Chapter 13: Slapping Reality in the Face
"Hey! I’ve been looking for you all day, and you’re already here," Cheon So-So said, playfully elbowing Donape.
Donape responded with a calm, warm smile. He knew the young miss harbored deep feelings for the protagonist, but he only intended to interact with her if it advanced the main story or yielded martial arts rewards.
His singular goal was strength. He wasn’t here to play a romance simulator, find a marriage partner, or settle down. With the entire game’s manual and quest rewards perfectly memorized in his head, the boundary between the virtual and the real world remained crystal clear to him, no matter how terrifyingly realistic this realm felt.
As the Entrance Ceremony officially commenced, the atmosphere turned electric. Even though it was a violent sparring event, the Murim was a place where combat was the ultimate dopamine rush, pumping the adrenaline of power seekers. Here, the strong devoured the weak.
"Can you really handle the sparring?" So-So asked, her expression clouding with genuine worry. "If you want, I can talk to Grandpa right now and ask him to promote you to an Internal Disciple."
Donape just chuckled.
"Come here for a second," he said, gesturing for her to lean in. As she did, he lightly tapped her forehead with his index and middle fingers. "Silly. We’ve been friends since childhood, haven’t we? Put a little trust in me and stop worrying. Besides, you shouldn’t frown so much; it doesn’t suit you."
So-So’s face instantly flushed crimson.
In the same game world, another player like Ji-Hong would experience a completely different outcome. When faced with Cheon So-So’s bright personality, he had been the one hopelessly charmed and flustered by her kindness.
But with Donape in the driver’s seat, the dynamic completely flipped. His casual, confident banter caught the unsuspecting NPC entirely off guard, making the reverse-flirting work flawlessly—even if that wasn’t his intention at all.
As the sparring sessions progressed, the fates of the new disciples were violently shuffled one by one.
One moment, a player was an Outer Disciple; the next, a successful match would elevate them to an Internal Disciple, opening the gates to a promising future.
However, the wheel of fortune spun both ways.
For those who dropped in status, the reality was utterly devastating. They went from being seen as promising prospects to facing the bitter truth that they would spend their lives serving the inner sect.
It was a depressing, high-stakes crucible.
Most of these recruits were the sole breadwinners for their households. Remaining stuck as an Outer Disciple meant a guaranteed return to a harsh, ordinary life, leaving them unable to survive the brutal conditions of the Murim or earn enough to support their families.
Under such immense pressure to succeed, extreme decisions became commonplace, and many broken souls chose to leave the Heavenly Cloud Sect entirely.
But none of that was anything Donape needed to take to heart.
Stepping onto the spacious dirt of the main training ground, his long-awaited opportunity to pursue true strength had finally arrived.
"If you surrender right now, I’ll spare your life," sneered a boy standing across from him—one of Young Master Namgoong’s arrogant lackeys.
Donape’s expression remained perfectly flat, showing absolutely no intention of replying.
While he looked like a cool, calculating master on the outside, a thread of nervousness still buzzed in his chest.
In reality, Donape lacked formal fighting skills; by nature, he had always been a bit of a coward who preferred to avoid conflict whenever it occurred around him.
But ever since the System arrived, he had become thoroughly accustomed to a different kind of abuse. He had gradually gained a bizarre form of courage, realizing that the pain of a human fist wasn’t nearly as terrifying as he used to think. Compared to the punishments in high-voltage procedures, a Murim thug was nothing.
All of that had happened in a single day—a window short enough to change him entirely into a brand-new person.
Donape racked his brains, calculating the stakes. If he failed this match, he could technically just restart the game, but he would lose something irreplaceable—a secret that players like Ji-Hong and Irene had no idea existed.
Every major scenario in this game contained a hidden achievement, triggered only under hyper-specific conditions. For this Entrance Ceremony, if he not only forced his way into becoming an Internal Disciple but did so by winning impressively, the system would grant him a Qi Starter Pill.
The catch? This hidden reward was strictly a one-shot deal. If he failed on his first attempt, the item would permanently vanish from the server.
According to the game’s info, the pill would enhance his Qi Perception, allowing him to read and track the surrounding world’s energy much better than learning it the hard way.
In the Murim, reading the flow of energy in the air was the ultimate foundation of the Heavenly Martial Arts—a cheat code that could alter destiny itself. And with his flat 20% synchronization rate, those mind-altering effects would bleed directly into his real-world body the moment he swallowed it.
The reward was too massive to pass up. He had one shot, zero room for error, and an arrogant kid standing in his way.
"Begin!" the instructor barked, his voice echoing across the arena.
The lackey charged instantly, throwing a heavy strike without even a formal bow.
Donape flinched. But as the incoming fist mirrored a trajectory he had seen before, his muscle memory fired automatically. His body slipped into the exact stance the First Patriarch had used to neutralize the Tyrant’s deadly assault in the opening cinematic.
As the blow arrived, Donape didn’t meet it with force. Instead, he gracefully and smoothly guided his hands around the strike, deflecting the trajectory without absorbing a single ounce of direct contact. The moment the boy’s forward momentum faltered, Donape locked his grip and slammed him straight into the dirt. A sharp crack echoed through the training ground as a faint cloud of dust erupted from the impact.
The sudden crash drew the immediate gaze of nearby second-grade and several first-grade disciples. Even the refereeing instructor frowned in sheer disbelief.
What Donape had just displayed was the absolute essence of the Heavenly Cloud Sect’s highest-level martial arts.
Up until now, the other recruits had only shown off flashy, aggressive techniques to boast of their brute strength. Soft martial arts—the concept of using gentleness to overcome rigidity—were notoriously difficult to comprehend without a master’s direct guidance.
But the quiet moment didn’t last long before the audience was amazed by the match.
The instructor loudly announced Donape’s victory, formally awarding him the rare Qi Starter Pill alongside a brand-new token representing his promotion to a Third-grade Internal Disciple of the Heavenly Cloud Sect.
Meanwhile, outside the game, Ji-Hong had witnessed the entire sequence. His voice suddenly crackled into the capsule, conveyed via the external audio function of the Share Track feature.
"Boss! Boss, can you hear me?!" Ji-Hong blurted out. "Boss, can you turn on VR Capsule 4? I think I want to play right now too!"
Donape had deliberately kept his external audio volume high, knowing he needed to hear the outside world if a customer arrived at the shop.
"Sure. Give me a second," Donape answered from within the Murim realm, scanning his interface for a safe moment to pause the game.
Not long after, the VR Capsule’s lid hissed open, revealing Donape stepping out in a completely calm state.
"Boss, if I reset my character, can I play the game just like you did?" Ji-Hong asked, practically vibrating with excitement.
"You can’t," Donape replied bluntly, walking over to the counter computer to boot up VR Capsule 4.
"Then what was that thing you got from the referee instructor after winning the sparring?"
"A necessary item. It’s going to help me learn the Heavenly Martial Arts better within the sect."
Ji-Hong nodded rapidly, trying to process the information.
Butler Lee was standing right nearby, push forward the question he held himself back on the throat.
"Why do you need to learn martial arts in a game so seriously?" Butler Lee asked, his tone skeptical. "It’s just a game; there’s no need to overdo it. No matter how godly those techniques look, it’s just fiction. It can’t be transferred to the real world."
Donape paused right before stepping back into his VR Capsule. He turned around, casting a long, meaningful look across the room.
"If I told you that this technology could bring everything you learn, experience, and gain directly into the real world... would you believe it?"
Ji-Hong was the first to interject, waving his hands. "Me! Me! I believe it, boss!"
Butler Lee’s eye twitched, thoroughly annoyed by his young master continuously calling a mere shopkeeper "boss."
Wanting to vent his frustration, he fired back with a harsh, grounding dose of reality.
"That is impossible. Things like inner strength and Qi are just entertainment propaganda used to make these games popular."
"Huhu," Donape chuckled softly. "It’s always easier to deny something than to face concrete evidence. Didn’t you witness the powerful lightning bolt that seriously injured those two bodyguards and sent them to the hospital yesterday? Yet, that same bolt didn’t leave a scratch on me. Is that superstition still just fiction to you?"
"That proves nothing," Butler Lee snapped, doubling down. "It has absolutely nothing to do with what you just claimed. That stun might be fake, and this entire technology is just an elaborate trick to deceive your customers."