They left at dawn.
No ceremony. No farewells that pretended to mean more than they did.
The woman tossed him a small cloth bundle before turning away. Inside were two hard travel biscuits, dried meat shaved thin enough to pretend generosity, and a small clay vial sealed with wax.
"Drink half," she said. "Not all. It's not a cure. It's a delay."
Li Yaochen nodded and tucked it carefully into his sleeve. He did not ask what was inside. People who asked too many questions tended to shorten their own roads.
The older man pointed east with his chin. "Follow the ravine until it splits. Take the narrower path. Fewer beasts. More rocks. You'll survive longer if you bleed where nothing wants to eat you."
The youth avoided his eyes entirely.
That suited Li Yaochen just fine.
He bowed once, shallow but sincere, then turned and limped away without looking back. Pride had no value here. Neither did attachment.
The forest swallowed him again.
---
The road—if it could be called that—was little more than compressed earth winding through stone and scrub. Each step sent dull pain up his leg, but the rhythm of movement kept him awake. Stopping invited worse things than exhaustion.
He drank half the vial as instructed.
Bitterness exploded across his tongue, followed by heat that spread through his chest and limbs like a slow-burning coal. The pain in his shoulder dulled to a distant throb. His vision sharpened.
Temporary, he reminded himself. Everything useful is temporary.
By midday, he reached the split.
The wider path bore signs of traffic—broken branches, old footprints, the faint residue of spiritual energy lingering like a stain. The narrower path disappeared between jagged rocks, uneven and hostile.
Li Yaochen chose the rocks.
They cut into his palms when he stumbled. His leg buckled twice. He crawled once, teeth clenched so tightly his jaw ached.
He kept going.
By late afternoon, hunger returned with teeth. The biscuits softened only slightly when soaked in water, but they kept him upright. When he finished the last strip of meat, he did not feel relieved—only aware of how little it had been.
As shadows lengthened, the pressure in his chest shifted.
Not stronger.
Closer.
Li Yaochen stopped dead.
The forest ahead opened into a shallow basin choked with broken stone. At its center stood something that did not belong.
A ruin.
Half-buried pillars leaned at unnatural angles, their surfaces carved with spirals and symbols worn smooth by time. Moss clung to them in patterns too deliberate to be random. The ground around the structure was bare of plants, as if life itself hesitated to cross an invisible boundary.
Li Yaochen's first instinct was to turn around.
Ruins were graves that hadn't finished killing.
But hunger, pain, and the memory of Iron River steel pressed in from behind. Roads rarely offered choices—only illusions of them.
He approached slowly.
The closer he came, the heavier the silence grew. No birds. No wind. Even his footsteps seemed muffled, swallowed before they could echo.
When he crossed the invisible boundary, the pressure in his chest tightened.
Not painfully.
Deliberately.
Li Yaochen's breath hitched. He waited for something to happen.
Nothing did.
He exhaled shakily and moved deeper between the pillars. Up close, the carvings revealed more detail—figures etched in shallow relief, their forms distorted by erosion. Some looked human. Some did not.
One mural caught his eye.
It depicted a mountain layered upon itself again and again, smaller peaks nested within greater ones. At the base, tiny figures clawed upward, crushed beneath falling stone. At the top—nothing. Just an empty sky.
Li Yaochen stared.
A chill crept into his bones that had nothing to do with the air.
"So that's how it is," he murmured.
His head swam. For a heartbeat, he thought he saw the mural shift—the stone lines deepening, the figures moving—
He staggered back, vision blurring, and fell to one knee.
The pressure in his chest flared.
Not outward.
Inward.
Like a door closing.
The dizziness vanished as abruptly as it had come. The mural returned to inert stone. The silence eased by a fraction.
Li Yaochen gasped, sweat cold on his skin.
"That wasn't meant for me," he whispered.
He backed away, pulse racing. Whatever knowledge lay buried here, it was not for someone who could barely walk without falling over.
He left the basin quickly, heart hammering until the ruin vanished behind stone and brush.
Only when night fell did he allow himself to stop.
He collapsed beneath an overhang, pulled his thin cloak tight, and chewed on nothing while staring at the dark.
The pressure inside him settled again—quiet, patient.
Li Yaochen laughed softly, humorless.
"You don't help," he told it. "You just watch."
The silence did not deny it.
As sleep crept closer, one thought repeated itself, heavy and inescapable:
If even forgotten ruins could crush him without effort, then the road ahead would not simply test his strength.
It would grind him down until only one question remained—
How much of himself could he afford to lose and still survive in a world that refused the weak?