You climb a mountain, and you are higher than a mountain.

When you climbed over one mountain, you stood higher than that mountain.

But a mountain did not grow lower because you conquered it. It merely retreated in silence into your past, becoming an extra layer of calcium in your bones.

You thought reaching the summit was the answer—but that was only the place where the wind blew hardest, where the view was so wide it made you feel hollow.

Mountains and rivers all had their end; clouds unfurled and curled freely beneath the blue sky, and water sat silent in a bottle, like a riddle.

What truly made you grow wings was not the view from the peak, but the panting halfway up the mountain, the clump of thorns you grabbed when you slipped, the heartbeat you heard again after losing your way in the thick fog.

Only later did you understand: what you longed for had never been some height, but the self that kept shattering and being reforged in the climb.

The highest mountain in a person's life was actually the threshold at the very beginning—once you stepped over it, every peak was merely the road home.

Situ Xuan came walking forward.

The mountain forest retreated beneath his feet, and the peaks seemed to shrink behind him. Wherever he passed, the grass and trees bowed slightly, as if pressed down by some invisible aura. He did not release any Soul Power, nor did he stir any blood energy. He simply walked calmly like that, yet that composure of treating all things beneath heaven as ordinary made others feel awe from a distance.

Over one mountain, then over another.

He did not know how many peaks he had crossed. The road beneath his feet changed from earth to gravel, from gravel to stone slabs, and from stone slabs to