Chapter 414: Snow Mountain |
Colorful prayer flags fluttered in the wind, reflecting a dusty gray under the black sky. Bai Ma, holding a whip, drove her flock of sheep up the mountain, leaving a trail of dark footprints in the deep snow.
Suddenly, she began to sing. Her clear, resonant voice echoed through the mountain wilderness, striking the ice walls and bouncing back, layer upon layer of sound drifting in the air as if a thousand voices were singing in chorus.
They sang: "Om Ah Hum, may the Savior Lord protect all beings; Om Ah Hum, may the God of Fortune grant his blessings; Om Ah Hum, may the God of Tombs watch over the spirits of the dead..."
Lin Chen followed beside Bai Ma, while Lu Li and Xu Yao mingled with the sheep. Qi Si trailed behind the flock, leaning on a hiking pole, his progress laborious.
The mountain wind was biting, a cold torrent laden with ice shards surging from the gorge. It scraped against their faces like a thousand tiny blades, leaving a dense, stinging pain.
The blood-red cloak whipped behind him, snapping violently in the wind with a strange rustling sound that seemed to slow the steps of both man and beast.
Qi Si wore only a suit and trousers. The clothes he’d redeemed from the game’s store had little lining, and the chill had already seeped into his very marrow. With every step, he could almost hear the faint grinding of his own bones.
For no particular reason, his mind drifted to the scene he had witnessed in the inn's mirror the previous night.
In the reflection, he had also been walking through a snow-swept mountain just like this. He wondered if that had been Zhou Ke in another time and place, or if it had been a glimpse of his own future.
A vast, bewildering expanse of white stretched between heaven and earth, burying all the world’s colors. In that moment, the soul felt utterly empty; even the most turbulent heart could not help but fall into a dead silence.
Their connection to the human world seemed to be completely severed. This was a forbidden domain belonging entirely to death, a place where all human joys and sorrows had been stripped away, leaving only one path to their final destiny—
Forward, over this snow-covered mountain, or remain upon it forever.
Bai Ma stopped on her own and turned to face the players, her eyes as placid as an ancient, unmelting glacier.
"We've reached the snow mountain," she announced. "The Mother God sleeps at the summit. Her dream envelops this entire mountain. If we continue onward, we may disturb her slumber."
"Oh, right!" Lin Chen nodded in earnest agreement. "So what should we do? Set up camp here?"
It was what everyone was thinking.
Even without considering the Mother God, climbing a snowy mountain at night was a challenge for players who lacked professional training.
Aside from the freezing temperatures that threatened to turn those who hadn't prepared proper clothing into blocks of ice, the darkness itself severely limited their vision and was extremely dangerous.
Hidden beneath the snowdrifts were ice crevasses, some of which could be over a dozen meters deep. A fall would be fatal. It was easy enough to misstep and plummet even during the day, let alone at night.
Bai Ma pointed a single finger at the ground beneath her feet. "We will rest here."
She placed two fingers to her lips and whistled. The sheep, as if hearing a command, gathered around her. Then, one by one, they lowered their heads, raised their hooves, and began to paw at the accumulated snow.
The white snow covering the ice was scraped aside, piling up into small, tomb-like mounds and exposing the transparent ice surface below.
Rows of dark shadows lay beneath the solid ice, like festering sores on the mountain's skin. A closer look revealed them to be stiffened corpses, their hands crossed over their chests, their eyes shut peacefully as if in a deep, untroubled sleep.
Lin Chen had been watching the sheep's actions with a puzzled expression. When he was suddenly confronted by the face of a corpse, he nearly jumped out of his skin.
Remembering his resolve not to be a burden, he took two deep breaths to suppress the urge to scream. "There are so many bodies here," he said, his voice strained. "We're standing on... corpses."
Xu Yao glanced down and shrugged. "What's there to be afraid of? They look like they've been dead for a long time. There aren't even any ghosts. They can't hurt anyone."
"That's right, we don't need to worry. This isn't a death trap," Lu Li calmly assessed. "It was a given, based on the clues we already have, that the mountain is a burial ground for the dead who come from all over the world."
"The passengers on the bus when we arrived were on their way to be buried in Shangri-La. And last night, you could see the bodies in the ice from the inn's window."
He was right. The ground beneath Shangri-La's snow mountain held a vast multitude of corpses, making one wonder just how many of the dead could fit within its icy chambers, and whether all the souls of the world, past and present, gathered here.
The sheep pawed silently at the ground for a while, clearing an area of about twenty square meters. The dark, crowded bodies lay packed together beneath the ice, turning the place into a natural, frozen sepulcher.
Bai Ma whistled again. The sheep dispersed, taking up positions at the edge of the clearing with their horns facing outward, forming a protective circle.
Pointing once more to the ice under their feet, Bai Ma said, "You can stay here."
The word "stay" felt a bit strange in this context, but upon reflection, it wasn't entirely wrong.
The four players and one NPC stood in the circular clearing formed by the sheep. Lin Chen retrieved a folded, waterproof tent canvas from a sheep's back and unfolded it in the frigid wind.
Ice particles pattered against the fabric with a series of sharp, brittle clicks. The edges of the canvas flapped in the wind, making it nearly impossible to grip. The four of them spread out to the corners to hold it down, their fingers growing numb and clumsy from the cold.
This instance had leveled the physical attributes of everyone, human and ghost alike. No matter how formidable a player was in the game, here they were all fragile beings, subject to the mercy of this harsh environment.
Qi Si took out the Azure Underworld Guide and distributed a stack of its pages to each of them. Once its effect activated, they all temporarily gained the status of ghosts, and their movements finally became a little more fluid.
Lu Li tossed several steel spikes onto the ice. Xu Yao picked them up and hammered one corner of the canvas into the frozen surface. Lin Chen set up the support poles and took the nylon rope from Qi Si to secure the structure.
With their combined efforts, the tent was finally pitched—a tiny, insignificant speck in the desolate, sprawling mountainscape.
The sky had taken on a terrifying darkness. The wind, far from abating, grew even more ferocious, shaking the newly erected tent from side to side as if it might be blown away at any moment.
"Please, try to sleep soon," Bai Ma said to them with a faint smile. "If you're lucky, you might enter the Ancestral God's dream and receive a revelation of your fate."
Enter the Ancestral God's dream? Qi Si didn't consider that "lucky" at all. On the contrary, for him, it would be the very definition of misfortune.
Of course, while he had no desire to encounter the Ancestral God so soon, he wouldn't deliberately avoid the instance's mechanics either.
"I'll take your word for it," Lu Li said with a smile, being the first to enter the tent. Xu Yao followed right behind him.
Lin Chen took half a step inside, then turned back when he saw Qi Si still standing outside. He retracted his foot and waited anxiously.
A thought seemed to strike Qi Si. He looked at Bai Ma and asked, "Excuse me, do you have any blankets to ward off the cold? It seems to be getting colder on the mountain."
Hearing this, Lin Chen immediately moved to take off his coat. "Brother Qi, if you're cold, you can have my jacket. I don't feel cold anymore, not since we set up the tent. Not cold at all."
Not cold? Qi Si glanced at Lin Chen. The sincerity in his expression was undeniable. As he spoke, white puffs of breath escaped his lips, yet his complexion was growing rosy, as if he truly was no longer affected by the low temperature.
He suddenly found it strange. The four of them were all lightly dressed, yet he was the only one who had been tormented by the cold from the very beginning.
It was a cold that felt as though it could freeze the soul, a chill that seeped through millennia of time, crossing the boundary between reality and illusion, as if he had been born with it.
"No, thank you. I doubt one more jacket will make much of a difference," Qi Si said, declining Lin Chen's offer before turning his gaze back to Bai Ma.
Bai Ma tilted her head and stared at him, her dark eyes reflecting his own deathly pale face. Her voice was as ethereal as a ghost's whisper. "You are incomplete. The incomplete are rejected by the snow mountain."
"Incomplete." There was that word again... Qi Si remembered being unable to open the doors of the abandoned temple in the Sunset Ruins because he was "incomplete." He never expected that same limitation to affect him in the Final Instance.
Before he could ask more, a neatly folded pile of clothing materialized in Bai Ma's hands. Even in the deep darkness, he could make out its vibrant colors.
The woman held the garments with both hands and offered them to Qi Si. "I can give you a set of the mountain's clothes. If you wear them, perhaps the mountain will accept you for a time."
Qi Si reached out and took the clothes. It was an intricately decorated set of Tibetan robes—a red top paired with a white, fur-lined outer vest, adorned with several strands of colorful beads. It looked very warm.
He draped the robe over his red suit. A faint smile touched his lips as he said with genuine sincerity, "Thank you. It fits perfectly."
Lin Chen had overheard the conversation between Qi Si and Bai Ma and sensed that something was amiss. He asked in a low voice, "Brother Qi, is something wrong? What does 'incomplete' mean? Is it because you... don't have a heart?"
"It's nothing. Let's get in the tent. We can talk about it tomorrow," Qi Si said evasively, pushing Lin Chen inside.
He was about to follow when a flash of dark red caught his eye.
It should have been a bright crimson, but the dim light had muted it to a deep, dull shade. A viscous liquid was oozing from beneath the spike securing the tent canvas, releasing a faint, metallic scent of blood.
Qi Si crouched down, took a flashlight from his backpack, and aimed its beam at the spike hole.
The sharp steel spike had penetrated the ice and pierced the forehead of the corpse below. Blood was now welling up from the wound, filling the hole and bubbling onto the ice's surface.
After death, the body's enzymes quickly break down blood cells; a dead person shouldn't be able to bleed. How could someone who had been sealed under the ice for so long still be alive?
Qi Si observed for a moment, then concluded with certainty that the person under the ice was well and truly dead. The bleeding was likely just a clichéd horror trope.
He tore off a piece of his sleeve, bent down to wipe away the blood that had seeped onto the ice, and balled up the scrap of fabric to plug the hole.
The material of his red suit was the same color as fresh blood. Even completely soaked, it showed no obvious change in color, a futile attempt to plaster over the truth and hide the inevitable.
Standing amongst the sheep, Bai Ma calmly watched Qi Si's actions. Suddenly, she spoke. "Why are you afraid of blood? I can clearly see so much of it on your hands."
Her tone was devoid of any emotion, as if she were merely asking a question without purpose, unconcerned with whether she would receive an answer.
Qi Si tilted his head, thought for a moment, and answered earnestly, "I'm not afraid of blood. I just find it dirty."
He looked down at his own hands. His palms, once clean and fair, were now covered in blood. It seemed to leak endlessly from between his fingers, dripping onto the ice with a soft, steady patter.
He couldn't remember when he'd gotten it on him. He had wiped them clean, so why was there still more?
A primal sense of irritation washed over him. He instinctively wanted to find a towel to wipe them clean, or at the very least, to cover them up.
But where was the towel? Where had he put it?
Amidst the dripping sound, the corpse under the ice had, at some point, opened its eyes. Its hollow, lifeless gaze stared up at the blood-soaked hands of the young man above. One by one, the corpses opened their mouths, waiting to catch the falling drops of blood...
...
Meanwhile, Dong Xiwen lay in his tent, tossing and turning, unable to sleep.
The day had been packed with too much information. First, Zhou Ke had used a holy chant to incite all the ghosts in the city, forcing Lin Jue to activate his Dark Judge ability with a move that was practically suicidal.
Then, Lin Jue had chosen to pass judgment on himself, adding a new option to everyone's main quest, and just like that, they were all climbing a snow mountain...
And then... the famous Fu Jue had appeared out of nowhere.
Dong Xiwen had mulled it over again and again, but he still couldn't figure out the mechanics of this instance.
Zhou Ke was a cunning schemer who used him and Zhang Yiyu as disposable tools, refusing to share any key information. If he wanted to survive, he had to rely on himself.
"Ahem... Zhou Ke, mind if I go out and get some air?" Dong Xiwen asked, his eyes half-closed. "Lying here like a corpse doesn't feel very helpful for clearing the instance. I've got a family to think of, you know. I'd like to live a few more years..."
The last part was complete nonsense. Whether Zhou Ke was too lazy to deal with him or had other reasons, he simply replied with his eyes closed, "Go ahead."
Dong Xiwen unzipped the tent flap as if he'd been granted a royal pardon and stepped outside.
He knew he wasn't the only one exploring at night. Lin Jue had said earlier that he would look around, and the members of the Ark Guild would likely follow their leader.
He hoped he wouldn't get cornered and beaten up if they crossed paths... then again, if he did get cornered, begging for mercy would probably work, right?
As his mind wandered, Dong Xiwen leaned on the hiking pole he'd bought from Zha Xi and began to walk.
After a short distance, he saw exactly what he expected: a pristine white figure etched against the snow. It was Lin Jue.
It was strange that the others weren't with him, but given his personality, it made sense that he would refuse to drag others into danger with him.
The thought brought a bitter taste to Dong Xiwen's mouth.
From any angle, Lin Jue and the Ark Guild were the clear-cut heroes—to put it bluntly, they were "impossibly cool." He and Zhou Ke, on the other hand, had undoubtedly been cast as the villains. According to standard storytelling tropes, they were destined to die at the hands of the heroes to satisfy the audience's simple sense of justice.
Dong Xiwen felt terribly wronged. Emotionally, he leaned towards Lin Jue's side. The man was definitely a good leader and a good companion, not someone who would use people like disposable tools, the way Zhou Ke did.
Unfortunately, one wrong step had led to eternal regret. He was now tied to Zhou Ke's pirate ship. Even though he held an "Audience" card and had only ever been a bystander to Zhou Ke's schemes, he was inevitably stained by a portion of the guilt. It was a true disaster of circumstance.
Not far away, Lin Jue was kneeling, his hand gently brushing a snowdrift as if he were observing something beneath the surface.
On a whim, Dong Xiwen walked over and craned his neck to get a look.
Hearing footsteps, Lin Jue turned to look at him and offered a warm smile. "Dong Xiwen. Are you also out looking for clues?"
Dong Xiwen was a little surprised. After the incident with Zhou Ke, he had assumed Lin Jue would have already classified him as an "enemy." He never expected such a pleasant greeting.
"Yeah, I couldn't sleep. Figured lying around was a waste of time, so I came out to try my luck and see if I could find any useful clues," Dong Xiwen answered honestly.
He thought for a moment, then offered a polite apology. "Sorry about what happened earlier today. I know it sounds like a lame excuse, but I wanted to explain that I don't actually agree with everything Zhou Ke does..."
"I know," Lin Jue interrupted.
The young man in the white suit turned to face him, a gentle, kind smile on his lips. He extended a hand. "I can see that you and that poor girl were coerced by Zhou Ke. I've heard about the methods of slaughter-stream players."
"I hope I can help you. If fate is still on my side, I think... perhaps we can work together to clear this instance. What do you think?"
Dong Xiwen: "Huh?"
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