My Journey to Immortality Begins with Hunting

A few days later.

Li Yuan finally decided to abandon his search for now. With a tug of his thousand-mile thread, he returned to the Tang Sect's restricted grounds. He paid a brief visit to Yan Yu, Xue Ning, and Tang Nian before returning to his usual routine of polishing his blade skills.

That was when an odd development occurred.

The Flying Nimbus Group, now riddled with spies, sent Xue Ning a letter of conciliation. The sender promised to withdraw every undercover agent they had planted. They also asked her to do the same with the spies planted in the Windfall Group. They claimed that the two sides weren't enemies, so there was no need to cause unnecessary friction.

Neither Li Yuan nor Xue Ning believed a word. When the world contained items like memory-altering soup and human-skin manacles, trust and contracts were meaningless.

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May arrived, and Cloudpeak Province's long winter had finally broken.

Snow melted, streams gurgled, and Li Yuan was outside practicing hisPark-Grandpa-Style Slow-Motion Bladewhen someone arrived with urgent news.

The messenger happened to be the esteemed matriarch of the Tang Sect herself. Of course, having only turned 27 this year, Tang Nian was only a matriarch in name.

"Pops, we may have found a lead on the Ice Folk.

"My people heard that an old hunter from Fullspring Village dragged home a frozen girl he found while trapping on the tundra. She calls herself Jen'gal Snow, but there's noJen'galClan anywhere in Cloudpeak Province.

"The girl was sealed inside a block of ice; when the hunter thawed her beside his hearth, she came back to life. She's fiercely withdrawn, knows nothing of the outside world, and trusts only the hunter. Yet whenever he asks where she lives, she refuses to say.

"We suspect she belongs to the Ice Folk."

Li Yuan's eyes lit up. If Tang Nian was this sure, odds were high the girl really was special.

"How do you want to handle it?" Tang Nian asked.

Li Yuan thought for a moment. "When the old hunter goes out, have our people escort him away, give him money and a better home.Youwill take his place, disguised with Yin makeup."

Tang Nian gaped. "Me? I'm a woman! And I have a stack of chores already. Why not bring her in as your little concubine instead? I hear she's gorgeous, wild and untamed."

Li Yuan shrugged. "That's not impossible."

"Excuse me...?" Tang Nian gaped. She'd only made the suggestion as a joke, knowing how averse he was to taking in more women.

"If she belongs to the Ice Folk and I want to learn about the Deathless Tomb, the fastest way is to become the husband of an Ice Folk woman," Li Yuan explained.

He remembered how the Ice Folk woman in Tales From The Frozen River had given birth to a child for the sixth rank disciple of the Holy Tree Temple. This was proof their bodies were...compatible.

Recently, he had felt all too keenly the cost of having too small a family. More heirs would solve several problems at once. As long as the girl didn't have a horrendous personality, he could accept it.

"And the disguise?" Tang Nian pressed.

"I'll pretend to be the hunter's son, not the hunter himself. If she really belongs to the Ice Folk and things work out between us, I'd rather not deceive her while wearing another man's face."

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Several days later.

On a lonely hill in the western fringes of Cloudpeak Province, a pale-skinned girl swung an axe in the mountain sunlight, splitting firewood with effortless, primal strength.

Her face was slim; the pupils of her eyes glimmered a faint ember-red, cold yet wild. Every downward chop sent the log flying apart with a crisp crack.

When the last piece fell, the girl straightened herself. The ill-fitting shoes on her snow-white feet crunched over bark chips as she walked toward the brook that ran past the cottage door.

When she reached the stream, the girl suddenly dropped to her knees on the lush bank, running her palms over the soft grass before leaning forward and plunging her fingers into the cold, rushing water.

For anyone else, it was an ordinary bit of scenery; to her it seemed wondrous, almost sacred.

A rustle from the hollow farther up the slope snapped her to attention.

Like a wild animal caught drinking, she whipped around, muscles coiled, then relaxed when she saw the old hunter shouldering a longbow and a three-pronged spear.

"Uncle—" she called, only to stop mid-word.

A youth followed at the hunter's heels, dressed like a young trapper and carrying a hatchet.

"Snow," the hunter said in his thick local drawl, clapping the youth on the shoulder. "This 'ere's m'boy, Woody. He done lost all 'is money in town, so ah dragged 'im home. From now on, he'll be livin' with us."

Snow's gaze turned frosty. In a lilting, slightly odd accent she barked, "A man who gambles away his silver is the most shameful of men! Uncle told me about you, useless at everything except losing!"

"It's past, all in the past. Mah boy done learned 'is lesson. He'll do right by me from now on." The hunter laughed awkwardly and waved both hands. "Ain't ya always been wantin' proper shoes? Woody'll take ya down t'town an' buy ya a pair."

He dug a pouch from his coat, shook out a few coppers, and stuffed them into the boy's hand. "Git the young lady a nice pair o' embroidered shoes, real fine ones now, y'hear?"

"Of course, Pops." The youth bowed his head. "My mistakes are behind me. From today I'll live honestly. Miss Snow, shall we go?"

"I don't know you," Snow said bluntly.

The hunter chuckled. "Ya know 'im now. Mah own boy, ain't he? Hahaha."

"Embroidered shoes look nice," the boy added.

Snow hesitated, then gave a curt nod. "Fine. I'll go with you."

Side by side, they started down the mountain path.

The hunter sat by the stream, watching the pair disappear, and muttered, "What a weird feeling... Seeing Pop's face and calling him my own son..."

Snow stalked ahead as if contemptuous of the weakling behind her, but no matter how fast she strode, the boy kept pace easily.

Halfway down the trail her ill-fitting shoe tore with a sharprip, splitting from ankle to toe.

Of course, theboywas Li Yuan. He hadn't even bothered to alter his features. He opened his mouth to speak just as Snow gripped the ruined shoe between two toes and marched on defiantly.

Li Yuan studied the faint golden numbers hovering beside her—600~610.

It was respectable for someone in sixth rank. Yet she moved like a girl who had never practiced any martial arts at all, her strength purely natural. She didn't possess any bulging muscles, but a dense, primal power that allowed skin to shrug off a spear-point.

The more he watched, the more sure he felt that she belonged to the Ice Folk.

He quickened his step. Snow growled and matched him. Anotherriprang out. The other shoe gave way. She kicked the pair aside and padded forward on bare, snow-white feet.

Li Yuan stopped.

Head high, chin set, Snow glared back—no hint of yielding, though she grudgingly admitted this wastrel she'd heard so much about might not be useless after all.

Then Li Yuan sat right down in the road, pulled off his boots, and held them out to her.

"My mother always said," he told her quietly, "no matter how hard life gets, never let a woman suffer for it. Take the boots. They're yours."