The passage spat them out at dawn.
Cold air slammed into Shen Yuan's lungs as light pierced his vision. He staggered forward, boots scraping against loose gravel, and only when his palms touched real earth did he realize—
They were alive.
Behind them, the mountain stood unchanged.
No cracks.
No opened gate.
No sign it had ever swallowed anyone.
It rose into the clouds like a natural formation, serene and eternal, as though the horror beneath its skin had never existed.
The alchemist apprentice collapsed immediately, retching, eyes wide and unfocused. He laughed between heaves, a thin, broken sound.
"I didn't feel it," he muttered. "I didn't feel afraid at all…"
Zhou Kai stepped out last.
Or rather—what remained of him did.
He moved stiffly, like a puppet whose strings had been tangled. His gaze slid across the landscape without recognition, lips parting as if searching for a name he could no longer grasp.
A shout echoed.
"There! Someone came out!"
Figures rushed toward them from the foothills—Iron Current Sect enforcers, county guards, and independent cultivators who had lingered overnight, unwilling to leave yet too afraid to enter.
Their expressions twisted as they took in the survivors.
Only three.
Out of eleven.
"What happened inside?" an elder demanded, eyes blazing as his spiritual sense swept over them.
The alchemist flinched violently.
Zhou Kai said nothing.
The elder's gaze finally landed on Shen Yuan.
It lingered.
Longer than it should have.
"You," the elder said slowly. "Speak."
Shen Yuan lowered his head. "The ruin judged us."
A murmur rippled through the crowd.
Judgment-type ruins were rare.
And feared.
"Senior Zhou?" the elder pressed, turning sharply.
Zhou Kai blinked.
"Zhou…?" he repeated faintly, as if tasting the word. "Is that… me?"
The elder stiffened.
His spiritual sense surged again—then recoiled.
Zhou Kai's cultivation was shattered.
Not suppressed.
Erased.
The elder's face drained of color.
This was no longer a county-level matter.
"Seal the area," he snapped. "No one enters. No one leaves."
Too late.
A tremor passed through the ground—subtle, distant.
Not from the mountain.
From far beyond the eastern horizon.
Shen Yuan felt the shard burn again, sharp and warning.
He did not look back.
High above Blackwater County, hidden within drifting clouds, a mirror-array flickered to life.
An old man sat cross-legged before it, robes plain, face deeply lined. His eyes opened slowly as images formed on the surface—blurred silhouettes of the mountain, the survivors, the sealed ruins.
"A judgment ruin…" he murmured.
Behind him, another presence stirred.
"Impossible," a woman's voice said softly. "That mountain should not awaken for another era."
The old man's gaze narrowed—not on the mountain—
But on one indistinct figure among the survivors.
"A variable returned early," he said. "One without marks."
Silence followed.
Then, faintly—
A sound like stone grinding against stone.
Far beyond the clouds.
Beyond the plane.
Beyond the comprehension of those below.
Something adjusted.
Not in anger.
In interest.
Back on the ground, Shen Yuan slipped quietly into the dispersing chaos, keeping his head down, his presence small.
The mountain had let him go.
But the world had noticed.
And in the Vast Martial World—
Being noticed was often more dangerous than being weak.