Snow covered the cold mountains, and frost clung to the trees.
Amid the white winter woods, a towering figure strode out, his steps falling in a measured rhythm. His movements seemed leisurely, like drifting clouds on the horizon, disturbing no fallen timber. Yet when his feet touched the earth, each step seemed to take root, becoming calm and steady.
Before he had gone far, however, the snowy scenery receded before his eyes, revealing the bleak landscape beneath.
His steps suddenly quickened. In a flash, he leaped off the desolate mountain path and bounded through the dense, bare-branched woods beside it, kicking off branches and swinging from trees like an ape that swooped and sprang, roaming the mountains with laughing abandon.
"Hahaha!!!"
His deep, ringing laughter echoed through the mountains like a tiger's roar. Lian Youming spread his arms, caught a withered vine, and leaped down the sheer cliff beside him. As he fell, he pulled on the vine, his feet pressing diagonally against the cliff with an inward-coiling force, springing along as though flying.
The cliff was not without a path. A dilapidated wooden plank road hung suspended between steep, jagged peaks, following the course of the surging river below. The slightest misstep would leave a traveler smashed to pieces.
Its dilapidation presumably came from years of neglect. Most of its planks had rotted and broken; some were damaged or missing, others loose, while long stretches had fallen away entirely, leaving only holes in the rock face to tell of the ravages of wind and rain.
Yet Lian Youming showed no fear. Laughing aloud, he released the vine and stepped forward. Outwardly, he seemed to make no large movements, but his center of gravity and even the muscles throughout his body shifted and swayed around his spine like a spinning