The map ended where the mortal world truly did. Han Li stood on a jagged promontory, the worn leather scroll in his hands now a relic of a past life. For five days, he had followed its lines through thinning air and thickening Qi, leaving the world of plowed fields and quiet hearths far below. Now, before him, the Seven Peaks Mountains didn't just dominate the horizon—they redefined it. Seven colossal spires of stone and ice punched into the heavens, their middles wrapped in eternal belts of swirling, spiritually-charged cloud. The energy here was a tangible pressure, a humming in the bones that spoke of power, opportunity, and profound danger.
He had traveled another fifty kilometers into the foothills before Xiao Yao's guidance vanished entirely. The path forked into three great valleys, each exuding a distinct aura. To the west, a valley shimmered with a harsh, metallic white light. To the east, deep indigo shadows promised hidden, cold secrets. To the south, a softer, golden haze glowed with a deceptive warmth.
"West, east, or south?" he murmured to the wind. This was the first true choice of his new life, unguided by master or letter. The token in his pouch was silent, the senior in the tower pendant offered no counsel.
His indecision lasted only until a coarse, probing thread of spiritual sense brushed over him. It was undisciplined, blunt, marking its owner as Qi Refinement Tier 5. Han Li's own aura, consciously restrained since leaving the village, rippled in response. In an instant, he compressed it further, layering veils of Qi until he projected the exact same, brittle signature of a Tier 5 cultivator. To show Tier 9 here, alone, was to paint a target on his back.
A figure descended a scree-slope to his right. A man in his twenties, wearing practical but worn black robes, with sharp, calculating eyes that missed nothing. He stopped at a wary distance.
Han Li offered a polite, slightly uncertain smile—the mask of a novice. "This cultivator, I am Feng Xiao," the man said, his voice carrying a false warmth. "Are you, too, headed for the Immortal Gathering at Seven Peaks City?"
Perfect. "Yes, Senior Feng," Han Li replied, layering a hint of respectful eagerness into his tone. "I am Han Li. I am going, but I confess, I do not know the path from here. I wonder if Senior knows the way?"
Feng Xiao's smile widened, a predator's grin. "I do indeed. The southern golden valley leads to the trade roads. Come with me. It's safer to travel together in these wilds."
Han Li swept his spiritual sense over the man. Tier 5, as sensed. No hidden artifacts of great power, no dense, concealed aura. Just the crude energy of a tier 5 Qi refiner and the sharp scent of greed. No immediate threat, Han Li concluded. And more importantly, a guide who would save him days of wandering.
"Many thanks, Senior Feng. I am in your debt."
They set off, Feng Xiao taking a lead that was just a little too eager. He chatted amiably about the Gathering—the grand sects that would attend, the Soaring Sword Sect, the Mystical Moon Valley, the Profound Sky Academy. He spoke of the chaos, the opportunities for rogue cultivators to be spotted, the legendary auctions. His words were a practiced lure.
Han Li listened, nodded, and played his part: the talented but naïve youth from some minor mortal-backed cultivation family, ripe for the plucking.
After twenty minutes of brisk travel, they entered a narrow, rock-strewn gully overshadowed by twisted, spirit-withered trees. The golden haze seemed thinner here, the air still.
Feng Xiao stopped walking.
He turned, and his friendly demeanor evaporated like morning dew under a scorching sun. In one smooth motion, he drew a notched, low-grade spirit steel blade from his spatial ring. "Brothers!" he shouted, his voice echoing coldly off the stone. "Get out!"
Han Li feigned confusion, taking a step back. "Brother Feng? What is the meaning of this?"
From behind large boulders and thickets of thorny spirit-vine, three more men emerged. The group's dynamic was immediately clear.
First was a hulking man in his late thirties, a mountain of fat and muscle stuffed into straining black robes. His bald head gleamed, and his small eyes glittered with casual cruelty. His aura pulsed at Qi Refinement Tier 8. The anchor, the blunt force.
The second was a lanky youth, perhaps seventeen, with a nervous twitch in his hands. He held a cheap dagger, his energy a shaky Tier 4. The lookout, the apprentice.
The third was a wiry, fox-faced man in his forties, with a thin mustache and eyes that darted like trapped birds. Tier 6. The strategist, the one who orchestrated the ambushes.
The fatty laughed, a sound like grinding stones. "Well done, Little Feng! He looks tender. Noble robes, clean hands. He's carrying something good, I can smell it."
The fox-faced man eyed Han Li with professional appraisal. "Indeed. No wear on his boots, his spatial pouch is of decent make. A little rich fledgling who strayed too far from his family's nest."
Feng Xiao, now standing with his newfound "brothers," smirked at Han Li. "Sorry, 'Junior Han.' The path to the Gathering requires a toll. Consider this your first real lesson on the immortal path."
Han Li let the mask of confusion settle into something colder. He looked from one face to another, his gaze lingering on the Tier 8 fatty who radiated the most threat. "A toll?" he repeated, his voice losing its naive tone, becoming flat and even.
The fatty took a heavy step forward, the ground seeming to tremble. "What do you think it means, pretty boy? Can't you see? This is a robbery!" He gestured with a meaty hand. "Take out everything in your spatial pouch. Every pill, every spirit stone, every artifact. Do it nice and slow. Then, maybe, we let you walk to the Gathering with just the clothes on your back. Maybe."
The Tier 4 youth giggled nervously, brandishing his dagger. The fox-faced man watched Han Li's hands, ready to react to any move for a weapon.
Han Li stood very still. He had faced a Tier 1 demon beast. He had cleansed a manor of mortal filth. These four were nothing in comparison. But this was different. This was the unvarnished truth of the world he had entered—a world where the weak were meat for the strong, where camaraderie was a lie waiting to become a knife in the back.
He had repressed his cultivation to avoid attention. Now, he would use that deception as a weapon.
A slow, chilling smile touched Han Li's lips, one that didn't reach his eyes. It was a smile that belonged to the boy who had outwitted a demon in a mountain cottage.
"Senior Feng," Han Li said softly, ignoring the fatty. "You are right. This is a lesson." His hand drifted toward his pouch. "The lesson is: never judge a herb by its flower."
---
Far to the North, Thousands of Li Away
At the highest peak of the Verdant Pluto Mountain Range, home of the prestigious Blue Luan Sect, the very air crystallized with cold, pure energy. Upon a natural stone dais that resembled a resting phoenix, a woman sat in serene meditation.
She appeared to be in her early twenties, but her presence spoke of centuries of refined cultivation. Her beauty was not of this earth. It was the heartbreaking delicacy of the first crack in ancient jade, the ephemeral frost pattern on a still pond at dawn. Her skin seemed to glow with a faint, moonlit luminescence, and her hair, blacker than a starless night, flowed like a silent waterfall over shoulders clad in robes of shifting, cloud-like silk. Her most striking features were her eyes, which held the profound calm of a deep, frozen lake, and the slight, sorrowful curve of her lips, as if she held the memory of every beautiful, lost thing in the world.
A soft crackle of energy, like ice settling, signaled her emergence. She opened those deep-frozen eyes. The spiritual pressure in the immediate area solidified, then gently released. Early Core Formation.
A junior female disciple in a patterned blue mask and silver robes appeared, bowing so low her forehead touched the stone. "Congratulations on your successful emergence from seclusion, Grandmaster Lan!"
The woman, Grandmaster Lan Shui, gave a slow, almost imperceptible nod.
"Grandmaster," the disciple continued, voice filled with awe. "The sect leader has requested your presence. We are to attend, and this year, to help oversee, the Immortal Gathering at Seven Peaks City."
A flicker of distant interest passed through Lan Shui's tranquil eyes. "Very well," her voice was like wind chimes made of ice. "Gather a few disciples. We leave shortly."
She rose. With a mere gesture, not even a spoken incantation, the stone dais—a piece of the mountain peak fifty feet across—groaned. Earth and stone cracked in a perfect circle around it. With a sound of tearing roots, the entire massive platform, with her standing serenely at its center, lifted from the mountain. Soil and fractured rock fell away, leaving a smooth, flat island of solid spirit-stone floating in the air. A Flying Mountain Platform.
Within minutes, accompanied by a handful of elite masked disciples who landed gracefully upon the platform, the massive stone slice tilted and then shot southward with terrifying, silent speed, a piece of a mountain on a diplomatic mission, carving through the clouds toward the distant Seven Peaks.
---
Back in the abandoned gully, the first lesson of the immortal path was about to be written in blood. Han Li's hand was still hovering near his pouch. The four bandits waited, greedy and confident.
The real Gathering, it seemed, had already begun.