Arc 3 — A Sect Born from Nothing
Dawn over the newly claimed mountain was more gray than gold.
Lin Yuan stepped out of the Ruined Main Hall—if that heap of leaning walls and splintered beams still deserved such a name—with an uneasy sense of unreality. He had slept little the night before, not because of fear of the system, but because of the constant awareness that sometime between his humiliation in Stone Dry Village and the underground chamber beneath the mountain, his life had turned in a way that could no longer be undone.
The mountain air smelled of damp rock, wild grass, and old wood. There were no disciples. No banners. No protectors, elders, or spirit mounts. Only a poor mountain, an impossible system, and him.
And, of course, the old man.
Gu Tian sat on a flat stone near the entrance with a jug of cheap wine between his knees, as if he had lived there since before Lin Yuan was born. His clothes hung unevenly, his gray hair looked as though it had been hacked short with a knife, and his half-lidded eyes had the dull color of old metal. Even so, nothing about him fit the image of an ordinary drifter.
Lin Yuan stopped a few steps away.
"You're still here."
Gu Tian took another drink without bothering to lift his head.
"And so are you. Considering how badly you were shaking last night, that alone deserves congratulations."
Lin Yuan did not bother correcting him. He had not been shaking from cowardice, but from exhaustion and pain. Still, arguing with a drunken old man at dawn seemed like a waste of energy.
"You still haven't told me why you appeared on this mountain right after I founded the sect."
Gu Tian let out a nasal laugh.
"Founded a sect? Boy, I've seen chicken coops with more dignity."
Lin Yuan let the insult pass. Since obtaining the system, he had grown used to separating words meant only to provoke him from words that hid useful information.
"Even so, you know something about this place."
For the first time, Gu Tian truly raised his eyes. They were not clouded by wine. They were sharp. Unpleasantly clear.
"Of course I know something. Any blind fool with half a brain could tell this mountain was sealed long ago."
Lin Yuan frowned.
"Sealed?"
The old man pointed toward the ground with the neck of the jug.
"Spiritual energy doesn't flow naturally. The earth is tired, as if it had been squeezed dry and then buried under layers of stone. There are rocks here that don't belong to this region, broken lines beneath the moss, and remnants of a formation someone wanted hidden, not destroyed. That does not happen by accident."
A faint pressure stirred beneath Lin Yuan's chest. The medallion hanging under his robe remained still, but the system had referred to the mountain as suitable territory for an initial foundation. Gu Tian was confirming with his own methods that this place was far more than a poor hill.
"How do you know how to read all that?" Lin Yuan asked.
Gu Tian inhaled as if offended by the question.
"Because I was not always a drunk."
The answer was too simple to be real. Lin Yuan waited, but the old man added nothing. Instead, he rose slowly and walked to a broken pillar near the hall. He tapped the stone twice with his knuckles.
"Look at this."
Lin Yuan stepped closer. At the base of the pillar was a pattern nearly erased by time: three curved lines around an incomplete circle, worn down so badly that anyone from the village would have taken them for cracks.
"Do you recognize it?" Gu Tian asked.
Lin Yuan shook his head.
"No."
"That does you credit. Fools usually pretend they know."
The old man lowered the jug and crouched with a groan from old bones. He traced the outline of the mark on the stone.
"This was part of an anchor mark. Something belonged here: a formation hall, an altar, a defensive core... I can't say yet. But I do know that a worthless mountain does not carry wounds like these."
Lin Yuan said nothing.
He did not like admitting it, but he needed this old man.
Not as a master. Not as a savior. Not even as someone trustworthy. He needed him because, in a world where he had only just discovered that miracles and systems existed, Gu Tian was the first person who did not look at the mountain like a poor lunatic staring at ruins. He looked at it for what it was: the incomplete corpse of something important.
"Why are you staying?" Lin Yuan asked.
Gu Tian smiled crookedly.
"Because I want to see whether you're a lunatic, a genius, or a corpse with the bad habit of continuing to breathe."
"That isn't an answer."
"It's the only one you'll get today."
Lin Yuan looked at the ruined hall, the empty mountain, the cold sky.
If he drove the old man away, he would still be alone. If he accepted him, he would be bringing into his sect an alcoholic stranger with a venomous tongue and too many secrets.
It was not much of a choice.
But he had not been given much of a life.
"Then stay," he said at last. "For now."
Gu Tian lifted an eyebrow.
"Was that an invitation?"
"It was a wager."
The old man's smile became a little more real.
"Ah. That sounds better."
Lin Yuan turned toward the hall.
"Even if you know things about this place, the sect still has no food, not enough water, no resources, and no disciples. The system called me founder, not miracle worker."
Gu Tian followed him with slow steps.
"Good. Then stop looking at yourself like a man who received a blessing and start behaving like what you are."
Lin Yuan stopped cold.
"And what am I?"
Gu Tian looked him over from head to toe as if the answer were obvious.
"A man who has far too little to afford softness."
The wind crossed the mountain and carried the silence away between them.
Lin Yuan did not answer.
Because, uncomfortable as it was to admit, the old man had just spoken the truth.