Chapter 198: Ice Arrows
Footsteps approached. The collapsed wooden roof was pushed open, and Xue Qi jumped out carrying Old Lin—his face already frozen to a purplish blue—slung over his shoulder. In just a few bounds, he landed in front of them.
“What should we do?”
Leave him? In this weather, it wouldn’t even take an hour for Old Lin to freeze to death.
Take him along? Someone who keeps saying there’s no meaning in staying alive might not want to follow a group of strangers onto a survival journey full of unknown danger.
“Bring him. We’re going,” Wu Heng decided decisively. He stepped down the stairs, and the biting cold instantly wrapped around everything below his knees. He glanced at the unconscious Old Lin on Xue Qi’s shoulder and tossed over a piece of wolf pelt. “When he wakes up, whether he stays or leaves is up to him—but he can’t slow us down.”
Vines burrowed from beneath Wu Heng’s feet into the frozen ground, finding a direction for the group to move forward through the vast, white expanse.
Once the direction was set, they quickly returned to his body.
It felt as though frost and snow pierced through the blood vessels in Wu Heng’s legs in an instant.
Colder than it had been back in the wolf village.
Wu Heng took a step forward. “Let’s go.”
Hidden in Xie Chongyi’s arms, X glowed with a pair of icy red eyes, darting its gaze around like a searchlight. It let out soft chirping sounds, more uneasy than ever before.
Fortunately, the human carrying it this time didn’t lag far behind its master like before and walked steadily. It felt as warm and comfortable as lying in its own nest. Nestled in his arms, when it looked up, it saw its master’s back—still unable to appear broad and imposing no matter how many layers he wore.
It quickly turned its head, almost bumping face-to-face with the greyhound that stretched its neck from behind Xie Chongyi, sniffing curiously.
X chirped and fussed, shooing the greyhound away, and finally caught sight of the rest of the group. The beams of their flashlights rose and fell with their uneven steps, and every human face was coated in a layer of pale frost.
The snow was too heavy—so heavy that the little bird could barely make out their expressions or even the light in their hands.
The little bird was getting ready to fall asleep.
By sheer accident, Wu Heng had ended up walking at the very front. He didn’t need a flashlight to see in the dark, so his fingers—already stiff with cold—no longer had to grip anything. He tucked each hand into the opposite sleeve, trying to reduce heat loss as much as possible.
The untouched snowfield, rarely trodden by people, felt as soft as clouds underfoot—but it wasn’t air. Once his calves sank in, the packed snow stabbed into his skin like silver needles.
He had always been afraid of the cold, because it intensified both pain and hunger—especially pain. The slap across his face burned as if struck by a branding iron, and the bruising in his knees felt like amputation.
The extreme low temperature dragged both his body and mind back to those ghost-like days when he had barely clung to life. But the sensation came in fragments, not continuous—because the murmurs of the group behind him and the swaying beams of light kept pulling him back to reality.
Wu Heng exhaled a few breaths. The snowflakes in front of him turned into a layer of warm mist that covered his face, but it quickly froze into frost.
The sky and the snowy forest seemed to merge into one—and showed signs of fusing even more tightly.
Climbing upward, moving forward—the cold air poured into his windpipe, causing it to constrict. At the same time, the increasing altitude became an even subtler, yet more unbearable factor.
Old Lin had already been awake for a while. He didn’t leave the group, silently falling in with them.
Not long after, the sound of someone vomiting came from behind Wu Heng.
He thought it was Lin Mengzhi—but it turned out to be Ruan Silian. He stopped. Xie Chongyi behind him naturally stopped as well, and even reached out to steady him from behind, preventing him from falling backward when his legs suddenly weakened.
Ruan Silian was half-kneeling on the ground, clutching her collar as she bent forward, vomiting violently.
Dou Lu was so anxious that tears were about to fall.
Lin Mengzhi clumsily hopped and stumbled over to her side. “Morning sickness!”
Ruan Silian raised a hand and waved weakly, signaling that she was fine. She couldn’t speak. After the gesture, she frowned in pain and vomited another mouthful of half-digested food.
Wu Heng slid and half-stumbled all the way from the front of the line to Ruan Silian’s side.
“How are you?”
Ruan Silian retched for a while longer before finally stopping. The wolfskin coat fit her size, but both its weight and bulk made her seem even smaller. Leaning against Dou Lu, her eyelashes were rimmed with frost. “I’m fine… probably altitude sickness. Something in my stomach isn’t sitting well, but I’m okay.”
Wu Heng frowned and glanced at her abdomen. To avoid pressure, two buttons over that area of her coat had been left undone. At least for now, the cold wouldn’t reach it—but the strain on the mother’s body and the lack of oxygen caused by their environment were making it uneasy.
It didn’t care about human goals.
It was sending a warning to the mother.
By Wu Heng’s usual standards, he wouldn’t pay attention to anyone’s suffering at a time like this—except for a select few. But Ruan Silian was a little different from the others. From the very beginning, she had resolutely chosen to follow him. Even as an ordinary person, she had never once complained or said anything was unfair.
So it wasn’t that he couldn’t give her a bit of special treatment.
With that thought, Wu Heng pulled his hands out from his sleeves. Extremely fine vines slid down from his wrist, flowing over the snow like a stream of green, then climbed directly onto Ruan Silian’s cheek. There, they split into hair-thin tendrils, weaving together into a green half-mask over the right side of her face. Finally, a few strands extended further, slipping gently into her right nostril.
“What is this?” Dou Lu asked.
“Oxygen.”
“Plants can produce oxygen, but the concentration is usually very low. I’m a top-level plant symbiote.”
…
This time, Xie Chongyi took the lead. One hand held X, the other held Wu Heng’s. The wind and snow raged so fiercely that they could barely keep their eyes open.
Not long after, Lin Mengzhi suddenly started having a heavy nosebleed at the back of the group. Bright red blood splattered onto the snow like plum blossoms.
“Ow—damn, damn, damn!” Lin Mengzhi was still worried about getting his clothes dirty. He kept backing up, then plopped straight into the deepened snow—so deep he nearly disappeared from sight—until Xue Shen reacted quickly and yanked him back out.
Embarrassed by the help, Lin Mengzhi awkwardly shook off his hand. “We’re both guys, don’t go grabbing me like that.”
This time, Lin Mengzhi also got oxygen.
The higher the altitude, the lower the air pressure and the less oxygen there is. Without instruments, they had no way of measuring the exact elevation they had reached. One after another, everyone in the group without abilities began to collapse. Xue Qi had long since turned into a palm-sized spider and crawled into Lin Mengzhi’s clothes. Even the greyhound had been wrapped in an oversized wolfskin coat.
Wu Heng took responsibility for most of the group’s safety, while Shen Ping’an looked after Shen Ruyi, the Yang siblings, and Yang Liangliang.
Wrapped in wolfskin, Yang Liangliang stopped crying once she had enough oxygen. For now, she hadn’t shown any other symptoms.
But Yang Yu was already heartbroken—heartbroken and terrified. Low-oxygen environments could cause irreversible brain damage to infants. “Can we… go back first? Wait until the snow stops…” she pleaded through clenched teeth.
By now, Wu Heng automatically filtered out unimportant sounds. He didn’t hear her.
“If you want to go back, go by yourself. I’m not suffering through this for nothing,” Shen Ruyi shot her a cold glance.
At this point, neither personal emotions nor even individual lives could stop the group from moving forward. They had already come this far—either they crossed it, or they became food for some starving animal. No one was willing to stop.
At the first faint hint of dawn, the group finally climbed out of the seemingly endless forest. A sky streaked with pale blue and gray looked down coldly upon the land buried beneath heavy snow.
The group staggered forward, crooked and sluggish, half-dead with exhaustion—then collapsed into the snow. Once they fell, their bodies nearly vanished from sight.
“I—I can’t go on. I need to rest for a bit,” Lin Mengzhi said, his ears ringing. At first, he thought it was loose snow falling on him. He pulled off his hat and touched his ear—his fingers came away with warm, fresh blood.
He glanced around. No one had noticed. Quietly, he wiped his hand clean in the snow.
In Xie Chongyi’s hand was a shovel—no one knew where he’d gotten it. He didn’t seem affected much by the conditions. In just a few quick motions, he cleared a patch of ground, then took dry firewood and kindling from Wu Heng. Squatting by the makeshift campfire, he lit it. The snow beneath the flames immediately melted into water and began to trickle away.
Wu Heng had all kinds of miscellaneous supplies—after all, when he gathered resources earlier, he had swept everything up in one go. There was even a stove rack, a kettle, and disposable paper cups.
After everyone drank some hot water, the chill inside their bodies eased considerably.
Hot water, paired with the corn buns that Ao She had prepared earlier, became their breakfast.
In the apocalypse, falling from luxury into hardship was something that happened all too easily—catching people completely off guard.
Half an hour later, the clouds and mist blocking their view began to clear. In the biting wind, everyone lifted their eyes toward what lay ahead—
An ancient snow mountain, seemingly covered in snow all year round, came into view. Two side peaks flanked it on the left and right, and what they faced was the main peak.
“Do you remember? About half a year ago, people said some snow mountains were moving—shifting from the western no-man’s land to the nearest bases,” Xue Shen said hoarsely. “If Deathlands can produce a vanished northern forest, then I think these mountains might have come from somewhere else too.”
“What’s wrong with these damn snow mountains? Blocking our path on purpose!”
“They’re just mountains.”
Wu Heng had already warmed up. After feeding X and Shukui several more cups of hot water, he stood up. The moment he moved, the others immediately began packing up and preparing to set out again.
This stretch of the journey turned out to be much easier than the forest. The snow was shallower, and the exposed rocks and withered moss frozen against the ground gave them enough traction to keep from slipping. For a while, their pace picked up noticeably.
Still, it took them three to four hours to get through this section. What awaited them next was a vast, nearly flat expanse of white. Ice pillars stood everywhere, frost flowers bloomed across the ground, and towering ice walls rose on both sides.
“So beautiful!” Dou Lu exclaimed, gazing at the shimmering ice flowers.
Ying Liuquan hunched his shoulders, arms folded, his expression serious. “There’s probably an underground river beneath our feet. Student Dou Lu, stay away from those ice flowers.”
Because of this, the group moved forward with extreme caution. Every step had to be tested before they dared put their weight down. Some areas were still dark patches of frozen soil, but the occasional subtle shifting of the ice flowers and pillars kept everyone on edge. Teacher Ying wasn’t wrong—beneath them was very likely a massive glacial river.
“In the future, I’ve got to find some mutated animal to bite me a few times,” Lin Mengzhi grumbled. “The way Qiu Li and Xue Qi are living is just too good. Has Qiu Li ever even worked in the fields?”
“Try putting glacier water in his fish tank.”
The pink-and-white betta fish flicked its tail, as if reminding them that the hot water added earlier had already gone cold again—it was freezing.
Wu Heng spoke little. He didn’t join their conversations, walking at the front with Xie Chongyi, observing the terrain and surroundings. The people behind moved slowly, and at one point he even stopped to wrap Shukui’s four paws with the soft inner lining of wolf fur.
This time, it took them nearly seven hours to cross the glacier. Beyond it, what blocked their path was a bottomless ice crevasse. The cold air rising from below was so intense that just standing near it made people shiver uncontrollably.
Ao She stepped forward a couple of paces, intending to get a closer look at the situation and estimate its width.
Before Ying Liuquan could even warn him to watch out for a possible landslide, several sharp whooshing sounds suddenly cut through the air above them—like the fierce, short cries of some bird.
Right overhead.
Ao She reacted instantly, retreating backward. In the very next second, several ice arrows as tall as a person slammed down, piercing straight into the rock in front of them. The rock was punched through, then broke loose, falling together with the arrows into the crevasse below.
On a snowy slope several hundred meters away, a girl in a white jacket stood facing them. Her long white hair streamed wildly in the freezing wind, and her pale, snow-colored eyes were tinged with red.
She looked toward the group—though her gaze lingered mostly on the one standing in the middle. But the moment their eyes met, she quickly and awkwardly looked away. Then, turning cold again, she said to Ao She:
“Take one more step forward, and next time, I’ll be shooting at people.”