Chapter 107: Lost in the Snow Mountain 10

Chapter 107: Lost in the Snow Mountain 10

The premium live-streaming hall, as a pay-per-view venue, although it accounted for the lion's share of transactions in the entire live-streaming pool daily, had persistently low foot traffic.

There weren't many spiritual entities willing to spend money on live-streams; most were wealthy high-level spiritual entities and fans of various high-ranking streamers.

Ordinary spiritual entities would rather circle around the free lower-tier halls, sifting through the boring live-streams like finding gold in a pile of shit, than part with their money for higher-level enjoyment.

But today!

It was a day unlike any other!

In front of the usually deserted entrances to the A, B, and C-grade live-streaming halls, an unusual crowd of spiritual entities had gathered.

Holding onto their gold coins, they rushed into the hall without looking back, heading straight for the screen that had the largest audience!

"Hurry up, come see the excitement!"

The spiritual entities called out to each other, impatiently pushing through the crowd.

A massive screen floated in the void, the live-stream showing a deep twilight.

Under the starless, dim sky, a team marched in two columns across the snow-covered mountain.

The two columns appeared to be marching side by side, but upon closer inspection, one could see that there was someone at the front, guiding the direction like a helmsman navigating the sea.

Long, rough ropes bound the players' soft necks, and all their freedom and lives were firmly held in the hands of the leader.

And not a single one dared to complain.

Actually, during the climb up the snow mountain, using ropes to secure the team to prevent being scattered by the wind and snow was a common mountaineering technique.

This was why the players found ropes in the Y University Mountaineering Club members' packs.

Mountain climbing ropes generally used figure-eight or double overhand knots, and whether within the Dawn Squad or Qin Fei and Mi Yang, they knew how to tie these knots.

Unfortunately, such orthodox methods did not apply to the players' current predicament.

As night fell deeper, the pollution from the dense forest grew heavier.

The players were completely unable to resist the repeated calls from behind, and someone would inevitably lose their mind before they realized it.

After several attempts, everyone agreed that the simple and brutal method of rope-tugging that Qin Fei had initially used was the safest.

Mi Yang reached up and loosened the rope loop around his neck.

The rope tightened bit by bit as they moved, almost choking him.

Mi Yang gasped for breath in short bursts, his expression freezing when he realized something.

...Why was he involuntarily starting to breathe through his mouth?

Was it because he had thoroughly embraced the role of a "dog on a leash"?

—Or rather, a pitiful little guard dog at a factory, unloved and uncared for.

Domesticated pet dogs wore harnesses; no one would tie a rope around their beloved dog's neck.

Mi Yang closed his eyes and sighed deeply, silently crying for help.

"How come... we haven't left this mountain yet?"

He barely managed to gather his thoughts amidst the chaos, lifting his gaze to the young man leading the team ahead and asking hopefully.

An entire night.

They had been walking non-stop in the snow.

The dense forest relentlessly pursued them, and the players had to maintain a steady pace to avoid being swallowed by the eerie shadows of the trees.

Kong Siming's phone showed that it was already six in the morning.

Qin Fei stopped.

The line of players behind him also came to a halt.

They still hadn't left the mountain, but dawn had arrived.

The distant clouds turned golden, and the scorching sun rose from behind the snow mountain, dyeing the entire snowy landscape a bright color.

Behind them, the dense forest melted away like ice, disappearing into the vast snowfield without leaving a trace.

Mi Yang basked in the sunlight, staring blankly at the snow mountain.

"I'm exhausted!" Wu Meng plopped down on the ground.

Ying Huo and Wenren Liming beside him nearly toppled over, cursing while tugging at the ropes around their necks.

The temperature in the morning was particularly low, and the breath exhaled from their mouths instantly turned into a white mist.

Ding Li wiped his foggy glasses, hardly daring to believe that they had finally made it through the night.

But when he put his glasses back on, he suddenly exclaimed in delight, "Look! Isn't there something up ahead?"

Although Ding Li didn't explicitly say so, many players had noticed that his glasses seemed to be an item.

He could see more distance or details in the instance than ordinary players.

If Ding Li said so, then there must indeed be something up ahead.

Last night, in order to avoid being misled by the map again, Qin Fei didn't look at it for the entire night, only advancing in the direction pointed by the compass.

Such a move undoubtedly violated the rules. Although the other players didn't say anything, they were secretly on edge.

Now that they seemed to have found a turning point, everyone finally got to breathe a sigh of relief.

Wu Meng excitedly slapped Qin Fei on the shoulder. "You're amazing! Buddy!"

His strength was truly astonishing, causing Qin Fei to stumble.

Fei: "…"

I suspect you're settling a personal grudge, and I have evidence!

The players' exhausted bodies were suddenly reinvigorated. Wu Meng, like an ecstatic dog, untied the rope around his neck while enthusiastically running forward.

This joy lasted for a very short time.

When the thing Ding Li had pointed out appeared before their eyes, everyone found it hard to smile anymore.

"…Uh."

Mi Yang's eyelid twitched.

"This is a—stick?"

Tall and straight, one end was stuck in the snow.

Facing the sunlight, it stood upright, coated with a faint golden glow.

The consequences of the pollution from the whole night did not dissipate with the sunrise.

Mi Yang's mind was still muddled, his thoughts slower than usual. He kept examining the object before him, dizzily thinking, "Why would there be a stick in the snow?"

A flagpole?

A streetlight?

Or a signpost?

—a signpost!!!

His dull head finally sparked, and Mi Yang lunged towards the snow.

The snow there was thicker than elsewhere, as if deliberately concealing something.

After Mi Yang dug several times with his hands, his fingertips finally touched a hard object beneath the snow.

The few members of Dawn Squad rushed over, their movements swift. In no time, they dug out the object from the snow.

It was indeed a signpost.

Blue background with white letters, just like the common road signs on highways.

The signpost was rusted and looked quite old. The text on it was worn, but it didn't hinder reading.

"Go down the mountain, please take this path."

Wu Meng read the words on the signpost aloud, his smile unhidden.

Found it!

The way down the mountain!

After being delayed for a whole day due to getting lost, they finally stepped onto the right track.

The heavy and large signpost, in Wu Meng's strong arms, could be manipulated like a small piece of iron.

Driven by the caution honed through years of副本 (dungeons), Wu Meng subconsciously flipped the signpost over, wanting to check if there were any other clues hidden below.

However, when the back of the signpost came into the players' view, Wu Meng's expression froze.

Damn.

He silently cursed in his heart, stabilizing his arm that nearly threw the signpost away.

Compared to the merely rusted front, the condition of the signpost's back was much worse.

The moment it was flipped over from the snow, nearby players immediately felt the overwhelming aura of pollution.

The air distorted strangely, and a strange humming sound came from their ears.

The back of the signpost was entirely brownish-black, as if it had been burned or soaked in some highly corrosive chemical agent.

Blisters of various sizes bulged on what should have been a flat surface, distorting the text severely. With a light touch, pieces of metal flaked off.

[Go down the mountain, do not////#—take "this" path—]

Below the polluted text, a large skull icon was drawn. Two bones crossed over the skull, making it somewhat eerie.

A circle of players stared at the signpost, at a loss.

Wu Meng put the thing back on the ground and turned to look at Qin Fei pleadingly. "What's going on here?"

One side said to go, the other said not to go.

So, can they or can't they?

Wu Meng hadn't realized that he had unknowingly started seeking advice from Qin Fei.

Qin Fei did not reply.

He was staring intently at the empty ground before him.

The flat road had an odd undulation to it, and under the gaze of dozens of pairs of eyes, Qin Fei kicked at the snow.

A large clump of snow flew through the air, dispersing into a drifting mist that revealed the broken bluestone paving bricks beneath.

It was like a common scenic walkway, clearly man-made.

One path led left.

Another led right.

They forked in front of everyone's eyes.

"This..."

Wu Meng's eyes widened.

It was now clear that the two sides of the signpost pointed in opposite directions, one correct and one wrong.

But the question was,

which one was correct?

The signpost was supposed to be stuck in the snow, but now that it had fallen over, the players could not determine which direction it originally pointed.

Wu Meng held up the signpost and compared both sides against the pole, feeling that either side could work.

"Shall we... try both?" Wu Meng asked hesitantly.

Ying Huo slapped the back of Wu Meng's head. "I think you still have water in your brain."

The back of the signpost was heavily contaminated, and the text on it was also alarming. Could they just step onto the wrong path?

There was no going back, and it wasn't just an empty threat.

The players gathered around the signpost, scratching their heads, unable to come up with a solution.

Qin Fei stared fixedly at the endless expanse of silver-white ahead, a subtle unease welling up within him.

He felt that something was off, yet he couldn't pinpoint the reason. Only his elusive and hard-to-capture sixth sense kept asking in his mind:

Was this really the way down the mountain?

"Why don't you take a look and see which path leads down the mountain?"

In the crowd, Mi Yang hooked his finger provocatively at Cen San Ya.

Last night, when he was delirious from contamination, he accidentally bumped into Cen San Ya several times.

But this guy's innate skill was related to the mind, and naturally, his mental immunity was terrifyingly high.

Cen San Ya was perfectly lucid, and every time Mi Yang lost his bearings and stumbled toward him, Cen San Ya would kick him away with precision.

Mi Yang's butt still hurt whenever he saw those closed eyes!

Although Mi Yang asked, he didn't expect an answer. Cen San Ya was a high-ranking member of Blackfeather, and people from Blackfeather were always haughty.

The fact that Cen San Ya had taken the initiative to team up with them this time had already exceeded Mi Yang's expectations.

But Cen San Ya actually spoke up: "Neither."

Silence followed.

He seemed oblivious to the atmosphere and repeated slowly, "Neither of these paths can lead us down the mountain."

Diao Ming had been circling the signpost, examining it from all angles. Hearing Cen San Ya's words, he became displeased. "What makes you say that?"

He knew that Cen San Ya's innate ability was somewhat eerie, difficult to classify as either prophecy or perception. In any case, Cen San Ya was notorious for his "raven's mouth" in instances.

Cen San Ya rarely spoke.

But if he said someone would die during a live broadcast, that person would never make it to the end.

Someone with such a "raven's mouth" should be cautious with his words and actions, Diao Ming believed.

Cen San Ya ignored Diao Ming and did not get angry at his rudeness. He stood there with his hands hanging loosely by his sides, his expression indifferent.

"Are you really feeling something, or are you just saying it casually?"

Diao Ming persisted with his questioning.

The other person ignored him.

Diao Ming changed his approach. "Then which of these two paths is safer?"

Cen San Ya's eyelids flickered, seemingly casting a subtle glance at Diao Ming before closing his eyes again.

A fleeting trace of disgust flashed across his face, as cold and clear as the snow. But he still raised his hand and pointed to the left path.

"Then we'll go left!"

Wen Ren Liming was not as ungrateful as Diao Ming. With the foreknowledge of an A-rank expert, he quickly made the decision.

Before entering the instance, he had been firm in their squad's philosophy of keeping a distance from other players during instances.

But after a day and a night, things had subtly changed.

Qin Xiao's chivalrous intervention last night to save them had left an exceptionally good impression on Wren, making him see Mi Yang in a more favorable light as well. He was unusually unresistant to traveling with them.

However, the thought of an unknown "Deceased" lurking among their player group now gave Wren a splitting headache.

"Considering the current situation, who do you think is most likely to be the Deceased?"

After the players had set foot on the left path, Captain Wren discreetly asked Ying Huo in a hushed tone.

Ying Huo pondered for a moment before giving Wren a suggestive look.

Wren followed his gaze and saw Diao Ming trailing at the back of the group.

Since Qin Fei had retrieved him from the dense forest yesterday, Diao Ming had been in a daze, only slightly improving after the sunrise this morning.

No one knew what he had encountered in the woods. When he returned to the camp, he was soaked through, but it wasn't water that dripped off him—it was some kind of slimy, wet substance.

It was transparent and carried a faint, fishy stench.

In the extreme cold, it quickly solidified into smelly ice shards, almost sealing him inside his jacket.

That jacket was definitely unsalvageable, but fortunately, Qin Fei and the others still had a stash of spare clothes from the mountaineering club.

Qin Fei generously found a down jacket and tossed it to Diao Ming, barely saving his life.

"I've been thinking about it, and I find his rush into the woods last night suspicious," Ying Huo said earnestly, trying to sway the captain's opinion.

As one of the more intellectually developed members of the team, Ying Huo had always been Wren's go-to person for discussing important matters in various instances.

Although their team usually performed poorly when faced with analytical instances—getting three out of five wrong—they had survived so far by sheer force.

Nevertheless, Ying Huo remained Captain Wren's trusted strategist.

His words held significant weight with Wren, who immediately asked seriously, "Why do you say that?"

Ying Huo frowned deeply. "I think a normal C-rank player shouldn't be that weak."

A sea of "LOL" messages flooded the live stream chat of each Dawn Squad member.

"I'm truly speechless; I shouldn't have expected any brainpower from any member of this team."

"F*ck, f*ck, f*ck, I wasted 5 seconds fully focused on hearing Ying Huo's answer."

"Listening to Ying Huo's words is like listening to a lecture!"

Unfortunately, these comments were invisible to the players.

Unlike his beloved audience, who had an omniscient perspective, Ying Huo remained immersed in his own thought process:

"Diao Ming deliberately ran deeper into the forest to lure us after him, aiming to get us lost in the woods."

"Otherwise, given how fast he was running, he should have reached the depths of the forest. Why did he manage to return so precisely to the outskirts of the woods when Little Qin came looking for us?"

Admittedly, Ying Huo's analysis sounded somewhat plausible.

Wren nodded, his gaze toward Diao Ming becoming increasingly complicated.

Their journey forward was not smooth.

As the players approached the mountain's base, the wind grew stronger.

The howling gale swept over them, gradually replacing the morning sun with dark clouds, dimming the light until the sky was nearly as gloomy as dusk, barely illuminating the road ahead.

The storm battered them, causing everyone to sway and stagger.

If not for the thick snow beneath their feet, which helped stabilize their positions, the wind might have blown them away.

Trudging through the snow, progress was painfully slow.

With no choice, they once again took out the safety ropes, linking themselves together to withstand the fierce blizzard.

"This wind is wicked," Mi Yang gritted his teeth, preventing the icy wind from blowing snow particles into his mouth.

Logically, the higher up a mountain, the stronger the wind should be near the peak.

They should already be at the base of the mountain, where the wind shouldn't be this strong.

The guiding stone slabs disappeared after a certain distance, perhaps buried under deeper snow, forcing the players to rely on their compasses again.

"The map marked the distance from the fork leading downhill to the mountain's base. Under normal weather conditions, we should only need to walk for an hour at most," Wren struggled to move closer to Qin Fei.

It was already eight in the morning, and they had been walking in the snowstorm for over two hours.

The weather had shifted from clear skies to storms, and now lightning flashed overhead, accompanied by distant rumbles of thunder rolling behind the clouds.

"Is this path... really correct?" Diao Ming clenched his teeth and caught up from the back of the group, voicing the question that haunted everyone's thoughts.

No one could provide an answer.

Until half an hour later, Wu Meng, who was leading the way at the front of the group, suddenly stopped.

"Captain."

Wu Meng turned around, his face filled with confusion, pointing ahead. "Captain, look."

Ashen snowflakes swirled, slicing the field of vision into fragmented pieces.

But the pole standing in the snow silently conveyed a message to those who saw it.

They were back.

Back at the starting point after struggling for over two hours.

"Damn it!" Diao Ming collapsed onto the snowy ground.

He was in the worst condition among all the players.

Although Cen San Ya was weak, he had Ding Li and the others supporting him as they walked. Despite Mi Yang's dislike for Cen San Ya, during the fiercest part of the storm, she even condescended to carry him on her back for a while.

Diao Ming wasn't so fortunate.

The Dawn Squad had made up their minds; they only cared about his life or death, not his suffering. They didn't even bother to speak to him much along the way.

He wanted to ask Captain Wenren for some items to protect against the wind and snow, but the captain shook his head and said there weren't any.

Diao Ming didn't believe it, but he couldn't force the issue, knowing he wouldn't stand a chance if he tried.

Frustrated, he disregarded the vast gap in strength between A-grade and C-grade players, glaring resentfully at Cen San Ya.

"Didn't you say this path was safer?"

Cen San Ya sat on a waterproof mat that Ding Li had given him, closing his eyes to rest.

His composure was impressive, completely ignoring Diao Ming's venting.

Mi Yang, however, had a shorter temper and exploded, "Is there something wrong with your brain? You came back in one piece, isn't this path safe enough??"

Diao Ming regained a bit of reason from Mi Yang's scolding, not daring to argue further with an A-grade player. He sulkily shut his mouth.

The Dawn Squad whispered amongst themselves for a moment before Wenren Dawn approached again, politely asking Cen San Ya, "Although the left path doesn't have fatal dangers, it seems like a ghostly maze. Can we go right?"

Qin Fei, observing Wenren Dawn's anxious expression, felt that he treated Cen San Ya like a fortune-teller or a signboard at a temple.

Mr. Signboard nodded, giving an affirmative answer, "Yes."

With Cen San Ya's prediction in mind, the group rested briefly before setting off again down the right path.

This time, the players were mentally prepared. If the supposedly safer left path was so difficult, the right path would surely be more dangerous, possibly even leading to encounters with monsters.

However, things unfolded differently than expected.

As they followed the right path, the storm gradually diminished until it stopped entirely half an hour later.

The overcast sky cleared, and sunlight shone upon the snow, casting a surreal golden glow over the entire world.

Not far ahead, in the snow, a solitary wooden cabin appeared.

Perhaps due to the numerous setbacks they'd faced throughout the day, the players no longer dared to anticipate joy prematurely.

Everyone remained tense, each step forward feeling like walking a tightrope on the edge of a cliff.

Ding Li squinted and looked around. "Is there something on top of that house?"

"It's an antenna," Qin Fei said.

It was an old-fashioned antenna.

Before entering the rule-bound world, antennas of this style had almost been completely phased out.

The presence of an antenna outside the wooden cabin suggested there was equipment inside capable of communicating with the outside world.

A radio, or perhaps a television.

Ding Li paused, quickening his pace.

Soon, the group arrived in front of the wooden cabin.

The door wasn't locked, but it seemed to have been frozen shut. Ding Li struggled to pry it open.

"Move aside."

Wu Meng waved his large hand, unsheathing his horizontal saber.

With a powerful swing, the ice shattered, sending shards flying. The door of the wooden cabin opened with a creak.

A pungent smell of mold and decay rushed out, assaulting their senses.

No one had set foot in this room for years. Everything inside was covered in thick layers of dust.

There wasn't much inside. Near the entrance stood a desk, empty except for a broken radio in the corner.

The radio looked quite old, its gray casing dented in several places, barely holding together.

Wu Meng fiddled with it for a moment before pressing the button on top of the radio.

Static cut through the air, and Wu Meng leaned in to listen carefully, managing to make out part of the content.

"FM Snow Mountain 465.2 will bring you the latest... rescue updates..."

"The search and rescue efforts for the college mountaineering club that entered Mount Toromond three days ago continue. As of 7:00 AM on the 13th, the rescue team has found some human remains within the snow mountain. The facial features of the remains are unclear, and identification by family members is ongoing..."

"Preliminary... estimates suggest that they have... all perished..."

The players froze in place.

Qin Fei furrowed his brows.

His gaze pierced through the swirling dust in the room, landing on a yellowed, corner-crumpled page stuck to the wall.

It seemed to be a map, entirely different from the one they had obtained at the campsite previously.

At the top of the map was a line of text.

"Ostadia Snow Mountain Topographic Map"