The assignment arrived without ceremony.
A wooden slip lay on Shen Yuan's stone bed when he returned before dawn—no seal, no signature. Just ink pressed deep into cheap grain-paper.
Outer Task Directive
Destination: Eastern Ruin Belt – Fragment Seventeen
Objective: Resource verification & perimeter clearing
Personnel: Tier Three Provisionals (12)
Escort: None
Casualty Tolerance: Acceptable
Shen Yuan folded the slip once.
Acceptable.
That word meant something different outside the mountain.
The Lower Courtyard buzzed as provisionals gathered. Some whispered excitedly—first chance at real gain. Others wore expressions too tight to be confidence.
Twelve names were called.
Two did not answer.
No explanation was given.
A gate opened at the mountain's edge, carved with half-erased sigils. Beyond it lay a jagged valley where mist clung low and the ground bore scars too old to remember their cause.
The Eastern Ruin Belt.
They were given three hours.
No formations.
No elders.
No guarantees.
A senior outer disciple delivered the final instruction, bored.
"Bring back cores or relic fragments if you find them. If you don't return—your name will be handled."
Handled.
The gate sealed behind them.
Silence followed.
Then someone laughed nervously.
A short, broad youth clapped his hands. "Alright, let's not panic. Stick together, clear the perimeter, split gains evenly."
No one objected.
That was mistake number one.
They moved deeper.
The ruins were not buildings—not really. Just shapes in the stone that hinted at walls, at purpose. Broken pillars half-swallowed by earth. Murals scratched raw by time.
Shen Yuan kept to the back.
He watched.
Listened.
Counted footsteps.
The first monster appeared without drama.
A grey-furred crawler burst from a crevice, six legs moving wrong, mandibles clicking.
Low-tier.
The group surged forward together.
Too fast.
Too eager.
They killed it quickly.
Too quickly.
The ground shifted.
Shen Yuan felt it a heartbeat before it happened.
"Back—" he started.
The earth collapsed.
Two provisionals vanished into the sinkhole screaming.
The hole closed behind them.
Silence.
Dust settled.
Someone began to sob.
Mistake number two: assuming monsters were the threat.
They pressed on—slower now.
Tension thickened.
At the edge of a broken plaza, they found it.
A mural fragment.
Half-buried.
Symbols etched deep, pulsing faintly.
Several eyes lit up.
"Technique inheritance?" someone whispered.
The broad youth stepped forward. "We report this. Together."
No one moved.
Greed did not roar.
It leaned.
A thin boy lunged for the fragment.
The mural flared.
Light exploded.
The boy screamed as symbols burned into his skin—then went dark.
Dead.
No body.
Just ash.
Shen Yuan stared at the mural.
The shard reacted violently—heat, pressure, a scream without sound.
Not for you.
Not yet.
He stepped back.
That saved him.
The ground trembled again.
This time, it did not stop.
From beneath the plaza, something rose.
Not a beast.
A plant.
Roots like bones tore through stone. A trunk twisted with faces frozen mid-scream. Leaves sharp as blades unfurled slowly.
A sentient ruin-plant.
Tier above their pay.
Someone ran.
Someone tripped.
Someone was pulled screaming into the roots.
The group broke.
Shen Yuan ran—but not away.
Sideways.
Toward a collapsed arch where the ground dipped sharply.
The shard burned.
Jump.
He did.
The plant's roots tore past him, missing by inches.
He rolled, cracked his shoulder, kept moving.
By the time he crawled into a narrow fissure and forced himself still, the sounds above had changed.
Chewing.
Cracking.
Then… nothing.
Hours passed.
When Shen Yuan emerged, the plaza was empty.
No mural.
No bodies.
Just disturbed earth—and one thing left behind.
A single wooden token.
Cracked.
He picked it up.
Recognized the name.
One of the two who never answered roll call.
Shen Yuan closed his fingers around it.
Twelve went in.
Three came out.
When the gate opened again, no one asked what happened.
Names were recorded.
Some cracked.
Some erased.
Shen Yuan's did neither.
It was underlined.
That night, back in the dormitory, he finally shook.
Not from fear.
From understanding.
The academy did not send them to gain resources.
It sent them to reduce surplus.
Far above, in a hall sealed by time, an old god-thing shifted in its sleep.
And whispered a name it should not remember.
"Yuan…"