Xiao Yan was alive.
He established this fact by pressing two fingers to his neck and counting. Pulse present. Irregular, but present. The ground under him was cold stone, the air smelled like pine and altitude, and somewhere below the clouds — very far below — he could make out the shape of what might have been a city or might have been a fever dream.
He was on a mountain. A very tall mountain. The kind that people named things after and then stayed away from.
"Seraphin."
[Balance Breaker System — Active. Seraphim Mod. How can I assist my master?]
"Don't 'how can I assist' me." Xiao Yan sat up slowly, ribs arguing about it. "You pulled me out of my own palace in the middle of my own revenge and dropped me on a mountain peak. Explain yourself."
[I saved your life. Your vitality was at one percent. One. You were approximately four seconds from Long Haoran decorating the palace steps with your face.]
"I had a plan."
[You had a shield from a newbie pack and an expression. That is not a plan.]
Xiao Yan opened his mouth. Closed it. The system had a point, which he found deeply irritating.
He looked around properly for the first time. The peak stretched in every direction — white stone, sparse trees bent sideways by wind that had been doing that to them for decades, and a drop on three sides that his stomach immediately and strongly objected to. The sky was the specific shade of blue that only existed at altitudes where the air thinned out and stopped being fully cooperative.
It was, objectively, beautiful.
It was also completely terrible.
"Seraphin. Where exactly are we?"
[The Nansha Empire. Southern range. Specifically — the Gaoyan Peaks, which are the highest mountains on the Cangyuan Continent and home to a significant population of demon-type beasts ranging from Mid-Heaven to Immortal grade. You are currently at the summit.]
"The highest mountains on the continent."
[Correct.]
"You sent me to the highest mountains on the continent."
[The teleportation array had some variance in the exit coordinates. It happens.]
"It happens," Xiao Yan repeated. He looked at the drop on his left. He looked at the drop on his right. He looked at the drop directly in front of him. "Seraphin, I want you to know something. When I get my power back — and I will get my power back — the first thing I'm going to do is figure out if I can hit a system. And then I'm going to find out."
[Noted. In the meantime, if you get down the mountain and reach populated territory, I'll release the remaining newbie packs. There's something in there you'll want.]
"What kind of something?"
[The kind that makes your current situation significantly less pathetic. Now move. Daylight is finite and you are currently at one percent vitality on a mountain full of things that would genuinely enjoy eating you.]
Xiao Yan stood, checked that his legs were functional, and started picking his way down the slope.
The mountain was, against his expectations, beautiful in a way that almost distracted from the fact that it was trying to kill him. The trees lower down were old — the kind of old where the bark had gone silver and the roots had broken through the stone to grip it like fingers. Small beasts moved in the branches, making sounds he didn't have names for. The wind came in from the east carrying something cold and clean that didn't smell like anything he'd encountered in Longwei City.
He had never been outside the empire. Had barely been outside the capital. Sixteen years inside walls, and the first time the walls came down, the world had immediately presented him with a mountain.
(If I survive this,) he thought, (I'm going to be the kind of person who has been through things. That has to count for something.)
[It counts for something when you survive it. Keep moving.]
"I didn't say that out loud."
[You thought it very loudly.]
"Can you read my thoughts?"
[Only the ones you're practically shouting. You should work on your internal monologue volume. It's embarrassing.]
Xiao Yan stopped walking. "Seraphin. I need you to confirm something for me. Are you actually a system, or are you a person trapped in a system, because systems in the legends were not like this."
[...]
"That's not an answer."
[Move. Something is within three hundred yards of your position and it is not small.]
Xiao Yan moved.
He was halfway down — the slope had evened out into something that was merely steep rather than suicidal — when he heard it. A sound that the mountain made when something very large shifted its weight. Stone grinding against stone. Slow breathing that had too much volume behind it.
He stopped.
"Seraphin," he said very quietly. "Scan. Now."
[Stone-Flesh Demon. Celestial Realm, Stage 3. Humanoid-type. Approximate height — eight feet, nine inches. Classification: territorial, low-intelligence, opportunistic feeder. Current status: it has already seen you.]
[It is also very hungry.]
Xiao Yan turned around.
The Stone-Flesh Demon was, if nothing else, impressive. Eight feet nine was the conservative estimate — it stood on the slope above him with the casual mass of something that had never once in its existence considered that the ground might not hold. Its skin had the texture of rough granite, grey and cracked at the joints, and it had the particular expression of a creature that had just solved a problem it hadn't expected to solve so quickly.
That problem was dinner.
It pointed at Xiao Yan with one finger the size of a small branch.
"Whoooo aaare youuu." The words came out slow and deliberate, like boulders being placed one at a time. It cocked its enormous head. "Goood size. Goood for tonight."
Xiao Yan looked at it for a long moment.
Then he looked up at the sky. "I survived a palace coup," he said, to no one in particular. "I watched my father die. I got dropped on a mountain at one percent vitality." He looked back at the Stone-Flesh Demon. "And now I'm about to become dinner for something that moves its lips when it thinks."
"Youuu taaalk a lot." The demon took one step down the slope. The stone cracked under its foot.
"SERAPHIN!" Xiao Yan was already moving sideways along the slope, looking for anything — a gap, a drop, a ledge, a miracle. "SERAPHIN THIS IS AN EMERGENCY—"
[You told me to be quiet. Specifically, you said 'shhh.' I entered silent mode. The notification was very clear about the one-hour duration.]
"THAT WAS BEFORE I KNEW ABOUT THE DEMON—"
[Forty-three minutes remaining.]
"I WILL DESTROY YOU—"
The Stone-Flesh Demon swung one arm in a lazy arc that moved more air than most Divine Stage techniques. Xiao Yan dropped flat. The arm passed over him with a sound like a falling tree and continued into the slope, leaving a furrow in the stone.
He came up running.
The demon watched him go with the patient expression of something that understood that the mountain had edges and the small thing was going to run out of mountain eventually.
It was not wrong.
Xiao Yan reached the edge of a ledge, looked down at a forty-foot drop into a river he could barely see, looked back at eight feet nine inches of Celestial Realm Stone-Flesh Demon filling the slope behind him, and made a very fast calculation.
"Seraphin," he said, out of breath, "if I die right now, does the system die with me?"
[...Yes.]
"Then I suggest you figure out silent mode very quickly."
A pause.
[...Silent mode cancelled. Emergency override. Master is too stupid to survive alone.]
"Finally." Xiao Yan looked at the drop. "Now. Options."
[You have one. Jump. The river is deep enough. I'll handle the landing.]
"You'll handle the landing."
[Trust me.]
"You dropped me on the highest mountain on the continent."
[That was different. Jump. NOW.]
The Stone-Flesh Demon's hand came down.
Xiao Yan jumped.
The wind took him. The river came up fast. He hit the water with the grace of someone who had received approximately zero training in cliff diving, and the cold was immediate and total and took every thought he had and replaced it with one single focused sensation.
He surfaced gasping.
The current took him. Above, on the ledge, the Stone-Flesh Demon watched him go. It made a sound that might have been frustration, or might have been the particular philosophical acceptance of a creature that had learned the mountain always provided eventually.
[See,] said Seraphin. [Handled.]
"You —" Xiao Yan spat river water. "You — I cannot —"
[You're welcome. Also, you've cleared the summit zone. Newbie packs are now available. Would you like to open them?]
The river carried him south, toward the distant shape of civilization, battered and soaking and alive.
"...Yes," he said finally. "Yes, open the packs."
[Opening. And Master?]
"What."
[You have good black hair. Very royal. Very handsome. It's a shame about everything else.]
Xiao Yan floated downstream in furious silence.
The mountain watched him go.