One person: Starting with the Snow Drinking Blade

Nie Lingfeng ran his fingertips along the rim of the bowl and gently pushed it back in front of the uncle.

"Thank you, sir. The money for the tea is on the table."

He stood up, placed a banknote on the rim of the bowl, and turned to walk back. The wind rushed in from the end of the street, lifting the hem of his coat. His steps quickened compared to when he came, and his gaze fell on the snow-covered main peak in the distance, the color in the depths of his pupils darkening slightly.

Back at the inn, everyone was sitting around two low tables pushed together in the small lobby on the first floor. Zhang Chulan was sitting cross-legged on a round stool, peeling a peanut, leaving shells scattered all over the table. Wang Ye was peeling an apple with a knife, the blade circling around and around without cutting through the peel. Chen Duo was sitting by the window, holding Xiao Yun, who was holding an open picture book and pointing to a tiger in it, saying "big cat" to Chen Duo. Lu Linglong was leaning against the wall, her eyes downcast, flipping through a sword manual, her fingertips slowly tracing the arc of a sword's movement on an illustration on a certain page.

Nie Lingfeng walked in and sat down at the table, briefly recounting the information he had gathered from the stall.

"Qu Tong and his group went into the mountains half a month ago." He pressed the still-warm bowl of butter tea in his palm onto the table. "And there were indeed sounds coming from the mountains—the old folks in town said it was a muffled sound coming up from underground, like drumming, or something making noise."

Zhang Chulan stopped halfway through peeling peanuts, the shells still lingering in his hand: "Coming from underground? Is there something underground in Kunlun Mountain?"

"The ancestor of all mountains, the source of the dragon vein." Wang Ye cut the peeled apple into several slices and arranged them on a small plate. He used a bamboo skewer to stick one slice into Zhang Chulan's hand, and another slice into Lu Linglong's hand. "The Kunlun Mountains themselves are a huge Qi vein node. If anyone could disturb that primordial Qi at its core..." He shook his head, "it wouldn't be surprising if any disturbances came from underground."

"And they arrived half a month earlier than us." Zhang Lingyu sat on a bench on the other side, hands resting on her knees, her long eyebrows slightly lowered. "Half a month to prepare is enough time to set up a considerable trap. If we rashly enter the mountains, every step we take could lead us into a pre-set trap."

"What should we do then?" Lu Linglong chewed on an apple slice, swallowed it, and then looked back at Nie Lingfeng. "Master, should we go in?"

Nie Lingfeng responded without hesitation: "We'll go in first thing tomorrow morning. Everyone rests tonight and takes stock of the equipment. We'll set off at dawn tomorrow."

Everyone fell silent for a moment, then nodded to each other.

That night, Naqitai was unusually quiet. The wind blowing in from the valley outside the window, carrying the chill of snow, lashed against the painted walls of the inn, making a low, whistling sound. Zhang Chulan tossed and turned on the slightly sagging bed in his room for a long time, finally settling down only after pulling the blanket over his head. In Nie Lingfeng's room at the end of the corridor, the light stayed on late, and the occasional footsteps of someone moving about peeked through the crack in the door, creaking softly on the wooden floor.

At 4:30 a.m. the next morning, it was still completely dark. Car lights were already on outside the hotel, and the engines of two SUVs hummed in the cold. The group checked their equipment by the vehicles. Climbing ropes were coiled up and hung on the side of the frames, the sharp blades of ice axes gleamed coldly in the lamplight, and the valves of the oxygen cylinders were tightened and checked again and again. Xiaoyun was wrapped in a thick down jacket by Chen Duo, with only her eyes showing. The child yawned sleepily, then leaned back against Chen Duo's shoulder and closed her eyes again.

"Set off."

Nie Lingfeng slipped the last pair of crampons into the side pocket of his backpack, closed the car door, and stepped on the gas. The headlights cut through the night, casting two cone-shaped beams of light on the gravel road, illuminating the winding mountain road ahead inch by inch.

The mountain road grew steeper and steeper. After leaving the highway, the off-road vehicle followed a makeshift gravel path left by the exploration team for over an hour before the road abruptly ended, leaving only a gully of rocks eroded by floods and snowmelt. The group disembarked and began hiking, each carrying about twenty kilograms of equipment, trudging uphill over gravel and frozen ground. With every two hundred meters of altitude gained, the depth of their breath increased noticeably. Lu Linglong's lips began to crack; she licked them with the tip of her tongue, tasting a hint of rust, but she didn't stop.

By the time it was fully light, they had reached the edge of the glacier.

The glacier stretched down from the pass between two mountain peaks, nearly two hundred meters wide, its surface uneven, riddled with countless crisscrossing fissures and icicles. The ice's color transitioned from light blue to dark blue, then to a near-black inky blue, becoming increasingly somber towards the deeper layers, as if a frozen, bottomless lake lay hidden beneath. The wind whistled across the ice, like someone scratching a vast, thin pane of glass with their fingernail.

"One by one, stay close." Nie Lingfeng put on his crampons and fastened them tightly. He was the first to step onto the ice, the metal claws digging into the ice with a soft, squeaking sound. He chose to place each foot on the darkest part of the ice ahead, where the ice was thickest and most stable. The others formed a single file, moving forward step by step in the footprints of the person in front of them.

The ice was much slipperier than it looked. Zhang Chulan walked about two hundred meters before his foot stepped onto a dark patch of ice covered in broken pieces. His foot lurched to the side, and he swung his arm to grab Zhang Lingyu's outstretched wrist. He hung on the ice, swaying a couple of times before regaining his balance. His heart skipped a beat. He looked down at the thin, translucent crack beneath his feet, which was spreading upwards from beneath the ice, just a hand's width away from his toes.

"...Thank you." He released Zhang Lingyu's wrist, his voice slightly muffled than usual.

"Watch your step." Zhang Lingyu withdrew his hand, his tone calm, but he slowed his pace by half a step to wait for him to catch up.

The team continued moving across the glacier. The wind grew stronger, and the chill seeping into their collars felt like a bucket of cold water running down their spines. Lu Linglong buried her face in her scarf, leaving only her eyes exposed; a fine layer of frost covered her eyelashes, and each blink produced a faint crackling sound. Wang Ye took out his oxygen tank, inhaled twice, stood in the middle of the group catching his breath for a few seconds, then stepped forward to catch up.

After advancing about a kilometer further, a deep, muffled rumbling sound suddenly came from ahead, like some massive structure deep within the earth's crust shifting. The sound traveled along the ice surface, penetrating from the soles of the feet to the soles of the feet, vibrating from the knees into the chest, and the entire glacier resonated with an extremely slight amplitude, causing the tiny fragments of thin ice on the surface to twitch.

Everyone stopped in their tracks. Zhang Chulan's ears perked up, and he turned to look at Nie Lingfeng: "Brother Nie, that just now—"

"I heard you." Nie Lingfeng stood still. He turned his head slightly, facing the direction where the glacier stretched deep into the ground. A subtle, indescribable look flashed across his eyes below his brow bone—not surprise, nor alertness, but more like something had met his gaze from afar. He hadn't had time to recognize who it was, but a sense of familiarity had already welled up from the depths of his chest, running from his collarbone to the bottom of his stomach.

"This feeling..." he muttered to himself for a moment, then looked up.

At the end of the glacier is a vertical rock wall covered by a layer of millennia-old ice several meters thick. The surface of the ice is smooth as a mirror, reflecting the deep blue light of the sky. In the very center of that ice wall, a very fine crack can be faintly seen, from which a faint light shines—not the white of sunlight reflection, but a strange color, a deep blue with streaks of gold, as if something alive, luminous, and pulsating is frozen deep within the ice, sending its light up through the unfathomable thickness of the ice.

Nie Lingfeng stared at the crack for several seconds. Then he took a step forward, his pace quickening slightly.

"Let's go. Let's take a look."

The people behind him followed one by one amidst the sound of the wind and the crunching of the ice. Zhang Chulan quickened his pace to his side and asked in a low voice, "Brother Nie, what did you mean by 'this feeling'?"

Nie Lingfeng didn't stop. He walked silently for a dozen steps, then stopped at the edge of a relatively wide crack in the ice, waiting for everyone to cross it one by one, before replying, "Someone is calling me."

He didn't turn around; his voice, half-shattered by the wind, traveled back behind him. Zhang Chulan was stunned for a moment, and before he could ask any questions, the ice wall at the end of the glacier ahead—less than a hundred meters away from them—suddenly emitted a muffled hum that lasted for nearly five seconds. Then, the blue-gold light in the crack suddenly doubled in brightness, as if something on the other side of the ice wall had opened its eyes and looked at them through the millennia-old ice.

Lu Linglong subconsciously gripped the sword manual in the side pocket of her backpack. Wang Ye's thermos lid clicked shut. Xiao Yun woke up in Chen Duo's arms, rubbed her eyes, looked at the glowing ice wall in the distance, and suddenly grinned, exclaiming, "A light! A huge light!"

Nie Lingfeng stood still. As the buzzing sound that pressed down from the ice wall swept over him, a very faint layer of golden scales appeared on the skin beneath his clothes, fading away in less than a breath. He glanced down at the inside of his wrist; the fading scales still left a warm aftertaste.

He picked up his foot again and walked toward the crack.

What awaited him behind the ice wall was something else entirely.