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Xu Yuan felt pretty stupid, honestly. He had actually been counting on an idiot who could freeze her hostage half to death to know how to find her bearings in the wilderness.
After two seconds of silence, he raised a hand and lightly patted Ran Qingmo on the shoulder in consolation. Then he put away the map, stood up, and said in a low voice, “Take me to the highest spot nearby first. Maybe I can figure out where we are from there.”
Something shifted in Ran Qingmo’s eyes. She looked doubtful.
Xu Yuan knew exactly what she was doubting, so he said softly, “I may have spent these past years loafing around, but I still learned a few things.”
“Oh.”
Xu Yuan walked to the mouth of the cave and looked out at the misty forest blurred by rain. Then he glanced back at the black-clad woman packing up their things and said quietly, “It’s still raining outside.”
Ran Qingmo looked at him, then at the waterskin hanging from his waist.
Xu Yuan let out a faint sigh and looked at her soaked black clothes. “I know that with this Flame Spirit Fluid around, we don’t need to worry about catching a chill for now. But don’t you think wearing wet clothes is uncomfortable?”
Ran Qingmo blinked, carefully felt it out for herself, then nodded in agreement.
Xu Yuan thought for a moment and cast a sidelong glance at the ice spike that was still pinned through the Flame Spirit Python’s corpse outside, even in the rain.
One minute later, a man and a woman stood suspended high in the air, dozens of meters above the ground.
The man wore a splendid silk robe and held a sheepskin map in his hand. The woman, her face half-hidden behind a thin veil, stood gracefully at his side, holding an umbrella made of crystal ice.
The rain was beginning to ease, but the wind had not stopped. The mountain downpour had turned into a lingering drizzle.
Standing on the transparent platform Ran Qingmo had condensed from qi, Xu Yuan looked down at the vast forest sea beneath his feet, formed by giant trees dozens of meters tall, stretching to the horizon without end.
The Myriad Ascents Mountain Range lay across the southwestern border of the Great Flame Empire, extending for tens of thousands of miles.
The thick white mist still blocked much of Xu Yuan’s vision, but once he reached this height, he realized he did not need to figure out the direction at all. Far in the distance, at the very end of that sea of forest, stood the shadow of a colossal mountain, dark enough to blot out the sky.
Though it was impossible to tell how many miles away it was, its sheer size could still be vaguely seen through the hazy curtain of rain. It was like some heaven-swallowing beast sprawled between sky and earth. Compared to it, the roof of the world from his previous life looked like a baby.
When a flat game map became reality, the shock of it was beyond words.
Xu Yuan narrowed his eyes and stared at that monstrous silhouette. “That is Heaven's Gate Peak?”
“Yes.” Ran Qingmo held the umbrella as her sleeves fluttered softly in the wind.
“Can we climb it?”
“The cave dwelling you mentioned is up there?”
“Yes.”
That cave dwelling on Heaven's Gate Peak was a hidden map in Azure Point’s classic hot-blooded route.
The trigger conditions were just as old-fashioned as you would expect. Get hunted down, flee into the Myriad Ascents Mountain Range, climb Heaven's Gate Peak, get cornered into jumping off a cliff, and if your Luck was above 80, you would enter that hidden cave dwelling after the fall.
If your Luck was below 80? Then enjoy the free fall.
The thought flashed through Xu Yuan’s mind, and he shook his head lightly.
From the game guidebook, he remembered that the Third Young Master’s Luck stat had only been 3. Even if he jumped off Suspended Heaven Cliff a hundred times, he would never get in. He had clearly used up all the luck of this lifetime on being born well.
But now Xu Yuan had a top-tier expert like Ran Qingmo by his side. Once they reached Suspended Heaven Cliff, she could just carry him down and search slowly.
Ran Qingmo stared at the enormous Heaven's Gate Peak for two seconds in silence, then said, “All right.”
As soon as the words fell, she directly dispersed the platform of qi beneath their feet.
Xu Yuan had no words. Free fall did not feel good. Still, fortunately, this idiot woman at least understood that if he, an ordinary person, dropped from that height, he would be smashed into meat paste on the spot. Just before they hit the ground, a subtle force wrapped itself around Xu Yuan’s body. The two of them landed safely in the forest below, with Ran Qingmo carrying him in a princess hold.
They looked at each other. Holding the umbrella in one hand, Ran Qingmo gently set Xu Yuan down from her arms and said calmly,“Let’s go.”
Xu Yuan steadied himself and brushed off his robe to cover the awkwardness. But when he heard that, he frowned. “Go?”
“Mhm.” Ran Qingmo nodded.
Xu Yuan roughly estimated the distance between Heaven's Gate Peak and their current location in his head, then repeated, “You mean we’re walking there?”
Ran Qingmo tilted her head. “What else would we do?”
“Can’t you fly?” Xu Yuan’s expression turned strange. “If we walk, it’ll take us at least ten days.”
Ran Qingmo fell silent for two seconds, looked at Xu Yuan, and said very seriously, “I can’t fly.”
“But just now...” Xu Yuan pointed at the sky.
Ran Qingmo followed his finger and glanced upward before explaining, “That was a movement skill from my cultivation art, Ice Cloud Steps.”
“Ice Cloud Steps?” Xu Yuan knew basically nothing about the cultivation arts of this world, so he asked on instinct.
Ran Qingmo showed no intention of answering. She just looked at him.
Xu Yuan realized that questions about someone’s cultivation method were probably considered private, so he changed direction.
“Then what about sword flight? You can’t do that either?”
Ran Qingmo thought for two seconds, then said softly, “My cultivation art doesn’t include sword flight. It only has Ice Cloud Steps. Sword flight belongs to the Suspended Heaven Sword Art.”
At the mention of the Suspended Heaven Sword Art, Xu Yuan’s mind immediately flashed to the game guidebook’s description of it. But he could not recall anything in that entry about sword flight. Most likely, that was just the world filling in the blanks on its own.
Still, after hearing Ran Qingmo’s explanation, Xu Yuan more or less understood. This world did have ways to travel through the air, but because cultivation methods differed, the means of flight differed as well.
After a pause, he asked, “Then why not just use your Ice Cloud Steps to take me there directly?”
Ran Qingmo did not answer at once. She looked him up and down, sizing up his frail body, then shook her head. “Your body is too weak. You would die.”
“But I was fine just now, wasn’t I?” Xu Yuan frowned. Earlier, when Ran Qingmo had taken him up into the air to get a better view, he had not felt the slightest discomfort.
“The speed just now was very slow.”
Xu Yuan stopped talking. He realized he had taken too much for granted, so much so that he had overlooked a very important problem.
Ran Qingmo did not have the kind of protective bio-field Superman had in the movies from his past life, and the human body could only withstand so much acceleration.
The way Ran Qingmo moved through the air was obviously by condensing platforms of qi beneath her feet and leaping continuously through the sky.
For a pampered young master like him, a body hollowed out by wine and women, an unprotected acceleration of maybe four or five Gs would probably be enough to send him straight to the grave.
And judging from the speed she had shown earlier, fast enough that the naked eye could not follow it, thirty Gs was probably just the starting point.
Thinking of that, Xu Yuan gave the black-veiled woman before him a long look.
She might seem a little slow sometimes, but in certain ways, she really was dependable. If she had not thought of this detail for him, then the moment she accelerated, he probably would have died on the spot.
A moment later, Xu Yuan thought of having Ran Qingmo simply control her speed. But the idea was dismissed almost as soon as it appeared. She could slow down, yes, but that would keep them airborne longer.
The Myriad Ascents Mountain Range were crawling with demonic beasts. Even the Flame Spirit Python they had casually run into earlier had been under the control of a mysterious third party. If they stayed in the air too long, there was no guarantee they would not be spotted by beasts hiding in the dark.
And demonic beasts were not limited to the ground. Some avian demonic beasts in the sky had eyesight far sharper than humans.
Traveling on foot, with the forest as cover and a top-tier expert like Ran Qingmo sensing the surroundings, could not guarantee they would never be discovered. But at the very least, it meant no one would be left alive after finding them.
With that thought, Xu Yuan let out a soft sigh and looked around at the endless, bewildering sea of forest stretching beyond sight.
Walking it is, then… Let’s just treat it as my first field trip in another world.
