The mountain began dying beneath their feet.
Not metaphorically.
Qingyun Sect—its formations, halls, spiritual veins, and ancestral grounds—had functioned as a single interconnected system for centuries. Now that system was collapsing in layers.
First the formations failed.
Then the spiritual veins destabilized.
Now the mountain itself was breaking apart under converging pressure.
---
Wei Jun dragged Shen Luo across a fractured stone bridge as another section of the central peak disappeared into darkness behind them.
Not collapsed.
Consumed.
Anything touched directly by the spreading distortions simply ceased to behave like matter anymore.
Buildings folded inward into impossible angles before vanishing entirely.
Cultivators caught near the fractures died instantly.
If they were lucky.
---
The sky above Qingyun Sect had become almost completely black around the central rupture. The hand remained partially extended through the opening while reality fractured continuously around it like overstressed glass.
No lightning anymore.
No clouds.
Only pressure.
---
Every breath hurt.
---
Even Shen Luo struggled now.
The pathway inside him still resonated with the thing beyond the fracture, allowing him to remain conscious under the descending force—but the synchronization was becoming dangerous.
He could feel his thoughts changing around the edges.
Sharpening.
Flattening.
Human panic fading beneath cold structural awareness.
---
It would have been easy to surrender to that clarity.
Terrifyingly easy.
---
Another tremor split the mountain.
The bridge beneath them cracked apart.
Wei Jun reacted instantly, grabbing Shen Luo and leaping toward the next terrace just before the stone behind them collapsed into the widening abyss below.
They landed hard beside a shattered formation gate.
Wei Jun coughed blood again.
Too much.
His meridians were failing under the pressure.
---
"You're injured worse than you admit," Shen Luo said.
Wei Jun laughed once.
A dry, ugly sound.
"Everyone here is dying, Shen Luo."
Fair point.
---
Around them, surviving disciples fled in every direction. Some tried escaping down the outer mountain roads. Others rushed toward the transport formations deeper inside the sect.
Most wouldn't survive long enough to reach either.
---
The problem wasn't just the hand anymore.
It was the pathway.
---
The convergence spreading beneath Qingyun Mountain had destabilized every connected structure simultaneously. The sect's spiritual veins were feeding directly into the fracture now.
And the fracture was growing.
---
Above the shattered summit, the Sect Master rose into the air again.
Blood covered half his robes now.
Three hidden elders remained beside him.
Only three.
---
A massive golden seal appeared behind them, stretching across the sky like a second sun.
Ancient symbols rotated across its surface.
Sect foundation treasure.
Probably the strongest artifact Qingyun Sect possessed.
---
Wei Jun stared upward.
"…They're using the Heaven Suppression Seal."
Shen Luo immediately understood the desperation behind that decision.
Artifacts like that weren't weapons.
They were inheritances.
Using one risked destroying the sect's future completely.
---
The Sect Master raised both hands.
The golden seal descended toward the fracture.
The sky screamed.
---
For a moment—
the hand stopped moving again.
Pressure across the mountain shifted violently as the artifact forced the rupture partially closed.
Several disciples below actually began cheering.
Idiots.
---
Shen Luo felt the pathway beneath the mountain react instantly.
Harder than before.
---
"They're making it worse," he said quietly.
Wei Jun looked at him sharply.
"What?"
---
Then the mountain answered for him.
---
Every convergence point beneath Qingyun Sect ignited simultaneously.
Dark pillars of light erupted from below the sect foundations, piercing upward through the collapsing peaks.
One beneath the western ridge.
One beneath the eastern gardens.
One directly beneath them.
---
The terrace exploded apart.
Wei Jun shoved Shen Luo sideways just before dark light erupted through the stone where they stood.
The pressure wave threw both of them across the broken courtyard.
Shen Luo hit a collapsed wall hard enough to crack stone.
Pain exploded through his damaged arm immediately.
---
The convergence point beneath the terrace continued rising.
Not light.
A vertical fracture in space itself.
---
And inside it—
movement.
---
Something was trying to emerge.
---
Wei Jun saw it too.
His face lost color instantly.
"…There are more."
Yes.
That had always been the real danger.
Not a single connection.
A network.
---
The suppression systems beneath Qingyun Sect hadn't contained one pathway.
They had contained fragments of something vastly larger spread beneath the entire region.
---
And now all of it was reconnecting at once.
---
Above the summit, the Heaven Suppression Seal cracked.
One line across its surface.
Then another.
The Sect Master screamed something Shen Luo couldn't hear beneath the pressure tearing through the sky.
---
Then the artifact shattered.
---
Golden light exploded across the heavens.
The resulting backlash vaporized one of the remaining hidden elders instantly.
The others were thrown from the sky bleeding.
And the hand—
finally pushed fully through the fracture to the wrist.
---
Reality around Qingyun Sect began collapsing faster.
Entire mountain sections folded into darkness. Forests vanished. Rivers reversed direction before disappearing into fractures spreading through the earth.
---
Wei Jun grabbed Shen Luo again.
"This place is finished."
"Yes."
"We leave now."
Shen Luo looked toward the widening fractures spreading beneath the mountain.
Toward the dark pillars rising from the convergence points.
Toward the hand beyond the sky.
---
Then he said something that made Wei Jun stare at him like he'd gone insane.
---
"No."
---
Wei Jun's grip tightened.
"…What?"
---
Shen Luo slowly stood despite the pain tearing through his body.
The pathway inside him pulsed violently now, resonating with every convergence point beneath the sect.
And through that resonance—
he understood something.
---
The thing beyond the fracture wasn't fully entering reality yet.
It couldn't.
Not directly.
---
The pathway still lacked stable synchronization.
That was why convergence points continued forming.
Why pressure kept escalating.
Why the fracture remained unstable.
---
Which meant there was still one weakness left.
---
Shen Luo looked toward the ancestral summit.
Toward the original core beneath Qingyun Sect.
---
"They're trying to suppress the fracture from outside," he said quietly.
Wei Jun frowned.
"Yes, because otherwise we all die."
"That won't work."
"Then what will?"
Shen Luo's eyes narrowed.
---
"…Break the convergence before synchronization completes."
---
Wei Jun stared at him in disbelief.
"You want to go TOWARD that thing?"
"Yes."
"That's suicide."
"Probably."
---
Another pulse shook the collapsing mountain.
The hand moved further through the fracture.
And this time—
an eye opened within the darkness behind it.
---
The moment Shen Luo saw it, the pathway inside him nearly lost control completely.
Not from fear.
Recognition.
---
Something on the other side knew him now.
Personally.
---
And suddenly Shen Luo understood the truth that terrified him most:
the pathway hadn't connected him accidentally.
It had been preparing him.