Heavy snow fell relentlessly, as if it would never cease, gradually burying all traces of human presence.White became the sole hue.
“Guild Leader, are we truly in an S-rank instance? This feels more like the North Pole.”
With the first complaint voiced, others quickly joined in with their own grumbles.
“Exactly. We’ve been walking for so long; forget monsters, we haven’t even seen a single ore.”
“Who knows where the core might be? With this cursed weather and the endless snowfall, visibility barely extends twenty meters. It’s like searching for a needle in a haystack.”
“…”
“Silence, all of you!” Bai Xiao’s icy voice seemed to lower the already frigid temperature.
In an instant,
the complaining crowd clamped their mouths shut, daring not to utter another word.
Bai Xiao’s gaze remained cold as she pressed forward.
Rather than wasting energy on complaints, it would be better to conserve it for the unknown dangers ahead.
Simultaneously, she pondered the words her teammates had grumbled behind her.
Throughout their journey, their vision had been met only with an expanse of white snow.
Moreover, the silence here was too profound; even the falling snowflakes seemed to drift with an unnerving quietude…
She had previously participated in the strategy of the three S-rank instances in the Imperial Capital.
Even the most treacherous Molten Purgatory harbored monsters known as Dragonfish.
This place, however, was different.
From the entrance to this icy expanse, she had not encountered a single trace of life.
Only a deathly, uniform white.
This eerie scene filled her with an ominous premonition.
Just then, the communicator nestled in the fur near her ear chimed, signaling an incoming connection.
Then, Aya Tone’s urgent voice rang out,
“Watch out for the snow!…”
But before Bai Xiao could discern the rest of the message, the communication was unilaterally severed.
‘No, something is wrong!’
This communicator, crafted from a wealth of rare materials, was still in its experimental phase.
Yet, it had clearly connected moments ago; it was impossible for it to fail to transmit even a complete sentence!
Bai Xiao pulled off her communicator.
‘Just as I suspected!’
It still displayed a connected status.
This meant that the other party hadn’t cut off the communication; rather, an invisible barrier had obstructed the transmission.
“Snow…?” Bai Xiao murmured, her voice barely a whisper.
The very next second,
Bai Xiao, without a moment’s hesitation, unleashed a spectral tiger claw forward.
Accompanied by a low roar, a colossal energy tiger claw, like a true beast, lunged menacingly at the ice ahead.
The air itself seemed to rip apart, emitting a piercing shriek.
It struck the ice with immense power and presence, unleashing an earth-shattering boom.
****
The others behind her were bewildered by Bai Xiao’s sudden attack.
However, years of coordinated teamwork ensured they instantly snapped into battle formation.
Weapons in hand, they took their respective positions.
Once the icy mist dissipated, a gaping hole in the ice appeared before them.
A man from the team voluntarily stepped forward, and Bai Xiao offered no objection.
He was the team’s ‘侦察兵’.
The man craned his head, peering curiously beneath the ice, where a dark, menacing sea hinted at unknown perils.
“Guild Leader, we’re above an ocean; the water here is black!” the man reported, turning back.
He failed to notice that his reflection on the water’s surface did not shift with his movement.
Instead, it remained there, ‘watching’ him with an unsettling, fixed stare, its lips curling into a faint smile.
“Lu Cheng, look out!”
Before the words fully left her mouth, Bai Xiao had already lunged forward like an arrow.
“What’s wrong?” Lu Cheng, the man, felt a pang of confusion upon hearing his comrade’s warning.
Yet, in the next second, he understood precisely why his companions wore such horrified expressions.
A pale hand slowly emerged from the ice hole behind him, seizing his pant leg, and the powerful tug instantly threw him off balance.
“Help! Save me!”
Falling to the ground, the disoriented Lu Cheng frantically clawed at the ice, desperate to grasp anything that might slow his descent into the water.
But on the slick, unforgiving ice, what could he possibly hold onto?
Just as Lu Cheng was about to be pulled beneath the surface, Bai Xiao struck the spectral hand.
“Ah!”
The ghost hand was severed, and the creature beneath the water let out a pained shriek.
Bai Xiao’s brows furrowed. The shriek she heard didn’t sound like a monster’s cry.
Instead, it was more like—
‘A human?’
Aside from its bloodless pallor, the spectral hand was unmistakably human.
However, when Bai Xiao looked down again at the severed ghost hand,
there was no ghost hand to be found, only a puddle of water on the ground, already on the verge of freezing…
“…”
Such an uncanny sight sent a shiver down Bai Xiao’s spine.
‘Could this be what Aya Tone was trying to warn me about?’
Yet, before Bai Xiao could ponder further, movement stirred within the ice hole once more.
Bai Xiao seized the still-reeling Lu Cheng from the ground and pulled him back into the team’s formation.
Everyone watched the abyss with grave expressions.
“Splat…”
Another spectral hand burst from the water, slapping heavily onto the ice, followed by a figure clambering out of the depths.
It slowly rose, swaying precariously like a newborn infant learning to walk.
“Ah, ah…”
The figure’s tilted head suddenly straightened, fixing an intense stare on Bai Xiao, who still held onto Lu Cheng.
“Guild Leader, how cruel you are, to slice off my hand directly… It hurts so much, so much!”
“Why didn’t you cut off that imposter’s leg instead?”
“Ahhh!”
The girl with the weakest nerves in the team, witnessing such a bizarre spectacle, finally let out an uncontrollable scream.
The scream tore through the tranquility.
The creatures beneath the water, as if startled by the cry, began to scramble out of the hole.
One, two…
Until…
A ‘Bai Xiao’ emerged!
‘So, it wasn’t that there were no monsters, but that they were beneath our feet all along?’ Bai Xiao mused aloud, as if oblivious to her own doppelganger.
“Guild Leader…” Even Lu Cheng was terrified by the scene unfolding before them.
A dripping wet version of himself suddenly stood directly before him, amidst the icy wilderness.
It was like a water ghost claiming a soul.
He had often heard the village elders say that if one were ever dragged into the water, that entity would become them, and they, in turn, would replace the entity, forever remaining beneath the surface.
The thought of nearly being pulled into the water moments ago made Lu Cheng tremble uncontrollably.
Bai Xiao took a deep breath. “Everyone, listen up!”
“!”
Bai Xiao’s voice, like a potent sedative, steadied the frantic ‘three souls’ of her teammates, which felt on the verge of escaping their bodies.
“Do not choose your own doppelganger. As teammates who can entrust their lives to one another, you know whose copy to target.”
Given how the Lu Cheng copy had addressed her, it was difficult not to suspect that these replicas lacked their original memories.
Being taught by the same master made it challenging to counter their moves.
Furthermore, slaying one’s own replica would undoubtedly cause discomfort.
Therefore, it was best to entrust everything to their most trusted teammates beside them.
“As for that ‘Bai Xiao,’ I’ll handle her.”
The two Bai Xiaos exchanged glances, each seeing fierce battle intent reflected in the other’s eyes.
‘It seems her intentions align with mine,’
Bai Xiao’s lips curved into a bloodthirsty smile.
“Fight!”
“Roar!”