Chapter 108: Lost in the Snowy Mountains 11

Chapter 108: Lost in the Snowy Mountains 11

The radio broadcast continued to loop, repeating the intermittent search and rescue updates.

"University students... search and rescue operations..."

"Unidentifiable facial features of the corpses, contacting family members for identification..."

"All have perished..."

"All have perished..."

Those five words echoed like a haunting melody, incessantly ringing in the players' ears.

Everyone's faces were ashen, while Kong Siming, the only NPC present, stared blankly at the map on the wall.

"Ostadia Snow Mountain," he murmured, reading the text on the map.

As if struck by some profound revelation, he suddenly began to laugh and cry. "Haha, hahaha—I understand! I understand everything!!"

Wu Meng stood closest to Kong Siming and was startled by his outburst. "What do you understand?"

Kong Siming seemed to have been drained of all energy, collapsing onto the wooden floor of the cabin.

"Do you remember? The night before we climbed the mountain, when we searched for information about Mount Toromond in the village, we saw that forum post."

His body trembled, and although he spoke, his eyes did not meet anyone's gaze in the room; instead, they stared straight ahead into space.

"At the time, you joked that it was a snowy mountain ghost story."

Wu Meng: "..."

I don't remember that!! I didn't even see it!

Wu Meng felt nervous under Kong Siming's stare, opening and closing his mouth but failing to utter a word.

Qin Fei wore a benevolent smile, pushing Wu Meng aside without hesitation and sitting down next to Kong Siming.

He placed an arm around Kong Siming's shoulder and comforted him gently. "Don't rush, take your time."

Kong Siming's lips were pale, and upon recognizing Qin Fei, a sliver of rationality returned to him. "That post... I still have the pictures saved on my phone!"

He was agitated, his voice sharp, and Qin Fei handed him the phone. He scrolled through the gallery until he found the old photograph that had caught Qin Fei's attention before.

"This is it!!" Kong Siming breathed heavily.

"This photo, I found it on a forum used for exchanging tales of strange folk legends."

On the night of July 10th, as remembered by Kong Siming, he and the other members of Y University Mountaineering Club—those now gathered around him—were staying at a villager's house in Zhou Li's hometown.

"Because we decided to enter the snow mountain to find classmate Zhou Li, we all stayed up late that night, gathering information in one room."

Climbing a snow mountain required extensive preparation.

The mountaineering club members obtained a map of Mount Toromond from the villagers, but that wasn't enough.

Kong Siming searched for the name of the snow mountain on the mountaineer's website, hoping to find some climbing experiences left by predecessors.

"There were only a few scattered records on the mountaineer's website, which I found unhelpful, so I searched the browser."

And then he stumbled upon that peculiar forum.

"The poster wrote that there were rumors that Mount Toromond was the Divine Mountain of the Tolun region."

"From July to October each year, this Divine Mountain enters its sacrificial season. During this time, the mountain god forbids humans from entering the snow mountain territory."

"If someone foolishly ventures into the snow mountain, they will be taken by the mountain god as a voluntary sacrifice, forever trapped within the snow mountain, unable to leave."

Such a legend, steeped in folklore, religion, and mysticism, naturally wouldn't be taken seriously.

Although the post garnered high engagement, most of the replies came from scholars and enthusiasts of folklore, none of whom believed the authenticity of the rumor.

"But the poster clearly wasn't posting for discussion. He was serious, and he truly believed in that legend. Seeing that no one believed him, the poster attached several photos as evidence in the 146th floor of the thread."

These were the same photos that Kong Siming had saved in his phone's gallery.

"What did the poster say about these photos?" Qin Fei's eyes flickered. "What was I doing at the time... Was I in the bathroom? I don't think I looked at the post with you."

Kong Siming fell for Qin Fei's distraction and began recounting the details. "The photos he posted were taken by his uncle. This uncle wasn't a local of Tolun but a geologist who, in the summer of 1973, came to the vicinity of Tolun to survey the snow mountains."

Mount Toromond was one of the targets of this surveyor.

Due to the high safety of the Toromond range and the excellent weather conditions during summer, the surveyor ventured up the mountain alone one afternoon.

"Everything went smoothly at first. The surveyor was a professional, well-equipped and skilled, and he followed the map upward, successfully reaching the summit that afternoon and then returning according to plan."

"But on his way down, the surveyor encountered a forest."

Forest.

Upon hearing these two words, the expressions of the players in the room turned grim.

"This was strange because the surveyor was following the same path he took up the mountain, and he hadn't seen any forest along the way."

"Moreover, the snow mountain was bitterly cold, with a monotonous ecosystem. Trees that grew in the snow mountain were generally conifers, such as cypress trees, but the vegetation in that forest was different. The post didn't specify what was wrong with the forest, only mentioning that the surveyor's uncle became interested and entered it alone."

"The surveyor wandered around the forest, collecting some plant samples. Those temple photos were also taken by him in the forest. Because it was getting dark, the surveyor quickly left the forest after taking the photos."

Then, something terrible happened.

The surveyor got lost.

It was a path he had already traversed, an ordinary little snow-capped mountain.

But the surveyor encountered what seemed like a ghostly barrier, unable to find his way down the mountain no matter what he did.

He wandered in that snow-covered mountain for seven whole days and nights until his supplies ran out, and he collapsed in the snow, famished and freezing.

The surveyor thought he was surely at death's door this time.

But when he woke up again, he found himself back in the warm bed of a village at the foot of the mountain.

"He was saved by villagers who were on their way up the mountain."

As Kong Siming recalled the content of the post, his throat went dry from talking.

Qin Fei, being an exceptionally considerate listener, casually opened the hot water kettle and poured a cup for Kong Siming.

Kong Siming took the cup, and his Affinity Bar surged forward for the Nth time.

"Y University Mountaineering Club Member - Kong Siming: Affinity 58% (Often, it's the small details of consideration that touch the heart the most. He firmly believes you're his classmate, the best friend he had during his four years of university, someone with whom he can talk about anything.)"

"After the surveyor descended the mountain and recounted his experiences on the mountain, the locals didn't believe him. Because there were neither forests nor temples on Mount Toromond. Countless locals climbed this mountain every year, and none of them had ever seen the things the surveyor described."

"Everyone thought it was just a hallucination he had due to the cold, as he was on the brink of death."

Over time, even the surveyor began to doubt the authenticity of his own memories. The plant samples he had collected in the forest were lost, and he could only convince himself that it might have indeed been just a dream.

Until a month later, after he had recovered his health and returned to the city, he sent the camera with which he had taken photos in the snow-covered mountain to get the film developed.

Kong Siming: "That's how those few photos came about."

The forest and the strange temple in the photos were enough proof that the surveyor's seven days and nights in the snow-covered mountain were not nightmares.

"This experience became the surveyor's obsession. He couldn't let go of his doubts and was always seeking the truth behind the strange encounter on the snow mountain."

"He returned to Tolun Village and formed a mountaineering team, climbing Mount Toromond five times over three years. But just as the locals said, there were neither forests nor temples on the mountain."

The things the surveyor saw when he descended the mountain that year did not exist on Mount Toromond.

"In order to solve the mystery, the surveyor visited many elderly locals to explore stories and rumors about the snow mountain. The story told in the main post of the thread is precisely what the surveyor heard from a centenarian local."

Qin Fei understood: "So, that surveyor felt that his bizarre experience in the snow mountain was related to local legends about the 'Divine Mountain' and 'sacrifices'?"

"Yes," Kong Siming nodded.

The surveyor believed that myths and legends did not arise without reason.

There must be some factual basis for such rumors to exist locally.

The surveyor could be one hundred percent sure that the snow mountain he had climbed was indeed Mount Toromond.

But he had indeed seen things on the mountain that did not belong to Mount Toromond.

As a scientific worker, the surveyor found it difficult to completely attribute this strange experience to mysticism.

"The surveyor believed that between July and October each year, Mount Toromond and another snow mountain that wasn't originally in the area around Tolun would undergo a spatial crossover for three months."

"The people who disappeared on the snow mountain in local legends during the summer had walked into another mountain."

They just didn't have the surveyor's good luck and never returned afterward.

"The cause of all this might be a black hole in Mount Toromond—or something else. The post used a bunch of technical terms here, but I didn't remember them too well."

Kong Siming sheepishly touched the tip of his nose.

He looked up at the map on the wall: "Ostadia Hill, I've also seen that name in the post."

"The roll of film taken in the temple on the snow mountain was repeatedly reviewed by the surveyor over the following years. But strangely, the images on the few photos did not yellow or blur over time; instead, they became clearer and clearer."

Every so often, the surveyor could discover new details from the photos.

One time, while flipping through them, the surveyor found a string of characters on a photo of himself standing next to the temple gate.

"There are ethnic minorities living in the area around Tolun. The surveyor realized that these characters seemed to be the local language. He took them to the old man who had told him the legend of the snow mountain."

"The old man confirmed the surveyor's guess. These were indeed the characters of the Tolun tribe, 'Ostadia.' In the local language, 'Ostadia' means 'non-existent.'"

On the evening of July 10th, Kong Siming spent the entire night studying that post in his room.

Out of curiosity, the next morning, he asked several villagers living nearby, but it seemed none of them had heard of the legend.

This was quite normal. That post might have been fabricated. Nowadays, weren't there plenty of people posting fake threads online to grab attention?

Kong Siming didn't take it too seriously. There were no reports of anyone going missing among the many people who climbed the snow mountain in the summer in the nearby villages.

The Y University Mountaineering Club followed the plan set the previous night and ascended Mount Toromond.

Not until that evening, when they camped in the mountains and were attacked by an unknown creature, did Kong Siming become overwhelmed with shock. He remained dazed until he entered this wooden house just now and saw the words "Ostadia Hill" on the wall, which brought him to a sudden realization.

"So, I now think we're not on Mount Toromond at all."

Kong Siming gave a bitter smile.

"But rather, we've entered the legendary non-existent snow mountain."

The moment Kong Siming's words faded away, the system notification suddenly sounded in the minds of all players.

"Congratulations to the players present for successfully unlocking the hidden side quest of the instance: The Secret Behind the Snow Mountain! The current instance mission has been upgraded!"

"The conditions for clearing the 'Lost Snow Mountain' instance: Investigate the secrets of Ostadia Snow Mountain (0/5), and uncover the cause of Zhou Li's death!"

The players' faces alternated between green and white.

"This," Diao Ming gritted his teeth, "why are the conditions for clearing the instance getting harder and harder?"

Before, they only needed to climb to the mountain top to clear it, but now they had to investigate five secrets.

And what were those five secrets?

The snow mountain was rarely visited by people, and since they were now trapped in the "non-existent snow mountain," their previous plan to go down the mountain and return to the village to find someone naturally fell through.

Anyone could tell with their toes that this mountain wasn't one that could be easily left.

They couldn't get down the mountain, and Kong Siming, the only NPC on the mountain, wasn't a local and knew very limited information.

Where were they supposed to investigate these secrets?

Ask the sky, ask the earth, or ask the big tree?

The players in the wooden house didn't say a word.

Some hadn't recovered yet, while others like Mi Yang or Cen San Ya, who reacted quickly, had already started studying the map on the wall.

Qin Fei stood silently in the corner, half-lifting his eyelids to stare at a corner of the wooden house.

Everyone assumed he was also looking at the map.

Only the audience on the other side of the light screen, who shared Qin Fei's perspective, knew.

What Qin Fei was actually looking at was the floating prompt text in the air.

This was a prompt that only Qin Fei could see.

A prompt exclusive to the "Deceased" faction.

"Congratulations to the player for successfully unlocking the hidden side quest of the instance: The Secret Behind the Snow Mountain. The specific conditions for clearing the instance for the Deceased faction have been unlocked."

Just as the system announcement that all players could hear sounded, new prompts appeared in the air in front of Qin Fei's eyes.

In the attribute panel, under the "Current Instance Faction" column at the bottom, an additional explanation had already appeared.

"The conditions for clearing the 'Lost Snow Mountain' instance - Deceased: Reach the guiding place; tame new apostles for the Ostadia Mountains (0/10)."

(Please note: Once thoroughly tamed, the apostles will switch to the Deceased faction, and this faction conversion is irreversible.)

Qin Fei's mood was particularly complicated, no better than the other players.

Diao Ming was still ranting about how the clearance mission had become more difficult, but why did Qin Fei feel that the task for the deceased was the hardest?

In fact, the five secrets of the Living faction weren't insurmountable puzzles in Qin Fei's view.

The map on the wall clearly depicted five branches in the Ostadia Mountains, like five tentacles extending from the narrow main body of the mountain range in all directions.

Without NPCs in the snow mountain instance, the players could only obtain information by exploring new side maps.

The answers to those five secrets should, without a doubt, be distributed among those five points on the map.

But where exactly was the guiding place?

The five marked locations on the map were: Abyss Canyon, Ice Pond, an icon resembling a small house, a tree-like icon, and a moth icon with an eye pattern on its wings.

Would the guiding place be one of them?

Additionally, Qin Fei's second task was to tame new apostles for the Ostadia Mountains.

After the clearance mission for the Deceased faction refreshed, in Qin Fei's perspective, each of the 18 players in the instance gained a progress bar above their heads, similar to the favorability bar he could see when looking at NPCs.

However, the description for the progress bars above the players' heads read "Domestication Value."

Aside from that, Qin Fei hadn't forgotten the original purpose of coming to this snow mountain instance.

The young man gently spun the black crystal ring on his finger, his crow feather-like long eyelashes drooping to conceal the light of contemplation in his eyes.

He was here to find fragments of the source of pollution.

In an instance, the location of the source of pollution must be the most central area of the entire instance.

For example, the deepest part of Lamb's mental world in the Holy Infant Institute, or the Seal Sea where the evil god was imprisoned in the werewolf community.

Now that the factions within the instance were divided into life and death, with different clearance missions, it was clear from both sides' clearance missions that the Deceased faction was obviously closer to the core of the entire instance.

The Living's mission revolved around "Zhou Li," whereas the Deceased existed as apostles of the Divine Mountain, having a much closer relationship with the Divine Mountain than the Living.

This was undoubtedly good news for Qin Fei.

This meant that he could likely carry out the two tasks of clearing the instance and finding the source of pollution simultaneously.

By the time he had thoroughly explored Ostadia Hill, he would probably have an idea of where the fragment of the source of pollution was hidden.

—Perhaps it was hidden in the "guiding place" mentioned in the mission.

As a member of the Deceased, Qin Fei's greatest advantage was that his enemies were in the open while he remained in the shadows, allowing him many covert operational spaces.

To find the guiding place, he first had to understand Ostadia Hill, and to domesticate apostles, he also needed to approach the players. For a long time to come, Qin Fei could still travel with the other players.

No wonder the instance initially prompted that Deceased players must hide their identities well.

If the Deceased revealed themselves too early, the subsequent domestication mission would almost certainly be impossible to complete.

On the other side of the wooden house, Mi Yang took Kong Siming's phone to photograph the new map of the snow mountain, then carefully peeled the map off the wall.

Qin Fei stood at the back of the crowd, watching their heads with a casual gaze.

The biggest challenge now was how to tame the players?

Regarding this point, Qin Fei currently knew nothing.

The instance did not provide any clues, and everything could only rely on Qin Fei's own conjectures.

The dark-haired youth stood silently in the corner, his mind swirling with thoughts.

Taming.

What kind of person would one be, tamed by the snow mountain?

Would they regard the snow mountain as the supreme deity?

Willingly stay in the snow mountain, living and dying with it?

What kind of person would willingly spend their entire life in the snow mountain.

Qin Fei's eyes flickered slightly, and he had a guess.

When a problem is difficult to solve directly, reverse deduction can also be an effective method.

The snow mountain would never find an enemy to tame its apostles for itself, so as the snow mountain's chosen "instructor," Qin Fei himself was undoubtedly already a qualified apostle.

And his only identity in the instance was that of a "deceased."

Similarly, the faction hint given by the system could effectively prove this:

After being thoroughly tamed, the player would switch to the deceased faction.

So, as long as the player becomes a dead man, is that considered a successful taming?

But dead men can't clear instances, nor do they need any faction switching.

The crux of the taming mission should be "to make the player believe they have already died in the snow mountain."

Qin Fei narrowed his eyes.

This mission... doesn't seem that difficult either.

The radio placed at the door, after repeatedly broadcasting rescue notices, had gone silent.

Qin Fei leaned against the table, picking up the radio casually as if by chance and playing with it.

A click.

His knuckles accidentally brushed against a button on the radio.

The staticky sound of electricity crackled again, and that heart-stopping broadcast echoed through the air once more.

"College students... rescue operations..."

"Unidentifiable facial features of the corpses..."

"All deceased..."

"All deceased..."

...

The players huddled in the corner were having a quiet discussion. The moment the broadcast sounded, they all froze in unison, then slowly turned around.

Qin Fei blinked, his clear, light-colored eyes brimming with innocence. "I just touched it."

He placed the radio back on the table, as if to distance himself from it, and took a few steps toward the players.

The fear that had been interrupted by Kong Siming's story once again took hold of everyone in the wooden cabin.

"Al-al-already... all... deceased..."

The voice from the radio became increasingly distorted, as if submerged underwater, with every screw inside colliding violently with the sound. The accompanying noise caused piercing pain in their eardrums and made their hearts beat erratically.

NPC Kong Siming, the most psychologically fragile among them, was the first to start shivering.

"Are we... currently on Ostadia Hill, right?" he stammered.

Qin Fei nodded solemnly.

Kong Siming swallowed. "So, so-so, whose bodies did they find on M-Mount Toromond, then???"

Mount Toromond was just an ordinary little snow mountain.

To the local residents around Tolun, it was no different than the small artificial hills in the park near their homes.

How could there possibly be corpses appearing randomly on the artificial hills in the park near their homes?

And especially not corpses that matched the number of people in their mountaineering club.

The rescue team wouldn't shoot blindly. Since they dared to say "all deceased," they must have had at least a ninety percent certainty.

Before Qin Fei could even utter a word, in the wooden cabin, nearly half of the people's progress bars suddenly surged sharply.