The city lights of Longhai dwindled behind Su Yang, their garish glow fading into a dull orange smear against the oppressive night sky. The cacophony of urban life—the blaring horns, the distant sirens, the relentless hum of electricity—slowly surrendered to a deeper, more ancient silence. The air grew cooler, cleaner, carrying the scent of damp earth, pine, and the melancholy perfume of decaying leaves.
His feet, clad in cheap leather shoes already splitting at the seams, carried him on a path worn by memory and sorrow. He did not consciously choose his destination; his body moved on its own, guided by a homing instinct for the one place that had ever offered a semblance of peace, the only connection to a past that predated his lonely orphanhood.
The climb was arduous. The well-paved roads of the city outskirts soon gave way to rough, uneven trails snaking up the slopes of the Dragon's Breath Mountains. Thorny bushes clawed at his already ruined suit trousers. The fine, chilling rain that had started in the city became a persistent mist here, clinging to his hair and beading on his skin, seeping through his thin jacket until a deep, shivering cold settled into his bones.
He stumbled onward, the image of Lin Mei's scornful face and Jin Feng's arrogant smirk burned onto the back of his eyelids. Each step was a hammer blow, driving the nails of their betrayal deeper into his heart. The carefully constructed walls of his composure, which had held firm during the humiliating confrontation, finally crumbled away in the mountain's isolating embrace.
He arrived at a small, level clearing. Before him stood a simple, unadorned stone marker, its edges softened by time and weather. Moss clung to its base, and a single, gnarled pine tree stood sentinel beside it. This was the resting place of his grandfather, the only family he had ever known.
The old man had been a quiet, enigmatic figure, choosing to live in this isolated hut long since reclaimed by the forest, rather than in the bustling city below. He had spoken little of the past and had passed away when Su Yang was still young, leaving him with nothing but a few vague memories and this solitary gravesite. Su Yang had never understood his grandfather's choice, but in his youth, this place had felt like a sanctuary. Now, it felt like a monument to his own inherited loneliness.
He fell to his knees before the stone, the wet earth soaking through the fabric instantly. The tears he had refused to shed in the café now flowed freely, mingling with the rain on his cheeks. They were not gentle tears of sadness, but hot, angry tears of utter desolation.
"Grandfather," his voice was a raw, broken thing, torn from his throat and swallowed by the vast, indifferent silence of the mountains. "Why? Why did it have to be like this?"
He looked up at the dark, brooding peaks, as if accusing the heavens themselves.
"I have nothing! I am nothing! No family, no future, no hope. I worked so hard. I thought if I was just good enough, diligent enough, if I just endured… that something would change. But it's all a lie!"
His words grew louder, a desperate litany shouted into the void.
"She looked at me like I was garbage. They all did. Is that all I am? Just an orphan meant to be thrown away? Is this the destiny you left for me? To die alone and forgotten in the shadows of other men's glory?"
The wind picked up, sighing through the pine needles, a sound that felt like pity but offered no comfort. The crushing weight of his reality pressed down on him. He had nowhere to go. No home to return to that wasn't a rented coffin. No one who would care if he simply vanished on this mountainside.
The ember of defiance that had flared in the city guttered, threatened by the overwhelming tide of his despair. He was just a mortal, insignificant and weak, at the mercy of forces far greater than himself—be it the whims of cruel fate or the wealth of men like Jin Feng.
In a final, agonized gesture, he slammed his fist into the soft ground beside the gravestone.
"It's not fair!"
The movement was too abrupt. The earth beneath the rain-slicked moss where his knee was planted gave way with a soft, crumbling sound. With a startled cry, Su Yang felt the world drop out from under him.
He was falling.
A terrifying, breathless plunge down a steep, concealed embankment he hadn't seen in the dark and his distress. He tumbled, end over end, his body battered by rocks and roots, the world a dizzying whirl of blackness and pain. The air was knocked from his lungs. His last coherent thought was of the cruel irony—to have survived betrayal only to die in a meaningless accident.
With a final, jarring impact that sent a white-hot bolt of agony through his shoulder, he hit ice-cold water. The shock of it was absolute, a paralyzing cold that seized his heart. He had fallen into a mountain river, swollen and swift from the rains.
The current was a ruthless, living thing. It snatched him up, pulling him under its churning, frothing surface. Water filled his mouth and nose, bitter and tasting of stone. He fought, his limbs flailing uselessly against the immense, cold power dragging him downstream. His head broke the surface for a split second, just long enough to gasp a desperate, choking breath before he was pulled under again.
The journey was a blur of primal terror and brutal punishment. His body was slammed against submerged boulders. Branches clawed at his face and hands. The roar of the water was the only sound in the universe, a deafening promise of oblivion. His strength faded quickly, sapped by the cold and the relentless battering. The world began to dim, the cold numbness spreading from his limbs toward his core. Consciousness flickered, the will to fight extinguished by the river's brutal embrace.
He did not know how long the river carried him. Time lost all meaning. It could have been minutes or hours. When the current finally began to slow, he was barely aware of it. His body was a single, massive ache, a vessel of pure agony. The roar of the rapids softened to a steady rush.
The river widened, flowing into a calmer, subterranean channel. It carried his limp form into the heart of the mountain itself. The darkness became absolute, a suffocating black velvet that pressed against his eyes. The air grew still and ancient, smelling of wet rock and things long undisturbed.
Eventually, the water grew shallow, depositing his broken body onto a slick, pebbled shore within a vast cavern. He lay there, half in, half out of the icy water, shivering violently. Each breath was a ragged, painful effort. He was alive, but it felt like a temporary, painful state.
For a long time, he could do nothing but lie there and tremble, waiting for the feeling to return to his frozen limbs. Slowly, painfully, his senses began to report back from the darkness. He heard the steady, echoing drip of water from stalactites high above. He felt the unyielding hardness of the stone beneath him.
And he heard other things.
A skittering, scratching sound from the darkness. A faint, high-pitched chittering that seemed to come from all around him. His heart, which had slowed to a sluggish thud, began to pound again with a new, primal fear. He pushed himself up onto his elbows, his eyes straining against the absolute blackness.
Then he saw them. Dozens of tiny, pinprick points of light, glowing with a faint greenish luminescence. They moved in the darkness, swirling and blinking. Bats. A whole colony of them, hanging from the ceiling far above, their eyes reflecting some distant, unknown light source.
One detached from the flock, its wings rustling like dry parchment as it swooped low, skimming just inches above his head. Su Yang flinched violently, throwing up an arm to protect his face. The creature let out a sharp squeak and banked away, disappearing back into the gloom.
It was a warning. This was their domain, and he was an intruder.
Driven by a fresh surge of adrenaline, he forced himself to his feet. Every muscle screamed in protest. His left shoulder throbbed with a deep, worrying pain. He was soaked, freezing, and utterly lost. The hunger that had been gnawing at him since he left the office now returned with a vengeance, a sharp, hollow ache in his stomach.
He had to move. He had to find a way out.
He began to walk, his steps unsteady and shuffling on the uneven ground. His hands stretched out before him, blindly feeling his way through the oppressive darkness. The cavern was immense, its ceiling lost in shadow. He stumbled over rocks and through shallow, icy pools of water.
The skittering sounds followed him. Not just bats now. He heard the scuttle of what might have been large insects or perhaps something else entirely. Pale, blind creatures that lived their entire lives in this eternal night watched him pass, their forms occasionally glimpsed as pale blurs in the periphery of his vision. They were not overtly aggressive, but their presence was a constant, unnerving reminder of his vulnerability.
He walked for what felt like an eternity, his hope dwindling with every dead end and every circling passage. The cave system was a labyrinth, a maze of stone that seemed designed to trap the unwary. Exhaustion threatened to overwhelm him. His body begged for rest, for warmth, for food.
Just as despair was about to claim him completely, his searching hand, trailing along the cold, wet wall, met not more rough stone, but something different. Something smooth. And straight.
He paused, running his fingers over the surface. It was too perfect, too even to be a natural formation. He took another step, and his other hand found a matching surface on the opposite side. It was a passageway. But not a tunnel carved by water or time.
These walls were hewn. Deliberately. By tools.
A surge of bewildered energy shot through him. He moved forward, his pace quickening. The passage was narrow and descended at a gentle slope. The air within felt different—drier, stiller, and immeasurably older. It carried a faint, dusty scent, like that of a tomb opened after centuries.
The darkness remained absolute, but as he progressed, a faint, ethereal light began to emanate from the walls themselves. It was a soft, phosphorescent glow coming from intricate veins of crystal embedded in the rock. They provided just enough illumination to see the astounding sight before him.
The walls of the passage were no longer plain stone. They were covered in murals. Vast, sprawling, breathtakingly detailed frescoes rendered in pigments that should have faded to dust millennia ago, yet they remained vibrant, preserved by the perfect stillness of the air.
Su Yang slowed, his breath catching in his throat. He reached out a trembling hand, but dared not touch the ancient art. The scenes depicted were beyond his comprehension. He saw towering figures clad in robes of stars, their faces serene and powerful, commanding celestial dragons and summoning storms with a gesture. He saw vast battles between armies wielding beams of light and energy, their techniques defying all laws of physics he knew. He saw diagrams of the human body, but overlayed with intricate networks of glowing lines and swirling vortexes that spoke of a profound, hidden energy within.
This was not the work of any civilization history recorded. This was something else. Something mythic. Something… other.
The passage ended, opening abruptly into a cavern so vast its edges were lost in shadow. The crystal-light from the passage bled into this space, illuminating its center in a soft, otherworldly radiance.
And there, in the very heart of the cavern, lay the source of the immense, silent pressure that filled the air.
It was a palace. Not a building, but a structure carved seamlessly from the living rock of the cavern itself. Its architecture was sublime, flowing and impossibly elegant, with sweeping arches and delicate spires that reached toward the unseen ceiling. It was small, intimate, yet every line of it spoke of an authority that was absolute and timeless.
Before this miniature palace, on a raised dais of flawless white jade, rested a coffin.
It was unlike any coffin Su Yang had ever seen or imagined. It was carved from a single block of crystal so pure it was nearly invisible, like captured air. Within its depths, faint swirls of gold and silver mist seemed to drift lazily, coiling and uncoiling in a slow, eternal dance. The surface of the crystal was flawless, untouched by even a single mote of dust. It looked as if it had been placed there mere moments ago, yet the sheer, staggering weight of antiquity that radiated from it was undeniable. It was ancient beyond comprehension, a relic from a time before time.
Su Yang stood frozen at the entrance to the grand cavern, his own petty tragedies and mortal fears utterly forgotten. He was in the presence of something sacred. Something immense.
He was shivering, soaked, starving, and lost in a lightless maze beneath a mountain. But as he stared at the crystal coffin, at the silent, sleeping power within, a single, impossible thought surfaced through the awe and terror.
He was not meant to die here.
He was meant to find this.