Chapter Twenty-Nine: Harvest and Danger

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Harvest and Danger

At this moment, Pony was lying at the bottom of a snowdrift, his body smeared with Soul Lure, leaving only a small hole for him to breathe through. Ahead of him lay the trap he and Ye Bai had set.

To call it a trap was almost an exaggeration; it was much like the Dragon-Shedding Array. Iron spikes were embedded in the frozen earth or icy surface, each coated with Severed Soul. In this Ice Age, most animals had thick pads on their feet to keep in the warmth, so when they were drawn by the Soul Lure and stepped on the poisoned spikes, they barely felt a thing.

By the time they realized something was wrong, Ye Bai and Fan Xiang had already struck them down. Moreover, the snow-laden pine forest served as a natural barrier, preventing the beasts from stampeding in.

Suddenly, the snow atop a pine tree in front of Ye Bai began to slide off continuously; his heart leapt—he knew their prey had arrived.

A long trunk, a body covered in woolly fur, and two tiny tusks flanking its mouth—a baby mammoth.

As it plodded forward, the snow kept falling from the branches, its feet treading on the iron spikes laced with Severed Soul.

Pony lay utterly still beneath the snow, not daring to move for fear of startling the young mammoth before him. Should it flee, Fan Xiang would surely kill him for it.

The baby mammoth ventured deeper, stepping on ever more of the poisoned spikes. It stretched out its trunk, rummaging through the snowdrift in search of whatever had drawn it here, and suddenly its trunk bumped into something—five long strips. Claws? Could there be claws this small?

The baby mammoth looked utterly baffled; even Pony, buried beneath the snow, seemed to catch the startled look in its eyes.

Ye Bai summoned the elemental force within him, moving to encircle the mammoth from behind, while Fan Xiang leapt out from behind a pine tree with a great shout.

“Hey, you beast! Where do you think you’re going?”

The scene was so comical that Ye Bai almost released his gathered power on the spot; he hadn’t expected Fan Xiang to channel the Monkey King’s antics.

Steadily regaining his composure, Ye Bai charged forward, elemental energy surging into his right hand until it coalesced into a long blade. Across from him, Fan Xiang, wearing tall boots, stamped on a pine’s base.

With that, he soared into the air, sending cascades of snow tumbling down behind him—a scene like the Moon Goddess ascending to the heavens, except that the figure was a burly, barefoot brute rather than a graceful maiden.

Ye Bai darted around to the side, leapt up, and brought his elemental blade down hard on the mammoth calf’s spine, while Fan Xiang, flying in, left a ghastly wound across its face with his weapon.

Already poisoned, the mammoth calf, now grievously wounded, collapsed, weak cries escaping its mouth as its long trunk thrashed spasmodically against the snow—a pitiful sight.

A pang of guilt struck Ye Bai then. He suddenly wondered: Was endless slaughter an end to war, or merely its perpetuation? In war, it was not the warriors who suffered most, but innocents—women and children like the little one before him.

He kept telling himself it was not real, that everything was just data simulated by the Arya system.

The baby mammoth was unconscious now, its chest faintly rising and falling—a sign it was still alive.

Fan Xiang seemed intent on letting Ye Bai claim the first trophy. Standing a short distance away, he called out, “Brother Ye, finish it quickly! If you wait and it dies on its own, you’ll get nothing, not even a corpse—it’ll just vanish!”

Ye Bai stepped forward slowly, forcing courage into himself. Everything before him was fake, fake. Eyes closed, he ended the mammoth’s brief life with his blade.

Immediately, the points tracker on his arm surfaced from beneath his clothes, and his score increased by half a point.

He stood in the snow, head tilted back, eyes closed, feeling the fragility of life. It was as if the heavens themselves wept for the passing of this new life—snow began to fall softly again.

Snowflakes in the sunlight landed on the woman astride a tiger, whip in hand; on the man in pajamas; and drifted onto the bent face of the woman about to pick an ice crystal flower.

She extended her slender, boneless hand to catch a snowflake, watching it melt into water—the tears of the sky. She seemed to see the sorrow above, and gently placed the ice crystal flower back where she’d found it. Clad in a white dress, she walked away in a certain direction, as behind her, the thousand-year-blooming ice crystal flower blossomed at last.

When Ye Bai opened his eyes again, their darkness was now tinged with resolve. He understood—no one was innocent in this apocalypse. Perhaps the very existence of life was itself a kind of sin.

His only duty was to protect his mother and sister. With this thought, his mind cleared, and even the elemental force within him seemed to grow stronger.

For the rest of the day, the three of them remained there, racking up points, until near noon of the following day, when a group of unexpected guests arrived in Pine Valley.

At another entrance to the valley, a pride of saber-toothed tigers prowled along the edge of a cliff, drawing ever closer. Occasionally, one would slip from the brink, and the others would shrink back, trying to retreat.

But after falling back a few steps, green numbers flickered in every tiger’s eyes, and soon enough, they moved forward toward the valley once more.

“Roar... Roar~”

The animals lounging in the valley below, enjoying their leisure, suddenly heard the roars of their natural enemies from all around. Almost every creature stiffened, ears swiveling desperately to pinpoint the threat.

All at once, a Siberian wild ox at the edge was dragged deep into the drifts by three saber-tooths.

The animals’ tension exploded into panic, and chaos erupted as every beast began to flee toward the pine forest.

High on the mountain, snow capped the peak. The commotion of the giant beasts below angered the snow spirits, and snow began to thunder down both sides from the summit—an avalanche had begun.

Ye Bai and his companions, witnessing it all from the pine forest, turned and fled. With so many massive beasts, the woods would soon be flattened. Ye Bai still didn’t understand why the animals had suddenly gone mad—had they hunted too many?

“Is it an earthquake?” Fan Xiang, behind Ye Bai, felt the tremor in the ground.

Suddenly, Pony, who had been trailing behind, overtook Fan Xiang. Fan Xiang was about to comment on the boy’s speed when he glanced back—just in time to shout, “My god, it’s an avalanche! Brother Ye, run!”

Ye Bai looked back: most of the pursuing beasts were already buried under the snow. Panic seized him—he couldn’t be eliminated now! He hadn’t gotten into Zixing Academy yet, his mother and sister hadn’t begun a better life.

The thunder of the avalanche filled their ears, as if determined not to let the bodies of three poachers sully the pristine snow, but rather to shatter them with its roar.

Ye Bai forced himself to stay calm, searching for a way out. Suddenly, he remembered the boulders he’d seen near the entrance to the forest.

“Follow me—there are rocks at the edge of the woods, maybe we can survive there!”

But the noise of the avalanche drowned out his words; though his mouth moved, not a sound emerged. Pony, still at novice level, had already fallen behind, while Fan Xiang was fleeing for his own life, oblivious to Ye Bai.

Left with no choice, Ye Bai ran alone toward the rocks. Pony, seeing Ye Bai dash in a different direction, decided that death was certain either way and followed after him.

From the summit, the avalanche thundered down, its speed and acceleration unimaginable, obliterating everything in its path. Snow crushed and buried all it touched.

At last, Ye Bai kicked off and leapt behind a giant boulder, pressing his body tightly to the stone. Looking back, he spotted Pony not far away.

For a split second, everything seemed to freeze—Pony reached out, hoping Ye Bai would save him, hope and despair mingling in his eyes. Ye Bai stretched his own hand to grasp Pony’s—

A blinding white. The roar of the avalanche rendered Ye Bai deaf as he watched, helpless, as Pony was swept away, just out of reach.

The entire pine forest was leveled. Amid the tumbling snow, branches and debris hurtled by, and a massive tree trunk struck Ye Bai.

He didn’t even feel the pain before losing consciousness. Snow churned ceaselessly over the land, with no end in sight.

From afar, the mountain’s far side looked as if a millstone had passed over it—smooth and bare. Only the gray tip of a single boulder remained exposed in the center, a single mark upon a blank sheet of white.