She reached for the window sill, eager to escape isolation. The three floor drop did little to stop her, her body falling and rolling on contact. Despite the heavy watch surrounding the Snowstar Sect’s main building, her knowledge of the guards and their patrol patterns assisted her escape.

Her figure slipped through underbrush, halting in the shadows each time to assess her situation. Ice blue eyes scoured her surroundings until she felt confident enough to sprint through a clearing. Her body remained low to the ground and from the distance, one would only see a dark shadow with smokey gray hair fluttering across the landscape.

Her sensitive ears picked up shouts in the far distance and not long after, the sounds of empowered footsteps colliding against ground. Without the strength to match up to those chasing after her, the girl remained sprinting at full gait and yet was losing race.

She didn’t have a particular goal in mind for her escape. Distance from the sect was her only desire. 13 years of solitude. 13 years of mindless training. 13 years of her life tossed away only for her to find out she was sold like an item by her own parents.

Tears blurred her vision as she escaped the open field and broke through into a woodline. Her lame vision cleared long enough to find the mountains getting closer. Despite her low cultivation, she was able to feel the untamed qi grow stronger and denser as she encroached the mountain line.

It was her first time getting so close to the mountains. The Snowstar sect’s history told of wars ravaging the area over a treasure hidden in the mountains. Wars that lasted years with the victor and owner alternating every decade or so until her Snowstar sect obtained their turn.

They claimed the land and set up cultivation caves near the mountains. Their Kitsune bloodline provided a rather sizable edge over the competition during their first engagement and with the abundant qi rolling off the mountains, holding the site wasn’t a problem either.

Those mountains which provided her sect so much power and became something akin to a sacred altar for them grew in her vision. While the sight was captivating with the verdant trees and rolling hills riding up to its base, the sounds of multiple footsteps behind her detracted what enamour she might have felt for the scene.

Her chest heaved violently, for each step she pushed brought her further past her limits. Unable to hold her weight, her step failed taking her body down with it. She tumbled to the ground, rolling over herself until a tree brought her to an immediate halt. The exhaustion wracked her small body, her form laid still across the ground aside from the expansion and contraction of her tiny chest.

Her ears flicked once as she heard a familiar voice sound out. 7 other guards slid to a stop beside the man.

“Gina, come back with us.”

Her body was weak, yet her will remained firm. Despite her silence, Elric found the abundant refusal flooding from her gaze. He clicked his tongue before abandoning curtesties.

“Grab her. If she struggles, knock her out.”

Two guards moved in without any hesitation. It was clear the girl was treated as an outsider despite being the only child of the Snowstar sect’s master. Already 13 years old, yet her dantian had yet to develop a core despite the resources pooled into her. Such an existence was nothing more than a drain on the sect’s pride and resources.

Gina felt her arms grasped and her body pulled up. Her legs wobbled with weakness, yet her captors didn’t yield from pity. Rather, they dragged her along with them. The two guards only managed to drag her a meter or so when the forest went silent.

The group cautioned their movements to observe the surroundings. The forest was abnormally silent. Lack of wind, no birds chirping, crickets and insects seemingly frozen with fear, and the strangest of all, the qi surrounding the group appeared to swirl around them.

“Does anyone see anything? Hear anything?”

Elric questioned his group which remained in a semicircle covering each other. Each member scanned the forest with their twitching ears and flickering eyes. They circulated their qi, enhancing their senses and yet the only detectable abnormality was the increasing qi. It swirled around the group gathering momentum, yet didn’t appear to harm any of them.

“What?! What’s happening?!”

One of the guards felt his grip torn from. The swirling mass of qi condensed around Gina. Elric and the others looked on in abject confusion as it assimilated into the little girl’s body. The light scratches and bruise from her escape raced each other to heal. At first, Elric thought Gina herself was somehow controlling the Qi, yet the confusion spread across her face couldn’t be more obvious.

“Did... she get the blessing of the sacred mountain?!”

Elric panicked. This talentless girl that the sect finally managed to sell off was blessed by the sacred mountain? How could such a thing be possible? If her status were to rise, what would happen to those like him who used her as a stress relief? He couldn’t allow such a thing to happen.

“Cripple her dantian! If she gains a blessing we won’t survive!”

Before the blessing took hold, he had to cripple her. Excuses were abundant as long as the girl couldn’t speak about what happened. If anything, they could just blame the mountain for crippling her in anger due to her trespassing.

The guards understood Elric’s intent instantly as they held thoughts along the same lines. The one guard who managed to maintain his grip on Gina’s arm twisted her body around and launched his fist at her pelvic region. Crushing the dantian was the best way to prevent the blessing from completing.

His fist connected with the girl, yet the familiar feedback left him wanting. There was no crushing sensation, nor was there any outburst of qi. As far as the group could tell, Gina’s dantian survived the strike, something that shouldn’t have been possible under normal circumstances.

Gina took advantage in their moment of surprise and broke into a full sprint towards the mountain. She felt as if she were overflowing with qi, her body erasing fatigue before it could even build up. Even stranger, she felt a tug upon her body. It was something less physical as she couldn’t ‘feel’ it per se but she knew she was being directed in some fashion.

Elric and the other guards didn’t remain confused for long. The moment they saw the girl dash off, they chased after her. Yet, despite their advanced cultivation, the girl remained a fixed distance from them. If only they could kill her, things wouldn’t be so problematic. Their sect master would certainly cripple them though if such a thing happened.

They could get away with light punishment if the girl was only crippled as she was considered talentless already. Death on the other hand, was something the guards in charge of her couldn’t afford. A contract had already been signed for the girl to be sold into marriage with the neighboring Kitsune clan at 16. Their clan already received payment, how could they just say the girl died now that they received their payment? Wasn’t that just asking for war?

Elric chased after Gina with his group. They long since exited the lush forest for the verdant hills at the base of the mountain. Each step he took, Elric found himself struggling to maintain his speed. It was as if the mountain itself were rejecting him, something Elric was starting to believe and develop a budding fear towards.

Though the Snowstar sect educated their disciples on the sacred mountain and its history, if one were to ask said disciples if they actually believed it, they’d be hard pressed to find a believer. Despite that, Elric found himself forced to believe it. His last step felt as if he were pressing against sand while carrying an extra 100 kilograms.

Gina on the other hand felt nothing. In fact, she felt lighter than ever before. Her speed increased the further up the mountain she made it and at some point, she found herself stopping at the base of the mountain. Her path led her into a deep cavern where a waterfall fell into an otherwise placid subterranean lake. The dark environment was lit up only by glowing moss and flowers common to the caves.

The tug she once felt no longer pressured her as if she reached the desired location. Around her, she felt raw, unprocessed qi circulating. The ground, the water, and the air all contained copious quantities. She knew beyond a doubt that the cultivation caves her sect dug into the hills wouldn’t be able to match up to this.

She entered the depths of the cavern, walking along the edge of the subterranean lake while taking in the view. Her eyes focused on crystals growing out of stalactites that she just knew contained something valuable. As her eyes adjusted to the dim lighting inside the cavern, she saw a silver stone island sitting just below the waterfall. The placid lake surrounded it, however the stone platform itself seemed out of place somehow. She peered into the lake, only to find it coulded, her vision hardly penetrating beyond the first ten millimeters or so.

A series of footsteps broke her from the awe and wonderment she was feeling. Her head rotated and her eyes scanned with hopes of finding an exit. Those echoing steps were closing in and she knew who it was. She only managed to dodge that guard’s strike last time with the help of an enchanted item. She doubted she’d be so lucky as to survive such a thing again. Despite her efforts and desires though, there only appeared one exit for the cavern, and what a shame it was the footsteps were closing in from that very exit.