Passerby: Secret Image of Ancient Scrolls

The gunman's gun was already pointed at the window of car 2045.

Old Gu and Lin Jian, who were inside the car, were unable to move and were like two live targets. As long as the assassin pulled the trigger, he could instantly eliminate these two burdens.

But his finger rested on the trigger, yet he didn't pull it. His sinister gaze swept across the entire area, finally settling on the steep cliff to the side.

The cliff was smooth and flat, now covered with a thin layer of ice formed by wind and snow. It was hard to find even a crack to hold onto. It stood in an open area, and he could see the whole thing clearly from the slope. There was absolutely no way he could climb it with his bare hands.

He glanced down at the slope beneath his feet. The slope was wider at the top and narrower at the bottom, with the slope jutting outwards. Below was a cliff that connected to the side wall, hidden in a blind spot of the slope. Even if he peeked out, he might not be able to see the whole thing. But he had been traversing the cliffs of this mountain since childhood and knew the terrain like the back of his hand.

The cliff below the slope is even more treacherous than the sheer cliff on the side. In the middle section, there is a three-meter-wide area of ​​hanging precarious air that extends outwards, with no place to even put your foot down. It seems impossible to get across.

Not to mention that it's snowing at minus thirty degrees Celsius now, the top rock surface has long been frozen into a mirror by the wind and snow, so smooth that there's nowhere to touch it. Even if you can barely touch a few protruding rock points, they've long been frozen and loose, and it's hard to say whether they can support the weight of an adult man.

He later practiced rock climbing for over a decade, undergoing the most rigorous professional training, possessing unparalleled tenacity, strength, and skill. Even with full professional equipment, he wouldn't dare challenge this seemingly impossible path in such weather, let alone climb it without protection or equipment.

He simply couldn't believe that even if that man was highly skilled in martial arts, he could somehow fly over from nowhere in such a desperate situation.

The sheer cliffs on the surface were insurmountable, and the hidden slopes and cliffs below were even more dead ends. The only way to get close to the suspended vehicle on the entire battlefield was this snow slope that he was desperately guarding.

An idea instantly formed in his mind: killing these two useless guys would be too easy, but once they were dead, his scattered teammates would simply flee, making it difficult to capture them all in one fell swoop. It would be better to keep these two live bait and wait for them to come to him. Their teammates would definitely risk their lives to rescue them, and anyone who dared to charge down this snow slope would be completely exposed to his gun, and he could kill them one by one.

He slowly holstered his gun, a sinister smile playing on his lips. Using the pine trees for cover, he crouched down, completely letting his guard down. In his eyes, this area was an impenetrable trap; even if the man had wings, he couldn't possibly get behind him. He only needed to guard this slope and wait for his prey to walk right into his trap.

At this point, the battlefield was already fraught with danger.

Just now, Shen Xun had disappeared into the swirling snow; Ye Zhuo was facing the slope guarded by two assassins and had no way to charge forward, so he could only retreat to the foot of the road to take temporary shelter.

Two assassins, one at a distance and the other at close range, one with a crossbow and the other with a gun, have laid an ambush, blocking the only slope leading to 2045, and are just waiting for the rescuers to come and die.

Ye Zhuo's heart sank. All she could do at this moment was limited harassment fire. Shen Xun was nowhere to be found, and Ao Luya was still chasing the assassin who had fled into the woods. Old Gu and Lin Jian inside the car were trapped; if the small tree supporting the vehicle broke, it would mean certain death. She knew she couldn't just sit and wait to die; she had to disrupt the assassin and buy Lin Jian and Old Gu a chance to survive.

The howling wind, whipping up the heavy snow, mingled with the creaking of the suspended vehicle, adding to the deadly danger. "Shen Xun! Ao Luya! The vehicle is suspended in mid-air! Think of something!" Ye Zhuo roared at the top of his lungs, his voice piercing the howling wind and clearly echoing throughout the battlefield.

Without hesitation, she drew the composite bow to her front, her fingers swiftly drawing two carbon fiber arrows from the quiver with clean, decisive movements. She adjusted her breathing slightly, leaning against the roadbed, ready to strike at any moment.

Ao Luya had reached the fleeing assassin, blocking his path and completely cutting off any possibility of him escaping into the woods.

During the chase just now, she had already spurred the white deer and used its hard antlers to strike hard from behind. The assassin was knocked to the ground on the spot, and his already injured hands were unable to even push himself up.

Hearing Ye Zhuo's heart-wrenching cries, Ao Luya immediately stopped entangled with the cripple and gave a low shout to the white deer, issuing an order. The white deer understood immediately, raising its front hooves high and stomping down hard on the assassin's limbs. Several crisp sounds mixed with the assassin's screams were swallowed by the wind and snow, completely cutting off any possibility of his escape or sneak attack.

Ao Luya yanked the reins hard, and the white deer immediately turned and sped towards the chariot like an arrow, its figure becoming a blur. Ao Luya gripped the shield tightly with one hand and placed the other on the deer bone knife at her waist, her eyes fixed on the direction of 2045, her gaze growing increasingly sharp, already prepared to charge at any moment.

Meanwhile, Shen Xun, who had disappeared into the wind and snow, had already seen through the entire deadly situation.

He didn't choose the steep slope the assassin had predicted. That path was completely exposed to gunfire, offering no cover whatsoever. Once he revealed himself, he would be shot, his own safety in jeopardy, let alone rescuing the people in the car. His gaze first swept over the wide, sheer cliff to the side, and he immediately abandoned it: the cliff face was completely exposed to the assassin's view. Even if he could manage to climb it, he would become a sitting duck, with absolutely no chance of survival.

Finally, his gaze settled on the cliff below the slope where the armed assassin was guarding, a cliff that was obscured by the slope and that the assassin was certain could not possibly climb. There was a height difference of more than 20 meters between the top of the slope and the roadbed by the river. This cliff face jutted outward, forming a natural blind spot. The assassin standing on the top of the slope could not see any movement on the cliff face at all.

But it is precisely this structure that makes the climb so perilous. The suspended eaves in the middle section offer no footholds for leverage, forcing one to rely entirely on finger strength to forge ahead.

This was a dead end in the eyes of the assassin, but it was also Shen Xun's only way out of this deadly situation.

Fortunately, Shen Xun was also proficient in light-body skills. His light-body skills were not the flying and soaring depicted in martial arts novels and television dramas; in reality, they were simply a fusion of rock climbing, parkour, and traditional martial arts techniques. Most importantly, practicing light-body skills requires achieving a lightness of the body, controlling weight as much as possible, and honing physical fitness. Only through accumulated experience can one see results. It was through this kind of dedicated practice over hundreds of years that he developed a unique set of techniques that combined the finger strength and endurance of rock climbing with the agility of parkour, while also using the lightness of traditional techniques to maintain balance—all three seamlessly integrated.

Even so, this free solo ice climbing in the snow is still a gamble that even professional climbers dare not attempt.

He took a deep breath, rubbed his hands which were stiff and numb from the cold, and, taking advantage of the wind, snow and rocks, quietly circled around to the bottom of the cliff directly below the slope.

He dug his fingertips into the first crevice of the rock wall, and the snow slid down between his fingers. The sharp frozen soil instantly cut his fingers, and a familiar pain shot through his old wrist wound. The golden blood that gushed out was frozen into ice shards by the cold wind. The piercing pain spread from his fingertips to his whole body, but he was completely unaware of it.

His ears twitched slightly, and he clearly caught the choked screams of Lao Gu and Lin Jian inside the car, along with the ear-piercing cracking sound of the small tree supporting the vehicle. His teammates' lives hung in the balance; he had no right to slow down. His fingertips dug into the cold cracks in the rock, his feet precisely finding the few footholds on the cliff face, his body moving silently like a monkey as he climbed upwards, barely daring to breathe loudly for fear of alerting the killers on the slope.

Reaching the middle of the precipice, the most deadly danger suddenly descended, exactly as the assassin had predicted. The rock face abruptly changed structure, the slope abruptly extending outwards to form an "eave" more than three meters wide. The rocks at the eaves were covered with thick ice, making them slippery and impossible to touch. Even more deadly was that beyond this eaves, the rock face would continue to rise again, and beneath his feet was complete emptiness, with a rocky riverbank stretching out just over ten meters below.

The weight of the entire person instantly pressed down on the fingers that were gripping the crevice in the rock.

The wound on his finger reopened, and golden blood flowed down between his fingers, freezing onto the cold rock.

His old wrist injury flared up, and excruciating pain spread throughout his body along his bones. His body swayed slightly in the suspended snowstorm, and with each breath, he could feel the rock cracks at his fingertips crumbling bit by bit, as if it would completely collapse at any moment.

In that split second between life and death, the sounds coming from the wind and snow pierced his heart with every single one.

He heard a piercing metallic creak from the 2045's body, accompanied by Old Gu's heart-wrenching roar, as the vehicle clearly sank further outward; he heard the sharp sound of crossbow bolts piercing the air below, along with the startled cries of the white deer and Ao Luya's low shouts, indicating that the situation on the ground had reached its limit; he could even hear the heavy breathing of the gunman on the slope, as the other party adjusted his position, getting closer and closer to his head.

His teammate wouldn't last much longer, but he was trapped on the precarious roof, unable to move quickly or slowly.

He clenched his teeth, his jawline aching from the tension, forcefully suppressing the surging anxiety in his chest, focusing all his attention on his fingertips. The body control he had honed over centuries was now at its peak. Using the strength of his waist and abdomen to stabilize his suspended body, his left hand gripped the crevice tightly, while his right hand groped forward little by little, his fingertips repeatedly searching for a foothold on the icy rock surface, until finally he found a very shallow crevice.

He exerted force with his fingertips, repeatedly testing the firmness of the crack in the stone. The moment he confirmed that it could support his entire weight, he suddenly shifted his center of gravity, gripped the crack tightly with his right hand, and slowly released it with his left hand. With a slight sway of his body, he moved forward less than ten centimeters.

With each movement, the rock beneath his fingertips crumbled and crumbled, and even his breathing had to be timed to match the rhythm of his exertion. The wind and snow, swirling with ice shards, pelted his face, obscuring his vision. He could only rely on the feel of his fingertips to judge the firmness of the cracks in the rock, and depended entirely on muscle memory to complete each exertion and each shift.

He moved the overhanging eaves, which were more than three meters wide, bit by bit, a process that felt as long as a lifetime.

I was less than half a meter away from reaching the vertical rock face at the end of the eaves and finding a foothold on the protruding rock.

His nerves, stretched to their limit, remained tense. But just as he was about to shift his weight, a soft cracking sound came from the crevice in the rock that his left hand was gripping. Years of wind and snow erosion had made the frozen rock surface soft and brittle, unable to withstand his continued pulling. The edge of the crevice shattered with a crash.

The support vanished instantly, and he plummeted downwards. In the nick of time, he managed to hold on by gripping the narrow crevice he had just touched with three fingers of his right hand. But the shattered rocks tumbled down the cliff face, crashing against the rocks below with a series of exceptionally piercing sounds in the wind and snow.

Almost the instant the sound was heard, the footsteps on the hilltop abruptly stopped.

Immediately following, a soft thud of footsteps on snow was heard, mixed with the sharp whistling of arrows. The assassin, risking being hit by a stray arrow, instantly crouched low and quickly moved towards the edge of the cliff. He deliberately kept his footsteps as light as possible, but each step closer felt like a heavy hammer blow to Shen Xun's heart.

Two steps later, the footsteps stopped less than a meter from the edge of the cliff.

Shen Xun froze completely, hanging from the precipice a dozen meters above the ground by only three fingers, with the rocky riverbank below. He could barely breathe. The wound on his finger was torn open by the extreme force, and blood gushed out, but he didn't dare to tremble even slightly, for fear of knocking down more rocks and revealing his position.

He could clearly feel the shadow looming over the cliff top. The assassin had already crouched down and was peering down the cliff face.

In the midst of a blizzard, life and death hang in the balance.