From the perspective of Zhuge Su Yeon
There were no walls that delimited the Winter Forest.
It had no gates, nor official borders. A single misstep, a careless trail, and one was already inside it. That sea of white pines accepted anyone who dared to cross its threshold — only to then swallow them in silence.
And yet, men invented entry points.
Among the most stubborn villages, one in particular had become more than a cluster of houses: a refuge of stories.
A tavern, built of thick wood and constant smoke, rose there like a lighthouse for fools. Hunters with wind-scarred faces, underpaid mercenaries, and even some disciples from lesser sects gathered inside. Some to drown fear before the hunt, others to vomit boasts after returning alive.
It was the perfect place for a protagonist to overhear, by chance, about a lost map, a sealed cave, or the corpse of an ancient beast guarding treasure.
A trigger point for narrative.
The stage of "predestined coincidence."
That was why I went there.
The door creaked under my hand, and the smell of cheap alcohol mixed with greasy meat came to greet me. Crowded tables, shouts of false victories in dice games, and a drunk here or there trying to convince the next table that he had seen a beast the size of a mountain.
I sat in a corner.
I did not order anything elaborate — just meat, of origin as questionable as the cook's health. I chewed slowly, letting the environment reveal itself on its own.
I waited.
A full thirty minutes.
The conversations around me were nothing but nonsense.
Disputes over bets, arguments about who owed coins to whom, laments from hunters who had lost fingers to ice wolves. No mysterious map slid to my table, no old drunk muttered about forgotten treasure.
I sighed.
Of course. That script only worked for protagonists.
I wiped my fingers on the rough cloth that passed for a towel, left a single silver coin on the table — enough for the meal and to buy the innkeeper's silence — and stood up.
In the next instant, my presence faded like smoke.
The chair rocked on its own until still.
The coin remained, solitary, reflecting the flickering torchlight.
I was already gone.
The truth was simple: this world was not comfortable.
Earth, with its unbearably noisy technology, offered more distractions than real dangers. Here, on the other hand, everything boiled down to the old rule — the strong devour the weak, and still spit out the bones to make clear who rules.
But it would be a lie to claim there were no attractions.
The promise of immortality, for example, would already be enough to make any mortal from Earth abandon the comfort of electricity and hospitals.
And there was another gift, more immediate, almost childish in its allure: the ability to fly.
To walk in the air, to glide above the clouds, to turn the sky into a personal road — no matter how each cultivator described it, the fact remained. Only those who reached the Fourth Great Realm, the Golden Core, had the right to such luxury.
I had reached it.
And, ironically, had not yet tasted the privilege.
Within the walls of the Zhuge Clan, keeping a discreet profile required restraint. To leap across the skies right after crushing an elder of the Dark Sun Sect would have been nothing less than shouting, "look at me, I'm a walking golden target." But here, in the wilderness of the Winter Forest, far from the petty gazes of Grey Sky City, there was no reason to hesitate.
I took a deep breath.
Let Qi flow through the meridians, sustaining each invisible thread as if stretching cords toward the heavens. The body lifted gently, detaching itself from gravity as though it were just a habit I had forgotten to practice.
And then, the ground disappeared beneath my feet.
Flight.
Not like the fantastical stories of Earth, with airplanes and rockets spitting fire. No.
This was absolute silence.
My steps touched the air as if it were solid stone, and with each soft impulse I climbed higher.
Soon, the white and green carpet of the forest unfolded before me.
Pines laden with snow, deep valleys between dark mountains, frozen rivers snaking like silver blades.
A landscape that could probably only be appreciated by those with power enough to leave the ground.
There were no roads. No village smoke. Only the world in its brutal expanse, as if painted for the eyes of gods.
I allowed myself to linger there for a few moments.
Beauty, rare as it was, held value even for a cynic like me.
The sky opened, the forest seemed infinite, and for a brief second I thought that, if the author of this story truly wished to impress, he would have been content to leave the narrative as it was: a man, the wind, and silence.
But of course… that was not the case.
The sound came like a blade tearing through the air.
A scream.
Feminine.
And not the kind that escapes from fleeting fear. It was the raw timbre of despair, repeated in irregular cadence — the plea of someone who had already accepted death and still insisted on asking for help.
My body did not move.
Not immediately.
Why should it?
The heavens do not reward hasty spectators.
I closed my eyes for an instant and let my spiritual sense expand.
Qi spilled from my body like clear water, crossing the frosted canopies of the pines, gliding through valleys, penetrating snow and wind.
I did not need to descend.
I did not even need to turn my head.
The whole world revealed itself, piece by piece, before my feet decided the next step.
Thus, the screams were no longer mere sound.
They were coordinates.
A vibrating line on the invisible map of my spiritual sense.
And calmly, I began to observe the scene that fate — or the lazy author — insisted on placing before me.
At a distance, my senses captured the spectacle.
A young woman ran, her robe torn in places calculated to suggest fragility and stir base desires. Her screams dragged through the air, begging for help as if reciting a memorized play. The curious detail, however, was not in her voice, but in her essence: her cultivation had already reached the Spiritual Refinement stage.
Her pursuer?
A mere level 1 beast — equivalent to a human at Body Refinement.
The discrepancy was so glaring it almost insulted intelligence.
And, as expected, the scene did not end there.
Eight men watched from afar, patiently, like hunters setting a net and waiting for the fish to leap. It was the sort of farce any protagonist would recognize too late, only after killing the beast, saving the beauty… and finding blades at his throat.
A classic.
The cliché of clichés.
A dry smile escaped my lips. The author was, indeed, recycling chapters from old manuals.
I was already turning to leave the scene when another detail disrupted the frame.
Three cultivators came running down the snowy trail. Their robes bore a symbol I did not recognize — likely from some minor sect subordinate to the Seven Greats. Two had already reached Spiritual Refinement; the third, still in Body Refinement. Young, impetuous, and, of course, full of goodwill.
I sighed.
That was the problem with clichés: they actually worked.
The scene unfolded like an old film before my eyes.
With a single strike, the pursuer — the pathetic beast — fell dead.
The girl, now "saved," distributed thanks as false as the painted smile on her lips. Just a few seconds of distraction, and her accomplices leapt from the shadows, blades gleaming, surrounding the three youths.
I sighed again.
After a few moments of reflection, I released a wave of Qi.
Simple, contained, nothing more than necessary.
Six of the men collapsed to the ground, unconscious before they even understood what struck them. Only three remained standing — enough to balance the fight into a fair confrontation, three against three.
I could have erased them all.
I could also have ignored it completely, allowing the youths to pay the price of their own naivety with blood.
But for a moment, I thought of my brother Yu Jin — that little protagonist forged by the brutality of fate. If even he needed chances to grow, why not grant these three the same privilege of learning?
The fight now belonged to them.
Victory or death would be written by their own hands, not by mine.
With that, I turned away, slowly distancing myself.
The Winter Forest opened ahead of me, vast, wild, filled with mountains and secrets. I had a map to draw; I could not waste time resolving every disposable plotline destiny insisted on staging.
And so, leaving behind the shouts of effort, the clash of blades, and the eternal play of the "hero saving the damsel," I plunged deeper into the frozen wilderness.
After all, it was not my role to star in every farce.