No one spoke.
The chamber smelled of iron and rot, though the blood had already dried into the stone as if it had never truly existed. The broken altar stood whole again—uncracked, unstained—mocking the survivors with its pristine silence.
Zhou Kai lay curled on his side.
Not unconscious.
Not dead.
Awake enough to understand what he had lost.
Shen Yuan did not approach him.
He remained near the right side of the chamber, breathing slowly, listening—not to sound, but to the absence of it. The ruin was no longer hostile.
Which meant it was deciding.
One of the Iron Current disciples finally broke the silence. "S-Senior Zhou… should we… should we leave?"
Zhou Kai laughed.
The sound was wrong—thin, cracked, stripped of authority.
"Leave?" he rasped. "Did you see an exit?"
The disciple turned pale.
They hadn't come through a door.
They had come through a threshold.
Shen Yuan followed the disciple's gaze and felt his stomach sink.
The archway behind them was gone.
In its place stood a seamless wall of stone etched with faint carvings—figures kneeling, crawling, bowing so deeply their spines bent unnaturally.
The ruin had sealed.
A soft grinding sound echoed.
The altar shifted aside, revealing a narrow passage descending further into the mountain.
Darkness pooled within it like liquid shadow.
"This is madness," one of the independents whispered. "This ruin… it's alive."
Shen Yuan did not disagree.
But it was not alive in the way beasts or cultivators were.
It was aware.
And awareness meant memory.
As they hesitated, the murals along the chamber walls began to change.
Slowly.
Subtly.
Shen Yuan noticed first.
A carved figure's face—once eroded and indistinct—began to sharpen. Lines deepened. Features emerged.
It was the mercenary who had fallen into the pit.
Another mural shifted.
The Iron Current disciple who had been impaled.
A third—
Zhou Kai.
The carving showed him standing tall, arrogant, blade raised.
Then, frame by frame, the mural depicted his fall—roots piercing his body, his aura leaking away like smoke.
Shen Yuan's scalp tingled.
"This place records us," he said quietly.
All eyes turned to him.
The words felt dangerous the moment they left his mouth.
"What do you mean?" one of the survivors asked.
Shen Yuan chose his words carefully. "It doesn't just judge strength. It remembers responses."
Zhou Kai dragged himself upright, leaning against the wall. His face was gray, sweat-soaked. "Then what did it remember of you?"
Shen Yuan met his gaze.
Nothing.
No mural depicted him clearly.
His outline remained faint, unfinished—as if the ruin had not yet decided how to record him.
That terrified him more than anything else.
The passage pulsed.
A low hum reverberated through the stone, resonating in their bones.
An invitation.
Or a command.
"We move," Zhou Kai said hoarsely. "Staying is death."
No one argued.
They entered the passage one by one.
As Shen Yuan stepped into the darkness, the shard burned again—briefly, sharply.
This time, the vision was different.
Not death.
Not failure.
A corridor of murals, stretching endlessly.
Each mural showed a different world.
Humans kneeling beneath alien skies.
Forests walking like armies.
Stone-bodied beings carving symbols into planets.
At the center of every mural—
A mountain.
Always the mountain.
The vision ended as abruptly as it began.
Shen Yuan stumbled, catching himself against the wall.
The stone was warm.
Not from heat.
From use.
This passage had been walked before.
Many times.
"Do you hear that?" one of the survivors whispered.
Shen Yuan listened.
At first—nothing.
Then, faintly—
Footsteps.
Not ahead.
Not behind.
Beside them.
As if something walked parallel, separated only by a thin layer of stone.
The walls trembled.
A voice brushed against their minds.
Not speech.
An impression.
Progress requires loss.
One of the independents screamed and bolted forward.
The passage constricted instantly.
Stone flowed like wax, swallowing him mid-stride. His scream cut off as his body fused into the wall, face frozen in terror.
The murals beside them updated.
A new figure appeared.
Shen Yuan did not flinch.
He understood now.
This ruin did not reward courage.
It rewarded comprehension.
The passage widened again.
They continued.
Far above, beyond layers of stone and time, the mountain breathed—slow, patient, eternal.
And in a place not bound by this world's laws, something with a body like carved stone and eyes like collapsed stars paused.
It turned its gaze—not to Zhou Kai, not to the dead—
But to the faint, unfinished outline within the murals.
To the one the ruin had not yet named.