The Tale Never Ends Chapter 194 Lost in the Fros

There were ways to confound people and render them lost and clueless. Ghosts Barriers, a simple magic that common ghosts and spirits were capable of, was one of them. Zhu Mei's Windchaser enchantment was also another. But there were also mazes that could be conjured or erected. But I had not been looking closely enough, hence I failed to make out what was it leading us running in circles in the snow.

Bian Dashou stopped and surveyed their surroundings, looking deeply into the falling snow quietly. But even he failed to see anything out of place. He waved and beckoned his party to keep moving. With their bearing renewed, the party pushed on. Only this time, I became more alert.

We pressed on for another hour, then the lethargic and humdrum silence was shattered by a cry. We looked around and saw the cry came from the guide Li Cheng! The party came to a stop and Bian Dashou demanded, "What's wrong?!" With a voice on the verge of breaking, Li Cheng croaked, "Something's not right, my lord. We should have been out of the woods by now as usual! Even with the snow to slow us down, the journey shouldn't have taken so long! We've been circling around the woods for more than two hours!"

I was standing behind Li Cheng when he spoke and I began to see what he was trying to say. The hillside woodlands might span far beyond our sights, but its length and breadth were by no means infinite, considering the size of Mount San Feng Zi. My gaze slowly climbed up as I looked up at the sky, wondering where we were actually in this deep thick wood.

My feet slowly left the ground and I floated higher and higher into the sky. I looked down. The forest of thousands of bare and emaciated trees ringed around the slopes of Mount San Feng Zi but the party was standing at the spot where they had begun, the very same spot not far from where I had dealt with the yetis! For two long hours, we have been grappling against the thick snow without knowing that we were hardly making any headway! Not even I realized this!

It could not be Ghost Barrier or any magic manipulating elements, since I was invisible. So it could only be a reason: an enchantment that was cast unto the ground here. An enchantment that would affect anyone who walked this earth!

I could boast no expertise in the magic of bounded fields and formations. I knew only so little of them. But simple fields and formation to distract and hoodwink were hardly beyond my abilities. But this was of a wholly different level; whatever this was, it was able to trick the senses of anyone caught inside and lull its victims into believing that nothing was wrong and nothing of the surroundings has changed. Then it was also able to continually deceive its victims that none of us realized that we were straying off our path. But there was nothing but a vista of white around us in these wildernesses, what had the conjurer used to cast his magic here?!

Shaking my head wearily, a despondent me returned back to the ground. Bian Dashou was looking up at the peak of the mountain with a forlorn gaze, still wearing the same troubled expression that never faded from his face since arriving. After several beats of silence, he continued marching uphill. Thinking that he might have come up with a solution, the party and I trailed after him. I kept a watchful eye from behind. When I walked past a tree that I found conspicuous, I leaped and snapped a twig. The broken sprig fell to the ground but not before a lump of snow from the branch above dropped to the ground and the twig came down, plunging deep into the little mound of snow like an odd little tomb marker.

The crack of the broken twig made the heads of those behind turned. Frightened stares came from all around, although none of the men could see me. A man sighed, as if with relief that it was not a rampaging monster, and said, "It's fine. Just a twig broken by the weight of the snow. That's all! Press on!"

I continued shadowing the party from behind. As we walked I noticed the falling snow raining gently but in unusually strong volumes. The snow was covering the tracks that the party had left so quickly, leaving no signs as if no one was here. "How is it possible that no one notices something is wrong with the snow!? It is doing just that: blinding the senses so that no one could see what was going on around them! The seemingly-undying blizzard continued covering up our two-foot-deep tracks as soon as we passed by and this made everything seemed the same around us; small wonder we failed to notice that we have been circling back here again!"

I looked up again. I gasped with shock. The mountain peak which was dead center ahead of us was now to our left! We had strayed off-path again!

But clearly, Bian Dashou and his party had yet to notice this. They were still moving ahead, blinded in each and every step by the scuds of frost lashing at their faces. We continued for another hour, until Bian Dashou stopped. The party eased to a halt and everyone threw inquiring glances to the front, wondering what was holding them back this time.

But I could guess what they saw; Bian Dashou was standing, dazed and quiet, before a tree. One of the twigs of the few branches of the tree was broken and the stem still looked fresh. Under the tree was a little heap of snow with the fallen twig stuck into it. Bian Dashou looked up at once, hoping to see the mountain before it, only to find that it was looming over the party from behind!

I was looking aghast myself, although I now fully realized what this contrivance was all about. Whatever it was, it was all the snow. The tempestuous snowstorm had been whipping at our faces, keeping our sights veiled with hardly much visibility that we could not even see what direction we were moving in. With the help of the snow, we saw only the trees and the snow-overspread ground surrounding us and we failed to realize the difference in the terrain wherever we go. The trees of the forests look almost the same to us, all skeletal and leafless. With their visions obscured that they could scarcely see the peak overhead, Bian Dashou and his party did not even notice that they were traveling back down the path we had been climbing on! Only Heaven knew how many rounds have we been circling here.

A hum of murmurings rose again from the crowd of peasants as their faith threatened to give way once more. "We should turn back, Lord Magistrate! At this rate, we might be trapped in here forever!" That was the last straw that broke whatever resolve these peons struggled to maintain; a few more voices rose from the crowd, saying, "Indeed!" "Aye!" "We should!"

Bian Dashou looked on wordlessly. He stared blankly into the falling snow, bewildered and lost, as Jia Huan turned and tried to rally the men. "Silence! Stick together! We have not been making progress, which also means we might not be able to make it back either! Stay together while we make plans! Do not stray off alone and get yourselves lost!"

But with all faith in the cause lost, his words fell on deaf ears; many of the peasants, in groups of threes and twos, began to turn and ran like soldiers routed in battle. They ran with their backs to the peaks of Mount San Feng Zi towering overhead, running like mice abandoning a sinking ship. Jia Huan was about to scream something, but a hand stopped him. It was Bian Dashou. With a simple wave, he gestured his most trusted subordinate to stand down and Jia Huan obediently bowed and retreated.

Bian Dashou looked up again at the peaks of Mount San Feng Zi that could have been within reach. No one dared to speak a word in the billowing snowstorm and they merely watched him and waited for his next order as they shivered with cold.

Before long, the howling and merciless winds of frost were coupled with a litany of crunching footfalls in the snow. We looked. It was the deserters! Despite their attempts to escape, they had been running in a circle!

As the flocks of deserters regrouped with the main party, everyone was hardly unsurprised by this. A few of the escapees began crying and wailing as the last sliver of their hopes faded, "What is going on with this Heaven-forsaken place!?" "No, I don't want to die here!"

Bian Dashou, whose expression hardly improved especially in the white glow of the snow, continued to say nothing. No one knew what swirled in his mind. Was he frozen by the cold, or was he stricken with despair; no one could tell. I too was troubled myself. "What can I do to undo this magic?" I asked myself again and again. There was no way the party could continue walking aimlessly in the blizzard.

I began combing my mind for every detail of what happened before, wishing that I might be able to glean some detail that had escaped my notice earlier. My memories replayed in my mind like an old videotape, passing back the point where we found the lump of snow that dropped from the tree, past the point I snapped the twig, moving by the point when Bian Dashou discovered that we had been straying off-path, and finally reaching the point when I was still checking on the spirits of the yetis I had drawn into my Spirit Gourd.

My fingers grazed upon the surface of the Gourd as I pondered. "The yetis... Yetis... Wait a minute?! The yetis!"

A glimmer of hope shone from the pall of gloom in the form of inspiration suddenly as I remembered trying to tame the spirits of the yetis and I failed. Then I thought of just disintegrating them to use them as ingredients for pills and elixirs. My attention was transfixed upon the Gourd during that time and I did not notice Bian Dashou's party veering off-path. That was because I was still walking on-track!

"I see! The blizzard, the snow, the trees, and the terrain are all fooling our senses, but during then, my attention was solely on my Gourd. That's why I was able to walk straight, and that's why I was able to remain on the path! So if that were true..."

My eyes climbed slowly as they zeroed in on Bian Dashou.

Chapter end