Inside the secluded mountain cave, a clear, cold spring trickled endlessly down the rocky wall, its gentle, constant sound the only music in the silence. It collected in a small, natural pool carved from the stone over centuries. Any excess water spilled over the lip of the pool and escaped through a narrow, dark channel in the stone, vanishing into the mountain's unseen depths.
At that moment, the pool was occupied by a completely naked girl sitting cross-legged in the shallow water. It was Su Min. As the old saying goes, time loses all meaning in the mountains, and the weather follows no set schedule. She had long ago lost track of how many days or weeks she had been hiding and resting in this sanctuary, her world shrunk to the dimensions of this single cavern. Right now, sitting submerged in the cool water was not for comfort or bathing, but purely for the practical needs of her cultivation.
To break through to the next level, the Qi Refining stage, she first needed to expel every last impurity from her body, to make it a clean vessel for the potent energy to come.
When she had first entered the Body Refining stage, she had not paid enough attention to this messy process. The foul, greasy filth her body had expelled had hardened her only set of clothes into stiff, unwearable clumps that stank of decay. With just a few spare garments to her name, she could not afford to be so careless again. Washing clothes was not exactly a simple task in the deep, untamed wilderness, with no soap and only cold water.
So now, whenever she sat down to cultivate and purify her body, she did it naked in the water. Every person's body was full of impurities, toxins and waste accumulated since childhood from food, air, and illness. It was unavoidable unless you had been raised on expensive, specially prepared medicinal pills from the day you were born. Clearly, this body, for all its noble birth, had never enjoyed such a luxurious upbringing.
And so she sat submerged, patiently circulating her spiritual energy in a slow, deliberate cycle to push out the last of the lingering impurities. As time slipped by, marked only by her breathing, the final traces of grime were forced from her pores and carried away by the flowing water, leaving it momentarily clouded before it cleared again. When the process was complete, Su Min had undergone a subtle but noticeable transformation. The last traces of adolescent acne faded away, and her skin became perfectly smooth and flawless, glowing with a healthy sheen, like a piece of fine jade that had been carefully polished into a living work of art.
But Su Min had no time to stand back and admire these physical changes. Her eyes snapped open, her senses suddenly on high alert, cutting through the post cultivation calm. She had firmly stepped into the mid stage of Body Refining. Both her physical strength and the amount of spiritual energy she could control had taken a qualitative leap forward. Yet that was not what had startled her. A strange, scorched smell had reached her nose, carried on a shift of the wind into her cave.
"Sniff... What is that?" she wondered, her brow furrowing. "Was someone camping at the foot of the mountain?" But this was deep, untamed wilderness, not some peaceful tourist spot. This forest was home to wolves, tigers, and leopards. Anyone camping here would be courting death, a easy meal for the predators.
Though she had not gone hungry during her time in the mountains, living solely on bigu dan had left her mouth feeling utterly tasteless, a monotony of sustenance without pleasure. She knew she was still a wanted fugitive, so she never dared to light a fire to cook a proper meal, to roast a rabbit or boil some herbs for tea. Not that she had any salt or seasonings to make decent food anyway.
She had not starved, but the craving for real flavor, for the simple joy of a warm, cooked meal, was a constant, nagging presence in the back of her mind.
She quickly pulled on her clean, sturdy clothes and cautiously stepped out of the hidden cave halfway up the mountainside, peering through the screen of vines. The moment she looked out at the horizon, her expression darkened completely. A bright, terrifying ring of fire stretched across the world in every direction she looked, a line of orange hell against the darkening sky. The peculiar scent she had smelled was the stench of animals and plants being burned alive, a smell of destruction that choked the air.
It was early autumn. No snow had fallen yet, and the air was dry and brittle. The trees and grasses had already withered, their leaves brown and crisp, turning the entire mountain into a giant tinderbox waiting for a spark. A single ember was all it would take to ignite an unstoppable inferno. But what was truly terrifying was how the flames were advancing from all sides in a strangely uniform, controlled pattern, as if they were forming a deliberate, man made encirclement, a wall of fire designed to flush her out.
"Have they all gone completely mad?" she whispered, horror dawning on her face, her blood running cold. "Setting the whole mountain on fire? Do they not fear the ecological disaster this could cause? The landslides, the erosion, the animals driven into the towns?" All of this, just to capture one person? Just to capture me? I can't stay here." The realization was a punch to her gut.
Narrowing her eyes against the smoky wind, Su Min quickly assessed the situation. If the fire continued to burn unchecked, consuming the undergrowth that hid the cave's entrance, her hidden sanctuary would inevitably be exposed. If the searchers found no trace of her in the forest, the next logical place to look would be the mountain caves and cliffs. Though her current location was very well hidden, under such intense, systematic scrutiny, it would not remain a secret for long.
Cliffs and precipices could serve as natural shelters, but they were also potential death traps, offering no escape route. If she were surrounded on a cliff face, she would face a relentless, inescapable barrage of arrows from below, something her current strength could not hope to withstand for long.
"Looks like I have to break through their lines," she concluded, her voice firm with resolve, pushing down the fear. "I can't stay here any longer. As for where to go... south is the only option. Maybe I can find a real refuge by the Southern Sea." It was the only direction that offered a sliver of hope.
With that decision made, she mentally reviewed the four cardinal directions from her inherited memories. The east led to the wealthy coastal regions, rich in fish and salt, but they were also tightly controlled by the imperial court, with navies and garrisons everywhere. The west was similarly fortified with military strongholds and checkpoints, a land of constant scrutiny. Only the south offered a sliver of hope, a path into the unknown.
From the memories she had inherited, the southern lands were truly untamed, a frontier beyond the empire's firm grasp. It was a miasma ridden wilderness, plagued by poisonous insects and diseases, and considered uninhabitable for ordinary people. But for a cultivator like her, with a body being refined and cleansed, such obstacles were manageable. Her alchemy manuals described an Insect Repelling Pill and a Miasma Dispelling Pill. The former could be crushed and applied to the skin to ward off pests, while the latter, once ingested, would neutralize the toxic vapors in the air.
Beyond those southern wilds lay the Southern Sea, dotted with countless uninhabited islands, places of isolation and peace. Hiding there to continue her cultivation in peace would buy her all the time she needed to grow truly strong. Staying here in Minshan meant certain death, either by fire, sword, or capture. And even remaining anywhere within the Great Wei Dynasty's borders was no longer safe. She had to leave.
"First, I need to break through their lines," she repeated, solidifying the plan in her mind. "The fire is still at the outskirts. Given the strength of the autumn winds, there might be a gap upwind where the fire has not yet taken hold, a place where the soldiers are thinner." It was a desperate gamble, but her only one.
With that thought, she moved into action. She swiftly descended the sheer cliff face, her enhanced body finding invisible holds where none seemed to exist, and landed silently amidst the withered underbrush at the base. Though winter had not fully set in, most of the vegetation had already died, leaving only a few hardy evergreen trees and a carpet of dry leaves. The moment her feet touched the ground, an involuntary shiver ran through her body. The air was growing cold, the autumn chill deepening as the sun was blotted out by smoke.
"Thankfully, reaching the mid stage of Body Refining has improved my resistance to both heat and cold," she muttered, rubbing her arms. "Otherwise, I would be freezing to death out here. It is ironic, that little cave was surprisingly warm." A small sanctuary she was now forced to abandon.
Meanwhile, outside the mountain, the entire Minshan range was surrounded by an overwhelming, suffocating military force.
It had started with the five thousand soldiers from Yu City. Then, by imperial decree, an additional hundred thousand veteran troops were mobilized from the borders. After the autumn harvest was complete, the court forcibly conscripted over a hundred thousand peasants from nearby provinces, bringing the total number of men to more than two hundred thousand. It was a number large enough to physically blanket the entire mountain range, a human net with no holes.
For two or three months, the soldiers scoured the mountains, beating the bushes and searching every ravine, but they found nothing but old tracks and silence. Then, as late autumn arrived, with all vegetation bone dry and the air parched, the emperor finally issued a brutal and final decree, a order that brooked no argument.
"Burn it all." The order was absolute, delivered by a grim faced messenger. "Even if it means reducing all of Minshan to ashes, the witch must be captured. I do not care about the cost."
Discontent simmered among the common soldiers, who saw the madness of it, but the emperor's will was absolute, and it was backed by extravagant, life changing rewards.
Capture the witch, and you would be promoted three ranks and granted a noble title, lifting your family from poverty forever. Find her trail, and you would be rewarded with a thousand gold coins, a fortune beyond imagining.
Initially, the lavish bounties had fueled their enthusiasm, making them scour the woods with eager eyes. But after months of fruitless searching, blistered feet, and the creeping fear of the mountain's spirits, their morale had withered away like the autumn grass. Whispers began to spread through the ranks like the very smoke they were creating. They said the mountain was home to ancient, powerful mountain spirits, and that such reckless burning would surely bring divine retribution, famine and plague, down upon them all. The soldiers muttered uneasily to each other around their campfires, and even the commanding general, Mu Hongkun, a man who had seen many battles, felt the heavy, sickening weight of absurdity pressing down on him.
"What in heaven's name is His Majesty thinking?" General Mu Hongkun frowned deeply as he watched the flames surge forward, driven by the relentless wind, consuming everything in their path. "All of this, for one girl?" The words felt hollow even to him.
This was not a military campaign. It was madness, a sickness of the mind.
Deploying an army of this unimaginable scale to hunt a single, so called witch? He knew the Su family had once been influential, a pillar of the court, but now, with all the male heirs executed, they were as good as extinct, a memory. Why obsess over this one last surviving daughter? What secret did she hold that was worth the price of a mountain?