Chapter 1109: Chapter 1109: The Witch’s Path
The rumbling roar and the vibration of the snow mountain beneath her feet made Miss Chloe, who was climbing higher, want to turn back to check on Shard’s situation, but she knew Shard wouldn’t want her to delay the journey. So even though her concerns and guilt had reached their peak, she continued to bite her lip and climb upward.
In the distance, the platform with the snowy slope at the top of the mountain was already visible, but the silver-haired, red-eyed young Witch was starting to feel she couldn’t hold on any longer.
In a daze, those thirteen companions she still rembered all appeared around her, tugging at her clothes and urging her to stop and rest. In a trance, all the evil fiends she had encountered in this solitary and eerie snow mountain reappeared, laughing loudly and mocking her overestimation of her abilities.
At this mont, even though the final journey was right before her eyes, Chloe’s steps were becoming slower and slower. The wind and snow seed to want to push her down, and the confusion in her mind was causing her mory to falter. For a brief mont, she even thought she had entered this snow mountain alone.
Coming back to her senses, she realized she was crawling laboriously on the snow. The difficulty in breathing led her to loosen her scarf and turn her body upward, allowing herself to lie on the snow, breathing deeply while gazing at the brilliantly colored black sky scattered with snowflakes.
The vibrant black was sothing Chloe had never seen elsewhere. At that mont, she felt as if the sky was like a coffin lid pressing down, wanting to lock her forever in this desolate snow mountain:
"Keep going, continue forward."
Turning her body with effort to stand up and try to continue ascending, she only managed a few unsteady steps before collapsing again. However, this ti she fell not onto the soft, icy snow surface but crashed directly onto an ice layer. She couldn’t understand why there was a completely transparent ice layer beneath her, but she saw countless corpses imprisoned within the snow mountain, their sinister faces welcoming another addition of a lost one, reaching out to her through the ice.
"No, I want to reach the peak. I must climb the final stretch."
Fear drove her to stand up again, but at that mont, thirteen companions, including Mrs. Marques and an unknown man, appeared before her once more. They surrounded Chloe with shriveled, corpse-like bodies as if having died long ago, trying to block her path. But Chloe brushed away their hands and pushed through their bodies, relentlessly pressing onward:
"What is truth? What is illusion?"
In the chaos of her mind, she asked herself:
"Do I really have companions? Or rather, did any of my companions truly make it this far with ?"
The voices of her companions were right behind her, trying to make her stop, even if just to glance back.
Initially, Chloe didn’t mind those voices, but soon, mories of the journey with her companions up the snow mountain flooded her mind. Those bizarre and seemingly unreal mories forced her to genuinely stop, but just before turning her head, she forcibly changed her mind.
Because she could still taste the wine and blood in her mouth and still rembered the embrace of that incomparably warm man and the adorable cat that felt as warm as the sun.
"Even if everything is false, even if this place is a construct of my consciousness before death, at least, he is real."
Chloe said to herself, pressing her hands against the snow to support her body, painstakingly stood up, and continued to forge ahead. The peak was now within sight.
"But you don’t even know his na!"
A mocking voice sounded from behind, and Chloe knew that her "companions" were still following, yet this ti the voice seed as though it ca from her own mouth.
"Na..."
"Poor Chloe, you think we’re not real! Then is he certain to be true?"
That voice seed to be speaking directly into her ear, as if an "other self" was speaking from within her heart. Chloe hesitated again, but the warmth inside her reminded her that the man truly existed.
"A Witch capable of interacting with, entering and exiting this mountain range freely, and possessing such trendous power—isn’t he just an illusion of yours?"
The voice was like a demon in her heart, still crystal clear despite the howling blizzard. The young Witch had bitten her lip countless tis, and although the pain didn’t make her more lucid, the taste of blood convinced her:
"Yes, I believe he really exists."
Her expression beca more resolute, and her steps, though unsteady, beca quicker. The voice in her ear chuckled lightly, as if having achieved its aim. "She" did not linger on whether the "man" was real but instead asked the question Chloe feared most at this mont:
"So, he helped you so much, yet you left him behind and went on alone?
Perhaps now he has already fallen into a slumber in the snow of the Silver Mountains, his body and soul unable to leave for thousands of years. Perhaps that corpse is staring blankly at the sky, unable to understand why you truly never looked back, while his soul is being torn and devoured by the evil spirits of the snow mountain. He is truly pitiable."
Chloe’s steps halted once more, struggling to control her emotions, but the scene painted by her own words seed to manifest as reality in her mind, continuously urging her to turn around and descend the mountain.
The little silhouette in the storm looked so helpless, while over a dozen voices behind her laughed joyfully.
But in the end, she still didn’t turn back:
"I am Witch Chloe."
She wasn’t just telling herself in her heart, but she spoke the words out loud:
"I believe in myself, and I believe in him too."
```
She raised her head to look forward, no longer caring about the voices behind her, no longer caring about the powers that once pulled her. Though her steps were slow, she continued steadily upward. After what might have been re minutes or perhaps several hours of final ascent, those hands, frozen to the point of numbness, finally grasped the edge of the snow-covered plateau at the mountain peak.
She moved her body to bring herself to the highest point of the peak. Struggling to stand, she opened her eyes wide to gaze at the vast snowy mountains and the darkness in the distance:
"Is this, the very top..."
At this mont, there was no joy, but instead an indescribable emptiness. Behind her, she heard panting voices and turned to see Mrs. Marques and the timid man, struggling to catch up.
"Just as I thought, it was all an illusion... I really climbed up here, ti to go ho."
Though she had reached her destination, she felt as if part of her was forever lost amid the snowy mountains. At this mont, there was not a hint of achievent, and the boundless emptiness made her doubt whether she had truly succeeded in reaching the summit, or if this was just an illusion during her last snow slope unconsciousness.
Unconsciously, she opened her arms to face the wind and snow, but it gave her no consolation:
"Why did I do all this?"
She began to doubt everything, questioning the aning of the journey. The sensation of her soul being torn grew stronger; she truly felt as if these snowy mountains were imprisoning part of her soul.
"Oh, I must learn the lesson that roaring like a dragon on a snowy mountain will cause an avalanche!"
Suddenly, she heard a complaining voice in the wind, then saw Shard awkwardly climbing up from below.
He wasn’t consud much, the snow given by the Deity contained enough Spirit, he nearly got swept away by the avalanche and had to put in a lot of effort to climb back up. The snow mountain didn’t make it difficult for this Foreigner, as long as he wasn’t infected by Whisper Elent and ntal pollution power, climbing wasn’t a big deal for him.
Miss Chloe didn’t speak to Shard but instead reached out to help him up, standing shoulder to shoulder at the peak, gazing at the endless snowy mountains.
The silvery mountains were so strange yet so enchanting; Shard knew the young woman beside him was probably very confused at this mont, but fortunately, he had already learned the truth:
"You haven’t reached the end point yet."
He reminded her. As the Witch looked at him in confusion, Shard pointed to a higher place:
"There are Thirteenth Level Steps above."
Miss Chloe didn’t understand, but suddenly inspiration surged in her heart, and she realized so things:
"I... didn’t simply co to climb the snow mountain."
Besides the still very low temperature, the ntal influence at the summit was gradually decreasing, and she was retrieving her mories.
The exceptionally illusory golden steps appeared before her, and the Eleventh Level Steps represented the identity of the Eleventh Rank Witch.
"Mrs. Marques."
Shard called softly, and the middle-aged woman stood up from the snow awkwardly, coming to face the two of them.
Shard asked:
"Is your wish to imprint the boots of the master lost in the snowy mountain onto the snow layer at the peak? Now that we’ve arrived here, can you give
those boots?"
"Yes, sir!"
Mrs. Marques said imdiately, her face flushed with inner excitent.
She took out the boots she had hidden in her bosom and handed them to Shard. When Shard first arrived at this point in ti to see these boots, he noticed that they were as small as Miss Chloe’s feet (Chapter 1035), although he didn’t know what that signified then.
He kneeled down with them, signaling the young witch to raise her foot. She was slightly startled, evidently realizing sothing. She imdiately flushed and stopped Shard, changing into those boots herself, then stamping them onto the snow.
Shard said to Mrs. Marques:
"Thus, your wish is fulfilled."
Then he said to Miss Chloe:
"You will never have to worry about being abandoned by others, facing life’s journey alone. Chloe Marcus Marquez, don’t always depend on others; you need to beco soone else’s reliance."
"Yes, Chloe, you’re not alone."
Mrs. Marques said to Miss Chloe, bowing slightly to Shard. Then her body beca translucent and phantom-like, until she transford into a string of golden light points, flying to the top of the Eleventh Level Steps of the witch, becoming the Twelfth Level Golden Steps.
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