Chapter 244
That's practically suicide!
Saria wanted to catch up, but she was holding Ifrit's hand and had to ensure her safety first.
As Croissant's figure quickly disappeared into the Snowfield forest, Saria's expression turned grave. She grabbed Ifrit's hand and hurried back towards their This Ship.
They're all lunatics!
"Hey, wait for me!"
Croissant ran and shouted loudly, afraid of falling behind and being forgotten by everyone.
The deafening roar drowned out her cries.
Shi Lei sensed a creature wearing Jade Shield approaching from behind and stopped.
Upon seeing Croissant return to the team, Exusiai joked:
"Haha, why are you so slow? If you're any slower, we won't wait for you."
"He asked me to inform Amiya, so it's normal to be a little late, you..."
"Okay, listen to me first."
Shi Lei had already spotted the large avalanche that was still two or three kilometers away and interrupted the two men's bickering:
"If we let the avalanche go unchecked, it will likely affect the This Ship. I can summon a rock wall to block all the snow. Then everyone can go skiing, and it'll be time to head back."
"Wait a minute, wait a minute."
A very novel idea suddenly popped into Exusiai's mind, and she consulted Yu:
"Could you collect the snow into the painting?"
Xi didn't want to deal with this troublemaker, but out of respect for Shi Lei, she answered truthfully:
"I haven't tried it, but it's theoretically possible. Exusiai, why are you asking this?"
"Haha, it's already early May, summer is almost here. If you capture all this snow in the painting, you can go skiing and have fun. Wouldn't that be awesome?"
Lappland's eyes lit up upon hearing this, and she agreed:
"This is great, this is great, I want to play too."
Texas frowned slightly, clearly displeased.
"After you arrive in Lungmen, aren't you going back to Syracuse? What, are you planning to abandon the work at the branch?"
"But..."
The avalanche appeared in sight at an abnormal speed. Seeing the massive snowballs surging in like a tsunami, Lappland quickly warned:
"Snow!"
Shi Lei spread his arms, and a solid rock wall a hundred meters thick instantly appeared behind him. Xi muttered incantations and quickly drew a picture, facing the oncoming snow.
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308, a little closer to 3K
"Boom!"
As the avalanche drew closer, the strange noises grew louder. The ground trembled violently, as if the entire earth was shaking!
An avalanche is like a paintbrush covered in white dye, leaving everything in its wake in a white blanket. Trees, flowers, rocks, and even humans are all affected.
The overwhelming aura made Texas and the others tremble involuntarily. Even knowing that their lives were no longer in danger, they still instinctively trembled and broke out in a cold sweat.
This is the awe that people feel in the face of natural disasters.
"Boom!"
The avalanche is getting closer, even closer.
Entire tracts of trees were uprooted, and panicked rabbits were swallowed by massive snowballs. Life appears so fragile in the face of natural disasters.
Texas stood behind Shi Lei, her hands gripping the edges of his clothes tightly. Croissant, Exusiai, and Lappland followed in order.
Beyond that, there are solid rock walls.
"Stars are hidden like snowflakes, the moon is obscured by its dim light..."
This was the first time Xi had encountered an avalanche; the snowfall within Yan never reached this extent.
She stood in front of Shi Lei, her black hair swaying in the breeze, her gaze hardening.
"Traveling through the vast river in the dry mountains!"
As soon as the incantation ended, the scroll in front of her suddenly burst forth with a blue light. Like a bottomless pit, it sucked all the snow blocks in the fan-shaped area directly in front of her into the painting.
Snow blocks outside the absorption range of the painting rushed rapidly from both sides towards the rock walls, which were hundreds of meters thick.
Texas gripped Shi Lei's clothes tightly, and it took her several seconds to open her eyes. Like entering a bizarre dream, she found it difficult to describe her feelings.
Large chunks of snow collided with the rock wall without any fancy moves, exploding with deafening roars. It was as if waves were pushing one after another, completely filling the space around them. A small amount of snow still rushed up the rock wall, but its momentum was greatly reduced.
The hundred-meter-thick rock wall, like the earth that embraces all things, stopped this massive avalanche in sections.
Once he sensed that the snow blocks were no longer pushing forward, Shi Lei removed the rock wall that had stretched for several kilometers.
Given the great distance and the cover provided by other large trees on the Snowfield, as long as the height of the rock wall is kept within fifty meters, it will not be visible from afar.
As the rock wall vanished instantly, the large chunks of snow it had blocked began to cascade down. The advance continued for nearly fifty meters before finally stopping.
However, this allows those at the back of the line to climb out of the snowdrift using their own strength.
Lappland was the first to escape.
She crawled out of the snowdrift, brushing the dust off her clothes. She longed to express her indescribable sense of exhilaration by howling like a wolf.
Exusiai the second to break through the snow, looking at the surrounding snowscape and exclaiming how exciting and exhilarating it was.
If it weren't for Shi Lei's protection, she would never have had the experience of directly confronting an avalanche in her life.
Exusiai used to do the most thrilling thing in Laterano: blowing up schools. She'd done it more than once. But compared to the adrenaline rush she felt today, blowing up schools suddenly didn't seem so appealing.
Xi had been with the Special Operations Team for more than two months, but had not yet truly enjoyed the Jade Shield.
Previously in Yarbing, when sniping local armed forces, Shi Lei had once put Jade Shield on Miss Nian. However, because he had adjusted the shield's color to be transparent, Xi was completely unaware of it at the time.
She single-handedly, together with Mudrock, annihilated an Ursus army of several hundred men.
Later, the group arrived in Trimon and found an underground experimental base in the south of the city. Xi no longer personally participated in the battle, but instead summoned countless Ink Specter to assist in the fight.
She absorbed a large amount of snow with the scroll, but before long, she was buried by the snow that rushed back after hitting the rock wall.
Strangely, Xi felt no harm or pain. She then gradually realized that she might have been Jade Shield.
She always lacked a sense of security, and coupled with her poor social skills, that's why she hid inside the painting for hundreds of years.
This feeling of being filled with a sense of security is something that Xi finds hard to resist.
When the Sui Beast is resurrected in the future, perhaps Shi Lei can really help her change her fate of being wiped out.
Before Miss Nian could express her feelings further, Shi Lei suddenly grabbed her hand from the snowdrift and forcibly pulled her out of the snow.
She looked at the man beside her, breathing in the cold air around her, and felt a warmth in her heart.
But the dust concentration here was so high that Miss Nian started coughing after just two breaths:
"Cough cough cough..."
Texas was buried in the snow and couldn't see anything. The dark and cold environment gave her a feeling of unease.
But soon, Texas was found by Shi Lei, who grabbed her hand and forcibly pulled her out of the snow.
She coughed as she inhaled the dust. But the choking sensation felt all the more real. Texas only realized it belatedly after pinching her nose.
Hey, wait a minute.
Did he just hold my hand?
Shi Lei shielded everyone with Jade Shield, allowing him to pinpoint their exact locations. After pulling out Miss Nian and Texas, he flew to a low altitude of about ten meters and looked around. Quickly, like a falcon, he swooped down into the snowdrift and retrieved Croissant.
Only then did Shi Lei notice Exusiai and Lappland crawling out of the snowdrift, and asked:
"How are you all? Are you alright?"
To prevent the avalanche from impacting the This Ship, Shi Lei had to sail against the current to stop it. He was confident and capable of ensuring the safety of his teammates, so he did not persuade the Special Operations Team to leave.
"Haha, with you here, what trouble could possibly happen to us? Cough cough cough... It's choking..."
Shi Lei noticed that the dust concentration here was extremely high and gestured for everyone to leave first.
The group walked several dozen meters towards the village before they stopped holding their breath and started breathing normally.
Exusiai was very concerned about the painting and quickly asked Miss Nian about it:
How much snow did you capture in that painting?
Upon hearing this, Xi took out a scroll, but it didn't depict the beautiful snow scene she had imagined. Instead, it showed a chaotic mix of snow, branches, and rocks.
She glanced at it sideways, and her delicate brows furrowed slightly:
"This place has collected a lot of snow, but it's too cluttered with impurities and not suitable for skiing. If you really want to play in the snow, I can redraw it."
Xi's abilities are different from everyone else's.
This ingenious ability originates from fragments of the power of the 'Year' Beast and has nothing to do with Originium Arts.
But the Scroll Realm is all illusion, a fabricated dreamscape created from memory. She has no ability to arbitrarily disassemble and reconstruct the actual objects within the painting.
Exusiai felt quite regretful upon hearing this:
"Oh, I see. That's such a pity."
Xi glanced at the painting again and really couldn't believe that such a chaotic scene could be called a work of art.
"There's nothing to regret. I can paint as much snow as you want when the time comes. I'll pour out the snow from this painting now."
"No, please."
Exusiai interrupted, offering her own thoughts:
"Having multiple scrolls won't make much difference, so you might as well keep them. They'll be very convenient if you need to put out a fire or something in the future. You can't exactly turn the snow from those scrolls into real objects and pour it out, can you?"
Things in a fantasy world cannot be materialized and brought back to reality. Only physical objects absorbed from reality can be poured out, which conforms to the law of conservation of physics.
Xi nodded in agreement, finding it reasonable. He then rolled the painting into a small tube and carried it with him.
Her abilities are somewhat vulnerable to fire; if the scroll burns, it will severely affect the effects within the illusion. Adding some real snow now might come in handy later.
This seems to be an unthinkable path.
As the group walked back, Lappland suddenly asked:
"What are we going to say when we get back?"
Croissant and Exusiai were experts at this, and they gave their colleague, who had joined halfway through, a lesson:
"What do you mean, 'how to say it'? You don't have to say it. Shi Lei just wants to be a Medical Operator quietly. Why should he explain the specific reasons to them for no reason?"
"Yeah, just say the avalanche didn't affect us. If those Rhodes Island Operator insist on asking, just say we cut down a lot of pine trees to stop the avalanche. Anyway, they didn't see it with their own eyes, so whether the avalanche was big or small isn't up to us to decide."
"Yeah, I get it."
Before long, the six returned to the village entrance. But there wasn't a soul in sight; it looked like an abandoned village.
Hearing the unusual avalanche, the villagers cried out that the Mountain God was angry and evacuated early.
When Shi Lei passed by the well, he wanted to solve the problem of the lack of water and make life easier for the villagers.
He conjured a Rock Spear out of thin air, held it in his hand, aimed at the center below, and hurled it forcefully towards the bottom of the well.
The hard ice block was like a thin membrane, easily pierced by the thick, long Rock Spear. Groundwater at the bottom of the ice block overflowed, and the water level gradually rose.
"Done."
Shi Lei clapped his hands, satisfied with the result. He looked up from the well and instructed the others:
"Don't tell anyone about this well. Let's go, it's about time to head back to This Ship."
Whether it's preventing an avalanche or bringing water to a well, Shi Lei always does good deeds based on his conscience.