Going on from there, Ye Tianxie let a small measure of wariness rise in him. Icicles that might come down at any moment were quite enough to have an ordinary player treading every step of this place in dread, but for Ye Tianxie, once he had put his mind to watching for them, his perception and reaction speed were such that the instant an icicle worked loose overhead he registered it and stepped calmly aside.
His life was draining at fifteen points a second and recovering at five. Ye Tianxie advanced, dodging icicles liable to drop on him without warning at any moment, drinking a recovery potion now and then.
In ten minutes, apart from those first three Snow Wolves, Ye Tianxie did not run into a single further monster. In the quest description, the final objective was “to fulfill the Frost Snow Wolf’s long-cherished wish,” not to defeat it. Which, come to that, was fair enough — given the strength of an Immortal Spirit Beast, how could any player of the present day possibly defeat it?
So it plainly indicated that this was not a quest whose main key was clearing by combat. And when Yaya had been asking all those bizarre questions earlier, she had plainly mentioned it too… you had to be clever, or that terrifying wolf inside would eat you.
You had to be clever…
Another ten-odd minutes went by, and the road ahead finally changed — except that this time it did not grow wider but noticeably narrower. It was still a passage of the ice-cavern sort… but the color of the ice ahead was greatly different from before, turned bluer, and that blue grew deeper and deeper — a pure ice-blue, and one look at it was enough to tell a man exactly what sort of bone-cutting cold it stood for.
The moment Ye Tianxie set a foot into this other world of ice, a cold that changed his expression on the spot came sweeping over him, and in a single instant that terrible cold — nearly enough to freeze the blood solid — had soaked into every corner of Ye Tianxie’s body, every strand of his hair, every drop of his blood…
If the cold before this could stiffen a man’s body, cold like this was enough to freeze it outright and strip his consciousness away besides.
At the same moment, a loud System prompt sounded in his ear.
“Ding… You have entered the dangerous map ‘the Ice-Bone Severed Road.’ Within the Ice-Bone Severed Road, the terrible temperature will restrict your body’s agility to an extreme degree and will strip away 10% of your life force per second. Please make complete preparations before entering.”
Ten percent of his life force… per second?!
With the 2,727 life force he currently had… it meant that on entering this map he would not only have to endure inhuman torment from the cold, but would lose 273 points of health every second!
-273!
-273…
Three-digit damage figures floated up above Ye Tianxie’s head, and those bright red numbers sent a jolt of alarm through him in the middle of that bitter cold. With the best recovery potion currently available to him, he could restore 400 health every 5 seconds — that is, 80 health per second. A recovery rate like that was entirely sufficient for an ordinary player with only a few hundred health, and with a Priest’s healing added on top there would be nothing to worry about at all. But for him… in the face of this Ice-Bone Severed Road, that towering health pool of his had instead become a fatal encumbrance.
And apart from the 200 health added by the Ring of Life, all the rest of his health came compulsorily from his free attributes and from the Rebel-Boned Evil Dragon class. Even if he had wanted to strip it off, he could not…
Ye Tianxie turned on his heel and retreated back out of that terrible Ice-Bone Severed Road, and looking at a health bar that had emptied by close to a third in the time it takes to blink, his brows drew hard together. This cold was worse than any enemy he had faced — because it could not be resisted, and no amount of ability or talent offered any way around it. He poured down a high-grade recovery potion, brought the bar back up a stretch, thought for a little while, then lowered his head and called softly, “Yaoyao!”
At his summons, the snow fox Yaoyao appeared beside his feet. Summoned out so rarely, it paid no attention to the world of ice around it, only wagged its snow-fluffed tail and looked up at its master.
Mystic Spirit Snow Fox: Tier-3 pet. Level 12. Root and origin unknown. Sealed inside the Dragon God’s Stone by the Dragon God seventy million years ago; only just escaped. Delicate in build, gentle in temperament, extremely decorative. Will never initiate an attack on any living creature. Master: Xietian. Having signed the Soul Blood Pact, will never betray. Attributes: HP 340, MP 1,360, Physical Attack 58, Magic Attack 116, Evasion 17, Accuracy 17, Attack Speed 150, Movement Speed 180.
【Author’s note: For Yaoyao’s talents and skills, everyone had better just flip back to the earlier chapters — if I write them out I’ll have people cursing at me for padding the word count.】
Yaoyao was already level 12 and still had no attacking ability whatsoever; its skills were healing and support, every one of them. But set against a Priest of the same level, its 340 health was already quite considerable, and that 1,360 magic was frankly terrifying. By comparison, its attack power and magic attack power were rather pitiful… but the effect of its skills was several times stronger than an ordinary Priest’s basic healing arts.
With the 116 magic attack it had now, the health Mystic Spirit Cure could restore per cast ran as high as — 580! Converted into seconds, that was enough to cancel out 116 points of Ye Tianxie’s health loss per second.
Adding in the potions and the Ring of Life’s recovery, the health Ye Tianxie would actually be losing came to something around 70 points a second.
Seventy points…
And adding in Yaoyao’s Mystic Spirit Restoration on its ten-second cooldown…
Mystic Spirit Restoration could instantly return 30% of health on a ten-second cooldown, and with Ye Tianxie’s health, 30% came to 816 points… which meant it could cancel Ye Tianxie’s health loss out entirely.
Ye Tianxie studied the little fox’s attributes for a good while and could not help marveling. Tier-3 as a grade, level 12 — and its healing had already reached a level fit to shame every Priest player alive… Even Su Feifei, whose healing ability had abruptly doubled once she had the Seven-Colored Bracelet, came nowhere close to the Mystic Spirit Snow Fox.
“Yaoyao, aren’t you cold?” Looking at Yaoyao playing with its tail and standing there so obediently, Ye Tianxie asked in some puzzlement. Because on the face of it, it plainly showed no discomfort whatsoever at the climate here.
Yaoyao evidently understood him. It shook its head.
“Come on, then, we’re going in… Yaoyao, this time I’m relying on you.”
Ye Tianxie drew a deep breath and stepped into the Ice-Bone Severed Road once more. In an instant, a bitter cold that even he could barely withstand had him holding his breath outright.
A severed road also means a road cut off — a dead end.
By contrast, Yaoyao came bounding along behind him, plainly untouched by the cold in the slightest. Ye Tianxie’s teeth chattered. He glanced back at Yaoyao once, then dragged a body several times heavier than usual forward and ran through at the greatest speed he could manage.
-273, -273, -273…
+580,
-273,
+400…
Yaoyao was plainly very intelligent, and understood perfectly well where Ye Tianxie was and what he was up against; the moment a healing skill came off cooldown, it cast. It naturally had to stop each time it cast, but it was extremely nimble, its movement speed nearly twice Ye Tianxie’s — and with Ye Tianxie’s own body frozen stiff and his speed down by close to half, Yaoyao was never left behind at all, even stopping and starting as it did.
A stretch of road that took under a minute felt to Ye Tianxie, in the torment of that cold, as long as a passing century. But the Ice-Bone Severed Road was not going to stay that quiet the whole way. Ahead of Ye Tianxie, a short rank of snow-white shapes suddenly appeared.
Snow Wolves!
Six Snow Wolves stood in a row, for all the world as though waiting for him, and as Ye Tianxie came near, all six sprang at the spot where he stood with their steps in perfect unison.
The Hour of Fate appeared in Ye Tianxie’s hand. Under the invasion of that bitter cold, those hands seemed no longer to be his own, and the Hour of Fate he had gripped with such difficulty seemed to weigh a thousand pounds; even raising it was that hard. He breathed hard, his gaze tightened, and he twisted with everything he had to slip past the lunge of three of the Snow Wolves — but immediately the claws of the three behind them all raked home across his body.
-91, -92, -95, -272…
The cold and the three Snow Wolves together took a large chunk out of Ye Tianxie’s health. Yaoyao slipped nimbly between the wolves, and a “Mystic Spirit Restoration” whose cooldown had just come up restored the health Ye Tianxie had lost to full. But in the instant it paused, a wolf’s paw came down across it…
-162!
Yaoyao’s defense was relatively frail, and that one blow from the Snow Wolf emptied half its health outright. Yaoyao’s self-healing art followed immediately behind, bringing its own health back to full in one go…
Bang!
A Dragon Rend Slash drove one Snow Wolf back, and again three Snow Wolves attacked him at once. The stiffness of his body had stolen nearly all his agility; even the frequency of his attacks had become pitiful, and their precision had fallen off badly. In no more than five seconds he had landed hits on three Snow Wolves without killing a single one, while his own health, even under Yaoyao’s continuous healing, had already dropped by half.
Sighing inwardly, Ye Tianxie swiftly summoned Yaoyao back to his side, activated Soul of the Evil Dragon, and spread the Evil Dragon’s wall.
What made the Evil Dragon’s wall formidable was that it was a true absolute defense. “Absolute” meant that it could not only block attacks of any strength and any form, but could also cut off every outside influence.
Even including temperature.
Even including a monster’s aggro.
The Evil Dragon’s wall enveloped Ye Tianxie’s body and Yaoyao at his feet, and the moment it spread, Ye Tianxie’s health was still falling continuously — but that terrible sensation of cold had vanished without a trace. Outside, the Snow Wolves went on attacking, slamming into the invisible barrier again and again, and never touching him once.
Ye Tianxie took out a Town Portal Scroll, resigned. Beneath the Evil Dragon’s wall he was in a state of complete freedom and could use the scroll to escape at any moment.
Exactly as with his trip into the Ten Thousand Bone Ruins, his first entry into the Ice-Severed Wolf Den likewise ended in failure and a return home. But these two failures had at least let Ye Tianxie know what it was he would be facing.
Next time I come here, I won’t have to get through that little Yaya’s trial all over again, will I… The thought gave Ye Tianxie an ache in his head, and he crushed the Town Portal Scroll before the Evil Dragon’s wall could disappear.
(End of Chapter 190)