Silence settled over the temporary camp.
Not the calm kind—this was heavy silence, the kind that made every small sound feel wrong. A boot scraping stone. Someone setting a tool down too carefully. The sound of breathing when no one meant to be heard.
There were gaps.
Empty places where people should have been. Spots where someone had laughed or complained only hours ago. Now there was nothing there at all, marked only by cooldown timers quietly counting down.
No one mentioned it.
The survivors sat scattered across the camp. Some leaned against rocks. Others crouched with elbows on their knees, staring at the ground. A few kept opening their interfaces, checking the same numbers again and again, as if hoping they would change.
They didn't.
Broken Cloud Mountain looked exactly the same.
The stone walls were still tall.
The paths were still narrow.
The slopes were still unforgiving.
The mountain didn't care that they had failed.
That might have been the worst part.
"It's… quiet," StoneBit said softly.
No one answered.
Unbroken sat a short distance away, his back against a cliff face. His eyes were closed, breathing slow and steady, but his fists were clenched so tightly that faint cracks of Qi-light flickered around his knuckles.
He had almost died.
Everyone who had seen it remembered.
Ironroot knelt near the edge of the camp, scratching lines into the dirt with a stick. Slopes. Curves. Narrow paths. He erased them, then drew them again, over and over. His expression never relaxed.
Gachagami sat by himself, hugging his knees.
"…I didn't even do anything," he whispered. "Why did that happen?"
No one answered him.
On Earth, things were very different.
Group chats exploded the moment the revival cooldowns appeared.
[BrokenCloud-150]
LagPoke: WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT
HammerLOL: THAT WAS NOT RANK 1
StoneBit: it was rank 1… there were just too many
DustLine: we rushed it. that's on us
RandomIGN: i legit froze up
Some players ripped their helmets off as soon as they revived, sitting in silence on their beds or couches, staring at the ceiling.
It wasn't pain that got to them.
It was how fast everything ended.
One second they were running, shouting, still half-joking.
The next, everything went black.
No heroics.
No last words.
Just pressure, impact, and nothing.
A few players didn't log back in right away.
Twenty-four hours was a long time to think.
Back on Broken Cloud Mountain, Lin Yuan stood apart from the others, hands behind his back, eyes fixed on the distant slopes.
He hadn't moved since the survivors returned.
He hadn't opened the system interface.
He didn't need to.
He could feel it—the shift in how people looked at the mountain, at each other, at themselves.
Warbound approached him quietly.
"Some of them are blaming themselves," Warbound said. "Others are blaming teammates."
Lin Yuan nodded. "That's normal."
"Do you want me to step in?" Warbound asked.
"Not yet," Lin Yuan replied. "If I do, they'll think this was an accident."
Warbound exhaled and stepped back.
Lin Yuan walked to the center of the camp.
He didn't raise his voice.
People noticed anyway.
"I'm not here to lecture," Lin Yuan said calmly.
Several heads lifted.
"You failed," he continued. "That's already obvious."
No one argued.
"You survived," he said next. "That matters."
The words settled slowly.
"The rules haven't changed," Lin Yuan said. "Combat freedom remains. The trial remains."
A few people tensed.
"I won't take responsibility for your decisions," he added. "And I won't take that responsibility away from you."
He paused.
"Freedom means you also own the outcome."
That was all.
No comfort.
No reassurance.
Just consistency.
The tension didn't disappear—but it shifted.
Later, Ironroot finally stood.
"We didn't lose because they were stronger," he said, voice steady.
People turned toward him.
"We lost because of where we fought," he continued. "And how."
He crouched and pointed at the rough map in the dirt.
"The basin trapped us. The slopes funneled us. When we tried to retreat, the terrain worked against us."
He looked up.
"We fought the ground as much as the Warhogs."
Unbroken opened his eyes.
"I couldn't stop them," he said quietly.
Everyone listened.
"I held one. Maybe two," he continued. "It didn't matter."
He exhaled.
"If you think one strong person can carry this," he said, "you're wrong."
No one disagreed.
That truth hurt more than the stampede.
The discussion that followed was quieter. Slower.
"Hit the edges."
"Split the herd."
"Never charge the center."
Warbound helped keep the talk focused, organizing ideas without taking control.
Lin Yuan listened without comment.
Then Gachagami raised his hand.
"…I might be wrong," he said.
No one laughed.
"When I was running," he said slowly, "there was this really narrow path. The Warhogs didn't go through it. They avoided it."
Ironroot froze.
"…Where?" he asked.
Gachagami pointed vaguely. "West side. There was a fallen tree and rocks. Looked annoying."
Ironroot's eyes sharpened.
"That's not annoying," he said softly. "That's control."
For the first time since the stampede, the camp felt different.
They didn't hunt again that day.
Instead, they practiced.
Body Refining was no longer optional.
Movements were slower. More careful. Questions were asked. Corrections were made. Muscles burned and trembled, but no one joked about it anymore.
The mountain watched.
And waited.
They had failed.
But now they understood why.
And that meant the mountain would not be waiting forever.