Lin Chen left Blackwood Town before dawn.
The eastern gate creaked open just wide enough for him to slip through. The guards barely looked at him—another nobody heading toward something he shouldn't.
The Fallen Stone Ruins lay half a day's walk away, beyond a stretch of broken hills where vegetation thinned and the land itself felt… tired.
Wrong.
The air grew heavier with every step.
By noon, Lin Chen saw them.
Stone pillars jutted from the ground at impossible angles, fractured and half-buried like the remains of a fallen giant. Some were smooth, others jagged, as if shattered by a force too violent to leave clean edges.
No birds.
No insects.
Only silence.
"This place doesn't belong to the present," Lin Chen said quietly.
"It belongs to something unfinished," the voice replied.
Lin Chen stepped between the first two pillars.
The moment he crossed the threshold, pressure slammed down on him from all sides. Not physical—existential. His bones ached, and the cold energy within him tightened instinctively, compressing inward.
The ruins reacted to him.
Lines faintly etched into the stone flickered once, then faded.
Lin Chen slowed his breathing.
"Test," he thought.
He moved deeper.
The ground dipped, revealing a circular depression at the center of the ruins. Broken statues surrounded it—humanoid, but distorted. Their faces were frozen mid-expression, not in fear, but in strain.
As if they had pushed themselves too far.
Lin Chen stopped.
At the center of the depression sat a stone platform, cracked straight through the middle. Something dark stained its surface.
Old blood.
Not dried.
Soaked.
"Someone's been here recently," Lin Chen muttered.
"Yes," the voice said."And they did not leave whole."
Lin Chen's gaze sharpened.
He stepped onto the platform.
The world lurched.
Cold flooded outward—not from him, but toward him. The ruins hummed faintly, stones vibrating as if recognizing a familiar frequency.
Pain flared through Lin Chen's body.
Different from cultivation pain.
Sharper. Targeted.
"This place was built for those without meridians," the voice said slowly."Or those who destroyed them."
Lin Chen's heart pounded.
"So I'm not the first."
"No," the voice replied."You're just the one who survived long enough to arrive."
The stone beneath his feet cracked further.
A thin line of light split the platform open, revealing a narrow stairway descending into darkness.
Lin Chen stared down.
The air below was colder. Denser. Familiar.
He smiled faintly.
"Then this is where they failed," he said.
He stepped forward.
The ruins sealed behind him with a sound like grinding teeth.