I gripped the rope tighter and took a long breath before leaning down.

  The moment my hand crossed the rim, a wave of heat smacked me in the face — damp, choking, like someone had turned the whole well into a steaming pot. My arm felt half-cooked already.

  “Alright… hot, sure, but not that—”

  My fingertips brushed the water.

  “Ssszzhh—!”

  “AAAH—HOT! HOT HOT HOT—!”

  That wasn’t “warm.” That was broth temperature. The whole damn mountain was apparently trying to slow-boil me alive.

  Through the haze, I squinted at the stone wall. It should’ve been slick with moss, but instead it was cracked, yellowed, the vines shriveled like fried noodles.

  Then the smell hit — a sharp, sulfurous sting, bitter and smoky.

  “…Sulfur,” I gasped, hauling myself back up the rope like a man escaping hell. “The whole wall stinks of it! There’s tar, too — and the mud down there’s bubbling like pork stew!”

  “Just as I thought,” Lian said. His tone barely changed, but his eyes caught light.

  “When sulfur meets moisture,” he murmured, brushing his sleeve, “the heat turns the water foul. This mountain’s ‘fire’ isn’t divine wrath — it’s chemistry. If the veins below hold fire-copper, brimstone, and gypsum, the summer damp alone can make them swell and burst.”

  He looked at me with that calm, infuriating logic. “And if cold springs run nearby — heat above, cold below — the gases can’t escape. They’ll force their way up through cracks. Boiling wells, wildfires, even flying rocks — all one and the same.”

  I wiped sweat off my face and frowned. “So all this — the fires, the boiling wells, birds dropping dead — that’s just… bad plumbing?”

  Lian nodded. “The earth’s breath blocked, heat can’t vent. It erupts where it must. Fire, flood, chaos — all natural, not divine.”

  He paused, then added, “That night you entered the mountain, the southern wind turned back. It wasn’t your body being ‘cold’ that calmed it. You disrupted a dead air channel.”

  I blinked. “So you’re saying I didn’t bless the mountain — I just… broke its air vent?”

  “Exactly.”

  “…Great.” I clutched my chest, groaning. “So I’m not Heaven’s chosen — I’m a walking draft!”

  “Not necessarily.” Hua’s fan clicked open, that fox grinned back. “You stepped into the mountain, the water cleared, the fire stilled — call it luck or fate, you still did it right.”

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  I gave him a dead look. “So what, I’ve got innate mountain-calming magic now?”

  That’s when Mu finally spoke.

  He’d been staring at the mist rising from the well, eyes distant. His voice came hoarse and low. “All these years, I wondered if the ‘miracles’ were real.”

  He didn’t look up. “When the divine tree cracked, fire rained down. When the well boiled, infants screamed, birds fled. The elders called it the god’s anger.”

  He turned toward me then — not with accusation, but something like grief. “But tonight, you saw it yourself. That ‘divine flame’ was just sulfur smoke.”

  He gave a bitter laugh, almost to himself. “Three generations bowed to superstition, and all along it was mud and gas.”

  A chill ran down my spine.

  “So there were no gods,” I murmured. “Only the laws of nature.”

  The air went still at that. Even the leaves didn’t dare rustle.

  “Yet law itself isn’t without faith,” Lian said softly. “People worship gods because they don’t know. To know, and still walk by that knowledge — that is the right path.”

  Mu glanced at me again. “Then your coming here… perhaps heaven did have eyes.”

  I rolled mine. “You’re circling right back to the ‘chosen one’ nonsense. I believe in logic, not destiny. Heaven can keep its eyes closed for all I care.”

  He smiled faintly. “You don’t believe in fate, but you believe in reason. That’s enough.”

  “Sure,” I muttered. “Just don’t expect me to start believing this mountain’s gonna become another Qushan Village next.”

  We climbed to the Divine Tree Platform — the highest point behind the village.

  Three sides walled by mountains, one side sheer cliff. Clouds curled around it like smoke from a pyre.

  The so-called Divine Tree stood right at the edge — three men tall, trunk black as charcoal, its bark cracked in turtle-shell patterns. The branches were dead, twisted, scarred by something that once tried to burn it alive.

  Even the soil beneath it was scorched, brittle, reeking faintly of sulfur. My eyes stung from the fumes.

  “This… was your miracle tree?” I asked.

  “No,” said flatly. “It was just a tree. A rare one, yes — it lived a hundred years unbroken. Then lightning struck it thirty years ago. Ever since, it’s been restless. Fires spread faster. The elders called it cursed. So they sealed the cliff, set up a shrine, and prayed every year to keep the fires away.”

  We went further north — down the Fire Rift.

  A jagged scar in the mountain, winding like a serpent, its bottom swallowed in blackness. The air there hummed — hollow, hungry. The rocks were cracked and black, hissing faintly with white vapor. Even standing on them felt like stepping on a hot griddle.

  Mu crouched, picked up a piece of stone, and crumbled it in his fingers. “See how it flakes? Only long years of fire could do this.”

  I swallowed hard. “So the fire vein’s really… under there?”

  “My ancestors believed so,” he said simply.

  Lian’s voice was steady, but edged. “Faith deserves respect. But belief must answer to truth. We still need proof.”

  Mu nodded slowly. “Every year, around the eighth month — strange signs appear. Stones fly, fires rise, animals flee. Three days ago, the fire stirred again. The winds reversed. And the night you entered the mountain… everything stopped.”

  I squinted at him. “So your holy annual ritual — this random lottery to pick a ‘blessed person’ — wasn’t divine selection. The ‘Divine Tree’ just happened to point at me?”

  “Not the tree,” Mu said, steady as ever. “You.”

  He looked almost reverent. “That night you arrived, the wind ceased. The wells cleared. The old seers dreamed of a sign — ‘the foreign blessing enters, the heavenly fire rests.’ They smelled fragrance on you. Dogs didn’t bark. Eagles didn’t stir. Three signs. The sign of the blessed.”

  I gawked. “That ‘fragrance’ was bug repellent! You people made it divine decree?”

  Mu hesitated, then said quietly, “Coincidence or not, the mountain calmed. The cause is secondary.”

  Hua snapped his fan shut with a grin. “Well then, your Holiness, better stay put. Trip over a rock, and the whole mountain might kneel.”

  I smacked his fan. “Shut it, you damn crow!”