The north wind howled, as if laced with icy blades, scouring everything bare.
On a barren mountain path strewn with nothing but scattered rocks, Yu Ziqing tightened the cloak haphazardly pieced together from several layers of black cloth. With a black-dog-fur hat wrapped around his head, leaving only a pair of narrowed eyes exposed, he shrank into the middle of the group and quietly glanced up.
At the rear of the group followed a hundred and seventy or eighty goats. Most were so thin their skin clung to their bones. Besides them, six Long-haired Oxen carried supplies.
On either side of the group, seven or eight dark, withered men hunched their necks and listlessly watched over the flock.
At the very front, four men with dark, gleaming skin and hair like felt rode tall horses. They wore only animal-hide vests, yet steam poured from their bodies in the freezing weather.
Just getting a little closer made Yu Ziqing feel as though the cold had eased.
The man on the right, whose face was tattooed with a snake pattern, seemed to notice Yu Ziqing drawing near. He glanced back and spoke to his companions in a foreign dialect thick with trilled clicks, though Yu Ziqing had no idea what they were saying.
Yu Ziqing lowered his head and pretended not to understand. Even with his heels, he could tell these fellows certainly would not be spitting out anything good.
After a few sentences, the four strongmen shifted the topic away from Yu Ziqing and began chatting among themselves.
Yu Ziqing kept his head lowered, as though afraid of the cold, and followed close behind the four big men.
After nearly half an hour, snow began drifting down from the sky. Only then did the snake-patterned man on the right turn around and glare at Yu Ziqing, speaking in the official tongue with a somewhat stiff accent.
"I'm hungry. Roast meat."
"Oh." Yu Ziqing answered, thinking, Good thing I learned the official tongue quickly. Otherwise, even such simple words would be impossible to understand with the slightest accent.
When they reached a mountain hollow sheltered from the wind, the four strongmen dismounted and put up their tents. They drove the cattle and sheep into the very back of the hollow before turning to look at Yu Ziqing.
Expressionless, Yu Ziqing went to the gaps between the rocks and searched for scraps of dry grass to start a fire.
A moment later, Yu Ziqing took out a block of meat frozen stiff as a board, shaved it into slices with a cleaver, and spread them over a heated stone slab. Before long, the fat began to sizzle, and fragrance spread through the air.
The four burly strongmen stuffed their cheeks and wolfed down the meat. Yu Ziqing roasted it for quite a while, yet before even half a tea break had passed, they had devoured every last scrap.
After filling their bellies, they gulped down inferior liquor from animal-hide wineskins and continued speaking in that foreign dialect thick with clicking sounds.
With food and drink in their bellies, three of the strongmen grew tipsy. They fell beside the tents, wrapped themselves in animal hides, and began snoring like thunder. Only the snake-patterned strongman remained sitting by the campfire.
Looking at the empty stone slab, Yu Ziqing silently backed away. He took a piece of dry flatbread from his clothes, soaked it soft in some hot water, and slowly swallowed it.
The few dark, withered men then crept over. Using dry flatbread, they scraped up the bits of grease left on the stone slab and fought over them, wolfing them down.
Yu Ziqing sighed inwardly without saying anything. He covered his lower abdomen and stood up. Seeing this, the snake-patterned strongman impatiently waved him away.
After leaving the hollow and reaching the downwind side, Yu Ziqing relieved himself, surveyed the surroundings, and sighed inwardly.
What terrible luck.
To be honest, when he had first arrived in this world and discovered its ancient setting, Yu Ziqing had been rather worried—not about himself, but about other people.
He had feared that one dump of his might cause a plague capable of wiping out everyone in an entire city.
Then he had been worrying for nothing.
He had never even seen a city.
Less than three days after landing, he had seen what looked like a new sun slowly rising on the horizon. Its blinding radiance expanded exponentially.
Fortunately, he had reacted quickly and found cover at once. Otherwise, the intense light would have blinded him on the spot.
Disaster had descended.
After barely making it through a month, he still had not found the so-called cities. When he finally found villages, they were all desolate, without a single living person in sight.
Surviving for more than a month without dying of thirst or hunger had already been no small feat.
When he finally encountered living people, they turned out to be four bandits who kidnapped and plundered others.
After traveling with the group for a month, the old scholar who had taught him the official tongue had disappeared.
The wastrel who had wanted to act as a lackey and cling to the strong had disappeared too.
Even several women had vanished after Yu Ziqing woke from a sleep.
At the time, the snake-patterned strongman had said that anyone who wanted to run could leave freely. But the land within three or four hundred li was all barren, and with the weather so cold, anyone who left the resources controlled by the strongmen might not survive three days.
Yu Ziqing had never planned to run. When the vanished old scholar taught him the official tongue, he had also casually taught him some of the foreign languages. Since Yu Ziqing had started from scratch and compared what he heard with what he knew, he could basically understand most of it.
By secretly listening to the strongmen's conversations, he had pieced together that they were traffickers who sold people to the mines. The climate had also turned strange that year: the cold had come especially early, and each day was colder than the last.
Some sort of disaster had occurred in the preceding months as well. By now, forget five hundred li—the land within a thousand li held hardly a single village.
When they told the trafficked people that the land within three or four hundred li was an uninhabited zone, Yu Ziqing guessed that the bastards were deliberately setting a trap, giving people a sliver of hope to run.
By his estimates, the temperature was already around twenty degrees below zero and falling. He had no confidence that, under such conditions, he could wander like a headless fly through a completely unfamiliar thousand-li wilderness—or perhaps an even larger one.
Staying alive comes first.
Of course, he also knew he could not escape.
After returning to the hollow, Yu Ziqing hunched his body slightly, tightened the patchwork cloak around himself, and lay beside the campfire.
Before long, half asleep and half awake, he hazily saw a figure writhing about.
Yu Ziqing did not move. His breathing remained even. He merely opened his eyes a slit and quietly watched.
A man with a black, hairy mole on his left cheek circled around the edge of the camp for a while, then hoisted a lamb thin enough to show every bone and wriggled outward along the perimeter.
By the faint glow of the campfire, Yu Ziqing could still see the lamb's head drooping. He could not tell whether it was already dead.
The moment the man left the temporary camp, several other figures quietly followed behind him. The group exchanged hand signals and slipped away.
Inside the camp, even the snake-patterned strongman who had been keeping the final watch had fallen into a deep sleep.
Yu Ziqing sighed inwardly, his expression complicated. He did not know whether to admire these people's courage or lament the fate awaiting them.
Sure enough, after they had gone only a dozen or so yards, Yu Ziqing saw a black rope on the ground. It moved like a black snake, making a faint rustling sound as it followed them.
The man carrying the lamb seemed to trip and stumbled to the ground. He braced himself with both hands and was just about to rise when the withered lamb on his back silently transformed into a sheet of sheepskin that draped over him.
The black rope, which had approached without a sound, coiled around his neck at that moment.
A seven-foot-tall man was dragged into the shadows by the black rope without the slightest suspense.
"Baa... baa..."
As terrified bleating exploded through the night, the campfire suddenly flared fiercely. Under its blazing light, they saw that the Serpent-patterned Man had somehow appeared in the shadows.
He held the black rope in one hand. At its other end was a white goat.
On the goat's left cheek was a round patch of black hair.
Its shape was exactly like the black hairy mole on the man's left cheek.
Seeing the Serpent-patterned Man walk out of the shadows with a cold laugh, the remaining men wore terrified expressions. They wildly brandished small knives obtained from who knew where and stabbed at his body.
"Clang."
Metal rang against metal. Yet where the knife struck, his skin still gleamed with oil. It had not even been broken.
The roaring flames of the campfire subsided once more, and everything sank back into shadow.
Before long, Yu Ziqing saw the Serpent-patterned Man return. He held the black rope, which now bound seven or eight goats thin enough to show their bones.
All was silent, as though everything had returned to normal.
In the latter half of the night, it seemed even colder than the day before.
Yu Ziqing was jolted awake by the freezing cold. He could only move closer to the campfire and to the few human furnaces nearby. At last, he felt somewhat warmer.
After that, however, he could no longer sleep.
By the firelight, Yu Ziqing took out a yellowed book and a piece of charred wood to use as a charcoal pencil. He began writing and drawing across its pages.
The snake-patterned strongman keeping watch sat beside the fire. He glanced over, saw the two characters recipes on the cover, and turned away as though unsurprised. He casually took out a black scorpion and stuffed it into his mouth.
Yu Ziqing opened the recipe book. Most of its contents consisted of characters with extremely complicated strokes. Between the rows of writing were tiny characters written in the Chinese script he knew.
Code Name: Snake-Tattooed Face.
Real Name: Holgerda (transliterated), original text **** (blacked out).
Identity: Member of the Bantu Tribe (destroyed), slave trader, cannibalistic evil cultivator, informant for the Seventh Floor (unknown organization).
Main Experiences: After the tribe was destroyed, wandered the Wasteland and accidentally obtained a fragmentary cultivation manual called Commonly Heard Poisons, embarking on the path of an evil slave-trading cultivator.
Frequently consumes poisons (there are many poisonous insects and snakes among the supplies; necessary for cultivation).
Cultivates evil arts, Livestock Transformation.
Controls ropes. The black rope is actually woven from hair mixed with the wool of an unknown species. It is a necessary ritual implement for the evil Livestock Transformation technique.
Afterward, Yu Ziqing continued adding to the notes:
Invulnerable to blades and spears. Not bodily refinement, nor defense through qi. Must consume poisons to replenish himself during cultivation; poisons can also serve as mana potions.
He had only just observed this point. He had seen the man consume poisons to cultivate many times, but the fact that he could immediately eat poisons after attacking to rapidly replenish his expenditure was Yu Ziqing's deduction.
After he finished writing this page, the entire page of the recipe book was filled with tiny writing about the snake-patterned strongman. It was dense and extraordinarily detailed.
Once he finished, Yu Ziqing put the recipe book back into his clothes. He also glanced at the rusty sword tucked inside. Both its blade and scabbard had rusted solid and were completely ruined.
Yet at that moment, in the gap between the rusted-short-sword's blade and scabbard, some rust faintly turned to dust and silently fell away.
Yu Ziqing's heart suddenly loosened. His body, which had remained tightly wound and curled up, finally seemed to dare relax by the slightest amount.
Gathering information bit by bit and learning about those strongmen was necessary under normal circumstances, let alone now, when it concerned the trump card that could keep him alive.
Although he was merely an ordinary person—no, by now, he was not even as well off as a fed and rested ordinary person, but rather a weakling half-frozen and half-starved—
as long as he knew some essential information about his opponent, then against that opponent, the moment he acted, it would be tantamount to invincibility.
After several months of probing, he had finally fulfilled the conditions for triggering the information about the Serpent-patterned Man.
Unfortunately, his categories were still rather rough.
For now, he could only classify things as real name, identity, origins, primary cultivation method, and specialties or trump cards.
But he still did not know how specific the information required for each category had to be. Yu Ziqing even suspected there might be other requirements he had not yet included.
Yu Ziqing raised his head and looked at the snake-patterned strongman. His eyes narrowed slightly, and his taut nerves finally relaxed a little. At least from this moment on, his life would no longer be completely held in another person's hands.
He took up the charcoal pencil and blacked out every tiny character, adding only one line at the beginning.
"Serpent-patterned Man, harmless."
He continued to the next page. All the information on that page had already been blacked out, leaving only one sentence.
"Scar-faced Man, harmless."
He turned two more pages. It was the same there.
Yu Ziqing tightened his cloak and fell asleep beside the campfire.
This time, he slept much more soundly.
In the blink of an eye, dawn began to break, and Yu Ziqing was awakened.
It was time to continue the journey.
A quick glance confirmed that all the dark, withered men who had remained the day before were gone.
Yet counting the flock carefully, there were several more sheep than before.
When night fell again after another day of travel and they once more searched for a place to rest, the snake-patterned strongman seemed to sigh in relief. He pointed toward the faintly visible mountains in the distance and grinned broadly.
"We're almost there. The mine."
Yu Ziqing seemed to breathe a sigh of relief as well and forced a grin.
According to what the strongmen had said while communicating in the foreign dialect, ever since the disaster descended, this mine was the only place within more than a thousand li that could conservatively be said to have people.
Or rather, it was the only place considered relatively safe. At the very least, there was food, drinkable water, and shelter from the wind and snow.
A mineral called Jinlan Ore could be extracted from this mine. Its output accounted for more than half of all the ore produced in the world, while the remaining less-than-half was scattered across various places.
Yu Ziqing did not know what it was used for. He had only heard that, to the highly ranked, mysterious Dao Practitioners of the Great Gan Divine Dynasty in the south, it was an essential commodity that was forever in short supply.
With such profits involved, the mine could not possibly become a place without people.
However, for reasons Yu Ziqing had yet to understand, this desolate, uninhabited land stretching more than a thousand li had not been publicly incorporated into the territory of the Great Gan Divine Dynasty.
Yu Ziqing guessed that this was what had allowed the strongmen to kidnap people and sell them.
Unfortunately, the overall environment was growing worse and worse. Even the strongmen planned to leave for somewhere else after finishing this job, because there was no profit left here. This sheep drive had taken the longest, yet involved the fewest people.
These days, one could travel dozens of li without seeing even a rabbit. Edible plants had either frozen to death or withered away, and even those that had dried up and been buried in the soil mostly could not escape being gnawed clean by fleeing animals.
Along the entire journey, aside from dry bones, it was rare to see anything at all. The scene had not once been this bleak in the past.
Night fell.
Yu Ziqing stood at the edge of the flock, his back to the four strongmen. He held a palm-sized flatbread and offered it to the mouth of a withered old sheep, murmuring softly.
"Have a little. We have to survive first before there can be any hope."
The old sheep bleated twice, nibbled several bites of the bread, and drank some water Yu Ziqing fed it.
Just then, the snake-patterned strongman came over. He pointed at Yu Ziqing, then at the withered old sheep, and shouted impatiently several times.
"Hurry up. Bring it over."
Yu Ziqing's body went still, and his gaze instantly changed.
Unfortunately, his eyes were always narrowed, his face was covered in black ash, and the dead skin stuck to it from going unwashed for so long, along with the dog-fur hat wrapped around his head, meant that no one could read anything from his face.
Yu Ziqing sighed inwardly and slowly turned around.
He said softly,
"This sheep is old and thin. You won't get two pounds of meat from it, and it won't taste good. Aren't there a few fatter ones?"
To be honest, under normal circumstances Yu Ziqing really could not distinguish which sheep in the flock were victims of the evil Livestock Transformation technique and which were real sheep.
But here, he could tell at a glance.
On this freezing Wasteland, aside from strongmen like these, it was impossible to find an ordinary person who was well-fed and plump.
After several months, regardless of what they had been like before, whether dead or alive, they were certainly all thinner than the last.
As for anyone who was not thin, they would never have fallen into the hands of the Livestock Transformation technique as a victim.
Hearing this, the snake-patterned strongman threw back his head and laughed, pointing at Yu Ziqing.
"You're right. There are indeed some plumper ones here."
As he spoke, the black rope tied around his waist vanished at some unknown moment.
Hearing that, Yu Ziqing immediately understood. This bastard had done it deliberately.
They were about to reach their destination. His value as a chef was already far less than his value as a sheep.
His plan to first find a relatively safe place to settle down before making further arrangements was doomed to fail.
Yu Ziqing gently pushed the old sheep and said directly,
"Old sir, move farther away. Once the blood splashes on you, if you get wet in this wretched weather, it'll be deadly."
The old sheep bleated twice. Seeing the grief in Yu Ziqing's eyes, it cried out mournfully. It understood that even at the moment of his death, Yu Ziqing did not want to drag it into the matter.
Unfortunately, it could not resist Yu Ziqing. He pushed it into the flock, where the other sheep carried it away.
Yu Ziqing turned around and slowly walked outward. One hand gradually reached into his clothes and took out the short sword that had rusted solid.
The Serpent-patterned Man could not help laughing. He was not afraid that Yu Ziqing had already seen through anything, nor had he intended to hide it.
The black rope had already dragged a sheet of sheepskin into place behind Yu Ziqing.
The black rope flung the sheepskin forward in a pounce. Yu Ziqing's eyelids drooped. He gripped the scabbard in his left hand and the short sword in his right, then pulled with all his strength.
In an instant, a streak of sword light flashed across the rust-covered short sword. Trailing afterimages, it cleaved both the sheepskin and the black rope in two.
The black rope writhed and shrieked in agony as though it were alive.
Layer after layer of rust flaked away from the short sword. In the blink of an eye, it transformed into a Silver Frost Sword covered in watery patterns, radiating a piercing, icy gleam.
Yu Ziqing's slightly hunched body slowly straightened. Within his frail shell, a chilling killing intent suddenly burst forth alongside his searing blood essence.
His eyes, which had been narrowed ever so slightly, suddenly opened. Within those star-like eyes, it was as though a dazzling blazing sun had begun to shine.
Yu Ziqing said nothing. He drew his sword and rushed forward, his figure like a sharp sword leaving its scabbard. He was so fast that by the time the sword light appeared, he had already swept past.
A head soared into the sky, trailing boiling, foul-smelling blood.
The serpent-tattooed strongman's face still bore the shock and incomprehension of someone facing death.
Until the moment he died, he could not understand why a temporary cook whose blood essence had withered, whose body was gaunt as firewood, and who had been powerless even to truss a chicken—
had suddenly erupted with such terrifying strength.
They had spent so many days together, morning and night, yet not one of them had sensed the slightest hint of anything unusual.
This is a new writer with a new book. Please continue to show your support. The first chapter is over five thousand words. Many thanks.
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