Chapter 1 The Coldness in the Valley

The biting cold air in the valley was so sharp that it assaulted Fang Senyan’s skin, sending a chill deep into his bones. He stared at the endless abyss before him, like a monstrous beast with gaping jaws, rushing toward him with savage hunger. A slight dizziness clouded his mind, yet his heart was filled with an indescribable icy dread!

Though Fang Senyan was plummeting rapidly into the abyss, he could clearly hear suppressed chuckles of triumph from above, just a dozen meters away! He knew that voice well, and he distinctly remembered that the culprit was Taba, one of the Nepalese porters he had hired!

He had sensed Taba approaching earlier, assuming the man was coming to help him, fearing he might slip. Never did he imagine that the fellow was coming to give him a "push from behind"!

In a flash of insight, Fang Senyan understood the man’s motive without needing to think: simple greed and murder.

Fang Senyan was a lone foreigner in a hurry, without any family nearby. Moreover, he had been flashing his cash freely, making him a prime target.

Especially since Fang Senyan, confident in his strength as a powerful Contractor, had bypassed the more secure official channels in Kathmandu to exchange large sums of dollars and gold on the black market, hoping to save time. Hashimi and his crew had noticed this, realizing that he was carrying a substantial amount of cash and gold in his luggage…

These people had long been guiding travelers in the snowy mountains, and their poverty, coupled with the inherent risks of their profession, had bred a ruthless and adventurous spirit. Furthermore, these locals knew that in these frigid peaks, a death or two was easily dismissed as an accident! Would the police really bother to risk their lives investigating at an altitude of several thousand meters?

Considering the obvious motive, the low risk of getting caught, and the high potential reward, why wouldn’t they take the gamble?

Even more surprising, Taba wasn’t being greedy. He didn’t choose to knock Fang Senyan unconscious or tie him up to extort more wealth. Instead, he pushed Fang Senyan directly into the deep, icy chasm! While the first two methods might have been completely ineffective against Fang Senyan, pushing him exploited his weakness!

Although Fang Senyan's perception was strong, it could only provide warnings about direct threats causing great harm, such as a sniper shot. It lacked the ability to deduce consequences.

Taba’s push, strictly speaking, didn’t even touch a hair on Fang Senyan’s head, and his perception couldn’t predict that being pushed would lead to a fall into a deep valley, so naturally, it didn’t give an alert. As for the deep valley, his perception was constantly warning him that falling down was dangerous… So, due to this combination of factors, Fang Senyan was truly capsizing in a ditch, filled with bitter regret.

*

The howling wind felt like a thousand hands violently forcing sub-zero air into Fang Senyan’s nostrils and ears. All around him, he saw nothing but blades of frost and swords of snow forming icy spears, sharp and malevolent, gleaming with a cold light.

As his body plummeted, the feeling of death grew stronger, enveloping his heart. There was a saying that great terror existed between life and death, and Fang Senyan was now experiencing this indescribable despair and fear. Never before had he felt such frustration, such rage, and such unwillingness!

"Damn it, damn it, damn it!!"

As he fell, Fang Senyan instinctively struck out at the adjacent ice walls with his fists, but in this real world, most of his equipment was unavailable. Thus, his only recourse was his own fists and body! He wanted to smash out a path to survival on the millennia-old ice of Annapurna!

The ice on Annapurna, forged over countless years, was even harder than steel. Fang Senyan’s bare fists, striking with all his might, were quickly torn and bloody.

But at this moment, on the brink of death, Fang Senyan was lost in a frenzy, striking the glacier again and again as he fell. He felt his blood surging, as if his body would swell and burst into flames!

The droplets of blood scattered on the ice initially froze quickly into clots, but later, as the blood landed on the glacier, it showed no signs of freezing. Instead, it steamed like hot acid, emitting copious amounts of vapor as it corroded the ice!

At the same time, on the information regarding Fang Senyan’s talent: Bastion, the red light shone even more intensely, even more fiercely! The intensity of the light almost gave the illusion that it would explode in the next second.

Clearly, facing the immense crisis his body was experiencing, all of Fang Senyan’s power and potential were surging wildly. The insane pressure from death was like a giant furnace, forcing all the power in Fang Senyan’s body to rise to its limit, and then continue to crash forward, unwilling to yield!

Finally, Fang Senyan roared, blood spraying from his mouth, nose, and ears. The feeling of fullness and scorching heat within him was completely unleashed in this one punch!! This punch struck deep into the glacier, causing dense cracks to appear on the hard, steel-like, transparent ice wall, stretching for dozens of meters! It almost caused a large section of the glacier clinging to the cliff face to collapse.

But this earth-shattering punch still couldn’t stop his momentum. It only sent him flying horizontally for more than ten meters.

Next, Fang Senyan crashed heavily onto the valley floor of Annapurna! This place was a forbidden zone for humans. Aside from those who fell from above like Fang Senyan, it could be said that no one had set foot here for centuries.

At this moment, Fang Senyan had already closed his eyes, bracing himself for the terrifying impact, the twisting and shattering of his body, the feeling of being torn apart!! Fang Senyan knew deeply that Contractors were not omnipotent. Falling thousands of meters at once meant that the terrifying impact force was definitely not something a flesh-and-blood body could withstand!!!

But although the expected pain traveled from his back, and he even heard the crisp sound of bones breaking, Fang Senyan also had another clear and strange sensation: the entire ground beneath his back actually sank suddenly.

How was this possible?

At first, he thought it was a hallucination. How could the ground sink? But soon, Fang Senyan realized it was a deliriously joyful fact!

If one were to look down from high above, one would see that the instant Fang Senyan crashed onto the valley floor, a large cloud of ice and snow billowed up. Then, there was a crisp "kalakala" sound, and one could see that the valley floor, covering nearly one square kilometer, showed signs of widespread ice and snow mist rising. Then, clear, dense cracks appeared, like a circular spider web, with the point where Fang Senyan landed at the center…

In the next second, the area where Fang Senyan was located completely collapsed, followed by a large number of soaring water columns! And the water columns were carrying hot vapor, vapor filled with a strong smell of sulfur.

When the warm water flowed over Fang Senyan's body, mouth, and nose, and then stung the wounds on his fist, Fang Senyan understood what had happened, and then all the confusion was cleared up like water flowing into a channel.

The bottom of this immense ice valley was actually a hot spring lake! A hot spring lake with a thin layer of ice on the surface!

Although the warm spring water had a peculiar smell, it was a rare healing treasure for Fang Senyan at this time. Moreover, Fang Senyan could feel an indescribable force coursing through his body. Without looking, he knew that his talent, Bastion, had crossed the threshold and successfully advanced!

At this moment, he couldn't help but curse three words in his heart:

"Old fox!"

These three words were not directed at the porters above who had tried to kill him, but were a heartfelt expression toward that mysterious voice.

This mysterious voice had calculated everything, grasping people's psychology with perfect precision. He proposed the Lotus Stone jump method from the start, clearly wanting to select someone who unconditionally trusted him! Even if someone used high-tech means to learn about the situation below the ice valley in advance and then jumped, it wouldn't work.

Because the "path" that the mysterious voice spoke of was the enlightenment, madness, and breakthrough in the moment between life and death! Without the pressure of death, the potential within the body could not be forced out. If one knew in advance that below was a hot spring lake with a surface of ice, then it would be like bungee jumping, only stimulating, without the threat of death, and therefore not a breakthrough.

And if it were up to Fang Senyan's intentions and his character, he would never have jumped down. How would he have known that the porter, Taba, would suddenly appear, driven by greed, and push him down?

Fang Senyan had grown up by the sea, and after becoming a Contractor, his physique had skyrocketed, with the added bonus of the Pirate Captain title, allowing him to stay underwater for an hour without breathing. He lay in the warm hot spring, and the impact on his back was indeed severe, so wisps of blood kept seeping from his facial features, looking quite terrifying. However, the Contractor's incredibly powerful self-healing ability was at work, rapidly repairing the interior of his body.

Taking this opportunity, Fang Senyan called up his talent, Bastion, and found that it had indeed been replaced by a series of completely new data!