The mountain’s heart was a realm unto itself, a vertical world of unrelenting peril that dwarfed the forests below in both scale and danger.
Ming Xuan Ji had climbed many peaks during her months of travel through this strange new world, some steep and rocky, some covered in snow and ice that had tested her in different ways, but this one felt different from the very first moment she set foot on its lower slopes.
It felt alive with malice, as if the very stone resented her intrusion and was actively trying to push her back down into the endless green hell she had spent so long fighting her way out of.
The air thinned to a razor edge the higher she went, growing colder with every hundred meters she ascended, cold enough to bite through even the adaptive warmth of her [Heavenly Demon Raiment].
The fabric shimmered constantly as it worked to maintain her body temperature, but even the artifact had its limits against the altitude’s merciless bite that seemed designed to sap the strength from anything that dared to climb this high.
Mists clung to the jagged cliffs like spectral shrouds, concealing drops that plunged straight into oblivion and hiding narrow crevices that could swallow her whole if she misstepped even once.
One wrong placement of her foot on the frost-slick stone and she would fall for a very long time before hitting anything solid, and that could be fatal.
She ascended with deliberate grace, her Qinggong transforming the treacherous terrain into something that almost resembled a dancer’s stage where every movement had purpose and every leap carried her higher.
Every ledge became a platform she could push off from with perfect timing, every outcrop a stepping stone that carried her upward in soaring leaps that would have been impossible for any normal human back on Earth.
Feet skimmed over frost-rimed rocks with barely a sound, propelling her dozens of meters upward in a single bound before she touched down again and immediately launched herself higher without pausing to catch her breath.
Her black hanfu billowed around her like the wings of a nocturnal predator caught in an updraft, the red accents flickering in the dim light that filtered through the perpetual clouds like dying embers struggling to stay alive in the wind.
The fabric moved with her perfectly, never tangling around her legs or catching on the sharp stone edges that would have shredded normal clothing in minutes and left her exposed to the cold.
The artifact was proving its worth once again in an environment that seemed specifically designed to kill anything that didn’t belong here, and she was grateful for it in a way she hadn’t been during the easier fights below.
But the monsters here were no longer the mere prey she had grown used to harvesting for easy essence in the forests below where everything had started to feel routine.
These were wardens of the summit, creatures forged in the mountain’s dense spiritual energy over who knew how many centuries of brutal survival against the elements and each other.
Their Qi signatures burned brightly in her [Divine Eye of Veritas], stronger and more refined than anything she had encountered in the lower forests, their auras pulsing with the kind of power that came from thriving in an environment this harsh and unforgiving where only the strong survived and the weak became food.
Packs hunted with coordination that spoke of long years working together, their movements almost military in their precision, flanking and herding potential prey with terrifying efficiency that made her wonder if they had once been trained by something or someone.
Solo beasts wielded elemental mastery that forced her to draw deeper from her arsenal than she had needed to in weeks, pulling on techniques she had been saving for real emergencies and refining them on the fly as she fought for her life on narrow ledges with nothing but empty air beneath her and the promise of a very long fall if she made even one mistake.
The first real challenge came midway up a sheer face that would have been completely impossible for any normal climber to even attempt without specialized equipment and years of training.
A swarm of crystalline spiders erupted from webbed crevices above her, their bodies faceted like living gems that caught and refracted the dim light in rainbow patterns across the cliff face like a deadly light show.
Their legs were tipped with venomous barbs that gleamed with a sickly green light, promising a slow and painful death to anything they managed to pierce with even a glancing blow.
They descended in a glittering cascade, silk threads laced with wind-aspect Qi that sliced the air like invisible blades, the sound a high-pitched whine that set her teeth on edge and made the fine hairs on the back of her neck stand up in warning.
Ming Xuan Ji twisted mid-leap, her body contorting in ways that would have been impossible for her old self back on Earth, dodging a thick strand of web that would have ensnared her like a fly in a spider’s trap and left her helpless as they swarmed over her.
The silk passed so close she felt the wind it displaced against her cheek, the cold kiss of near-death making her heart race with something that was equal parts terror and the dark exhilaration she enjoyed.
She countered immediately with a protective shield, a dome of swirling Qi that shimmered into existence around her like a bubble of distorted reality that bent the light in strange ways.
The shield deflected the initial barrage of silk projectiles with a series of ringing impacts that sounded like someone striking a glass bell with a hammer over and over again.
The vibrations hummed through her meridians and made her bones resonate in sympathy, the force of the attacks stronger than she had expected from creatures this size and forcing her to reinforce the shield with more Qi than she had planned to spend so early in the climb.
The spiders were smart. They weren’t just attacking blindly or following simple animal instincts that she could predict and counter. They were testing her defenses, adjusting their angles with every missed shot, learning from her movements in real time and communicating with each other through subtle shifts in their Qi that she could see with her Divine Eye but couldn’t quite understand.
It was the first time she had encountered a group of monsters that seemed to be actively adapting to her fighting style mid-battle, and the realization sent a thrill of something dangerous and exciting through her veins that made her grin despite the danger.
Seizing the momentum before they could adjust their strategy again and overwhelm her with sheer numbers, she unleashed [Demonic Waves] in rapid succession.
Her palms blurred as she struck the air in front of her, sending vibrational waves rippling outward that shattered the spiders’ crystalline exoskeletons from afar with satisfying cracks that echoed off the cliffs.
The technique was one she had been refining during the long weeks of travel between the easy kills in the forest, practicing the timing and the flow of Qi until it felt as natural as breathing and she could use it without thinking.
Shards exploded outward in sparkling bursts that caught the dim mountain light like fireworks, the sound of breaking crystal strangely beautiful in the thin air, a symphony of destruction that echoed off the cliffs around her in strange and haunting ways that made her think of music she hadn’t heard in a very long time.
But the survivors adapted with terrifying speed, scuttling across the cliff face with blinding speed that made her eyes struggle to track their individual movements as they moved as one organism with many bodies.
Their legs found purchase on sheer stone where nothing should have been able to climb, moving with a coordination that suggested they had hunted together on this mountain for a very long time and knew every trick the terrain could offer.
She absorbed a venomous dart mid-flight without conscious thought, her devouring arts converting the poison Qi into raw energy that immediately fueled a [Devouring Fire Lance] with barely a conscious command from her.
The crimson spear streaked upward, impaling three spiders in a fiery chain before detonating in a bloom of flames that lit the mist around her like false dawn, the explosion echoing off the cliffs in a way that made her ears ring and her vision flash white for a moment as the heat washed over her face even through the protective shield she had raised at the last second.
Higher still, the foes grew bolder, as if the mountain itself was watching her progress with ancient eyes and escalating the challenge to see if she was truly worthy of reaching the summit or if she would fall like so many others before her who had tried and failed.
A colossal stone golem emerged from the cliffside itself with a grinding sound like continents shifting against each other, its body a fusion of rock and earth Qi that made it look like a piece of the mountain had decided to stand up and fight back against the intruder who dared to climb its slopes without permission.
Its fists were like battering rams the size of small cars, each swing cratering the narrow ledge where she had been standing a heartbeat earlier and sending chunks of stone tumbling into the abyss below with a sound like the world itself breaking apart and falling into darkness.
The ground shook with every step the golem took, the vibrations traveling up through her legs and into her chest, making her teeth rattle and her balance waver on the precarious outcrop she was using as a battlefield with nothing but empty air on three sides.
Ming Xuan Ji danced around it, her form ethereal and untouchable, her feet barely seeming to touch the ground as she used the narrow ledges and protruding rocks as springboards for her Qinggong that carried her in arcs that defied gravity.
She tested its defenses with [Demonic Echo], the vibrations cracking its surface in spiderweb patterns that spread across its chest and arms like fractures in glass, but failing to penetrate deeply into whatever core kept it moving and regenerating with relentless efficiency that made her wonder if it was even alive in any traditional sense.
The beast’s regeneration was swift and almost beautiful to watch in a horrifying way, stone reforming like living clay under her attacks, the cracks sealing themselves almost as fast as she could make them appear with her strikes.
It was like fighting a living mountain that refused to acknowledge that it was supposed to be dead and stay down.
‘Time to escalate and go even further beyond! I’ve been holding back for too long, playing it safe, treating this like just another grind session where I can coast on my cheats and previous experience. Let’s see what this body can really do when I stop playing it safe and actually push myself to the limit.’
Qi surged through her dantian like a river that had finally broken through a dam it had been pressing against for weeks of easy fights that hadn’t tested her.
Yin cold and Yang heat intertwined in a volatile dance that made her meridians sing with power and her vision blur at the edges from the sheer amount of energy she was channeling through pathways that were still adjusting to this new world.
She unleashed the [Yin Yang Vortex Strike], her fists spinning in a prismatic whirlwind that pulled the golem off-balance and sent it staggering backward toward the edge of the ledge with a grinding sound that made her teeth ache.
The conflicting forces of ice and fire eroded its body in a cataclysmic fusion that sent chunks of superheated and flash-frozen stone flying in all directions like shrapnel from an explosion that had gone off right in front of her.
Freezing shards met searing blasts in a continuous assault, the temperature swings causing the stone to crack and shatter as it tried and failed to adapt to both extremes at once in a way that made her think of thermal shock on a massive scale.
The technique drained her reserves significantly, a heavy toll that left her breathing hard and her vision swimming for a moment as her Qi reserves dipped dangerously low and she had to fight to stay upright on the narrow ledge, but the payoff was immense and immediate.
As the golem crumbled into a pile of rubble that cascaded down the cliff in an avalanche of broken stone that sounded like thunder, essence flooded her like a mountain spring breaking through ice in spring, widening her meridians and densifying her Qi in a rush that made her laugh out loud despite the exhaustion and the thin air burning her lungs with every breath she took.
She paused on a narrow outcrop no wider than her shoulders, crossing her legs to meditate in the thin, freezing air that made her head spin if she moved too quickly and the wind threatened to push her off into the abyss if she lost her balance even for a second.
She had learned to trust her body’s balance on these heights after weeks of climbing, but it was still a conscious effort not to look down into the endless drop that waited for any mistake.
The Heavenly Demon Scripture guided her cycling with the patience of an ancient teacher who had seen countless disciples rise and fall over the centuries, drawing in the ambient spiritual energy that saturated the peaks like a sponge soaking up water from a flood that had been building for eons.
It flowed into her like nectar from the gods themselves, restoring what was spent and polishing her foundation further, the energy here denser and more potent than anything she had encountered in the forests below where everything had been too easy for too long and she had started to feel like she was just going through the motions.
She could feel her Dantian expanding with every breath she took, the power settling into her bones and making her feel both stronger and more centered than she had in weeks of easy grinding that had started to feel more like a chore than actual progress toward becoming something worthy of the title Savior.
Days melted into this rhythm of climb, fight, absorb, recover, and repeat until her body moved without conscious thought and her Qi flowed like it had always belonged in this world instead of being something she had to force through pathways that were still learning what they were capable of.
Each victory refined her in ways that went beyond simple stat increases or the satisfying feeling of leveling up that she had chased for so long in UBAO. Her movements grew more instinctive, a seamless blend of game-honed technique from her years as FistMasterAdam and real-world adaptation that made her feel like she was finally becoming one with this body instead of just piloting it from somewhere behind her eyes like a passenger in a vehicle she didn’t fully understand.
The loneliness that had been eating at her during the forest grind was still there, a constant background hum that never quite went away no matter how many monsters she killed or how strong she became, but it was quieter now, pushed to the background by the constant challenge and the knowledge that she was getting closer to something important that might finally give her answers.
The smoke she had seen after the wyvern fight was still on her mind every single day when she woke up and every night when she meditated, a promise of people, of civilization, of not being alone with only her own thoughts and the endless green for company anymore. She just had to reach the summit and see what lay beyond the final cliffs and the last of the mist that had been her constant companion for longer than she wanted to think about.
The higher she climbed, the more the mountain seemed to test her in new and creative ways, as if it had an intelligence of its own and was genuinely curious to see how far she could go before breaking under the pressure of its challenges.
The mist grew thicker in some sections, sometimes so dense she could barely see her own hands in front of her face even with her enhanced vision that could normally pierce through darkness and deception, forcing her to rely entirely on her Divine Eye to navigate and spot threats before they could ambush her on the narrow ledges where there was no room to maneuver and no second chances if she reacted too slowly.
The cold deepened until even the Raiment had to work harder than it ever had before, the fabric shimmering constantly as it fought to maintain her body temperature against an environment that seemed specifically designed to kill anything that wasn’t native to these brutal heights where only the strongest or the luckiest survived.
She started seeing things in the mist during the long, lonely climbs that lasted for days at a time with nothing but her own thoughts for company, shapes that might have been monsters or might have been her own mind playing tricks on her after so long alone with nothing but the wind and her own breathing for company in a world that didn’t seem to care if she lived or died.
She talked to herself more up here than she ever had in the forest below, her voice echoing off the cliffs in strange and sometimes mocking ways that made her wonder if she was finally starting to lose it after everything she had been through since waking up in that forest with nothing but her cheats and her memories.
One particularly brutal day that seemed to stretch on forever in the thin air that made every breath feel like she was sucking through a straw, she encountered a flock of wind-aspect hawks that attacked in perfect formation, their beaks and talons glowing with concentrated Qi that could shear through stone like it was paper and leave nothing but dust behind.
She spent what felt like hours dodging and counterattacking, using the narrow ledges and the mountain’s own terrain to her advantage, luring them into tight spaces where their numbers became a liability instead of the overwhelming advantage they should have been on open ground.
When the last one fell and its essence flowed into her Dantian in a warm rush that made her feel stronger, she collapsed against a rock wall, laughing breathlessly at the absurdity of it all while her heart pounded in her chest.
She was fighting birds on a mountain in another world, using techniques from a game that no longer existed anywhere except in her memories, and she was winning.
If someone had told her this a year ago while she was grinding in her VR pod back on Earth, she would have laughed them out of the room and told them to touch grass and get some real sunlight instead of living in a fantasy world.
As she meditated that night on a precarious ledge that would have given her vertigo in her old life and made her question every decision that had led her to this moment, the Heavenly Demon Scripture revealed another fragment of knowledge that hadn’t been there before, a deeper understanding of how to cycle Qi while moving at high speeds, how to maintain her techniques without draining herself as quickly as she had been during the earlier fights where she had been too aggressive.
The mountain was teaching her as much as it was trying to kill her, and she was a fast learner who had always thrived on challenge and the satisfaction of overcoming something that was actually difficult instead of just going through the motions.
She could feel herself approaching some kind of threshold, a breakthrough that was waiting just beyond the next fight, the next absorption, the next moment when she pushed herself harder than she thought she could go and came out the other side stronger than she had been before.
By the time she reached the upper slopes where the air was so thin it made her head spin if she moved too quickly and the cold was so deep it made her bones ache even through the Raiment that had been her constant companion and protector, her body had changed in subtle but profound ways that she could feel with every breath she took and every movement she made.
Her Qi reserves were deeper than they had ever been. Her meridians were wider and smoother, the pathways for energy flowing through her body with an efficiency that made her techniques hit harder and cost less Qi than they had when she first woke up in this world with nothing but the clothes on her back and the cheats she had brought with her.
Her reactions were faster than they had been even during her best no-hit runs where she had been at the top of her game, her body moving before her conscious mind had finished processing what was happening and what she needed to do to survive.
She was no longer the same person who had woken up in the forest all those weeks ago, confused and terrified and desperately trying to figure out if any of this was real or if she had finally lost her mind in the earthquake that had ended her old life.
She was something more. Something dangerous. Something that was starting to feel like it belonged in this world instead of just surviving in it by the skin of her teeth and the power of her cheats that had carried her this far.
And somewhere above her, past the final cliffs and the last of the mist that had been her constant companion for days on end and sometimes felt like it was trying to swallow her whole, lay the summit, and whatever lay beyond it.
She is certain that she wasn’t alone in this world, that there were people out there somewhere living their lives and going about their business, that her time as a solitary hunter grinding endlessly for power was coming to an end whether she was ready for it or not. She has to think this way, she has to believe or she will lose her mind.
“Come on then,” she whispered to the mountain, to the monsters that had tested her, to whatever waited above with the promise of civilization and answers and maybe, finally, someone to talk to who wasn’t herself echoing in her own head.
“Show me what you’ve got. I’m ready for whatever comes next, and I’m not going to stop until I find out why I’m here and what I’m supposed to do with all this power.”
She leaped upward one more time, her body a black streak against the gray stone, her hanfu billowing behind her like the wings of something that had finally learned how to fly after being grounded for too long in a world that didn’t make sense, and the mountain answered with a roar of wind and the distant cry of something ancient and powerful that had been waiting for her arrival since the day she first woke up alone in this strange new world with nothing but her cheats and her memories of a life that was gone forever.
The climb was almost over.
The real journey, the one that would define who she became in this new life and whether she would be a savior or something else entirely, was about to begin.
The final stretch of the climb was the hardest yet. The air had grown so thin that every breath felt like fire in her lungs, and the wind screamed across the exposed rock with enough force to nearly knock her off balance more than once.
Ming Xuan Ji pushed through it anyway. After the crystalline spiders that had learned her movement patterns mid-fight, the regenerating stone golem that had forced her to unleash the [Yin Yang Vortex Strike] for the first time in real combat, and the long days of meditation where the Heavenly Demon Scripture had poured new knowledge into her mind, she was not going to be stopped by something as simple as altitude and wind. She had come too far to turn back now.
When she finally hauled herself over the last jagged ridge and onto the summit plateau, the sight that greeted her was both beautiful and desolate.
The plateau stretched wide and barren, whipped by howling gales that carried snowflakes like razor-sharp confetti. The sky above was a bruised purple-gray, and the world below looked small and distant, like a painting she could reach out and touch if she only stretched far enough.
At the center of the plateau loomed the guardian.
An Earth Dragon.
A behemoth that resembled a hill given monstrous, living form. Its massive lizard-like head was crowned with jagged horns, and its eyes glowed with ancient, territorial fury.
A bulky torso rested on four pillar-like legs, each claw sunk deep into the stone as if the creature had grown out of the mountain itself. Earth-aspect Qi emanated from it in palpable waves, making the ground tremble with every slow breath it took.
In the old UBAO lore, Earth Dragons were divine beasts, masters of terrain, capable of summoning quakes, raising barriers, and possessing unyielding defense.
Her [Divine Eye of Veritas] confirmed what her instincts already knew: this thing was vastly superior in raw power. Its Qi was an abyss compared to her own burgeoning sea.
Yet instead of fear, a thrill coursed through her, banishing the fatigue of the long climb. As a veteran who had spent years outleveling and outplaying bosses, this felt familiar. This felt like coming home.
A playful smirk curved her lips as she stepped onto the plateau, her black hanfu snapping in the gale.
“Finally,” she said to the wind, voice light with mockery and genuine excitement. “A worthy opponent. Our battle will be legendary.”
The dragon detected her instantly. Its massive head swiveled with predatory grace, golden eyes locking onto her small figure.
A roar erupted from its throat, a primordial bellow that cracked the plateau and sent snow avalanching down the slopes in white rivers. It charged, the earth buckling and rising under its weight like a living thing, spikes of stone erupting from the ground in a deadly forest aimed directly at her.
Ming Xuan Ji exploded into action.
Her Qinggong carried her skyward in a soaring arc, dodging the erupting spikes with fluid twists and spins that would have been impossible months ago. She landed lightly on a protruding boulder, using it as a springboard. The dragon’s tail swept in like a whip of scaled destruction, pulverizing the boulder she had just vacated into powder.
She vaulted over the tail, robes fluttering dramatically, and struck first.
[Demonic Echo] channeled into her palm, she slammed it against the dragon’s flank. Vibrations rippled inward, cracking scales and drawing a spray of viscous, dark blood. The beast shrugged the attack off with terrifying vitality, retaliating with a claw swipe that gouged a deep furrow where she had been standing a heartbeat earlier.
She circled it like a shadow, graceful and relentless, using every lesson the mountain had taught her.
The aerial raptors she had fought on the way up had sharpened her mid-air maneuvering. The golem had taught her how to deal with regenerating defenses. Now she combined everything into something new.
The dragon summoned earthen barriers, walls of stone rising from the plateau to shield it, but Ming Xuan Ji weaved between them, striking at weak points with [Demonic Echo] and [Vibration Pulse].
The dragon healed its wounds with earth essence, forcing her to innovate on the fly. She absorbed fragments of its own earth Qi when she could, turning its power against it in small ways.
The fight intensified into a symphony of chaos. The dragon summoned a tidal wave of rock and dirt that rolled across the plateau like a living landslide.
Ming Xuan Ji leaped from Qi platform to Qi platform she formed mid-air, the new technique from her meditations letting her stay aloft longer than ever before.
She retaliated with a concentrated [Yin Yang Vortex Strike] that fractured the dragon’s earthen defenses in a radiant eruption of ice and fire.
The dragon raged, slamming its tail and claws into the ground to create shockwaves and rising spikes. Ming Xuan Ji was forced to stay constantly moving, her body pushed to its current limit.
She took hits, glancing blows that still felt like being struck by a falling boulder, but the [Heavenly Demon Raiment] absorbed the worst of the damage, and her own growing power let her keep fighting through the pain.
Finally, after what felt like hours but was probably only minutes of brutal, back-and-forth combat, she found her opening.
The dragon reared up for a massive overhead slam, the ground cracking beneath its weight. Ming Xuan Ji darted in low, both palms blazing with intertwined Yin and Yang energy, and drove a perfected [Yin Yang Vortex Strike] directly into its exposed underbelly.
The explosion of conflicting elemental forces tore through the dragon’s defenses. Scales shattered. Flesh ruptured. The massive body convulsed once, twice, then crashed to the plateau with a sound like thunder rolling across the mountains.
Golden essence, richer and denser than anything she had absorbed before, flooded into her Dantian in a torrent. She dropped to one knee, gasping, as her body underwent another transformation.
Bones densified further. Meridians widened. New pathways for Qi opened in her mind and body, knowledge from both the Heavenly Demon Scripture and techniques she had been inventing during the climb settling into place like they had always belonged there.
When the rush finally subsided, she rose slowly and surveyed the vista from the summit.
The world unfolded below her: endless forests under a vast sky, mountains piercing the horizon in every direction. It was beautiful. It was also the same old same old.
‘Still nothing,’ she thought, the excitement of victory tempered by the familiar disappointment. ‘No cities. No roads. No people. Just more nature. More trees. More of the same.’
She rested for a while on the plateau, meditating to stabilize her gains and integrate the new power flowing through her. Then she continued her journey, already used to disappointment. It only pained her mind. It didn’t halt her movement for even a moment.
What followed was a long period of travel and deliberate training.
After descending the mountain, she moved through the forests with new purpose. The enemies she encountered grew weaker the farther she traveled from the mountain’s dense spiritual influence. She ignored most of them, they no longer held any real value in her eyes. Instead, she focused on training.
She practiced the new techniques she had gained from the Earth Dragon fight and the deeper insights from the Heavenly Demon Scripture.
She experimented constantly. She refined [Demonic Echo] into variations that could target specific internal structures with greater precision. She learned to maintain [Yin Yang Vortex Strike] for longer periods without draining herself dry.
She created mid-air Qi platforms that let her change direction in flight and even briefly hover when needed. She pushed her Qinggong to new limits, learning to move so fast the world blurred around her while still maintaining perfect control.
Days turned into weeks. Weeks turned into months.
Over a hundred days passed as she lost herself in the wild forests, hunting only when she feel like it, training constantly, growing stronger in ways that went beyond simple levels.
The loneliness never fully left, it had become a part of her, but it became background noise, something she had learned to live with rather than something that could stop her.
Then, one day, as she crested another hill after weeks of travel through increasingly tame forests, something appeared in the distance that made her stop dead in her tracks.
A walled city.
Ramparts ancient and sturdy, smoke rising from within in multiple columns. Even from this far away, her [Divine Eye of Veritas] could pierce the haze and confirm what her eyes were telling her.
Civilization.
People.
Excitement crashed over her like a wave, chasing away months of isolation and numbness.
‘Over three fucking months lost in trees and monsters, hunting, grinding, alone…’
Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes, but she blinked them back with a slightly hysterical laugh that echoed across the hilltop.
“Finally,” she whispered to the wind.
With renewed vigor, she formed Qi platforms mid-air and leaped from the hill, covering leagues in minutes with massive, empowered bounds. The city grew from a distant speck to a clear beacon on the horizon.
As she crested the final ridge and the forest began to thin, the distant city sharpened into full view: a sprawling fortified settlement ringed by weathered stone walls twice the height of the tallest trees.
Banners fluttered from the ramparts, deep blue fabric embroidered with silver sigils she couldn’t yet make out, and thin columns of smoke rose lazily from chimneys within.
For the first time in over three months, she saw proof of hands other than her own shaping the world.
Then the wind shifted, carrying the sounds of battle.
A low, rhythmic thudding rolled across the plain like distant thunder. Ming Xuan Ji froze mid-leap, landing silently on a broad branch. Her eyes narrowed as she took in the scene below.
The city was under siege.
And the attackers were trolls.
A slow, dangerous smile spread across her face as she dropped from the tree and began moving toward the battlefield.
After everything she had been through…
She was finally going to make an entrance worth remembering.