The mountain should not have been there.
Everyone in Blackwater County knew this.
Three days ago, the eastern horizon had been flat—fields, broken forests, and the low hills where feral beasts nested. On the fourth dawn, the sky cracked open with thunder that did not belong to the weather, and when the clouds withdrew, a mountain stood where nothing had been before.
Not a hill.
A mountain.
It pierced the clouds like a blade driven into the world.
No birds flew near it. No beast approached. Even the wind bent away, as if unwilling to brush against its slopes.
The elders said nothing.
That silence was what terrified Shen Yuan the most.
He stood at the edge of the crowd gathered outside the county walls, his back pressed against cold stone, fingers numb despite the heat. At sixteen, his body was thin, his cultivation barely at the second stage of Body Tempering—a level so low it was considered laughable even among outer disciples of minor sects.
Yet he had survived longer than many stronger than him.
Not through talent.
Through caution.
"Ruins," someone whispered.
The word passed through the crowd like rot through flesh.
Ruins meant opportunity. They also meant death.
Shen Yuan's eyes narrowed as he stared at the mountain. Its surface was wrong—too smooth in some places, jagged in others, as if something had clawed its way out from beneath the earth. Faint lines glimmered across its lower slopes, half-buried beneath stone and ash.
Murals.
He swallowed.
Murals did not belong to this era.
They were remnants of civilizations that had failed—worlds that had climbed too high and been crushed when something higher noticed them.
"County Lord is sending scouts," a guard announced, his voice strained. "Any independent cultivator who enters without permission will be treated as a criminal."
The words were meaningless.
By nightfall, people would sneak in anyway.
They always did.
Power was worth more than life in the Vast Martial World.
Shen Yuan turned away before the crowd surged forward. He did not need to see more. The mountain had already etched itself into his mind—its presence heavy, oppressive, like a hand resting on the back of his neck.
He moved through the narrow alleys of Blackwater County, past broken roofs and drying bloodstains that never fully washed away. This was not a peaceful land. Monsters prowled the outskirts. Sects demanded tribute. Cultivators fought and killed over scraps of inheritance.
And yet, compared to what that mountain promised…
This was safety.
He reached a dilapidated courtyard hidden behind a collapsed grain store. The door hung crooked, the wood dark with age. Shen Yuan slipped inside and barred it behind him, exhaling only when the latch settled.
The room was bare.
A straw mat. A chipped bowl. A short blade with a nicked edge.
And beneath the loose stone in the corner—
the thing that had kept him alive.
Shen Yuan knelt, lifted the stone, and drew out a shard no larger than his palm.
It looked like broken glass, translucent and colorless, yet light bent strangely around it, as if it refused to fully exist in this world.
He had found it a year ago, lodged inside the skull of a corpse half-devoured by beasts. No one else had noticed it. No one else could.
The shard was invisible to everyone but him.
He did not know why.
He only knew what it did.
When he touched it, fragments of memory surfaced—
not his own.
Scenes of failure.
Cultivators torn apart mid-breakthrough.
Sect masters kneeling in despair.
Cities reduced to dust beneath incomprehensible forces.
No techniques.
No guidance.
Only endings.
At first, the visions had driven him to vomit and fever. Later, he learned to endure them. To study them. To recognize patterns.
People who rushed died first.
People who trusted miracles died screaming.
People who survived were those who withdrew, waited, and accepted humiliation.
Shen Yuan closed his fingers around the shard.
It trembled.
For the first time since he had obtained it, the shard reacted without his prompting.
A cold sensation crept up his arm, not painful—alerting.
Warning.
His breath slowed.
The mountain.
He did not need to ask. The shard responded only to events tied to catastrophic convergence—places where layers of the world overlapped.
This ruin was not meant for Blackwater County.
It was too early.
Too high.
A knock struck the door.
Shen Yuan's hand went to the blade.
"Open up," a familiar voice said, rough and impatient. "County Lord's summons."
He hesitated.
Summons meant obligation. Refusal meant punishment.
He concealed the shard, replaced the stone, and opened the door.
Two men stood outside—cultivators in gray armor bearing the mark of the Iron Current Sect, a third-rate sect that ruled Blackwater in all but name.
Between them stood Zhou Kai.
A genius.
At least by county standards.
Zhou Kai was seventeen, already at Meridian Forging, his aura sharp and oppressive. His eyes flicked over Shen Yuan with thinly veiled disdain.
"So it's you," Zhou Kai said. "Still alive."
Shen Yuan lowered his gaze. "Barely."
A lie.
But a useful one.
"We're forming an exploration team," Zhou Kai continued. "Outer disciples. Independent cultivators. You're coming."
Shen Yuan's pulse quickened—but his face remained blank.
"I'm weak," he said simply. "I'll slow you down."
Zhou Kai smiled.
"That's fine. Weak people are good for testing arrays."
The Iron Current disciples laughed.
Shen Yuan bowed his head.
Inside, his mind raced.
The shard had warned him.
This ruin was not an opportunity—it was a filter.
The mountain did not care about geniuses or sect backgrounds.
It cared only about whether one was meant to advance.
And most were not.
"Prepare," Zhou Kai said. "We move before dawn."
As they turned to leave, Shen Yuan spoke quietly.
"Senior Zhou."
Zhou Kai paused, irritated. "What?"
"Will the County Lord enter as well?"
For a heartbeat, Zhou Kai's smile stiffened.
"No."
That was all Shen Yuan needed to hear.
True treasures did not allow rulers to stay behind.
This was not a ruin meant to be harvested.
It was a door.
And doors opened both ways.
That night, Shen Yuan did not sleep.
He sat cross-legged on the mat, breathing slowly, stabilizing his weak cultivation. Outside, the sky darkened unnaturally early, clouds spiraling around the mountain's peak like a vortex.
At midnight, the shard burned cold against his chest.
A vision surged into his mind.
A mural—vast and ancient.
Three figures stood beneath a shattered sky:
A human drenched in blood.
A towering beast crowned in roots and bone.
A figure with a body like stone and eyes like stars.
Above them loomed a shadow that could not be defined.
Below the mural were words, cracked and incomplete:
"…when the mountain appears, the small will be judged first."
Shen Yuan opened his eyes.
His hands were shaking.
For the first time since obtaining the shard, he smiled—not with excitement, but with grim clarity.
He was small.
A grain of sand.
And grains of sand, if patient enough, survived avalanches.
Outside, the mountain breathed.
And the Vast Martial World, indifferent and immense, turned one fraction of its gaze toward Blackwater County.