Having successfully run away from their life problems, Art and Yao paused to catch their breath.

They were presently… well, somewhere. It was a bleak and grey and dull place, with not even dead grass to cheer it up. Occasional small hillocks butted up from the otherwise level plain, but the only feature of any note was a mountain - and even that towered only a couple hundred feet off the ground.

Yao began to pace about the mountain’s edge, muttering to herself. “They were using the castle as a meeting ground, not a base… one of them successfully escaped… didn’t catch the direction… but maybe…”

Art pondered the mountain. “You know, I bet I could bench that.”

“But what if they used a portal? Or a mortal? Or a chortle? What, how does that make sense - they must have gone by flying sword…”

“Yo, would you mind spotting me while I bench this mountain?”

“Hmmm? Sure… at any rate, if I were to triangulate on the basis of their technique… their actual technique, of course… it must have been, what, a part of the Penultimate Demonic Spatial Arts? Or maybe not even demonic at all, now that I think about it… just because they’re demonic cultivators, doesn’t mean every technique they use is demonic…”

“Awesome, thanks. To be honest, ever since I read my first cultivation novel, I wanted to know if cultivators could bench a mountain, and if it would lead to any rad gains.”

“Sure, sure, whatever. But if it wasn’t demonic, then what was it? Perhaps if I consider the history of local cultivation techniques…”

Art tunnelled to just slightly under the mountain, moleman-style, then braced himself. He’d never been very active in his first life, but he knew a thing or two about proper exercise form.

He did his first pushup.

***

Xie Xie, demonic cultivator, was not having a good day. He’d been preparing to depart their sect’s base and headquarters for a meeting at Craghair Castle with the Bathhouse Invasion Squad, when one of the members of that same squad had shown up and informed him that everyone else in the squad was dead.

This would have been irksome enough had they not been slaughtered in a completely pointless, arbitrary, and absurd fashion - I mean, seriously, who ever heard of being dismembered after interrupting someone deciding to ascend half a realm early? And over a sentient rock, no less.

Once he’d finished shooting the messenger - it was the appropriate thing to do - he turned to Xie Fu, his sister and second in command.

“I’ll have to leave for a while and deal with this. Only the forces of darkness know when I’ll return. You’ll have to run the lab in my absence.”

Xie Fu saluted. It was an honour to defend and oversee their lab, and one she took seriously. It was where the Dark and Evil Sect did all their dark and evil research, after all. They had human experiments, and animal experiments, and plant experiments, all of them reduced to a subconscious level - aware only of constant agony, incapable ever again of knowing more - and all sorts of other poisons and plots and plagues brewing. If no one looked after it properly, then how could its magisterial villainy ever achieve success?

“Right,” said Xie Xie, throwing off his lab coat. It was done in the transmigrator fashion, and frankly he disliked it, but when the boss insisted, well, what could you do? “I’ll head out immediately, and contact you when-”

And then their secret base shook.

***

“…And that’s one. Man, this is harder than I thought it would be. To be honest, with their strength, I always figured cultivators would have an easy time benching a mountain. Guess not.” Called out Art, from far under the mountain, where he had just completed his first push up.

“Benching? Aren’t you doing push ups?” Yao returned, continuing to pace and worry.

“Enh… tomato tomato.”

‘That is not what that expression means. Precision please.”

“Live a little, why don’t you? Now, that was one… time for two…”

***

Their secret base shook again. Xie Xie looked about wildly. “What was that? Why is the mountain shaking?”

He barked at the guy in charge of security, his tone furious. “Why is the mountain shaking? It shouldn’t be shaking!”

The guy - Xie didn’t know his name - rushed over to a control panel, examining the various formations and talismans protecting their secret base, cleverly disguised as a mountain in the midst of their experimental research plain. “I don’t know, sir. According to this readout, all the talismans and formations are still working as intended… Nothing seems to have even come into contact with the mass formation surrounding the mountain…”

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

The shaking - which had momentarily subsided after the first uncomfortable tremor - returned, and this time it was worse than before. Xie Fu tumbled backwards, knocking over a tray of mutant foetuses, as Xie Xie struggled to keep his balance.

“Answers, random miscellaneous guard! I need answers!” He cursed. The guy in charge of security frantically searched through data readouts, finally giving an ‘aha’. He looked smugly at his boss.

“Looks like the source of the tremors is coming from under the mountain, sir.”

“Well of course it’s coming from under the mountain, you transcorporeal toad,” Xie Xie swore, as another tremor shook the mountain, then another, the mountain pitching and heaving as something underneath it pushed. “The question is what can we do about it.”

“Easy peasy,” said the guy in charge of security, “we can-”

And then a stalactite fell off the roof and impaled him through the head.

***

“You know, on second thought, this mountain is awfully light… feels practically hollow,” said Art. “Honestly, I’m not sure I’m getting a good workout.”

“Are you nearly done?” Yao whined. “I want to go and hunt for the demonic cultivators.”

“Oh, no worries. I’m nearly finished - my first set, that is. Only three more to go!”

***

The mountain heaved once more, fracturing formations, tearing talismans, and sending the demonic cultivators within into a tizzy. They ran about, shrieking and crying, as parts of the mountain caved in and internal infrastructure shattered.

In the midst of it all Xie Xie strove to maintain order, shouting out at the top of his lungs, “Enough! We’re in peril, yes, but not insurmountable peril. All we need to do is leave the mountain, find out who is behind this, and-”

“And I’m afraid we can’t do that, brother,” Xie Fu said. Her face was pale as she examined the readout screen, the unlucky guy who was in charge of security no longer being able to do so. “It seems the doors have locked themselves.”

Xie Xie was stunned. “What…? But that would only happen if… oh no.”

And both brother and sister looked at each other, terrified.

Deep within the bowels of the mountain, it roared.

***

“Forty five, forty six…” Art said, finishing his fourth set. Yao just sat there, sighing glumly. To think she’d come all this way pursuing demonic cultivators, only to harmlessly do push ups. Hopefully he wouldn’t decide to do sit ups next.

“Forty seven, forty eight… and, done.” Art stood up with a groan, shrugging the mountain off. It landed immediately behind him with a thump, a cloud of dust and gravel floating into the air. “Well, no clue yet if I got any gains from that-”

“You won’t have. ‘Gains,’ to quote your abhorrent transmigrator diction - and you really could have mentioned you were one of them earlier - come from steady work, not lifting a mountain once or twice.”

“I guess I’ll just have to lift a mountain again, then.” Art chirped.

“Please don’t,” said Yao, her tone legitimately affronted, “mountains belong in their proper places, thank you kindly. All sorts of animals use them, and plants, and underground cultivation sects… this place is pretty dead, so I didn’t say anything, but I’d really be very grateful if you wouldn’t do this again.”

“Fair enough. I’ll probably find some cool technique for integrating the mass of a mountain into the volume of a beer stein, anyways.”

Art stretched a couple times to get the post-mountain kinks out of his muscles, contemplating the deadened landscape around them.

At last he turned and gazed upon his handiwork.

Art pondered the mountain once more. “Huh… why do you think there’s gorse growing there?”

“Gorse…? Of course, there’s gorse, it’s a mountain,” and then Yao froze as she noticed what Art had. “There’s gorse there… and nowhere else. It’s the only plant around.”

“Precisely. Seems a little weird, if you ask me.”

Now Art and Yao were two very different - some might even say contradictory - personalities. The former lived only to experiment and discover; the latter, to end the omnipresent threat of transmigrators to the health of the empire (and, to a lesser extent, to end the threat of demonic cultivators). There was one thing, however, on which they both agreed: where there was mystery, there was something worthy of investigation.

They climbed onto the mountain. Art felt weird for a moment, like he was passing through spiderwebs, though Yao identified them immediately. Her eyes narrowed.

“Formations. Demonic ones, although mostly broken. I’d say I wonder what happened here, but frankly I have a pretty good guess as to who happened.”

“Oh? Who was it?” Asked Art obliviously. Yao gave him a withering look and kept climbing.

“You were right about the gorse, though. You have a good eye, if nothing else. This isn’t natural gorse… it’s too ugly, for one. Gorse is ugly, but it’s not ugly. Even the flowers look hideous,” Yao observed, leaning down close to examine the gorse bushes. Art nodded seriously, politely standing behind her.

After a long while of examining the gorse bushes - staring at them, sniffing them, licking them, hearing into their souls - Yao stood back up and proceeded on her, if not quite merry, then certainly methodical, way. “There’s nothing else, either. No grass, no shrubs, no birds, no meadow voles. I can’t even sense worms. There’s only tastefully arranged gorse bushes.”

Her eyes narrowed. “There’s nothing more suspicious than tastefully arranged gorse bushes.”

“Precisely. That’s even my catchphrase,” Art observed. Yao gave him a withering look, again.

“At any rate, this is definitely the base of demonic cultivators. There are only two questions: one, are these the same demonic cultivators as earlier? And two, how in the Blazing Blue Baboon do we get in?”

“The who now?” Art asked, and then the ground gave way underneath his feet. Yao reached over to grab onto him and stop his fall only to flounder as the ground gave way underneath her, too. Both of them tumbled down, down below, down into the darkness.

Down, down, down, tumbled Yao and Art, down into the hole that had opened up underneath them. It was a long fall, but not a dangerous one, ending as it did on a comfy if uncommonly squishy cushion. Slowly, cautiously, carefully, they stood up, examining their surroundings.

“What the…” Yao said, as she saw the ocean of blood.