Chương 21: Chapter 20: Mountain

Yang woke sometime before dawn and sat up. He felt numb after last night. Empty. He went through the motions of his morning routine as the sun rose, his body moving on autopilot while his mind remained distant. He took a dip in the river. The cold water shocked his skin but barely registered in his awareness. He scrubbed away the blood and dirt from last night. Filled his waterskin with fresh water. Yang made a pack from supplies he'd taken from the Zhao brothers. An extra tunic went inside.

He was wearing one of the tunics now along with trousers and the shoes he'd found. The shoes were a few sizes too big, so he'd stuffed rags into the toes to make walking easier. He took a cloth sack and filled it with dried meat and an extra waterskin. Yang could carry heavier weight than his size would suggest, but more things would become unwieldy. He needed to travel light. Yang put on his quiver and took his bow and arrows. His spear went into his hand.

He looked around the cave once more, confirming he'd taken everything worth taking. He'd left the pots and plates he'd created over the years in the cave by the river where he'd lived. Since this cave was just a temporary shelter while he'd kept watch on the village, there was nothing much here. Everything he'd brought, he was taking on his journey away from the forest. Yang had no destination. He had no idea what existed beyond the village.

The other corners of the forest hadn't had any town or city nearby based on his explorations. He would be going across the mountain. Taking exactly the path that got Grandpa killed. Yang didn't know what was beyond it, but those rare merchants who crossed from the village always left by that path. He'd been too young for anyone from the caravans to talk to him about what lay on the other side. Yang stood ready and left the cave.

He looked around the forest that had been his home for a third of his life in this second existence. Memories flooded him as he walked. Every tree and rock held some association. Some lesson learned through pain and survival. He left the forest and headed toward the mountain. Yang particularly took the route he knew Grandpa had guided the merchants toward. He didn't know anything else about it, but there must be at least a water source on that particular path. It would take weeks to reach the top of the mountain.

Without the strength from the beast cores, he would have never imagined crossing it. Yang walked the path carefully. Making sure he stayed outside and away from open areas in case villagers were around. The path toward the mountain was not unknown to them, even though they never went far up. Yang had never heard of anyone in the village reaching the top, let alone crossing to the other side. But that was exactly what he intended to do. The whole day went like this. Yang kept walking.

Taking small sips of water from his waterskin. A small bite of dried meat or a handful of nuts. By the time the sky turned orange, he knew he needed to find shelter for the night. Yang found a tree and decided to sleep under it. This was not the forest, so he didn't have to fear animals hunting him. The villagers made sure to spend nights in their houses and return home before dark. He wouldn't fear villagers finding him at night either. He was fine as long as he left with dawn.

Yang rested against the tree and fell asleep. The first week of travel was deceptively easy. The foothills rose gradually. The path wound through sparse vegetation and rocky outcrops. Yang made good progress, covering what he estimated to be several miles each day and hunting in between so he can keep his rations for as long as possible. But as he climbed higher, the terrain changed. The gentle slopes gave way to steep inclines.

Loose stone shifted under his feet with every step, forcing him to test each foothold carefully. One wrong placement could send him sliding down dozens of feet, undoing hours of progress. Yang's enhanced strength helped. He could grip handholds that would have broken under a normal person's weight. Could haul himself up rock faces that should have been impossible to climb. But even his unnatural strength had limits. The second week brought the first real challenges.

Yang encountered a cliff face that rose nearly vertical for what looked like a hundred feet. No obvious path around it. He stood at the base, neck craned back, studying possible routes up. He chose a line that looked promising. Started climbing. His fingers found cracks and ledges. His feet pressed against tiny protrusions. He moved slowly. Testing each hold before committing his weight. Halfway up, his handhold crumbled. Yang dropped. His stomach lurched.

His other hand shot out desperately and caught a narrow ledge. The impact nearly tore his arm from its socket. He dangled there, heart pounding, feet scrabbling for purchase against rough stone. It took minutes to find another foothold. Minutes of hanging by one arm while his muscles screamed. When he finally secured himself, Yang pressed his face against the cold rock and breathed. He continued climbing. More carefully now. More careful of the mountain's dangers.

When he reached the top of the cliff, Yang collapsed. His arms trembled with exhaustion. His fingers were bloody from gripping sharp stone. But he'd made it. The third week brought worse. Yang woke one morning to find his breath coming in short, painful gasps. His head pounded with a pain unlike anything he'd experienced. Worse than any injury he ever had. This pain came from inside his skull, pressing outward. He tried to stand and immediately fell. The world spun.

His stomach heaved, and he vomited what little food he'd eaten the night before. Yang didn't understand what was happening. Was he sick? Poisoned? It took hours for the symptoms to ease. Yang lay in his shelter, a small overhang that barely protected him from the wind, and tried to think through the pain. He was higher up the mountain now. Much higher than the village. Higher than he'd ever been in either life. The air was thinner here. He remembered reading something about that in his previous life.

Altitude sickness. The body needed time to adjust to less oxygen. Yang realized with growing dread that this would only get worse the higher he climbed. He was right. The fourth week became a nightmare of descending and re-climbing. Yang would push higher, gain a few hundred meters of elevation, then collapse as the altitude sickness overwhelmed him. His head would pound. His vision would blur. Nausea would grip him until he couldn't keep anything down. He learned to recognize the signs.

When his breathing became too labored, his thoughts fuzzy and his coordination started to fail. Yang would descend then. Go back down several hundred meters until he could breathe more easily. Rest for a day or two. Let his body adjust. Then climb back up to where he'd been and try to push a bit higher. It was agonizingly slow progress. Some days he gained only a hundred meters of elevation after hours of climbing. Other days he gained nothing at all, forced to rest and recover.

The cold worsened as he climbed higher. Yang's enhanced body helped, but even he felt the bite of freezing wind. His fingers grew numb. His face felt raw and chapped. Ice formed in his lashes and eyebrows. Snow appeared. First just patches. Then covering everything. Yang trudged through drifts that came up to his knees. Sometimes his waist. The white expanse was beautiful and deadly. He learned to melt snow for drinking water. His supplies of dried meat were running low, but there was no game up here. No plants.

Nothing lived at this altitude except the wind and cold. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. The fifth week brought the first storm. Yang was climbing a steep slope when the sky darkened suddenly. Wind howled. Snow began falling so thick he couldn't see more than a few feet ahead. He needed shelter immediately. Yang found a small depression between two boulders. Barely enough space to squeeze into. He huddled there as the storm raged.

Wind shrieked past his tiny refuge. Snow piled up at the entrance, nearly sealing him in. The storm lasted two days. Yang sat in the dark, conserving his energy, rationing his dwindling supplies. His body heat in the confined space kept him from freezing, but barely. He shivered constantly. His teeth chattered. His fingers and toes ached with cold. When the storm finally passed, Yang had to dig himself out. The snow had piled several feet deep at the entrance to his shelter.

He pushed through it, gasping as frigid air hit his lungs. The world outside was transformed. Everything buried under fresh snow. The landscape looked completely different. Yang had to spend an hour figuring out which direction to continue climbing. The sixth week was when Yang truly began to break. Every step felt like lifting a boulder. His legs trembled with each movement. His breathing came in ragged gasps that never seemed to bring enough air. His head pounded constantly now. The pain had become his companion.

His baseline existence. Yang would climb for an hour and need to rest for two. His progress slowed to a crawl. Sometimes he covered less than fifty meters in an entire day. Sleep became impossible. The thin air meant he would wake gasping every few minutes. His body screaming for oxygen. He'd drift into shallow unconsciousness for brief periods, then jolt awake, chest heaving and mind foggy. The hallucinations started during the seventh week. Yang saw Grandpa walking beside him on the mountain.

The old man looked solid. Real. He spoke words of encouragement that Yang could hear clearly over the wind.

"Keep going, Little Yang. You're almost there. Just a bit further." Yang knew it wasn't real. Knew his mind was playing tricks on him. But the comfort was too precious to reject. He talked back to the hallucination. Had conversations with Grandpa's ghost about the climb. About what waited on the other side. His hopes. His dreams. Other times, Yang saw the Zhao brothers. Saw Liu Wei. Their families. They stood in his path, blocking the way, their eyes accusing.

Yang would shake his head and the visions would dissolve into snow and wind. His supplies ran out during the eighth week. No more dried meat. No more nuts. Nothing left but melted snow to drink. Yang's enhanced body kept him alive where a normal person would have starved, but he could feel himself weakening. His muscles consuming themselves for energy. He found some roots, moss, hardy grass and insects and ate what he could and saved as much as he could for later. He kept climbing anyway.

Because stopping meant dying. And Yang refused to die on this mountain after surviving everything else. The ninth week brought another storm. Worse than the first. Wind strong enough to knock him off his feet. Snow so thick it formed a solid wall of white. Yang found a crevice and wedged himself into it. The storm raged for three days. Three days of sitting in darkness. Three days of his body slowly shutting down from cold and hunger and exhaustion. When the storm passed, Yang could barely move.

His limbs felt like they belonged to someone else. His thoughts were slow and confused. He'd lost feeling in several of his toes. His fingers were swollen and discolored. But he was still alive. Yang dragged himself out of the crevice and looked up. Through the thinning clouds, he could see the peak. Close now. Maybe only a few hundred meters higher. He started climbing again. One hand. One foot. Repeat. His body moved mechanically. His mind had retreated somewhere far away, leaving only the animal need to survive.

The tenth week ended when Yang pulled himself over a final ridge and found himself at the summit. He lay on the frozen ground and stared at the sky. His chest heaved. His vision swam. But he'd made it. Against all odds, he'd reached the top. Yang rested at the peak for two days. Melting snow to drink. Letting his body recover what little it could. He looked back the way he'd come, at the brutal climb that had nearly killed him a dozen times over. Then he looked forward. Down the other side of the mountain.

His descent route. Going down would be easier than climbing up. The air would thicken as he descended. His breathing would improve. The altitude sickness would fade. But new dangers awaited. The descent began deceptively well. Yang made good progress on the first day. His breathing came easier. His head pounded less. Hope flickered in his chest. The second week of descent brought the first fall. Yang was crossing a steep slope covered in loose stone. His foot slipped.

He tried to catch himself but his exhausted body responded too slowly. He tumbled. Yang rolled and slid down the mountainside. Rocks tore at his clothes and skin. He tried to grab hold of something, anything, to stop his momentum. His fingers found only loose stones that came away in his hands. He fell for what felt like forever. The world spun in a chaotic blur of white and gray and blue. His body slammed into rocks. Pain exploded through him with each impact.

Finally, Yang crashed into a boulder that stopped his fall. He lay there, stunned, taking inventory. His left arm was badly scraped. His ribs ached, possibly cracked. Blood ran from a cut on his forehead into his eyes. But nothing was broken. Nothing that would kill him at least. Yang looked up the slope. He'd fallen at least hundreds of meters. He would have died by the fall if he wasn't strengthened by the cores. He started climbing down and continued his descent even more carefully.

The third week brought a realization that chilled him worse than any storm. The path he'd chosen down was leading him toward a cliff. Not the kind he could climb. A sheer drop of hundreds of feet with no visible way around. Yang stood at the edge and stared down. Far below, he could see a continuation of the path. But between here and there was nothing but empty air and certain death. He'd have to backtrack. Find another route. Lost time and progress. Yang wanted to scream. Wanted to rage at the unfairness.

But he had no energy left for anger. He simply turned around and started climbing back up to find a different way. The fourth week of descent, Yang's vision began to blur. Not from altitude now, but from exhaustion and starvation. His body was eating itself. He could feel it. The weakness in his limbs. The trembling that wouldn't stop. The moss and insects weren't enough to keep up with his bodies needs. He stumbled and fell regularly now. His coordination was shot.

Each fall added new bruises and scrapes to his collection. The fifth week, Yang lost his spear. He'd been using it as a walking stick, leaning on it heavily, when his foot slipped on ice. The spear fell from his grip and tumbled down the mountainside. Yang watched it disappear over a ledge, too exhausted to feel anything about the loss, he didn't even have the energy to follow his inner instincts anymore. The hallucination of Grandpa was there again to encourage him.

"You're doing well, Little Yang," the vision said.

"Keep going. Just a bit further."

"I can't," Yang whispered.

"I can't anymore, Grandpa. I'm too tired."

"You can. You've come so far, Xiao Yang. Don't give up now." Yang kept walking. Following the hallucination of Grandpa down the mountain. Sometimes the old man walked beside him. Other times he stood in the distance, waving Yang forward. The sixth week of descent, Yang heard water. At first, he thought it was another hallucination. But the sound grew louder as he descended. Running water. A stream. Yang stumbled toward the sound. His legs gave out and he fell. He crawled the last dozen feet on hands and knees.

A small stream cut through the rocks. Flowing water instead of frozen. Yang plunged his face into it and drank desperately. The cold water burned his throat but he didn't care. He drank until his stomach hurt. Then lay beside the stream, gasping, feeling the first tiny spark of hope in days. The sixth week was the best, a few days in the week he came across trees. Actual trees. Scraggly and twisted from growing at altitude, but alive. Green. Yang wanted to weep at the sight.

Where there were trees, there would be animals. Where there were animals, there would be food. Yang's bow was still intact. His arrows too. He moved as quietly as his exhausted body allowed, searching for prey. He found a mountain goat that week. It was browsing on sparse vegetation, unaware of his presence. Yang's hands shook as he nocked an arrow. His muscles were so weak he could barely draw the bow. The arrow flew and missed. The goat bolted away quickly. Yang collapsed to his knees and wanted to cry.

But he had no tears left. He kept searching. Kept hunting. His body moving on pure instinct now. One day, he finally succeeded. A small rabbit, caught unaware. Yang's arrow took it through the body. Clean kill. He built a fire with trembling hands. Roasted the rabbit. The smell of cooking meat made his mouth water. When it was done, Yang ate like a starving animal. Tearing into the meat with his teeth. Not caring about manners or dignity. It was the most delicious thing he'd ever tasted.

The seventh week, Yang killed another rabbit and a bird. His strength was slowly returning. Food and thicker air working together to pull him back from the edge of death. The eighth week brought more trees. Denser now. An actual forest beginning. And finally, Yang saw flat ground in the distance. The base of the mountain. He started crying then. Actually crying. Tears streaming down his face as he stumbled forward. He'd made it. Against every odd. Despite every obstacle. He'd crossed the mountain.

Yang reached the base on the ninth week of descent. Five months total since he'd started this journey. Five months of hell that had nearly killed him. He stood there for a long moment. Looking back at the peak he'd conquered. The mountain that had tried its best to claim his life. Then Yang looked forward at the unknown land that stretched before him. Forests and hills rolling away into the distance. Somewhere out there were towns. Cities. People and Knowledge. Somewhere out there was the path forward.

Yang had left the forest. Left the village. Left everything he'd known. He'd crossed a mountain that was supposed to be impossible. Now he would find what this world had to offer beyond the mountain. He took a deep breath of the thick, easy air. Felt strength slowly returning to his battered body. And began walking forward into this new land.