Chapter 981: Mountaineering
Even at night, there would be members of the Sun Sect, let alone in broad daylight.
As soon as they walked out of the valley, Jeno and his party encountered some pilgrims from the Sun Sect.
The Lakore people travel up and down steep slopes every day, so they always keep their belongings as simple as possible, a small cloth bag and two pickaxes are sufficient. Heavy tools are often stored in mountain huts, and pulleys are used to transport items up and down the hill.
Ephelius avoided these believers, and he used the falling light to spew out magic orbs to absorb the pumice stones in the mountains, arranging them in a line, opening up a dangerous but no one could have thought of a shortcut.
Jeno carried Leona on his back instead, holding her close to his back, and stepped onto the pumice bridge with Ephelius.
This scene seems familiar, he had done something similar in the Shadow Isle, except that at that time there was an endless sea of undead waiting for him below, and now it was 10,000 meters in the air.
The howling mountain wind whipped against his body with frost, shimmering and disappearing, ruffling Jeno's hair and lifting his neckline. The arms around her neck suddenly tightened, and Leona subconsciously hugged him tightly in the cold, absorbing the warmth from him.
"Bear with me a little longer, and when I get to the place, I'll buy you some coats." Jeno clamped the crook of her leg and trotted easily across the pumice bridge, climbing rapidly.
The same distance would take others days to climb...... But most people don't try this trail at all.
By taking a shortcut, they arrived at the temple hidden in the cave by the Bright Moon Sect before sunset.
At first, Ephelius did not allow Jeno to take Leona into the temple, believing that even if she was unconscious, she might remember the path she had traveled and the places she had stayed, fearing that it would reveal the temple's location.
But at Diana's insistence, Leona was taken into the cave, but not for long. And Jeno also wanted to buy some warm clothes for Leona, and sit by the campfire to warm herself up before continuing on the road. He was in a hurry more than anyone else, and had to work day and night to find Soraka before Leo died.
But soon after he sat down, a cold wave hit, and a blizzard howled outside the cave, and the snow covered the cave in an instant.
This cave was Ephelius' secret base, and he was the only one who lived here, and even the other cultists didn't know much, and even if they did, few people would come and bother him on a rugged mountain road, unless the situation was critical.
As Ephelius lit the bonfire, Jeno finally had some time to rest. He kept Leona warm on the nearby steps, and he himself went to the mouth of the cave to look down.
At the foot of the mountain, there are four distinct seasons, but above the mountainside it becomes snowy.
"The weather of this giant god peak is really unpredictable, I saw the sunset just now, and in the blink of an eye, it was windy and snowy. Alas, if only Jana were here......"
He took a deep breath, the thin air making every breath exerting its might, making it painful. If it weren't for Jeno's strong physique, he would have been lying next to Leona due to altitude sickness.
As promised, when Diana had found a fur coat for Leona to wrap in, Jeno picked her up and hurried.
"Otherwise, wait for the snowstorm to pass before leaving, it's too dangerous to climb the mountain in this weather." Looking at the snowstorm, Diana dissuaded.
Although she is not an orthodox Rakoor, her upbringing is not much different. She knew how dangerous it was to climb a mountain in such snowy conditions, and that a slippery foot would cause her to fall off a cliff and shatter her bones. The weight of the snow can also cause landslides, and she has seen her people fall from rolling rocks. The severe cold brought by the wind and snow can quickly deplete a person's physical strength, and if you are exhausted on the mountain trail and there is no possibility of rescue, such an attempt is tantamount to suicide.
"No, it's the right weather to travel, and no one is going to die patrolling in a blizzard, which means we're much less likely to be spotted."
Jeno didn't want to brave the snow either, but Leona probably didn't have that much time left for him to waste. He had to race against time to get to his destination before Flower Poison took her away.
"Then I don't have anything to say, I must come back alive." Diana prayed for them devoutly.
"Hmm." Jeno picked up Leona on his back and stepped into the snow.
The frost and snow hit his face, making him feel the cold weight. Leona's long, chestnut hair flowed down his chest.
Without the guidance of Ephelius, he chose to follow the established paths.
Following the original path of the rocks, the Lakoer carved stone paths and stairs in the lower part of the peak. The plank road is draped with heavy curtains with tied ropes to block the long wind and snow.
These plank roads gave him some shelter at the beginning of the journey, and made him feel a lot more relaxed. Passing by the shelter hut used by the Rakol people to store their tools, he took out some climbing tools from it.
But then, the wind and snow intensified, crushing the trestle at Jeno's feet, and he retreated again and again to save himself from stumbling, but this section of the trestle was definitely not walkable.
He climbed instead, tying Leona tightly to himself with a rope, and two pickaxes took turns to hammer into the rocks, climbing steadily and quickly.
Jeno never imagined that he would be like the main character in the game, tossing and turning on a near-vertical cliff, and being able to kick the cliff double jump against common sense. He used to think that this was something that only superhumans could do, but when he became a superhuman, he found that this kind of thing was not very difficult.
The place where Jeno climbed was a stone carving, and if the Lakore saw that the motifs they worshipped had been ruined by Jeno, and that they had broken the sacred pattern by knocking out small holes with their pickaxes, they would have tied him to a wooden frame and burned him with the fire of ruling.
The physical strength consumed by climbing on the back was very fast, and after climbing a few hundred meters in one go, Jeno was also a little overwhelmed. He dragged a nearby pumice stone with a force field, jumped on it as a foothold, and slowly raised it in height with the force field, taking himself up like a vertical elevator.
However, this trick seemed to attract the wrath of the giant god, and the bitter cold wind and snow slapped on him even more violently, causing the pumice stone to stagger.
"Damn, I'm just a mountainside, not a mountain, and it's going to make it more difficult for me." Jano muttered to himself. As a last resort, he jumped back to the top of the cliff and took turns striking out his pickaxe to move on.
After passing a cliff, Jeno discovered a tunnel at the end of the stairs that led to the interior of the mountain. But Jeno didn't go inside to hide from the snow, as it was likely that there were already Rakor people hiding inside to escape the cold wave.