Over the next few days, Yvette went back to the old book street several tis, but whether at Snowmist Lodge or at the bookstore, she never ran into Shuanghua again.
She did see Sara all the ti—naturally, since she was a waitress. Every morning when Yvette stepped out of her room, the girl would spot her and greet her cheerfully.
So, on a morning in mid-October, Yvette finally decided to begin her first exploration of the Snowfields.
Still, this trip to the Snowfields was mostly a test run. For her, the biggest problem wasn’t likely to be the Snow Emperor’s gaze, but rather—getting lost.
Yes, getting lost. Even in Icehamr City, she couldn’t buy anything you’d call a reliable map. At best, there were maps covering the areas from the outer edge to the Cold Mountain Belt. As for the Blizzard Belt and Abyssal Chill Belt, they were completely shrouded in mystery—vast as a new continent.
She wouldn’t go so far as to actually lose her way back, but carpet-searching absolutely required the help of a map.
Otherwise, she’d end up going back and forth over the sa explored ground, wasting ti and racking up a serious sense of frustration.
The chill of early morning was sharp enough to bite bone, her breath freezing into frost almost as soon as it left her lips. Setting out on such a quiet morning, Yvette left Icehamr City and, without spending too much ti on the road, reached the largest barbarian settlent on the border between the outer edge and the Cold Mountain Belt—Forgehold.
In essence, the Snow Country was a confederated tribal kingdom ford by four great clans: Icehamr, Winterwolf, White River, and Froststar. Forgehold was a town under the Icehamr Clan, inhabited mainly by a distinct branch of snow dwarves. They were broadly self-governing, but acknowledged Icehamr rule and paid regular tribute.
Thanks to the dwarves’ superb smithing, the place quickly beca a supply hub for adventurers heading out to explore the Cold Mountains and the Snowfields. The air was forever filled with the slls of coal fires, molten tal, and ale, while the clang of hamr on anvil was its eternal white noise.
Yvette took a brief turn along Forgehold’s rough stone-paved streets and past the workshops spewing thick black smoke, but didn’t linger. She cut straight through, crossed the endless Cold Mountains, and stepped into the domain known as the Blizzard Belt— the true, boundless frozen Snowfield tundra.
It was a world of pure white. Endless ice plains stretched toward the horizon, where the pale earth and the gray-white sky blurred into one another in the far distance, as if they’d fused into a single whole. Standing within it, it was all too easy to lose any sense of direction or scale.
She walked forward calmly, sketchbook in hand, ready to record any distinct landmarks or terrain features she saw along the way as markers for her hand-drawn map.
This lonely, solitary journey quickly stretched into a full day and night.
To avoid standing out too much and attracting the Snow Emperor’s attention—and also to avoid missing secrets buried in the permafrost—Yvette kept her spiritual sense spread beneath the ground at all tis. For that reason, she chose not to fly, but instead walked at an unhurried pace, strolling across the Snowfields.
In the morning light she walked over glass-smooth ice, its surface refracting dazzling colors. By afternoon, she found herself on frozen earth where black rock jutted starkly from the ground.
By the ti the sky went completely dark and a glorious river of stars arched across the velvet night, she was passing through a glacier canyon glowing with faint, ghostly blue light. At dawn on the second day, she ca out of an ice cave tunnel that perhaps no one had walked through in hundreds of years.
With her sketchbook and feather pen in hand, expression intent as she took her notes, she looked like a little artist strolling through her own backyard—utterly out of place against this grim, killing land.
Perhaps her luck was just bad, because it wasn’t until sunset on the second day that she finally encountered her first Frost Wraith.
This Frost Wraith wore the gear of a male adventurer: fur-lined trousers, an empty dagger sheath strapped at his calf, but his clothes were in tatters. He was probably so unlucky explorer of the Snowfields who’d been attacked and infected by a Frost Wraith and turned into what he was now—a withered, gray-blue husk with empty eyes, condemned to wander forever.
From a distance, Yvette simply snatched him up with Wind Magic, ignoring the Frost Wraith’s violent struggles. She devoured and broke down part of his flesh with her tendrils, and her expression quickly grew a little surprised.
Since she hadn’t harvested any Aberrant Mana, she could be sure that the strange “virus” carried by the Frost Wraiths wasn’t an aberrant factor. “Frost Wraith virus” was probably a more fitting na.
But it was similar. Very similar.
Not in terms of how it manifested or what it did, but in terms of its underlying code.
To put it bluntly, it felt like the Frost Wraith virus was a knockoff of the aberrant factor.
On the microscopic level, if the aberrant factor was a naturally ford work of art, then the Frost Wraith virus’s most notable trait was this: everything about it was chaotic and irregular, with a kind of wild, natural disorder—except for the exact structure that actually did the work. That part bore a highly pronounced similarity to the known structures of the aberrant factor, with a clear, artificially ordered pattern.
That was why she could say with confidence that the Frost Wraith virus was imitating the aberrant factor, and not the other way around—that the aberrant factor sohow evolved out of the Frost Wraith virus.
But why?
If it wasn’t a coincidence, then were the myths true? Was the Eden’s Garden created by the Sage actually part of the Ultra-ancient Civilization, and was the Doomsday Witch truly the one who destroyed that civilization?
And the Divine Husk Black Tower Pharmaceuticals acquired—where had that co from? The Doomsday Witch’s leftover body?
Then had She been resurrected, just like what the Witch Cult was trying to do now?
For a mont, waves of speculation surged through Yvette’s mind, but in the end it all dissolved into one deep perplexity, and that was— the tiline didn’t add up.
In the myths, the Four Gods defeated the Doomsday Witch and exiled Her to the Land of Doom ten thousand years ago, at the end of the Ultra-ancient Civilization.
But the Origin Civilization had been destroyed thirteen hundred years ago. By then, the Era of Withering on the Radiant Continent was already over. It was the height of the Elven Kingdom, and the demons’ eastward invasions had already happened more tis than anyone could count.
And the flow of ti in the two worlds was perfectly synchronized. Her and her students’ multiple trips across the Broken Abyss, and the sensory linkage she maintained with Ish Island through her flesh-and-blood markers, all confird that.
So what was going on? Was ti itself scrambled?
Even leaving the tiline aside, in the Origin Civilization there had existed artifacts on par with the Divine Husk—the Green Coronet and the Heart Core. Where had those co from?
Among the Sage and the Five Great Divine Beings He created, the Four Gods still existed. The Green Coronet and the Heart Core couldn’t possibly have co from the original Creator—the Sage—could they?
In that case, she might as well assu the Divine Husk, the Green Coronet, and the Heart Core were all pieces of the Sage’s remains. The Doomsday Witch was His creation too, after all, born as the embodint of His malice. If He could create one of those, He could create a second, a third, a fourth. And if He ever ran out of “malice,” there was always greed, gluttony, lust… hmm. But if that were true, then she herself might not be entirely free of suspicion. If she were one of them, what would she represent? Sloth?
Following that line of thought, there might even be a “first” Doomsday Witch still exiled in the so-called Land of Doom, never again to see the light of day—
Wait a second, why are there suddenly so many Doomsday Witches?!
In the end, Yvette gave up on thinking.
Soon, it was the fifth day of her Snowfields expedition.
When a familiar-looking canyon webbed with winding ice veins appeared before her once more, Yvette finally confird that she’d walked in a big circle and ended up near a landmark she’d passed and recorded on the very first day.
——
There was nothing especially sinister interfering with her. It was simply that the Snowfields were too monotonous, too vast and empty. One careless step off a straight line was enough to send you looping in a huge arc.
Even the nights here lasted much longer than the days. It felt like if she kept going farther north, she’d run into a full twenty-four-hour polar night.
Still, she’d managed to map out a small slice of the Blizzard Belt this trip, which was a decent harvest. Next ti, she should be able to go much farther in. For now, she could think about heading back to Snowmist Lodge to rest up, soak in the hot springs, and indulge in so good food.
She wasn’t a workaholic, after all. Rest was important too.
With that thought of rewarding herself, a faint, gentle smile appeared on Yvette’s usually calm face, and even her steps grew lighter and more buoyant, like a snow hare hopping along.
Then, just as she drew close to the edge of the Blizzard Belt and the Cold Mountains were almost in sight, a party of adventurers being chased by Snowfield beasts caught her attention.
She quietly slipped closer at once, planning to save them first and then seize the chance to preach. The effect would definitely be excellent.
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