After over a year of being a dungeon core, Xu Han had discovered one thing. It was fun. The former cultivator would admit that there was a transition period, especially after he first found himself being reborn into a unmoving sentient crystal, but it had been, on the whole, a fun experience.

  Words could not describe how strange that was.

  In his old world, Xu Han was a cultivator. He was a ten-thousand-year-old monster who had done horrible things in his pursuit of immortality. So horrible that he didn’t really have an argument when the Heavens denied him entry and punished him for the things he had done.

  When he was a cultivator, fun was a distant thought for Xu Han. He was one of those cultivators who pursed cultivation with all his heart. Xu Han studied, he cultivated, and he strategized, but he did not do things for fun. Unlike other cultivators who would spend some time raising disciples, creating secret realm for their descendants, or just have a harem of men and women at their beck and call, Xu Han wanted none of that. For him, there was only cultivation and the prize of immortality.

  Xu Han now realized that was a mistake.

  Xu Han found that creating things was fun. Whereas spreading knowledge was still key to him, and was his Dao in this new strange world, the act of building a floor, making monsters, and creating puzzles were things that he enjoyed. Not for the first time, Xu Han had some regret in not creating a secret realm when he had a chance. Heavens know he had enough Qi and power to create several of them when he was in the Crimson Lands. He had ten thousand years! He could take his time, creating realms with maddening secrets that would have driven even the most persistence of cultivators crazy. He could have -

  “Is this really necessary?”

  He could have done it alone, without having to convince a dungeon fairy of how wonderful his designs were.

  Mentally sighing, Xu Han addressed Jemma, his dungeon fairy. “Jemma, you were the one who said that some Rest Floors have tests the adventurers need to pass before they could get into the floor itself.”

  “Yes, but painting? Really?”

  “This is my test. I can pick whatever I want.”

  “Stop using my words against me,” his dungeon fairy grumbled as she glanced at the latest room her dungeon core created.

  After a lot of coercion, Jemma had finally managed to get her dungeon core to create a new floor. It was a Rest Floor for adventurers, a place for them to rest and trade, but Jemma made a mistake. She told Xu Han that some dungeon cores created tests for the adventurers at the entrance of their Rest Floors.

  For Jemma, it was just a passing comment, but for some reason, her dungeon core loved the idea. It wasn’t like Xu Han was thinking that if other cores could do it, then it made sense for him to do the same thing. It was beyond that.

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  Xu Han truly loved the idea!

  He went on about making the adventurers earn the right to enter and believes that the test would weed out the ‘pretenders’, leaving only the ‘worthy’ to enter his Rest Floor.

  At times, her dungeon core made no sense, but Jemma had never complained when her dungeon core wanted to do more work and so, she kept quiet as Xu Han created a room before the entrance of the Rest Floor.

  The room Xu Han made was a rectangular cave, wider than it was deep. There was a small house in the middle. The house had dark timber beams, white marbled walls and curved, grey-tiled roofs. Potted plants lined the courtyard outside the house which featured a small, artfully arranged rock garden, a few trees, and a clear pond where fat, colourful fishes swam lazily beneath broad lily pads. Beyond the courtyard, there was a small grove of big shiny mushrooms at one end, and a small lake that fed water to the pond in the courtyard. The room lacked grandeur, scale, and beauty, but it was elegant, tasteful, and gave the room an undeniably peaceful air.

  Jemma hated it.

  Her problem wasn’t with the architecture. The architectural style was like the pavilions Xu Han created in the Lake Room; clean, simple, and elegant. Jemma assumed that elegance was an important and desired feature in Xu Han’s old homeland. No! Her problem was not with the buildings the dungeon core created.

  It was with the Boss.

  The house did not have a door, so any adventurer who entered the floor could immediately see the latest Boss her dungeon core created. The Invigilator, as Xu Han called it, was a humanoid reptilian green-skinned Boss. He was a scrawny and skinny creature with long black hair that reached to his back. The Boss could walk on two legs, but his stride was so ungainly Jemma believed only the Boss’ long lizard-like tail kept the Boss from falling flat on it’s face. The Invigilator had yellow eyes with vertical pupils that held the brilliance of life, but his eyes were as soft and weak as his body. The Boss lacked the hardness normally associated with killers and predators, and the reason for this was simple. The Boss was not a fighter.

  He was a painter!

  Since its creation, the Invigilator would be painting with the tools Xu Han had placed in the house or just sitting in a chair admiring at the numerous paintings hanging on the walls of the house. Xu Han had created humanoid Bosses before, so Jemma wasn’t all that surprised by the Invigilator’s creation, but the reason for this Boss’ creation was concerning. Jemma turned to her dungeon core to complain.

  “You know very well that when I told you about the tests, I was talking about a fight, or a puzzle, not…whatever this is. He is barely a Boss!”

  “It is a Boss,” Xu Han replied, “it’s just not a fighter. It’s worse. It’s an Invigilator who oversees a test. You know how scary they are?”

  As a dungeon fairy who had studied at a dungeon fairy academy, Jemma knew how scary invigilators were, but there was no way she was going to admit that to Xu Han.

  “Look core, this Boss isn’t going to work.”

  “Why not? This is a simple test on how artistic the adventurers are. I even gave them an option. They can show off their skill and imagination in painting something with the tools I provided or show their knowledge of the arts by discussing the various paintings in the house. As long as the Invigilator agrees with their points, it will allow them to pass.”

  “That’s too arbitrary,” the dungeon fairy complained. “How would the adventurers know what will impress you? What makes you think you are ‘worthy’ to judge their works?”

  “I’ll have you know I had mastered the Dao of the Arts in my past life. Not all of them I’ll admit, but the Art of Painting is one that I am very accomplished in.” Xu Han huffed.

  “I know the words coming out of you, but not their meaning. What you said make no sense, and if I can’t understand it, the adventurers wouldn’t either.”