When Qi Tian opened his eyes, the ever-burning lamp inside the cavern had already gone out.
It was not the wind that had extinguished it.
The lamp oil had simply run dry.
At the bottom of the bronze lamp, the wick lay curled and blackened, resembling a fragment of charred bone.
Qi Tian remembered filling that lamp before he entered seclusion.
The spiritual oil he had poured into it should have been enough to burn for a hundred years.
He had obtained it from the old servant who guarded the mountain. The old man had been reluctant to part with it, complaining for half a day that such a quantity was enough to keep a Golden Core cultivator's lamp burning for an entire century.
And now, it had finally gone dark.
Qi Tian did not immediately rise.
For cultivators, the moment of emerging from seclusion was one that required absolute composure. A single mistake while circulating true qi could cause the energy within one's body to deviate from its proper path. At best, the damage would be minor. At worst, one's entire cultivation foundation could collapse.
Remaining seated cross-legged, he first guided his qi through a complete cycle, slowly awakening the blood and energy that had lain dormant for far too long.
It felt as though countless tiny shards of ice were melting within his veins.
Numbness.
Itching.
Aching.
Swelling.
Four distinct sensations surged through his body in waves.
Qi Tian endured them silently, without moving a muscle.
Three more hours passed.
Only when warmth had fully returned to his body did he slowly open his eyes.
He reached toward the lamp beside him.
The instant his fingertip brushed the bronze surface—
Crack.
A faint sound echoed.
The entire lamp collapsed into dust.
Qi Tian froze.
Even a bronze lamp that had completely lost its spiritual properties should not have crumbled from a single touch.
Unless...
Unless it had remained inside this cavern for far too long.
So long that even the metal itself had surrendered to time.
So long that it had quietly decayed while the years passed by unnoticed.
For the first time since awakening, Qi Tian felt a trace of unease.
This cavern had been carved out by his own hands deep within Qingya Mountain.
There had only ever been one entrance.
Before entering seclusion, he had sealed it with a ten-thousand-jin boulder and placed a simple Spirit-Locking Formation upon it.
Now, he walked toward the stone gate and pushed.
Nothing happened.
He frowned and increased his strength.
Still, the stone did not move.
Qi Tian's expression darkened slightly.
He had spent years cultivating. Even if his cultivation had not advanced during his retreat, there was no reason he should have weakened to the point where he could not move a single stone.
He steadied his breathing, gripped the edge of the gate with five fingers, and sent true qi surging from his dantian.
Boom!
A deep rumble shook the cavern.
The massive stone, along with half of the surrounding mountain wall, collapsed outward.
Dust erupted into the air.
Qi Tian coughed as the cloud swept over him.
When the dust finally cleared, he stared at the opening before him.
What he had just pushed aside...
was not the boulder he had used to seal the entrance.
It was stone.
Natural stone.
Rock that had grown from the mountain itself, sealing the entire cavern entrance over countless years.
Dead vines were embedded within the cracks, their roots spreading through the stone like veins beneath flesh.
Qi Tian recognized them.
Cloud-Locking Vines.
They grew at an extremely slow pace. A single vine required at least three hundred years to grow as thick as an adult's arm.
Yet the vines before him...
Every single one was thicker than his thigh.
Qi Tian stood at the entrance of the cavern.
For a long time, he said nothing.
A mountain breeze drifted inside, carrying the scent of grass, trees, and damp earth.
He lifted his gaze.
Qingya Mountain was still Qingya Mountain.
But beneath it...
Where a small village had once stood, there was now a vast city he had never seen before.
Countless tiled rooftops stretched toward the horizon, layer upon layer, covering the land below.
Before he entered seclusion, there had been only seven households there.
Qi Tian remained seated at the cavern entrance throughout the night.
There was only one question he needed answered.
How long had he truly been in seclusion?
The answer was already beginning to reveal itself.
The lamp oil, which should have lasted a hundred years, had burned away completely.
The bronze lamp had decayed so thoroughly that a single touch reduced it to dust.
The Cloud-Locking Vines had grown thicker than his thigh. For even three of them to reach such a size, at least seven or eight centuries would have been required.
And beneath the mountain, the tiny village of seven households had become a sprawling city.
Every clue pointed toward a number Qi Tian did not want to acknowledge.
A number he had been avoiding since he first opened his eyes.
He cultivated the Essence-Returning True Origin Scripture.
The essence of the technique was to enter a state of absolute stillness—to forget the self, to extinguish all distracting thoughts, and to allow the mind to become as calm as a silent lake.
Back then, his cultivation had been stuck at the late stage of Foundation Establishment.
No matter how hard he tried, he had been unable to break through that final barrier.
In frustration, he had entered this cavern and decided to devote himself completely to cultivation.
He had thought he would spend three years here.
Perhaps five.
Once he comprehended the missing piece of his cultivation, he would leave.
He had never imagined that, in attempting to forget everything else...
he would forget time itself.
When dawn arrived, Qi Tian made his decision.
He would descend the mountain and find out what era this world had entered.
He rose to his feet and instinctively reached for his robes.
The moment his fingers touched the fabric—
The Daoist robe he had worn for countless years crumbled.
It did not tear.
It did not fall apart.
It simply turned to dust, scattering around his feet like ashes.
Qi Tian stood frozen in the mountain wind, completely exposed.
A faint flush of embarrassment touched his face.
His cultivation might have been extraordinary.
But at this moment, he did not even have a single piece of cloth to cover himself.
Qi Tian silently returned to the cavern.
After searching for a long while, he found an old stone chest where he had stored miscellaneous belongings before entering seclusion.
Inside was a piece of beast hide.
It had come from a Red-Spotted Jackal he had casually hunted behind Qingya Mountain before his retreat.
The creature had only been a second-rank demonic beast.
It was thick-skinned, fierce, and foolish enough to charge straight at him.
Qi Tian had not even bothered circulating his true qi.
A single slap had ended its life.
Afterward, he had skinned it and casually thrown the hide into the stone chest, thinking he might one day turn it into a cushion.
Then he entered seclusion...
and completely forgot about it.
The stone chest had long since decayed.
The pills, talismans, and storage pouch inside had all turned to dust.
Yet this piece of hide remained.
Qi Tian held it in his hand.
Through his fingertips, he could still sense a faint trace of demonic energy lingering beneath the surface.
That final trace of ferocity was what allowed it to survive.
Qi Tian stared at it for a moment.
Then he let out a quiet, helpless laugh.
A piece of hide from a second-rank beast had endured longer than all the treasures he had painstakingly collected.
He wrapped it around himself, roughly covering his body.
Other than this...
he had nothing left.
A late-stage Foundation Establishment cultivator had finally emerged from years of seclusion, carrying nothing but a piece of beast hide.
He did not even know how long he himself had existed.
Qi Tian gave a bitter smile.
It was the first time in countless years that the muscles on his face had moved.
For a moment, he wondered if even his expression had grown stiff from disuse.
The journey down Qingya Mountain took him three days.
Not because the distance was great.
Because he did not dare use movement techniques.
He did not dare recklessly circulate his true qi.
Deep inside, Qi Tian remained uncertain about the condition of his body.
What if time had already hollowed him out from within, leaving only a single breath keeping him alive?
What if releasing his true qi caused this fragile balance to collapse instantly?
So he walked carefully.
Like an old man taking his first steps.
On the afternoon of the third day, he finally arrived beneath the gates of the enormous city.
The city walls were astonishingly tall, built entirely from massive blocks of blue stone.
Above the entrance, two characters were carved into the gate beam, their surfaces gilded in gold.
Qi Tian looked up at them for a long while.
He recognized the characters.
But the style of writing was strangely unfamiliar.
The strokes were more intricate.
The structure was more rigid.
The script before him had already passed through several generations of change from the one he remembered.
"Zhen..."
"Yuan..."
"City."
He pronounced each character slowly.
Zhenyuan City.
He had never heard of this name before.