Chapter 206 – The Sight of Silver (I)

Chapter 206

The Sight of Silver (I)

The summit–well, not the literal one, but more so the one passage between the two sides of the mountain–turned out to be a wide col, a flat saddle between two peaks, but instead of rock, it was a plateau of solid ice, approximately eighty feet from front to back and about two hundred across.

We emerged right by the edge of the leftmost side, with Rayce leading the charge and me coming up second, pulling the kids up.

It was a glacial plateau if I ever saw one–a thin layer of snow covered the icy surface beneath, though the ice itself didn’t appear to be uniform in make. The part closest to us actually resembled hoarfrost. I mean, it wasn’t; it was probably either just glacial ice that formed in a strange pattern or some ice formation unique to this world, but it looked the part, especially with the snow forming feathery patterns on top of the ice’s own feathery patterns.

Further toward the center it became very much akin to verglas–a thin sheen that looked like it would crack if someone so much as spat on it, and toward the other side, it looked to be ‘just’ glacial ice… if its saturation was blown up just a tad.

No, seriously, it was so goddamn blue. It all but glowed through the thin layer of snow on top of it.

The entire plateau was walled off by massive, jutting ice crystals. Even the smallest looked to be at least eight or nine feet long, as thick as trunks of the trees, their surface almost glass-like in how transparent they were.

Eerily, all crystals seemed to bend westward toward their tips, thus coming together to form a shroud of sorts that bled into the mountainside that went up another two hundred or so yards. In addition to their bodies bending westward, they also looked like they were arranged into a wide spiral, all spiraling around the center of the plateau–well, not really a room, as it didn’t have a ceiling. Its edges were shaded by the protruding stones of the mountains to some degree, though the rest of it was laid open to the elements.

Which begged the question…

How is there a fucking plant in the middle of it?

Just one look caused me to frown, as it was eerily similar in its make, though still distinctly… alien. Its bodice had a singular ‘rod-like’ structure that pierced into the ice below, pulsing at irregular intervals and stirring the glow of the glacial sheen beneath it. As it went up, it broke off into branches that more so resembled roots and would wriggle and writhe like excited worms each time the vine pulsed.

Oh, holy shit!

It’s that parasitic vine!

I mean, not the exact replica, but a pretty close simulacrum!

Love what you’re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

“Oh. I did not expect that, actually.” Long Tao’s words sent a bolt of electricity through me as he emerged onto the plateau.

He walked over rather casually, and I followed, telling others to stay put.

It was like walking, well, on ice; I had to use Qi to generate enough friction to not just slide and skid over the entire thing. On top of that, each crunch echoed out almost like a detonation, though only for a moment as the howling winds quickly suffocated the sound. We stopped about a foot from it, as there was a thin sheen of light coating it.

“It really is the vine,” I mumbled as a statement, though I intended it more as an egging question.

“… I’ve underestimated them,” he said. “I just thought they were greedy for some Life Qi, as they had arts designed for it, but this… hmm. It might be quite serious.”

“Was the vine causing the bad weather, then?”

“Yes,” he nodded with a shrug. “Not directly, but just as a byproduct of what it was doing–sucking up all loose Life Qi from the entire mountain range.”