Chapter 377: A Solved Puzzle |
The towering peaks of the Misty Mountain Range stood before us, their bodies shrouded in drifting clouds. They felt less like mountains and more like colossal, silent monsters looming over the land.
Goosebumps crawled across my skin, and a prickling sense of wrongness washed over me.
This was terrifying, because a foreboding feeling tightened in my chest. But a part of me was also excited at the thought of exploring these wonders.
I was certain we had gone in the opposite direction to these mountains. I had been concentrating the entire time, wary of ambushes or anything of that nature. After all, we were still within the danger zone of the warfront, and the Misty Mountains sat in a delicate region where the borders of the four great sects brushed against one another.
Normally, battles never happened here. Any force reckless enough to clash near the Misty Mountains was usually swallowed by the fog, with cultivators and beasts alike vanishing without a trace.
Was this hypnosis, or spatial manipulation?
The former would be acceptable, though difficult to implement on someone like me, whose Foundation Techniques were rooted in the mind. Still, it wasn’t impossible, especially if the other side possessed higher cultivation, and I was also mentally weakened during this period. Since the matter with the Blood Step Immortal had left me a bit weary on the conscious aspect.
But the more exciting possibility was the latter.
Spatial manipulation would be far more interesting, much harder to pull off, far more dangerous, and significantly more challenging to escape.
She wasn’t surprised.
Information about this region was scarce, but it wasn’t nonexistent. Especially not for someone with the highest level of clearance in the Blazing Sun Sect’s knowledge archives.
I had been careful. We should have been far beyond a safe distance from the mountains. Earlier, we could barely see their outline even with our enhanced senses; the distance had been enormous.
Jiang Yeming wore an innocent expression as she looked ahead, not turning toward me, even though she should have sensed my gaze.
Had she done something? Perhaps drawn the attention of something living within the mist.
After lingering just long enough for her inattention to become suspicious, Jiang Yeming finally turned toward me, her expression calm.
“What do you think of this, teacher?” She asked.
I shrugged. “No idea, but I'm open to suggestions. How do you think we should handle this?”
The question was genuine. At the same time, I watched her closely.
“I’ll try something,” Jiang Yeming said.
Her Qi surged.
I immediately frowned in disapproval. That kind of fluctuation would make us easy to detect by anyone stationed nearby.
The air screamed as condensed slashes tore free from her outstretched hand, thin crescent arcs of pale light that flew low and fast. They struck the wet ground ahead and carved through it as though the earth were soft clay. Mud and stone split apart, spraying outward in jagged bursts. Deep gashes scarred the soil with long and uneven cannals, their edges still faintly steaming where her Qi had passed. One slash skimmed a fallen log and cleaved straight through it, leaving the two halves to slump apart with a dull thud.
The scent of freshly torn dirt rose immediately.
Any careful trail we had tried to conceal, every effort to erase our passage, was obliterated in seconds.
My frown deepened, and I snapped at her, “What the hell do you think you're doing, Jiang Yeming? We are trying to erase our presence, not announce it. Every cut you made was like shouting to everyone within a hundred Li that we are here!”
She didn’t answer right away.
Another slash severed the trunk of a nearby tree halfway up, bark exploding outward as it toppled and crashed through the undergrowth. Then she stopped. The light around her hand faded, and she turned to face me, her expression unreadable. Looking calm and distant, as if she were already looking several steps ahead of us.
“I want them to think there was a fight here,” she said simply. “Not a passing group.”
I stared at the ruined ground, at the scars she had carved so deliberately into the land.
She continued before I could respond, her voice lowering. “Whatever shouldn’t have noticed us already has. That much is obvious. At this point, all we can do is distract it. Give it something else to consider.”
Seeing the look on my face, she cleared her throat, almost awkwardly, and added, “Besides… no ordinary humans come this close to the Misty Mountains. Anyone reckless enough to do so is either desperate, powerful, or already dead.”
Already dead?
I followed her gaze back toward the distant peaks, still wrapped in their pale, shifting mist. That strange sense of being watched crept along my spine again, heavier now, more aware.
Okay. Now I was almost a hundred percent sure this regressor beside me had done this deliberately. She had drawn the attention of something within the mist and dragged us here.
What methods had she used while we were running in the opposite direction? I had no idea. I hadn’t sensed a thing.
“Why?” I asked. “We are already trying to run away… Do not act stupid anymore, Jiang Yeming.”
My voice was calm. I wasn’t making accusations yet.
Perhaps it was hypocritical of me to say this. I often did things my way and dragged my disciples along for my own reasons. But no matter how old Jiang Yeming truly was, I was her teacher. That gave me the right and the responsibility to make those calls, always with their safety in mind.
Her doing this underhandedly, bringing us here without approval, was unacceptable.
I didn’t believe she had malicious intentions. But I had seen her make mistakes before, mistakes born from the future she thought she understood. She assumed people in the present were fixed, destined to become the versions she remembered, no matter what changed.
Jiang Yeming hesitated, then held my gaze. She swallowed and let out a turbid breath.
“Do you trust me?” she asked.
“Somewhat,” I said. “But with how you’ve been acting recently, you’ve brought doubt to the table.”
“I can work with that,” she replied. “If you follow my plan this time only, I will never ask you about anything ever again.”
What the fuck? That sounded suspicious as hell! I didn’t trust her for a second to keep that promise.
Worse, even if I wanted to agree, I didn’t trust her judgment or how much she was overestimating me, and us. Especially when she already believed I could orchestrate the death of a major sect leader.
That alone told me how dangerous her assumptions had become.
“Tell me the request you have first,” I said. “Then we can talk about whether I’ll agree.”
“Well…” Her lips puckered as she searched for the right words, and the moment she hesitated, I knew she was about to say something unacceptable. “We should take a detour and hide in the Misty Mountains?”
Why did that sound more like a question than a plan? In that instant, my confidence in her judgment crumbled.
I frowned and paused, pretending to seriously contemplate her suggestion.
“Sure,” I said.
Jiang Yeming’s eyes widened for a fraction of a second, surprise flickering across her face at how easily I’d agreed.
Before she could say anything, I turned and dropped into a crouch on the wet ground. Qi surged toward the soles of my feet, compressing in an instant before I launched myself forward. Mud erupted behind me as I dashed away, moving as fast as I could to put distance between us and the mountains.
Tingfeng followed immediately, staying one step behind me, exactly as I expected. No matter what was happening, his focus never wavered.
Jiang Yeming took a moment to process what was going on, and I sensed her giving chase.
She was fast. The techniques she had inherited from the future might even have been faster than mine.
However–
For a fraction of a second, the world slowed to a crawl. A deep whooshing sound echoed as a horse made of Qi surged beneath me, driving me forward with heavy stomps that made the earth quake underfoot.
I cut off my Foundation Technique to avoid straining my mind, but I’d already hit a trace, something akin to a critical hit. It happened when an Earth Grade Technique was pushed to its maximum capacity and efficiency.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Even superior Earth Grade techniques from the future would struggle to keep up with this. Unless she was willing to waste Qi on a Sky Grade movement technique… or even resort to spatial skills.
But as I moved at top speed, my steps gradually slowed.
I stared ahead at the mist, at the ruined ground around us split by cracks and gouges left behind by Jiang Yeming’s earlier attacks.
Then came the wet sound of boots stepping through mud behind me.
I turned.
Jiang Yeming was walking toward us at a relaxed, normal pace. Tingfeng followed just a step behind her.
She raised an eyebrow at me, amused.
“See?” she said, smiling not smugly, but with genuine delight. “This place isn’t that easy to escape once you’re inside. Think of this array like pushing against a stretchy wall. The speed you try to run at doesn’t matter.”
She’d let something slip, something I wasn’t sure she even realized.
An array?
So this mist wasn’t a technique at all.
Judging by its behavior, it had to be a very high-level array, likely one designed not just to trap intruders, but to keep whatever lived inside sealed as well. That explained why strength and speed meant nothing here.
Oddly enough, that realization was a relief.
If she was right, then this wasn’t the power of some Nascent Soul creature or an absurdly strong cultivator manipulating space itself.
It was dangerous, yes, but at least it was something that could be understood.
The Misty Mountain Range…
I gathered every memory I had of it, every half-forgotten tale, every brittle record I had read. All of them painted the same picture: a place shrouded in mystery, where those who entered rarely returned alive. And those few who did… were never whole. Minds fractured, eyes hollow, speech broken into rambling whispers that made little sense. Some claimed to have seen cities swallowed by fog. Others spoke of voices that guided them deeper until they could no longer tell whether they were walking forward or in circles. No two stories ever aligned, except in how badly they ended.
It was not a land meant for humans, one scholar had once described it.
Despite myself, I felt a stir of curiosity. A quiet pull, like a locked door begging to be opened. For a cultivator, such places were dangerous in more ways than one.
But curiosity was not the same as greed. Some might believe this place hid an inheritance, that an immortal had left something behind capable of changing one’s fate.
I was not foolish enough to gamble my life on unanswered questions.
There was a difference between walking toward opportunity and stepping willingly into a grave.
The Misty Mountains could keep their secrets, at least for now.
I turned my back on the distant peaks and pressed onward, counting my steps, reminding myself that some mysteries endured precisely because those who sought them never lived long enough to understand why.
Still… It was a little informative to know that this place existed, another destination marked somewhere in the back of my mind to explore in the far future.
Well. Time to run some tests.
…
The fog at its base had already been there when we arrived, all white, dense, and clinging low to the earth like something that had crawled out of the mountains and decided not to leave. In the distance, it swallowed roots, stones, and the lower halves of trees, leaving only the upper trunks floating.
I raised a hand, closed my eyes, and stopped.
Jiang Yeming and Tingfeng made no sound, reading the mood.
Good. Silence mattered here.
Mist could be many things.
Weather. Formation. Illusion. Beast.
Or several of them at once.
I crouched and gathered a handful of soil. It was cold, damp, and heavy between my fingers. I rolled it once, feeling the grit scrape my skin, then hurled it forward with full strength.
The earth vanished into the fog.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then the mist shifted. Not peeling away, not parting cleanly, but rolling. Thickening in one place while thinning in another, like flesh responding to pressure.
Too slow for an array. Too uneven for a simple illusion.
I straightened slightly.
I stepped closer and let my sleeve brush the edge of the misty ground, turning my head away as I did. Cold seeped through the fabric immediately. Real enough that the cloth grew heavier where moisture clung. When I withdrew my arm, droplets slid down the threads and fell to the ground.
I rubbed my fingers together.
Wet.
Illusions could mimic sight. Even sound. They were far less convincing when it came to persistence.
I exhaled slowly.
My breath vanished into the fog instead of stopping short of it. No visible seam. No delay.
I listened.
The world beyond the fog felt muffled, but not silent. Sound didn’t disappear; it scattered, dissolved, and returned dull and uncertain. Almost like a low-volume jumbled TV.
I clapped my hands once.
The sound died almost immediately.
That ruled out a cheap trick.
I drew a piece of paper from my storage ring and lit it. The flame flared bright, then weakened as I brought it closer to the mist. It hissed faintly. Steam curled upward where heat met cold, moist air.
I extinguished the flame and closed my eyes.
Qi flowed outward, slowly.
The mist did not feel empty. Nor did it feel structured.
It was dense in some places, thin in others. Heavy, but not uniformly so. My Qi slid into it and did not return cleanly. What came back felt warped, as if it had brushed against something uneven.
Not a formation. Not a pure illusion. But not ordinary mist either.
This was going to take some time.
I opened my eyes.
The mountains loomed above, half-lost in cloud, their presence oppressive even from a distance. I didn’t like the way the fog pooled against the slope, thicker near the rock and thinner farther out, like something anchored there.
I decided to leave.
Turning my back on the mountains felt wrong, like doing so on a lion. That alone was reason enough to do it. If this was an illusion meant to lure, retreat should break it.
“You guys stay here,” I told Tingfeng and Jiang Yeming.
If someone were controlling this, they would try to separate us. I could handle being alone. They would at least have each other. And if we were separated anyway, it would confirm that someone was consciously manipulating the mist either to harm us or simply to play.
I focused, calmed my breathing, and began to walk away.
I counted my steps.
One. Two. Three.
The ground was soft beneath my feet. The fog thinned as I moved, just as it should.
Ten. Eleven. Twelve.
I kept my pace even. No Qi reinforcement. No shortcuts. If someone wanted to harm me, now would be the best time.
Twenty.
The air felt normal. Marsh bushes passed at my sides. The distant mountains faded from my awareness.
Thirty.
I noted the slope, the soil texture, and the angle of the roots. I memorized it all.
Forty.
My steps remained straight. No deviation.
Forty-eight.
I stopped. The air felt colder. I looked up.
The Misty Mountain Range stood before me. The same slope. The same half-buried stones. The same fog pooling at its base like a wedding dress.
I did not move. I checked my breathing. Steady. I looked down.
My footprints ended behind me, looking clear and undisturbed. They led toward the mountains.
Not away.
I crouched and measured the distance between my feet and the nearest stone. The same as before. I checked the tree to my left, the split bark, the fungus clinging to its base.
Identical. Forty-eight steps.
I had not turned. I had not accelerated. I had not lost awareness.
I had been returned.
An illusion, then.
But–
I extended my hand again and brushed the fog. It was cold, wet, and unmistakably real.
I closed my fingers and pulled back. Moisture clung to my skin.
Illusions did not usually soak flesh, especially flesh lacking active Qi. That was why transmigrators who arrived here in otherworldly bodies, without Qi, often possessed strange resistances to sensory techniques and even arrays.
My Qi moved again, more carefully this time. I traced its flow along the fog, not pushing, not dispersing, merely following.
And this time, I felt it. A boundary. Not a wall. A curve. The mist was not filling the space. It was exuding from something.
I stepped closer.
The fog thickened immediately, reacting to my presence. Not consciously, but instinctively, like muscle tightening around a wound.
I swallowed.
The realization settled heavily in my chest. This was not mist covering the mountain. The mountain was resting against it.
The array bent space, folding distance back on itself, guiding, redirecting, and returning. But the substance? The cold. The damp. The weight pressing against the senses?
That was real. I followed the curve with my Qi, deeper this time, ignoring the subtle resistance.
And I touched something beneath the fog. Not stone. Not earth.
I sensed it for only a split second before the sensation vanished.
What was that?
Not dead, but not awake either. The mist shuddered faintly.
I withdrew my Qi immediately.
My heart beat once. Then again.
The fog was both illusion and body.
Was it a creature made of mist? No, not quite.
I had never read about anything like this. There were monstrous beasts capable of elementalizing their bodies, turning themselves into snow or mist for brief periods, but this was different.
This felt like a natural exhalation from something too vast to fully perceive, paired with a spatial distortion that kept intruders circling its perimeter.
Forty-eight steps. Always forty-eight.
Not a trap meant to kill. Not a defense meant to deter intruders.
I straightened slowly and took a single step back.
The fog did not pursue. It merely waited.
I did not try to leave again.
Some boundaries were not meant to be crossed, not because they were impossible, but because crossing them meant becoming noticeable.
And whatever lay sleeping beneath that mist had already proven it could notice me whenever it wished.
It was already watching me, wasn’t it?
Even though I had never perceived its form, nor understood what it truly was, a strange sense settled over me.
Like childhood, learning how to play chess for the first time and sitting across a chessboard from an opponent, we were not enemies yet.