The mountain path gradually became narrower and narrower. Soon Hudson only had the width of a few feet to walk on; the mountain on his left side and a mist-filled gorge on his right.

Gaps began to appear in the path. The first few were only gaps of a foot or two, but they gradually grew longer and longer, requiring Hudson to take larger and larger leaps. Worse yet, a strong wind whistled through the gorge unpredictably, threatening to knock him off of the ledge, or push his leaps off-target.

When the path ended completely, it was sudden. There was no other ledge to jump to. He thought for a second he had taken a wrong turn, but there had been no turns after passing through the second gate. How was he supposed to go forward? He was momentarily confused.

Then he saw, on the other side of the gorge, appearing out of the mist: a narrow path continuing on a cliff face opposite to the one that he was on.

He walked up to the edge and looked down – it was a steep drop off, no hand-holds or anything to climb down. The bottom was hidden by fog. It could be fifty feet, it could be five hundred.

A strong, prolonged wind suddenly blew up around him, and it almost knocked him off of the ledge. He scrambled backwards, placing his back against the mountain side, adrenaline running cold through his body.

The wind had blown some of the mist out of the way, and for a moment, Hudson could see more clearly. The path ahead now alternated between the sides of the gorge, leaping from one to the other. Off in the distance, there even appeared to be small peaks rising up in the middle of the gorge.

He could do this. It was like the obstacle course they completed in the trial. He had cultivation–enhanced strength – twenty, thirty, maybe even forty feet jumps from a standstill should be no problem.

He swallowed his fear, braced himself, judged the distance… and jumped.

The wind whistled past his ears as he hurtled across the void. He landed hard, slamming into the side of the mountain several feet above the narrow path. He rebounded slightly, scrambling to get his feet on the ledge below him. They missed, and he started tumbling into the mist below.

His elbows slammed into the narrow path, sending shocks up his forearms, all the way to the tips of his fingers. A knee up and a quick push and he stood shakily on the narrow ledge. That had been too close – and it was the first jump of many.

How had the other participants done this trial? Had they all fallen into the gorge? He couldn’t see many of the grasshoppers making these jumps, not by a mile. Even if Cor had trained them to within an inch of their lives. Had they gone a different way?

Rather than proceed immediately to the next jump, Hudson sat down and meditated. He felt he was missing something, and that in trying to make up time and rush forward, he had overlooked something critical.

He was right. Fifteen minutes passed before Hudson rose from his meditation. He turned and waited for the wind to blow before jumping back across the gorge, going back the way he had come.

While progressing backwards along the path, his thoughts strayed back to the hidden forest. His qi sense was now much clearer, and could feel a much greater distance than before. He could only attribute the change to the strange fruit he had eaten, and wondered if there were other lucky chances he could find in this challenge.

When he arrived back at the first gap in the path, he paused and waited, listening to the wind, eyes closed. A few minutes passed by, but Hudson stilled himself to patience as he waited. Finally, right as a new wind began to blow, he opened his eyes and took a step forward into the gap.

Instead of falling down into the gorge, the wind gave him just enough lift so that his foot rested down on the other side of the ledge. He continued walking forward, listening intently to the pattern of the wind.

During his meditation, he had sensed qi in the breezes flowing through the gorge, letting him know that they were not natural. There was a pattern to the updrafts as well, varying in intensity, length, and direction, but that was harder to grasp. Going back to where the gaps in the path began had let him start at the beginning as well.

He was slightly behind tempo as he stepped into the next gap, catching the updraft slightly late, but he was able to compensate. He increased his pace slightly to that of a brisk walk.

He crossed the next gap, and the one after that. Each gust was more intense, lasted a bit longer and blew a bit harder than the previous one. There was a cycle of gusts, and Hudson was betting – literally trusting his life – that each gust of wind was strong enough to carry him over the next drop into emptiness.

The moment of truth came quickly. It was one thing to trust that these qi-laced winds would hold him aloft over a short distance, but trusting it with crossing the entire gorge itself was another matter.

The words on the gate at the foot of the mountain flashed in his mind: the Way is Empty. Empty like the abyss yawning in front of him. His heart thudded in his chest as he stepped out into the mist-covered gorge.

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A screaming wind lifted him aloft, carrying him upwards twenty feet before pushing him back against the mountain slope he had jumped from. Instead of carrying him across the gorge, the wind had deposited him on a hidden path, higher up the mountain.

Hudson leaned against the side of the mountain, waiting for his heart to calm down. He had leaped into the void and trusted the architects of this sigil challenge, but it had taken him in a completely different direction than he had expected.

This new path was still narrow, but had no gaps or drop-offs. Hudson could look down over the edge and see the other path below him, continuing to bounce back and forth between the walls of the gorge. Eventually, it came to a steep set of stairs carved into a switchback up the mountain, joining the path that Hudson now walked.

There were at least two ways, then, to pass this section – one through brute force, trusting in one’s precision and cultivation strength to pass the dangerous route. And another, that Hudson had found, using his senses and trusting in the qi and patterns he had seen around him. He wondered which way was the intended route – or if both were.

The two paths now rejoined to one and cut up the mountain through switchbacks and the occasional set of stairs. After climbing for a short time, the stairs ended at the mouth of a cave. Set over the small entrance and into the side of the mountain were a small set of gate columns and a plinth – similar in style and ornamentation to the previous gates Hudson had seen, albeit on a smaller scale.

Each new section of the sigil challenge had a gate and a theme expressed in the lintel above the gate. This section was no different.

Hudson stared at the strange words for as long as he could before his eyes blurred with tears from the pain; it was like staring into the sun.

So far the gates had said “the way is hidden,” “the way is empty,” and now “first and last follow each other.” He could see how the hidden oak grove in the first section might be alluded to by the first carving, but he wasn’t sure about the second. He assumed they were intended to give some kind of hint, or some kind of lesson.

Hudson walked quickly down the path into the cave. There were hidden, recessed lights every ten yards or so. They cast a muted, silvery light, and Hudson assumed they were fueled by maseki somehow. The cave tunnel proceeded straight, angled slightly downward, and quickly ended in a well-lit, open room.

A massive stalactite descended from the ceiling in the middle of the chamber. Beneath that stalactite, there was a pool of muddy water. Small drips fell from the stalactite into the pool.

On the other side of the pool, across from the tunnel Hudson had entered by, the tunnel continued, but the passage was blocked by a single large rock slab of a door. There were two protrusions from the stone walls on either side of the door that looked to Hudson’s unsophisticated eye like door knobs. They didn’t turn, though, or perform any other function as far as he could tell.

He activated this Engine Breath technique at a high intensity and tried to pry the stone door up with his hands. It didn’t budge at all. Punches and kicks – even cultivation empowered – were completely ineffective. Hudson carefully examined the entire room, looking for hidden switches or other secrets.

He noticed shallow grooves carved into the floor. They looked like random scratches at first, but they started at the pool in the center and gradually worked their way across the room. There was an inkling of a pattern in the way they criss-crossed each other that tickled the back of Hudson’s brain.

His qi sense had been very helpful in the last section, so he sat down and quickly began to meditate. There were faint wisps of qi in the stone walls, floor, ceiling and doors – likely meaning they were fortified with qi somehow. That would explain why his attacks didn’t even make a crack.

There was even more qi, however, in the water dripping down the stalactite and into the pool. A lot of qi.

Hudson exited his meditation and drew closer to examine the pool. It would be much easier if he could sense the qi in things when he wasn’t meditating – something for him to work towards.

The water was muddy, so he knelt down and dipped his hands into the pool, fishing around beneath the surface. It was very shallow, with a slick rock bottom and a few inches of mud. Nothing of interest.

He sat back down and pondered the path forward. There were strange grooves on the floor. Qi-reinforced walls to prevent circumvention of the puzzle. Qi-infused water. A large stalactite in the middle of the cave. Knob-like protrusions on the walls.

He was very conscious of time, and wasting it sitting around trying to figure out whatever puzzle he was supposed to solve. He’d already wasted time meditating in the last section. Could he be overthinking things?

He walked up to the door knobs again, grasped them with both hands and pulled. Twisting and pushing did nothing either. He was worried about breaking them off of the wall if he pulled with his cultivation technique active, so he had just used his normal strength. Out of ideas, he began his breathing technique and grasped the nob again.

There was an immediate reaction in the chamber: water began flowing up and out of the pool and into the grooves on the floor. Hudson kept one hand on the knob and continued his breathing, watching the water flow around in fascination. The knob must work like the sledgehammers and pickaxes in the trial, gradually absorbing qi from a person while they cultivated. After a few short seconds, the grooves on the left side of the chamber were all covered in water.

After being filled with the murky water, the grooves in the floor started to look like the formations he had seen carved in the ground around the portal to the sigil challenge. It was incomplete, though. Only half of the room was filled.

Hudson let go of the knob on the left and quickly grasped the knob on the right. The formation grooves on the right side of the room began to fill, but a knot formed in the pit of Hudson’s stomach.

The water on the left had begun draining, gravity pulling the water back down a gradual slope towards the pool in the center. When Hudson let go of the knob on the left, whatever qi or force was pulling the water uphill and out of the pool was also released.

The exit door wasn’t small, and the knobs on both sides were at least eight feet apart. He couldn’t hold both at the same time.

He needed to stretch his arms out a few feet longer, or hope that someone else, another cultivator, would come and help him.