Chapter 96: Losing Members on the First Night of the Mountain Exploration, Isn’t That Bad?

Chapter 96: Losing a Member on the First Night of the Mountain Expedition—Isn’t This a Bad Omen?

"Ah—a human head!!"

A blood-curdling scream cut through the blizzard, instantly drawing the attention of the others.

Lena and Chen Hui, who had been organizing their gear, rushed out to investigate. Even Yi Fengchu, who had been alone in his tent, emerging from his tent, casting a searching gaze in their direction.

Zhang Ming was sprawled in the snow, limbs flailing wildly, kicking up fine snowflakes as if he were flailing like a drowning man in the snow or in the throes of convulsions.

The scholar quickly stepped forward, seizing Zhang Ming’s shoulders firmly as he asked gravely, "What happened?"

"A—a human head..."

Zhang Ming wheezed for breath, his exhales forming clouds of frosty breath in front of his face. Yet his complexion was even paler than the mist, his skin drenched in clammy sweat, making him look as though he had just been dragged from frozen waters.

Trembling, he raised a finger and pointed at the pot over the fire, his voice shrill with panic:

"There’s a human head in the pot! It’s my father’s head!"

Zhang Ming’s father’s head?

But the pot had only been set up a short while ago, and Zhang Ming’s father had been missing for over a decade...

How could his head have appeared in the pot out of nowhere in just those few minutes?

The scholar instinctively frowned and turned his gaze toward Eurus.

She had been sitting by the fire the whole time—if anything unusual had happened, it shouldn’t have escaped her notice.

Eurus looked completely bewildered. She shook her head and held up her hands, trying to assert her innocence. "Don’t look at me, I don’t know anything! I only saw him pour water into the empty pot and put it over the fire. No one—nothing—approached that pot the whole time. Then, after a while, he lifted the lid to check if the water was boiling, and suddenly started screaming..."

The scholar pressed further, "When he opened the lid, did you see what was inside?"

"The rising steam obscured the view a little, but I’m certain," Eurus paused, she stressed, "there was only water in the pot. Nothing else."

"You didn’t see it?" Zhang Ming seemed teetering on insanity, his fingers trembling as he gesticulated frantically in the air. "There was clearly a human head in there! It even turned over and looked right at me!"

"Its eyes were reduced to pulp... One was all shriveled up, strung with bloody filaments, and the other had slipped out of its socket, leaving behind a black, empty hole..."

Zhang Ming’s voice broke with mounting hysteria.

Sank into the snow, he slowly wrapped his arms around his head, swaying compulsively as if trying to shake the horrific image from his mind.

The scholar realized he wouldn’t get any more useful information from Zhang Ming.

He decided to use his Ability, "Truth Domain," to see the answer for himself.

The moment his hand touched the pot lid, the disembodied voice of the system whispered in his ear:

*"This snowy mountain is like an ever-shifting kaleidoscope—what each person sees through the lens at first glance may differ.*

*Through your Ability, can you see the truth you seek? That hinges entirely on fortune."*

*"This is now your solo chance roll. It will not affect the external timeline."*

*"Due to the difficulty of this luck check, the player must roll the dice three times consecutively, all within a one-minute countdown."*

As the system’s voice faded, the dice in the corner of the scholar’s vision split into three, awaiting his rolls.

The scholar sighed. Even when rolling just once, his numbers were never high. Now he had to roll three times in a row...

He held little faith in his luck.

With resignation, he tossed for the dice—and, as expected, rolled a 3, a 1, and a 4.

Yet, contrary to his expectations, the system didn’t restrict his Ability. Instead, it merely left him with ominous parting words: *"Good luck."*

What did that mean?

The scholar froze. Had those dice rolls not been to determine whether he could use his Ability?

A creeping dread stirred in his chest, but after a moment of hesitation, he braced himself and lowered his gaze to the pot over the fire.

As always, the power of the Truth Domain coalesced and swelled within him, carrying his consciousness backward in time to the moment Zhang Ming had lifted the lid.

Through Zhang Ming’s eyes, the scholar saw the same human head bobbing grotesquely in the boiling water—but he noticed far more details than Zhang Ming had.

For instance, the moment the head appeared, the formerly spotless pot was suddenly covered in a patina of grime, its edges began curling, and its smooth surface now pitted with corrosion...

These signs indicated that the pot Zhang Ming had seen in that instant was not the new one they had carried up the mountain.

Given the mountain’s temporal anomalies, it was likely that, in this exact spot, a similar fire had once been built—and over it, an old, battered pot had boiled...

And inside that pot, Zhang Ming’s father’s head had been cooked.

Did this mean Zhang Ming’s father had already died horribly on this mountain?

The scholar wasn’t surprised by the revelation of Zhang Ming’s father’s death. What intrigued him more was:

Why had his head been severed and boiled in a pot?

Had he encountered someone after his disappearance, only to meet a grisly fate—murdered and dismembered?

As he pondered, the scholar suddenly went rigid, his eyes widening in shock.

Because he realized—his Ability was spiraling out of control.

The orderly flow of power abruptly turned chaotic, spreading recklessly in all directions. The scholar felt a torrential deluge of information surge into his mind, its volume and speed far exceeding his mental capacity to withstand.

It was like forcing a container with limited capacity to hold far more than it was meant to...

His brain felt like it was swelling dangerously, near rupture, on the verge of bursting like a firework.

Most dangerously, he began compulsively absorbing information about the mountain—including knowledge laced with eldritch corruption and eldritch forces.

So this was it—sometimes, seeing too many crucial clues wasn’t necessarily a good thing...

In the split second before his consciousness shattered, the scholar finally understood the meaning of those three dice rolls.

They hadn’t been a restriction—they had been protection.

But by the time he realized it, it was already far too late.

White-hot agony detonated in his skull. The scholar digging his fists against his temples, desperately trying to stop his brain from absorbing any more of the dangerous knowledge. But the torrent of information surged like a tsunami, crashing uncontrollably into the depths of his mind.

In that instant, he saw an infinite white wastes, time itself shifting, overlapping, and splitting apart above it. He saw countless interwoven chronologies ensnaring the peak...

The scholar could no longer think, relying only on a self-preserving numbness to resist the onslaught of information pollution.

His perspective gradually rose to a high altitude, blankly gazing down at the entire snow-capped mountain.

At the very end where all possible timelines collapsed into one, the scholar suddenly locked eyes with a golden, slit-pupiled eye...

At this moment, he felt both soul-crushing terror and agony, yet also an inexplicable urge to break into hysterical laughter—

He had seen it!

He had already seen everything!

So, that mysterious fourth peak was actually...

A distant "snap" rang out in the void, and the last thread of the scholar's rationality finally snapped, bringing his overwhelmed mind to an abrupt halt.

He felt as though he were sinking into a lightless abyss, unable to move or resist. A garbled, staticky voice from the system seemed to murmur in his ears:

「You have gazed upon the indescribable, the incomprehensible... Your mind has undoubtedly suffered a tremendous impact, which may... [static]... cause an indelible mark.」

「Please complete a dice roll within one minute to determine the type and zzz... of trauma.」

「From 6 down to 1, the consequences range from... unconsciousness to instant death.」

「Countdown begins: 60, 59, 58...」

The scholar collapsed face-first into the snow. Eurus rushed forward in shock, quickly turning him over to prevent his mouth and nose from being buried in the snow and suffocating him.

Eurus began slapping his cheeks, trying to wake him, only to find thick, dark blood continuously seeping from the scholar’s orifices, forming a growing crimson stain in the snow.

Thanks to Eurus' intervention, the scholar briefly surfaced to consciousness.

His fingers trembled faintly as he instinctively tried to roll the dice, but he ultimately lacked the mental clarity or physical control. He could only hazily listen to the system’s merciless countdown:

「43, 42, 41...」

「Warning! Half the countdown has passed. Please zzz... or it will default to 1!」

「Warning! Please...」

Though the scholar remained hovering at the edge of consciousness, hard-won survival instincts told him that no one could save him this time.

Even if Eurus and the others didn’t want to lose him as a teammate so soon, the other players simply couldn’t roll the dice for him.

This time, he was well and truly finished—and all because of his own Ability...

"..."

Yi Fengchu leaned against the tent, watching in astonishment as the scholar rolled the dice three times, stared blankly at the cooking pot a few times, then suddenly went into convulsions, blood streaming from every orifice, and collapsed.

Had he not sensed any fluctuations of power, Yi Fengchu might have suspected the pot was some cursed object imbued with dangerous energy...

He glanced down at the unconscious, helpless scholar, then up at the glowing silver die hovering above him, vibrating violently. He grew pensive.

Instinct told Yi Fengchu that if he let the die continue shaking like a live grenade, the scholar would be dead in less than half a minute.

Losing a member on the very first night of the expedition would make for a poor start, wouldn’t it?

Moreover, from what he’d observed, the scholar’s Ability seemed valuable—maybe even crucial down the line?

With that in mind, Yi Fengchu swiftly retreated into the shadows of the tent.

Seizing the moment when no one was paying attention to him, he reached out his hand toward the die above the scholar’s head, as if closing an invisible grip around it.

In the scholar’s ears, the system’s incessant countdown abruptly ceased.

In its place came the distinct rattle of the die rolling and spinning.

Strange...

How could the die... activate spontaneously?

The fleeting thought of confusion vanished as the scholar's world went dark, and he lost all consciousness.

Thus, he missed the system’s final announcement:

「Congratulations, player. With the aid of a mysterious force, your die has rolled the highest possible value: 6—」

「Your randomly acquired resulting affliction is "snow blindness for 4 hours." What luck.」