"It is a real shame," Su Min thought, her body weaving swiftly between the thick, ancient trunks of the forest, her breathing even despite the frantic pace. "It is just one mountain range."
Her mind raced as she moved, analyzing the geography she had inherited from the original Su Min's memories. Minshan was much like the Taishan mountains from her old world, with peaks that scraped the sky and deep, shadowed valleys, but it only covered a modest amount of land. The real danger was not the mountains themselves, but the endless, open plains that surrounded them, a flat and exposed landscape where a lone runner would stand out like a single tree on a barren field. To truly escape, she would need enough raw strength to break through the layers of military encirclement, to become a force that could not be contained. She would have to fight her way to the weaker outposts, the ones far from the empire's core where their grip was loosest and their soldiers less vigilant.
Until she had that strength, she could not afford to clash with soldiers directly. Her current level, only the beginning of the Body Refining Stage, was not enough to ignore the threat of sheer numbers, of a hundred blades coming at her at once. Besides, in any army, there was always a stronger enemy waiting in the ranks, a captain or a general who had trained for decades. She had to stay cautious, always, treating every shadow as a potential threat.
At last, her frantic flight led her to a place where she could finally breathe, where the sounds of pursuit faded into the natural hum of the forest. Halfway up the mountain, tucked into the cliffside and hidden by a stubborn, wind-gnarled pine, was a hidden cave. It was completely invisible from the paths below, a secret pocket in the stone. To reach it, a person would have to rappel down from the peak using a long, sturdy rope, or somehow climb the nearly sheer rock face using tiny cracks and ridges that offered barely any purchase. It was a feat only possible for someone with an almost superhuman body, someone who had already mastered their physical form.
"Finally, a place that feels safe," she sighed, sinking into the cool, dry shadows of the cavern, the silence a balm to her frayed nerves. Only now did she have a quiet moment to truly think about her situation, to piece together the fragments of memory and the strange, brutal story she seemed to be trapped inside.
"After all this chaos, I finally remembered," she whispered to the silent cave, the words echoing softly. "This has to be the prologue of that game, The Empire's Collapse."
Back in her world, getting a helmet for that fully immersive cultivation game had been incredibly difficult, a lottery of luck and connections. By the time Su Min had managed to secure one, it was already the third release batch. She had not even been able to play it properly herself before being pulled into this world, and had to rely on livestreams and secondhand stories from other players online to understand its mechanics.
The game was centered around immortal cultivation, and its timeline spanned centuries, a long, slow burn of power and politics. The main goal was to continuously advance your power before your character's natural lifespan ran out. Failure meant permanent character death, losing everything you had built. For beginners, the safest strategy was always to focus on survival, growing stronger slowly while staying out of sight and out of trouble, avoiding the main plot until you were ready.
The game world felt alive, a dynamic and breathing universe. NPCs would age, die, and leave behind descendants, creating a living history that spanned generations, with new conflicts and alliances always forming. However, every player's starting point was completely random. Your birthplace and identity were a roll of the dice, making each journey unique, though eventually, every story was pulled into the same central, world shaking plot, the inevitable collapse of the dynasty.
Su Min had chosen to be born as a noblewoman. It had seemed like the smart choice at the time, the path of least resistance. Her chosen abilities were not combat oriented, and a noble background promised a safer, easier start, with resources and protection. If she had picked a battle focused talent instead, something built for direct conflict, she might have already fought her way to freedom, even at this early Body Refining Stage.
"But who would have thought I would end up like this?" she murmured to herself, a bitter smile touching her lips as she looked at her ragged clothes and dirty hands.
"If I remember right, the first story arc follows those old myths about gods and demons, like the Investiture of the Gods. Beautiful enchantresses corrupt entire kingdoms, empires fall into chaos, the emperor becomes obsessed with immortality and loses his humanity, and monsters rise to fill the power vacuum." She shook her head, the weight of it all settling on her slender shoulders. "And this, all of this, is only the very beginning." She was a pawn in a prologue, a minor character in the opening act of a great tragedy.
Su Min exhaled slowly, pushing the overwhelming thoughts away and clearing her mind. She focused on the feeling of the cool cave air, on the steady beat of her own heart. She returned to her cultivation, sitting cross-legged on the stone floor. In the timeless silence of the mountains, days and nights began to blur together, marked only by the slow, steady circulation of her qi. While she practiced in her hidden peace, at the foot of the mountain, chaos was brewing.
"This," General Ma growled, his voice tight with frustration as he stared at the hunter's corpse, the man's lifeless eyes staring at the sky. "This is a disaster."
According to the strict, ancient laws of Great Wei, the entire Minshan region, though vast and wild, belonged solely to the emperor, his personal hunting ground. Only a handful of families with special, hereditary hunting rights were permitted to enter. Commoners were strictly forbidden, on pain of death.
This particular hunter had been one of the very best, one of the few who still knew the treacherous terrain like the back of his hand, who could read the forest like a book. Losing him meant the army could easily get lost in the deep, pathless forest, wasting weeks and missing their target entirely.
"You are telling me," General Ma barked, his expression dark as a thundercloud, "that an entire squad, fifteen men, could not catch one single little girl?" The words tasted like ash in his mouth.
The squad leader, flanked by his two wounded soldiers who were being dragged away to the medics, their faces pale with pain, knelt stiffly under the general's withering glare. He was the one who had shot the arrow at Su Min, the arrow she had so effortlessly split in midair with a flick of her wrist before escaping their carefully laid trap.
"The girl's skills are not human," the squad leader said, his voice low and bitter with shame. "She cut my arrow in half without even looking strained. She moved like a phantom, too fast to track. Besides, we were under strict orders to capture her alive. We could not risk a full volley of arrows." They had been fighting with one hand tied behind their backs.
They were an archer unit, every man capable of drawing a powerful war bow and hitting a target at a hundred paces. But with the live capture order in place, only the squad leader had been allowed to carry arrows, and even his had been blunted. The rest were burdened with heavy shields and coarse nets, tools for containment, not killing. General Ma's face darkened even further as he understood the tactical failure.
"How can this be?" he muttered in disbelief, his head snapping toward the brothel madam who had provided the intelligence. His look said everything, his eyes burning with accusation:
You lied to me.
You said she had no real cultivation, just a momentary burst of strength at most—enough to kill one or two, but nothing more. And yet, she cut her way out of an encirclement with a single sword stroke, then vanished without a trace.
Ten steps, one kill; a thousand miles, no lingering shadow.
You call that a 'little girl'? That is how the empire's top martial artists fight!
"This is now a very big problem."
Ignoring General Ma's accusatory glare, the madam hurriedly excused herself with a flustered bow and fled the camp, her heart pounding with a cold, sharp fear that climbed up her throat. She had to report this immediately, to warn her master. The worst case scenario she had been dreading had come true. Somehow, that girl had crossed the fundamental threshold, the one that separated ordinary mortals from true cultivators. Now, she was far, far beyond anything the madam, with her worldly tricks and connections, could ever hope to handle.
Soon, deep in a hidden underground chamber beneath the brothel, a ritual reached its grim conclusion.
A young, beautiful girl, no older than sixteen, struggled weakly in her iron chains. As the last of her vital energy, her youth and her life force, flowed from her in a visible, sickly green mist, her smooth skin withered and cracked in an instant. Her vibrant youth was consumed, leaving behind only a dried out, brittle skeleton that clattered apart on the cold stone floor. From the shadows, the decayed figure licked its cracked lips with a grotesque, wet sound of satisfaction.
"Mistress," the madam said, kneeling on the hard, blood stained ground. She kept her eyes lowered, not daring to look at the remains. "The worst has happened. That girl, she..."
Trembling from head to toe, her voice unsteady, the madam recounted everything she had seen and heard, the impossible speed, the clean sword stroke, the escaped encirclement.
"Early Body Refining Stage," the monstrous figure rasped, its voice like stones grinding in a dusty mill. "Yes, that explains it. She truly has that level of strength now." To the madam's utter surprise, her mistress sounded completely calm, almost pleased.
"What?" the madam gasped, daring to look up at the horrifying visage.
"He has already begun mobilizing the troops," the figure continued, a hint of grim amusement in its tone. "A hundred thousand soldiers will flood the mountains from all directions. They will move like a human tide, leaving no stone unturned. That girl, no matter how talented, she will not escape that. There is nowhere for her to run."
The monstrous figure ran a shriveled, blackened tongue across its bark like skin, a sickly smile tugging at its lifeless lips.
"The Human Emperor is born under the protection of the Purple Star's true essence (Ziwei Zhenyuan, a royal-protective energy in cultivation lore). No ordinary cultivator can directly harm him. But the daughters born under that same royal star are rare treasures among mortals. Unlike that wild girl, they can be harvested safely, their essence taken without a fight. It is a shame, really. One of her would have been enough to restore me completely, but now we will need several Purple Star daughters instead." It was a mere inconvenience, a change of menu.
The madam shuddered, a sharp hiss of air escaping her teeth. She had grown up in Great Wei, taught to revere the imperial family. To her, the idea of forcing the emperor himself to offer up his own royal bloodlines, his own daughters, was so audacious it bordered on madness, a crime against heaven itself.
But her master, her master thought nothing of it. The emperor was just another man, and his daughters were just another resource.
Outside, under the deepening twilight, the earth began to tremble, a low, constant rumble like distant thunder.
Tens of thousands of imperial soldiers, their armor glinting in the fading light, started their march, a river of steel and determination.
From every direction, from the north, the south, the east, and the west, a vast human tide surged toward the dark, brooding outline of Minshan, their countless torches lighting the night like a swarm of angry fireflies, their purpose singular and grim.
The hunt had truly begun. And this time, it was on a scale befitting an army, not a single girl.