1RomanceEB Chapter 438 - 402: Association Selection (Part 2)
Chapter 438 - 402: Association Selection (Part 2)
He looked up immediately and saw Aurora Sinclair already climbing toward the layer of permafrost above them.
The giant boulder had smashed a semicircular gap into this layer of permafrost.
The remaining section was solid, so it was relatively safe.
Aurora Sinclair quickly looked up. Far above their heads was a section of permafrost that had clearly been blasted apart.
The gap it left was like a severed arm, a horrifying sight.
’Someone is trying to kill us!’
"Are you two all right?" Suddenly, a woman’s voice came from above them.
A head peeked out from below the shattered permafrost—it was the woman from Esteros.
With her help, Aurora Sinclair and Alvin Morgan climbed up to the layer of permafrost she was on.
This area had also been partially smashed by the boulder that fell down the cliff, making it look like a broken ice bridge.
"Do you have any medicine? He’s injured," the woman from Esteros asked again.
The hospitable man from the Western Continent was now covered in blood and had fallen unconscious.
Apparently, he hadn’t managed to dodge the falling rocks and had been hit in the head.
Aurora Sinclair strode forward and quickly pressed several major acupoints on his head.
Alvin Morgan, meanwhile, took out hemostatic medicine and bandages from his bag to treat the man’s wound.
"It must have been the Amerians. I saw explosives in his bag earlier."
The woman from Esteros viciously sharpened her dagger, looking like she was ready to fight someone to the death.
"The Southelander and the Amerians are both above us?"
"Yes, they were faster than us."
Aurora Sinclair took out her binoculars and looked up. The path up the mountain was almost completely gone. The explosion seemed to have deliberately destroyed the only route, trapping them on this level.
"You, come up with me," Aurora Sinclair said suddenly, looking at the woman from Esteros.
"You can get up there?" she asked dubiously, glancing at Aurora Sinclair.
She herself would have some difficulty climbing up, let alone this girl who showed no fluctuations of "Power" and looked like an ordinary person.
But Aurora Sinclair pulled two climbing picks from her protective suit, strapped them to her hands, and with a quick leap, jumped two or three meters high.
As light as a swallow, she made the Esteros woman’s eyes light up.
One after the other, the two of them quickly began to climb upward.
The permafrost here was incredibly hard. Without the strength of a Martial King, it was difficult to pierce through the solid chunks of ice on its surface.
The woman from Esteros was utterly shocked.
’I can’t believe this young girl’s strength has actually reached the level of a Martial King.’
’But why can’t I sense any Power from her?’
***
「After an unknown amount of time.」
The two finally reached the destroyed layer of permafrost.
The blast had left only a foot-wide ledge for them to use as a foothold.
The smell of sulfur still lingered in the air, a testament to the fact that there had been enough explosives to level a small hill.
"This is the spot—" the woman from Esteros said angrily, pointing to the blackened permafrost at her feet.
Aurora Sinclair glanced at the area by the woman’s feet, then at her own side, a coldness rising in her eyes.
"It wasn’t necessarily him."
She and the woman from Esteros were several meters apart. The black scorch marks from the explosives weren’t confined to a small patch; they stretched for dozens of meters across the mountainside, meaning nearly half of this face’s permafrost had been destroyed.
Based on the length of these marks, it would be impossible for a single person to plant so many explosives in such a short amount of time.
’And he’s supposed to be climbing in such a dangerous place at the same time?’
’Therefore, these explosives could only have been prepared by people from the Association.’
"Let’s go up and take another look."
The two continued climbing for several dozen more meters and finally saw a larger, flat layer of permafrost.
There were some food wrappers on the flat ground, clear evidence that the three people ahead of them had rested here.
Aurora Sinclair carefully examined the nearby mountain face, took a metal piton for her rope out of her bag, and hammered it hard into the rock wall, preparing to descend the rope to find Alvin Morgan.
But the woman from Esteros didn’t want to waste her energy going back down the mountain and offered to wait up here to assist them.
Aurora Sinclair pursed her lips, then suddenly shot her hand out and stuffed a small, round pill into the woman’s mouth.
"You—"
The woman’s face paled. She gagged violently, but the pill dissolved the moment it touched her tongue. "What did you make me swallow?"
Aurora Sinclair calmly replied, "Withered Grass Toxin. When we come back up, I’ll give you the antidote."
With that, under the woman’s furious glare, Aurora calmly rappelled down the rope.
The rope was only 30 meters long, so Aurora had to hammer in a new piton every 30-odd meters on her way down.
By the time she reached them, the man from the Western Continent had already woken up.
Alvin Morgan breathed a sigh of relief when he saw her and began to pack up their things from the ground.
Seeing that Alvin Morgan and Aurora Sinclair had no intention of taking him with them, the man from the Western Continent asked anxiously, "What about me?"
But Alvin Morgan just tossed him a dagger, pointed down the mountain, and replied coolly, "Go down by yourself."
"I want to—"
"No one here is going to waste their energy on you. If you want to go up the mountain, climb it yourself."
Alvin Morgan cut him off bluntly, shouldered the climbing pack on the ground, and leaped onto the rope Aurora Sinclair had thrown down.
When Aurora Sinclair and Alvin Morgan finally climbed back up to the permafrost ledge where the woman from Esteros had been waiting, she was long gone.
Judging by the marks left by a dagger on the rock face, it seemed the woman had already continued climbing up the mountain.
Aurora Sinclair pursed her lips, looked up at the cloud-shrouded summit, and asked softly, "’Isn’t she afraid of the poison acting up?’"
Alvin Morgan paused for a moment, then handed her a ration biscuit. "There are many hidden Ancient Martial Families in Esteros. They have their own ways of staying alive."
The two rested for a while longer before continuing their climb.
Just as they were about to reach the summit, a silver light suddenly flashed, heading straight for Aurora Sinclair’s vitals.
It was the dagger of the woman from Esteros.
"I’m returning the favor..."
She had a deadpan expression, her chin slightly raised as she looked at Aurora with a cold, hard stare.
Aurora Sinclair’s expression flickered, and she quickly pulled off her glove, which had been corroded by the poison.
She took a small vial of medicine from her pocket, poured out a black pill, and tossed it to the woman from Esteros.
The woman held the pill to her nose and sniffed it before swallowing it with confidence.
The pill Aurora Sinclair had given her wasn’t a fatal poison, but without the antidote, it would have damaged her meridians.
Her junior sister had specially prepared it for her self-defense when she left Sunstone.
***
The summit was covered in snow and permafrost. As far as the eye could see, it was a blinding white.
Since it wasn’t snowing, several sets of footprints leading into the distance were clearly visible on the ground.
"I followed the footprints for a bit. They disappeared not too far from here. I was afraid of traps, so I didn’t go any further."
As she spoke, she held a Compass in one hand and seemed to be making calculations with the other, a bit like Master Aerion. She was also muttering under her breath.
"Qian, Kun, Zhen, Xun, Kan, Li, Gen, Dui..."
After calculating for a few minutes, she suddenly said in confusion, "’Could it be to the northwest?’"
She immediately followed the Compass’s needle and started walking northwest.
But Aurora Sinclair and Alvin Morgan didn’t move. The woman only noticed they hadn’t followed after she had taken a dozen or so steps.
"Why aren’t you guys moving?"
Aurora Sinclair watched her calmly, then her gaze suddenly sharpened, and she threw a punch in the woman’s direction.
The powerful force of the punch made the woman’s face drain of color, and she quickly dodged to the side.
The force of the punch grazed past her body and struck the empty ground behind her.
Suddenly—
A massive roar, like the sound of ice cracking, erupted.
The ground on the summit began to shake, and large chunks of permafrost rolled down the mountain like an avalanche.
The woman from Esteros was aghast. "You’re insane—"
But before she could finish, the sound of ice cracking—CRACK! CRACK!—came from behind her.
She turned to look and saw that a fissure had appeared in the path ahead of her.
A reflection of the sun glinted up into her eyes.
’This is...’