The north wind blew cruelly, and snowflakes drifted through the air.
After nearly a week of arduous climbing, Yu Yuanzhen and his companions trudged along a narrow mountain path. Steep slopes stretched along their route, with frost-covered rock to their left and a bottomless abyss to their right. At an altitude of fifteen thousand meters, the oxygen was so thin that every breath took tremendous effort, while the cold wind slashed at their faces like knives.
Caught in the undeserved disaster Yang Ming had brought upon them last time, Yu Yuanzhen and his companions had strained every sinew just to escape with their lives. Even so, three of their original eighteen members had perished in the avalanche. The remaining fifteen were the elite of the Soul Master World, yet seven days without proper rest had left them sallow-faced, with dust and snow clinging to their faces, clothes, and hair.
Yang Ming might have made crossing this freezing stretch between ten thousand and twenty thousand meters look easy, but for elite Spirit Masters like Yu Yuanzhen and his companions, it was a matter of life and death.
High altitude, oxygen deprivation, low temperatures, bitter cold, wind, and snow—those were merely the dangers posed by the environment.
Then there were the precipitous mountain paths, a destination nowhere in sight, and a trial that had them searching for a needle in the ocean. They had spent almost seven days searching for that tiny Tianshan snow lotus, without a single lead.
On top of that, Soul Beasts occasionally appeared along this stretch of mountain path, specifically targeting their bedraggled group.
Yes, a population of Soul Beasts lived on Dragon Mountain!
These Soul Beasts all carried at least a trace of dragon clan bloodline. To adapt to the bitterly cold environment, they had evolved thick,