The mountain did not call him.
That, more than anything else, was what convinced Chen Yu to return.
For three days after the distortion in the sky, the Qinling Deep Range remained unnaturally quiet. No alerts. No sealed notices. No official responses beyond vague reassurances from the Federation that atmospheric interference had caused a "localised visual anomaly."
Chen Yu listened.
He always had.
When myths survived for thousands of years, it was never because they shouted. It was because they waited.
On the fourth night, he packed lightly and left the city without notifying anyone.
The forest greeted him like an old habit.
Mist clung low between the trees, swallowing sound. Even the insects were muted, as if the mountain itself were conserving breath. Chen Yu followed no marked path. His feet chose turns before his mind did, avoiding unstable slopes and dead ends with quiet certainty.
He stopped at the edge of the clearing.
The ground had changed.
The shattered stone where the foundation once stood was gone—not removed, but absorbed. The earth there was darker, smoother, like cooled metal. At its center lay a shallow depression, circular and precise, etched with lines that had not been there before.
They were not symbols.
They were intervals.
Chen Yu did not step forward.
He waited.
The air thickened.
Pressure gathered, not against his body but within it—his chest, his marrow, his breath. It was the same sensation he had felt during the sky distortion, but now it was focused, contained.
Judging.
Chen Yu knelt.
Not in reverence.
In acknowledgement.
He placed his palm against the ground.
The world answered.
Sound vanished first.
Then the temperature.
Then time.
Chen Yu felt his heartbeat slow—not from fear, but alignment. The pressure behind his eyes surged violently, tearing open something he had not known was sealed.
Blood rushed through him, hot and cold at once.
Images erupted.
Not visions—resonances.
A human figure stood upright while beasts bowed.
Hands shaping stone into law.
Voices chanting not prayers, but agreements.
He saw humans before they were small.
Before gods wore names.
Before heaven claimed authority.
The pressure intensified.
His veins burned.
Something ancient stirred—not awakening fully, but testing the seal.
Chen Yu gritted his teeth.
He did not scream.
He did not resist.
He endured.
Around the clearing, the forest reacted.
Trees bowed inward as if under sudden wind, though the air remained still. Stones trembled, rolling toward the depression with faint, ringing tones. The mist spiralled upward, forming a vast column that pierced the canopy and rose into the sky.
Miles away, animals froze.
Satellites glitched.
Instruments failed to register what was happening because what occurred was not energy.
It was recognition.
The sky darkened.
Clouds twisted into unfamiliar patterns, rotating around a silent axis. For a brief moment, constellations long erased from Earth's sky burned faintly through the daylight—arrangements that did not belong to any modern star chart.
People across the world looked up.
And forgot what they were seeing the moment they looked away.
Chen Yu's vision collapsed inward.
He stood in a place without ground.
Before him rose a vast shadow—not a figure, not a being, but the outline of humanity itself, layered endlessly upon itself. Within it pulsed countless locked fragments, most dim, some flickering weakly.
One fragment burned brighter than the rest.
It pulsed in rhythm with his heart.
As he reached toward it, resistance met him—not force, but inquiry.
What are you willing to bear?
Chen Yu answered without words.
He remembered obscurity.
The quiet erasure of meaning.
Civilisations reduced to footnotes.
Knowledge dismissed as superstition.
Humanity kneeling—not in reverence, but in surrender.
His hand closed.
The fragment dimmed—not extinguished, but contained.
The pressure eased.
The shadow receded.
And Chen Yu fell.
He awoke at dawn.
The clearing was silent again.
The depression remained, but the lines etched into it had faded, leaving only faint impressions—as if memory itself had chosen to retreat.
Chen Yu sat up slowly.
His body felt heavier.
Denser.
Each movement carried weight, not in effort but in presence. When he stood, the ground beneath his feet responded differently, compressing slightly before settling.
He flexed his fingers.
They did not glow.
They did not radiate strength.
But when he clenched them, the air resisted.
Not because he was strong—
But because he now belonged.
Far beyond Earth, the phenomenon did not go unnoticed.
In a realm where stars were fixed by decree rather than gravity, a vast hall stirred with murmurs. Thrones of light and shadow hummed as ancient sentinels turned their gaze toward a sealed coordinate.
"A resonance," one voice whispered. "On a closed origin world."
Another presence frowned. "Impossible. That lineage was buried."
"Not buried," a third corrected calmly. "Deferred."
Silence followed.
Then a low, humourless laugh.
"If the Human Origin stirs," said the first voice, "then Heaven's accounting is no longer complete."
A pause.
"Observe," commanded the central figure. "Do not intervene."
"But if he crosses—"
"Then he will learn," the figure replied, eyes reflecting endless layers of law, "what it means to stand without permission."
Back in the Qinling range, Chen Yu gathered his belongings.
He did not linger.
The mountain had finished speaking.
As he descended, he noticed small changes—stones shifting subtly to ease his path, branches parting just enough to avoid his face. The forest did not bow.
It acknowledged.
At the edge of the range, Chen Yu stopped and looked back once.
The clearing was gone.
In its place stood untouched forest, as if nothing had ever happened.
Only Chen Yu carried the weight of it forward.
That night, as he slept, fragments stirred within him.
Some opened easily.
Others remained sealed behind vast, unmoving barriers.
He did not know what they were.
He did not know what he had gained.
But somewhere deep within his blood, something ancient had begun to turn—
Slowly.
Patiently.
Waiting for the world beyond Earth to notice.
End of Chapter 5