Desolate Mirage Ridges
The land stretched endlessly before Wei Shiyan's eyes.
Black peaks clawed at the sky like the ribs of a fallen giant, their edges jagged enough to slice clouds apart. Valleys twisted and coiled beneath them, a labyrinth of shadows where sunlight dared not linger. From a distance, the ridges looked barren, lifeless, nothing but a wasteland of scorched stone and skeletal trees.
But Wei Shiyan knew better.
Beneath that charred soil, hidden in those cavernous hollows, slumbered things far older and far more terrifying than kingdoms. Veins of ore that pulsed like arteries, springs that bled liquid spirit light, artifacts buried beneath layers of ash that whispered of forgotten civilizations—such treasures existed here, untouched and unmeasured. Even beasts walked this land whose bloodlines reached deeper than dynasties, their very roars shattering mountainsides.
Yes, treasures beyond imagination lay here.
Yet not one of them could outweigh the truth etched into every stone.
This was a land that belonged to no man.
Not because it lacked value. Not because it was abandoned. But because no one who dared to claim it ever truly lived long enough to hold it. Every hand that stretched for dominion was severed in time. Every sect that tried to mark its banners on these ridges was swept aside before a single moon's cycle passed. Even the air itself seemed to thrum with rejection, as if the ridges were alive and breathed with killing intent.
The survivors who had named it long ago were not poets—they were simply men and women who had crawled away from slaughter. They had named it as it was:
No Man's Own.
Wei Shiyan walked with deliberate steps, his boots crunching over gravel that looked like the remains of shattered bones. His breath came slow, measured, eyes sweeping from shadowed ridge to pale horizon. He did not hurry. He knew better. In the Desolate Mirage, haste was death.
Violence was not a possibility here—it was marrow.
Cruelty was not mere chance—it was law.
Even the phrase "law of the jungle" was too gentle. Here, the strong devoured the strong. The cunning devoured the cunning. The desperate devoured everything in between.
Wei Shiyan's gaze lifted briefly. In the skies above, two winged figures clashed—one with feathered wings burning in golden fire, the other with membranes stretched like a bat's, exhaling storms of shadow. Their battle scarred the heavens themselves, but Wei Shiyan did not pause to watch. Such fights were common. By the time the victor fell flaming to the ridges, carrion beasts would already be gathering.
On the ground, he passed a cracked gorge where half-beasts tore apart the remains of a corpse. One gnawed bone, another drank marrow, a third clutched the victim's soul fragment in its claws and inhaled the scream into its lungs like smoke. Wei Shiyan's eyes flickered once, then moved on.
This was the Mirage.
Everywhere, slaughter. Everywhere, hunger.
Even the most powerful beings, those who could command rivers or topple mountains with a sigh, counted themselves fortunate if they survived here a single year.
Yes. Just one year.
That span of survival was so rare, so unthinkable, that a name had been carved into the marrow of the land for such beings:
Long-Luck Life Cultivators.
The LLLC.
Wei Shiyan had heard of them long before setting foot here. To the outside world, they were legends. Myths. Names that carried weight in taverns and courts. But in the Mirage, the truth was different. Here, they were not honored. They were not revered. They were prey.
Because one year in this place meant you had taken from it. Fought it. Devoured its riches. Every drop of blood in your body became heavy with essence. Every bone condensed with spiritual ore. Every tendon, every thought, every memory—worth more than jade, more than weapons, more than coin.
That was the irony. The day a cultivator celebrated one year of survival was often the very day their flesh was butchered for a banquet table.
Not metaphorical. A real banquet table.
Wei Shiyan's lips pressed thin. He remembered the whispers:
"If a survivor's treasures cannot be found, it means they ate them. If they ate them, their body is now the treasure. So devour them. Cut them apart. Sell what you cannot consume."
That was the logic of the Mirage. Simple. Twisted. Absolute.
Wei Shiyan's path curved toward a settlement—or what passed for one. A sprawl of tents, wooden shacks, and stone stalls stretched across a plateau, wrapped in smoke and the metallic stench of blood.
The market.
He stepped through its boundary and felt the air shift. It was not commerce that greeted him, but slaughter disguised as trade.
Merchants shouted over each other, not selling jewels or silks, but jars of marrow still warm, cages filled with twitching limbs, eyes sealed in crystal flasks, and tendons wound tight as bowstrings. One stall displayed a skeletal arm studded with essence crystals; another sold bottled screams extracted from dying souls, each labeled with the ruins or valleys they had been taken from.
Wei Shiyan moved slowly between the stalls, his gaze steady though his stomach twisted. Around him, buyers bartered with the fervor of gamblers, voices rising in hunger. Alchemists weighed livers rich in spiritual marrow. Blacksmiths haggled over bones that could be reforged into immortal blades. Talisman-weavers fingered through strands of hair and sinew, murmuring about thread durability.
Everywhere, no pity. Only profit.
No morality. Only hunger.
No guilt. Only necessity.
Wei Shiyan stopped before one stall. A jar rested there, filled with shimmering liquid. Floating within it was a pearl of light, soft and pulsating like a heartbeat.
An insight pearl.
A cultivator's final memory, ripped from their mind before death, bottled and sold to the highest bidder. Some contained the secrets of formations, others the path to hidden ruins, still others the experience of long battles.
Wei Shiyan's hand twitched slightly at his side, then withdrew. He knew better. To linger too long was to draw suspicion. In the Mirage, staring at something too intently was an invitation for another's blade.
He passed on, weaving through the crowds. Each step deepened his understanding.
This was not merely a land.
This was a furnace. A crucible. A pit that melted men and women down into resources. And here, even survival was not a blessing—it was a curse.
Wei Shiyan thought of the Long-Luck Life Cultivators again. He wondered how many of their heads had once stared from these stalls, how many of their bones had been carved into trinkets, how many of their memories now rested in jars like pale lanterns on the shelves.
And he realized something bitter.
To survive here was not to conquer. Not to win. Not to rise.
It was simply to delay the inevitable.
Because in the Mirage, you were always the treasure.
Whether your wealth was in your pouch or your veins, it made no difference.
Wei Shiyan drew in a breath, tasting ash and blood in the wind, and exhaled slowly. His eyes lifted to the ridges beyond, black and endless, shrouded in mists that twisted like specters.
Here, fortune was sharper than blades.
Here, hope and mercy had been buried long ago.
Here, survival itself was the cruelest joke.
And the ridges echoed with laughter that was not laughter, but the sound of bones breaking under eternity's weight.