Chapter 66: Night on the Cliff
Chapter 66: Night on the Cliff
With doubts in her mind, Lin Sai stepped onto the snow-covered ground and approached the bodies.
She began to examine the product information of these corpses.
Just like the fire fox corpse she had inspected earlier, these beasts that had frozen to death in front of her also had identical death information, differing only in the length of time they had been encased in ice compared to the ones she had seen before.
"..."
After checking several corpses consecutively, Lin Sai stood in place, her brows furrowed in deep thought.
Both she and these beasts were suddenly caught in a cold gust of wind.
However, Lin Sai only felt a chill, while these beasts met their fate in an instant, frozen by the icy blast.
There had to be some distinction between them.
Just as Lin Sai had subconsciously judged earlier.
Perhaps it was because his human identity was unaffected, or perhaps it was due to the fact that these beasts all came from the Black Mountain World.
"It's probably still an issue with the Black Mountain..."
Between the two possibilities, Lin Sai leaned more towards the latter.
The anomaly of instant freezing was closely related to the essence, even though humans and beasts might differ in their utilization of the essence, the fundamental distinction wasn't as apparent.
If it were the former, he should at least be able to sense the essence's invasion.
He analyzed his thoughts.
Lin Sai walked on the snow, selecting a lighter corpse and placing it into his portable bag.
This wasn't for collecting food for the journey.
Instead, Lin Sai lacked better analysis methods other than product appraisal.
So, he planned to bring this corpse back to the border town and let other Awakened individuals handle it, testing if they could further decipher the information contained within.
After completing these tasks, to ensure no surprises, Lin Sai checked the surrounding area for other corpses.
He conducted a thorough inspection, confirming there were no exceptions.
Lin Sai didn't immediately embark on the return journey but instead returned to the Vine Cliff at the edge of the world.
"It's getting dark."
Standing at the edge of the cliff, Lin Sai gazed into the distance.
By this time, the sky had darkened.
At the end of his sight, an endless night sky stretched forward, adorned with twinkling stars that embellished the night's curtain.
Lin Sai sighed softly and immediately got to work.
He dismantled his wooden snow sled, using it as a temporary shovel, and dug into the snow at the top of the cliff, creating a snow cave adjacent to the climbing vine, before crawling inside to wait for external changes.
Lin Sai needed to clarify one issue.
The beasts that climbed up from below, how often and in what numbers did they appear? Was his encounter just bad luck, or were these beasts frequently present, making his experience just one of many?
To avoid alerting anything with his presence.
Lin Sai hid, refraining from lighting a fire, and simply ate his meat biscuits to satisfy his hunger.
Chewing the salty and bloody taste in his mouth, he began his vigil on the cliff's edge throughout the night.
"..."
In the silent watch, the night quickly passed.
Lin Sai's adventurous act of spending the night on the cliff's edge finally yielded two pieces of information.
First was the eerie cold wind.
This frigid current, capable of instantly freezing beasts, blew up from below the cliff, with almost no interval. At times, a short duration would pass before another gust arrived, and at others, a small group of beasts would appear.
Lin Sai also attempted to use mathematics to discern a pattern.
Unfortunately, the sample size of a single night might not be sufficient to derive a conclusion, or perhaps the occurrence of this cold snap is inherently unpredictable.
In any case, within a short time, Lin Sai couldn't deduce any patterns from it and could only treat it as an irregular phenomenon.
The other crucial piece of information was the Black Mountain monsters below.
For an entire night, Lin Sai only witnessed one wave of monsters escaping from below.
Facing this unpredictable cold wind, these monsters were also helpless, only able to gamble with this unpredictable interval of time.
Lin Sai wasn't sure how many monsters there were below or what the exact situation was.
But in just one night, only one wave of monsters managed to reach the summit.
And what awaited them here was not a successful escape to freedom but, once again, being caught by the cold wind from behind in the vast snowfield, turning into ice sculptures buried deep in the snow.
Lin Sai stood guard at the entrance of the snow shelter atop the cliff.
He observed everything, his mind filled with thoughts.
"Well, I guess this is good news."
"Even though I was unlucky to encounter that group of monsters, at least it proves that their numbers are far less than I imagined."
Indeed, this was the case.
Even if the monsters had the reproductive ability that human Awakened lacked.
But if every cold gust of wind brought a corresponding number of monsters escaping from the Black Mountain World, then the number of monsters below would be an astronomical figure, impossible to calculate!
This situation has completely exceeded the realm of possibility!
The next morning, the sun rose in the east, shining directly on the entrance of Lin Sai's snow shelter.
He stood up, stretching his frozen body from the night before. Life Essence flowed within him, and he quickly adapted.
"Alright, it's time to go back."
Lin Sai exhaled and, after warming up, climbed out of the snow shelter. But instead of rushing to leave, he stood on top of the shelter and jumped vigorously.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
After a few muffled sounds, Lin Sai successfully compacted a significant amount of snow on top of the shelter, but the hole he had dug below remained sturdy.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
"..."
"So hard?"
Lin Sai tilted his head, his expression filled with helplessness.
He had no choice but to crawl back inside, pull out his long dagger, and carve grid-like cracks on the inner walls of the snow shelter, then punch them to destroy them.
Once the structure of the snow shelter was thoroughly demolished and collapsed.
Only then did Lin Sai crawl out, put on his wooden snow sled, and embark on his true journey home.
Before leaving, he deliberately created this situation.
Lin Sai's intention was simple.
Although these monsters, climbing up from the Black Mountain World, had all perished in the snowfield, no one could guarantee that if another monster came up and, by chance, encountered his cave, it wouldn't cause trouble.
These were real threats to the town!
Concerned about the safety of the entire Hidden Frontier, Lin Sai didn't want to make a mistake in the details, so he deliberately erased his traces.
In the vast, white snowfield, Lin Sai's figure gradually faded into the distance until it disappeared.
He took one last look at the cliff behind him, the intersection of two worlds, and muttered softly:
"What a pity."
"Originally, I wanted to collect some wild crops on my way back. But now it seems that the most important thing is to hurry back and inform the people in town about the situation here."
[These past two days, I've had gastritis, and my writing condition has been poor. Please bear with me.]
(End of Chapter)
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