Chapter 414: Snow Mountain (14) “So-called Dancing Beads are Bone Beads”

Multicolored prayer flags fluttered in the wind, reflecting a dull gray under the black sky. Baima held a whip, driving the sheep up the mountain, leaving a string of dark footprints on the deep snow.

She suddenly began to sing, her clear voice echoing through the mountains and fields, bouncing off the ice walls and returning, layer upon layer of echoes drifting in mid-air, as if countless people were singing in harmony.

They sang: “Om Ah Hum, may the Savior protect all beings; Om Ah Hum, may the God of Fortune bestow blessings; Om Ah Hum, may the God of the Tomb protect the departed souls…”

Lin Chen followed beside Baima, Lu Li and Xu Yao mingled with the sheep, while Qis lagged behind the flock, leaning on his trekking pole, struggling to move forward.

The mountain winds were biting, cold air mixed with ice shards swept out from the canyon, scraping across their faces like blades, bringing a dense, stinging pain.

The blood-colored cloak flapped wildly backward in the wind, making a “shua la la” sound, slowing down the pace of both humans and animals.

Qis was only wearing a suit and trousers, and the clothing exchanged in the game mall had little lining. The cold had already permeated his bones, and with every step, he seemed to hear the “ka ka” sound of bones rubbing.

He inexplicably thought of the scene he saw in the mirror at the inn last night.

The person in the mirror also seemed to be walking through a snow-covered mountain in such a manner, burdened by wind and snow. He wondered if that was Zhou Ke in another time-space, or his own future.

The group walked past the foot of the mountain adorned with prayer flags, and continued for an unknown distance. When they looked back, the prayer flags were no longer visible.

Vast expanses of bewildered white stretched between heaven and earth, burying all colors in the world. The mind instantly became empty, and even the most turbulent emotions within couldn’t help but turn silent.

The connection with the human world seemed to be completely severed at this moment. This was a forbidden zone belonging entirely to death, where all human joys, sorrows, and emotions were stripped away, and the path to ultimate destiny was restricted—

Go forward, cross this snow mountain, or stay on it forever.

Baima stopped on her own accord, turning to look at the players, her eyes as calm as an ancient, unmelting iceberg.

“We have reached the Snow Mountain,” she said. “The Mother Goddess sleeps at the summit. Her dream envelops the entire Snow Mountain. If we proceed further, we might disturb her slumber.”

“Oh, oh!” Lin Chen nodded earnestly in agreement, then asked, “What should we do then? Set up camp here?”

This was everyone’s thought.

Even without considering the Mother Goddess, climbing a snow mountain at night was a challenge for players who hadn’t received professional training.

Not to mention the freezing temperatures that almost froze those who hadn’t prepared clothes before entering the instance, the impact of the dark environment on vision and visibility alone was extremely deadly.

Crevasses lurked hidden beneath the snowdrifts, and the space below could be dozens of meters deep. A fall could be fatal. Even in daylight, one could accidentally step into one, let alone at night.

Baima lowered a finger, pointing to the ground beneath their feet, and said, “Let us rest here.”

She put two fingers to her lips and whistled. The sheep, as if hearing a command, gathered around her. Immediately after, each goat lowered its head, raised its hooves, and began to dig at the accumulated snow on the ground.

The white snow covering the ice layer was dug aside, forming small, grave-like mounds, exposing the transparent ice surface below.

Rows of black figures lay side by side beneath the solid ice, like scars growing on the snow mountain. Looking closer, they were clearly stiff corpses, hands crossed over their chests, eyes tightly closed, sleeping peacefully.

Lin Chen had been watching the sheep’s actions, puzzled, until he unexpectedly came face to face with the corpses, nearly jumping out of his skin.

He remembered the principle of not being a burden, took two deep breaths to suppress the urge to scream, and said hoarsely, “There are so many corpses here. Beneath our feet… they’re all corpses.”

Xu Yao looked down for a moment, then shrugged, “What’s there to be afraid of? They look like they’ve been dead for a long time, not even ghosts, so they can’t hurt anyone.”

“Yes, we don’t need to worry, this isn’t a death point,” Lu Li calmly concluded. “The snow mountain is buried with the deceased who came from all over the world, which is a prerequisite information that can be inferred from existing clues.

“When we came, those passengers on the car were going to be buried in Shangri-La; last night, looking out the window of the guest room, we could also see corpses in the ice.”

This was true. Beneath the snow mountain of Shangri-La lay a vast multitude of corpses, making one wonder how many deceased could be crammed into the mountain’s cavities, and then speculate whether all the spirits of the departed throughout history would gather here.

The goats silently dug at the ground for a while, clearing a space of about twenty square meters. The dense, dark corpses lay packed together beneath the ice, clearly a naturally formed freezer.

Baima whistled again, and the sheep dispersed, standing at the edge of the cleared area, horns outward, forming a protective stance.

Baima pointed at the ice surface beneath their feet again and said, “You can stay here.”

The phrase “stay here” seemed a bit odd in this context, but upon closer inspection, it wasn’t a big problem.

Four players and one NPC stood in the circular clearing surrounded by sheep. Lin Chen took a folded waterproof tent cloth from a sheep’s back and unfolded it in the cold wind.

Ice pellets tapped against the fabric with fragmented crisp sounds, and the edges of the tarp flapped in the wind, making it almost impossible to grasp. The four of them spread out to the four sides, grabbing the tarp, their fingers becoming less nimble due to the cold.

This instance had suppressed the physical abilities of both humans and ghosts to the same level. Even players who were once formidable in the game were essentially fragile lives limited by the harsh environment.

Qis took out the Underworld Guide, handing each person a stack of pages. After the effect was activated, everyone temporarily gained a ghostly state, and their movements finally became a bit more fluid.

Lu Li tossed a few steel nails onto the ice. Xu Yao casually picked them up and hammered one corner of the tarp into the ice. Lin Chen set up the supports, taking the nylon rope from Qis to secure it.

The tent was finally erected with the combined efforts of the players, a tiny speck in the vast, wild snow mountain.

The sky presented a terrifying darkness, and the cold wind did not cease, but rather intensified. The freshly pitched tent swayed from side to side, looking as if it could be blown down at any moment.

“Please go to sleep as soon as possible,” Baima said with a smile to everyone. “If you are lucky, you might enter the Ancestral God’s dream and receive a revelation of fate.”

Enter the Ancestral God’s dream? Qis didn’t think this was a sign of “luck” at all; on the contrary, it could be called utterly bad luck for him.

Of course, while he didn’t want to encounter the Ancestral God too early, he wouldn’t deliberately avoid the instance’s mechanics either.

“I’ll take your auspicious words,” Lu Li smiled and was the first to enter the tent. Xu Yao followed closely behind him.

Lin Chen took half a step in, then, seeing Qis still standing outside, he retracted his foot and waited uneasily.

Qis seemed to have suddenly thought of something, looked at Baima, and asked, “Excuse me, are there any quilts to keep warm? It seems to be getting colder on the mountain.”

Lin Chen heard him and made to take off his coat: “Brother Qi, if you feel cold, you can have my clothes. After setting up the tent, I don’t feel cold anymore, not at all.”

Not cold? Qis glanced at Lin Chen, whose expression was so sincere it didn’t seem feigned. As he spoke, white mist escaped his lips, but his complexion gradually turned rosy, as if he was truly no longer affected by the low temperature.

He suddenly felt strange. The four of them weren’t wearing much, yet he was the only one who had been bothered by the cold from beginning to end.

It was a cold that seemed to freeze the soul, permeating millions of years of time and space, transcending reality and illusion, as if he had been born with it.

“No need, I don’t think a jacket would do much good,” Qis refused Lin Chen and turned his gaze back to Baima.

Baima turned her head to look at him, her dark eyes reflecting his ghost-pale face, and her voice was as eerie as a ghost’s whisper: “You are incomplete. Incomplete people are rejected by the snow mountain.”

“Incomplete,” this phrase again… Qis recalled that in the Ruins of Sunset, he couldn’t open the door of the abandoned temple because he was “incomplete.” He hadn’t expected to be restricted by this in the final instance as well.

Before he could ask more, a bundle of folded clothes appeared out of thin air in Baima’s hand. Even in the deep night, their vibrant colors were discernible.

The woman held up the clothes with both hands, offering them to Qis: “I can give you a snow mountain garment. If you put it on, perhaps you will be temporarily accepted by the snow mountain.”

Qis took the clothes. It was a elaborately decorated Tibetan robe, with a red top paired with a white fluffy outer jacket, adorned with several layers of colorful beaded strings, looking very warm.

He draped the robe over his red suit, curling his lips slightly, and said sincerely, “Thank you, it fits perfectly.”

Lin Chen overheard Qis and Baima’s conversation, sensing a subtle, unusual meaning. He quietly asked, “Brother Qi, is something wrong? What does ‘incomplete’ mean? Is it because you ‘have no heart’?”

“Nothing, let’s go into the tent. We’ll talk about anything else tomorrow,” Qis said perfunctorily, pushing Lin Chen into the tent.

Just as he was about to step in, his peripheral vision suddenly caught a glimpse of an ochre color.

It should have been a bright red, but the dim light made it appear dark and murky. A viscous liquid seeped out from under the nails securing the tarp, emitting a faint smell of blood.

Qis half-squatted, took out his flashlight from his backpack, turned it on, and shone it into the nail hole.

The sharp steel nail had pierced through the ice layer and into the forehead of the corpse below. Blood gushed from the wound, filling the hole and bubbling up onto the ice.

After death, enzymes in the body rapidly dissolve blood cells; dead people don’t bleed. But how could someone sealed under ice for so long still be alive?

Qis observed for a while and was absolutely certain that the person under the ice was a corpse, dead beyond dead. The bleeding was probably just a cliché horror novel trope.

He tore off a corner of his sleeve, bent down to wipe away the blood that had overflowed onto the ice, and crumpled the rag to plug the ice hole.

The fabric of the red suit was the same color as blood; even if completely soaked, there wasn’t a very obvious change in color, making it seem like a superficial cover-up, trying to conceal the obvious.

Baima stood among the sheep, calmly watching Qis’s actions, and suddenly spoke: “Why are you afraid of blood? I clearly saw a lot of blood on your hands.”

Her tone was devoid of emotion, as if she was just asking a question aimlessly, not considering whether she would get an answer.

Qis tilted his head in thought for a moment, then answered seriously, “I’m not afraid of blood, I just find it dirty.”

He looked down at his hands; his originally clean and pale palms were covered in blood, seemingly endless, leaking through his fingers and dripping onto the ice.

He didn’t remember when the blood got there. He had clearly wiped it clean, so why was it still there?

He instinctively felt annoyed, subconsciously wanting to find a towel to wipe them off, or at least conceal them.

But where was the towel? Where had he put it?

Amidst the “drip-drop” of water, the corpses beneath the ice had opened their eyes at some unknown point. Their hollow, lifeless eyes stared directly at the young man with blood-soaked hands above, and one by one, they opened their mouths to catch the falling blood… On the other side, Dong Xiwen lay in the tent, tossing and turning, unable to sleep.

The events of the day had been too much to process. First, Zhou Ke used a sacred song to mobilize ghosts throughout the city, forcing Lin Jue to activate the effect of the Dark Judge with a nearly suicidal act of madness.

Then, Lin Jue chose to judge himself, adding an optional main quest to everyone’s list, and the group inexplicably set off to climb the snow mountain… And then… the famous Fu Jue appeared.

Dong Xiwen had studied it many times but still couldn’t understand the mechanism of this instance.

Zhou Ke was a cunning old fox, using him and Zhang Yiyu as tools, not revealing any crucial information. If he wanted to survive, he could only rely on himself.

“Cough… Zhou Ke, can I go out for some fresh air?” Dong Xiwen said, squinting. “Lying here like a corpse doesn’t feel like it’s helping with the instance at all. I have elderly parents and young children, and I want to live a few more years…”

He was completely talking nonsense at the end. Zhou Ke, whether too lazy to bother with him or for some other reason, closed his eyes and said, “Go ahead.”

Dong Xiwen, as if granted a great pardon, unzipped the tent and walked out.

He knew that he wasn’t the only one choosing to explore at night. Lin Jue had said beforehand that he would look around, and those from the Ark guild would most likely follow their guild leader.

He hoped they wouldn’t get ganged up on if they met… By the way, if he really got ganged up on, would begging for mercy work?

Dong Xiwen pondered idly, leaning on the trekking pole he bought from Zaxi, and slowly walked forward.

After walking for a while, he indeed saw a white figure embedded in the snow, which was Lin Jue.

It was strange that the others hadn’t come out with him; however, given his personality, refusing to drag others along to their deaths was understandable.

Thinking of this, Dong Xiwen felt a pang of bitterness.

From every angle, the Ark Guild, led by Lin Jue, was genuinely righteous, metaphorically speaking, their “style points were ridiculously high”; while he and Zhou Ke undoubtedly had the villain script. According to genre literature, they were destined to die at the hands of the righteous, to satisfy the simple sense of justice of the vast audience.

Dong Xiwen felt very innocent. Emotionally, he leaned towards Lin Jue. This person was definitely a good leader and a good companion, not like Zhou Ke who treated people as disposable consumables.

However, he made one wrong step and regretted it for a thousand years, tied to Zhou Ke’s pirate ship. Even with a Spectator card, merely watching Zhou Ke cause trouble from beginning to end, he inevitably became tainted with some sin, truly an undeserved calamity.

Not far away, Lin Jue was squatting on the ground, reaching out to touch a snowdrift, seemingly observing something beneath the snow layer.

Dong Xiwen, as if by a ghost’s prompting, walked over and craned his neck to peer.

Lin Jue heard footsteps, turned to look at him, and greeted him with a smile: “Dong Xiwen, are you also here to look for clues?”

Dong Xiwen was a little surprised. He had thought that after the brief interlude with Zhou Ke, he, as Zhou Ke’s companion, would have long been classified as an “enemy” by Lin Jue, but he didn’t expect Lin Jue to be so amiable towards him.

“Yeah, I couldn’t sleep, and felt like just 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 replied truthfully.

He thought for a moment, and out of politeness, apologized: “About what happened during the day, I’m sorry. Although I know it sounds ridiculous, I still want to explain that I don’t actually agree with all of Zhou Ke’s actions…”

“I know,” Lin Jue interrupted.

The young man in the white suit turned to face him, a gentle, kind smile on his lips, and extended his hand: “I can see that you and that poor girl were coerced by Zhou Ke. I’ve also heard about the actions of the slaughter-type players.

“I hope I can help you. If fate is still on my side, I think we might be able to cooperate to clear this instance. What do you think?”

Dong Xiwen: “Huh?”