The Qinling Deep Range did not welcome return visits.
That much became clear within the first hour.
Chen Yu felt it not as resistance, but as indifference—the forest accepting his presence without acknowledging it. Paths that had seemed straightforward during the expedition now appeared subtly altered. Not blocked. Not erased. Simply… less cooperative.
He adjusted his pace and stopped trying to match memory.
Observation first.
He moved alone, deliberately avoiding the sealed collapse site. Official barriers were easy to spot, marked by bright material and surveillance nodes. What interested him lay beyond them—not the chamber itself, but the way the land bent around it.
He followed a stream that cut unnaturally straight through the undergrowth.
Water had always been honest. It remembered gravity even when people forgot it.
As he walked, Chen Yu became aware of a familiar sensation—the faint pressure behind his eyes, present but unobtrusive. It did not guide him. It did not warn him.
It was simply noticed when he did.
After several hours, he reached a place that was not marked on any map.
The trees thinned, opening into a shallow depression where stone broke the surface in broad, flat sheets. Moss avoided the area entirely. The air felt cooler, though sunlight fell unobstructed.
Chen Yu stopped at the edge.
He did not step in immediately.
He crouched and placed his palm on the stone.
It was warm.
Not sun-warmed. Warm in a way that suggested retention rather than exposure. As if the ground had absorbed something long ago and never released it.
He withdrew his hand and waited.
Minutes passed. Nothing happened.
Satisfied, he entered the depression.
There was no tunnel here. No chamber. Only stone arranged too neatly to be chance—slabs forming a rough ring, their edges worn smooth by time. At the centre lay a shallow indentation, circular and deliberate.
Not an altar.
A foundation.
Chen Yu circled it slowly. He noticed faint scratches along the stone—old, irregular, placed by different hands across different eras. Not inscriptions. Not symbols.
Marks of adjustment.
People had stood here. Measured. Corrected.
The realisation settled quietly.
This place had not been built once.
It had been returned to.
Chen Yu sat at the edge of the foundation and waited.
He did not know why he did this. He only knew that acting felt wrong.
The forest remained silent.
Hours passed. Shadows lengthened. Insects resumed their muted chorus at the edges of the clearing. The pressure behind his eyes ebbed and flowed, responding subtly to his attention.
At no point did anything reveal itself.
By nightfall, Chen Yu stood and left.
He returned two days later.
Then again.
Each visit followed the same pattern. Observation. Waiting. Departure.
No activation. No response.
On the fifth visit, he brought no supplies at all.
He sat longer this time, ignoring hunger, ignoring discomfort. When fatigue crept in, he shifted position but did not leave.
The pressure behind his eyes sharpened briefly, then settled.
As dusk approached, something changed.
Not in the air. Not in the light.
In alignment.
Chen Yu felt it as a subtle correction, like a thought snapping into place after long hesitation. The stone beneath him did not move, yet he was suddenly aware of its shape in relation to the surrounding land—how the slopes angled, how the stream curved just enough to redirect runoff, how the trees leaned ever so slightly inward.
This place was not hidden.
It was balanced.
A presence brushed the edge of his awareness.
Not a voice. Not an image.
A condition.
Remain.
Chen Yu did.
Night deepened.
Stars emerged above the canopy, sharper than he expected. They did not seem closer—just more precise. He found himself noticing patterns he had never paid attention to before, not constellations but spacing. Distances.
Intervals.
The pressure behind his eyes intensified—not painfully, but insistently.
He closed his eyes.
Something shifted.
He was no longer certain how much time had passed.
Thoughts drifted without urgency. Memories surfaced—texts he had read long ago, obscure footnotes about ancient sites dismissed as impractical. Stories where people built structures not to summon gods, but to hold the world steady when it threatened to fracture.
Humans responding to instability.
Not masters. Not servants.
Participants.
When he opened his eyes, the clearing looked the same.
Yet the stone foundation now bore faint lines that had not been there before.
They were shallow, almost hesitant, forming incomplete shapes that suggested no known script. Chen Yu leaned closer, heart steady, breath controlled.
The lines were not carved.
They were revealed.
He reached out, then stopped.
Remembering restraint, he withdrew his hand.
The lines deepened anyway.
A sensation spread through his chest—not heat, not force, but recognition. As if something within him had been measured and found… sufficient.
The pressure behind his eyes released slightly.
A pulse travelled through the stone.
Not outward.
Inward.
Chen Yu gasped, not from pain but from sudden clarity. Images brushed his thoughts—fragmented, incomplete. Human figures standing beneath open skies. Stone raised not as monuments, but as answers. Hands bleeding. Hands steady.
Then the sensation vanished.
The lines on the stone faded.
The clearing returned to silence.
Chen Yu remained seated long after dawn broke.
When he finally stood, his legs trembled—not from exhaustion, but from the unfamiliar weight of awareness settling into place.
He did not feel stronger.
He felt… aligned.
As he left the clearing, the forest seemed no more hostile than before. No less indifferent.
But Chen Yu sensed something had changed—not in the mountain, but in the way he occupied it.
On his way back, he encountered movement ahead.
He froze instantly.
Two figures emerged from between the trees—men in plain field gear, not official survey attire. Their expressions shifted from surprise to calculation when they saw him.
One spoke first. "Didn't expect company out here."
Chen Yu inclined his head politely. "Neither did I."
Their gazes flicked past him, toward the clearing he had left.
"Restricted zone," the other man said casually. "You lost?"
"No," Chen Yu replied. "Just walking."
A pause.
The first man smiled thinly. "Careful where you walk. Some places don't like being remembered."
Chen Yu met his gaze evenly. "Then perhaps they shouldn't leave traces."
The smile faded.
The men exchanged a glance, then stepped aside, allowing him to pass.
Chen Yu walked on without looking back.
That night, back in his apartment, he slept deeply for the first time since the expedition.
He dreamed of hands again.
This time, they were his.
And they were steady.
End of Chapter 3