> Spoiler warning: This article describes Li Jun's story through This Inevitable Ruin, including his injury on the Eighth Floor and his death during Faction Wars.
Li Jun is a Chinese human crawler, Street Monk, and one of the leaders of the group centered on his sister Li Na and his best friend Zhang. He first encounters Carl and Princess Donut when the Maestro forces him and Zhang onto the Death Watch segment of his program. Li Jun survives that encounter, reaches the crawler top ten, and develops into an agile unarmed fighter whose skills include walking briefly on air.
Li Jun remains with Li Na and Zhang rather than formally joining Carl and Donut's party. The three nevertheless become enduring members of the wider crawler coalition. Li Jun helps lead more than a thousand survivors through the Iron Tangle, takes part in operations on every later floor, and commands defensive construction in Shanty Town during Faction Wars. His story is defined by loyalty to his original group and by his repeated willingness to help other crawlers without waiting for formal orders. That pattern culminates when he deliberately draws a hostile deity away from Donut's tower, buying her time to complete a battlefield plan at the cost of his life.
Life before the crawl and Death Watch
Before the collapse, Li Jun worked in a warehouse with Zhang, their manager, and another man who entered the dungeon with them. Li Na was the only member of their five-person crawler group who had not worked at the warehouse. Li Jun is identified as her brother, while Zhang is already his close friend. Their shared history explains why the group remains unusually stable after entering the dungeon: its central relationships predate both the crawl and the classes, races, and alliances imposed by it.
On the Second Floor, Li Jun's group is trapped between troglodytes and Brindled Vespas. The Maestro freezes the endangered crawlers and transports Li Jun and Zhang to his studio for Death Watch. Both men are level seven, have one bronze star, and possess a Strength score of eight. The Maestro humiliates them before his audience and turns the lives of their three companions into a game. Correct predictions allow the two men to choose which companions can be teleported to safety, forcing them to rank the lives of their friends.
Li Jun refuses that premise. When the Maestro demands a final choice, Li Jun says that the group will die together. Zhang briefly offers to save Li Jun and Li Na, but Li Jun rejects even that arrangement and insists that they stand together. His decision establishes two traits that persist throughout the series: he will not secure his own safety by abandoning his companions, and he treats the group as a unit even when the dungeon offers him an individual escape.
Carl and Donut, present as the program's principal guests, disrupt the segment. Carl correctly anticipates that the enraged Maestro will return Li Jun and Zhang to the dungeon rather than accept Carl's challenge to take their place. Before that happens, Carl tells the pair to retrieve Li Na and their wounded manager, abandon the tempting sword in the corridor, and run directly through the distracted troglodytes. Li Jun grabs his sister and directs the group forward while Zhang carries their injured companion. The Vespas and troglodytes attack one another, allowing all five crawlers to reach a saferoom. The rescue creates the first connection between Li Jun's group and Carl's, but Li Jun's own refusal to choose who should die is equally important to the outcome.
Street Monk and the Iron Tangle
By the opening of the Iron Tangle, Li Jun has remained human and selected the Street Monk class. He reaches ninth place on the top-ten list as a level-25 crawler. Broadcast footage shows him still traveling with Li Na and Zhang, although their builds have diverged: Li Na has adopted a demonic race and chain-based combat style, while Zhang becomes an armored Earth Mover. Li Jun does not carry a conventional weapon. His class instead develops his mobility and striking power.
When Carl next examines him directly, Li Jun is a level-28 Street Monk. His close-range style combines acrobatics, powerful hand techniques, and abrupt changes in elevation. Against the Iron Tangle's monsters, he flips through the air, catches tentacles, and throws enemies. During a fight with a mantaur, he applies a buff that makes his hands glow red, slides beneath a potentially fatal swipe, and shatters the creature's leg with one punch. He then backflips clear and uses Carl's shoulders as a platform to vault behind the falling enemy. His later Walk on Air skill extends the same approach, allowing him to step briefly on empty air and maneuver around opponents while fighting hand to hand.
The original group's builds are designed to work together. Li Na restrains enemies with her chains, Zhang attacks or controls terrain with earth magic, and Li Jun supplies fast close-quarters force. All three deliberately obtain immunity to acid attacks after their encounter with the Brindled Vespas, showing that their progression choices respond to dangers they have already survived. Although Li Jun is the one who reaches the top ten, the novels present the three as complementary rather than as followers assembled around a single ranked crawler.
Li Jun also becomes a field organizer during the Station 101 crisis. After Carl, Donut, Katia, and Hekla's forces create an escape route, Li Jun leads more than one thousand survivors to the stairwell platform at Station 36, where they meet Imani's exhausted Meadow Lark group. The newly concentrated force immediately attracts ghouls, but the station offers defensible chokepoints and access to saferooms. Li Jun and Imani fortify the position, disable a Vermillion train to block one approach, and agree to Carl's plan for clearing another mass of monsters with an explosive train. Li Jun remains at the station even when other routes open because its defenses are holding and moving the whole population would create new risk.
Near the floor's end, Li Jun, Li Na, and Zhang volunteer to accompany Carl without being asked. Li Jun explains that the rest of their team is needed to defend the station, but the three will assist and return. They join the operation involving the Gate of the Feral Gods and the battle against Grull, guarding the portal cart and fighting through the surrounding monsters. Their decision is framed as repayment for the Station 101 rescue, turning the connection created on Death Watch into a reciprocal alliance.
The Fifth and Sixth Floors
Li Jun and Li Na remain operational partners on the Fifth Floor. Their group storms a submerged castle while rising water overtakes their bubble, and Li Jun finishes the last castle before the siblings remain behind to observe danger in a neighboring area. Li Jun reports the nearby tentacled monster, notices Agatha entering a stairwell before the normal threshold, and promises to reconnect through the new guild system. These reports make him part of the information network coordinating scattered groups even when he is not physically with Carl.
On the Hunting Grounds, Li Jun, Li Na, and Zhang work with the coalition led by Katia, Imani, Elle, Florin, and Bautista. Li Jun is infected with vampirism during this period but conceals it from everyone except Li Na and Zhang. The condition ends when Miriam Dom dies and the connected vampires are cured. Katia is angered by the concealment because the infection could have affected the group's planning, but the discovery does not break their alliance. Li Jun continues to reinforce other crawlers, stand with Li Na during confrontations, and participate in the Butcher's Masquerade. He and his two closest companions enter its talent show as knife jugglers, using the performance as cover for the coalition's larger operation.
Li Jun is also present when Katia and Li Na confront the critically injured Eva after the Masquerade. He reacts nervously as Li Na urges Katia to kill her and is visibly shocked after the battle. The scene emphasizes a difference between the siblings: Li Na can respond to a threat with cold decisiveness, while Li Jun more openly displays fear, disgust, and concern. His sensitivity does not prevent him from fighting, but it remains visible even after repeated exposure to the dungeon's violence.
The Eighth Floor separates the crawler coalition into Earth-based regions. Li Jun's team, which now includes Chris, operates in China and establishes access to a Desperado Club that can supply the other groups. The struggle around the Soho building becomes known as the Battle of Beijing. Li Jun later explains that Lucia Mar refused the floor's card-battle structure, attacked enemies directly, and killed many crawlers during the chaos around an unclaimed key. By the time he reaches Carl's group, Li Jun bears two new player-killer marks, although he says that he saw the aftermath rather than the whole battle.
After Lucia supplies rapid-travel upgrades, Li Jun joins more than twenty allied crawlers in reaching Carl's position for the final operation. He fights beside summoned combatants during the conflict with Ysalte and Amayon, using Walk on Air to dance and kick around a ghommid while Li Na supports a Legendary Master with speed enhancements. When the battle spreads through the collapsing building, Li Jun continues moving between levels to reinforce threatened allies.
Loss of his eye
Li Jun's most serious injury occurs when he approaches Carl during the final Eighth Floor battle and asks how he can help. Carl is under Shi Maria's control. She uses Carl's stick-and-poke tattoo tool to tear out Li Jun's eye, consumes it through Carl's body, and incorporates the stolen material into the Eye of the Bedlam Bride tattoo. Li Na retrieves potions and tends to her brother, but the loss is permanent. The group reaches the end of the floor before Carl can apologize directly.
The injury has a second consequence: Carl acquires Li Jun's Walk on Air skill without choosing to take it. On the Ninth Floor, Rosetta confirms that a skill taken against its owner's will is stronger and is permanently lost by that owner. Carl recognizes the ability as Li Jun's immediately and is sickened by the reminder of what Shi Maria forced him to do. Li Jun initially does not answer Carl's attempt to discuss the incident. Katia later tells Carl that Li Na blames herself for failing to protect her brother rather than blaming Carl, who had not controlled his actions.
Li Jun and Li Na spend the beginning of Faction Wars looking for a healer capable of regrowing the eye. He later wears an eyepatch, confirming that ordinary treatment has not restored it. The unresolved injury does not remove him from combat or command. He returns to the coalition, continues using his remaining abilities, and takes responsibility for one of its most exposed defensive sectors.
Faction Wars and the Engine of Tomorrow
During the Ninth Floor ceasefire, Li Jun and Li Na oversee the defenses of Shanty Town. Li Jun reports construction progress, coordinates the 107th White Dragons and new recruits, and monitors the broad perimeter for infiltrators. The position contains no single throne room and can be attacked from many directions, making tower placement, patrol coverage, and communication especially important. By the final battle, Li Jun is identified as the crawler in charge of the defensive towers.
Li Jun also joins Carl, Zhang, Li Na, Katia, Bautista, and Prepotente in the assault on Club Vanquisher. He and Zhang trail wires from Li Na's tower through the temple entrance so that her dread aura can reach the club. Li Jun props doors open, anchors the wires inside, guards the entrance, and fights the club's defenders. When the attack turns into a divine confrontation involving Khepri and other gods, he survives the locked battle alongside the other crawlers. His role is largely positional rather than spectacular: keeping doors and aura connections open makes the deeper assault possible.
The raid awards Li Jun a celestial loot box. Its principal reward is a replacement eye called the Engine of Tomorrow. At rest it resembles a swirling black orb; when active, it takes on the appearance of a miniature clockwork engine. The eye lets Li Jun detect the beginning of an opponent's muscular movement and briefly accelerates his perception, allowing him to anticipate an attack and react with exceptional speed. He and Li Na train with it continuously. The replacement restores more than sight, turning the injury inflicted by Shi Maria into a new combat advantage without erasing what happened.
Sacrifice and death
During the final Faction Wars crisis, Donut remains in the Nest tower to complete a plan involving the Rolling Battle Formation. The god Harpocrates, angered and marked against her, approaches faster than the formation can reach its destination. Leaving the tower too early would endanger the crawlers trapped in the spell, but remaining exposes Donut to the deity.
Li Jun identifies a way to redirect Harpocrates. One surviving speaker is mounted on the back of a cart, so he tells Donut to mute the other speakers and play a song he sends through that one. The sound draws the god away from the tower and toward Li Jun. Li Na immediately understands the danger and protests. Li Jun tells her he intends to jump clear before Harpocrates catches him, but he continues the diversion as the god closes the distance.
Realizing that he will not escape, Li Jun sends a final message to his sister. He asks her to tell Zhang that he is sorry they could not say goodbye face to face, says that his choice was his own, and urges her to protect Zhang and be kind to the others. He frames the act as a deliberate decision rather than Donut's command. Soon afterward, the system identifies him as a deceased crawler. His diversion gives Donut enough time to cast the needed spell when the formation reaches the corpses, preserving the coalition's plan during the transition into the Peeling Phase.
Li Jun's death immediately changes the roles of the survivors around him. His towers revert to automatic control until Carl accesses their menus. Li Na takes the Engine of Tomorrow from her brother, removes one of her own eyes, and installs his replacement so that its accelerated perception can remain in use. In grief, she tells Donut that Li Jun's death is her fault, but Zhang rejects that judgment. He calls Li Jun his best friend, refuses to blame Donut, and explains that Li Jun had feared dying without doing anything important. By protecting Donut long enough for her plan to continue, Li Jun resolves that fear through the same principle he demonstrated on Death Watch: he accepts danger for himself rather than decide that someone else should be abandoned.