and overwhelming awe. She looked down at the figure of Yan Zheng, her eyes burning with an intense, unshakeable loyalty.

Down in the crater, Yan Zheng ignored the cheers from the wall. He extended his right hand, a cold smile touching his lips as he tested his newly unlocked feature.

"System," he thought. "Deploy first unit."

Deep within his shadow, the pale emerald moonlight seemed to twist and deform. A pool of pitch-black darkness expanded across the snow, and from the depths of the void, a silent, armored figure clad in tattered black cloth and midnight-steel slowly rose to its knees, its eyes glowing with a chilling blue flame.

[Shadow-Guard Unit 1: Successfully Summoned.]

[Realm: Level 3 Qi Refinement.]

[Loyalty: Absolute.]

Yan Zheng looked at his new dark soldier, then toward the horizon where the rest of the invading nation awaited. "The real game begins now.”