The cold wind was a knife, with the earth as its chopping block and all living beings as the flesh beneath its blade.
Snow swept across ten thousand miles, making a furnace of the heavens and melting all things into silver.
A vast whiteness filled the world. Goose-feather snowflakes drifted endlessly from the lead-gray sky, covering the highway, fields, and forests, wrapping the entire world in pure white.
Gales howled across the land, cutting against faces like sharp blades. The cold pierced to the bone, easily penetrating ordinary clothing and freezing into the marrow.
Yet even amid the savage wind and snow, a set of wheel tracks slowly extended through the boundless white.
A sturdy carriage came from the north, struggling through the blizzard. Its wooden wheels rolled over the thick ice and snow with dull, crunching creaks, carving two deep ruts into the smooth surface.
It was the carriage carrying Yang Jing and Sun Ningxiang, who had set out from Hidden Dragon Town and were heading south toward Yuhe County.
Snowflakes had begun falling the very night they left the sect.
At first, they were only fine grains of snow. Later, the snowfall grew heavier and heavier, becoming an unending blizzard that greatly impeded their journey.
At their usual speed along the level highway, they would have reached Yuhe County in less than two days.
Now, delayed by the heavy snow, they had to stop repeatedly to clear drifts and shelter from the storm. They estimated that the journey would take a full three days.
Yang Jing sat upright on the carriage shaft, holding the reins steadily in one hand and flicking the whip lightly with the other as he drove with a calm expression.
The world outside was bitterly cold, the temperature at its lowest. Even ordinary martial