Chapter 98: “Many Versions of Me Are Wandering on the Mountain.”

Chapter 98: "Many Copies of Me Wander the Mountain."

Zhang Ming's disappearance was quickly noticed by Lena and Chen Hui, who were keeping watch.

Lena was the first to notice something wrong—

Why had she heard the sound of a tent being unzipped but no one walking out afterward?

It couldn’t possibly be that someone had opened the tent in the middle of the night just to get some cold air, could it?

Realizing something was wrong, Lena immediately turned to check and saw Zhang Ming’s tent wide open, the wind whistling inside, carrying flurries of snow—only the half-frozen, dazed scholar, groggily roused by the cold, remained inside.

Where's Zhang Ming?

Had they really lost their employer on the very first night?!

"Did you just see Zhang—"

As Lena turned to ask Chen Hui, she suddenly found herself inches from his face.

Her heart skipped a beat. Instinctively holding her breath, Lena’s pupils shrank in shock.

The proximity was so extreme that the first things she registered were his eyelashes, nearly brushing against her face, his wide, unblinking eyes, and the dark shadows in his black eyes.

After a pause, Lena realized whose face this was—Chen Hui!

What was his problem?

Just as she was about to push him away, Chen Hui abruptly straightened up, backing up several steps to put a normal distance between them.

"What were you trying to do just now?"

Lena glared at him, her distrust and anger obvious. "Were you planning to attack me the moment I turned my head?"

"Wait—or are you even Chen Hui at all?"

She suddenly wondered:

Had the real Chen Hui been silently replaced in that brief moment she’d turned away?

Though the interval had been brief—no more than three seconds—and she hadn’t detected any unusual movement…

But hadn’t Zhang Ming’s disappearance also occurred in mere seconds, without any noise?

So Lena couldn’t afford to lower her guard. If Chen Hui had left her sight even for a moment, that was reason enough to doubt him.

In a dungeon, all sorts of strange things were possible—including teammates being replaced by shape-shifting monsters.

Lena had encountered something similar before: allies she’d trusted turning out to be monsters in disguise. In such cases, trusting blindly could get you killed…

Because of that firsthand experience, this possibility was the first thing that came to Lena’s mind now.

Faced with Lena’s aggressive questioning, Chen Hui scratched the back of his head and gave his usual relaxed smile—as if the darkness in his eyes moments ago had just been her imagination.

"Oh, I was just trying to get a closer look at what was behind you. Didn’t expect you to turn back so fast…"

Then, completely normal, he complained, "Seriously, warn me next time before you move like that. We almost bumped heads!"

Lena remained tense. Her tone remained stern. "Tell me everything we’ve experienced in this dungeon so far. Start from the beginning, and be as detailed as possible."

"Until you prove your identity, I can’t trust you—let alone continue working with you."

Anyone subjected to such open distrust wouldn’t be in a good mood.

Chen Hui’s facial muscles twitched slightly. A vein throbbed at his temple as irritation flickered across his face, but he still reluctantly described their previous experiences.

Lena checked every detail, confirming that the person before her was likely still Chen Hui. She let out a small sigh of relief but didn’t fully lower her guard.

—Because even if he was Chen Hui, that didn’t necessarily mean he was safe.

Especially after that creepy close encounter earlier…

Just remembering it gave Lena chills, goosebumps covering her arms.

Wrapping her arms around herself, she rubbed her arms vigorously, trying to dispel the lingering unease, and snarled at Chen Hui, "Stay away from me! Don’t you dare get that close again!"

Then she shouted toward the tent behind her, "Scholar! Eurus! Wake up! Something’s happened!"

As she shouted, Lena kept her eyes fixed on Chen Hui, not looking away, watching his every move intently.

Soon, movement came from the tent. Eurus was the first to emerge, quickly putting on her coat as she stepped out.

Next was the scholar, who had been unconscious for half the night. Surprisingly, he was now awake—though pale and unsteady as he stood, wiping dried blood from his face with a tissue.

"What happened?" the scholar asked.

"It happened in your tent. How could you not—"

Mid-sentence, Lena noticed the scholar’s eyes—blank and unfocused, staring blankly into empty space.

It hit her. "You can’t see?"

The scholar nodded, explaining succinctly, "Failing a roll can result in random penalties. Mine is snow blindness—lasting four hours from the moment I woke up."

After a moment's hesitation, he decided not to mention the faint sound of rolling dice he’d heard in his dazed state.

He suspected that some unknown entity in these mountains could override the dungeon’s rules, directly altering their dice results.

If that were true, then even the system information in this dungeon might be unreliable—because their very dice could be under the hidden control of this entity…

Lena nodded. "As long as it doesn’t affect our next steps." Then she filled in the other two on what had just occurred.

Uncertain whether their mission could proceed without their employer, the players immediately began searching the area for any sign of Zhang Ming.

Beams of flashlight light cut through the darkness, illuminating the entire campsite as bright as day.

They searched everywhere, inside and out, but found nothing.

Chen Hui frowned. "Not a single footprint, let alone a person!"

Eurus aimed her flashlight at the tent, thinking aloud, "There aren’t even marks outside the tent. It’s like… he disappeared the moment he stepped on the snow."

With his temporary blindness, the scholar didn’t join the search, instead analyzing the others’ descriptions from where he stood.

"Time is distorted in these mountains," he suggested. "We’ve already encountered other copies of ourselves from different timelines—could Zhang Ming have accidentally stepped into another time when he left the tent?"

"Figuring out why he disappeared isn’t the hard part," Eurus shrugged. "The real question is, how do we find him and bring him back?"

Suddenly, Eurus paused, as if struck by a thought, then hurried into Zhang Ming’s tent and began rummaging through his backpack.

When she returned, she held a weathered notebook with a frayed cover in her hand.

Eurus couldn’t hide her excitement: "I’ve always been curious about what secrets he was hiding in that notebook he refused to show us—now that he’s conveniently gone missing, it’s practically a godsend!"

She put on a fake lament: "Ah, our employer mysteriously vanished without warning. Worried about his safety, we have no choice but to check his belongings to track him down as quickly as possible... That’s perfectly reasonable, right?"

With that, Eurus snapped open the magnetic clasp on the notebook’s cover and flipped through the pages without a hint of guilt.

"...Sounds awfully self-righteous."

Lena instinctively snorted in derision but still leaned in with Chen Hui, stood on their toes to read the notebook’s contents—

"October 12, 2012 - Sunny

I’ve discovered that after Yi Meishan was diagnosed with a tumor, she traveled alone to various places. She likely set out from City A, heading north, passing through Yunping Mountain in City D and Lüsong River in City B, before finally reaching Dragon Snow Ridge in the far north.

After scouring major online forums and media reports, I found that supernatural tales abound about Dragon Snow Ridge.

For example, in 2009, a travel enthusiast posted about encountering several fellow hikers during his climb. But after talking to them, he was shocked to find that they all insisted it was 2005...

Later, back at the foot of the mountain, he asked around at several guesthouses and inns using the names of those hikers, but the owners all claimed no one by those names had stayed recently. In the end, he suspected he might have met the wandering ghosts of those who had died on the mountain.

In 2010, a woman shared on a travel forum that while climbing Dragon Snow Ridge with her boyfriend, they set up camp at a public site above the mountainside to rest for the night.

She woke up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, and upon returning, she saw the shadowy figure of a woman sneaking about their tent, peering furtively.

Blinded by rage, thinking she’d caught a thief, the woman immediately rushed forward to confront her—only for the figure to vanish instantly.

Baffled about where the woman could have hidden, she circled the tent twice in confusion before suddenly realizing: her own actions now mirrored exactly what the mysterious woman had just done...

These incidents remind me of that child’s ability—as if some mysterious force is recklessly distorting time, leaving those caught within it like fish trapped in a puddle, utterly bewildered...

Beyond that, I’ve also found numerous testimonials of answered prayers, claiming the mountain truly has a mountain god's protection.

I’m certain I’ve found the origin of that child.

If the mountain is so merciful, surely it will grant my wish too?"

"October 14, 2012 - Rainy

Had a nightmare.

I dreamed that near my home, on the streets, atop the high-rise buildings... flowed rivers of silvery snow. When I got closer, I realized they weren’t rivers at all—but countless serpents, their scales gleaming silver, pressed tightly together!

The shortest among them was at least five meters long, while the largest stretched taller than a skyscraper dozens of stories high. Its sinuous form extended endlessly toward the vanishing point—I couldn’t find its head or tail...

Sunlight reflected off their scales as the serpents lay coiled in every corner, eyes shut, as if embracing the entire city in slumber.

In the dream, I was unusually bold. Following the direction of the great serpent’s tail, I walked and walked, crossing what felt like several cities before finally ascending a towering snow-capped mountain.

Standing at the summit and gazing into the distance, I realized with a shock: I would never reach the end of its tail.

Because this serpent spanned the entire surface of the earth, stretching from the far east to the far west—until its head meeting its tail...

The scene in the dream was truly breathtaking. I wonder if it carries some kind of portent?"

"October 20, 2012 - Overcast

Signed the divorce papers and officially parted ways with Yushan at the civil affairs office. She insisted on taking our son, and I didn’t stop her... because I have more important matters to attend to.

I bought a set of mountaineering gear and a fluxgate magnetometer. There’s no helping it—since I can’t directly perceive those mysterious forces, I have to rely on technology. Hopefully, the energy radiating from those forces can still induce detectable magnetic anomalies.

Tomorrow, I’ll set out for Dragon Snow Ridge. I’ll leave everything behind in City A—my job, my car, my house, even this notebook that’s accompanied me through my darkest hours.

If all goes well, I’ll return here someday.

Wish me luck."

By this point, the readers assumed there would be no more entries after this page.

However, Eurus turned the page and found something else... something far stranger.

Unlike the earlier ink pen writing, these characters were thick, dark crimson bordering on black, each one crooked and sprawling across at least three or four lines... as if they hadn’t been written directly in the notebook but rather imprinted from another surface.

The content was also inscrutable—it was unclear what state the writer had been in when he penned these words.

"The fourth sub-peak is the promised land."

"Traverse beneath His skin, enter His womb, and pray."

Staring at these two short lines, Eurus frowned and turned the page again.

"I don’t think I can leave this mountain anymore. I've lost track of how long it’s been since I arrived..."

"Finally came across tourists!"

"...Pleaded for help, but they couldn’t see me."

"Wandering alone in the snowy mountains—no hunger, no thirst, invisible to all, and no one speaks to me... I’m going mad."

"I regret it so much. Why did I choose divorce back then? With my parents gone, my wife took my son away... Now, no one would even notice I'm missing. Someone—anyone—please save me."

On the notebook’s final page, only a few cryptic words remained—

"Countless versions of myself roam this mountain."