As wind and snow usher in the passing of winter, spring is still gathering its strength in the south of this continent, while the northern wind and snow have already strangled all signs of spring in the cradle. At the northernmost reaches of the continent, for three hundred and sixty days a year, the harsh winds and frost press relentlessly, so there is likely no spring to speak of at all. The boundless wind and snow have transformed into deeply penetrating blades and swords, hacking and slashing from left and right.

The rarely seen dark, rocky outcrops, which occasionally peek through the snow, appear deathly still due to the cold, merciless sculpting of heaven and earth. This is a land of ice and snow, a land of death, yet now there is a line of small black dots moving across the century-old desolate snowfield, silently and resolutely heading forward.

Occasionally, the sound of dogs barking pierces the howling wind and snow, carrying a hint of life to the distance. The team consists of only three people, but no fewer than sixty snow dogs, pulling long sleds laden with food and equipment, constantly advancing northward.

It is said that these snow dogs roaming the far north are descendants of snow wolves, and only those northern barbarians who can endure the bitter cold are able to domesticate them into helpful companions for mankind. However, in recent years, the continent has grown increasingly cold. Once past the Tian Guan (Heavenly Gate) north gate, the temperature plummets. The northern barbarians, who used to fight bare-chested in the snow, have long since migrated south at any cost to the western grasslands. The snowfield has returned to tranquility. So, who do these snow dogs belong to?

Wrapped in thick fur, with his head and face covered in warm fox fur, wearing leather boots and thick gloves, the whole person bundled up like a rice dumpling, Fan Xian exhaled, discovering that the warm air quickly turned into frosty snow the moment it left his lips. His complexion was a little pale. Although he had been secretly preparing for several years since learning the whereabouts of the Shrine in the fifth year of Qingli (Qing Yu Nian), only upon truly stepping onto this snowfield did he realize that the might of heaven and earth cannot be truly borne by mental preparation alone.

It has been several days since leaving the capital of Northern Qi, and seven or eight days since passing through the North Gate Tian Guan, which is no longer heavily garrisoned. The thought of the soldiers in that snowy city looking at him and his dogs entering the snowfield as if they were already dead, caused a bitter smile to appear on Fan Xian's lips. It seems that still no one has faith in his party.

He put his fingers to his lips and whistled. The ears of the sixty-odd snow dogs around him perked up alertly. They shook their heads energetically, shedding the snow from their bodies. Their thick furred paws stood firmly in the cold snow, seemingly unafraid of the cold. They stuck out their long, red tongues, awaiting their master's next command.

At this moment, the wind and snow seemed to lessen somewhat. Two figures emerged from the simple sleds in front of and behind Fan Xian. Haitang and Wang Shisanlang were also wrapped up like rice dumplings. They walked towards Fan Xian with puzzled expressions.

"We have to hurry while the snow is light."

Wang Shisanlang's voice sounded muffled through the fur. Fan Xian took two heavy breaths and coughed in response: "Are those people still following us?"

Haitang removed the earmuffs from her fur hat, revealing two delicate and lovely ears. She listened quietly to the wind and snow for a moment, then shook her head, saying, "It seems they've lost us."

Although the wind and snow had lessened somewhat, it was still very difficult to hear clearly when the three of them were close together. Fan Xian curled his lips and smiled, saying, "It's good that they've lost us. I don't want the people sent by your little emperor to freeze to death on this snowfield."

Haitang said nothing, but narrowed her eyes slightly, looking towards the depths of the northern snowfield. All she could see was white. It seemed that there was nothing but snow in this world. Such a dry and monotonous journey was made particularly dangerous by the bitter cold. A complex look arose in her eyes. It had been seven or eight days since they left the Tian Guan, yet Fan Xian did not need to scout at all. Instead, he simply issued commands, bypassing snow-capped mountains and ice hills, silently moving forward, as if he knew exactly how to get to the Shrine.

Fan Xian's injuries were too severe for him to scout. Wang Shisanlang's right arm was not fully healed. Of the three, Haitang's body was also somewhat weak, but if scouting was needed, it would definitely be her who did it. She didn't understand where Fan Xian got the confidence that he wouldn't get lost in this wilderness where the sun couldn't be seen, the terrain couldn't be discerned, and there was nothing but ice and snow.

Fan Xian took a bamboo knife from the sled behind him and carefully scraped the ice off his leather boots. Everything hinged on details. Only with thorough preparation and careful consideration of the details could they possibly reach that ethereal Shrine. In the days since leaving the North Gate Tian Guan, he had led the sled team around on the snowfield in order to shake off the team that had been faintly following them.

Whether the Northern Qi emperor wanted to ensure the safety of this group, or wanted to follow Fan Xian to find that hidden, unknown Shrine, Fan Xian would not allow it. On the one hand, he did not want too many people to die in this cold. Secondly, Fan Xian himself was not clear about what kind of things existed in the Shrine. Ku He had been so careful to hide the location of the Shrine, fearing that the things inside would spread to the human world and bring unknowable harm to this world. Therefore, Fan Xian had to be careful.

"Although it's a bit cold, do we... really need to wear so much?" Wang Shisanlang stood in front of Fan Xian, took two breaths, and felt that the thick fur coats and boots he was wearing were a bit cumbersome. Fan Xian was seriously injured and unable to mobilize his true energy to resist the cold, while Shisanlang and Haitang still had abundant true energy. As top-tier ninth-rank experts, they could be said to be immune to heat and cold under normal circumstances.

Fan Xian smiled, looked at him, and said, "Save as much heat and true energy as you can. Don't think you can withstand the cold now, because we still have to go further north. Who knows how low the temperature will be there?"

As he said this, he lowered his head slightly, concealing the faint worry in his eyes. In the Xishan cave in the fifth year of Qingli, he had memorized every word of what Xiao En said before his death, and had made thorough preparations for this trip to the Shrine, but he still had not imagined that the cold of heaven and earth would have reached this level only ten days after leaving the Tian Guan.

It seems that the current temperature is several degrees colder than when Xiao En and Ku He went to the Shrine decades ago.

"Since the greatest difficulty is the cold, why don't we choose to set out in the summer?" Haitang keenly noticed this problem. The attitude Fan Xian showed now was not very urgent. In that case, setting out in the summer seemed to be the best choice.

Fan Xian was silent for a moment, then said, "The journey will take about two months, and I don't know how much longer it will take to find the Shrine. Setting out at the end of winter and arriving in early summer is safer... And I don't want to be trapped in darkness for half a year."

"Yes, I heard that the Shrine is a place where heaven and earth are reversed, with half a year of darkness and half a year of daylight." Wang Shisanlang nodded.

"You don't understand this world as well as I do, so you just need to listen to me." Fan Xian said calmly, but his words were full of unquestionable confidence. Yes, he had confirmed again that this was Earth when he and Da Bao were stargazing together. Since it was Earth, then the Arctic naturally had polar days and polar nights.

The north of this world is too cold, and few people can set foot in the depths of the snowfield, let alone return alive. Therefore, in legends, the location of the Shrine has some mysterious and unknown atmosphere. However, this mystery had no effect in front of Fan Xian.

Fan Xian took out three strange things from the cloth bag beside him and handed two of them to Haitang and Wang Shisanlang, saying, "From now on, we will probably only see snow. Too monotonous colors can cause problems with the eyes. Whether you're used to it or not, you must wear these things."

As soon as he finished speaking, Fan Xian put the object on the bridge of his nose. It turned out to be a pair of glass spectacles, but the lenses were painted black with some kind of paint, but they still allowed light to pass through.

Haitang narrowed her eyes slightly and looked at Fan Xian for a long time without speaking. She felt more and more that she couldn't see through him, and didn't know what the thing in her hand was for. Would it be good for her eyes? She didn't ask much, but followed Fan Xian's example and put the world's first pair of sunglasses on her upturned nose.

They had seen crystal glasses before, but they had never seen this kind of black one. Wang Shisanlang looked at Haitang and hesitated before putting them on his eyes. The three of them suddenly became three young fortune tellers who looked somewhat comical. The three looked at each other for a moment and couldn't help but laugh.

"Let's get on the road. We'll camp in another hour." Fan Xian took out the pocket watch that he had carefully protected from his arms and looked at it, then squinted at the sky in the wind and snow and said. Traveling north, he was afraid that it would not be accurate to look at the time by the sky. He didn't know how many days this pocket watch could last in the cold.

A whooshing sound rang out. The sixty-odd snow dogs, who had rested for a moment, perked up and barked, joyfully rushing into the depths of the snowfield. Their silvery-white fur flowed with a wonderful sense of movement.

Fan Xian leaned against the leather box of the sled, squinted slightly, feeling the cold snow on his eyelashes against his thin skin, couldn't help but twitch his nose, and pulled the ties on his collar and cuffs tighter, not wanting any snow to get into his body.

From the fifth year of Qingli, when he learned the location and route map of the Shrine, Fan Xian had kept this secret in his heart for more than six years. He knew that it was destined that he would eventually go to the Shrine, but he did not expect that it would be to find Uncle Wu Zhu, and because of the break between himself and His Majesty the Emperor.

The journey of exploration... once there is such a direct purpose, it seems to lose many of the wonderful feelings. The sled glided quickly on the flat snowfield, and the rapid breathing of the snow dogs and the rustling of the wind and snow came from all directions. Accompanied by such sounds, Fan Xian seemed to be falling asleep.

He couldn't fall asleep. He was carefully listening to the breathing frequency of the snow dogs to judge their fatigue. In the six years, his younger brother Fan Sizhe had followed his instructions to prepare all the things needed to overcome the cold, including the food, fire seeds, and specially made snow tents on the sleds in front and behind, and these snow dogs, who had been trained at the North Gate Tian Guan for three years, were Fan Xian's greatest reliance on this trip to the Shrine.

From these aspects, it can be seen that Fan Xian is an extremely meticulous person. He never fights unprepared. In the eyes of the world, going to the Shrine is as difficult as climbing to the sky, but in his opinion, as long as he is well prepared, the Shrine is just a more remote tourist attraction.

The only thing that made him a little wary was the cold. The current cold was even worse than when Xiao En and Ku He went there. In those days, the Da Wei Dynasty had put on a show of a hundreds-strong expedition team, and in the end, the two great experts, Xiao En and Ku He, still needed to eat human flesh to survive until the Shrine appeared. Now there were only three people in their team. Could they survive until they reached that place?

Fan Xian closed his eyes, but he didn't worry that he would freeze. The meridians in his body were indeed almost completely destroyed, and he couldn't mobilize his true energy to protect his body. However, what was strange was that as soon as he entered this uninhabited, extremely cold snowfield, he keenly noticed that the heaven and earth's vital energy in the wind and snow seemed to be much richer than anywhere in the south.

This sensitivity was due to the small booklet given to him by Grandmaster Ku He before his death. Without that booklet, Fan Xian would probably not be able to sense the slightest change in heaven and earth. Why is the heaven and earth's vital energy richer the further north you go? This was a phenomenon that Fan Xian could not understand, but it was a good thing after all. He lay half-reclined on the sled, slowly absorbing the fluctuations of the heaven and earth's vital energy. If the vital energy in the north was richer, perhaps it would only take two or three years for the meridians in his body to be restored to their original state.

The sled bumped slightly on the ice and snow, and Fan Xian woke up from that empty state, his eyes slightly narrowed, and he calmly observed the wind and snow land in front of him through his sunglasses, suddenly gaining some understanding. In those days, the Da Wei Dynasty dominated the world, and that emperor who had nothing else to ask for sent envoys to dedicate to the Shrine in order to seek the path to immortality. All of this was because of Ku He's suggestion.

Xiao En, who was in charge of the Tiqi (Imperial Guard), vaguely grasped the approximate location of the Shrine, but who in the world would dare to risk their lives to explore it? If Ku He had not strongly promoted this matter and tempted the Wei Emperor with immortality, the trip to the Shrine decades ago would probably not have happened at all.

Why was Ku He so interested in the Shrine that he was willing to go at all costs? Was it simply because he was a bitter ascetic of the Tianyi Taoist sect and served the Shrine for life? No, Ku He was a realist. Just looking at the agreement he reached with his mother Ye Qingmei, who was imprisoned in the Shrine, within a moment outside the Shrine, he knew that this Grandmaster Ku He did not have much respect for the Shrine.

Fan Xian's eyes under his sunglasses narrowed even more. He didn't know when Grandmaster Ku He got the small booklet. Could it be that he had already noticed that there was a problem with the heaven and earth's vital energy in the north at that time, so he wanted to go to the Shrine to see the source and truth of all these fluctuations?

……

……

The wind and snow were getting heavier and heavier, and the temperature was getting lower and lower. The white sheep and snow foxes that could still be seen occasionally had disappeared to avoid the cold. On the desolate snowfield, only this team of snow dogs was struggling to move forward in the wind and snow.

From the sled where Fan Xian was, came two suppressed coughs. This kind of low temperature was not something that ordinary people could withstand, and his injuries had not healed, so he was indeed having a hard time.

Wang Shisanlang on the sled in front seemed not to have heard Fan Xian's coughs, but was looking ahead vigilantly. Suddenly, his body turned into a sword light, wearing a bloated fur coat, piercing the air and rushing directly to the front of the snow dog team, stabbing fiercely into a slightly raised pile of ice and snow.

The snow dogs were in a commotion for a while before calming down. Several bold and curious snow dogs went over and stood beside Wang Shisanlang, sniffing, and then let out several sharp cries, extremely cheerful.

Wang Shisanlang held his sword in his left hand and sheathed it, staring blankly at the pure white bear that the snow dogs had dug out of the snow. This was originally a task that Fan Xian had given him: to hunt some prey along the way to prepare for future needs.

The snow dogs were very obedient. After tearing the white bear out of the snow, they did not take any further action, but only licked their dog snouts with blood, extremely cheerful, because they knew that their masters would definitely leave most of the flesh and blood for them to eat.

"We can roast bear paws tonight." Fan Xian did not get off the sled, but looked at Haitang and Wang Shisanlang tying the white bear onto the empty sled, and couldn't help but smile happily.

This was just an interlude. The sled team started again, and under Fan Xian's whistling instructions, moved quickly along the cold snow river in a northwesterly direction.

Haitang sat on the sled, looking at Fan Xian's back in front of her, a trace of worry flashed in her eyes. She didn't know if Fan Xian's current body could continue to support him. However, the worry in her eyes turned into doubt and deep admiration in an instant. Haitang rarely admired anyone in her life, but today, looking at Fan Xian's calm and confident manner, as if everything was under his control, she finally admired him a little.

Why did Fan Xian have such strong confidence in reaching the Shrine? Why did he seem to have no respect or fear for the Shrine at all? Could it be that, as her master said in those years, Miss Ye was really a fairy who ran out of the Shrine, so Fan Xian was going to the Shrine... just to go home?

What the Shrine was, few people knew. Fan Xian closed his eyes halfway, nestled in a place, saving his energy, and his heart was also rippling with faint waves. He knew that his mother had stolen things from the Shrine, and he even knew that his closest Uncle Wu Zhu was originally from the Shrine. Logically speaking, he was the person in this world who had the closest relationship with the Shrine, so his mentality on this trip to the Shrine was also a bit strange. It seemed that he might discover the truth of everything, or even the truth of his own life this time.

Of course, this might just be wishful thinking. The most critical issue at the moment was to find the Shrine. In those days, Ku He and Xiao En were the strongest people on this continent, and their age and physical strength were at their peak, but they still had such a hard time finding it. Fan Xian had no advantages compared to them, so where did his confidence come from?

Knowledge is power. Fan Xian had more knowledge from his previous life than anyone else in this world, so many of the mysteries were actually just natural phenomena in his eyes. And because of this knowledge, he also knew the route map from Xiao En's mouth, so he was not worried that he would get lost.

Fan Xian on the sled carefully put the latest pocket compass from the Neiku (Imperial Treasury) last year back into his sleeve, sighed, stretched out his finger, and drew two semicircular arcs up and down in the snow-covered air, softly muttering to himself: "What does '勿' mean?"