Xu Yuan felt that he was truly an idiot. Really.
He was actually counting on an idiot capable of freezing a hostage to death to navigate in the wilderness.
After two seconds of silence, Xu Yuan reached out and gently patted Ran Qingmo on the shoulder to comfort her, put away the map, stood up, and said in a low voice, "First, take me to the highest point nearby to look around. Maybe I can roughly figure out where we are."
Ran Qingmo's eyes shifted, a hint of suspicion in her gaze.
Knowing what she was skeptical about, Xu Yuan said softly, "Over the years, I may have idled my life away, but I did learn a thing or two."
"Oh."
Xu Yuan walked to the cave entrance and looked out at the misty sea of trees in the drizzling rain. He glanced back at the black-clad woman packing her gear and said in a low voice, "It’s still raining outside."
Ran Qingmo looked at him, then at the waterskin hanging at his waist.
Xu Yuan let out a soft sigh, looking at her soaked black clothes. "I know with this Flame Spirit Fluid, there's no need to worry about catching a cold for now, but don't you feel uncomfortable wearing wet clothes?"
Ran Qingmo blinked, took a moment to feel it, and nodded in agreement.
Xu Yuan pondered for a moment, then glanced sideways at the icicle that still impaled the corpse of the Flame Spirit Python in the rain.
A minute later,
A man and a woman stood suspended dozens of meters in midair.
The man wore a fine brocade robe, holding a sheepskin scroll in his hand. The woman was veiled, slender and graceful, standing beside him holding an umbrella made of ice crystals.
The rain was dying down while the wind blew on, the torrential downpour of the mountains dwindling into a continuous drizzle.
Standing upon the transparent platform Ran Qingmo had condensed from qi, beneath their feet lay a vast sea of trees formed by towering trunks dozens of meters tall, an endless expanse stretching beyond sight.
The Wanxing Mountain Range spanned the southwestern border of the Great Yan Dynasty, stretching for tens of thousands of li.
The white mist heavily obscured Xu Yuan's vision, but once he reached this high vantage point, he realized he didn't need to navigate at all.
Gazing far into the distance at the edge of that sea of trees, the massive, dark silhouette of a mountain blocked out the sky and sun.
Even across an unknown number of li, through the misty curtain of rain, its colossal scale was still faintly visible—like a world-swallowing behemoth straddling heaven and earth. The 'Roof of the World' from his previous life would look like an infant before it.
When a paper map from a game materialized into reality, the shock before his eyes was beyond words.
Xu Yuan narrowed his eyes, staring at that colossal dark silhouette. "Is that Tianmen Mountain?"
Holding the umbrella, Ran Qingmo's sleeves fluttered lightly in the wind. "Mm."
"Can we climb up?"
"The cave you mentioned is up there?"
"Yes."
The cave on Tianmen Mountain was a hidden map in Cangyuan's classic hot-blooded storyline.
The trigger condition was also quite cliché:
Get pursued by enemies, flee into the Wanxing Mountain Range, climb Tianmen Mountain, get forced to jump off the cliff—if your Luck exceeded 80, you would enter that hidden cave after jumping.
Luck under 80? Then prepare for freefall.
As the thought flashed through his mind, Xu Yuan gave a slight shake of his head.
In the game’s official guidebook, he remembered that his original body, this Third Young Master, had a Luck stat of only 3. Jumping off Xuantian Cliff a hundred times wouldn't get him in—it was truly a case of exhausting a lifetime's worth of luck just being reincarnated into such a noble family.
However, Xu Yuan now had Ran Qingmo, this top-tier expert, by his side. Once they reached Xuantian Cliff, she could just carry him down slowly to search for it.
Ran Qingmo stared at the colossal Tianmen Mountain for two seconds in silence, then said, "Okay."
The moment the word left her lips,
She directly dispersed the qi platform beneath their feet.
"..." Xu Yuan.
The feeling of freefall was far from pleasant. Fortunately, this birdbrain of a woman at least knew that falling from such a height would turn a normal person like him into meat paste.
Just before hitting the ground, an adroit force quietly enveloped Xu Yuan's body, and the two landed smoothly among the trees, with her holding him in a princess carry.
They met eyes.
Holding the umbrella in one hand, Ran Qingmo gently set Xu Yuan down from her embrace onto the ground and calmly said, "Let’s go."
Xu Yuan found his footing and patted his robe to cover his embarrassment. Upon hearing her words, he frowned. "Walk?"
"Mm," Ran Qingmo nodded.
Xu Yuan roughly calculated the distance between Tianmen Mountain and their current position in his head, repeating, "You mean we walk there?"
Ran Qingmo tilted her head. "What else?"
"Can’t you fly?" Xu Yuan gave her an odd look. "On foot, it'll take us more than ten days at least."
Ran Qingmo went silent for two seconds. Staring at Xu Yuan, she said with utmost seriousness, "I cannot fly."
"But just now..." Xu Yuan pointed toward the sky.
Ran Qingmo followed his finger toward the sky and explained, "That was the 'Ice Cloud Steps' from my cultivation art."
"Ice Cloud Steps?" Knowing nothing about the cultivation arts of this world, Xu Yuan asked reflexively.
Ran Qingmo showed no intention of answering, simply looking at him.
Realizing that questions regarding cultivation arts were considered private, Xu Yuan changed his query: "You don’t know how to fly on a sword?"
Ran Qingmo thought for two seconds and said softly, "There is no sword flight in my cultivation art, only Ice Cloud Steps. Sword flight belongs to the Xuantian Sword Art."
Hearing the name 'Xuantian Sword Art,' Xu Yuan's mind swiftly scanned the game guidebook's description of the technique.
Yet he didn't recall sword flight being mentioned in the description; likely, the world had automatically filled in the relevant details.
Still, after Ran Qingmo's explanation, Xu Yuan roughly understood what she meant.
There were methods for traversing the sky in this world, but depending on the cultivation art, the manner of flight differed.
Pausing, Xu Yuan asked, "Then why not just use your Ice Cloud Steps to carry me over?"
Ran Qingmo didn't answer right away. She sized up Xu Yuan’s frail frame from head to toe before shaking her head. "Your body is too weak. You will die."
"But wasn't I fine just now?" Xu Yuan frowned. When Ran Qingmo had leaped into midair with him earlier to scout their location, he hadn't felt the slightest discomfort.
"That speed just now was very slow."
"..." Xu Yuan fell silent.
He realized he had taken things for granted—so much so that he had overlooked a critical issue.
Ran Qingmo didn't have the biological force field of Superman from movies in his past life, and the acceleration a human body could endure had limits.
Her method of traversing the sky clearly involved condensing qi into platforms she could step on, leaping repeatedly through the air.
For a pampered young master whose body had been hollowed out by wine and women, four to five Gs of acceleration without protection would probably send him straight to the afterlife.
And with Ran Qingmo's previous speed that was invisible to the naked eye, it had to start at 30 Gs of acceleration at minimum.
Thinking of this, Xu Yuan took a deep look at the black-veiled woman before him.
Although she seemed a bit dazed at times, she was remarkably dependable in certain matters.
If she hadn't considered this, he might have dropped dead the moment she accelerated.
An instant later, Xu Yuan thought about asking Ran Qingmo to control her speed.
Yet no sooner had the idea surfaced than he dismissed it.
Ran Qingmo could regulate her speed, but that would extend their time in the air.
The Wanxing Mountain Range teemed with demonic beasts; even the Flame Spirit Python captured at random earlier had been under the command of that mysterious faction. Lingering in the air for extended periods would inevitably draw the attention of demonic beasts lurking in the dark.
Besides, demonic beasts didn't only roam the ground.
The vision of certain aerial avian demonic beasts far surpassed that of humans.
Traveling on foot allowed the forest canopy to shield them, and with Ran Qingmo, a master, sensing their surroundings, while it couldn't guarantee being completely undetected, it could at least ensure no witnesses were left alive.
With these thoughts in mind,
Xu Yuan let out a soft sigh and looked around at the vast, boundless sea of trees.
Traveling on foot it was; he would just treat it as his first hike in another world.
Chapter 8