Chapter 81

Chapter 81

Chapter 81: Approaching

Bai Zhengliu didn’t hear Mei Yinghan calling his name from outside the ice crevice.

He was still descending, searching for the traces of the lotus pickers.

He had already gone down at least three zhang—oh, now it was almost six zhang—yet still found nothing.

The surroundings couldn’t exactly be called “empty,” but indeed there was no sign of another person at all.

As his position lowered, the light in Bai Zhengliu’s field of vision gradually dimmed. By now, he could barely make out the contours of the surrounding ice.

This gave Bai Zhengliu a very bad feeling.

He carefully placed his foot on a protruding section of ice, his hand still resting on the hilt of the Twenty-Eight Generals sword.

In this position, Bai Zhengliu leaned down to look. What he saw was an increasingly deep darkness, completely impossible to discern the bottom of the ice crevice.

“It feels like I’m going to fall straight into the mountain itself…”

The frustrated swordsman muttered under his breath.

He tried calling out: “Brother Liu? Brother Liu?”

The young man’s voice spread between the thick ice blocks, echoing down and then drifting back up.

For a moment, it was as if another Bai Zhengliu existed at the bottom of the crevice, calling upward.

This image suddenly flashed in the swordsman’s mind. He frowned, then immediately cleared it away.

Still, if he couldn’t find Brother Liu, he would have no choice but to go further down.

Thinking this, Bai Zhengliu took a copper coin from his pocket and dropped it into the ice crevice.

He counted silently in his mind: “One, two, three…”

He kept counting until fifty.

It didn’t take too long, but Bai Zhengliu’s expression had already begun to change.

After counting so many seconds without hearing the coin hit the bottom, just how deep was this place? …If things really went that badly, and Liu Dequan first fell onto a ledge, then accidentally dislodged the rope while others tried to rescue him and fell again, would he still have a chance to survive?

No one could answer Bai Zhengliu, but he already knew the answer in his heart.Hope was slim.

The swordsman slowly exhaled, deciding that no matter what, he at least had to look further down.

Maybe the man had just fainted but was still alive.

Perhaps the copper coin had even landed on Liu Dequan himself. The lotus pickers braving the heavy snow all wore thick layers of clothing, with generations of leather layered over them. Though bulky, this gear truly protected them from the cold. Without such clothing, Zhou Liuer might not have lasted until Bai Zhengliu and Mei Yinghan found him.

If the coin really landed on him, it was normal for there to be no sound.

With that thought, the swordsman stopped hesitating and resumed descending in the same way as before.

He drove the sword into the ice wall, while his feet searched for footholds below. Once he found one, he pulled the sword out and searched for the next insertion point.

Step by step, he moved downward.

Bai Zhengliu called again: “Brother Liu? Brother Liu?”

No response.

He didn’t get discouraged and was about to descend further and call again. Just then, a shadow flickered in his peripheral vision.

He slowly turned his head toward it.

Because he had descended further, the light was even dimmer than before. Yet Bai Zhengliu did not lose his sight like an ordinary person; instead, he could still clearly outline everything in front of him. Even the cracks inside the ice wall, he could measure their length.

After a moment of observation, he realized that the shadow was actually a vague shape deep within the ice wall. Perhaps it was a shadow caused by the angle, or maybe something had been trapped in the ice as it formed.

In any case, it was unrelated to him.

Seeing this, Bai Zhengliu didn’t pay it much mind and continued downward.

Not only did he keep calling out, but he also scanned left and right, trying to find any nearby “platforms” in the ice wall where Liu Dequan might have landed.

But there were none.

He descended about another ten zhang, still discovering nothing.

When he lifted his head again, the light from outside was completely blocked by various platforms and the undulating ice wall. The biting cold radiated from the ice in front of him, but Bai Zhengliu’s dantian energy kept him warm. Even his right hand, which frequently touched the jagged ice while inserting and pulling the sword, retained a steady warmth.

He wasn’t cold, and the icy chill couldn’t affect his judgment.Bai Zhengliu murmured, “Brother Liu… where on earth did he fall?” Using sound to judge position was a basic skill for a martial world wanderer, and he was no rookie just out of training. By now, he should have discovered something. “What if it’s really…”

No, no, no! Still cannot curse others.

With no one else around, the swordsman just muttered silently in his mind, “Tch, tch, tch.” Then he sighed and resolved to continue downward.

Bai Zhengliu could feel that his current position was still far from his limit.

If he had stopped now, in the future he would feel bitter and restless when recalling it.

His mindset remained relatively stable. Before descending further, he carefully scanned the nearby area, looking for the next foothold.

But this glance revealed a problem.

Deep within the ice wall ahead, there was yet another shadow.

Much closer than the previous one, and squinting slightly, he could even vaguely make out the outline of the shadow.

Bai Zhengliu couldn’t help being drawn in. After studying it seriously for a moment, he shivered.

It seemed like a person.

Frozen into the ice wall, the person had certainly already died, leaving only a still body.

He wore a leather jacket similar to those of the lotus pickers, with the bright cloth sewn in by family still visible. The lotus pickers traditionally bought a piece of bright red cloth to display on their hats, arms, and especially their bodies. This allowed others to spot them from afar on the mountain—and likewise, they could see others.

In calm weather, this detail helped them avoid clustering and bypass areas already searched for snow lotus. When storms hit, the bright color allowed them to quickly gather together, facing the harsh cold and wind as a group.

Unfortunately, the person before him had clearly not survived. The body was curled up, still shivering until the very end.

Bai Zhengliu didn’t know what the person had endured in their final moments. He felt some sorrow, but also a stronger resolve: “At least I can prevent Brother Liu from ending up in that state…” With that thought, he continued descending.

Along the way, Bai Zhengliu began to see more bodies frozen into the ice wall, each one closer than the last.

Besides the first curled-up corpse, there were ones lying straight, and some still struggling until the last moment. Their poses varied, but their attire was almost identical. No one knew how long they had been left on the snow mountain, or if their families were still shedding tears for their unknown fate.

—Wait a moment.

Their attire… almost identical?

When the shadow was only a little over two zhang away, Bai Zhengliu suddenly noticed a detail.

Although the lotus pickers’ sewn bright cloth was roughly in the same spots, there were differences in craftsmanship—some precise, some crude. Moreover, each family supplied different leather. Ignoring the bright cloth and focusing on the leather jackets of the bodies in front, he realized that this person was dressed very similarly to the corpses he had seen earlier.A chill slowly crawled up Bai Zhengliu’s spine.

He lifted his head slowly, looking toward the path he had descended.

He saw the marks left by the Twenty-Eight Generals. The swordsman deliberately left a small pit in the ice wall each time he drew his blade, so that when descending afterward, there would be plenty of footholds.

Although he hadn’t intentionally focused on it, Bai Zhengliu realized that his vision must have been influenced by the power in his dantian. Otherwise, how could he so clearly see the jagged edges of the tiny pits? They glittered like stars accidentally fallen here.

Looking deeper into these “stars,” he could see the thick ice layers, formed over hundreds or perhaps thousands of years. Over the long passage of time, they had become part of the Tianshan itself. The lotus pickers walked on it during the day and rested on it at night.

It seemed entirely ordinary. Yet the more Bai Zhengliu looked, the faster his heart raced; even his palms gripping the Twenty-Eight Generals were slick with a thin layer of sweat.

He did not see the corpses he had seen earlier.

All those bodies—ten or so in total—he saw not a single one of them!

Realizing this, Bai Zhengliu suddenly looked down at the space in front of him, and his pupils constricted!

The lotus picker corpse that had been six zhang below him just a moment ago had vanished! What he now saw was only a transparent layer of ice, at most marked by the cracks left by the Twenty-Eight Generals!

Bai Zhengliu’s mind buzzed violently. Endless darkness and icy cold pressed in on him. His mind flashed back to the details above the ice fissure. How many people were there then? Besides Brother Mei, besides the nearby Cao Youde, there was that pair of brothers not far off, and…

He counted them carefully in his mind.

The conclusion: eight people! Eight lotus pickers were above him alone.

So, who exactly was he supposed to find below? Who was the elusive Liu Dequan he still hadn’t seen? And the one who had appeared in the ice wall and then disappeared—

Before the swordsman could think it through, he felt a pair of icy-cold hands, as if coated with frost and shattered snow, grab his feet.

He looked down.

The “corpse” that had been frozen in the ice a moment ago was now directly beneath him, revealing a pale, green-tinged face!

Noticing Bai Zhengliu’s gaze, the “corpse” grinned at him, showing a purplish tongue inside its mouth.

Then, with a sudden tug, it tried to pull Bai Zhengliu down into the abyss!

Author’s note:

Good morning!Not sure if any little angels noticed, but the cover has switched back to the previous simple version~

Because this week it appeared on a list that doesn’t show the title, only the cover, it felt like if we used the "Carrying the Sword" cover, new little angels might be confused—not knowing what Bai Zhengliu and Mei Yinghan’s story was about—so it was changed temporarily.

Next week, it will be the "Carrying the Sword" cover again.