The year was 2973 CE.
Earth had unified its calendars long ago, but tradition had proven harder to erase than borders. Across the Pan-Asian Federation, vast tracts of land were designated as Historical Preservation Zones—regions sealed from development, untouched by sky-rails or megacities, preserved less for tourism than for restraint.
Some places, it was said, were better left undisturbed.
The Qinling Deep Range was one such place.
Dense, folded, and stubbornly resistant to full mapping, the region existed in a permanent state of partial knowing. Satellites lost resolution. Drones returned with corrupted data. Geological surveys ended not with conclusions, but with footnotes.
That was why Chen Yu was there.
He walked a few paces behind the main group, careful where he placed his feet. The ground was slick with moisture, the stone uneven. Overhead, the forest canopy blocked most of the light, leaving the path in a perpetual twilight.
"Are you sure this place even has anything worth scanning?"
The question came from Li Wei, senior geo-surveyor, irritation clear as he adjusted his drone controller. The machine hovered uncertainly above the trees, its stabilisers whining softly.
"The data gap is reason enough," someone replied. "You don't leave blanks on a continental survey."
Chen Yu said nothing.
He listened instead—to the rhythm of the group, to the way the forest absorbed sound rather than echoing it. It reminded him of old texts he had read, descriptions of sacred mountains where even footsteps were said to be swallowed.
He dismissed the thought as a habit.
Chen Yu was twenty. He had no reputation to protect, no rank to assert. His role on this expedition was technical support and historical cross-reference—useful, but easily overlooked. He preferred it that way.
They advanced deeper.
The terrain shifted subtly as they moved. Stone replaced soil. Roots thinned. The air cooled, though no elevation change justified it. Chen Yu noticed before the others, but did not interrupt. Observation came first. Interpretation later.
The first anomaly occurred just before noon.
One of the drones dropped.
Not crashed—simply stopped responding and descended as if the air itself had lost interest in holding it aloft. It struck the rock face below with a dull crack.
Li Wei swore under his breath.
"Interference?" someone asked.
"No," Li Wei replied after a quick diagnostic glance. "Power's fine. Controls fine. It just… didn't answer."
A few uneasy glances were exchanged. Equipment failure happened. Everyone knew that. Still, no one rushed to retrieve the drone.
They rerouted slightly, following a narrow cleft between two stone ridges.
The accident came without warning.
The ground gave way beneath the lead researcher's foot—stone collapsing inward with a sharp, hollow sound. He shouted once before vanishing from sight.
Panic followed immediately.
Someone lunged forward and nearly slipped in after him. Ropes were uncoiled. Voices overlapped. The cleft widened as loose rock continued to fall inward, revealing not a pit, but a sloping descent—unnaturally smooth.
A passage.
Chen Yu watched the opening with a stillness that surprised even him.
The rock was wrong.
Not fractured. Not eroded. Shaped.
When the dust settled, the passage revealed itself fully—a tunnel angling downward, its walls bearing faint striations too regular to be natural. The missing researcher's voice echoed faintly from below. He was alive.
Barely.
They descended cautiously.
The tunnel widened into a chamber large enough to swallow their lights. The air inside was dry, preserved. Old. Not stale, but patient.
Their lamps illuminated stonework.
Not decoration. Structure.
The chamber walls bore marks—lines cut shallow but precise, arranged not for beauty but for alignment. Chen Yu stepped closer, his gaze tracing the grooves.
They were not symbols in any known script.
Yet the spacing made sense.
The proportions were… deliberate.
"Never logged," Li Wei muttered, awe bleeding into his voice despite himself.
Chen Yu knelt near the centre of the chamber.
There, partially buried beneath fallen debris, stood a raised stone platform. Its surface was smooth, untouched by time, unmarred by dust despite the age suggested by everything around it.
An altar.
The word surfaced unbidden.
Chen Yu did not say it aloud.
As others rushed to assess the injured researcher, Chen Yu remained still. He felt no compulsion to touch the structure. No thrill. No fear.
Only a quiet pressure at the base of his skull, like the awareness of being observed—not by eyes, but by memory.
He noticed details others ignored.
The altar was not central by accident. The chamber's geometry curved subtly toward it. The markings on the walls did not praise it or name it—they pointed to it, the way margins pointed to a text's meaning without containing it themselves.
One of the researchers stepped closer and brushed dust from the altar's edge.
Nothing happened.
Another laughed nervously. "Guess it's not cursed."
Chen Yu stood.
"Don't," he said—not sharply, not loudly.
The hand froze.
They turned toward him, surprised.
"There's no inscription," Chen Yu continued, choosing his words carefully. "No dedicatory marks. No ownership."
"So?" Li Wei asked.
"So it wasn't made to be used casually."
A pause followed.
Someone scoffed. Someone else shrugged. Curiosity won out, as it often did.
The injured researcher was stabilised. A report was filed. The chamber was marked for follow-up exploration.
As they prepared to leave, Chen Yu glanced back once more.
For a brief moment, his lamp flickered.
In that instant—so short he might have imagined it—the markings on the walls seemed deeper. Older. As if light, rather than revealing them, had been obscuring them all along.
A sensation brushed against his awareness.
Not a voice.
A question.
He did not answer it.
The mountain swallowed the chamber again as they sealed the entrance.
Aboveground, the forest resumed its silence.
No one spoke of the altar aloud.
But as the expedition moved on, Chen Yu felt it clearly now—the pressure behind his eyes, faint but persistent, like a door he had not opened and a place that would not forget he had seen it.
Somewhere beneath the Qinling Deep Range, something had been acknowledged.
And that, Chen Yu sensed, mattered far more than discovery.
End of Chapter 1