Screeech!!
The car skidded out of control with a piercing screech, then slammed straight into a roadside boulder.
The windshield shattered at once, and the body crumpled from the impact as the airbags deployed.
With a loud crash—
The rear door flew more than ten meters away. Xiao Ran stepped out of the car and lightly brushed the dust from his clothes.
He looked around. A vast expanse of snow stretched in every direction. Bai Jing, that old man, and the driver inside the car had all vanished.
Even when Xiao Ran turned to look back the way he had come, he saw that the road behind him had been buried beneath the snow. Farther away, nothing was visible but a crystalline white glare.
Xiao Ran opened his palm and watched the snowflakes settle on it, frowning.
So it starts?
Just then, Xiao Ran sensed something and turned around. Not far behind him, an old man sat beneath a snow-covered pine, smiling as he beckoned to Xiao Ran.
Seeing this, Xiao Ran started toward the old man.
But the moment Xiao Ran took a step forward, the frozen ground beneath his foot sank. A powerful sense of wrongness swept through his whole body.
It was as if he had stepped into an invisible mire, or disturbed the pulse of the sleeping earth.
A heavy, viscous chill, seemingly cold enough to freeze his very bones, surged up from his sole, raced along his leg, and struck at his organs.
"Hmm?" The old man beneath the pine looked surprised. A sharp glint flashed in his cloudy old eyes, and his smile faded as he carefully examined Xiao Ran.
"Four hundred years ago, True Man Zhang came down from the mountain. He took seven steps here, and was already one of the greatest