chsdbacks Chapter 427 Ice Wall?!
Chapter 427 Ice Wall?!
The roar on the glacier was no longer the faint, muffled sound it had been moments before. It surged up from the depths of the ice, seeping into the bones beneath everyone's feet, making their teeth chatter slightly, and causing the ice chips under their feet to dance, as if a giant engine was running at high speed beneath a sheet of ice hundreds of meters thick. The wind had stopped, and the surroundings were so quiet that only the continuous, low-frequency pulsation remained, making their eardrums ache and their breathing become erratic.
Nie Lingfeng raised his right fist, clenching his fist tightly. The group behind him immediately stopped, six or seven people halting simultaneously on the ice, the crampons of their mountaineering boots scraping against the surface with varying lengths of harsh sounds. He slightly turned his head, pricking up his left ear towards the glacier's outward extension. To him, the sound was no longer a simple roar—it contained a very faint resonant frequency, almost drowned out by noise, perfectly aligning with the throbbing rhythm of the Qilin Yuan Dan in his chest, resonating in unison, like two drums striking each other across a valley.
"Something's not right." Master Wang's voice came from behind, a degree more tense than usual. He had already stuffed the thermos back into the side pocket of his backpack, and his left hand slid out from his sleeve, his five fingers moving rapidly, each movement of his fingertips intercepting a wisp of the primordial energy fluctuation pressing in from the direction of the ice wall. By the third round, his expression changed, his knuckles hovering in mid-air. "The earth's energy is as chaotic as a pot of boiling porridge, the dragon vein's course has been forcibly skewed by an entire azimuth angle... Something here is drawing the primordial energy of Kunlun Mountain, accumulated over thousands of years, to a single point."
"Pull it in one spot?" Zhang Chulan stood two steps in front of him, her scarf askew as she turned her head. "Which spot?"
Wang Ye pointed towards the end of the glacier. The sky there was shrouded in a thin layer of ice mist, through which the outline of an almost vertical ice wall could be vaguely seen, gleaming with a pale blue cold light in the afternoon sun. The ice wall rose from between the rock faces on both sides of the mountain, so high that its top could not be seen, and its upper part disappeared into the clouds, like a doorway that pierced straight from the ground to the sky.
"Behind that ice wall, that's the point that's twitching." Wang Ye pulled his fingers back and rubbed them together a couple of times, a fine layer of white frost forming where his fingertips touched the air. "If we get any closer, the Qi we carry will also be pulled by that force field. Those with heavy steps need to stabilize their dantian first."
"Then you help us keep things stable—"
"I'll help you steady yourself?" Wang Ye looked at Zhang Chulan with a wry smile. "I'm swaying myself."
Lu Linglong stood in the middle of the group, her hands resting on the two sword manuals in the side pocket of her backpack. Her fingertips pressed against the hard covers, feeling the waves of air surging from the direction of the ice wall. The feeling wasn't exactly dangerous, but it made her instinctively tense the muscles in her shoulders and back, like an animal sensing a sudden drop in air pressure in the silence before a storm. She turned her head to look at Nie Lingfeng's back in front of her—his back was still straight, his shoulders were lowered, and his center of gravity was extremely stable. He was like a stake driven into the ice, completely still.
"Master," she called out, "are we still leaving?"
Nie Lingfeng didn't answer immediately. He stood there, eyes closed, his breathing slower than before. The Qilin Yuan Dan deep within his chest was throbbing at an unusually high frequency, and with each beat, the buzzing sound emanating from the direction of the ice wall grew clearer. He could sense something on the other side of the ice wall, across an unknown thickness of millennia-old ice, focusing its gaze on him. That gaze wasn't hostile, nor even ardent; it was more like a long-awaited stare cast from an extremely distant place, like ripples finally spreading across the water at the bottom of a dry well upon hearing the approach of a second footstep.
He opened his eyes.
"Walk."
After saying that one word, he took a step forward, his right crampon cutting into the ice, the ice shards making a soft crunching sound as they were pressed down.
"But Master—"
"It sent me here." Nie Lingfeng didn't turn his head, his voice muffled from under his scarf, but every word was clear. "Even if it's a trap, I have to go see who set it."
Zhang Chulan grinned slightly behind him, wanting to say something to ease the tension, but his Adam's apple bobbed and he ultimately remained silent. He tightened his backpack strap and followed with his head down.
The further we went, the more obvious the changes on the ice became. At first, it was a smooth, mirror-like expanse of blue ice, stretching for miles beneath our feet, with countless tiny air bubbles trapped within the ice layer, like frozen stars. After walking about a kilometer, dense cracks began to appear on the ice surface, the lines extending downwards from the glacier's surface, seemingly bottomless. Some cracks were wide enough to fit a finger, and the darkness and coldness emanating from them didn't seem like ice at all—it was more like the cracks leading to some deeper, endless space. The wind had picked up again, blowing close to the ground and skimming the ice, whipping up tiny ice crystals that rubbed against everyone's trouser legs with a soft, sandpaper-like sound.
The deep rumble seemed to grow even closer. It was no longer a muffled sound from the depths of the glacier, but rather as if it were seeping from the ice from all directions, filling the entire world with this trembling frequency. The people felt the ice beneath their feet rising and falling at an extremely slow pace, alternating between high and low, cycling approximately every three seconds, like the breathing of some living thing.
"My God..." Zhang Chulan carefully placed each foot, probing the ice surface ahead with the tips of his crampons before each step, his voice barely audible, "Are we walking on a glacier or stepping on the belly of something?"
"Can you use a different analogy?" Lu Linglong followed two meters behind, her face buried in her scarf with only her eyes showing, her eyelashes frosted with white. Hearing this, she snorted through her nose, "The more you use this analogy, the more creepy it gets."
"I'm telling the truth—look at the undulations of this ice, it's surging and bubbling—"
"Alright, alright, stop talking."
Wang Zhenqiu walked second to last in the group. His bright orange jacket stood out against the gray-blue glacier background; even from a distance, his warm color could be seen moving. He unusually refrained from interrupting or joking. His left hand never left the three-section staff folded into a short stick at his waist, while his right hand's fingers unconsciously formed a hand seal in the air, the white mist from his lips moving intermittently.
Feng Baobao walked at the back, her katana hanging horizontally at her waist, her steps as even as if measured with a ruler. She didn't speak, but her gaze never left Nie Lingfeng's back in front of her. Occasionally, she would glance at the ice walls on either side, her pupils barely showing any change in focus at that distance.
The group advanced for about twenty minutes, and the landscape suddenly opened up after rounding a huge, isolated icicle. At the end of the glacier stretched an ice wall, towering into the clouds, as smooth as a single, polished piece of blue jade, extending from the rocky base on the left to the edge of the cliff on the right, gleaming with a cold, eerie blue luster in the afternoon backlight. The surface of the ice wall was without a single crack or scratch; millions of years of snow accumulation and air currents had left only faint ripple-like patterns on its surface, like a bronze mirror sculpted by time.
The deep rumbling sound emanated from within the ice wall—now so close, it was no longer the chaotic noise pressing in from all directions, but a clear, rhythmic, and heavy throbbing. Thump. Thump. Thump. The intervals were even, each beat precisely matching the throbbing of the Yuan Dan within Nie Lingfeng's chest.
"This is it." Nie Lingfeng stopped. He stood about ten meters in front of the ice wall, looking up at the part of the ice wall that disappeared into the clouds. His breath condensed into a thick white mist in the cold air, drifting and gathering in front of him.
No one behind him spoke. Everyone stood a few steps away from him, and could feel the primordial energy emanating from inside the ice wall slowly pushing towards him like a warm tide on a windless day. When it brushed against his skin, it brought a strange itch, and the capillaries under his skin involuntarily dilated and then receded.
Nie Lingfeng slowly raised his right hand, spread his five fingers, and placed his palm on the surface of the ice wall.
The first sensation was a bone-chilling cold that shot up from his palm, along his wrist, to his elbow, making the hairs on his entire right arm stand on end. But then, beneath that chill lay another layer of warmth—a warmth buried deep within the ice, frozen for who knows how many years, slowly and hesitantly seeping into his palm, like someone just awakening from a long slumber and lifting their eyelids.
Then he felt a response. From the depths of the ice wall, a power far greater and more ancient than the warmth in his palm surged upwards along the ice's texture, like a sleeping river turning over at its lowest level, the undercurrents stirring the entire ice wall's internal structure.
The surface of the ice wall emitted a muffled hum, and then—crack.
A hair-thin crack appeared where Nie Lingfeng's palms met, extending vertically downwards for about half a meter. A very faint blue-gold light seeped out from the edge of the crack, reflected on the ice surface for a moment, and then dimmed.
"Brother Nie, you—" Zhang Chulan took a step forward, trying to pull him back, but Nie Lingfeng gently blocked her with the heel of his other hand.
"Don't panic." Nie Lingfeng's voice was calmer than he had expected. "It's talking to me."