Jared’s eyelids lowered a fraction. “Which Sacred Paragon, exactly?” he asked, as though the name might unlock a hidden door.
The elder shook his head. “I cannot say… The mountain has stood tens of thousands of years. Celestial guardians watch it, but they give no name, only that the remains are ancient and revered, likely tied to their own lineage.”
Jared clasped his hands in thanks and let the elder continue on his way. When the elder’s back disappeared into the procession, Luther leaned closer, voice barely a thread. “Mr. Chance, the energies here mesh in an ugly way, celestial essence braided with Ghost Clan chill.
This isn’t a normal shrine. And…” He let the warning hang. Luther’s brow furrowed deeper. “The ghost scent doesn’t drift; it cycles, almost like someone laid a formation underneath.”
Jared exhaled through his nose. A metallic tang rode the breeze, faint but unmistakable—blood, half-masked by pine and incense. Neither man hurried. They matched the crowd’s reverent pace, letting sandals scrape gravel while the path wound upward.
The trail coiled between towering, time-gnarled cedars. Golden-armored celestials strode past at intervals, eyes sharp, spears sharper. Each patrol barked orders that reduced seasoned cultivators to flinching peasants. More than once a guard cuffed a slow walker, sneering as though the offense stained sacred ground.
An hour in, the grade sharpened. Those at High Immortal Realm Level Three and below fought for breath, sweat dampening their prayer beads. The mountain’s silent rule forbade flight or essence reinforcement.
Without that crutch, powerful bodies felt suddenly human, thighs burning, lungs rasping. Jared’s stride stayed steady; memories of harder climbs in the mundane world left his muscles untroubled.
Higher elevations carried a creeping chill that slid beneath the skin. With each switchback, another squad of golden armor appeared, as though the mountain’s ribs were lined with jailers. The place felt less like a shrine and more like a cage, and the thought curled into a cold smile behind Jared’s calm eyes.
Beside him, Luther murmured, “At this pace we’ll never reach the summit today. Perhaps we should take to the air?” The Ghost Clan envoy fixed Jared with an expectant look that underlined his proposal. Sweat darkened Luther’s collar; he had never relied on raw muscle to climb a mountain, and the novelty wore thin fast.
“Fine,” Jared said, “But we keep it subtle.” His voice dropped to a whisper, repeating the caution more for himself than for Luther.
Every pilgrim accepted the no-flight rule as gospel; breaking it would spotlight them against the gray sky. They slipped behind a crooked boulder where no sentinel watched. Essence folded inward, figures blurred; a heartbeat later the spot held only wind-stirred dust. A single pulse of movement carried them to mid-mountain.
Below, the main road seethed with pilgrims of every cultivation, each face shining with unquestioning devotion. Eyes half-closed, palms pressed together, they advanced three paces, knelt, and touched foreheads to stone before rising to repeat the pattern. Jared lifted his gaze; only frosted swirls of immortal mist answered, hiding the peak like a secret the sky refused to tell. The fog’s edges clung in geometric layers—too even, too deliberate to be natural—which confirmed someone wanted curious eyes kept out.
Luther drew a sharp breath. “The ghost aura thickens the higher we go; it’s bleeding straight out of the mountain.” A deep crease split his forehead as he spoke.
Jared’s mind ticked over the possibility of hidden Ghost Clan cultivators burrowed within the rock. The idea sat uneasily; the pieces refused to lock together. He remembered Nether City skulking beneath the Myriad Monster Mountain Range, proof that ghosts favored deep cover. If the Sacred Mountain truly sheltered such a nest, the leaking aura made perfect sense.
“Should we trace it to the source?” Luther asked, eagerness edging his voice. The chance to find kinsmen on the very first day set a fire behind his eyes.
Jared tipped his head. “If we sense it this easily, how have the celestials missed it?” Suspicion coiled; perhaps the ignorance itself was part of a larger plot. His tone flattened, caution overriding curiosity.
The ghost scent drifted in the open like smoke from an unbanked fire. On a mountain owned by celestials, such a flaw should have sounded every alarm long ago, yet no horn had blown. Jared kept a wary pace, scanning the swirling mist. The celestials should have rushed over the moment Ghost Clan aura drifted out, yet not even a patrol stirred. The calm felt wrong, like the hush before a trap snapped.
“Exactly. Why haven’t the celestials reacted? They treat our Ghost Clan like thorns in their eyes and knives in their flesh.” Luther’s voice stayed low, but the bite behind it carried through the haze. Luther’s brows drew together. Even his steady ghost-fire eyes flickered with confusion as he searched the dim air for an answer that refused to appear.
“Move… We’ll see what is hiding up there first.” Jared decided the Sacred Mountain had to show its hand sooner or later.
Both men lifted off again. Their figures vanished into the thick immortal fog, the pearly swirls swallowing every trace of them almost at once. Mist folded around them like wet cotton. Up, down, forward—every direction blurred together until Jared’s balance spun and the pull of gravity felt uncertain.
It felt as if they drifted inside raw chaos: no sky, no ground, only shifting gray that erased distance and direction.
When Jared looked back, the long file of pilgrims on the mountain road had already disappeared, swallowed whole by the white void.
“No wonder those cultivators chose to walk. This fog is part of the mountain’s rules.” Jared’s words broke the muffled silence. Luther answered from somewhere close, his tone half-impressed, half-annoyed. He had never feared heights, yet the formless space unsettled him.
On foot, a pilgrim at least felt the stone path under each step; even if the fog confused the eyes, the road would carry them upward in a straight line. But flight offered nothing to gauge by. Without landmarks, a single misjudged angle could send a flier circling forever inside the vapor.
“Stay on me, don’t drift off.” Jared let his eyes narrow, then spread his divine sense as wide as the fog allowed, searching for the faint thread of spirit current that still flowed toward the summit. Luther held close behind Jared’s shoulder and followed the path Jared marked, both men pressing upward through the blank air.
After climbing a bit higher, they halted. A thin crease formed between Jared’s brows; the same question showed in Luther’s eyes.
“Mr. Chance, do you sense it as well?”
“I do… Celestial aura is braided with Ghost Clan aura here. The strands are so tight I can barely separate them,” Jared said, voice even but wary. Two different bloodlines were never meant to merge like this. Even a dual-cultivator could not weave energies so seamlessly that an outside observer struggled to tell which was which.
