IRM Chapter 115

Reize stared blankly at the woman on the rock. After so many years, his childhood memories had actually become quite unclear, but the bond from their blood ties allowed him to instantly overlap the wind-weathered face before him with the gentle countenance deep in his memories.

The woman also saw Reize’s appearance clearly at this moment. Golden-haired, purple-eyed children were truly too rare—so rare that she couldn’t find an excuse to deny it even if she wanted to.

“Reize…” The woman’s first reaction was not joy, but deep fear and sorrow. “How could it be you? How could you come here…”

The incredible joy in Reize’s eyes immediately extinguished. He opened his mouth, not knowing how to answer her. After a long while, he finally called out to her in a hoarse voice. “Mother.”

Natasha’s hand gripping the sword trembled imperceptibly. She looked deeply at Reize, then swept past him like the wind with her sword, charging into the horde of berserk beasts. The ordinary iron sword traced sharp, piercing beams of light in her hands, and the sound of cutting through air shrieked and echoed through the valley.

Ji Chi had been busy fighting the berserk beasts head-on earlier and hadn’t seen the mother-son reunion. Seeing someone come to help, he joked with considerable surprise. “Not bad, Reize! Did you activate cheat codes? You hid this pretty deep—hello, miss.”

While bantering, he turned his head and immediately saw a face both strange and familiar. The woman’s delicate features were very similar to Reize’s, though Ji Chi wasn’t confused enough to mistake her identity. He reflexively greeted her, then looked her over in puzzlement, not expecting to encounter a living person outside the fortress.

Natasha glanced at Ji Chi with her peripheral vision, but was more focused on discerning the sword in his hand. She swept her iron sword horizontally in front of her in a circle, temporarily forcing back the surrounding berserk beasts, then quickly said while catching her breath, “The next blizzard is coming soon. You lure the two on the right away, I’ll handle the rest.”

Ji Chi determined she had no ill intent and refocused his attention on the berserk beasts. Seeing the mass of beast heads surging before the woman, he asked with concern, “Can you manage? Otherwise, let’s switch.”

Natasha didn’t even turn to look at him, merely dropping a flat statement, “Children should be obedient.”

After speaking, her slender figure flickered in place, and the next second she appeared before the claws of several giant beasts. She raised her hand to grab the long fur on a berserk beast’s body, kicked off its chest with her long legs, executed a clean flip, and straddled its neck.

Natasha didn’t immediately kill the berserk beast beneath her. Instead, she controlled it to ram around wildly, knocking the berserk beasts everywhere it went off balance. She didn’t miss this opportunity, leaning down to carve fatal wounds across the surrounding massive wild beasts.

The berserk beast beneath her became even more frenzied under the stimulation of the bloody smell. It roared and lowered its head, charging mindlessly toward the cliff wall—clearly intent on mutual destruction!

Natasha watched as the jagged stone wall drew closer and closer to her. Her expression remained unchanged, but her body tensed like a fully drawn bow, ready at any moment to dodge the fatal impact.

“Roar!” A strained roar came from below. Reize had somehow raised his silver-white longsword again. He wedged his legs deep into the snow, gripped the sword hilt tightly with both hands, and let the blade sink into the berserk beast’s body, allowing the beast to use its own momentum to tear a long gash in its flank.

The tremendous force caused his hands gripping the sword hilt to split open instantly. Blood dripped onto the snow, quickly freezing into translucent ice beads.

The berserk beast kept running until the second before it hit the cliff wall, finally unable to support itself and collapsing. Its putrid, blackened internal organs spilled along its tracks across the ground, drawing the remaining berserk beasts to gather around.

“Reize, quickly stand behind me!” Natasha somewhat reproached his reckless act of disregarding his own safety, frowning as she sternly commanded!

Reize shook his head with his back to her, his profile speaking softly, “I’ve already grown up, Mother.”

His blood-drenched hands held the only fire element bottle. Just as several berserk beasts were about to reach him, he swiftly threw it toward a crevice in the rocks not far away.

“Boom!” The fire element bottle detonated several glass bottles that had been placed there beforehand. Various elemental reactions erupted simultaneously in one small corner. The falling rocks on the mountain wall were shaken loose, tumbling heavily downward and crushing the running berserk beasts into bloody pulps!

The falling rocks also stirred up a large cloud of snow dust that shrouded the entire valley. Natasha didn’t relax. Seeing the vicious maw lunging through the snow dust, her pupils constricted sharply as she tried to rush forward to shield Reize. “Watch out—”

Reize didn’t dodge. He stood in place, looking up at a figure rapidly advancing through the air by stepping on falling stones. The black sword in his hand was plain and unadorned, yet its abyss-like aura inexplicably sent a chill through one’s heart.

Just as the berserk beast was about to pin Reize under its claws, a cold sword light swept past not far from Reize’s nose. The berserk beast suddenly stopped in its tracks. Before it could even let out a mournful howl, it crashed to the ground with a thud. Its intact corpse split along the spine, revealing the sword-wielding figure behind it.

Ji Chi flicked the filthy blood from his sword onto the snow, walked forward and lightly bumped fists with Reize. The two smiled at each other with perfect understanding.

Natasha’s hoarse trailing voice still lingered in her throat. She gasped heavily. Her taut nerves suddenly relaxed, and along with them, her suppressed emotions uncontrollably poured out. She unconsciously sighed. “Yes… someone has already accompanied you as you grew up.”

After speaking, she suddenly snapped back to awareness. Using the motion of sheathing her sword, she lowered her head to hide her expression. Overwhelming guilt made her every gesture full of helplessness.

Ji Chi had already guessed Natasha’s identity and glanced at Reize with an inquiring look.

Reize pressed his lips together and nodded silently.

“Follow me.” Natasha collected her emotions and looked back at the sky rolling with residual snow. “The blizzard hasn’t truly stopped yet. I’ll take you to a place to shelter from the snow.”

She led the two through the valley’s stone walls. There wasn’t a single proper path on the treacherous snowy peaks. Some ravine crevices they even crossed by stepping on fallen tree trunks and branches.

Before the first snowflake was blown by the wind, Natasha slipped sideways into an inconspicuous crevice. Inside the crevice was a natural cave—pitch black, but with some unburned firewood scattered on the ground, like a hidden shelter.

Natasha took out a piece of flint from the animal hide pouch at her side and quickly struck it against her sword. Sparks fell onto tinder made from twisted dry tree bark, and the rising flames quickly dispelled the cold, flickering to illuminate the three people’s silent faces.

Natasha’s rough animal hide clothes were nearly torn at the hem. She quickly glanced up at Reize, her gaze soon falling back to the fire. “After all these years… how have you been?”

Reize was silent for a moment, then said flatly, “Not bad. The uncles and aunties all took good care of me.”

Natasha seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. “That’s good…”

Reize also raised his eyes, looking at the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. Their identical purple pupils brimmed with complex emotions. He still couldn’t help but directly ask, “What about you two? Father is alive too, isn’t he? Why do you want to stay here?”

Natasha closed her eyes, as if instantly aging several more years. “I’m sorry, I’m truly sorry to you… But we can’t go back—at least not now. That would bring even more disaster.”

Her weathered eyes gazed at the fire as she suddenly said, “Actually, before I recognized you, I came to kill you.”

Ji Chi was startled and looked up at her.

Natasha actually felt somewhat relieved after saying it. She laughed self-mockingly. “There are quite a few greedy people who come here every year. They all come for the coveted treasure at the snowy mountain peak.”

“But they don’t know what will happen if that treasure is taken now…” She picked up a branch burning in the fire and drew a winding horizontal line on the ground. “We’re not entirely clear what it is either, but you can imagine it’s a seal. Once it disappears, countless berserk beasts will break through the fortress and trample the entire snow plain.”

Reize’s eyes trembled as he silently looked toward Natasha.

“Actually, it’s not just your father and I guarding the snowy mountain. We’re also outsiders, come to think of it. Back then we spent great effort to be accepted by the tribe on the snowy mountain.” Natasha felt somewhat helpless thinking of the past. She raised her eyes to look guiltily at Reize. “I’m sorry, baby. We think about returning to be by your side every single day, but we can’t. Once we step out of the fortress, something even more terrible might happen.”

Reize nodded. “I know. Once you return home, you’ll be the only people who could come back from beyond the fortress. The Angel Kingdom would definitely use any means necessary to force you to return to the snowy mountain, betray the tribe, and lead a group of people to seize the treasure. And after they seize the treasure, no matter what happens, they won’t care about anyone’s life or death—even if the Northern Kingdom is destroyed, they won’t give it a second thought.”

Natasha stared blankly at Reize. “You—how could you…”

She hadn’t expected Reize to see things so clearly. Her memory still remained in the distant past, when Reize was still a little dumpling who greatly envied his father’s snow-white wings and was full of longing for the Angel Kingdom… What exactly had made him become so perceptive? Natasha didn’t dare imagine further.

Her attention returned to the present, anxiety and anger showing in her brows. “So you shouldn’t have come here… Since you know this, you should understand that you’ll also face their threats. So why would you still do this?!”

Reize lowered his eyes. “At first I was impulsive, but all of this can be resolved, can’t it? Why can’t we pacify the berserk beasts and then return openly and honorably?”

“You’re thinking too simply!” Natasha suddenly stood up. She couldn’t possibly let her child do something so dangerous. Her voice cold, she said, “I don’t know where you obtained these two swords. They’re certainly unusual, but your confidence is rather laughably misplaced! Alright, I’ll take you to the tribe. You’ll stay there obediently.”

Natasha looked at Reize, realizing she had spoken too harshly. Her tone softened. “I don’t know if there’s still a chance to correct the principles I taught you before, since your father and I only learned this later ourselves. Having courage and working hard doesn’t necessarily lead to success. Here, strength is everything.”

Ji Chi had been silently listening from the side and only now frowned slightly.

It seemed this Beast God’s divine authority was [Strength]. This was somewhat tricky for him, because a dead Beast God couldn’t be communicated with—there was no way to get Him to control His strength.

And his [Creation], to be honest, had no offensive capability. It could bluff people in civilized society, but in this savage environment, it merely meant being affected a bit less by divine power than ordinary people.

However, all of this was just slightly more difficult. What he feared least was carving out a new path from a difficult situation. Ji Chi rubbed the sword in his hand, the corners of his mouth lifting slightly.

When the wind and snow subsided, Ji Chi and Reize followed behind Natasha, walking along the valley to its depths. The terrain before them had transformed into an enormous ravine, and on the stone walls on both sides of the ravine, quite a few human figures were actually shuttling and leaping about. They lived in caves carved into the stone walls, with beacon fires burning along the cliff faces.

“That’s Snow Wolf Valley. You can think of it as the snowy mountain’s second fortress.” Natasha laughed mockingly. “That’s right—the Snow Wolf Tribe’s people have the same duty as the Snow Plains Expeditionary Army. They guard against others entering the snowy mountain, while the Expeditionary Army guards against berserk beasts entering the snow plain.”

“And the Ice Fortress you saw is everyone’s fortress.” Natasha gazed distantly at the ravine. “For us, here—this is also within the fortress.”