[Vol. 1] Chapter 16 - First Light on the Peak
Within the misty white fog… Crunch. The air stilled into silence. A beautiful blue aura mixed with the faded mist, spreading a chilling cold.
"Azure mist, ice condense!" came a young woman's voice.
Crack. Ice formed from the foot of the wailing beast, climbing rapidly to freeze its whole body. Swish—a sharp, clean streak of a sword immediately sliced through the Yao beast.
[Trial points: 36]
Chen Mingyuan stood before the frozen, bisected body of the Yao beast, sheathing her sword. Her braided dark brown hair was slightly dishevelled, with a few loose strands framing her face.
Her baby face, distinct jawline, and soft cheeks remained flawless, save for the thin, streaking cuts that marred them.
Her apricot eyes narrowed as she sized up the place. It was a ruined building, a medium-sized house, thoroughly dilapidated. Its walls were crumbled, the faded sigils of dragons barely visible beneath the grime.
"This must be the place…" she murmured. Exactly what the Wusheng Ying Sect member had described after her interrogation.
The soft pastel hues of her ruqun were stained with dirt, a stark contrast to the still, frozen environment. She took a step forward. Crunch.
Her foot had stepped on a twig. She paused and looked down. On the dirt was a dark, dried stain of blood. Beside it, scrawled in haste, was a message written in an unfamiliar script.
Curious, she crouched down, her lithe form bending to examine the writing more closely.
"충전 포인트 낭비 금지.
안정적인 세이브 포인트 유지 기간은 1개월.
그 이후엔 로딩 비용이 더 듦.
지금부터 1개월 후, 이 포인트로 로드할 거야.
너는 허락해야 해.
메인 플롯 이탈 금지.
살아남아."
Her apricot eyes blinked slowly, tracing the angular, foreign characters. The strokes were deliberate, yet frantic.
This was no script from the Central Plains, not even the obscure sigils of the southern border tribes resembled these clean, blocky forms.
Some kind of cipher? A secret code of a rival sect?
Her finger hovered just above the dried blood, then the script. A few characters bore a passing, ghostly resemblance to simplified radicals: one looked like a hollowed-out 门 (mén, gate), another like a tilted 口 (kǒu, mouth) with extra lines.
But they were assembled all wrong, like a child's clumsy attempt at carving known components into nonsense.
She frowned. This was not part of the Wusheng Ying's intelligence. A cultivation senior's final testament? Or something else entirely?
Committing the strange shapes to memory, Chen Mingyuan rose, her gaze sweeping the ruined house with new wariness. The message was a puzzle, and in these trials, puzzles were rarely left behind by accident.
Those words were of modern Korean script, the same message written by Xiaolan, but to Chen Mingyuan it was just symbols.
Her hand went instinctively to her side, feeling over the folds of her ruqun and the hidden pockets within, searching for the cool metal of her spatial ring...only to remember with a flicker of frustration that she hadn't brought it along.
Clan rules for the trials forbade external storage; everything had to be carried or foraged. She couldn't record the piece exactly.
"I'll just come back after…" she murmured to the silent ruins, making a mental note of the location. The frozen beast, the blood, the cryptic script...it was a scene that demanded later study.
Maybe it's a cultivation piece, she thought. Some lost, esoteric mantra or a forbidden sealing array written in a corrupted script. The disciplined structure of the symbols suggested intent, not random scrawling.
***
Rustle.
The sound of silk brushing against leaves. Xiaolan's eyes fluttered open to a haze of weakness, her entire body a landscape of dull ache.
She pushed herself up slowly, taking in the familiar sight: the view from outside the fog, atop the North Mountain Peak with its clusters of trees.
Disqualified participants were scattered around like aftermath. Some spoke in hushed clusters, others sat in stiff, solitary silence. A few lamented openly, while others radiated a quiet, seething fury.
Her gaze swept over the faces. There was Lin Zheng, still deep in conversation with his cronies and, for now, still oblivious to her.
And there was Wenhui, mingling with another group, his demeanor as ingratiating as ever as he tried to carve a space for himself.
But then her eyes caught, and her breath stilled.
Both of Wenhui's hands were there...intact, unharmed, gesturing animatedly as he spoke.
Not severed at all.
Xiaolan stared, utterly dumbfounded.
The sun broke through a sky scattered with the last of the morning dew, its light dappling through the leaves of the tall trees. Xiaolan was still trapped in her daze when a soft chime from her system snapped her back.
[Charge points +1]
[Current charge points: 101]
Only then did she realize—it was the next day.
A loud, resounding bell echoed across the grounds, its deep tone rolling over the mountain peak to signal the definitive end of the fog trials.
Bai Yu stood unwavering, his gaze fixed on the curling edge of the mist, a sentinel awaiting the return of the remaining participants.
Within the fog…
Chen Mingyuan's ears pricked at the sound. In an instant, she was gone, leaving only a fading afterimage. Using qinggong, she became a flash of motion between the trees, swift and silent.
Elsewhere…
Taka stood with arms crossed before three trembling, giant insect-beasts. At the bell's call, he glanced over his broad shoulder.
The tone echoed once, seeming to emanate from all directions, a disorienting summons that left many confused.
Not far away, Lin Eishou stood rigid, his face pale.
The woman Lin Yorou, the female Alpha and teammate to both, spoke quietly. "Let's go."
"I know that," Taka grunted, turning his back on the cowering beasts.
Similar scenes fractured across the fog. Some participants remained frozen, disoriented. Others now moved with frantic urgency, scrambling to find the exit before the mist sealed its doors for good.
Some of the lucky ones, Chen Mingyuan and Taka's group among them, emerged from the thinning fog. None were unscathed.
Each bore the fresh marks of battle: dirt-stained robes, newly bandaged wounds, and the profound weariness of those pushed to their absolute limit.
The sight embodied the battle-hardened ideal of Alphas. Some nursed severed limbs; they groaned and winced through gritted teeth, but none displayed the raw panic of an ordinary person confronted with such injury.
Shadow Guards swept forward in a whisper of coordinated motion, each seeming to glide toward a specific participant.
Xiaolan watched, transfixed, as one guard produced a circular brown pill the size of a palm. Her eyes widened as an Alpha cultivator tipped their head back and swallowed the bone-rejuvenating pill whole.
Then, a miracle...or a horror unfolded.
From the stump of the cultivator's severed limb, something began to reform. Not merely emerge, but be repaired from the inside out: bone extending first, then muscle and flesh weaving over it in an agonizingly slow, visible layering.
The process was excruciating; the cultivator's face contorted into a silent scream of agony.
Though miraculous, the visceral reality of it struck Xiaolan with nauseating force. To feel every nerve and strand of tissue slowly knitting itself back together… She shuddered, the visual alone twisting something deep in her gut.
"Miss Xiaolan."
At some point, Bai Yu had crouched beside her. He spoke with the poised composure of a head butler, his muted blue-gray hair tousled by the mountain breeze as he studied her profile.
Xiaolan's body jolted in a flinch, she hadn't had time to even gasp. She hadn't seen him move; he had simply manifested. Or had she been that lost in thought? "You scared me," she breathed out.
Bai Yu maintained his courteous, inscrutable smile. "I believe you have noticed, but I shall reiterate: every participant here is a prospective heir. Each is assigned a personal Shadow Guard."
"So, you're…" Xiaolan whispered, the words sticking in her throat.
Bai Yu inclined his head in a slight, confirming nod. "Indeed, Miss Xiaolan. I will be responsible for you from this point onward. Though I introduced myself as an instructor earlier…"
Xiaolan's whole body stiffened. Bai Yu… is my Shadow Guard? Then what about Lin Xiao? That was a mystery for later. But for now—
Grumble.
Bai Yu's head tilted a fraction, mentally noting that his young miss had not yet reached the Bigu stage, where spiritual refinement transcended mortal needs like hunger.
Though the sound was soft, a few nearby glances found her, painting her cheeks a bright, scorching red.
"Miss Xiaolan, you will need to descend the mountain yourself. The trial grounds are now closed," Bai Yu stated, his tone gentle but final. "You earned exactly 30 points before being disqualified on the second day, late afternoon."
Finished? Xiaolan blinked. Disqualified… on the second day… a hair's breadth from the end. A wave of bitter despair washed over her features.
But then, almost as quickly, her expression softened into relief...relief that the exhausting trial was finally over, and a quiet excitement at the prospect of freedom.
A feeling of anticipation welled up inside her, especially at the thought of seeing this world with her own eyes.
A line of maidservants, all senior and clad in identical, intricate dark green robes, ascended the final stretch from the foot of the mountain to the peak.
In unison, they bowed. "Young masters," their voices chimed as one, "please follow us."
They divided with practiced efficiency into two streams. One group began leading the young masters and misses down the mountain, while the other remained to wait for those still emerging from the fog.
Xiaolan fell into step unsteadily behind an assigned maidservant. Her gaze drifted away from the path, caught by the sun now fully risen, its light shimmering across the peaks like a promise...the first gleam of her new life.
It was early morning. Fresh, cool air, rich and invigorating, flowed through the mountain pass. The path beneath her feet was natural stone, worn smooth by the passage of countless others before her.
Her breath caught. This is natural spiritual air, she realized, utterly untainted by modern industry and pollution. So absorbed was she in the sensation that her pace slowed to a crawl, until—
A solid body bumped into her from behind which caused her to stumble forward a step. And the participant, a tall youth with a sharp glare, scowled at her.
He released a burst of musky Alpha pheromones, an instinctive, aggressive reaction. The scent clashed immediately with the ambient air, drawing displeased looks from others nearby.
Alpha pheromones naturally repelled one another, a biological assertion of dominance that bred instant discomfort.
"Sorry," Xiaolan blurted out instinctively, before she could think. Weird, why do I feel hot all over?
Her apology hung in the air, making her an immediate outlier. A prospective Alpha heir… apologizing? Murmurs flickered around her.
They walked on, passing under successive paifang gates that marked spiritual thresholds.
With each step, the wild, untamed beauty of the mountain seamlessly gave way to signs of human order: first small, secluded courtyards, then tiered compounds built ingeniously into the mountainside, ascending like steps toward the heavens.
###
TIMELINE RECAP
DAY 1 – March 15, 0907 (Chapters 3 – 11)
· Encounter with Wenhui.
· Hunt by Chen Mingyuan & the "honey trap."
· Arrival of Lin Zheng's group.
· Discovery of Lu Family ruins & Jade Slip.
· Attack by Wusheng Yin Sect assassins.
· First rescue by Feng Yue (masked).
· Shaky alliance with Mingyuan, her drugging attempt.
(End of Chapter 11: System grants +1 daily Charge Point, confirming transition to Day 2)
DAY 2 – March 16, 0907 (Chapters 12 – 15)
· Coughs out the drug, receives +50 Timeline Stability bonus (6 hours passed without using save/load).
· Lin Zheng fight, headbutt victory, Feng Yue's psychological test.
· Gains 25 trial points (total: 30).
· Ambushed and defeated by Lin Eishou's group. Talisman ripped.
· DISQUALIFIED – teleported out of fog in the second day just in time for the third day to come. Xiaolan was unconscious.
DAY 3 – March 17, 0907 (TRIAL END) (Chapter 16)
· Chen Mingyuan's discovery of the Korean message.
· Emergence from the fog.
· Wenhui's severed hand is restored.
· Witnesses the rejuvenating bone pill.
· Descending the North Mountain Peak of the Lin family.