They kept climbing down, down, and down again, at a steady pace. It might have been several hours, or a whole day. There was no sky in sight, and Sigvar couldn't tell the time.
Be patient and don’t complain. Bing never begs for mercy and never gives mercy. I should be like Bing.
No inferior creature can keep up with their pace. They are iceborn, children of gods, and they are different from other mortals. Iceborne can march for several days and nights without sleeping, and can then fight any enemy without defeat.
The unyielding endurance far exceeds the life limit of any furnace user.
Even so, Sigvar's forearms ached, and he was sweating beneath his furs. So when the ice fell away from his feet, he was too slow to react. He dug out an ice ax, but the ice
It was too shallow, and it just pulled a large piece of ice off the ice wall.
Then he started falling.
Don't be afraid of pain, and don't avoid the blessing of pain. Without pain, there can be no life.
He turned around in the air, tried to stop his fall again, and drove the ice ax hard into the ice, but the ice ax fell out of his hand. If it were not tied with a wrist strap, the ice ax would have been lost.
When death comes, don't shrink from it.
He fell forty feet and flew past Oral. His predecessor's flint-like eyes widened.
We were born in ice and return to ice.
"Hold on tight!" the old Iceborn warrior shouted, grabbing the ice ax tightly and bending his knees to wait.
He saw Hala raise her head and curse, because she realized that he was about to fall right on top of her. She immediately stabbed the ice pick into the ice quickly and steadily, and moved it sideways so that he did not drop it.
She hit the cliff.
Then he was pulled by the rope, and the sudden pause caused his bones to fall apart. He hit the ice wall hard, and the violent impact squeezed out the air in his lungs.
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Oral roared and swallowed Sigvar's weight. However, Stone Fist's hands were firmly clenched and firmly grasped on the ice. His hands were as hard as iron.
Sigvar quickly regained his posture and immediately smashed the ice pick into the wall, kicking the toe spikes deeply in. He raised his head and glanced at Hala Hambingpo. She was staring at him with a pair of soul-piercing eyes.
- One blue, one gray - as unblinking as the single eye painted on her forehead.
Her eyes were silently judging.
"Let's take a break at the Bridge of Shadows," she said at last, before climbing further down into the twilight gloom. Sigvar cursed himself, his cheeks burning in the cold wind.
When Oral passed him, he showed him another toothy smile.
"You little bastard is pretty heavy, half a barrel of arrows," he said. "You damn thing, you almost took me down with you."
"The ice is falling off," Sigvar's voice was very weak. "I will do better."
"Sure. I might cut your rope next time."
Sigvar looked at the old warrior with doubts in his eyes. Oral returned from the three previous expeditions to the abyss alone. Is this the reason?….
When they arrived at the Bridge of Shadows, they unloaded their bags, untied the ropes, and turned back to the ice axe. The Bridge of Shadows was called the Bridge of Shadows because even in midsummer when the sun never set below the horizon, sunlight was never seen here.
Oral lay down on the stone slab, stretched out exaggeratedly, and leaned on the railing beside the bridge. Hala left the two men, took off a small black statue from his neck, and placed it on the ground.
She knelt in front of the statue and took a deep breath devoutly. Sigvar stood there like a stake. He was wondering whether he should also use this time to pray, but Oral called him over and urged him to sit down.
.
He didn't know how much older this senior was, but Oral must have been over sixty - he conjured up a small skin bag from nowhere. He unscrewed the stopper, took a big sip, and let out a sigh of satisfaction.
He took the breath and handed it to Sigvar. The young warrior nodded his thanks, took out the bag, raised his head and took a sip.
"The tears of the gods," Oral said. "On this side of the Crest Mountain there are only
This is my share."
The nectar burned his throat and made his eyes moist. The overflowing tears immediately froze into ice on his face. He nodded in approval, and then returned the skin bag to Oral. He took another big sip, and then hid the skin bag back.
Inside his fur vest.
If it were a water bag, it would have frozen when they stepped through the gate of the main castle. They didn't need to drink water, but the strong liquor was the moistening Sigvar's throat desired.
Oral's tattooed arms were still outside. Sigvar shook his head and wrapped his fur clothes tighter.
"Aren't you cold, old fellow?" he said.
"The cold one is in the back, kid," Oral grinned maliciously. "Compared with the cold that is about to come, this is simply the warm breeze of summer."
Sigvar didn't know if he was joking. He moved his luggage to the side, took out a small strip of bacon, opened the wax-sealed outer skin, broke off a frozen piece, handed it to Oral, and then passed it on to him.
He broke off a piece. He held it back and forth in his mouth, defrosting it to the point where he could chew it. The meat was rough and soft, but at the moment it tasted luxurious.
Sigvar also sat next to Oral, leaning against the low wall of the stone bridge. He was sheltered from the howling wind, although the cold wind itself was also a blessing. The wind screamed above them, making a terrifying wail, turning the messy
Ice and snow swept across the bridge. Some people said that the sound of the wind was the screams of thousands of Iceborn who died in the final battle. Their souls were forever trapped in this deep valley since the ancient heroic age.
"The sound is pretty scary, isn't it, kid?" Oral said. "It gets into your head after a while."
"Is it always like this all the way?"
Oral shook his head. "Yes, that's fine. No, it was as quiet as a cemetery when we were almost at the end."
"That must be better than this..."
"Of course you think so, don't you? But silence is worse. That kind of silence is very heavy. It's as heavy as if you were wearing chain armor all over your body. No, I would choose to be like this at any time."
Hala finished her prayers, returned to the two of them, and sat down next to Oral. She took a long sip on Oral's skin, and then wiped her mouth with the back of her glove...
"Why do you always have the best products, Stone Fist?" Her words made Oral chuckle.
"It must be because of my charming charm," he replied.
"I can fully deny this," she said expressionlessly, and Oral snorted again.
Sigvar came closer and cautiously offered her a piece of meat. He was still ashamed of his fall. She looked at it for a while, making Sigvar think that she was going to refuse his kindness, but in the end she accepted it.
Go over and nod your thanks.
"How did you earn your name, half-barrel arrow?" she asked, chewing.
"An attack. I was a novice at the time, escorting a convoy to transport supplies to the main castle. We were attacked on the open ice field. A blizzard concealed their approach. The Toothcrow tribe."
Halla grunted. "A sinister warrior who specializes in cutting off human heads."
Sigvar nodded. "I took a few arrows in the melee. But I kept on shooting. When the last member of the Toothcrow tribe escaped and the rest were dying or dead on the ice, Stone Fist gave me
Gave me my current name,"
"You will never learn to tell a story in this life, boy," Oral said. "You tell half the story. You don't know how to create an atmosphere at all."
"Not like you, old man," Hala said. "I swear every time you tell your story it's more outrageous than the last."
"Did I tell you my story about the bear, kid?" Oral asked Sigvar with a wink.
"Don't," Hala said, raising a finger to the Frost Guard elder. "I don't want to hear it again."
"Then next time," Oral shrugged helplessly. "However, the people from the Teeth Crow planted at least a dozen arrows in this guy. At that time, you, what, Fourteenth Winter? He was already a big man at that time.
Although he has not grown into the big man he is now, he is still very strong. There are four arrows stuck in his shield, two in one leg, and one across his chest.
Two on the mouth, one on the shoulder, and more on the back. But he kept fighting until the end, like a stuck Erniuk. He knocked down three of the Teeth Crow's men,
Then he was hit by another arrow and dropped the sword in his hand. But he didn't stop. He pulled out an arrow from his body and used this arrow to kill two more toothed crows! This bird's eggs are the happiest I have ever seen.
Oh, that’s it! A pure iceborn, enough to make Serelda proud.”
"The Fearless Mother," Hala said at once, seizing Serelda's pale amulet, which hung around her neck along with Avarosa and Lissandra's amulets.
"The Fearless Mother," Sigvar also whispered. His cheeks were hot and he lowered his head, feeling uncomfortable with Oral's words of praise.
"You have a weird sense of humor, Stone Fist." Hala said, standing up. "Come on. It's time to continue."
"I'm sorry I fell just now," Sigvar said, and he stood up to prepare for the next climb. "I swear here that I will not let you down again."
"If you fall, it is the will of the three sisters," Hala said. "If you fall and you take us down with you, then this is our fate too. Your oath is irrelevant."….
She passed by him, her eyes searching for the best starting point. Oral smiled and slapped Sigvar hard on the shoulder.
"It's okay, kid," he said. "Even the strongest iceborn will make mistakes sometimes. If this is the most dangerous difficulty, we have to kneel down and thank the three sisters."
They continued to descend into the abyss, and the cold wind chased them with howls as always.
It appeared like a ghost in the fog. One moment there was nothing beneath them, and the next moment it appeared.
Lost Bridge.
From a distance, the bridge seems to be covered with some kind of greedy weeds or thorns. But this is nonsense. Obviously, no life can grow and multiply in this abyss. The cold here seems to shine from below.
.
No, this weed-like thing is definitely not the plant life we usually see. It is the opposite of life. Sigvar felt a twitching in his stomach. He swallowed, and the contents in his stomach seemed to be moving up. It once went down to
Members of the institute who had been here told Sigvar fireside stories about this place, but even if he was prepared, the scene was still unsettling.
He jumped the last ten feet and landed in a crouch. His muscles were burned from exertion, and his hands were twisted into claws from holding the ice ax tightly. Although he was exhausted, he still stared at the surroundings warily, barely daring to breathe.
, dare not blink.
"Don't touch anything," Hala warned him.
"If I touch something, it is the will of the three sisters, right?" Oral said. Faced with the old warrior's joke, Sigvar could not smile.
Hala turned around and shook his head. "Take a breath. This is the last bridge. We will not stop until we reach the bottom - the next section is the longest section. May the three sisters watch us."
Sigvar unloaded the extra burden, walked to the middle of the bridge, and stared around in fear and amazement. The wind here was no longer strong, and it whistled through the strange stone structures, which were like twisted fences surrounding
around the bridge.
It was hard for him to guess what he was seeing, but even just looking at it made him feel uncomfortable.
Huge arched rocks surround the top of the bridge, just like a column of magma crossing the entire length of the bridge and then suddenly solidifying in mid-air.
Of course he knew the history of the bridge. Those imprisoned below had begun trying to escape its prison long ago, long past the time of the three sisters.
Here, the people of the Frost Guard once fought against the darkness, and here, they died. Every death of each person allowed the things that lived below to grow. It ate the corpse of the deceased, absorbed it, transformed it, and became an explosion.
Fuel for growth. This is its nature. Perhaps it has been sleeping for thousands of years, looking lifeless and lifeless, but just a drop of blood can make it suddenly come alive and reveal its violent nature.
What Sigvar was looking at, those strange, stomach-turning mixtures of ringed archstones and misshapen debris, were paths for the growth of something beneath, leaping from one Frostguard corpse to another.
A Frost Guard corpse occupies all of them.
The substances it eats give birth to other things.
There was an uneasy, maddening pressure in Sigvar's mind, one that seemed to be coming from below. He pressed his temples with his knuckles, trying to relieve the headache.
Without warning, a long-forgotten memory came up, like a swarm of bats flying out of a cave. He thought of his childhood, when he had not been accepted by the Frostguard tribe. He thought of the ice arch of his tribe.
, and the streamlined three-masted sailing ship, standing on the sharp blade, speeding across the frozen water. He thought of that night when their ship came to the majestic spire. Frostguard warriors wearing black helmets were waiting there.
Sigvar and six other children from his tribe who were less than ten years old were singled out. This was a great honor. And there he was, facing the midnight sun, watching his tribe sail away in a boat. That
It was the last time he saw his family.
He was brought to the main castle, where he was tested and forced to participate in bloody and cruel trials. Other children from the same tribe as him were extinguished one by one, and finally he was left alone.
By that time, he had completely forgotten his tribe. He had a new home and a new faith.
