Heaven Gate Mountain

Xu Yuan thought he was pretty stupid. Really.

He'd actually been counting on an idiot who could freeze a hostage to death while they were still alive to know how to find her way in the wilderness.

After a couple of seconds of silence, Xu Yuan raised a hand and gently patted Ran Qingmo's shoulder in consolation. He put away the map, stood up, and said quietly,

"Take me to the highest point nearby first. Maybe I can figure out where we are."

Ran Qingmo's eyes shifted, and she looked doubtful.

Xu Yuan knew what she was wondering. He said softly,

"I've spent these past years lazing around, but I still learned a few things."

"Oh."

Xu Yuan walked to the cave entrance and looked out at the forest sea, hazy beneath the drizzle. He glanced back at the woman in black as she packed their things, then said quietly,

"It's still raining outside."

Ran Qingmo looked at him, then at the water flask hanging from his waist.

Xu Yuan sighed faintly as he studied her soaked black clothes.

"I know that with this Flame Spirit Fluid, we don't have to worry about catching a cold for now. But don't you find it uncomfortable to wear wet clothes?"

Ran Qingmo blinked, took a moment to consider how she felt, then nodded in agreement.

Xu Yuan thought for a moment and glanced sideways at the icicle that still pierced the Flame Spirit Python's corpse, even through the curtain of rain.

A minute later,

a man and a woman stood in midair, dozens of meters above the ground.

The man wore a robe of fine brocade and held a scroll of sheepskin. Beside him stood a graceful woman with a veil over her face, holding an umbrella made of ice crystals.

The rain was about to stop, but the wind had yet to die down. The downpour in the mountains had dwindled to a steady drizzle.

Standing on a transparent platform Ran Qingmo had formed from qi, they looked down at a vast forest sea, its towering trees dozens of meters tall stretching beyond the horizon.

The Wanxing Mountain Range ran for tens of thousands of miles along the southwestern border of the Great Yan Dynasty.

The dense fog greatly restricted Xu Yuan's view, but once they reached this high vantage point, he realized he didn't need to figure out their direction at all.

Far off, at the edge of the forest sea, the silhouette of a colossal mountain loomed against the sky.

Though it lay who knew how many miles away, its enormous bulk was still faintly visible through the mist and rain. It resembled a giant beast that could swallow the heavens, sprawled across the world. Even the Roof of the World from his previous life would have looked like an infant beside it.

Seeing the map from a game take shape in reality left him speechless with awe.

Xu Yuan narrowed his eyes and stared at the vast shadow.

"Is that Heaven Gate Mountain?"

Ran Qingmo held her umbrella, her sleeves fluttering lightly in the wind.

"Mm."

"Can we climb it?"

"The cave you mentioned is up there?"

"Yes."

The cave on Heaven Gate Mountain was a hidden location in the Cangyuan King's Way, a hot-blooded worldline.

The conditions for finding it were as clichéd as they came.

Be hunted down, flee into the Wanxing Mountain Range, climb Heaven Gate Mountain, get forced to leap from a cliff, and have a fortune score above 80. After the jump, you'd enter the hidden cave.

A fortune score below 80? Then you could look forward to a free fall.

The thought crossed Xu Yuan's mind, and he gave a slight shake of his head.

In the game's guidebook, he remembered that his original body, this Third Young Master, had a fortune score of only 3. He could jump from Hanging Heaven Cliff a hundred times and still never get in. He'd used up all the luck he had in this life just getting born.

But now he had the expert Ran Qingmo with him. Once they reached Hanging Heaven Cliff, she could take him down and search at their leisure.

Ran Qingmo gazed at the enormous Heaven Gate Mountain in silence for a couple of seconds, then said,

"All right."

As soon as the words left her mouth,

she withdrew the platform of qi beneath their feet.

"..." Xu Yuan.

The sensation of free fall was awful. Luckily, even this idiot Ran Qingmo knew that if he fell from this height, an ordinary person like him would be smashed into a meat pie.

Just before they hit the ground, a deft force quietly enveloped Xu Yuan. The two landed safely in the forest in a bridal carry.

Their eyes met.

Holding the umbrella in one hand, Ran Qingmo gently set Xu Yuan down from her arms and said calmly,

"Let's go."

Xu Yuan steadied himself and brushed at his robe to hide his embarrassment. Then he frowned at her words.

"Go?"

"Mm." Ran Qingmo nodded.

Xu Yuan roughly estimated the distance between Heaven Gate Mountain and their current position, then repeated,

"You mean we're walking there?"

Ran Qingmo tilted her head. "What else?"

"Can't you fly?" Xu Yuan looked at her strangely. "If we walk, it'll take us at least ten days."

Ran Qingmo fell silent for a couple of seconds, then looked at Xu Yuan and said with complete seriousness, "I can't fly."

"But just now..." Xu Yuan pointed at the sky.

Ran Qingmo followed his finger with her eyes and explained,

"That was the Ice Cloud Steps from my cultivation art."

"Ice Cloud Steps?" Xu Yuan knew nothing about the cultivation arts of this world, so he asked without thinking.

Ran Qingmo showed no sign of answering. She simply looked at him.

Xu Yuan realized that questions about cultivation arts probably counted as private matters, so he changed the subject.

"You can't fly on a sword?"

Ran Qingmo thought for a couple of seconds, then said softly,

"My cultivation art doesn't include sword flight. It only has the Ice Cloud Steps. Sword flight is part of the Hanging Heaven Sword Art."

At the name Hanging Heaven Sword Art, Xu Yuan quickly recalled the guidebook's description of the art.

But he couldn't remember anything about sword flight being mentioned. He figured the world had filled in that information on its own.

Still, Ran Qingmo's explanation gave him a general idea.

There were ways to travel through the air in this world, but the method varied according to the cultivation art.

After a pause, Xu Yuan asked,

"Then why not use your Ice Cloud Steps to take me there?"

Ran Qingmo didn't answer right away. She looked Xu Yuan up and down, then shook her head.

"You're too weak. You'd die."

"But I was fine just now, wasn't I?" Xu Yuan frowned. Ran Qingmo had taken him up into the air to get their bearings, and he hadn't felt the least bit uncomfortable.

"We were moving slowly."

"..." Xu Yuan said nothing.

He realized he'd been making assumptions and had overlooked a crucial problem.

Ran Qingmo didn't have the kind of protective biological field Superman had in the movies from his previous life, and the human body could only withstand so much acceleration.

Her method of traveling through the air clearly involved forming platforms of qi to step on, then leaping from one to the next.

For a pampered young master like him, whose body had been ruined by wine and women, an unprotected acceleration of perhaps 4 or 5 G would be enough to send him straight to his grave.

And at the speed Ran Qingmo had moved earlier—too fast for the naked eye to see—she must have reached at least 30 G.

At the thought, Xu Yuan took a long look at the woman in the black veil before him.

She sometimes seemed a little spacey, but in certain matters, she was quite reliable.

If she hadn't thought of this, he might have died the moment she sped up.

Then Xu Yuan thought of asking Ran Qingmo to control her speed.

But the idea vanished as soon as it occurred to him.

Ran Qingmo could control her speed, but that would keep them airborne for longer.

The Wanxing Mountain Range teemed with demonic beasts. Even the Flame Spirit Python they'd casually caught earlier had been one of those mysterious forces' beasts. The longer they stayed in the air, the more likely they were to be spotted by beasts lurking in the shadows.

And demonic beasts weren't limited to the ground.

Some flying beasts had far better eyesight than humans.

On foot, with the trees to hide them and an expert like Ran Qingmo sensing their surroundings, they couldn't guarantee they'd go unnoticed, but at least they could make sure no one survived to tell the tale.

Thinking this, Xu Yuan sighed softly and looked around at the boundless, bewildering forest sea.

Fine, they'd walk. He'd just treat it as his first trip to another world.