The mountain's exterior arrived around him all at once.
Not gradually, not the transition of moving from an enclosed space to an open one, but immediate, the absence-threshold delivering him to the outside of the mountain at the Third Gate's altitude in the same way the First Gate's opening had delivered him to the interior stairway. One step inside, the next step outside.
The altitude was significant.
He was high enough on the mountain that Tianyuan Star's landscape was visible at a scale that required distance to appreciate. The Zhao Family estate far below, its cultivated order reduced to a pattern of rooflines and stone paths. The eastern forest beyond it, the deep zone's boundary identifiable as a change in the forest's character visible even at this height. Further, the mountain range that Tianyuan Star's two ruling families divided between them, the visible demarcation between western and eastern hemispheres a change in terrain quality that the distance made abstract.
