Chapter 83: Snow Mountain Herbs
Lu Yunxi hopped over to the massive cauldron with two light thuds. Pulling the absolute smallest vial she could find from her spatial inventory, she carefully filled it with the hot, spicy ginger soup. She then bounded back to Shen San’s side, cradling the tiny vial as she painstakingly tipped the liquid into his mouth.
The ginger soup was incredibly effective.
Although a significant portion of the liquid dribbled down the corners of his lips and only a few drops actually made it past his teeth, it was enough. Shen San’s eyelids fluttered, and he slowly blinked his eyes open.
“Master?” he rasped, his voice weak. He glanced at the system prompt blinking on his interface and finally understood what had happened.
Forcing himself to his feet, he walked over to the steaming cauldron and downed a massive bowl of the soup. The intense, burning heat of the ginger instantly flushed the lingering [Coma] debuff completely out of his system.
“Master, be careful, it’s very hot,” he cautioned. He retrieved a small spoon, scooped up a serving of the broth, and gently brought it down to her. To her, the spoon was larger than a dinner plate.
Lu Yunxi lowered her head, pressed her lips to the edge of the iron spoon, and sipped slowly. As the warm, spicy liquid settled into her stomach, she could feel her strength steadily returning.
However, the buff provided by the ginger soup wasn’t permanent. Its thermal effects would expire after six hours, meaning they would have to consume another batch before the timer ran out to stave off the freezing coma.
After carefully packing the remaining soup into insulated spatial containers, the pair laid out a simple straw mat, a mattress, and thick quilts, settling down right there on the cavern floor.
Night fell silently over the cave.
Inside their makeshift camp, the young man lay quietly, the translucent, magical fireball hovering nearby to provide a steady, ambient warmth. Snuggled securely against his collar was a tiny girl, no taller than his finger. A translucent barrier sealed the mouth of the cavern, entirely blocking the howling, raging blizzard outside.
The night passed without incident, and the sky slowly began to brighten.
Lu Yunxi stretched her tiny arms above her head, letting out a satisfied groan. “That was so comfortable.” Throughout their entire grueling ordeal drifting across the ocean, she couldn’t remember the last time she had enjoyed such a deep, relaxing sleep.
Rays of morning sunlight spilled through the cavern entrance, casting long, pale shadows over the two of them.
As the sunlight touched his face, Shen San’s eyelashes fluttered, and his eyes slowly opened. Bathed in the morning light, his dark brown eyes seemed to catch a layer of warm gold, making them sparkle gently.
“Master?” he mumbled, his gaze slightly unfocused. He clearly hadn’t fully booted up yet, looking remarkably like a large, dopey dog wagging its tail after waking up from a nap.
However, Lu Yunxi possessed zero appreciation for the aesthetic beauty of the moment. Bursting with renewed energy, she vaulted directly onto her apprentice’s stomach, bouncing up and down a few times as if he were a human trampoline.
After getting the zoomies out of her system, she planted her hands on her hips. “Are you awake? Hurry up and make breakfast! We need to eat and get moving.”
“Are we still planning to hunt for a resupply town on this continent?” Shen San asked, expertly pulling out his cooking pots and pans as he verified their itinerary.
There had to be towns on the Ice Continent. According to the global forum data, there were permanent resident populations on every single landmass. But the Ice Continent was impossibly vast, and its outposts were notoriously sparse. On the Forest Continent, you could trip over a village every hour, but they had wandered the ice fields for ages yesterday without seeing a single trace of civilization.
“Forget it. Even if we miraculously stumble upon a town here, I doubt they’ll have any high-tier provisions. There aren’t even any fruit-bearing trees in this climate!” Lu Yunxi shook her head, deeply resistant to the idea. She gritted her teeth. “It’s safer to just push straight through to the next landmass. If we miss, the currents should bounce us back toward the Flower Continent. As long as we make landfall anywhere else, we won’t have to worry about starving.”
The geographic layout meant the Flower Continent was wedged between the Desert and the Ice. This guaranteed that, at the very worst, they wouldn’t accidentally drift back into the burning sands of the desert. Out of all the zones, the Desert and Ice continents were universally considered the most lethal survival maps. If they could just reach any other shore, their survival was virtually guaranteed.
Shen San nodded in agreement. He rapidly threw together a boiling pot of something resembling spicy hotpot, tossing in all their remaining raw ingredients. He ate until his mouth was coated in red chili oil, packed his gear, and prepared to march back toward the coastline.
But in this world, disaster always struck without warning. Just as they stepped out of the cavern, the earth violently convulsed.
“An earthquake?!” Lu Yunxi screamed, her tiny hands clamping onto Shen San’s collarbone in absolute terror that she would be flung into the abyss. Simultaneously, she triggered her master-tier barrier, sealing the two of them tightly within a protective bubble.
Shen San, however, didn’t have the luxury of a safety tether. Standing fully upright on the shifting ice, he had absolutely nothing to brace against. As the ground bucked beneath his boots, he was forced to drop to his knees to keep from being launched into the air.
RUMBLE.
A deafening roar of shifting tectonic plates and shattering glaciers echoed through the valley. Shen San flattened his body against the permafrost, desperately trying to maintain his center of gravity.
Instead of subsiding, the violent tremors escalated.
ROAR—
An earth-shattering bellow ripped through the air.
The master and disciple exchanged a look of pure horror, their pupils constricting as they frantically scanned the horizon. Yet the icy landscape remained entirely empty, making the colossal roar feel like a terrifying hallucination.
Gradually, the violent shaking began to taper off.
Seeing that the worst of the tremor had passed, Shen San cautiously pushed himself up from the ice.
But in the very next second—
A massive, hurricane-force gale blasted upward from the ground, instantly launching him straight into the sky.
The wind tore past his cheeks like a barrage of invisible knives, the pressure so intense it caused his eardrums to pop. The roar of the gale was so deafening it drowned out every other sound in the world.
“MASTER—ARE YOU OKAY?!” he roared at the absolute top of his lungs.
Lu Yunxi had long since burrowed deep beneath his heavy collar. She didn’t dare poke her head out, terrified that the slipstream would violently rip her away. At a mere ten centimeters tall, if she were separated from him in mid-air, finding her would be mathematically impossible!
“I’M FINE—BRACE YOURSELF!” she screamed back. Luckily, she was positioned directly next to his ear; otherwise, he never would have heard her over the howling wind.
Feeling a wave of relief that she was secure, Shen San tightened his grip on the massive, jagged spike he had managed to grab onto mid-flight.
Wait. A spike?
It took him a moment to process the texture beneath his gloves. It wasn’t an earthquake at all. The deafening roar and the violent upheaval were the result of a colossal, ancient dragon—which had been slumbering beneath the permafrost for god knows how long—suddenly waking up.
It hadn’t attacked them. It had merely rolled over in its sleep.
They were just the unfortunate collateral damage standing on its back.
The massive Azure Dragon tumbled through the cloud layer a few times, completely ignoring the microscopic human clinging to its horn, before lazily diving back toward the ice shelf. It settled back onto the permafrost, closed its massive reptilian eyes, and instantly fell back into a deep slumber. It had merely shifted positions to get comfortable, but the movement had nearly killed them.
The master and disciple shared a bitter, traumatized smile.
When they had initially ventured into the ice fields, they had maintained a strict, linear heading. To return to the sea, they only needed to execute a 180-degree turn and retrace their steps. But because the dragon had launched them into the stratosphere, spun around, and crashed back down in a completely unknown location, their spatial orientation was entirely destroyed.
They stood frozen on the dragon’s snout for a long time before their brains finally rebooted.
“Master… which direction do you think we should take?” Shen San asked hesitantly, scooping her up as he stared out at the identical, endless expanse of white permafrost.
“I… honestly, just pick a direction and start walking.”
High upon the towering, snow-capped peaks, a crystal-clear spring cascaded down the cliffs, sparkling with breathtaking beauty under the arctic sun.
General Shen San carefully knelt by the water, placing Lu Yunxi onto a flat stone as gently as if he were handling a piece of fragile glass. “Master, please wait here. I’m going to harvest some spring water. I’ll be right back.”
Lu Yunxi nodded, hopping down from his palm. As he uncorked his flasks to collect the water, she began to wander around the immediate area.
“Huh?”
Suddenly, her eyes locked onto a plant growing a short distance away. It was entirely white! If she hadn’t been staring directly at the spot when the wind caused it to sway, it would have perfectly camouflaged against the snow.
Seeing that the flower was close to the spring, she didn’t bother calling out to her apprentice and excitedly jogged over to inspect it.
“Hiss!” After executing a detection scan over the blossom, Yunxi gasped in absolute shock and joy, gently brushing her tiny fingers against the frosty petals. “It’s actually a Gold-quality herb!”
She took two steps forward, fully intending to yank a shovel from her inventory… but upon looking up at the stalk, which was currently three times her height, she reconsidered. She quickly whipped her head around and shouted, “Shen San! Stop what you’re doing and come harvest this! It’s a Gold-tier medicinal herb!”
A legendary drop like this, if handed to a novice-tier alchemist, contained enough experience data to instantly force a rank breakthrough! Of course, Lu Yunxi would never be so wasteful with premium materials.
Shen San rapidly filled his spatial inventory until the system flagged a stack limit of 999 bottles of premium spring water. He then filled several massive, industrial-sized vats and hauled them over to his master. “Master, the water you requested is secured.”
Lu Yunxi waved her hand, instantly transferring the massive vats into her own expansive spatial storage.
Their agonizing ordeal drifting through the desert and the ocean had left a deep, lingering trauma on both of their psyches. Since making landfall on the ice fields, their operating protocol had shifted to absolute hoarding. They aggressively vacuumed up every single resource node they encountered, regardless of its immediate utility. Lu Yunxi hoarded massive blocks of raw ice, compacted snow, and heavy mineral ores. Shen San was slightly more selective, prioritizing water and high-yield ores, since his player inventory had strict encumbrance limits.
Yunxi pulled a heavy iron shovel from her storage and directed him to carefully uproot the golden herb.
But as they expanded their search perimeter, she stumbled upon several more Gold-quality herbs hidden in the snowdrifts.
It suddenly clicked. The Ice Continent wasn’t a barren wasteland—it was the global spawn hub for elite-tier alchemy ingredients! She had spent months scouring the entirety of the Forest Continent and had never triggered a single Gold-quality drop. Yet here, on these freezing peaks, they were practically growing like weeds.
Instantly forgetting their desperate need to return to the ocean, the master and disciple were overcome by a feverish excitement. Gripping their shovels, they began aggressively strip-mining the snow-capped mountain.
