Gen rushed into the mountain.
He took the uneven, ancient steps not by climbing, but by consuming the distance between them. He pushed his **Jingdao** into his legs, his **Shidow** into the air at his back, becoming a relentless upward force. The barren rock face blurred around him. He didn't look for traps or landmarks. His entire being was a single, focused soul: *Up. Find them.*
At his speed, he quickly ascended past the lower cliffs, through a narrow, wind-carved pass, and emerged onto a broad, natural ledge.
He stopped.
The sight before him was not what he'd expected. It wasn't a hidden valley or a single, towering peak. The Lost Triangle Mountain was a fortress.
The ledge widened into a vast, terraced platform carved from the living mountain stone. Built upon and into the sheer faces around it were dozens of pavilions and structures of grey-white stone and dark, weathered wood. They clung to the cliffs, connected by delicate-looking but undoubtedly solid bridges and staircases that spiraled up towards the mist-shrouded, triangular summit high above. It was serene, orderly, and emanated a quiet, profound power. It felt less like a refuge and more like a sect of immense, ancient standing.
On his way up the final stretch of path leading to the main terrace, he met a young girl.
She stood squarely in the center of the stone path, blocking it. She was clouded in the fine, perpetual dust of the desert, but her posture was alert, her eyes sharp. Gen's abrupt, dusty appearance—a lone figure charging out of the wilderness—caused quite a stir. She raised a hand, palm out.
"Where do you think you're going?" Her voice was young but firm, carrying an authority that didn't match her years. "This is the Lost Triangle Mountain. Declare your business."
Gen took a brief look at her. She was slightly younger than him, perhaps sixteen, with features hardened by high-altitude sun and discipline. He didn't recognize her in any form. He was tired of hiding.
"I am Gen Jiang."
He pulled back his hood, revealing his face—youthful, but with features hardened by grief, battle, and solitude. The softness of the Jade Palace was gone, replaced by the sharp angles of a survivor.
The girl blinked twice. Her raised hand lowered slightly, her eyes widening in shock. "Gen… Jiang?" she repeated, as if trying to process a contradiction in her mind.
At the same time, movement rippled through the serene pavilions. Doors slid open. Figures emerged onto balconies and bridges. Dozens of them, men and women, cultivators of various ages, their auras snapping to attention. They gathered along the path ahead, not with overt hostility, but with a dangerous, unified readiness to block his way. A low murmur spread through them.
"Isn't Gen Jiang colluding with the Divine Generals?"
"What is he doing here? On *our* mountain?"
"How did he even find it?"
Soon, a leading figure moved through the crowd. It was an elderly woman, her back straight as a spear, her hair a severe silver crown. She walked with a slow, deliberate pace that made the space around her seem to still. Her aura didn't flare; it simply *was*, a towering, immovable presence that settled over the entire ledge like a weight. Gen took a few glances at her. *Was this the Lost Triangle?* A person?
Shelai's voice chimed softly in his mind, a note of caution. *'The Lost Triangle is a legend. She will not appear before you just because you are Gen Jiang.'*
Gen agreed silently. The Lost triangle, a woman's level… it was on par with Black Greenwood, or perhaps even Lorel's father, Tiang Feng. It was a realm of power a little Gen could not command, not yet.
The woman stopped on the other side of an invisible line where the path met the main terrace. Her eyes, the color of old flint, regarded him without warmth or recognition.
Gen didn't bow. He met her gaze. "I came here to meet my friends. They are on the Lost Triangle Mountain. Are they here?" He asked it with a smile, a fragile hope breaking through his usual guardedness. He took a step forward, intending to simply walk past the line, past the woman, into the pavilions where he was sure they must be waiting.
He noticed it the moment he tried to cross.
An invisible, formless barrier met him. It didn't shove; it presented an absolute, unyielding solidity. The air itself became a wall. It forced him to take a full step back, his boot scraping on the stone.
The elderly woman behind the barrier spoke, her voice dry and final. "Go back home, young man. There is nothing for you on this mountain."
Gen's smile vanished instantly.
The words landed not on his ears, but directly in his chest, cold and heavy. *Go back?* Now? After everything? Was this some kind of cruel joke?
"I have friends here!" he said, his voice tightening. "Lorel. Li Fen. Master Ting. They came here. They must be here!" He spoke the names like incantations, hoping one would be a key.
On the opposite side of the barrier, the elderly woman's flinty eyes flickered. A slight, pained frown touched her lips at the sound of those names, as if they were a taboo, a disturbance that hurt to hear. "It is all thanks to *them*," she said, the words laced with a deep, weary resentment, "that our peaceful mountain draws more and more unwanted attention. Go home. Traitors are not allowed on the mountains."
That was the word that broke the dam.
"I AM NOT A TRAITOR!" Gen's roar tore from his throat, raw and full of months of bottled rage, frustration, and loneliness. The quiet of the mountain ledge shattered. "Stop pretending to believe these rumors! Allow me in, or I will not be polite anymore!"
The old woman actually laughed, a short, brittle sound. "Good luck. This barrier has stood for over a millennium. No one has ever broken it unless allowed inside from within."
Gen's face hardened into a mask of cold fury. He stopped pleading. He stopped explaining.
He looked at the rippling, invisible wall. At first glance, it seemed like nothing—just a slight warping of the light, a pressure on the skin. But he could feel the depth of it, the layers of will and Qi woven into the mountain itself over countless generations.
He wasn't going to let himself be stopped. Not at the end of the path. Not so close.
Blinded by anger, by accumulated frustration and a love that felt like a physical ache, he poured it all out.
His **Jingdao** flared. But it did not erupt in a golden blaze. The light condensed, pulling inward, becoming a serene, dense radiance that clung to his form. His body flickered with an intense, focused luminescence. For a brief, breathtaking second—a fraction of a heartbeat—the legendary **Third Door of the Eternal Body** flashed into existence once more.
It was not the desperate, soul-rending touch he'd used against the Sky Demon. This was different. This was driven not by survival, but by a will that refused to be denied. The light around him turned clear, almost crystalline.
He turned into a beam of solidified resolve.
His fist, sheathed in that serene, impossible light, struck the barrier.
***THUUUM.***
The sound was deep, resonant, not a crack but a profound shudder, like a great bell struck once. The shocked onlookers behind the barrier flinched as the entire invisible field rippled violently, the deflected force washing outwards in visible concentric waves that distorted the pavilions behind it.
The elderly woman sighed, a sound of pity and finality. "You are too arrogant. That is why you—"
She never finished.
At the point of impact, where Gen's fist met the unyielding force, a tiny, hairline fissure appeared in the air. It was no bigger than a finger's length. It didn't spread like a crack in ice. It simply *was*, a black seam in reality, a miniature void.
A mark.
The disciples of the mountain all wore expressions of pure, stunned disbelief. The legend of the barrier was the foundation of their safety. How many powerful, desperate cultivators had tried to deal with it over the ages? All had failed. This felt so improbable it was hard to even accept what they were seeing.
Gen, on the other hand, stumbled back, the transcendent light snuffing out from his body. He landed on his knees, breathing in ragged, painful gasps. A bitter smile touched his lips.
The feeling had lasted only a fleeting second. It was terrifyingly familiar to when he'd fought the Sky Demon in the Sky Ocean. Back then, he had been so cornered he had no hope. He'd touched the Third Door out of sheer desperation.
But this time… he had *felt* it. He had truly felt it.
This wasn't reinforcement of the aura, nor hardening of the bones like the First and Second Doors. This was different. It was a reinforcement of the *soul*. The will made indomitable. The legendary state that could, in theory, rival the body of his father at his peak. A body that could hold back a falling Damocles.
He had touched it. And he had left a mark on a millennium-old barrier.
He looked up from his knees, his eyes locking with the elderly woman's. In her flinty gaze, he no longer saw just dismissal. He saw the first flicker of something else: a cold, calculating reassessment.
He had not broken in. But he had proven he was not just anyone.
He was Gen Jiang. And he was not leaving.