mchenry-crisis.org Chapter 151 The Summit
Chapter 151 The Summit
The altitude is 4,000 meters.
Song Chen encountered a second team of martial arts practitioners.
This squad is much stronger than the previous one. There are five people, and the leader is at the initial stage of the fourth rank. He uses a greatsword as wide as a door panel.
They are being attacked by three snow leopards.
The three snow leopards worked together like a single unit, with one restraining the captain from the front and the other two taking turns attacking from the flanks. Each attack left new wounds on the team members.
The captain swung his greatsword with great force, but the snow leopard was too fast. The spiritual energy of the high mountains made their muscle fibers several times denser than those of the lowland snow leopards, and their burst speed was comparable to that of a fifth-tier leopard.
Since we've encountered this, let's just kill it while we're at it.
Song Chen drew his Heavenly Blade and charged forward.
The first strike was aimed at the snow leopard that was directly restraining the captain.
Sensing danger, the snow leopard abandoned its captain and turned to pounce on Song Chen.
Its claws struck the back of the Heavenly Blade, but it struck the wrong thing.
The moment Song Chen's knife struck it, it flipped, the blade changing from a vertical slash to a horizontal one, cutting into the armpit of its foreleg just past its claw.
The armpits are the weakest point in a snow leopard's body, with the thinnest fur and no psionic markings for protection.
The blade cut in from under the armpit, through the muscle, severed the blood vessel, and emerged from the other shoulder.
The snow leopard's foreleg was severed at the root, causing it to lose its balance and fall to one side.
Song Chen's second strike came the instant it fell, slicing through the skull from behind the ear.
[A fourth-tier alien beast has been killed, gaining 5124 kill points.]
The remaining two snow leopards abandoned their attack and pounced on Song Chen from the left and right.
Their coordination was even better than before; one attacked from the front, while the other circled around to their back, blocking their escape route.
Song Chen did not retreat. He took a step forward, his body crashing into the snow leopard's attack range.
The snow leopard's paw slammed down on his head, and his knife swung upwards from below, the blade imbued with purple lightning, slicing through the snow leopard's jaw and cleaving its skull in two.
[A fourth-tier alien beast has been killed, gaining 3987 kill points.]
The snow leopard had already pounced on him from behind, but he didn't turn around; instead, he reached his left hand behind him.
The Mystic Eyes of Illusion shone deep within his pupils, and golden light of spiritual power shot from his fingertips, condensing into an extremely fine needle.
This is a technique he learned after becoming a fourth-tier ability user.
The mental needle pierced the snow leopard's forehead, penetrating its skull and reaching its brain tissue.
The snow leopard's vertical pupils blurred less than a foot from his back. It lost control of its body in mid-air, grazed his shoulder, and crashed to the ground, sliding more than ten meters away.
[A fourth-tier alien beast has been killed, gaining 4038 kill points.]
The five people stood frozen in place, the captain's hand gripping the greatsword trembling.
He was a fourth-tier martial artist who had spent five years killing exotic beasts on the southern slopes of the Himalayas.
He had met genius martial artists from Great Xia and high-level superhumans from Eagle Country.
He had never seen anyone kill a snow leopard like that.
One slash, one head; three level-four snow leopards fell in no more than five breaths from the first slash to the third.
Song Chen picked out the three crystal cores, put them away, and glanced at the team leader: "How far is Mount Everest?"
The captain's Adam's apple bobbed.
"Heading north, about 100 kilometers, but you'll have to pass through the territory of the Snow Demons, who are at the peak of the fourth tier and live in groups."
Song Chen nodded and walked north.
At an altitude of 5,000 meters, the territory of the snow dart.
Song Chen stood on a piece of glacier debris, looking down at the snow darts in the valley below.
There were more than a dozen of them, and the leader was at the peak of the fourth tier.
They are smaller than snow leopards, standing about three meters tall, but their psionic density is several times that of snow leopards.
At this moment, the snow apes are devouring a wild yak that they have just hunted. The yak's carcass has been torn into more than a dozen pieces, and each snow ape is holding a piece in its mouth, squatting on the edge of a crevice in the glacier and munching on it.
The crunching sound of bones being chewed echoed through the valley.
Song Chen jumped off a piece of glacier debris.
More than a dozen snow demons raised their heads at the same time, and more than a dozen pairs of scarlet eyes stared at him.
The lead snow demon, the largest of them all, stood nearly eight meters tall and let out a sharp screech. Instantly, the other snow demons dropped the meat in their mouths and pounced on it.
They are more than twice as fast as snow leopards, and when they move on the snow, you can hardly see their legs moving; only white afterimages surround them from all directions.
Song Chen stood in the center of the encirclement, and purple lightning began to flicker on the blade of the Tianjun Blade.
The first snow leopard pounced in front of it. Its claws were shorter than those of a snow leopard, but thicker and harder, with a layer of keratin hardened by psionic energy covering its nails.
The claws slapped at his face, moving so fast that they left a white trail in the air.
Song Chen turned to the side, his claws grazing past the snow demon's ear. His knife pierced the snow demon's ribs, and with a horizontal slash, he ripped open its entire abdominal cavity.
Internal organs and blood spilled onto the snow, melting into a steaming depression.
[A fourth-tier alien beast has been killed, gaining 1987 kill points.]
The second and third heads attacked simultaneously from the left and right sides.
Song Chen did not retreat. Instead, he crouched down and slid through the gap between the claws of the two snow demons as if his bones had been removed.
In the instant it slid past, the Heavenly Blade slashed left and right. The left snow demon's leg was severed at the knee joint, and the right snow demon's abdomen was cut open with a deep gash that exposed its internal organs.
Both snow demons fell to the ground at the same time.
The remaining snow demons did not back down despite the death of their companions.
There was no fear in his scarlet eyes, only an even stronger killing intent. The four heads pounced at the same time, blocking all his escape routes from four directions.
Four pairs of claws, sixteen nails covered with a layer of psionic keratin, drew sixteen white trails in the thin air.
On Song Chen's blade, the lightning changed from purple to dark gold.
The dark golden blade light spread outwards from him, forming a blade domain with a diameter of twenty meters.
The four snow demons froze the moment they touched the blade domain.
This intent of the blade acts directly on the central nervous system, severing the mental connection between the brain and the body.
The four snow daemons remained pouncing like four statues as they fell from the sky and crashed onto the snow, motionless.
Song Chen only used four cuts.
Upon seeing this, the lead snow demon let out a strange cry, turned around, and ran away, as did the others.
"Still trying to run?"
Song Chen drew his knife and chased after him.
One day later, Mount Everest.
Song Chen stood at the highest point of Blue Star, at an altitude of 8,848 meters.
In the old days, this place was the ultimate symbol of mankind's conquest of nature.
Even after the arrival of psychic powers, this place remains a forbidden zone for life.
Song Chen stood beneath a cloud, with no strange beasts around him.
The wind blew in from the west, carrying dry, cold air from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.
The psionic cloud spun slowly overhead, casting his shadow on the millennia-old snow and ice of Mount Everest with its ethereal blue light.
The shadow was stretched long, extending from the peak down the ridge and finally disappearing into the sea of clouds.
Song Chen looked eastward, towards the territory of the Great Xia Dynasty. Crossing Mount Everest would lead to the road home.
His chest heaved, then he looked up and shouted at the psionic cloud, at Mount Everest, at that unseen land.
"Aaaaaah!!!"
The sound traveled far in the thin air.
There was no echo. Mount Everest is too high; the sound only spreads outward and doesn't bounce back.
But his voice was so loud that it drowned out the sound of the wind high in the sky.
The psionic cloud slowly rotated above his head, its eerie blue light flashing as if in response.
On the mountainside, several teams of martial arts practitioners who were climbing looked up at the same time.
They heard the shout, a meaningless shout coming from the highest point of the blue planet.
After shouting, Song Chen smiled happily.
Now he stands at the highest point of Blue Star, with snow and ice that have never melted for millennia beneath his feet, a crown of spiritual energy above his head, and the Great Xia Dynasty opposite him, his home.
He gripped the hilt of the Heavenly Blade tightly and walked down the mountain.